cardinal's point [roe x mateo, brunch]

[tick 12a / calla]

R O E

The lateness, you should know, isn't really his fault. He just didn't want to go.

There's a giant wrench in Roe's plans now, and that's that he's been labelled a flight risk. A major one. And then it was highlighted and underlined. Circled about seven times. Bolded, even.

The brunch is already in full swing by the time they finally manage to wrangle him down from the top of the suite's dresser. He'd been just minding his own business, making the most of his last few days trying to pry open one of the vents, meticulously using his nail to dig at the corner screw until he was rather rudely interrupted by his scuffed security brigade.

It's the one with the ponytail who twists Roe's arms behind him and marches him down to the dining hall. Roe makes sure to let him know just how much the ponytail isn't working. It's not the guy's fault - some people's faces are just too round to not have a framing cut.

They march a little faster.

The table he gets dumped at already has someone waiting. Poor guy. Ponytail dumps Roe in the empty seat and then swipes the fork from the table, pocketing it. Then he seems to think better of it and takes the rest of the silverware from Roe's side of the table away.

"Dick." Roe hisses, rubbing at his wrists.

It's not like he would've actually stabbed someone. And not with a spoon. At least not somewhere so public.

Ponytail doesn't even leave, just takes a few steps back and menacingly hovers.

Roe brushes him off rather effectively, turning to his partner with a disarming sort of energy.

"Sorry to keep you waiting." He says, too sweet to be real, "I didn't want to come."

ELEGANT

[napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ.]

↳ MATEO IZAR

Mama says it isn’t hard to tell a person’s edges from the very first glance. They tend to glisten. And the edges to the boy that stumbles onto the seat across his, Mateo can tell, are sharp enough to cut.

He checks him with a cocked brow, his own face framed in half-shadow by the hood of his sweater. It’s too damn cold here for some reason, a chill that even the buzz from the mimosas can’t kick, and he fights off a shivers as he instead sighs and picks out a question from the bowl.

“So, any specific reason as to why you have a personal bodyguard?” Mateo asks with his eyes affixed on the paper slip as if the question is written on it. “Does everyone get one? They must’ve skipped out on me.” He chuckles gently, moving his gaze towards the ponytailed male behind the boy and back at him.

Pointed like a knife, all sharp edges, Mama told him to stay away from boys like him, too.

But Mateo has never been too good with rules. He respects them, sure, but following them is another story. Even now, his pockets are heavy and overfull of the utensils and little knickknacks he had been picking up throughout the day from trays, tables, and allegedly people. Allegedly.

The boy in front of him doesn’t look to be carrying much though, other than Mateo’s own interest.

“Mateo,” he greets, a little pointedly. “Izar,” he adds a beat after, a little reluctantly. It’s a heavy name. “Do you have any questions or should I ask your bodyguard, hm?”

[tick 12a / calla]

R O E

"There's no way it says that."

Emo looking bastard. This kid's got the sort of disposition that belongs out on the street, in the rain, standing sopping wet on a stoop. It's just a little bit pathetic. The kind of pathetic that you want to roll up into a towel and wring out.

Roe leans forward to pluck the paper from his fingers, smoothing it out and reading the damn thing for himself - 'what is your biggest regret?'

"Yeah, we're not doing this."

He crumples it up and throws it back in the bowl. If he's going to be forced to sit here, he may as well get something out of it. The broiling arrogance settles over him like a shroud, his knee bouncing against the tempo beat of his energy. There's too much of it in him. Overflowing. It makes him wild at the worst of times and unbearable at the best.

“Mateo.”

Uh-huh.

“Izar.”

“Shiiiit.”

Damn, did he say that out loud?

There might've been no reality tv in Twelve - sorry Miss Lumiere-Fray - but they're sure as shit was games tv. And reruns. Lots and lots of reruns. You'd have to live under something significantly more solid than a rock to not recognize one of the most cursed names to come out of the lower districts.

"Sorry about that." And Roe can't exactly hide the way his face screws up, "I guess."

"Do you have any questions or should I ask your bodyguard, hm?”

"Jealous?" He jerks a thumb over his shoulder, "All you gotta do is stab one of them and they'll hook you up with an entourage."

Roe twists around in his seat to look at Ponytail expectantly, his voice heavy with sarcasm, "You gonna just keep standing there, or are you gonna do something useful?"

He gets a tepid glare in response.

Roe turns back to Mateo, mockingly apologetic, "He's a bit shy."

Then the tone turns worse.

"You shy, Izar?" He kicks his heels out to extend his legs beneath the table, lounging. "You seem like the type."

ELEGANT

[napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ.]

↳ MATEO IZAR

Mateo looks at what’s in front of him and, he decides, likes what he sees. But in the way you like a macabre object, the trepidation is always present. The other’s a kaleidoscope of features and temperament, hot one second and icy the next, and it’s fun, he realizes, to try and predict which direction this pendulum swing of a boy surrenders itself to.

He’s a room that keeps rearranging itself.

His name throws the furniture off-kilter.

Mateo leans back in his own chair, unable to repress a smirk.

“Yeah, yeah, don’t pity me.”

An Izar is a part of a legacy. If their lineage were a tree, it would have thick roots that overlapped one another and had outgrown itself boundlessly, infinitely. An Izar had been in this room before. An Izar had talked to another tribute in the same way he was talking to the other. He feels oddly as if he is a shadow reliving the memories of its host, retracing each taken step.

But he’s sure that an Izar hasn’t met someone as wiry and sharp as the person he eyes.

“You … stabbed them,” Mateo echoes, almost confusedly. “Right. Now I’m suddenly on ponytail’s side. What forced your hand?”

From the looks of it, the reason could’ve been anything.

It's the eyes of a shark that turn back to Mateo, pure hunger in that gaze as he feels the brush of ankles underneath him, and, well, he is not strong enough to battle the flush in his cheeks.

But he fakes a cocky grin, shaking his head.

“No, no, you got the wrong dude,” his fingers drum themselves on the table, “I'm not shy, I just want to drink my mimosas and do brunch.” A pause. “You haven’t introduced yourself,” Mateo adds, and he instantly detests how eager his tone sounded then.

[tick 12a / calla]

R O E

"I don't pity you."

He's out of place here. Little maudlin hand puppet. There's not much to a name like Izar unless you have the backing for it. They all blur together at some point. Not shiny anymore. Not gilded, not good. Still, not a bad bit of armour.

"Family." He muses outloud. It's sharp. "Not really my thing."

A grin starts to cut across Roe's face, that derision dripping from his chin like blood.

"You... stabbed them." Mateo echos incredeously.

"Yeah."

"What forced your hand?"

He thinks of the blank anonymity of the helmet, the opaque plastic, thick enough to hide any expression - “He looked at me funny.”

The joke settles, carving smooth lines into the wood grain of the table. What a strange morning. Brunch. Roe didn’t even know what that was until this morning.

“You haven’t introduced yourself.”

“Top marks for observation.”

Roe lets him wait for it, his eyes gleaming in the long silence. He tracks the minute movements of Mateo's face, listening to the anxious rhythm of his hands, moving his ankle along to it. It's almost too easy, the poor guy looks like he's about to tip out of his chair.

Roe settles in his seat a little further, watching the canary, pawing at the mouse. His claws come away blue-blooded.

"Roe Daniels." He says finally.

Pause for non-existent applause.

"Not very exciting, I know." He points across the table lazily, "Not like you."

His head tilts, the teasing just shy of malicious, "Evidently."

ELEGANT