it's called camping | { lex / mackenzie }

His birthday was nice. Not good, not necessarily bad either. Just... nice. Decent. Due to it's very close proximity to All Hallows' Eve, the few Capitolites who'd invited themselves to be a part of the function had decided it would be a costume party.

The most Mackenzie and Max had ever done for their birthday was share a sheet cake made by their mother when she got home from work and, as it was a tradition, she'd give them each another wooden charm she'd likely saved up weeks for.

Even since winning, Mackenzie was glad to keep the celebration under wraps, sharing a beer with Max on the front porch, talking about running the traps he rarely had time for and certainly didn't have need for anymore. It was the familiarity of the thing, he'd decided, and Max didn't seem to mind.

But this year, things were different. This year, Jacquelyn had noticed his birthday while going through some papers, and she'd told everyone who would care, and so for the first time, his birthday was an event. He'd asked everyone who came not to bring gifts, and had quietly demanded that if they brought him a gift, they also had to bring Max one. It was her day too, and the fact that it was already going to be ruined with forced festivity on his behalf was already enough; he figured getting some new shit would at least make it a bit more bearable.

He planned on dressing as a lumberjack, which meant throwing on a years-old flannel and some boots, strapping an axe to his back, and calling it quits. But his prep team arrived with a set of costumes. The one meant for him took itself entirely too seriously: stag-esque, sort of, or at least vaguely cervinae adjacent. It came with a taupe colored fur coat, tailored khaki pants, brown boots, and a pair of antlers that were decorated with an unfair amount of red roses. No shirt. Naturally. Where Lazarus was involved, there was never a shirt.

The point is that despite everything else, despite that this simple day had been taken hostage and turned into an obnoxious one full with just as many people he didn't trust as people he did, despite that he didn't get to talk about traps with Max, or enjoy a slice of cake his mother made, or listen to Marley's off-pitch rendition of the birthday song, it would've been tolerable if he was high. But he'd been saving the last of a very good buy for when Lex arrived.

And she never did.

So his entire night was awful.

So, he found himself standing on the porch of her home- her father's home, a place he realized he'd never been, which felt off-putting for some reason. Lex, slippery as she may have been, had become a constant in his life, an assurance. He liked to think he knew most of the pieces that built her up, but standing here, seeing this place where she'd grown up, knowing that at least some of the intricate designs in the wood work were her doing, he realized there was still a lot to learn.

And he would. When he was less annoyed. Still, he put on his public appeal face: the one with the sly smile and the mischievous eyes and the charismatic chin raised into the air, and he knocked on the door and took a step back to wait.