knock twice // beck & ky

b e c k .

"when the lights come down,
got an empty crown"

Frankly, Beck Hailsham is tired of grieving. This past year was nothing more than a link welded into the rusted red of a wrought iron chain. It rests heavy on his shoulders, wound several times around his throat. Wound so tight it's no wonder his skin has begun to grow around it like the leather collars of forgotten strays plauging the alleys of Four. He imagines he feels a lot like they do.

He's been running away from velveteen wildfire; he's been running straight into her embrace. His own hipocracy has given him whiplash. Fingers dig into the knotted muscles of his neck, beneath the broken skin of course, and he crashes like the crest of a wave against a cliff face - broken mid-breath.

Sophie's smile still haunts his mind's eye. A flash of brilliant white beneath the blood and dirt that curled tenderly around her temples. He's watched Eloise kill her a thousand times over, he's spent days in bed trying to forget the sight. He doesn't know how to make himself feel better. Clinging to memories hurts as much as the thought of forgetting. The other Victors look at him through gazes of molten honey and understanding but none of them told him how to stop the hurting.

He's beginning to think they can't. That life goes on and they go on with it and the pain is always there, a needle in their vein, and they've just got to ignore it.

God, he's tired.

The Quell twist is pathetically cruel, he doesn't envy those given a second chance. It is not an act of mercy, not like the Capitol would have the masses believe. What remained of those who returned were fragments of already broken things. (You'll have to watch them die twice.) How did the Capitol manage to make poison taste so sickly sweet?

Vaguely, he wonders if the next Victor will know death intimately or be haunted by the fact that they don't. Either fate is worthy of his pity but he won't be able to help them either way.

He takes love like lidocaine, using up others to stifle his agony. Beck doesn't smile for himself much anymore, the only words he dares to speak are what others want to hear.

Because when they love him, it hurts less and no one could love what he's becoming. His job isn't unlike Sailor's in that way - they're both playing pretend. Making him up better than he is.

Emmett was a good kid, a real good kid. Beck couldn't stifle a sense of satisfaction at the hundreds and thousands of dollars that must have been lost because a scared little boy was forced to die twice. The Capitol's outrage might be cathartic if not for the fact it was only because he'd dared to do it so soon. Careers were made for better placements, after all.

He drove his fist into a wall the minute his canon rung. The skin around his knuckles was stained an angry red but, regretfully, nothing had broken. If nothing else, that might have given him something to think about.

Maybe it's the remnants of Sophie that made this hurt so bad or maybe it's the way that Ky had looked at Emmett, with eyes made of diamond and shattered glass. The kind of look that burned bright as a brand and was no less perminant. He knew it well; he'd dared to hope they'd have a better ending than his.

Not a happy one, just better.

Beck stares at his knuckles, at all of his forgotten scars, and he feels like screaming.

Craving fresh air and freedom from the walls that seemed to whisper he found himself waiting for the elevator. Every passing second is the skittering of spiders across his skin, eight legs dragging themselves against exposed nerves. He's running away again but it won't be long before he turns on his heel and dives into the flames.

The silver doors finally slide open and the sight almost breaks him.

"Ky," He tries to greet him with a smile, stepping into the belly of suffocatng silence. He can't bring himself to look at Ky, after all he tends to avoid mirrors.

"Tough luck." The words are hoarse and ragged, dragged from his throat against his better judgement.

They definitely aren't what Ky wants to hear.

But he's so tired of grieving.

b e c k .

"when the lights come down,
got an empty crown"

Pressure builds behind his eyes, a dull ache creeping up the base of his neck and scratching in between his ears. It sounds vaguely like Ky but too much like a career for comfort. He sooths his thumb over the angry skin of his knuckles, settling a lazy gaze upon the younger boy.

It's a performance, it has to be. Or maybe he'd had too much faith in a boy who's only ever known wealth and glory. (But the way he looked when he was around Emmett-)

He digs his nail into a bruise.

"Shut the fuck up." He winces at the rough words he'd managed to drag up from somewhere deep in his chest. It's not what he meant to say but that's par for the course. It's almost comforting not to mean anything.

And every time he thinks someone understands that, he's playing into the same pretty fairy tale that Ky and Emmett had. One made up of bouqets tied in pink ribbons, of happy endings at the end of a wedding isle. Picket fences, two-point-five kids, and living past twenty-two. "Shit, I mean-"

His breath shakes with a shallow exhale, "I was just upset. For you." Beck gestures half heartedly at his hand in a desperate bid to make less of an ass of himself than he already has. There's about a thousand things he should be saying but he can't bring himself to soothe those wounds. Maybe because it feels so fucking good to see them on someone else for once.

He could say it, that stupid empty promise that clings to him like flame to a catalyst. "I'm not gonna tell you it'll be okay."

That was a lie meant for her, after all.

He doesn't know what he's trying to say and he's almost certain this is making everything worse. If a cure existed he'd have used it on himself ages ago. "But don't pretend you don't care. This shit hurts, no matter if you'd known him two weeks or twenty years."

Unfortunate he'd never see that birthday.

God damn, pep talks suck. Beck blows his bangs out of his face, fiddling with the buttons on his phone as has become habit when he's feeling uncomfortable. Was he supposed to give him a hug? The thought makes him nauseous, even as he shuffles a few steps closer to his companion.

Seeing as Ky has pressed every button in the elevator this ride is bound to take a while but Beck has yet to decide whether that's a good thing. Probably not.

Friend was a word he'd used sparingly, even before they'd sewn a crown beneath his skin. It was senseless, delicate as vines woven between blackened thorns and riddled with secrets he didn't care to face. He'd called Bell a friend but what he felt for her was so much different than the angry exasperation that accompanied the sight of Ky.

He wanted him to smile, to be happy, to be better than Beck. Is that what friendship was?

And Lorenzo had called him a friend within moments of meeting but now a days that left him with a strange, hollow feeling.

Absolutely none if this has ever made sense, so he's just gone about ignoring it. And it had worked well up until this point when he's found himself alone with a maybe-friend in an elevator that seems intent on suffocating him.

He reaches out, maybe to wrap his arm around Ky's shoulders in a half-hearted hug but ends up punching his shoulder lightly. The hollow thud makes him cringe.

"But yeah, the other guy is pretty fucked up."