fate, bitter and sweet [ love x emerson ]

pogue
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fate, bitter and sweet [ love x emerson ] Jun 9, 2021 16:17:40 GMT -5

Post by pogue on Jun 9, 2021 16:17:40 GMT -5

C A L L U M

L O V E

There’s diamonds glistening in his eyes as he casts his gaze around the Training Center, throwing knife quivering as he balances the point on his fingertip, hand moving softly as he keeps it upright. Lambs to slaughter and he’s the wolf, all licked lips and bared fangs and narrowed eyes, his time in the training center has been preoccupied by making sure the shadow cast by Julian Le Roux’s last name includes himself.

Less a career, more a parasite. But he’ll take it. After all, it’s not like the Career status has been kind to so many boys like him.

He finally rests his gaze on the other half of a tarnished legacy, catches Emerson Le Roux with metal laced in her fingertips and training dummies faltering underneath her swings. A smirk dances across his face as he makes his way over, watching the career slice clean through the neck of a dummy, his gaze following it as it hits the floor and rolls towards him. Digits spread and wrap around the fleshy material, pulling the head into his grasp when Emerson’s back is turned.

“Clean cut.” Love remarks, tossing the dummy head back and forth from hand to hand. “Guess with a last name like yours I should expect that though, right?” Plastered smile spread across a face too kind for a Career and he extends a hand, palming the dummy’s head with the other.

“Love. I’d ask yours, but your reputation sort of precedes ya.”

alex 🐺
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fate, bitter and sweet [ love x emerson ] Jun 9, 2021 19:01:35 GMT -5

Post by alex 🐺 on Jun 9, 2021 19:01:35 GMT -5

She should have pulled her hair back into a ponytail, she realizes her mistake now. Because each swipe that she takes through these ridiculously realistic dummies with her swords has her flicking her bangs out of her eyes and blowing strands of blonde away from her mouth.

Emerson’s off in a corner, holding two katanas, one in each hand, trying to fight off a headache and counting down the hours until she can go back to their apartment and strategize more. It’s less a training session and more of a way to get some face time with the other tributes. Learn their weaknesses. Size them up.

Emie didn’t have to say anything to any of the others for them to know who she was, which was—fine, probably.

She and Julian were marked because of their name and their district and every other thing that made them stand out from everyone else. Not that it mattered. Emmett and Silk played the game with the same pieces and the same background and they both ended up buried six feet under in the family tomb.

“Clean cut,” a voice says. She sighs, eyes closing slowly as she works to get her heart rate back to normal. The fucking things that the Avoxes had injected had to be tracking all of that shit, right? Emie didn’t want anyone to know that half an hour of some minor swordplay had made her as winded as it did. Maybe she should go for the eggs tomorrow rather than her liquid diet of vodka and cigarettes.

Speaking of which, who did she have to bang around here to get more of those? She turns to see the boy from—Two maybe? He looked like a Two. Let’s go with that. She feels a bead of sweat make its way down her neck.

“Guess with a last name like yours I should expect that though, right?”

“Yeah, they’d beat us at the training center if it wasn’t through and through.” She pauses, a smile breaking out across her face. “I’m kidding. My mom did the beating, actually.”

Her eyes follow the way he treats the dummy head like a football, dexterously lobbing it back and forth to himself before he cradles it with one hand and extends his right hand.

“Love. I’d ask yours, but your reputation sort of precedes ya.”

He was cute—with his symmetrical face and stereotypical good looks. If you were into that sort of thing and word on the street was that—but before she could entertain that thought, Emerson reaches out to shake his hand, gripping both of the tsukas with her left hand. Now, where the hell had she placed their sayas?

“You’re the one that my cousin is fake-fucking, right?” she asks quietly, her voice low lest anyone else hear her. She smirks, eyebrows raising because it was so fucking like Julian to do something as extravagant as this. He wasn’t stupid, that’s for damn sure, but did he really have to be so damn extra?

She lets go of Love’s hand, spotting the sayas next to the weapons rack. “I can see the appeal, honestly. A showmance like yours will put asses in the seats—or sponsors in your pocket. I thought about it for half a second but then realized, you know, I’m just not cut out for charisma. I’m not a charmer, you see. You can call me Emie. I feel like we’re going to be seeing quite a lot of each other over the next few weeks.”

the smell of night, inhaling stars.

pogue
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fate, bitter and sweet [ love x emerson ] Jun 9, 2021 21:24:42 GMT -5

Post by pogue on Jun 9, 2021 21:24:42 GMT -5

C A L L U M

L O V E

Emerson Le Roux reeks of a lot of things, vodka and smoke and poor childhood memories being some of them. Predictable, he thinks to himself, behind plastered smile and engaged demeanor. He could practically smell the way her guard keeps her afloat, desperately attempting to keep herself above the water of a legacy wracked with loss and disgrace. What was it they called themselves? Lions. He nearly laughs at the thought.

If this is what the Le Roux’s call a lion then he’s the hunter with the gun. Finger on the trigger, eye on the sight.

“You’re the one my cousin is fake-fucking, right?”

The smirk wipes itself from his face. Perhaps Emerson Le Roux had some fangs left in that mangled jaw of a family legacy she’s got.

“Fake?” He repeats the word, voice purposely dumbfounded as if he doesn’t know what she means. Smirk wiped from his face he ponders, arching his eyebrow and tilting his head and analyzing Emerson’s question. His mind chews on itself in the process of formulating a response, debating whether or not the insistence of the facade would be the correct card to play. After all, he’s built himself off of diamond reflections, off of smoke and mirrors and everything in between.

But Emerson- Emie, is still family to Julian, no matter how hard he forces his hand and the cards he’s dealt onto the playing field. Fine, he tells himself, if she wants to play ball, let’s do it.

“Fake is such a strong word. I’d call it more... convenient.”

The words rest between them, heavy with the admission of a false relationship. He says the words quietly, feeling them slip from his lips and fall to the ground as he crosses his arms, dropping every smirk and smile and kind word in passing that he’d spit so far in the training center. Some were easy to fool, and some were fools too easy to ignore. He decides Emie Le Roux is the latter. His eyes drift down, then up, narrowing before he finally smirks again.

“Am I supposed to believe you, a Career from One, has never focused on convenience at all?”

He says the words with malice and venom laced between them, smirking deviously as he unfolds his arms and walks behind her, taking his place at the training stand to her left and running his fingers across the rack of weapons. After a moment and a half he rests his hands on the throwing knives, pulling them from the rack and tossing one softly from his grasp, letting it spin in the air before his hand wraps around the handle again.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Emie..” He slips her nickname from his lips drenched in sarcasm. “I’m thoroughly charmed by that attitude of yours.” He smiles, dazzling whites and filled with deadliness, raises both eyebrows before shrugging.

“So you’re not a charmer. We can’t all be.” He turns, briefly, launching the knife into the nearest dummy in the practice range. It glows green briefly as the knife strikes its heart, resting for a moment before the belt zips it to the back and replaces it with a target anew. “But what you are-” He raises another knife, twisting it around and around in his grasp. “is a Le Roux.” His voice raises at the mention of her last name, indistinguishable between mockery or interest. “So tell me, Emie.” The knife launches from his grasp into the head of a dummy.

What makes you tick.
“What makes you special?”

Last Edit: Jun 9, 2021 21:25:35 GMT -5 by pogue

alex 🐺
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fate, bitter and sweet [ love x emerson ] Jun 10, 2021 17:55:18 GMT -5

Post by alex 🐺 on Jun 10, 2021 17:55:18 GMT -5

Emerson decides then to start taking things seriously. Eating right. Hydrating with something other than vodka. Getting a good night's sleep. Because the way Love is looking at her—not with pity, no, but something hovering quite close to disgust at the waste of a Career that she is—no, she can't fucking have that. And who the fuck names their kid Love?

Emmett may have rebelled against the constraints placed upon them by their name and by their upbringing. Silk may have embraced it with open arms. But Emie had always been in the middle. She'd begrudgingly accepted the mantle that was placed upon her head, a tarnished diadem with missing rubes and dull gold, but it was a mantle nonetheless. the sword of Damocles that was her life.

She might have come to the Training Center for a bit of anthropological research into the minds of her fellow tributes but she was dumb as hell and fucking short-sighted to not guess that they were all doing the same thing to her.

"Fake?" Love asks her, tilting his head the same way she had tilted hers. “Fake is such a strong word. I’d call it more... convenient.”

"Well whatever you want to call it," she remarks absently, watching him as his eyes drop down her legs and make their way glacially back up her body. Interesting!

“Am I supposed to believe you, a Career from One, has never focused on convenience at all?”

She scoffs, licking her bottom lip because he clocked her just as easily she had clocked him. Maybe Julian hadn't been thinking just with his dick when they entered into their arrangement. Perhaps she had met her match with Love, her barbs landing just shy of their target, but no matter. It was a war, not a battle.

"And here I thought we were talking about you. I'll not give you the shovel talk with Julian. It would be a waste of breath anyway. Odds are, none of us are going to get out of here alive."

She follows him over to the weapons rack to grab the sayas for the katanas, relishing in the sound of the blade securing itself in the sheath. She'd never get over that sound. It was a beginning and an ending and endless possibilities in between. If anyone could say anything about Emerson Le Roux, it was that the girl loved her blades.

She cracks her shoulders as Love picks up the knife weighing it in his hand and saying, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Emie. I’m thoroughly charmed by that attitude of yours.” He thoroughly fucking wasn't and she knew it. But there were rules against the sort of ideas that she was having about the knife in his hand and the fleshy parts between his legs.

He turns, briefly, launching the knife into the nearest dummy in the practice range.“So you’re not a charmer. We can’t all be.” His words fall on a razor's edge, just like the casual toss that sings through the air as his knife strikes true. Right through the heart. She should be frightened, maybe. She isn't.

“But what you are-” God, is he still talking? Evidently, he was—“is a Le Roux. So tell me, Emie. What makes you special?" The question lands just like his knife, through the eye and probing deep.

Rubbing at the back of her neck at the sweat that was quickly drying, Emie exhales loudly, holding her hands out in front of her and her palms upward. Supplicant.

She opts for three truths and a lie, pacing towards the weapons rack and picking up a spear. It's nearly six feet long and Emerson wonders for a minute if it was the same one that—"I can remember every weapon I've ever fought with. How it feels in my hands. How much it weighs. How true it strikes. I know every single muscle in the human body and what it feels like to tear it apart with a knife. My sister was gorgeous and deadly with a blade, but she favored spears and so I do too."

Emie lifts up the spear, spinning it hand over hand, feeling the weight and counterweight."My mind works faster than anyone else's. And I always, always have a plan. That's what makes me different." She pauses, driving the point into the mat next to her right foot.

"And I'm pretty fucking great in bed, but that would be barking up the wrong tree with you, I think. I don't fuck where I eat."

Last Edit: Jun 28, 2021 6:57:40 GMT -5 by alex 🐺

the smell of night, inhaling stars.

pogue
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fate, bitter and sweet [ love x emerson ] Jun 10, 2021 21:17:19 GMT -5

Post by pogue on Jun 10, 2021 21:17:19 GMT -5

C A L L U M

L O V E

He knows his words cut deep, can practically trace the gashes he leaves on Emerson Le Roux as they slip from his mouth. She’s guarded and, honestly, he can’t blame her. It’s a bone toss of fortune that he hasn’t had to watch any of his family get cut to bits in the Arena in years past. If he’d watched a person drag the family legacy through the mud like some of the Le Roux family had in the past, he’d probably be just as negative himself.

Difference is, he hadn’t. It’s why confidence still seeps from his form, spilling out to the ground below in every smirk that dances across his face. He notes the weapon that Emie wraps between her fingertips, gaze narrowing for a brief moment before she continues, spilling her guts in reckless abandon.

He counts the skills she lists on his fingers as she talks, eyebrows raising higher and higher in mock respect with each new thing she lists. She’s firing hollow bullets at an invisible target, throwing every card she has in shaking hand out on the table in hopes it’ll translate into a winning hand. And he mentally licks his lip, grabbing another knife from the table and absentmindedly twirling it in his grasp. He can’t say he’s particularly impressed with the skill set she’s laid out in front of him, any Career training would touch on the same pedestals she’d awkwardly placed herself upon. But it’s an interest none the less, and if a girl with a tarnished legacy and the memory of an elephant was what he had to work with then so be it. He just hoped she didn’t carry the Le Roux curse right along with her, that the build up wouldn’t just lead to a slit throat and a hollow corpse.

And besides, at the very least Emie Le Roux was good for some authentic banter. It’d been too long since he’d let the mirror he held to the world crack and shatter, tilted his head and finally tasted the venom that drips from his lips. His eyes drift up from the knife and to her face, ice curling at the edges of his irises.

“Wow..” He mutters softly, letting the sarcasm fall dead into the air between them, eyes tracing her jugular. Eventually, he’d run metal across her neck, maybe just leave the knife in her grasp after he does so, since she seems so keen on remembering her weapons. She punctuates her words with grace and venom and he smirks, plastering a fake frown on his face. “It’s not that it’s the wrong tree, Emie. I’m fun to play with and to eat.” He remarks, tossing the knife from his right hand into his left before twisting on his heel, using the momentum to fire the knife into a moving target. The range glows green with the hit, a screen in the back highlighting the muscle area his knife had struck. “It’s just, unfortunately, I’m taken.” He says with a smile, turning back towards her.

“And I mean, talk is great. But in the three days I’ve watched you, all you’ve done is sit with a scowl on your face and swing your little swords.” He shatters the diamond facade, letting the act drop from his face as he takes a step towards her. “Julian might be convenient, but the Capitol goes nuts for a good love story, not for smoke-stained clothes and vodka breath.”

He mocks her, fanning his hand in the air between them as if to clear it of foul stench, look of disgust flashing on his face. “See, I can make plans too. Guess that makes me special, just like you.” He punctuates his words with a grin, devious and vicious and filled with bared fangs.

“So, does that mean the little lion cub is gonna be all on her own in the arena?”

Last Edit: Jun 10, 2021 22:00:26 GMT -5 by pogue

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fate, bitter and sweet [ love x emerson ] Jun 11, 2021 8:01:30 GMT -5

Post by alex 🐺 on Jun 11, 2021 8:01:30 GMT -5

She can see it in his eyes. He thinks she’s full of shit. He sees everything about her family tattooed across her chest and down her arms like brands from a war that she didn’t want any part of.

He sees her tarnished legacy and while his head may be too far up his own ass to see the sunrise, she knows that he’s thinking she’s an easy target. Good, he can keep thinking that. It suits her, actually.

Because Ridley, Emmett, and Silk had all played to their strengths. And Emie had seen how that had served them. Emmett was dead, Silk was dead, and the black sheep of the family had come home, cursing their name every single step of the way. She won in spite, not because of their name, and that’s what made her different.

The girl, the Career that Emerson had portrayed in the Training Center was a one-trick pony who could barely stand up straight, reeking of nights spent doing ripred knows what. Opal had told her to milk that for all it was worth in the first few days. Show them a side of herself that screamed weakness. And then, flip the script.

Love's looking at her now with derision dripping from his words and his movements, thinking he has the upper hand, and maybe he does. Maybe he had seen right through her. Maybe he hadn't.

Mom had always said she was too trusting for her own good. Wretched girl, she had called her in the Justice Building after everything. Wretched girl, you’ll get your neck snapped quicker than you think in there if you trust every single person who comes your way.

Love wants to examine the lion’s teeth, get inside the mind and motivations of the Le Rouxs. But what he didn’t seem to remember was that the best way to do that was to stick his head in the lion’s mouth.

Wow.” Sarcastic fucking shit. She’d trace that smile with the tips of her switchblade, etching a permanent grin on his features before the Games were finished.

”It’s not that it’s the wrong tree, Emie. I’m fun to play with and to eat. It’s just, unfortunately, I’m taken.” He throws the knife again, pleased with himself to no end as he turns back to her. The spear she had handled remains stuck in the ground next to her and she crosses her arms over her chest. First, she would give him a smile that would last for the rest of his life and then—then she would cut off every finger of his hands, one by one.

“Your relationship is as fake as those pearly white teeth you keep flashing around.”

He steps towards her then and she inhales sharply, rethinking the rules that keep her from slicing her way up his stomach, starting with his pelvis and ending just below his neck.

“And I mean, talk is great. But in the three days I’ve watched you, all you’ve done is sit with a scowl on your face and swing your little swords. Julian might be convenient, but the Capitol goes nuts for a good love story, not for smoke-stained clothes and vodka breath.”

Emerson clenches her teeth, jaw set, and eyes flashing. He was all bravado and she was bored. Bored of him and bored of this conversation.

See, I can make plans too. Guess that makes me special, just like you. So, does that mean the little lion cub is gonna be all on her own in the arena?”

Grabbing the spear next to her, she angles the tip of it towards her left hand, running her index finger along the edge. She blinks, looking away from him, eyes watching the way the lights of the Training Center glittered along the steel like diamonds.

It would be so easy to just— “Why? Are you interested? Would you deign to let your glamour falter with the likes of me? A washed-up Career with mommy issues and corpses littering her path? If you’re really asking me about my plans for the arena, it seems that your little lion man has you in his jaws rather than the other way around. Maybe you’re into that kind of thing.” Emie shrugs, eyes moving slowly from the weapon back to Love. She angles it towards his throat, her right foot moving back imperceptibly as she stands.

“I’ve heard he likes knife play so clearly you’ve chosen well. But I’m gonna need you to do something for me though, Loveface. Because you’re forgetting something about the convenient relationship you’ve found yourself in. What benefits you, benefits him and by virtue, me.”

She tilts the spear higher, close enough to the line of his neck where she knew his carotid lingered so tantalizingly close to the surface. ”So, you can check your fucking ego and remember who you’re speaking with. At the end of the day, I share the last name with your fucking meal ticket, not you, so whatever leverage you think you have—there are two of us and one of you. And I’m not above reshuffling the deck to have a better hand.”

Last Edit: Jun 11, 2021 8:56:30 GMT -5 by alex 🐺

the smell of night, inhaling stars.

pogue
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last seen Aug 16, 2024 17:29:16 GMT -5

Is she trying to interrupt our henna session?

fate, bitter and sweet [ love x emerson ] Jun 11, 2021 15:14:17 GMT -5

Post by pogue on Jun 11, 2021 15:14:17 GMT -5

C A L L U M

L O V E

He’s under her skin.

Parasitic and loaded with toxins and venom, he can see it in the way her muscles tense and fingers curl around the spear she wields, the way her silence grows louder and louder until almost deafening.

Sticks and stones break bones, but words go right past the two and straight into the heart.

If Emerson Le Roux was good for nothing else, he could at least rely on her for the entertainment.

He merely shrugs at the jab she takes at his and Julian’s fling, brief sigh slipping from his lips. She’s continuing to take shots at the largest target in the range, and he wouldn’t respect it nor would he let it get to him. They both knew what he was working with and what was working with him, and it wasn’t his fault that she’d been too caught up in her own little world to snag him first.

Le Roux. He chews on the last name in the back of his mind as he absently listens to her rant with bared fangs and sharpened claws. Once a legacy and now little more than a crutch they use to stand on. He’d tossed her the benefit of the doubt at the beginning of their time in the training center, and had watched her chew it up and spit it out. Now she’s clawing desperately at the air and the earth in a piss-poor attempt to level the playing field.

It’s like he’s watching a child throw a tantrum, chewing on the candy he’d snatched from their hands.

But screw it, he reasons, he might as well let her tire herself out. His gaze travels from her eyes down to the blade now pointed at his throat, watching the fluorescent lights above bounce and scatter on its surface as her grasp tightens and tightens with her words. His eyes flutter, briefly, into an eye roll as she begins on the mommy issues. It was always the mommy issues with Careers like her, too entrenched in their childhood to take themselves seriously. But he wipes it clean, patches up a shallow crack in the exterior and lets a disrespectful smirk back onto his face. “He has me in something other than his jaws, trust me.” He mutters quietly, knife dug into the cut and salt poured on the wound.

When she’s finally done, Emie Le Roux stands dripping in rage and hollow words, a weak war cry tossed out into the battle in place of a threat. And he’d love to throw her a bone and pretend to be afraid of a the cards she’s clinging to, would love to throw her a bone. But, truthfully, as her threat settles into the space between them he can’t help but be confused, all furrowed expression and the brief raise of an eyebrow as he processes that crumbling pillar of a last name she insists on supporting herself with.

After all, wasn’t it the trust in the name Le Roux that had gotten so many of her family members killed?

The words bite at the tip of his tongue, as if itching to be the salt poured on the wound but he holds them back, instead opting to raise both hands in mock surrender. A content sigh breathes through his lips, raising the illusion of a little white flag of surrender.

No more jabs, no more threats, no more malice.
“Looks like the lion does have a roar.” Alright, maybe one more jab.

“I’m just saying...” He starts, pressing his fingertip to the edge of the spear and pushing it down away from his neck. “That it’s normal for a lion to travel in a pack, right?” He lets the question linger as he steps back, leaning himself against the training stand. “And I think you know as well as I do, that you’re probably better off with me than against me, no matter how much you hate it.”

He raises his eyebrows, testing her resolve as he settles for her reaction. “Plus-“ He adds. “I think Love Le Roux has a nice ring to it, don’t you?”

Last Edit: Jun 11, 2021 15:16:47 GMT -5 by pogue