See You Again [Exover/Ronan]

[cameron]

He thumbed the rough edges of the rock from thumb rock and breathed slow, deliberate breaths. Hay poked through previously unknown pants rips. Helmet stalks swayed in the breeze. His faithful rat companion sat on his shoulder nibbling his earlobe, and he hated that he loved it.

Hatred was almost his only defining character trait, but since being plucked like a flower petal and discarded into the games that had gone to spectacular shit. Everything he knew of himself, of the hollow, haunted boy that brewed in his bedroom, was tested and his values came up far ahead of his expectations. But his newfound morals could not be met; his skill and aptitude remained entirely subpar. Instead of finding himself and following through with who he was and how he felt, he set back and listened as the people he cared about suffered, listened as his friends took care of him because he himself needed care. Ex needed Savior to leave the bloodbath, Stanley to continue fucking breathing, and Finley to have any idea of his alien surroundings. She didn’t even want to leave him there on the hay, but he insisted. He insisted he’d be just fine, and of course one of his lover boys would join him on the bale, maybe the one with the abs, he didn’t know, and she had nothing to worry about.

Sheriff Finley had plenty to worry about.

Deputy Endor of her personal department was a loose cannon. Dressed how he pleased without regard for proper uniform, brought animals from home to the office, and, worst of all, he never seemed to have a clue where he was. Yet she delegated him to defense, where he wielded a chunk of rock he gathered from a landslide as his sole weapon, where he watched out for crime like a hawk watching for a fish in a river, but that hawk had no eyes and no sense of direction and kept flying smack into trees. Needless to say, the deputy was not given an outstanding performance review, but the sheriff liked his spunk, his chutzpah, and he didn’t know what that meant but he thought it was probably a sausage.

The rock clapped against his palm again and again and he breathed. Slow. Deliberate. Pushing himself to relax, to escape the grated windows of his head. To remain in reality. Each day in the games brought a new level of panic, spiraled his stomach higher into his chest, sent the miner in his mind spelunking deeper. Going without food wasn’t unusual to him, but prolonged activity was. He’d never gone that long without eating while also using much of any motor functions, but in the arena he was tugged along by Finley like a disobedient puppy, swinging his arms at asshole boys on their asshole donkeys, crying about his friends dying and crying about his feelings and crying about shit he didn’t want to deal with, setting up a four person hammock, and hopping away from his ally to pee. He was busy, and he was hot, and he was uncomfortable with who he was as a person, and dammit if he didn’t wanna be like Saturn, or Francisco, or even fucking Stink Ass from six. They had legs and eyes and could fight for themselves, even fight for their friends, could walk a few steps away to relieve themselves without exerting half his energy. They had lived before stepping into their giant collective death bed, and could die knowing such. He, however, only just began to truly live, to take the world for what it is, and to allow himself to breathe in thoughts other than his usual defeatist ones, thoughts that painted him with colors outside of gray.

And then he smelled it.

Asshole.

He knew that smell anywhere, even through his damaged nose. It was all too familiar after three days of heartache wrought by him and his jackass and that mean doctor, too. Deputy Endor was back from lunch, a grande spicy burrito in his belly and a gut full of fire. His fingers wrapped around the rock and he lifted himself from the hay. “Don’t worry Blind boy, I’ll see you again.” He straightened his pants at the waist, tipped his helmet down, and smirked. I know you will, you dirty criminal. Shoulders pressed back and chest puffed up, a heat inside him that reminded him of the day before, when he tried to stop the dick from leaving, from running away after trash-talking them for running away, when he let the anger control his actions and threw skill and aptitude to the wind. Confidence was key, and the present was unlocked. Deputy Endor was going to right this wrong, whether or not Exover thought he was capable.

“Whether it’s tonight in your nightmares, or another day--” It wouldn’t be another day. He kicked off hard, his one good leg launching him as close to the boy as it could, and he swung his rock hard at where he assumed his face to be. “It’s your nightmare, fucker!” But he missed and his rock hand passed through the air, and his body continued forward without a left foot to stop it, and his full weight smashed into Ronan like the hungry, eyeless hawk he was.




ooc: ex tries to punches ronan's bitchass but ends up tackling him
thread title - see you again by miley cyrus lmao

[Tom]

I wonder why the poor damsel sounds so distressed we weren't there to rescue him from the little puppies?

Damsel repeats like a broken record through the thrumming of his own mind. A dull ache forming from the same phrase over and over and over again. Damsel. Villain. Bad Guys. Good guys. Morally ambiguous questions about himself ringing through his head. The fight is a flash of reality crashing into his past that he keeps locked away in the confines of his mind. The past wasn't meant to hold him back. Dreams crumbling to ash. His friend vanishing before his eyes as she crumbles to ash in his dreams. The sound of his mother at the top of her lungs telling him all of his insecurities and expecting him to do better. To do more than be Ronan Keeni-Einfallen. As if the names Keeni and Einfallen burn into his skin like a branded animal, or are stuck to him like the obnoxious tag on his ear with a giant fucking six attached to it.

Is that why he's your willing little bitch, Lady Death? Cause you're so much better at this than him?

Bitch. The ringing of the word comes back in the flash of a memory. The same word leaving his mother's lips and his father's ignorance of this behind that bliss of a loving relationship. A loving relationship that Ronan had ruined by being himself. A relationship that turned to ash with his own name etched into a birth certificate. Einfallen. Keeni. Fuck his father for putting his through this. If only he could have kept it in his pants, instead of creating an abomination of a child. Keeni. Einfallen. Both of those were true, but he was not his mother's child. A child born out of ruins of a love. As if the shining smile on his lips as a kid could rebuild that love when he was nothing more than a painful sign of unfaithfulness. The word bleeding onto his skin as if it were his own now.

That's why he was a bitch.

Not because he couldn't kill. Not because he couldn't handle the mutts.

But because he was the living being of ruin.

Ashes of figurative opera house engulfed in flames by the eyes of the woman who raised him, if he could even believe it to be raising.

Guess there was a reason Stanley considered him to be pestilence. All he brought around him was ruin. Ashes standing behind him like the destructive force of disease that spreads like wildfire through humanity. Hospitals barely able to handle the capacity of ruin that he brought to District six. Busted noses, broken hearts, and cancer filled lungs. Ronan was a menace to everyone everywhere.

That was the truth that Savior saw in him.

The night came to quickly. Eyes spread over fake simulated stars that he never even got to see in Six due to light pollution. They flicker from reality and fantasy, stretching this place into the middle of everything real and fake. A performance on the screen was all they wanted, but he wasn't the right performer to their story and deep down, he knew that. A quick huff of a cigarette as he avoids the lingering eyes of his alliance, he stares into the moon as if it were going to fall and shatter everything from them. At least, he could live with that ending to his story.

Dream big. His friend once told him to do that. Dream bigger dreams than reality itself, but the glittering moon gazing back at him as if they didn't matter. His mother's words on the tip of his tongue. The bringer of ruin. The reminder that he was nothing more than like the meaning of his own name. Little seal, struggling in a fire of expectations, of destruction, and of failures that linger on his back like the scars that swirl on his body. As the anthem plays, he ignores the faces, only glancing to catch sight of each dead person who he didn't care about anymore. Leticia was alive and that's all he needed to know out of it.

Savior's glance doesn't put him at ease, but only instills that annoyance into his bones.

As it drifts away, he burns out the cigarette to the butt and turns in for the night, ignoring the nightmares of his mother's yells down his throat.

Morning comes, but not exactly like how he wanted it to. The beating of his heart rings in his chest loudly as the dream of the night before wakes him up earlier than everyone else. A scream almost threatens to tear through his drained lungs, but it doesn't make it out. The realization of dreams being dreams coming to light in the wake up. Instead of morning being bright like every day before, the sky still sits barren with stars. Worries fill him for thinking he didn't sleep, but it was fine. Instead of waking the others, he pulls the moonshine out of his bag.

If it were still night, he didn't want to be awake. He didn't want to be stuck in this thought of ruin that fills him. The King of Fools in his head as a memory of the emptiness in the pit of his chest. The moonshine goes down rough. Burning his throat with liquid courage that instantly makes him feel better, but guiltier than before. A groan on his lips as he moves on drunkenly with himself, until they all wake from their slumber.

Ignoring them as he sets himself on his horse, taking off in the direction of nowhere. The barren wasteland of a lake bed and the two dead bodies vanishing from his memory as his eyes scan the horizon carefully. The conscious on his shoulders still reminding him that death waits around every corner. Unlit cigarette on his lips, until they reach where people linger.

Almost as if hell itself opened, Ronan feels his chest rise with anger and the coldness on his lips, but he ignores that feeling of wanting to cause a scene. Lips open to say something, but he closes them immediately, climbing down from his horse, patting the beast on the neck before lighting his cigarette and approaching a far end where he can ignore the group of survivors who would have to kill each other, sooner or later. His guess was on sooner, unless everyone wanted to rest for once.

Drunkenly, he walks to the edge with his head down and a puff of smoke on his lips. Sulking was easier than facing his own performance that he put on. Exhaustion in his skin from thoughts that thrum with a banging over and over again. Rest was what he needed, but also the sight of homebrewed alcohol made him want to go into party mode like he would do in Six. Forget about the pain and focus on something else. Something stronger that could make him fade from the reality of Ronan Keeni-Einfallen.

Unfortunately, he should have known better than to let his guard down.

"It’s your nightmare, fucker!"

Balance lost with the world spinning to the ground as his back and head hit the ground hard, but not as painful as he thought, thanks to the grass cushioning his fall, still made his head pound with a new headache. Not the first person who would want to get into a fight with him at a party. As he focuses on the one and only, Exover Endor, he can't help but feel the drunkenness to his thoughts. The words that wanted to slur on the way out. The blind guy was on top of him, with anger in his veins as Ronan felt something there. Pity? Regret? He couldn't fucking name it for the life of him. Instead he pushes himself closer to Exover, lingering by his ear with a smirk on his lips that the blind boy couldn't see.

"If this is what you dream about, all you had to do was ask to get on top of me, blind boy."

The small slurred words lingering in the air as Ronan doesn't even dare move. Ronan knew he deserved this pain that Exover put into his body. The violence in his bones was a piece of who he was now. The performance that Stanley, Savior, Finley, and Ex had wanted from him. The villain of the eighty first. A true menace throughout all of his life. Would they look back to him as if he was like Aeson Kite. A monster to remember in the games for his hatred on his lips. Instead of fighting back, he ignores his head and gives up his strength, letting himself hesitate for a moment as the world nightmare lingers upon his ears with a fiery blaze.

"You'd be better than any other nightmare I have, Ex."

Cigarette still burning from his lips as he reaches out and pulls it from it's place. Eyes glancing to it as he pushes himself back up with nose flared and pity in his eyes. Exover would be better to dream about that his mother's own words or the flames that burnt down his only dream in life. The dreams of ruin that he brings and the tears that linger on his dream self's skin. Ashes crumbling and nothing being reborn except the lingering hatred that he embodied in his skin.

Pushing the cigarette out into the neck of Exover, letting it burn on the skin.

Ronan, the bringer of ruin, the fourth piece of the four horsemen, pestilence.

The villain of the Eighty First.

Only a boy who carries ash in his lungs and everything he touches.

ooc: ronan puts out his cigarette on exover's neck

[cameron]

They fell to the ground, he and the asshole, and their bodies smacked against each other as Ronan landed flat on his back with a thud. The air stood still around them, the grass ruffling beneath the other boy, the heat sweltering between their faces. Distance shrank, their heads almost side by side, and his enemy’s humid breath whistled past his ear. Ronan’s words came with a lilt, something drawing out syllables and beginning words with a rumble, and his breath stank of alcohol. But Ex didn’t want to be on top of the other, not in the way his waist wrestled against Saturn’s hips, not in the way he wished Saturn would do right then, right there.

He hadn’t even stopped to think about the Iron Lung and his appeal, his greasy bad boy persona or his tall, lean body, the one that pressed into his with a tightly bound chest. One track mind kept him in solitary view of Six’s irredeemable tendencies, the things he had to do to survive just like he did, just like he would continue doing for Sheriff Finley. A deputy was loyal to his superiors, and he would be loyal to her till his body went up in the neverending hellfire promised by Savior Powermaker. Hell, as described by its only return visitor. Someone who came back for permanent residence after a brief parlay years before never quite left the back of her mind.

Ex planned to join her soon enough, after a day of mulling it over one way or the other, contemplating what option best suited his and his friend’s survival. But there he lay with the boy who, until then, topped his list of Avoid To Survive, a rock in his hand he’d practically tried bludgeoning him with and a smile that plastered itself across his face in seconds of slow-onset amusement. He was alone without Finley’s supervision for maybe five minutes before going off the rails and making things worse than before, and that seemed to be a rather upsetting trend in the past few days of Exover’s life.

Unfortunately for him, the last few days of his life were the only ones worth shit. Those were the days he opened his proverbial eyes to who he was, allowed himself to metaphorically see the big picture.

“You’d be better than any other nightmares I have, Ex.”

He chuckled at that, letting go of his tension and dropped his weight gently into the other’s. The words “you too” started to form, but then there was a fire on his neck, the quick-burning smell of singed skin slinking into his bruised nostrils, and he remembered why they were bruised to begin with, because of the absolute asshole beneath him pressing his fucking burning shit stick into the blind boy, after complimenting him, catching him off guard. Too many trends of recent days involved Ex being stupid, and he was frankly getting tired of feeling like the butt of every joke. But his anger didn’t persist, for he was tired and couldn’t stomach another blow.

Rolling off Ronan, he landed on his elbows and sat up.  “Fuck you, prick.” As fast as he could, he jabbed his head at the boy, one last hurrah for Savvy. A proper sendoff headbutt. And as he leaned away, he couldn’t help but laugh. 




ooc: ex headbutts ronan

[Tom]

The world's spinning with colors of the dark sky and bright stars into flashes of pain and memories of the past.

Alcohol and smoke filled lungs breathing heavily as they reside on the ground, stuck in a perpetual free fall into broken people and rivaled tributes. Ex wanted him to suffer, at least, that's what he thinks. Ronan's been nothing, but fucking awful to him. Breaking his nose, to killing his friends, to letting the guy suffer in his own grief. If this was how he was going to die, at least his mother would have been right. He's a pathetic human with nothing more than negatives attached to his skin. The big six hanging from his ear, a clear reminder that he was nothing more than Six's villain. Rough, rude, and just like Aeson Kite, but he wasn't strong like the guy.

No, Ronan was nothing more than a boy playing pretend.

A performer in his own right, but all performances are just that, fake and hold no reality to them.

A fantasy that he uses to shield himself from his own bad deeds. A fucking villain through and through like Stanley thought of him. Bad guys with bloody weapons and shitty words that linger in the air. All he knew is that the cigarette ash would burn into Ex's skin like a marking of knowing that Ronan would always be stuck with him, even if he were to die. Stuck in the worst way possible, until Ex learned to no longer be afraid of him.

It was kind of selfish in a way. Ronan just wanted someone to have some sort of memory of him before things left his reach. As more alcohol is consumed by others, he's sure he'll lose his edge. Savior Powermaker already was making him question his strength. Question his logic. Question his entire being. Savior had seen through him, but not truly into who he was. She only saw what his mother saw. The parts of him that they wanted to see.

As Ex rolled off of him, he heard the words come from Ex's lips.

"Fuck you, prick."

The smirk overtakes him before he gets Ex's head slammed into him. Pain and flashes of white appear before his vision as they swirl with the stars above. If this is the pain that he deserved, he could take it. A moment to rest on his hands as the grassy ground mixes with dirt and Ronan can feel the ground breath with him. The silence of the air filling his ears before the dizziness dissipates.

"When and where, Endor?"

A smirk on his lips before he pushes himself forward. Hands and knees sinking slightly into the grass and dirt below. The smirk falls as he can see the bruising that he had caused to Ex. Despite everything, Ex wasn't the worst person in the arena. The guy was someone Ronan thought was weak, but something about him made him want to test his limits rather than harm him. It could be a bad thing, but he couldn't help the pity and guilt that flooded his stomach before he stared for a moment into Ex's eyes and let himself fall.

The drunkenness was getting to him. Alcohol in his blood making his head not work quite right. His emotions weren't in check and he's been insecure since Savior opened her damn lips. A moment of silence before Ronan pushes himself forward and desperately pushes his lips on Ex's own. A moment of kissing passing between them before Ronan pulls back with a blank face and the heaviness of cigarettes in his shirt pocket. A silence as he groans and pulls himself back onto his butt, with his hand rummaging into the pocket.

"You got me. Helluva headbutt you got there, Ex."

A frown on his lips before pushing his hand out to give Ex one of the only important things with him in the damn arena.

"I think you need a smoke more than I do."

ooc: ronan kisses exover and gives him a cigarette

[cameron]

Filler leaving post so not to hold Tom up while I'm driving to a different state today! Ex gets kissed and smokes a cig and starts drinking and tells ronan "I'll see you in hell, too, won't I?" OK cool

[Tom]

I'm gonna filler this, just because I'd like to have Ex's post to work off of ^^ Ronan probs is hella confused, but a bit more confident and less sulking. His response to Ex would be with a smile. "Yeah, you'll see me there, Ex."

ooc: ronan collects water and flees