wired hermes [ lorenzo phone calls ]

[Deleted]

lorenzo emberstatt!

There was a long pause when the train finally pulled away one last time and there stood just Lorenzo. He watched it as it went, Kahinta Jones inside and another boy who very much was not Lorenzo Emberstatt, district ten male of the eightieth Hunger Games. Lorenzo's eyes on the window, on the engine, on the smoke and on the tracks, he stared and stared and stared until it blurred into the flat land of the district past the tall wheat and weeds. The black metal shining in the sun, like a coffin on wheels and they would never come back. They would never come back and Lorenzo held his hand to his forehead and hugged Mace Emberstatt, his forever father. 

And he didn't move until he knew for sure that it was gone, with Mace inside. 

It wouldn't come back for him, not a day in hell- not next year, not the year after that, he was a man free to do whatever the fuck he wanted and he'd live to see the number nineteen. He nearly collapsed on the wooden station planks, part of him wanted to sob and fall apart and finally feel everything he held in his chest for the last eighteen years. All the trauma and exhaustion, the panic; the worry. The grief he held for Kahinta Jones, and the sympathy bleeding for Temple as she had to leave the Justice Building alone in a way Lorenzo would never have to understand. 

He wanted to weep for Lorenzo Pevek, that only boy he ever killed in that arena. He was an adult now -- Lorenzo Emberstatt was safe. Like Wander and Minx, like Denali, and Temple and he would make it to the class reunion whether they wanted him there or not. Quest would probably hate to see it, but he would love to see her again; if it meant he'd live another year every year, he'd let Quest kick him in the ribs and break him and choke him all over again. 

If Shy Aubergine doesn't die next year, he'd do the same for him. 

Lorenzo had pocketed his father's ID chip for the justice building, snagging it from his bedside table that morning while Saffron brushed her teeth. Regalia would let him use the phone for as long as he could (twenty goddamn minutes), all he did was find a way inside without official business. But this was Enzo, survivor and adult and the biggest, smiling mess of district ten on this day. 

He would always find a way. 

Every single time, baby. 

[Deleted]

lorenzo emberstatt!

"Hey Auntie!"

"Lorenzo-?"

"Yup, that's me! Anywho, where's the phone at?" Lorenzo tossed his arms on the counter, moments after the bullet whizzed past his head. Adrenaline shook his body still, his hands nervously twitching and his legs weak, sore even. He had been running this whole time with his head down and for the first time in the longest, Lorenzo could finally breathe. 

"You know, when I'm not working here next year, you're not going to be able to use this phone." Auntie Reggie looked concerned, but that's fine. 

Who isn't at this point? 

"Oh, totally, I would never do that to any mayor after Kieran's thirty year term."

"Lorenzo."

There was a stern look in her eyes, in Reggie's own, kind way. Enzo struck that pretty smile, "Am I WRONG, Reggie? He's gonna be the next Talon Irvine, we both know this." He was, in fact, probably not wrong, and they both were aware of it. Lorenzo stuck his hands to his chin, pushing his cheeks into his eye and Reggie sighed- admitting defeat. It's war with these adults, and Lorenzo's been training for the last five years. "Okay, okay, but it'll okay be twenty minutes, Enzo." 

"Aw Reggie, you're the best!" 

"I mean it!"

Reggie crossed her arms and turned back to grab the key to the parliament, "I mean it too! You're my favorite aunt, and you know Paige is up there!"

He grabbed the keys and scurried before she could change her mind, the checklist of people on the forefront of his mind- there was a lot to squeeze into twenty minutes, and he already kicked himself for not giving Beck a call back, but Enzo knew that would take up all of it. Besides, it's his first year mentoring, he understood that Beck should focus on that. His bones rattled the same way the keys did in the door handle until eventually the lock clicked and gave away. 

It was a single bell phone, worn over the years and it showed in the dark wood plates of the telephone. All the sweat and grease of finger prints staining like whispers of people he'd never know. He'd never meet, he unfolded the dial list from his pocket, numbers gathered from word of mouth, from Temple, from Beck and Mace and Saffron and Justice, it felt like he drew the numbers together. The first number on his listing, calloused fingers sliding the dial ring ten digits 'round, he held the phone to his ear until it fully rang. 

He trained five years for this moment, every nightmare and asthma attack, the crying pains of endurance. A part of him he struggled with would die on this phone call; the thing he learned to fear, and learned to conquer. 

The dial tone beeped, a younger boy's voice came through -- nearly the same age as Enzo's. 

"Uhh, hello?"

"Fuckin' PUSSY!"

Fourteen seconds, and Lorenzo Emberstatt hung up on Shy Aubergine.  

[Deleted]

lorenzo emberstatt!

For a second, Lorenzo tried to pretend that he didn't want to laugh. That it wasn't the single most fulfilling, gratifying moment of his five years of emotional disposition. He slammed the phone onto the hook, hands shaking and a flutter in his gut; he was shaking with it, that adrenaline and fear and anger and most of all, euphoria. It shook him something gleeful from the tingling hairs on the back of his neck to the way he bounced both legs at the dial phone booth. 

Shy Aubergine was a pussy, a little bitch. He killed him and Lorenzo got his jabs in back and he felt a release come from the back of his brain -- he laughed until there were fat sobs landing against the hard oak. 

He had kept himself from crying for so long, standing on edge on that clifftop for five years and smiling through it. Laughing through it, that willed glee like armor plating and a spear in his hand and he ran through the redwood trees and he died, and he lived. Lorenzo laughed and cried and spit and bled, and he killed Shy Aubergine in every nightmare and came back alive; through everything, this was the moment he felt most alive. Crossing off the first number on his list, the called digits and a solid 00:00:14 rising on the receipt screen. 

This was truly living, in a way he had never known it before. The tears would subside before he would lift the phone back up, nineteen minutes still on the clock. He still shook, twitching in his stature -- the manic breaths still remain. But it was good enough, it was always good enough. Lorenzo looked down at the list, squinting to make out numbers on the second line through the blotched stains, Annie. 

and Beck, in a way. 

For the first time in a while, he felt the want to talk to her, the need. Realizing how necessary and real these emotions - and in a way, himself - truly are.  She had reached out to him at home, wine glass in hand and Saffron with cucumber on her eyes; Annie had been there through it all. In ways he had never had to be, and he thought her something of a villain until he realized he had never been running from her, but towards her. Towards the chair and the phone, and the ten digit code; "Annie? Bitch, 

I fuckin' lived."  

Lorenzo said it with a somber glee, healing words, he patted his hands excitedly on the table. She would be on the train ride right now, Beck to her left and Leon to her right and whoever two would be with them, and he smiled with the cold on his cheek. Smiled to hear her voice for the first time in months; to hear it, truly, for the first time. 

He tried to imagine her and Beck in the same room, but all he could remember was how scared of her he was during Beck's tour. How Annie had sat at the table and Lorenzo couldn't stand to be in the same room as her; a bit of him felt ashamed of it, another bit couldn't help but wonder that if he had been on that train a second time, would he still feel this way.

Annie's came through as the clock's timer hit twenty seconds, "good." She said, he heard her breathe a little before continuing, "you're one less I have to worry about dying." Lorenzo couldn't tell if it was warm or cold, had she truly cared or not -- he just imagined that she did. And in a way, he was sure she had to be, in the same way he hadn't wanted Wander or the twin from three to enter again. Not when they already survived it once, he didn't know if any of them were strong enough to do it again. 

He pretended to be for five years, trained for it, and he was still unsure. 

"Hey, well," Lorenzo shrugged some, eyebrows perched, "that just leaves Shy, right? I called him too, called him a big ole pussy-" he started laughing over the phone, the way a champion does in old tales. "I think that means I'm winning, Annie!" And in his own way, he may have done it. Won after all, after five years of stress, maybe he was just preparing for this moment all along. He heard Annie laugh too, and he felt some type of family between them. Not in the way he bonded with Temple, no, but it had to be something real nonetheless, right?

It felt nice- reassuring, almost. To make Queen Annie laugh, the one who survived it all and survives it every day. She's a career, still, and a champion, and she brought Beck home and so Lorenzo knows she's doing something right. In her own way, and that's all he needs to know of Annie right now. 

"Okay, okay, I only have the phone so long so I have to go, but tell Beck I said hi!" He was somewhere on that train, and he wanted to pass the call, but there was too much to catch up on. Lorenzo could hear it all from him when he came back, but there was too much to catch up on in the now for the district ten boy to be greedy with the time. "And your tributes too, I guess!"

He smiled in the send off, something better than he expected. Something kinder. 

Something happier, until she spoke again, that one line- "will do, you stay safe, Enzo. 

Tell Temple I'll see her soon."

And as he hung the phone up, he realized, she hadn't known about where Kahinta had gone. 

[Deleted]

lorenzo emberstatt!

It went straight through him, the chill of Kahinta Jones. As if she died in this moment and he had been trying to ignore it; ignore the pain it'd cause to Temple, and to those who loved Temple. Ignore her sitting on the train between Mace and Saffron and god, fucking Ansgar. 

"Okay, will do, Annie." Lorenzo said instead, shoving his tongue to the back of his mouth and shoving the phone on the wire. 

He inhaled euphoria and exhaled the rest. 

He inhaled again, and it felt different. Colder, heavier. 

Lorenzo tried to shake it from his mind, sitting up straight and holding his breath before carrying on. It wasn't his fault, it wasn't anybody's fault -- what would happen would happen, and Annie would have found out either way. He eventually relaxed again, the heat from his neck disappearing and his fingers once again finding their way into the dial. He couldn't find the same energy to cross Annie's name from the list, and perhaps it was because she had always been a girl too powerful to take off the list. 

It felt like a disservice, it felt like cowardice; he moved down to the next digit and swallowed those feelings. Just like before -- that's what he learned from Saffron. The baggage never goes away, bottling up those emotions, there comes a release sure, but there will always be something else. And before he knew he was safe, he knew Kahinta would die, and Temple would mourn, and that would be tomorrow's trauma. For the first time in a while, Lorenzo could at least find comfort in knowing there was a tomorrow. 

For himself, at least. 

He lifted the phone back to his ear, the dial tone ringing and echoing in that empty skull as he watched the dial ticker. Second by second, it unfroze and he started immediately. "Hey! This is Lorenzo Emberstatt, from ten," he said, to a boy he'd never met before. The first words ever spoken between them, before and after the boy had watched Enzo die. 

"And you're Angel de Costa, right?"

It's a second of a stifle, a gruff voice and he hears the phone being picked up by somebody else who he imagined to be him, Angel. It's confirmed with a "who-?" Curt and short, and just as confused as Lorenzo was, truthfully. 

"Ahh," he must not have heard him, "it's Lorenzo!" That familiar cadence, "Emberstatt, well, I used to be Pevek but now I'm Mace's kid." There was a second of silence past it too. 

"And Saffron's too, I guess."

There was another second, what sounded to be a cough on the other end. Lorenzo blushed a little, embarrassed of the thought of anyone other than Angel picking up the phone. "I was the district ten male in your games- our games, Tmeple's partner, you know?" Picking up his pace with each attempt, "I got like, tenth place, I mean, I made it pretty far?! Lorenzo Emberstatt, Mace's kid?"

Lorenzo squinted at the clock, watching the seconds tick and growing ever more anxious. Oh, what the hell, sure, he hadn't spent the longest trying to memorize all the tributes from his games, but he knew enough. Well fucking enough, he knew Angel! It wasn't until a soft "oh." rang through the other end that Lorenzo was able to convince himself there was even anybody on the other end. There was another silence, and he impatiently bounced his thigh waiting. 

"Yeah?"

What,

"uhh, yeah."

And once again, the silence rang through, and Lorenzo felt the red in his cheeks as his headache pounded. The emotional drains of these calls already took too much, and he began to ride his patience to not hang up on this one. "Okay, well, I just wanted to call and pass on the message that I'm not upset that Lex severed my ear and lit me on fire, and, y'know, all that." Between Annie and Angel, he expected this one to be the more draining, but in a way so unlike this. 

"It happened, it's fine! Truthfully, pass it on if you can but either way, it is what it is."

And he drew his breaths deeply as he watched his reflection in the glass pane. The slight green buttons ticking each second of each minute; he began drumming his fingers on the table surface, waiting for a response. He looked at the phone itself, waiting for a response, waiting for a cough, a sniffle, a fucking end dial- anything, anything of fucking reason; Lorenzo just didn't understand. 

"Yeah,
totes."

Okay, Angel de Costa.

The inhale out ran the exhale, trying his hardest to hold onto the phone. Frustration built in his temple until Angel de Costa's low tone came through once more, "hey, Lorenzo." 

"I am sorry, too. I was there - 

when it happened -

I think." 

He held the phone to his good ear, tightly. The urge to scream settling from forehead to gut and plummeting with it, Lorenzo clenched his jaw. "I watched it happen." With Annie. Lorenzo remembers, they had killed Minx and- and they killed Maxwell twice that day, and Annie and the two girls and Angel de Costa were there. It was so much more than the Games, when Lorenzo pulled those memories back up. Of the tar lick on Minx's skin, and the way the flesh burnt off what was originally Lorenzo's. 

The eat sat on the ground, and he had remembered staring at it, and attacking Lex. 

He never realized Angel de Costa was there the whole time. 

"I am sorry for that."

And he tried not to focus on the digits on the clock, his twenty minutes drindling half way with still so many names. So many names and events he hadn't even remembered that just sat, waiting to be rediscovered. So much hurt that was one phone call away for five years, and Lorenzo feels his lips touch dry again. 

"That's-" stutter, "that's okay, I mean, we all did things, Angel, and that's okay, that's," he didn't know how to articulate it, what he truly meant. And truth be told, he didn't know a damn thing about what he meant, all he knew is that he wanted to get off the phone. 

"It's all okay." 

He convinced himself. 

"We don't have to talk about it." A whisper to his neck and less into the phone, but on the record none the less. He saw his face in the glass pane and regretted confronting anything, "I'll be around at Mace's." 

Lorenzo couldn't tell who exactly hung up first. 

[Deleted]

lorenzo emberstatt!

It didn't matter truthfully who hung up first, whether it had been Lorenzo or Angel or the phone disconnecting, cold sweat sat in beads on the phone's metal. There was relief billowing in his chest, cycling through his lungs like a chill wind and he didn't understand it -- the phone call, Angel de Costa, why he would apologize. Why he would bring it up, why he would talk about it like that. His chest rose and fell and rose and fell and he hated how these calls were starting to make him react; he hated that he was reacting.

Lorenzo had brought it up just to make light; apologizing made it something wrong. It made the connection in his brain that he refused to acknowledge for five years- that something awful happened to him. He apologized to Lex the way a brother apologizes to a sister, fingers crossed behind his back and tight lipped and blushing, almost. Angel de Costa made things awkward; he couldn't treat this as something serious. It's what held the threads together, that last, loose string of fabric. 

Nothing happened, nothing out of place. Angel de Costa was just- I don't know - fucking weird? For being so serious about it, for actually thinking there was something to apologize for, for thinking there was anything actually emotional about it. Lorenzo had felt the ebb and flow of these emotions and it felt like he was watching Beck Hailsham mount that bull one more time; the way his neck snapped back and forth and he ran and Lorenzo tried to grab his hand to steer him the right way. It was just every attempt to stay together, to stay on the bull -- to sit in the chair and finish the phone calls, and to cut out the bullshit at this point. 

To cross off Angel de Costa from the list, at goddamn least. 

He crossed out the next line too, Quest Hertz. 

And the next, Denali Lyons. 

It was too much, it was too much and he didn't care to handle whatever they said to him. Not on the balance beam of twenty minutes and his hands white hot holding onto the last bit of rope he can, Quest had nothing to say to him that was good. For good reason sure, he was an annoying thirteen year old and he'd probably stab himself too in that position. He couldn't imagine being on the other end- he never could try either. At this point, Lorenzo could hardly get a grasp of his own goddamn reality. 

Denali Lyons was nothing to him, just a girl who touched a corpse that wasn't his. 

Because he lived. 

And nothing happened, nothing truly stayed the same. 

She wouldn't pick up the phone regardless, Lorenzo convinced himself. Saffron had passed the letter from him to Patricia Valfierno, and whether it got any further didn't matter. He looked up for the timer again, making peace with the last eleven minutes on the clock -- he realized from Angel, that he didn't need the closure if he could just ignore it like always. Turn it away, Denali Lyons never held him, he only reached out for death and jumped towards it. So many of the other tributes had moved on and continued, and he was realizing he was late to that party. 

All that time was wasted bottling it up and pretending it never happened, and so he put the cork back on. 

Easy as that, Lorenzo moved onto the next number- the last of three, really. There was no point calling people he'd never see or interact again- maybe Bette Sublino, Temple told him good things about her but they were two different worlds. What would they talk about, Temple throwing her out a tree? 

That Lorenzo watched it all, and chose to ignore it? 

"Hey, 
Minx?" 

Lorenzo was taken back by how damp the phone still was to his ear, "it's Lorenzo- you remember me right?" Let's start there, he said to himself, not interested in another Angel de Costa situation. At least he learned that there weren't any grudges, hardly any one remembered him. "Uhh, yeah sure." 

Maybe that'd just be better anyways. 

He had so many questions he couldn't just throw at Temple, there was nobody in the world like them. The twenty two of them- Annie doesn't count, as much as he cared for her, she was the one who lived. And as much as he felt for Maxwell, he couldn't count either. For the other reason, but he just needed to know that it wasn't just him and Temple. "Okay, well," it was a good sign that at least Minx got it in the first twenty seconds. Growing pains and all that, "I've got my permit cleared for district four, and Kieran- my brother, he used to travel a lot- he told me that the trains often stop for a day in district five." That's when he'd see a woman named Lethe, and Patricia Valfierno on the later trips. Only once, very briefly. 

"I could stop by! Maybe see you, if you wanted-" and Patricia, that red ghost. 

He had the opportunity; why the fuck not. And he could see Denali, but Lorenzo knew nothing good would come out of it. 

He wasn't ready to hear that his death wouldn't have mattered.

"Oh, really? Uhh," Minx was the same form of distant as Angel de Costa, and Lorenzo couldn't help but stay on edge, just a little. Just for those few seconds between each word, the way the clock reflected from his eyes and burned into his vision- only twenty minutes. Too long and still, damning short. "I-"

"Sure! I mean, okay yeah, I can give you a gift,"

"Oh?"

Lorenzo hadn't expected a yes, truthfully- yearned for one, yes, but he had learned to stomach the disappointment. The isolation in the word no sat on his tongue. "Yeah, you can come meet my boyfriend!... that's not the gift though." 

"Well, yeah, I-" he laughed at his own reflection, imagining Minx's words in Lorenzo's own mouth, "I wouldn't expect your entire boyfriend to be my gift, haha." 

This is what I fucking needed! Just to know that he wasn't the only one with a little life in him still, Annie was caring in the same way that needles and threads hurt you for the best, and Angel was- fuck, not something he wanted to experience something twice in a row. Maybe they were just two different, it was too awkward and Lorenzo was insane for taking it so lightly, but he just needed Beck right now. Just somebody who could ride that bull and laugh afterwards, bleeding on the ground-- that happiness that only something cruel can bring to light. 

He needed Minx, on this phone, "but damn, tell him I said hi! I'll bring my hot wife and a spare Yorgos Candle with me." 

"You don't have to do that, Lorenzo," he scratched at his scalp, still smiling, "but... we do like candles." 

"I hope you know I was bringing it either way," truthfully, stubborn in every way. 

Before and after death. 

Shy Aubergine can't keep a good bitch down, really. 

"I should get going soon, but I'm happy w-"

"WAIT,"

"What?"

"WAIT, WAIT,"

"WHAT?"

"What's your favorite color!"

Uhh. Lorenzo pressed his lips together and stared wide at the floor. It wasn't a question he had readied himself for, which didn't account for much considering he hadn't readied himself for anything. That was unfortunately, Lorenzo's style, and he thought of Beck and Annie. Of everything Temple said of district four, of Saffron talking of Ewe and Eye Saw. The ocean that seemed to bring the world together, he'd never seen it. Can you imagine that? A color everyone's seen but you, Lorenzo tries to remember how they described it. 

"Blue, I reckon?" 

It had to have been, the color of three months from now and that thing he had been chasing for eighteen years. Through everything, through poverty and broken legs and death and family, and every bitter sweet memory to date, and every night he'd chew the blood out of his lip and every day he'd run the sweat from his pores. He'd kill himself dry without ever knowing what it was for, and he pictured Beck in front of the ocean. 

A true friend- not just parents, but a brother. 

"Okay," Minx says through the phone, as if he's writing something down and Lorenzo is scared for a second that he can read his mind through the wire. "Thanks." 

"Yeah, it's no problem," his mind else where. "I'll see you soon Minx, alright?"

To tomorrow, Lorenzo hangs up the phone with three minutes remaining. 

[Deleted]

lorenzo emberstatt!

In a curious way, Lorenzo giggled realizing how little they knew about the world. 

How little he knew about people, about Minx and love, and the ocean. And the color blue, I mean seriously, there are way too many shades of it. Through everything, Lorenzo had only ever been able to see the way he failed to measure up, in the way he broke down looking in the mirror and fought with his new found father. He hadn't just killed to get to that spot, he fought and cried and screamed and laughed, and he learned every day still how far he had left to go. 

It excited him, that thought. The fact that he would actually be able to learn everything for once, and not be held back by the paranoia of who was going to kill him tomorrow. It was always something more than that; dying, and earning everything, it uprooted all those things that had been apart of him all along. How lonely he was as a child, the orphanage warm only for the fact that he said it was -- he's always been good at that. Speaking his lies so well that everybody believed him, Lorenzo said he was okay, and so that was fact. 

He realized in the way he was jealous of Kieran and the way he fought with his father, that that's what made family something important. You fight, and scream and swear you hate them, but it's just the molded milk under your bed, you clean it up and the glass is all clean afterwards. That's an awful metaphor, but he held the phone to his chest, as if to let Minx Alhstrom hear his heart beat through the line. 

There was something to learn from him, Lorenzo just didn't know exactly what yet. 

Maybe it was just to know how love worked, in that kind of way. Lorenzo had learned it in slow, different ways from his family, that much was certain. Part of him hated to think of it -- maybe it had already passed him by. Most kids know by now just a little bit of that feeling, but he couldn't even imagine what it felt like. Just like he couldn't imagine the ocean; not accurately, at least. It was a large body of water, that's what he had heard. And it had a way of making you feel small and important at once, it smelled like sea salt and tasted the same. 

Annie told him once that you can just hold your tongue out and taste it -- well, she had told Quinn. And then Quinn had told him, but it still held that same sentiment. That's what Minx had found, right? All this time, all along, before whatever had happened and now, Minx had always had his partner. Lorenzo wondered how he found it so young, so easily. 

Things must just be different in five, Lorenzo thought to himself. Confirmed to himself, even. Somewhere in the world, love wells from the ground and he saw it in the way Saffron and his father looked at each other. There's something kind in the world that he had been too scared, to naive to ever find. He couldn't help but feel stupid thinking about it, about how long he had spent running when something could have been ahead of him this whole time. Something great, something perfect -- he never thought he deserved it before. 

Yet here he was, eighteen, and alive. 

And in every way, worth something. 

Lorenzo straightened back up in the chair, mostly because he pictured Reggie would walk in and yell at him for slouching. At this point, she had heard him sob and laugh hysteria and rinse and repeat again, he probably had more things to be embarrassed about then just forming back pains. He held his hand over the phone as if somebody would over hear him and the dial tone, and looked at the door, watched the light underneath for a solid second. She heard all of that, huh. 

That's rough- he shrugged it off and looked back at the dial up receipt screen, each number listing the used time so far. He wouldn't call it wasted, but he had definitely spent more time in this chair digging up suppressed emotions than he realized. There'd probably be a long sit down with Saffron after this too, when she got home in three months and was available to talk to again; he already missed her, in a sort. Mace, his father, he had given him a home, but it wouldn't be what it is without Saffron. 

It was probably too late to start accepting that she was his mom in a way, but she would always been a really cool sister in law. But also... technically an aunt, right? That's a question for Reggie or Jasper, and definitely a question for later. It ain't matter how old he got, no matter how long ago it was that he was an orphan, Lorenzo probably would not ever understand his family tree. 

Only that he was thankful for all of those crazy bastards. 

He dialed the last number on his list, internalizing how little time he had to talk to ver. They hadn't ever been close, just really similar in strange ways; ve had been Temple's friend, and Annie's. Ve knew the ocean like Beck, and it had been so damn long since he talked to ver, Lorenzo couldn't even think about what it had actually been. But hey, ghosts of a feather flock together and all that, what's the worst that can happen? 

Plenty of terrible, awful things, sure, but what's life without a little adventure! 

The dial rang a short bit, just enough to keep Lorenzo from getting comfortable, but eventually the line landed. "Hello!"

"Hey!"

"Sibley Cl--"

"Wander, right!- Oop," they spoke at the same time, he bit his words back a bit as the other end of the call bounced around a bit.

"This is uhh, Temple's friend, Lorenzo!"

That usually got the point across, it had for the last few. Hook, line and sinker and all that -- Lorenzo had been working on his district four themed lines. Beck would read 'em over, they didn't have to be perfect straight away. 

"Hold for one second," 

"Oh yeah! No problem, no problem."

( "WANDER!" )

Lorenzo strummed his fingers along the table counter rim, watching the last few seconds on the clock tick down to the beat of his heart. He had started getting nervous about the time restraint, but at the end of the day, it was his birthday, his father might be able to dish out an extra 5 minutes or so. Hopefully. 

He tried not to second guess it by the time the line was picked back up, a sort of enthusiastic, "Lorenzo? Hey!" 

"Yeah, hey!" Lorenzo met ver back, almost surprised hearing how ver voice had changed since they last talked, "it's me, Lorenzo! We haven't talked in, y'know," he nods his head as if ve could see him -- this whole long distance thing felt weird still. Lorenzo spent most of these phone calls pretending to talk to his reflection, "a while, but," he stared at himself in the glass pane, the ticking timer ever apparent. 

"Just know I've gotten real attractive since the last time you saw me!"

"Uh-huh,"

Lorenzo couldn't stifle the laugh at how stupid he sounded, but it was nice that Wander would know now, he reckoned. It all felt comfortingly awkward- they both knew this felt a little dumb, "and I'm like, a vessel mate?" Even he sounded shocked, 

"Y'know, like a fisherman? I'm gonna live in a boat I think."

"You think?" Ve was amused in ver own right, "do you live on a boat or nah?"

"Mm... mhm!" He tried to reassure ver of... well, something, he started to realize how ridiculous it all sounded as it came together out loud. District Four beckons and all that, he just wanted to escape, truthfully. He fought for this damned life, if he was getting to live to nineteen he was going to find a way to see this damn ocean. 

"That's cool though, I didn't know Ten had fishing!" 

Hmm, 

"you like it?" Oh boy. 

It was all falling apart, very quickly, Wander was supportive it sounded, but Lorenzo was realizing rapidly that they hadn't thought it through at all. But, y'know, that had gotten him eighteen years and a whole family so far, so maybe that was just how life could be for someone like him. 

"So, if I'm gonna be honest,

I ain't got a clue what I signed up for."

Spoken in rapid succession, Wander laughed in a way that reassured him. "No one really does at first," ve says. 

And he takes it to heart, because he truly never  knew what was going on. It was calming in a sense to know he wasn't alone in that. 

"But that's the kicker, Wander! See, apparently with the whole 'lock down food withdrawal' and everything, these permits are just goin' out to anyone who wants 'em- you know what that means, Wander?" He had started getting excited again with each word until eventually he was leaning over the counter, hand pressed hot white and his face nearly tucked into the glass pane reflection in front of him. 

"That's right, that's right, I made some reckless decisions and I'm coming to four, baby!"

"Oh, no shit?!" Real shit! Lorenzo liked the sound of this already, "you'll love it the ocean's-

The ocean's..." Wander trailed off with Enzo holding onto that last word. 

"Yeah, the ocean's great."

As simple as that, Lorenzo smiled in agreement so wide that Wander had to hear it, "yeah, it's insane! I was actually just thinkin' about it when I was on the phone with Minx-"

"Oh, cool, how's he doin'?"

"Oh he's great! Y'know," he liked the small talk, four phone calls and Shy Aubergine later and he didn't feel so lonely in that room, finally. "Still gay and all," ve laughs to this. 

"It's just, y'know, insane! I've heard so much about this ocean, and I ain't ever even seen it!" The sweat between his hand and the counter sucked as he threw his arm into the air, the other one still holding the phone to his ear, "at this point, I'm convinced it's gotta have like, the answer to poverty in it or somethin' aha," they both stifle some form of awkward laugh. Figuring it out as they go, Lorenzo bites his tongue a little as Wander fills the silence. 

"Mhmm, 

well,"

It's awkward, but it's alive, and Lorenzo's just grateful for that if anything. 

"You should swing by my place!" Real shit? He's already mentally creating his slumber party suitcase as Wander continues, "just lemme know when and I'll make sure I'm onshore." 

"Oh, hell yeah!" He leans back in his chair, "I mean, I'll be there by the time Annie and Beck get back!" It's all getting put in place, part of Lorenzo is surprised at well this is actually going. Every piece of him is grateful, "I've got to babysit Quinn still while pops and Saff are in the capital,"

"Oh yeah, babysitting duty,"

ugh, ve gets me,

"I get you."

Ve gets him, and it breaks his heart. Mace and Saffron, and Kahinta. He tries picturing Wander with vis family -- siblings and parents, and that voice on the phone before vis. It's Minx being stripped from his boyfriend, and Kahinta from Temple; it's why Lorenzo had hated the idea of family for so long. 

"They're uhh- they're with Kahinta." It's a bitter, ugly thing to say and there's even a struggle to say her name out loud to ver- Wander will know eventually, regardless. In their own right, the early the better, right? Lorenzo covers his mouth, like it'd stop him from saying her name a second time, a third; he realized why he had always been running. That fear of dying, of not making it, Lorenzo couldn't lose his family again. He couldn't be scared again, that thirteen year old dying alone in the fucking tar pits, 

Temple hadn't been there. 

Wander hardly knew he existed in that moment -- can he blame them? Either of them? 

"Ahh," and Lorenzo had realized it under that vineyard lattice home -- all he ever did was run. Run from district ten, and away from Mace and Temple, he ran to the corners of that arena twice goddamn over, and he died, and no one mourned him but Mace. He returned to a life worth living and it all remained that same pace, feet on gravel - he ran for his own sake this time, sure - but running nonetheless. To a timely death, in his eyes, to that eighteenth birthday, running and eating and fighting for every last happy fucking minute -- plying them through the grit of his strength and please, just one last good day, just one more.

He realized it talking to Wander, a soul he never knew in that arena.

Eventually, he’ll have to stop. And he’ll have to look behind him, and see how far that thirteen year old boy ran.

And the strides he took.

The strength it took.

He would turn around at twenty five, and see him at eighteen, looking at him at thirteen.

And he hoped he was no longer running by then- that he was finally living. And that he was proud of where he came through wedding dresses and matador facades, that Lorenzo Pevek was always deserving of being Lorenzo Emberstatt. Lorenzo himself was always deserving of being some one like Wander, and Beck, and Minx and Annie and Saffron and Mace and Kieran and Quinn.

He always deserved to know what a family could be.

And Wander repeats it after him,

"Kahinta," Jones. He hears it in the way they announced her name and killed Temple all over again.

There's a second where it's just the two of them, both knowing what the context meant. How cruel that context was -- Kahinta Jones, in the capitol. Lorenzo wishes he could just move on from it, turn it all off and focus on the seconds he had left; he was starting to hate how much time he wasted thinking.

And fucking realizing things, this whole trauma thing was exhausting.

"Good luck to your parents and--" Lorenzo doesn't know quite what to say back to that, and neither does Wander. That simple, "yeah."

"Well,

hey,

we'll look forward to seeing you!"

Wander says, Lorenzo focuses a bit too much on the static through the feed, "oh yeah, totally!"

"It's been forever, I can show you around-- oh, Annie will wanna take you surfing, for sure."

"I, uhh-" trying to gather his thoughts one last time and shove it all in his open mouth, "I don't even know how to swim! Ahaha," he tries to match ver beat some, try not to be fucking weird again, "but the tour for sure!" Even as he thinks of Annie drowning him, how vast the ocean may be. 

Still, he can't picture the ocean, Wander laughs and it comforts him some. 

Ve's got a nice laugh, "yeah, you'll learn!" 

"Yeah! We can talk about it a bit closer to the date," Lorenzo sinks his cheek into his free hand, "this phone bill gets charged after twenty minutes and Mace'll- well, you know, he ain't gonna be too happy,"

"Oka-"

"Yeah, gotta keep things brief brief for now."

"Ohhh, gotcha," ve says, "okay, cool!"

In a way, Lorenzo's almost proud of himself for surviving the whole twenty minutes. Every goddamn minute of it, lord, what a draining day- through it all he decided he enjoyed every one but Angel fucking goddamn de Costa. 

"Yeah," he says, peacefully drained, "but thanks for the call, Wander, really!"

"Oh yeah, we'll talk later then!" Ve says. 

"Okay, yeah,"

"Okay," "see ya, Wander!"

"You too, Enzo!"

"Hahaha, bye!!"

"Yeah, bye!"

"Byeee!"

"Haha, bye! I'll talk to you soon!"

"Bye bye bye!"

"Bye Enzo!"

[Deleted]

ooc: yoo!! shout out to kay, yoya, ryan, griffin, claudia & wootee for their dialogue & characters, this one shot took too damn long to write but i got it done :flex: and it wouldn't of been without the help of those gays (and ally yoya!)