tough tough // sin & lore

Something Sin had always wanted to do, was go to the ice machine.

He'd seen it once, on the little television in the Hospital's waiting room. There was a show that always played, sometimes the same episodes over and over again. At one-thirty every afternoon, the same bad soap opera would play. Sin would sit on one of the dingy, stained chairs, a knee under his chin and watch as people yelled at each other on the television, fucked on hospital beds and performed surgeries wrong.

There was a whole while where one of the main characters had been living in a place called a hotel, because he'd been caught fucking a nurse in a closet and his wife had kicked him out. Once night his wife went to the hotel to confront him, but they ended up yelling, a lot. Then the Doctor had thrown his hands in the air, grabbed a bucket, and said, "Goddamnit Kelly! I'm going to the ice machine, I need to cool down."

Sin had thrown his hands up in the air and huffed slightly, a frown tugging at his lips. The receptionist had arched a brow and shooed him away.

He had yet to find the ice machine in the training centre. There were machines filled with food spread carefully throughout, but nothing that he would classify as a machine for ice. He was pretty sure he'd know one when he saw one.

Floor One had been his first stop, sterile, quiet, boring. Not even a vending machine. Not for the first time, he wondered why he had the privilege of having the best view from his place on the Twelfth floor. Pity made the most sense.

A girl got on moments before he was going to step off to explore the next floor and she seemed busy, so he didn't try to push past her. He'd just wait for her to go, then keep searching, it was fine, he had all night.

She wasn't the first person to pay him no mind, Sin was used to being ignored. He didn't mind anymore when people spoke to him, but even on Monday, it'd made him uneasy. People didn't speak to him, they never had, not until here.

Before the train ride, the justice building, this week, he'd been absolutely nothing. People's gaze would fall on him briefly and then slide away, unable to look in the cracks of society.

He often fell through them.

Sin watched as the girl slapped at the control panel, as things fell from her grasp, as the lights started to blink on the wall, as the elevator suddenly went from brightly lit to an off-red, as they ground to a halt and he lost his footing a little bit.

The whirring sound was gone.

They were frozen there, between floor nine and eight.

He leaned against the wall, settling into the shadow caused by the emergency lighting. Sin didn't really know what to do, other than wait and hope that whatever floor they ended up on, they arrived there soon.

The female tribute's energy was more than what he was used to.

A bolt of fabric had rolled to stop at his feet and Sin gazed down at it, eyes travelling along the ragged edge.

Her sewing scissors could use sharpening.