fish with teeth / ki+lou

Her life is the culmination of other's bad decisions. Which is funny, really, because she could have ruined herself perfectly well if they had given her the chance.

Instead she is woken by an alarm her brother set remotely. Chef's left a bagged lunch on the counter and she pretends to forget it for the third day in a row. She'll claim it's a crash diet, if anyone asks. They'll commend her willpower.

The chauffeur sits in the driveway, gloved fingertips tapping an anxious pattern on the steering wheel. He looks at her with a hopeful gaze to which she shakes her head. It's three miles to the Academy, but her blisters have long since turned to calluses.

Sometimes she screams in empty rooms, just to feel them in her throat. No one's noticed yet. Probably because no one's listening.

The afternoon has drifted into a orange lull, Louvelle rests her cheek in her palm and fights against her drooping eyelids. A lazy, looping script peers up at her from her notebook - Miss Eairto's lecture near verbatim. She hasn't allowed room for her own thoughts in the margins because they don't matter. She'd be prettier without them.

"Mutt pissed off the teacher again~" Avani chitters from beside her, hand curled over her lips as though that makes her cruelty something demure.

Lou looks over her shoulder, toward where their teacher looms over a boy heaped in his desk. She'd found him interesting for all of three hours, but he wasn't very good at hiding that he was more trouble than he's worth. A junkyard boy made of broken parts, the tips of his ears are beginning to rust. It's only a matter of time before this place eats away at him, 'til he's nothing but shrapnel and dust. If he didn't want to be tormented, he should have done a better job of hiding that he doesn't belong here.

She envies him, though, there's no one doubting Louvelle Fenwick's fucking birthright. They'll pretend to adore her until the day she dies, and then they'll engrave her tombstone in rose gold letters through sighs of relief.

"Don't be ugly." Lou could pretend the words weren't pointed if Avani didn't recoil as though physically struck. Ringed fingers clatter against the desk as the girl fights to keep anger from settling on her features. Lou's rolls her gaze over to her, brows raised in half of a challenge. Avani's father dealt in pharmacology and whatever other fancy words were meant to obscure the Capitol's drug trade.

This was a conversation between pawns, not daughters.

"We didn't even know he existed a month ago, I don't know why you all care so much."

She puffs up like a parrot, mouth opening and closing a few times before simply sinking lower in her seat, "Whatever."

What a fucking coward.

Louvelle had hoped she'd try to bite with those blunted teeth.

"Miss Fenwick?"

Her spine goes pin straight, ankles crossing beneath her desk, "Yes ma'am?" It's all instinct. She's suddenly aware of every every inch of her body. The ache in her legs from sitting still for so long, the way her hair tickles the place between her shoulder blades. In spite of it all, she holds a careful posture as she turns to look at Miss Eairto.

"Starting today, you will be Mr. Wang's seat mate. I think you will be a good influence on him."

Avani stifles a laugh in her palm.

"Of course, ma'am." Her lips are closed around a soft smile, hiding her grinding teeth. The rest of the class watches as she gathers her things, picking her way through a labyrinth of desks and scattered belongings until she reaches Kija.

She gazes down at him for a long while, until the world starts moving again. There's no getting a read on him when he's backed into a corner, leaking from fresh wounds he hasn't had the time to lick. Her hand rests on the edge of his desk, she watches his shoulders - not his face. Until they rise and fall in a more steady rhythm.

Only then does she move into the seat beside him.

"We're both unhappy with this arrangement, I presume?" She opens up her textbook, flipping to the assignment now scrawled on the board. "Do as I say, and make no trouble. We'll both make it out of this just fine."

That's comforting, right? She's not used to trying.

Boys bleed easy.

She rests her elbows on the desk, busywork waylaid in favor of confirming this hypothesis. She's careful when she looks at him, eyes darting away to some inane fixture in the classroom every so often. They expect her to fear those sharp teeth when he's too busy gnawing at his own wrists. Her attention lingers on the exposed nerves a little too long to be mistaken for polite.

The conclusion comes, quick and lethal. He's no more a monster than the rest of them.

"Sorry about..." She repeats his words, trying to puzzle out the meaning behind them. Lou doesn't entertain apologies, they're only ever a clumsy attempt at manipulation. She clicks her tongue at his question, impatient as he drags his fingers through her thoughts. Ripples on a mirrored lake. "Here."

Her thoughts drift to dead cats as she leans toward him, thumbing through his textbook until she's found the right page. Never quite looking at him, but keeping him trapped in her peripheries. Her hair curtains the other side of her face, a veil between them and the rest of the world. Her lips twitch as she considers what might kill a kitten.

Curiosity, among other vices.

"No apologizing." She settles on saying, the heat radiating off his skin nears a fever. She shouldn't be able to feel it from this far away, that must be agony. Poor thing. Somewhere in between the steady thumping of her pulse, a beat skips. Her fingers twitch, and she immediately sets about finding a way to recreate it.

Light filters through the window, the sight of it making her head swim. Like a mosquito drowning in molten amber. The skin on the back of her hands boils, she trails black-tipped fingers over the skin. Dust motes dance through the stagnant air, they collect on his fluttering lashes. She gives up on breathing altogether.

"If you're angry about this, I'd prefer you don't take it out on me. I don't mind working together if you pull your weight." She explains, perplexed by her own reluctance to leave the space she'd made for them. She sets a notebook there instead, picking through her pencil case until she finds a color she likes for him. Orange ink, red glitter. She writes his name on the top of the page, then rolls it toward him, "To keep things organized."

In spite of herself, the next words are somewhat sheepish, "That's yours now, so feel free to lose it after the assignment. If you hate it." She's always squirreled away shiny things, a habit that once cost her brother an obscene amount of money on one particularly fateful gala appearance. The black diamond now dangles from her wrist like a dead star, the only piece of jewelry she's never taken off.

She works in silence for a little while, reading under her breath and copying down important notes. Stars and underlines the information she finds interesting, until the page is more galaxies than words. Every so often she leaves a question marks beside a thought she wants him to see, but often thinks better of it and scribbles them into black holes. Better not to ask than to be disappointed with the answer.

"They're all stupid, by the way." She rolls her eyes as a peal of giggles bursts across the class, a little too mean not to be directed their way, "You shouldn't rise to it."

Louvelle has spent her life looking up at her family from the foot of their throne, bended knees blossoming into bruises. It's less trouble than biting back. That's only worth something while the blood is still warm.

Kija's too covered in scabs and scars.