Fluff Prompts Roundup, Part IV
ACTUALLY FLUFFY THIS TIME?!!?!
(also apparently this is the
penfold_x edition, sorry guys! the others are on my list though)
For
penfold_x, bb adopted!Claudius gets a pet
uh okay fair warning, there are no pets in this, and there's hints at some harm to animals, soooo
The fall after Claudius turns twelve, a trainer brings him and the other twelve-year-olds into the big, dark room and makes them stand in the middle, surrounded by the walls of cages. "This is why you're here," the trainer says, giving them all a hard, long stare. "You're almost out of Transition now, no more baby games. Before you leave this phase and join Residential, you will have to kill one of them."
Claudius has known since he was eight, and a few of the others have already practiced out in the woods, but some of them gasp and band together, shuffling close, their shoes squeaking against the metal floor. Claudius concentrates on his breathing, because the trainers will be watching for their reactions. They're always watching. He breathes and he runs through the death list and he doesn't look at the wide, mournful eyes staring at him from every direction.
One of the girls grins, eyeing up the animals like she'd be fine with starting now; one boy starts crying. The girl will still be here tomorrow; the boy, probably not. Claudius presses his lips together and wishes they didn't have to do this. Killing animals isn't the same thing as killing people, not at all.
Killing animals is much, much worse. Kill a human, there's a good chance they did something to deserve it. There's no point in killing an animal that's spent its whole life in a cage. They get fed and cleaned and that's it, because nobody has time to let them out to play and it would be stupid anyway when they're just going to die. In a way that's almost worse. They live every day in a tiny prison and never get to learn what it means to be an animal because they serve a purpose and that's it.
Any person who's killed at least had a life before that. There was a point to them, not just being raised to die. It sticks in Claudius' chest in a way he doesn't understand but knows he doesn't like.
That afternoon in free time they all sit together and talk in hushed whispers. The ones who've already done it brag about how it felt, whether they squeaked or tried to run and how the blood felt on their fingers, hot and sticky. Some of the kids listen, determination on their faces; others turn away, pale and sickened. Most of them talk about which one they hope they'll get, which they hope they don't.
Claudius doesn't. The Centre will give him what they give him, and no worrying himself to death over it will make a difference. He just hopes that whatever it is, he can do it fast, but he's pretty sure he can. He's twelve years old and they never told him officially but he already has one human kill and he wasn't even trying. But Matthias' neck made a snap when his head hit the shower floor and the water went up his nose and he didn't even blink and the tiles were red, red, red turning to pink as the spray washed the blood down the drain and Claudius knows what his eyes looked like.
Matthias deserved it. The animals don't. But the Centre says to kill them and so he will, and Claudius goes to sleep that night with his stomach churning. He dreams of bodies in the shower with those big, frightened animal eyes.
It lives in the back of his mind, filling him with unease, and every so often Claudius sneaks into the room just to sit on the floor and stare at them. He doesn't practice, doesn't imagine how he'll do it, just stares at them and tells himself he can, inuring himself to the eyes that follow him whenever he moves. He's not sure he can do it, except he has to and that means he will and that's all there is to it.
Except it never happens, because Lyme shows up to the Centre and takes Claudius with her, and everything in his life up to that moment turns hazy -- not forgotten, but no longer important.
He has enough to think about, anyway, with nearly killing a kid at school and nearly killing himself out in the mountains, but finally spring hits the Village and Claudius' fear settles and life starts to feel a little more normal instead of a strange dream.
Spring is cold up in the Village but Claudius loves it, and he drags Lyme -- there's another word for her tickling his brain but he's not ready yet -- all over the green, looking at the flowers that pop up out of the ground or burst forth from the trees.
"How do they do that?" Claudius asks, crouched down in the grass with his nose a few inches away from a spray of primrose. "How do they know?"
"Don't ask me," Lyme says, sounding amused, and she kneels down next to him and ruffles his hair. "You have any biology questions, ask Odin, he's the one who likes flowers. Or Frigga, she's got that garden she plants every year, but I'm not sure how much thought she actually puts into it. Still, she'd probably let you help, if you want."
"Maybe," Claudius says airily, like it's no big deal to plant flowers with one of Two's most famous, prettiest Victors, and Lyme grins.
He stares at the flowers, a low chill spreading through him as he stops moving; the grass cold is underneath him, and Lyme leaves her fingers in his hair and Claudius relaxes. "Your birthday's right before the cutoff, right?" Claudius asks. He memorized Lyme's stats from every interview she ever did.
"Yeah," Lyme says, her fingers making circles across his scalp. "Why?"
"Did that make spring weird?"
Her hand stills. "What do you mean?"
Claudius pokes the hard ground, feeling the dirt crumble and give beneath his fingertip. "Mine's after, so for me it's the fall and winter that was hard because I knew all my tests would be coming then. But by spring, everything for that year was over and I could just -- relax for a while, I guess. For you it was the other way around?"
"Oh. Yeah, I never really thought about it, but I guess so." Lyme moves again, scratching at the base of Claudius' skull, and he leans his head back and tries not to purr like a cat. "Fall was always the best time for me. You thinking about the Centre Exam?"
"Yeah." Claudius' eyes fall half shut, and he lowers his head onto his hands, kicking his feet idly in the air. They don't talk for a while, and Claudius nearly dozes off when he catches sight of a chipmunk racing up the trunk of a nearby tree.
They had chipmunks in that room. They used to sleep together in a pile, all tangled until you couldn't tell how many were in there and which body parts belonged to which ones. Claudius used to wonder if they noticed when one disappeared, if they used to look for their missing friends or if they'd learned not to care.
"Do you think I could've done it?" Claudius asks suddenly.
"What, passed the exam?"
"Yeah." He wants to ask if she thinks he could've done all of it, made it through the Program and graduated at the top of his class and come home with a crown and a year's worth of food for the whole district. But that's too far, too many variables, and she couldn't possibly answer that. The exam, though, that's just one test.
"Oh man, D," Lyme says, her voice going to her thoughtful place. "I don't know. But yeah, probably. You were the best kid in your class, you know that. Frigga thought you would, that's why she called me when she did instead of waiting to see if you'd fail."
Claudius hums. It's nice to hear that they had confidence in him, that Lyme wanted him so much she didn't want to risk him passing and going into Residential where it would be too late. "I'm glad I didn't have to," he says finally. "I think I could do the rest of it, but I didn't want to kill an animal. They didn't do anything wrong."
Lyme lets out a breath that sounds funny, and Claudius twists back to look at her but he can't make out her expression, just that he must have said something bad. But she doesn't yell, doesn't pull back in disgust, and she brushes his hair off his forehead and rubs her thumb between his eyes. "That's why they make you do it," Lyme says, and her voice isn't sad, exactly, but it sounds like there's a sigh inside it. "When you volunteer, the kids who were Reaped didn't do anything wrong either. It's good practice."
"Oh." Claudius blinks, and something inside him settles, like two cogs finally fitting together. The Centre knows what it's doing, like always; he shouldn't have doubted. They always know. "Okay, yeah, that makes sense. We have to get used to it sometime."
"Not 'we'," Lyme says, her voice and face going hard before she catches herself and lets out a breath. "Not you, D. Not anymore. No tests, no killing, no Arena. It's time to start remembering that."
"Okay," Claudius says carefully. It feels like the time they played a rough game on the lawn at the Centre, and his sneaker slipped in something but he didn't know if it was mud or blood until he looked down. "Are you okay?"
Lyme presses a thumb between her eyes and exhales through her nose. "Yeah, I'm fine. I just need you to remember something, okay?" She looks at him, and Claudius goes still because he's never seen her look at him like that, fierce and angry and intent. He has seen it -- on television in the Arena, staring out at the Cornucopia, at the bright, shiny sword in the centre of it that's always meant for the leader of the Pack -- but never at him. "You're mine now," Lyme says. "Not theirs."
Claudius sucks in a sharp intake of air. "Not whose?" he asks, carefully, and this time Lyme winces like he stuck her in the foot with a pin.
"Nobody in particular." She says it with false calm, and Claudius has been at the Centre long enough to recognize a lie but he knows not to push it. "You're just mine, kiddo, that's all, so don't you forget it, all right?"
She pokes him in the forehead, and Claudius grins, the weird uncertainty forgotten. "Sure, Mom," he says, then snaps his mouth shut. "Uh, ma'am," he corrects himself quickly, but that doesn't feel right, either.
His heart pounds in his chest, but then she smiles. It's not a huge grin, nothing big or showy, and it's too subtle for the cameras but he feels it right down to his toes anyway. "First one's fine," she says, and the whole world tips sideways and dumps him head first into a nest of blankets.
Claudius stares at her, his brain exploding like the sun coming out from behind the clouds and lighting every flower in the meadow like little bits of gold, and he needs to stop because he probably looks about six years old. But then again, if she wanted him to stop smiling like a dope all the time, she should probably quit making him so happy.
"C'mon." She stands up and tugs him to his feet. "There's a bird's nest in the tree out back, I can boost you up so you can see it, if you want."
Claudius rears back. "I don't need a boost!" he explodes. "How old do you think I am?"
"Yeah, you're my kid all right," Lyme says -- no, Mom says -- and she throws an arm around him and tugs her against his side. "Fine then, Mr. Grownup, in that case I'll race you, and loser has to do dishes."
He wins. She lets him. He doesn't care.
For
penfold_x, Brutus breaks his leg and Lyme has to help him out
There is no worse way for a Two to break a bone than climbing rocks. None. Tripping over shoelaces would be embarrassing, in a ridiculous, can't-believe-it-happened kind of way, so over the top that everyone would have a laugh and move on. Slipping in the shower, same deal. A grisly sporting accident -- not that Twos bothered with that shit, but not the point -- would at least give some kind of badass points; same with training or sparring or pretty much anything else that a good Two hasn't been doing since birth.
It's as bad as a Four nearly drowning or a Ten forgetting how to break the amniotic sac on a newborn cow. Brutus may as well have strangled himself with his own umbilical cord and be done with it.
The doctor says it's not his fault, could've happened to anyone, but Brutus has lived in Two all his life and he knows how to read the cliffs. He knows how to check the terrain and suss out stress points. The part where he didn't even spot the rockslide until it took him out is just as bad as his thigh bone snapping when he fell.
The only good bit in the whole mess is that Brutus made it down the mountain and back to the Village himself, having reset his leg and braced it solid with a good branch and the strips of his torn shirt. Pain jarred through him with every step but at least it gave him something else to think about, and with each new wave of it Brutus cursed and gripped his makeshift walking stick and told himself that if he survived on his own he would boot his own ass into last Wednesday.
Falling down a mountain, for fuck's sake.
It wouldn't be so bad -- Brutus has had worse, they all have, and if nothing else a little pain is a solid reminder that his body is here and working and that everything good can be taken away -- except that Lyme appoints herself as his babysitter. The first time she shows up at his house, grinning and bearing a bag of groceries, Brutus rears back in horror. "No," he says, voice flat, and when he uses that voice the new victors stop their shit and listen.
Lyme just grins wider. "Oh yes," she says, gleeful. He hates her. "You wouldn't want your kids seeing you all laid up like this, now would you? Goes against the natural order of things. I'm only here to help my dearest friend in his time of need."
Brutus drags a hand down his face. "You know what, fuck you."
She snorts. "You first, asshole. Plus you'd have to catch me."
And all right, points to Lyme, because Brutus laughs into his palm despite the frustration and the very present itch starting up underneath the plaster. "I really don't know why we didn't work out. It's just so magical."
This time she winks, and she hefts the bag higher in her arms. "I'm gonna drop this stuff off in your fridge, you want me to make you something? I can cut it up into tiny little pieces for you if you want."
Brutus shoots her the bird, which Lyme mimes catching in mid-air and eating. As soon as she disappears through the door to the kitchen, Brutus tries to jam his fingers into the gap between the cast and his thigh, but no such luck. Stupid giant fingers. He settles for sticking a pencil in and wiggling it around, but it doesn't actually reach the itch and Brutus hates everything.
Lyme comes back with a sandwich and a beer, and Brutus is evaluating how much he values his junk staying exactly where it is versus how perfect the setup is when Lyme gives him a look that says she knows. "Say it and I break the other leg," she warns him.
Brutus snickers, but then Lyme sets down the plate and the bottle on the coffee table, just far enough out of Brutus' reach that even if he stretched out as far as he could, his fingers would only barely brush the edge.
He gives her a betrayed look. "Oh, come on. Really?"
"Like you wouldn't do the same," Lyme scoffs, and Brutus wants to make a huffy retort about how he's a gentleman, unlike some people, but let's not kid himself. For a minute he thinks she's going to make him say something humiliating first -- in which case bring on the starvation training, Brutus lasted ten days before the Centre doctors intervened -- but then she leans forward and pushes the sandwich into reach.
He's almost afraid to eat it, but Lyme wouldn't actually dose his food with anything unless he seriously pissed her off. Most likely she just wants to watch him squirm, and so Brutus tears off a huge bite and pushes it into his cheek. "Thanks," he says, but then Lyme pops the top off his beer and slides it down and he shifts right back into aggrieved. "It's my leg that's broken, not my hands," Brutus grumbles, snatching the beer away and downing half of it in one go.
"I just want to make sure you're okay," Lyme says, patting his other knee. "Plus I owe you for that time I got the flu and you kept asking if it was possible to get pregnant from pretty boys letting me fuck them."
He'd forgotten about that one, and Brutus tries to arrange his face into a neutral mask but it's too late. "Okay, okay," he says at last, holding up his hands in surrender while keeping two fingers curled around his beer. "We're even."
Lyme gives him a sharp-toothed smile that would have the sponsors leaping for their wallets. "Oh, caveman, we are so, so far from even."
Over the next two weeks, Lyme offers to chew Brutus' food for him, to carry him up to bed, to order a few of her pretty boys to give him sponge baths (that one got a "Fuck you" so violent she nearly fell down the stairs laughing) and to tuck him in and sing him lullabies at night. In the meantime, Brutus' doctor threatens to strap him to a chair and insert a catheter if he doesn't stop trying to get up and train, and so Brutus grits his teeth against Lyme's mirthful mocking and his doctor's admittedly unavoidable advice and works from home.
Three weeks later, Lyme comes in and drops Brutus' mail on the desk without joking that she should make him say pretty please first. Brutus raises an eyebrow and scoops it up before she can change her mind. "You're being nice today," he says. "You coming down with something?"
Lyme coughs, and her ears actually go red. "Claudius told me I was being mean. Nothing kills a good bout of immaturity like your kid crossing his arms at you."
Brutus stares at her for a second, then barks out a laugh. "Oh, shit, I'm sorry. You can tell your boy I'm not crying into my cereal every night, so he can turn off the guilt-eyes."
"Yeah, I told him you can take it, but apparently that wasn't enough." Lyme rolls her eyes. "Anyway, I promised him I'd try to be nice, which is too bad because I had a great one up my sleeve. Too bad you'll never hear it."
She parks her hip on the side of the desk, drumming her fingers against the wood. "I think he just doesn't get what it's like having somebody on the same level," Lyme says, and Brutus winces. Nobody's come out on either side of Claudius for years; he has a lifetime in front of him of people to defer to but nobody to sit and joke with as equals. "Anyway. I told him I'd behave, because it was keeping him up at night thinking of you crying yourself to sleep."
"Bring him over for dinner," Brutus says after a minute, and Lyme glances at him in surprise. "I'm going crazy in here, and if your boy's there to keep a leash on you, then maybe I won't want to commit murder-suicide by the end."
Lyme nods, but she still doesn't go. Brutus is wondering whether she set a bomb in his house and is just waiting for the reaction when she finally glares at him. "You know why I'm giving you shit, right? I thought after a couple of weeks you'd get it but I'm starting to think you don't."
"Enlighten me."
Lyme narrows her eyes. "Because you climbed down a mountain with a Games-damned broken leg when you had a perfectly good phone, that's why. You've got kids to think about. Almost twenty years out and you're still pulling this shit, the fuck is wrong with you?"
Brutus sits up, anger straightening his shoulders. "It's just a leg, and I obviously made it down just fine."
"Yeah. You did. Just like you walked out of the Arena, because we all know that if you survive something, there's no way it could've gone wrong." Lyme scowls at him, and Brutus fights back the thought that he liked it better when she was tormenting him. At least that he could ignore. "Maybe you don't give a shit about yourself, but other people do, including me. So you do that again and I'm gonna dress you up in a tutu, wheel you out in front of the Village, and alert the media, do you hear me?"
He stares her down but Lyme stares harder, and Brutus might be pissed but she has righteous anger on her side and that trumps personal affront any day. Finally Brutus gives in, breaking eye contact with a grunt, and he picks up his pen and twirls it around his fingers. "So, to show me that I should stop being so independent and accept help, you then spent three weeks making me hate every kind of help I could possibly get."
Lyme laughs, finally, miming a strike to the heart. "Hey, I said I wanted to help, I didn't say I was good at it."
"You really suck," Brutus agrees. "How are your kids still alive again?"
"It's a miracle," Lyme says dryly, and she nudges Brutus' good leg with her foot. "Seriously, though, you made me talk about feelings. I used the c-word for you. Do that again, I kill you myself. Deal?"
Lyme raises her eyebrows, challenging and joking but not really, and she might have annoyed Brutus from here to Eleven and back again but she did make sure he was safe, she did keep his kids from seeing him at his most vulnerable, and she had breached their no-emotions agreement to say she cared because he had to hear it.
"Fine, I guess I'll give you one," Brutus says, and Lyme nods in satisfaction. "You still need to work on your bedside manner."
"You could be a less irritating patient, but that's not going to happen either."
He ticks off a point in the air. He still isn't sure how Odin survived having him as a tribute, other than sparring with him six times a day so Brutus would calm the hell down and listen. "All right, all right. Get your boy, I'll haul my ass down to the kitchen, and we can eat and show him we're playing nice like adults."
Lyme nods, and this time she heaves herself off the desk. "Sounds good, I'll go get him," she says, and on her way out she clasps Brutus by the shoulder and shakes him. "Not being a complete dumbass looks good on you. Keep it up."
Brutus throws his pencil at her head as she leaves. After the door shuts, Brutus sighs, grabs the crutches propped up next to his desk, and heaves himself up onto his feet. When he makes it out to the kitchen, there's a brand-new pack of his favourite beer on the counter. Brutus decides to make the spiral kind of pasta that Lyme likes best, just because.
(also apparently this is the
penfold_x edition, sorry guys! the others are on my list though)
For
penfold_x, bb adopted!Claudius gets a pet
uh okay fair warning, there are no pets in this, and there's hints at some harm to animals, soooo
The fall after Claudius turns twelve, a trainer brings him and the other twelve-year-olds into the big, dark room and makes them stand in the middle, surrounded by the walls of cages. "This is why you're here," the trainer says, giving them all a hard, long stare. "You're almost out of Transition now, no more baby games. Before you leave this phase and join Residential, you will have to kill one of them."
Claudius has known since he was eight, and a few of the others have already practiced out in the woods, but some of them gasp and band together, shuffling close, their shoes squeaking against the metal floor. Claudius concentrates on his breathing, because the trainers will be watching for their reactions. They're always watching. He breathes and he runs through the death list and he doesn't look at the wide, mournful eyes staring at him from every direction.
One of the girls grins, eyeing up the animals like she'd be fine with starting now; one boy starts crying. The girl will still be here tomorrow; the boy, probably not. Claudius presses his lips together and wishes they didn't have to do this. Killing animals isn't the same thing as killing people, not at all.
Killing animals is much, much worse. Kill a human, there's a good chance they did something to deserve it. There's no point in killing an animal that's spent its whole life in a cage. They get fed and cleaned and that's it, because nobody has time to let them out to play and it would be stupid anyway when they're just going to die. In a way that's almost worse. They live every day in a tiny prison and never get to learn what it means to be an animal because they serve a purpose and that's it.
Any person who's killed at least had a life before that. There was a point to them, not just being raised to die. It sticks in Claudius' chest in a way he doesn't understand but knows he doesn't like.
That afternoon in free time they all sit together and talk in hushed whispers. The ones who've already done it brag about how it felt, whether they squeaked or tried to run and how the blood felt on their fingers, hot and sticky. Some of the kids listen, determination on their faces; others turn away, pale and sickened. Most of them talk about which one they hope they'll get, which they hope they don't.
Claudius doesn't. The Centre will give him what they give him, and no worrying himself to death over it will make a difference. He just hopes that whatever it is, he can do it fast, but he's pretty sure he can. He's twelve years old and they never told him officially but he already has one human kill and he wasn't even trying. But Matthias' neck made a snap when his head hit the shower floor and the water went up his nose and he didn't even blink and the tiles were red, red, red turning to pink as the spray washed the blood down the drain and Claudius knows what his eyes looked like.
Matthias deserved it. The animals don't. But the Centre says to kill them and so he will, and Claudius goes to sleep that night with his stomach churning. He dreams of bodies in the shower with those big, frightened animal eyes.
It lives in the back of his mind, filling him with unease, and every so often Claudius sneaks into the room just to sit on the floor and stare at them. He doesn't practice, doesn't imagine how he'll do it, just stares at them and tells himself he can, inuring himself to the eyes that follow him whenever he moves. He's not sure he can do it, except he has to and that means he will and that's all there is to it.
Except it never happens, because Lyme shows up to the Centre and takes Claudius with her, and everything in his life up to that moment turns hazy -- not forgotten, but no longer important.
He has enough to think about, anyway, with nearly killing a kid at school and nearly killing himself out in the mountains, but finally spring hits the Village and Claudius' fear settles and life starts to feel a little more normal instead of a strange dream.
Spring is cold up in the Village but Claudius loves it, and he drags Lyme -- there's another word for her tickling his brain but he's not ready yet -- all over the green, looking at the flowers that pop up out of the ground or burst forth from the trees.
"How do they do that?" Claudius asks, crouched down in the grass with his nose a few inches away from a spray of primrose. "How do they know?"
"Don't ask me," Lyme says, sounding amused, and she kneels down next to him and ruffles his hair. "You have any biology questions, ask Odin, he's the one who likes flowers. Or Frigga, she's got that garden she plants every year, but I'm not sure how much thought she actually puts into it. Still, she'd probably let you help, if you want."
"Maybe," Claudius says airily, like it's no big deal to plant flowers with one of Two's most famous, prettiest Victors, and Lyme grins.
He stares at the flowers, a low chill spreading through him as he stops moving; the grass cold is underneath him, and Lyme leaves her fingers in his hair and Claudius relaxes. "Your birthday's right before the cutoff, right?" Claudius asks. He memorized Lyme's stats from every interview she ever did.
"Yeah," Lyme says, her fingers making circles across his scalp. "Why?"
"Did that make spring weird?"
Her hand stills. "What do you mean?"
Claudius pokes the hard ground, feeling the dirt crumble and give beneath his fingertip. "Mine's after, so for me it's the fall and winter that was hard because I knew all my tests would be coming then. But by spring, everything for that year was over and I could just -- relax for a while, I guess. For you it was the other way around?"
"Oh. Yeah, I never really thought about it, but I guess so." Lyme moves again, scratching at the base of Claudius' skull, and he leans his head back and tries not to purr like a cat. "Fall was always the best time for me. You thinking about the Centre Exam?"
"Yeah." Claudius' eyes fall half shut, and he lowers his head onto his hands, kicking his feet idly in the air. They don't talk for a while, and Claudius nearly dozes off when he catches sight of a chipmunk racing up the trunk of a nearby tree.
They had chipmunks in that room. They used to sleep together in a pile, all tangled until you couldn't tell how many were in there and which body parts belonged to which ones. Claudius used to wonder if they noticed when one disappeared, if they used to look for their missing friends or if they'd learned not to care.
"Do you think I could've done it?" Claudius asks suddenly.
"What, passed the exam?"
"Yeah." He wants to ask if she thinks he could've done all of it, made it through the Program and graduated at the top of his class and come home with a crown and a year's worth of food for the whole district. But that's too far, too many variables, and she couldn't possibly answer that. The exam, though, that's just one test.
"Oh man, D," Lyme says, her voice going to her thoughtful place. "I don't know. But yeah, probably. You were the best kid in your class, you know that. Frigga thought you would, that's why she called me when she did instead of waiting to see if you'd fail."
Claudius hums. It's nice to hear that they had confidence in him, that Lyme wanted him so much she didn't want to risk him passing and going into Residential where it would be too late. "I'm glad I didn't have to," he says finally. "I think I could do the rest of it, but I didn't want to kill an animal. They didn't do anything wrong."
Lyme lets out a breath that sounds funny, and Claudius twists back to look at her but he can't make out her expression, just that he must have said something bad. But she doesn't yell, doesn't pull back in disgust, and she brushes his hair off his forehead and rubs her thumb between his eyes. "That's why they make you do it," Lyme says, and her voice isn't sad, exactly, but it sounds like there's a sigh inside it. "When you volunteer, the kids who were Reaped didn't do anything wrong either. It's good practice."
"Oh." Claudius blinks, and something inside him settles, like two cogs finally fitting together. The Centre knows what it's doing, like always; he shouldn't have doubted. They always know. "Okay, yeah, that makes sense. We have to get used to it sometime."
"Not 'we'," Lyme says, her voice and face going hard before she catches herself and lets out a breath. "Not you, D. Not anymore. No tests, no killing, no Arena. It's time to start remembering that."
"Okay," Claudius says carefully. It feels like the time they played a rough game on the lawn at the Centre, and his sneaker slipped in something but he didn't know if it was mud or blood until he looked down. "Are you okay?"
Lyme presses a thumb between her eyes and exhales through her nose. "Yeah, I'm fine. I just need you to remember something, okay?" She looks at him, and Claudius goes still because he's never seen her look at him like that, fierce and angry and intent. He has seen it -- on television in the Arena, staring out at the Cornucopia, at the bright, shiny sword in the centre of it that's always meant for the leader of the Pack -- but never at him. "You're mine now," Lyme says. "Not theirs."
Claudius sucks in a sharp intake of air. "Not whose?" he asks, carefully, and this time Lyme winces like he stuck her in the foot with a pin.
"Nobody in particular." She says it with false calm, and Claudius has been at the Centre long enough to recognize a lie but he knows not to push it. "You're just mine, kiddo, that's all, so don't you forget it, all right?"
She pokes him in the forehead, and Claudius grins, the weird uncertainty forgotten. "Sure, Mom," he says, then snaps his mouth shut. "Uh, ma'am," he corrects himself quickly, but that doesn't feel right, either.
His heart pounds in his chest, but then she smiles. It's not a huge grin, nothing big or showy, and it's too subtle for the cameras but he feels it right down to his toes anyway. "First one's fine," she says, and the whole world tips sideways and dumps him head first into a nest of blankets.
Claudius stares at her, his brain exploding like the sun coming out from behind the clouds and lighting every flower in the meadow like little bits of gold, and he needs to stop because he probably looks about six years old. But then again, if she wanted him to stop smiling like a dope all the time, she should probably quit making him so happy.
"C'mon." She stands up and tugs him to his feet. "There's a bird's nest in the tree out back, I can boost you up so you can see it, if you want."
Claudius rears back. "I don't need a boost!" he explodes. "How old do you think I am?"
"Yeah, you're my kid all right," Lyme says -- no, Mom says -- and she throws an arm around him and tugs her against his side. "Fine then, Mr. Grownup, in that case I'll race you, and loser has to do dishes."
He wins. She lets him. He doesn't care.
For
penfold_x, Brutus breaks his leg and Lyme has to help him out
There is no worse way for a Two to break a bone than climbing rocks. None. Tripping over shoelaces would be embarrassing, in a ridiculous, can't-believe-it-happened kind of way, so over the top that everyone would have a laugh and move on. Slipping in the shower, same deal. A grisly sporting accident -- not that Twos bothered with that shit, but not the point -- would at least give some kind of badass points; same with training or sparring or pretty much anything else that a good Two hasn't been doing since birth.
It's as bad as a Four nearly drowning or a Ten forgetting how to break the amniotic sac on a newborn cow. Brutus may as well have strangled himself with his own umbilical cord and be done with it.
The doctor says it's not his fault, could've happened to anyone, but Brutus has lived in Two all his life and he knows how to read the cliffs. He knows how to check the terrain and suss out stress points. The part where he didn't even spot the rockslide until it took him out is just as bad as his thigh bone snapping when he fell.
The only good bit in the whole mess is that Brutus made it down the mountain and back to the Village himself, having reset his leg and braced it solid with a good branch and the strips of his torn shirt. Pain jarred through him with every step but at least it gave him something else to think about, and with each new wave of it Brutus cursed and gripped his makeshift walking stick and told himself that if he survived on his own he would boot his own ass into last Wednesday.
Falling down a mountain, for fuck's sake.
It wouldn't be so bad -- Brutus has had worse, they all have, and if nothing else a little pain is a solid reminder that his body is here and working and that everything good can be taken away -- except that Lyme appoints herself as his babysitter. The first time she shows up at his house, grinning and bearing a bag of groceries, Brutus rears back in horror. "No," he says, voice flat, and when he uses that voice the new victors stop their shit and listen.
Lyme just grins wider. "Oh yes," she says, gleeful. He hates her. "You wouldn't want your kids seeing you all laid up like this, now would you? Goes against the natural order of things. I'm only here to help my dearest friend in his time of need."
Brutus drags a hand down his face. "You know what, fuck you."
She snorts. "You first, asshole. Plus you'd have to catch me."
And all right, points to Lyme, because Brutus laughs into his palm despite the frustration and the very present itch starting up underneath the plaster. "I really don't know why we didn't work out. It's just so magical."
This time she winks, and she hefts the bag higher in her arms. "I'm gonna drop this stuff off in your fridge, you want me to make you something? I can cut it up into tiny little pieces for you if you want."
Brutus shoots her the bird, which Lyme mimes catching in mid-air and eating. As soon as she disappears through the door to the kitchen, Brutus tries to jam his fingers into the gap between the cast and his thigh, but no such luck. Stupid giant fingers. He settles for sticking a pencil in and wiggling it around, but it doesn't actually reach the itch and Brutus hates everything.
Lyme comes back with a sandwich and a beer, and Brutus is evaluating how much he values his junk staying exactly where it is versus how perfect the setup is when Lyme gives him a look that says she knows. "Say it and I break the other leg," she warns him.
Brutus snickers, but then Lyme sets down the plate and the bottle on the coffee table, just far enough out of Brutus' reach that even if he stretched out as far as he could, his fingers would only barely brush the edge.
He gives her a betrayed look. "Oh, come on. Really?"
"Like you wouldn't do the same," Lyme scoffs, and Brutus wants to make a huffy retort about how he's a gentleman, unlike some people, but let's not kid himself. For a minute he thinks she's going to make him say something humiliating first -- in which case bring on the starvation training, Brutus lasted ten days before the Centre doctors intervened -- but then she leans forward and pushes the sandwich into reach.
He's almost afraid to eat it, but Lyme wouldn't actually dose his food with anything unless he seriously pissed her off. Most likely she just wants to watch him squirm, and so Brutus tears off a huge bite and pushes it into his cheek. "Thanks," he says, but then Lyme pops the top off his beer and slides it down and he shifts right back into aggrieved. "It's my leg that's broken, not my hands," Brutus grumbles, snatching the beer away and downing half of it in one go.
"I just want to make sure you're okay," Lyme says, patting his other knee. "Plus I owe you for that time I got the flu and you kept asking if it was possible to get pregnant from pretty boys letting me fuck them."
He'd forgotten about that one, and Brutus tries to arrange his face into a neutral mask but it's too late. "Okay, okay," he says at last, holding up his hands in surrender while keeping two fingers curled around his beer. "We're even."
Lyme gives him a sharp-toothed smile that would have the sponsors leaping for their wallets. "Oh, caveman, we are so, so far from even."
Over the next two weeks, Lyme offers to chew Brutus' food for him, to carry him up to bed, to order a few of her pretty boys to give him sponge baths (that one got a "Fuck you" so violent she nearly fell down the stairs laughing) and to tuck him in and sing him lullabies at night. In the meantime, Brutus' doctor threatens to strap him to a chair and insert a catheter if he doesn't stop trying to get up and train, and so Brutus grits his teeth against Lyme's mirthful mocking and his doctor's admittedly unavoidable advice and works from home.
Three weeks later, Lyme comes in and drops Brutus' mail on the desk without joking that she should make him say pretty please first. Brutus raises an eyebrow and scoops it up before she can change her mind. "You're being nice today," he says. "You coming down with something?"
Lyme coughs, and her ears actually go red. "Claudius told me I was being mean. Nothing kills a good bout of immaturity like your kid crossing his arms at you."
Brutus stares at her for a second, then barks out a laugh. "Oh, shit, I'm sorry. You can tell your boy I'm not crying into my cereal every night, so he can turn off the guilt-eyes."
"Yeah, I told him you can take it, but apparently that wasn't enough." Lyme rolls her eyes. "Anyway, I promised him I'd try to be nice, which is too bad because I had a great one up my sleeve. Too bad you'll never hear it."
She parks her hip on the side of the desk, drumming her fingers against the wood. "I think he just doesn't get what it's like having somebody on the same level," Lyme says, and Brutus winces. Nobody's come out on either side of Claudius for years; he has a lifetime in front of him of people to defer to but nobody to sit and joke with as equals. "Anyway. I told him I'd behave, because it was keeping him up at night thinking of you crying yourself to sleep."
"Bring him over for dinner," Brutus says after a minute, and Lyme glances at him in surprise. "I'm going crazy in here, and if your boy's there to keep a leash on you, then maybe I won't want to commit murder-suicide by the end."
Lyme nods, but she still doesn't go. Brutus is wondering whether she set a bomb in his house and is just waiting for the reaction when she finally glares at him. "You know why I'm giving you shit, right? I thought after a couple of weeks you'd get it but I'm starting to think you don't."
"Enlighten me."
Lyme narrows her eyes. "Because you climbed down a mountain with a Games-damned broken leg when you had a perfectly good phone, that's why. You've got kids to think about. Almost twenty years out and you're still pulling this shit, the fuck is wrong with you?"
Brutus sits up, anger straightening his shoulders. "It's just a leg, and I obviously made it down just fine."
"Yeah. You did. Just like you walked out of the Arena, because we all know that if you survive something, there's no way it could've gone wrong." Lyme scowls at him, and Brutus fights back the thought that he liked it better when she was tormenting him. At least that he could ignore. "Maybe you don't give a shit about yourself, but other people do, including me. So you do that again and I'm gonna dress you up in a tutu, wheel you out in front of the Village, and alert the media, do you hear me?"
He stares her down but Lyme stares harder, and Brutus might be pissed but she has righteous anger on her side and that trumps personal affront any day. Finally Brutus gives in, breaking eye contact with a grunt, and he picks up his pen and twirls it around his fingers. "So, to show me that I should stop being so independent and accept help, you then spent three weeks making me hate every kind of help I could possibly get."
Lyme laughs, finally, miming a strike to the heart. "Hey, I said I wanted to help, I didn't say I was good at it."
"You really suck," Brutus agrees. "How are your kids still alive again?"
"It's a miracle," Lyme says dryly, and she nudges Brutus' good leg with her foot. "Seriously, though, you made me talk about feelings. I used the c-word for you. Do that again, I kill you myself. Deal?"
Lyme raises her eyebrows, challenging and joking but not really, and she might have annoyed Brutus from here to Eleven and back again but she did make sure he was safe, she did keep his kids from seeing him at his most vulnerable, and she had breached their no-emotions agreement to say she cared because he had to hear it.
"Fine, I guess I'll give you one," Brutus says, and Lyme nods in satisfaction. "You still need to work on your bedside manner."
"You could be a less irritating patient, but that's not going to happen either."
He ticks off a point in the air. He still isn't sure how Odin survived having him as a tribute, other than sparring with him six times a day so Brutus would calm the hell down and listen. "All right, all right. Get your boy, I'll haul my ass down to the kitchen, and we can eat and show him we're playing nice like adults."
Lyme nods, and this time she heaves herself off the desk. "Sounds good, I'll go get him," she says, and on her way out she clasps Brutus by the shoulder and shakes him. "Not being a complete dumbass looks good on you. Keep it up."
Brutus throws his pencil at her head as she leaves. After the door shuts, Brutus sighs, grabs the crutches propped up next to his desk, and heaves himself up onto his feet. When he makes it out to the kitchen, there's a brand-new pack of his favourite beer on the counter. Brutus decides to make the spiral kind of pasta that Lyme likes best, just because.