👨‍💻🍆🍑🌈 [Exover/Saturn]

Exover Endor


That morning he woke early, assumed it was bright, and fumbled his way to the bathroom. The first days in the training center, a few key splashes in the most pertinent places did the trick, especially to a boy due for death in days. Things had changed for Exover, though, taken a turn for the green and blooming, and he was determined to inhale plants like air, determined to make an impression on the boy from Five and his tulips, and he knew that was next to impossible without a proper shower. Hours set in the base of the tub that first night, a captive in his own territory, as his stylists scrubbed layers of dirt from his dusty skin, shrieked of the exfoliant needed STAT. Hours in the tub that weighed his arm down with ghost nerves as he reached to turn the knob on on his own, before finding the wall and spreading fingers wide to search. A minute of stroking aimlessly before he grunted “fucking come on” and the water rushed from the head. He stepped in the shower, and the water stopped.

It took a while to come to terms with the malfunctioning automated bathroom, but as the toilet began to sing opera he knew something was more wrong than mumbling “fucking come on” could fix. His usual well-planned splashes took precedence over figuring out technology he’d never dreamed of existing, and he headed down to the main floor grumpy, half as clean as he wanted, but still set in his goals and motivated for success.

By nightfall he was ready to die again. He’d been plagued all day long by the cruelties of other tributes, taunted by their aptitude and his hindrances. And not only the tributes, but a gamemaker, too. It seemed like his hopes, his dreams of the day were centuries past, crumbled to dust and scrubbed away in his bathtub, try as they may to cling to him. Confirmation signed in light that the shooting star he’d lucked into the day before was not the cause for celebration he’d interpreted, but in fact was headed right for him, faster and hotter than anything he’d ever known. There was no time to make a wish. Would’ve been pointless, regardless. A wish on a star didn’t work if it wasn’t seen.

One of the avoxes in his room placed her hand on his shoulder and he unclenched his fists from their rocky grip on the bed frame. He didn’t know how long he’d stood there, sulking and fuming all the same, but it clearly was longer than he realized, because the avox led him to the bathroom and clapped twice. The shower turned on. A breathy “thanks” was given her as he stripped down and got in.

Several hours passed and Exover remained in the shower, the threat of climate change and wasted water not present in this timeline of the universe. Steam hung like clouds behind the closed doors, and he sucked in air as slowly as he let it out. He was relaxed, for once. Actually relaxed, despite the mass slaughter that soon awaited he and his peers, despite the possibility of being literally blindsided at any given moment by anything around him, despite the boy who started an orchard in his heart one day and forgot to return and water it the next. Despite everything, a smile stretched out wide on his lips, and -- “INCOMING PHOTO MESSAGE” a shrill, metallic voice called from his bedroom. His smile died and curled away like a bug. Who the hell sent him a picture. Who the actual hell. He clapped twice, stopping the shower, and walked out into his bedroom still dripping wet and naked.

“Can someone tell me what the hell someone sent me?” Two avoxes and a stylist assistant stood nearby, seemingly gathered around where his JAN thing was, but not a one replied. “Well?” More silence followed, and he could hear a buzzing coming from the wall. “Is there a projection, does someone want me dead, what’s up.” He could handle whatever they threw his way; he’d been handling that and more for years. Finally, the stylist assistant opened his mouth, relieving the two with no voices of the duty. “It’s, uh.” A loud gulp, and he continued. “I mean…. Girl.” More silence, tense and uncomfortable. Then, laughter, gushing from his mouth and bouncing in the avoxes’ shoulders. “You should just go to his room. I think it’s better you read it in person.”

A few minutes later he knocked on the door of the boy from One with soaking wet hair, bare chest, and dirty pants hanging loosely from his waist. An air of impatience stirred in the winds around him, and he couldn’t for the life of him imagine why someone would send the blind guy anything without an audio attachment. And really, he was just plain tired; tired from the bullshit and the anger and the empathy and the boys. He really didn’t have much an opinion on any of the girl tributes, but fuck the boys, and especially fuck Nico from Twelve.

And Saturn from One, who interrupted his shower to mock him in the middle of the night. As he waited outside his door, all he could think was “get fucked, dude.”

This is a wip placeholder cuz I'm filling this in for necessary development!