obligatory rooftop thread | [lucius/umber]

He supposed it was only a matter of time before he wandered up this way from the Twelfth floor. He had to ignore a number of different caution signs as he bound up the spiral staircase and shouldered his way through a heavy metal door. Someone left a cinderblock handy nearby, so he maneuvered his foot around its edge and slowly dragged it over to hold the door open. Afterwards, he sighed from effort, dusted his hands and placed them proudly onto his hips.

For the first time since making his way through the exit, he bothered to take in his surroundings. The view was absolutely breath-taking, with a 360 degree perspective of the Capitol sprawling out around him in every direction. The Training Center was, indeed, the tallest building in the perceivable space, and from up here he could see the top of every skyscraper from Style Street all the way down to Saturn City across the bay, where spotlights danced in the skies and towers twinkled like stars already in the early evening air. "Wow," he whispered, resting his arms and chin on the building's ledge.

He ended up staying that way for quite some time, bent in half at the waist and staring down at the blur of headlights zooming through the streets, which slowly began to glow brighter and brighter as neon signs replaced the fading day's light. From here, the people walking through courtyards and sidewalks were like ants- too many to count, and each just the same as the last. He found himself envious of them, of their mundane little lives. It made him miss his own, and it hurt him to know he probably wouldn't ever have the opportunity to return to it. Resigned at this point to his fate, he groggily moved on from the sights, marching his way around a huge AC unit and stepping off to a landing, where he found a sitting area waiting for him.

The sofa's scratchy run-down texture seemed closer to something Umber would've seen back in Twelve than anything he'd seen in the Capitol. There were two small tables- one on either end of the sofa- and each held an old kerosene lamp like his parents used when the weather knocked out the electricity. There was a well-treaded rug which looked like it had been white at one point. A single line of fairy lights was haphazardly swung across a rusted over antenna and some vents. Overall, it looked like something Terrence would've set up in order to impress some girl: nothing that took longer than 10 minutes or so to stage.

He quirked an eyebrow, wondered what the deal was. He made his way over and hesitantly sat on the sofa. It creaked under his weight, but other than that nothing happened. Then he rolled his eyes at himself and wondered what, exactly, he had expected to happen. An alarm to go off or something? To be electrocuted? From the looks of it, this was probably just a space for some of the employees to come on their lunchbreaks, or, according to the various ashtrays, their smoke breaks. He wrinkled his nose as the wind sent some of the topmost ashes skidding across the rooftop's rough surface.

And then a noise from the opposite direction caught his attention.

He turned to find standing before him first a monster, then a shadow, then a man, then a boy. In this lighting, the tribute from District Ten looked quite young, actually. Umber wondered if they might be closer in age than he'd realized, his brown eyes twinkling with the fairy lights over Umber's head.

"Uh, hi," he said, awkwardly shuffling his feet, "Sorry, did you call dibs? I was just-" From the corner of his eye, Umber recognized the neck of an electric guitar, casually stuffed around one of the back edges of the sofa. His eyes widened with excitement and he quickly grabbed the guitar and hefted it up. "No effing way! It's a guitar!" He chuckled, tossing the arm-strap over his head before he realized how openly he was showing his excitement.

He cleared his throat and tucked his chin. "I uh, I mean, I- do you? Play? I can play. I mean, I know how to-"