~/You're {Crashing} But You're No Wave\~ [OPEN!]

[Deleted]

.:.:I must confess, I'm in love with my own sins:.:.

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You could have knocked me out with a feather
I know you've heard this all before, but we're just Hell's neighbors
Why, why, why won't the world revolve around me?
Build my dreams, trees grow all over the streets[/font][/size]

There were some days when you just couldn't win.

Today had been one of those days, Luke noted, making a vain attempt to peer around all the smudges and grime coating the cracked mirror in his equally filthy bathroom, trying to distinguish the vague shape he saw into enough of a reflection to allow him to do something with his hair, still damp from a recent shower. The inconsistent flashing light of the bare, dying bulb overhead wasn't helping his lowered visibility or the raging one-two throbbing of a massive headache that had been plaguing him him all day, prompting him to give an irritable growl and paw half-blindly at the light switch, muttering something incoherent about his apartment's shoddy wiring interspersed with an impressive stream of profanity.

Still ruminating on the injustice of his less-than-reliable electricity, he grabbed quickly at the cord attached to the old blinds that hung over one of the two windows in the apartment and gave it a sharp yank - which promptly caused the entire setup to detach from the wall and fall on top of him. Hissing violently in pain from both the head trauma inflicted by the falling window dressings and the sudden, merciless attack of midday sunlight on his still very hungover eyes, Luke's cursing went from a mumble to something distinctly louder and more clearly enunciated as he made a halfhearted attempt at disentangling himself from the twisted metal-and-string contraption. A few seconds later he gave up, sinking to the yellowed linoleum and planting his head in his hands with a tortured groan of frustration.

His whole damn day had gone down the tubes, and ending up on the bathroom floor tangled up in a set of malfunctioning blinds, badly in need of a whole slew of illegal substances, preferably with a whiskey chaser, was just the icing on the whole shitty cake. True, he'd only been awake for about two hours, but Luke Marling was nothing if not a master of intuition (and a handsome devil, and God's gift to women, and a general badass of the highest caliber), and his gut was giving him the hunch that the remainder of his day was going to suck just as much, if not more than, it had so far. And his gut was never wrong. Or maybe that was just the withdrawal.

Anyhow, back to the heart-wrenching saga of Luke's Terrible-Awful-No-Good-Horrible-Very-Bad-Day. It had begun at dawn. Dawn, for Christ's sake. That alone would have been enough to put him in a sour mood, ever the consummate night owl, loathe to be woken for anything short of the apocalypse before noon on any given day. The crashing clamor from his kitchen had accosted his slumbering senses, making him wake up with the Headache to End All Headaches as his sole companion. Suckish part of the day number two: raging hangover. Slurring together incomprehensible half-sentences, he'd stumbled out of his bedroom, only to be greeted by the sight of a bright-eyed girl (he couldn't remember her name for the life of him) shoving a plate of food at him, too-perky entreaties of I made you breakfast and we should totally do that again sometime grating on his over-sensitized ears.

Still not entirely lucid, Luke had blinked blearily at her a few times, tilting his head curiously to the side."That's weird. You were way cuter last night."

He'd ended up wearing the plate of scrambled eggs and bacon. Not his best look. Not to mention the fact that she'd stormed out still wearing one of his shirts. Suckish parts of the day number two and three.

The hot water had been on the fritz again, resulting in a very uncomfortable shower that didn't do much to help with his headache, and he'd actually had to clean the spilled food that had been chucked with wicked aim at his face (he would have left it alone if he hadn't slipped in a puddle of bacon grease and landed rather unceremoniously on his ass). Suckish parts of the day number four and five. And now here he sat, caught up in a tangled mess on the bathroom floor looking and feeling like utter hell. Looking down, Luke noticed that the buttons of his shirt were done up wrong.

Six.

A few hours later, Luke was having the best day ever. His paradigm shift mainly had to deal with the fact that he was higher than a kite when he shouldered into the bar, his guitar slung over his shoulder, taking in a deep breath of the distinctive aroma of stale cigarette smoke and cheap alcohol. Place smelled like home. The thing about cocaine was that it made you feel fantastic, even if you'd had the worst day on the planet (he was fairly certain he had, but none of that mattered now), which meant that he'd knocked back three lines at the first opportunity after his inexcusably awful morning. The jitters that shot through his limbs like little electric currents weren't the most desirable side effect, but he was more than used to it by now.

"You're late, kid." It was the standard greeting from Old Man Hendrickson, accompanied by the same old beady glare from behind the worn surface of an ancient, scarred bar that made up one whole side of the room, mismatched stools standing single-file in front of it. It was just another night, so Luke gave his standard reply of a flippant smirk and humorless laugh as sauntered over to the corner that had become his after almost a year.

"You gonna fire me after all the business I've brought in?"

It wasn't like the old geezer knew that the real reason this little hole in the wall was thriving was that his lounge singer was running a drug ring under cover of pretty lyrics and admittedly skillful piano ballads. All he knew was that the Marling kid had a magic voice, and that was what had been drawing people in for miles around over the past twelve months. And to some extent, it was true. Not all of the shady clientele that crowded around Luke's corner when he walked into the place were addicts looking for their next deal. He'd be the first to spout off about his own talent to anyone who cared to listen. Witty words buoyed on a warm, rich tenor voice spread through the smoky atmosphere, gradually silencing the previous murmur from the bar's occupants and making something electric crackle in the air. Now this was the first really good part of his day.

Music was a different kind of drug. Just as addictive and almost as powerful as the rest of the stuff that was coursing through his veins most of the time, but somehow unique in the headiness it gave him. And there were no crashes, save the times when he was trying to write and nothing would come. But tonight, Luke was golden, baby. Every note, every riff, every subtle twist of the lips on a particular line was pure, unadulterated gold, polished to a gleam by the powdered happiness that was currently sullying his insides with deadly force, sending his heart thrumming pleasantly and his skin tingling in a way that felt like something good was coming (how could anything bad ever happen to him? He was on top of the world).

He took a break after about an hour, settling into an unoccupied barstool and nursing a whiskey on the rocks quietly as dark orbs roamed the room, searching out interesting prospects: pretty girls, potential customers, poor bastards who were so fall-down-drunk that they'd never miss their wallets until it was too late. Yes, there were plenty of opportunities for adventure crowding the bar tonight.

Just gotta kick back and let one come to me. They always do.

But I don't know much about classic cars
But I've got a lot of friends stuck on classic coke
Down, set, one, hut, hut, hike
Media Blitz, let's hear it for America's Sweethearts[/font]

[semper]

Devroux Southern-Hymn Creighton

So here I was once again, roaming District 5 as if I expected to find what I was looking for. Lily and Colton were nowhere to be found, and that depressed me. I had only gotten to see Colton once before I had to leave again, and I wanted more than anything to see the little squirt again. It hadn't been but a few months, so I could only wonder how much he had grown since then. Maybe a little, maybe a lot. But I would never get to know because I just couldn't find them. No matter how hard I tried, no matter the places I searched, they were gone. Vanished into thin air, pretty much. I checked Lily's house, I checked the old trail I had fallen across and first saw her, I checked my old campsite where we h-- ... did a few things, but the campsite was demolished. No one was home. The trail was nearly completely grown over. Lily and Colton were gone.

And to think, for once, I thought an Avox's life could be all hunky-dory. I thought I had made something good out of being permanently mute, but nooo, karma came to bite me in the ass. So not only was I punished for trying to help my rebel brothers escape the Capitol, but I was basically psyched by Fate with my own son. I really didn’t like that, but what could I do? I couldn’t go around asking people if they knew where Lily and Colton Cochon were; I highly doubted that anyone would know who they even were. Then I’d just look like a stupid Avox, as if I wasn’t that already.

So, needless to say, I was ready to give up my search for the day. I shoved my hands into my pockets, shoulders hunched over, and kicked at a stray rock that was on the dirt path I was currently standing on. I hated giving up like this, but what could I do? I had done everything in my power to find them and I came up empty handed. Yeah, might as well just give it up for today.

Trudging along the path, I was considering what my next move would be. I could always go to that old campsite I had just outside the border fence, but the Peacekeepers had found me – and Lily – there once before, so I didn’t really want to risk being caught there again. That had landed us in the Detention Center, and I sure as hell didn’t want to go there again. Strange and terrible things happened there…. I remembered my cellmate being a curious fellow. I don’t quite remember how, but we both ended up taking a rock, slitting our wrists, and drawing on the walls with our own blood. I wondered if our pictures were still there, but I bet you they bleached the walls to get it off. No creepy red-stained pictures to scare future inmates. That disappointed me, actually. I was looking forward to hearing stories about people’s time in the DC and them mentioning the faded red pictures on the wall of their cell and how it haunted them at night. I pulled my hand out of my pocket, turning it over so I could see the obvious scar that decorated the underside of my wrist. Such semi-fond memories of my cellmate…

Anyway, I’m getting off track.

Placing my hand back into my pocket, I continued down the dirt path, my dark eyes scanning everything around me that I could. District Five had changed so much since my last visit. The vast farmlands seemed to be taken up by these strange-looking machines that kept rotating in a circle at one end and up and down at the other end. I had no idea what those things were, but word on the street was that what once had been beautiful fields with livestock and crops was now oil fields, or something having to do with that. I didn’t like it at all. The air seemed a lot thicker with smog, making it a lot harder to breathe. It wasn’t clean and crisp as it had used to be, and I missed it. Even as I was making my way to the slum part of the District (or what I figured to be the slums), I tried to see the place as it used to be: animals running everywhere, people milling around and talking, but things weren’t like they used to be. That sense of community was no longer present in the thick, muggy air. Now it felt more like tension; you keep to yourself and I’ll keep to myself. I wasn’t too keen on that, so I quickly high-tailed it out of there to somewhere less…. seemingly threatening.

As I continued to wallow in my failure of a wild goose chase, I soon came upon what looked like a run-down bar. I could hear the faint lull of someone singing from the inside, causing me to stop and turn my head toward the building. The smell of food and liquor began wafting toward me subtly, but it was enough for me to recognize a painful feeling of hunger that was gnawing at my empty stomach. I hadn’t had anything to eat since yesterday, so the smell of whatever it was being cooked was tempting as hell. I swallowed and took a hesitant step toward the building, but I quickly stopped. I’m an Avox – Avoxes usually aren’t allowed in public places such as bars. However, I was in District Five. Mute people like me weren’t usually seen in these parts, so maybe the people inside would just ignore me for the most part. I could only hope they would because that smell of food was drawing me in like a stray, starving animal to a fresh carcass. Oh, what the hell. It was worth a shot.

Slowly opening the door to the bar, I peered inside, seeing only a few people sitting around. There was no one singing anymore, and with an audience as small as that, I could see why the guy stopped. Sucking in a quick breath, I pushed the door further and entered, closing it quietly behind me. I really hoped no one had noticed me enter, but that seemed pretty much impossible. I felt as though the door had made every squeak and squawk and rusty screech a door could possibly make, so if that wasn’t enough to turn heads, I don’t know what was. I tried to not look like it had bothered me, but that failed, too. I had cringed at the obnoxious sounds, but that was replaced with relief as the tall slab of wood was shut. Turning around, I quickly scanned the interior, blinking a few times to get my eyes adjusted to the dim lighting. There seemed to be a few empty spots at the bar, so that was where I headed.

I took my seat next to a dark-haired guy that was drinking away at some type of beverage, trying to avoid eye contact with him. The nagging emptiness in my stomach was prompting me to ask for some food, but obviously I couldn’t do that. I sighed, biting on my lower lip as I thought. I could always just steal food, but I would feel horribly guilty afterward; I could try writing it down, but there was nothing to write on as I looked at the surface of the bar I was seated at. No paper anywhere in sight. Emitting a small sigh, I reached into my pocket and took out what few coins I had and reached out to the guy sitting next to me, setting them quietly on the counter so as to not attract the attention of any thieves that may be around. I knew from experience that the sound of clanging coins could draw greedy people from just about anywhere (thank you Uprising, for consisting of mostly thieves and murderers), so as stupid as it seemed, I was overly cautious about being in this bar.

Having set the coins down, I looked back up at the man’s face before gesturing with both my head and my eyes toward the bartender. Hopefully the man would understand what I was trying to get at and not just take the money and bolt. All I wanted was some food or a drink.

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[Deleted]

.:.:If you don't let it out, you're gonna let it eat you away:.:.

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The world may call it a second chance
But when I came back it was more of a relapse
Anticipation's on the other line
And Obsession called while you were out[/font][/size]

Luke doesn't like being interrupted. For someone whose chosen career(s) necessitate extroversion and social savvy, he really does like to keep himself to himself sometimes. It's easier to drink the guilt and memories back into submission without something distracting him. Sure, he'll strike up a conversation (as long as you're a pretty girl with something more to offer than a smile and flirting you don't intend to follow up on), but it'll be on his terms, dammit, and not the other way around. The guy that plops himself in the empty barstool to Luke's left is not a pretty girl (strike one against him), nor does he seem like he has any particular purpose in interrupting the dark-eyed musician's carefully crafted solitude (strike two. One more and he'll wake up next Tuesday with his teeth and wallet missing). That is, he doesn't look like he has a purpose until he pulls a wad of money out of his pocket, lays it on the counter, and gives Luke a meaningful look with eyes even darker than his own. The smaller of the two males (but then again, Luke's smaller than almost everyone, all five-foot-six and a half, thank you very much inches of him making him more diminutive than half the girls he takes home) blinks slowly once, twice, baffled. The drugs haven't done his cognitive skills any favors, and it's this thought that makes the slightly dim, flickering lightbulb sputter on over his head, making him realize that drugs are probably what this is about.

"Are you nuts, man? Not in here," Luke hisses, setting his whiskey down with a louder thunk than he means to and sweeping the money off the dented wooden surface of the bar and holding it in a tightly clenched fist. He'll never understand how some junkies just don't understand the concept of subtlety and how all the ones like this guy haven't been caught and hauled in by now. Luke will be the first to admit he's not the sharpest tool in the shed (he used to be, used to be a model student who helped his sisters with their math homework after dinner, but after all the chemicals in his bloodstream that shouldn't have been there he knows he's a crispy critter), but even he knows the importance of discretion in matters such as these. He has no desire to spend any amount of time in the Detention Center - or lose his tongue for that matter - and it'll be a cold day in hell before he let's some half (or fully) baked moron land him behind bars because he doen't know better than to go waving his drug money around in the middle of a crowded albeit sketchy dive bar.

Almost everyone in the place knows that he's a dealer, but knowing and seeing are two different things entirely, Luke tells himself as he grabs the taller kid by the back of his shirt and hauls him out the back door and into an alley even dingier than the bar and run-down tenement apartment that frame it. The place is constantly damp and smells like piss and garbage and a few more of your least favorite things, but it's dark and secluded and in a good location to suit his purposes, which is what changes it from just another crummy alleyway into Luke Marling's Emporium of Illegal Substances. He can't count the number of times he's gotten high back here (he thinks he might have last night but it's all a blacked-out blur, the last thing he remembers is picking up that girl who threw his breakfast at him earlier this morning), but right now he's coming down off of the cocktail of euphoria-inducing whatnots he ingested before he started playing, and it sucks. He blames it on the taller guy. Strike three, but he's feeling charitable. Or maybe he just needs the cash.

"Okay, I don't know who sent you to me, but rule number one is that you don't just wave the fact that you're buying stuff around when I'm working, got it, brosef?" If rent wasn't due next week Luke would send this kid packing without a second thought (people this dumb don't need anything to kill off any more of their brain cells), but given the situation he settles to glare daggers but deftly count the money still clutched in his hand. It's enough for a gram of coke (apparently whoever directed him here informed him of the prices if not the proper business practices), and with an eyeroll and a practiced flick of the wrist Luke presses a tiny plastic bag full of a one-way ticket to a good time into the other boy's palm before pocketing the money and glancing back at the door. "Anything else? I've gotta be back on stage in five minutes."

Put another X on the calendar
Summer's on its deathbed
There is simply nothing worse
Than knowing how it ends[/font]

((ooc - OH LOL THIS ONLY TOOK ME FOUR MONTHS, NBD BRO.))

[semper]

Devroux Southern-Hymn Creighton

My eyes go from the money on the counter to the guy’s face. Sheesh, how long does it take this guy to get a hint? I mean, I know I can’t speak or anything…. Well, maybe that’s exactly why. I can’t speak so maybe he’s waiting for me to. Really. My parched throat is making me quite impatient and at the moment I’m seriously considering just reaching over and snatching up the whiskey bottle the guy has in his hand, and then I don’t have to wait for the electrical impulses in this guy’s brain to make the connection that all I wanted was for him to get me a drink.

The guy suddenly comes alive though, calling me nuts and “not in here.” What? I look at him, confused. What, I’m not allowed to get a drink here? So Avoxes are treated like shit here too, I guess. I almost want to snarl at the guy. This guy’s just like those dirt-awful Capitolites that use the Games as a toy. No, I don’t almost want to snarl at the guy – I really want to. You know, I despise people who degrade others because of situations they can’t handle, and here’s this guy, just grating my nerves with that one, simple sentence. My eyes narrow onto the smaller guy and I’m filled with a sort of anger that I really don’t feel often.

All that anger grows as he sets his whiskey bottle down rather harshly and grabs my money. Just grabs it in a manner that suggests to me that he doesn’t intend on giving it to the bar tender. Before I can stop it, my face twists into a snarl and a deep, rumbling growl starts to sound from my chest, my eyes still narrowed onto him. So not only does this guy discriminate, but he’s a thief, too. Not a good combination. I’m trying to think of something heinous to do to him as he grabs onto the back of my shirt and pulls me down off the bar stool, my hands instinctively shooting out to try to grab onto the counter and hold myself in place, but that plan falls through as gravity is acting against me. So, reluctantly, I follow this guy – backwards – out some door and into a dingy, moldy alley. When I feel the pressure of the back of my shirt, I quickly whirl around to face the guy, pretty much feeling that my life is in danger now. Maybe this guy is some cult member that’s hell-bent on taking out Avoxes. Won’t this just be my day? I went into the bar, hoping at the mercy of strangers to understand and help me get something to drink, but no, I have to come across some psychopathic cult member.

He starts talking again and honestly, I’m horribly confused. No one sent me, what is he thinking? I don’t work for anyone – or maybe he thinks I’m someone’s servant. Yet another reason I’m really starting to dislike this guy. And if he really was “working,” as he says he was, I doubt he would’ve been sitting there drinking whiskey. My face contorts into a defensive work. I work for no one. Well, except Luk, but I haven’t seen him in what feels like years. And “brosef” – what the hell is that? That’s certainly not my name. One of my eyebrows raise in confusion. Maybe it’s a slang term for “deranged Avox.” Oh, joy. So first I’m robbed of what little money I could scrounge up, he insults me, and then drags me out here to probably kill me and take my head back to his cult. He then presses something into my hand. I look down at it, startled by what I see: a small bad with what looks like white powder in it. My brows furrow in confusion, and the longer I look at it, the more confused I get. I look back up at him, a plain and simple expression on my face: what the fuck is this?

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