hard to find // { lex + denali }

there's a lot i've not forgotten
and i let go of other things

Tumbling through the holiday shrapnel and locked in an aggressive hug, maybe this is the only way Lex Lionel and Denali Lyons are capable of meeting one another. The war-screech of enthusiasm leaves one of her ears ringing, but this time when their heads are smashed together it's an eager embrace and the stars Lex sees aren't from a vicious headbutt. No one goes for the throat. No one goes for the heart. At last Denali relaxes her death grip without being told to surrender, seizing a break in the boisterous laughter to loose the grievance that's been pent up for months. "You didn't answer any of my phone calls!" she chastises, poking a stern finger at Lex. On the surface it sounds like she's teasing, but beneath the chiding the complaint feels genuine. "I missed you! I thought about you all the time! I wrote you letters! You wouldn't even say hi? It's like you don't like me back or something."

It's true that she made a point of missing dinner at Mackenzie's when the prospect of phone calls came up, but not because she didn't want to talk to Denali so much as that she didn't want to talk, period. Not on the phone. Not to Makenzie. Not to Arthur. Not to anyone. It was easier to sort out her head in relative seclusion, easier to talk sense into her stupid heart when it wasn't doing... well, exactly what it's doing now. Denali Lyons had been too many things in too short a timespan for Lex to have any hope of keeping up: from foe and hostage to reluctant landship-proximity associate and cautious friend, to someone who had her back... there was scrapping and crafting, stitching each other's wounds, sharing an impossibly hard time, and at some point it evolved into genuine caring... and all of the good was in constant contention with the mutual exclusivity of each other's victory. Then at last there'd been the dueling, the dying, the undoing. The very real prospect of never seeing each other again... Complicated. It was just so complicated. Given that — up until the announcement of this festival — the best hope for a reunion was winning the 81st Hunger Games, it really seemed like trying to put Denali out of her mind was for the best. She wanted to talk too much, and that's why she didn't.

It's Lex's turn to blink like a moron, ears burning — from guilt, from embarrassment, from everything complicated. "Of course I —" The feeble protest dies on her lips as her brain goes: Wait, like me? and Letters? and But phones all at once. "I keep asking Mickey if maybe something happened and you're mute now —" Lex snorts at how close that quip had come to being reality, wondering if somehow Denali heard about the incident with the peacekeeper and the yard traps or if she just knows Lex too well "— but nope! Here you are: Hey, Freckles," the impression is punctuated with an eye roll, and Lex does her best to look indignant about the spot-on impersonation. "Ugh. You're still so you."

She proves Denali right with a smirk and casual shrug: "Don't sound so disappointed about it." Pointedly ignoring the remark, Denali turns her sulking attention onto the scattered cookie pieces, plucking a delicately iced rat from the snow and shoving it into her mouth whole. "Five second rule. Mmm. Want one, you antisocial loser?" There aren't many situations in which Lex would turn down home-made Ratmas cookies (even off of the ground) and this certainly isn't one of them. "Obviously." She doesn't contest the name-calling, but instead clicks her teeth together in anticipation as Denali retrieves a golden triangle (or maybe a star with some points broken off) from the ground beside her. It feels like a trap — a familiar trap — and that's because it is: Denali waggles the cookie at Lex then jerks her arm away at the last second, cackling triumphantly as the blonde's jaw snaps shut on empty air.

"Don't tell me I'm bad at this!" Lex pre-empts the inevitable taunt, sitting back in a huff, snatching a fully-intact cookie shaped like a Ratmas tree from the ground beside her and deliberately decapitating it between her incisors. "Mmm. Yep. Good cookies." She shoves the rest of the tree into her mouth before swallowing her first bite. "Not even a little burnt. Which one of your sisters made 'em?" Wiping the crumbs off on her shirt and dusting the snow off of her pants, she hauls herself to her feet before offering a hand out to Denali. "Oh, except this one —" She stoops on the way down, plucking a goat with a broken horn and a crudely iced sweater from the snow. It's drab and olive where the colors have run together, with bright pops of vibrant purple and yellow and orange and green dotted in seemingly at random. "You must've at least decorated this one, right?"

if i tried they'd probably be
hard to find

It's hard to keep up the veneer of indignation over the baked-good fake-out, not when Denali's fully howling in hysterics about the easy success of her usual tricks. Soon enough, Lex finds herself laughing along with gusto, broad smile mirroring Denali's. Six months and all the hundreds of miles evaporate between them, visibly exhaled into the frosty air with the deep, steady attempts to regain composure. She doesn't bother wondering if it should be harder than this, picking up right where they left off — not pretending that time hadn't passed, but not pretending like that should make things different, either. More than anything, it's a relief that though Lex can spend all the time she wants back in District Seven stubbornly pretending that nothing has changed since the 80th Games, here with Denali it's as though nothing at all has.

Grin confirming Lex's guess that the wonky icing job is indeed her handiwork, Denali launches right into the cookie's backstory in District Five Ratmas lore. It all sounds a little crazy compared to the holiday traditions she grew up with: the only goats that factored in didn't pull Ripred's sled — rather, that was a duty reserved for the elk prince, with the garland-trimmed antlers — but instead were responsible for herding up the misbehaving children and getting them lost in the forest. They were also part-demon and preferred tailcoats to sweaters, and when she was small Lex used to wait up near the windows at night, thoroughly convinced that her year's worth of antics had earned her a spot in the caprine kidnapping.

"So anyhow—" Lex blinks, focus snapping back to the present "— I knit the goat a little Ratmas sweater that looks just like that." It's one thing to bite back the taunting Oh yeah? I bet it does look just like this. but Lex can't fully suppress the accompanying smirk and snicker. It isn't from a place of scorn or criticism — just that, with all her first-hand experience watching Denali's improvised crafting projects in the shade of the redwoods, Lex feels like she already knows what her attempts at knitting look like, and yep: they match the cookie. An impatient hot mess of equal parts enthusiasm and determined frustration. Dropping the impishness from her expression, she wonders if this is what the fearsome wealth duo looks like in their post-arena life: swap thread for yarn and redwood for basswood, the yoga mat for a shaker tilting chair and the basket of the landship for — Lex imagines — a gilded overstuffed chaise in front of a fireplace, replace fending off constant mortal threats with more normal-sounding jobs and hobbies and call it good.

"But see? Right there —" Denali points at the cookie in Lex's hand, trying to give her a rundown of what the different smudges of icing were intended to be. Brow furrowed in attempt to pass her inattention off as deep concentration, she follows Denali's finger across the various dots and smudges, giving her a firm nod when their eyes meet. Yes, I've been very seriously paying attention to your cookie this whole time, and I totally see what you mean now. Lex Lionel caught daydreaming? Never. "And... Um. I dunno. The goat is around here somewhere — she's really good at smuggling it around — so maybe you can meet it later and then you'll totally see what I mean. Yeah."

"Yeah," Lex agrees. "I'd like that. It'd be nice to meet your — I mean, little Ratmas goats obviously — but if your family's here, that would be, um." She clears her throat, not knowing how better to end the thought. It would be nice to meet some of the family that she's heard so much about already. Part of her curiosity is slightly morbid, but it's not like Lex has any concept of what's normal when it comes to family. Is it weird to want to meet the people that Denali fought so hard to go home to? Maybe not, not when Lex's interest is rooted in the way that that they're important to her. She flashes an awkward smile, defers the conversation to Denali's rundown of who designed which of the cookies that spilled into the snow. Varying wildly in precision and artistic flair, the remaining shapes are neatly lined up in between them, a neat row of options for Lex to choose from.

"You probably shouldn't eat that one," Denali nods at the goat still delicately clasped between Lex's thumb and forefinger. "I like the goats and the rats and, well, obviously, their sweaters, so you can avoid those if you want. Which one do you want to trade for?" The redhead reaches for the goat with the wonky sweater, but like some sort of hold-over reflex from all those months ago, Lex pulls the cookie away and tucks it into the pocket of her shirt before it can be reclaimed. Like a polaroid or a paring knife, it goes next to her heart with other things she'd rather keep for herself. "Oh, no, no," she laughs, taking Denali by the expectant hand instead, "I'll take this one." She rightens herself and hauls the other girl to her feet, still grinning when she asks "You'd tell me if you poisoned that one, wouldn't you? You've had thousands of opportunities to kill me and only did it the once, so... actually, I don't hate those odds."

Lex might've stood there for hours without realizing it if it weren't for the small flock of cuckoo clocks chiming from a nearby booth. "Shit." She sucks a breath in through her teeth, trying to guess how long her five minute break actually lasted and wondering if dragging it out further would be worth the extra chiding once she returns. "I've got to get back to work. Arthur's going to be exasperated with me, I left him up on the roof holding a truss in place — someone has to get the booths built, we've been here for a week already doing setup, which I think I already..." She frowns, trying to place the memory of having already told Denali this, which can't be right because they haven't seen each other and Lex has made a point of avoiding phone calls. "Letters! I've got some of those for you, too. We should have the rest of the booths done this afternoon, um..." Faced with an ever-growing list of things she's trying to say and under the pressure of a past deadline and subsequently mounting future consequences, Lex's thoughts knot themselves up. "Meet me, uh later, I guess... somewhere?"