A/N: God, I am shit incarnate.

Ajax Walker, District 8 Male

We're all tangled up in one big bed, ignoring the fact that we very well could cease to exist tomorrow as we laugh far too loudly and share popcorn. Preston seems to have lightened up, thank god, though it's worth noting that his eyes are still slightly puffy, and he's not eating as vigorously as Quinn. Then again, nobody eats as vigorously as Quinn.

"Truth or dare, Gareth?" Quinn sings, legs pointed upwards like she's a beetle on her back. Gareth winces and briefly dodges the question by stuffing a handful of pastel macaroons in his mouth. Preston shivers in disgust as Gareth chews loudly. Gareth finally swallows loudly. "Uh… dare?" He stammers. Quinn's face contorts in malicious happiness and Gareth flinches away from her in fear. "Piss out the window!" She says cheerfully and without hesitation. Gareth practically flies off the bed. "No way!" He yells. Quinn grins. "It's a dare!" She chimes. "You haaaaaave to do it!"

"Do it! Do it! Do it!" I chant. Preston joins in hesitantly. Gareth flushes bright red. "Truth!" He screams in frustration. "Truth, truth, truth!" He yells in horror. Quinn pouts. "Fiiiiiine." She whines. I frown. "No fair!"

Quinn leans backwards, contemplating. She pulls up heavy bunches of sheet, almost absentmindedly swaddling herself. "What's the stupidest thing you've ever done for money?" She asks, raising a bushy eyebrow. Gareth snorts. "Easy." He mutters. "My stepsister is kinda rich thanks to her part-time job clerking… but she's a terrible cook, so she paid me to make her lunch…" He winced. "It… didn't turn out very well. She's not the only one bad at cooking." "Descriptioooon!" Quinn whined. "We want drama! We want intrigue! We want details!" Gareth furrows his brow. "All you need to know is that a frying pan ended up wedged in the ceiling and we still haven't gotten it down. We live in a state of constant fear, thinking it'll fall on our heads."

Preston managed a giggle. I snorted. "That's tame!" I laughed. Gareth scowled. "It's all I've got." "Whatever." Quinn says with a casual smile, pulling the box of macaroons from Gareth's hands. "It's my turn." He sings, grasping for the box and popping a cookie into his mouth. "Quinn!" He yells. "Truth or dare?"

Quinn smiles devilishly. "Dare, cowards! Wimps!" Gareth groans in despair. "Can't you think of anything better then wimps?" Quinn swooned back onto the bed. "I didn't exactly have a stellar education- isn't it par for the course for me to have a limited vocabulary?" Gareth rolls his eyes. "That isn't what I meant, shit idiot." He grumbles.

I take this opportunity to chime in. "He meant friends!" I yell skywards. "Buddies, chums, pals! A handheld dictionary is hardly needed to describe us. Nobody asked you to be eloquent, Quinn, just slightly less abrasive, maybe?"

Quinn blinks in surprise, taken off guard for the first time in- ever? Seriously, I think this might have been the first time we took Quinn off guard ever." She quickly snaps out of her mini-funk however, and grins, cheesy as the dusty snacks we munch on. "I'll keep it in mind. Anyways, you guys gonna dare me?"

Gareth grins, flashing huge teeth in our direction. "I dare you to eat your sock!" Quinn's face scrunches up in utter surprise and despair. "Ew!"

"Eat your sock! EAT YOUR SOCK! EAT YOUR SOCK!" We chant, a glorious miasma of conflicted bros coming together in harmony- over a dirty sock. "Fine, I'll deepthroat the sock." She grouses. "But I'm not going to actually digest the little shit!"

"If it smells like feces, that's your fault!" I chime in. "But no, you don't have to actually swallow it. That would probably make a mess out of your liver." Says Preston solemnly. "Leave my liver alone!" Quinn yells passionately. I roll my eyes and shoves the sock into Quinn's mouth.

She stammers and chokes for a few minutes, nose wrinkling at the indescribable oder, but eventually noms on it and pulls it out of her mouth, her cute-ass freckled features rife with despair at the stink. "You guys all suck!" She yells, mouth still infected with scraps of cotton.

Preston rolls his eyes and promptly falls off the bed. It is a grand and dramatic gesture. His fellows- my fellows- take a break to stare at him for a hot second in disbelief and apprehension. Then they-we turn their-our heads and begin to discuss Quinn's liver at an extent again. Preston pouts and for a second the look on his face resembles Preston in the pettiness factor. Then the storm clouds clear and he scrambles up on the bed to diss Quinn's immune system with the rest of us riffraff.

"I cannot believe it is still functioning! That little lass deserves a medal for all her hard work!"

"If you ever refer to my organs with feminine pronouns again, I will give your organs something to worry about!"

"My organs aren't worrywarts like yours! They're total party animals!"

"Maybe Quinn's liver isn't the liver we should be worrying about…"

Quinn sticks out her hands in my direction, eyes glinting under a sizzling electric faux-sun. The limb hangs in limbo for a second, then I grab it. We shake, once, twice, three times, an imperial, businesslike pact. "our livers-" She says, with a grim, solemn air unheard of in the relentlessly lighthearted archive of patented QuinnTones- "Are both absolutely shot to hell."

That's a positive note to end the liver chat on.

We doze in silence for a few minutes. I eat- nay, I gorge. I'm hardly starved, but before the games, I never had food in excess, too worried it would spoil my lean figure, perfect for flinging knives like the dumbass, progress-obsessed vigilante I was. The dumbass I still kinda am. I still want to be the best. But it's not for myself anymore, and that allows me a kind of self-reflection and self-awareness I didn't possess before. I can laugh at myself, not with myself.

And as a remarkably shitty amateur comedian, I understand the distinction more than anyone.

Obviously, staying in shape for the games is important, but I'm naturally skinny and a few days of luxury will hardly reprogram my form. Progress is important, but there's little to no point in it. I can already since my impending death, hanging on the horizon like a fat, heavy cloud, pregnant with misfortune and not a little pain.

I pop a kernel in my mouth. Fuck it. I'm nigh-content.

Chew and swallow.

I am not the Hunter.

A/N: Like I said in the beginning, I am shit incarnate. It's been almost a year, and I don't know if anyone is still reading this woeful tale of horny teenagers and painful death. I wouldn't blame you if you weren't. All I can say, really, Is that I'm sorry. I went back to school in January, and it sucked major ass for many reasons. The curriculum was indecipherable to me, my grandfather's health took a sharp turn for the worst, and I became, unfortunately, used to random breakdowns in bathroom stalls. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. You probably don't care, and I shouldn't be pushing this on you. It's not an excuse- I had obligations, and I failed them, and that's on me- Just an explanation.

I'm not abandoning this story. It isn't very good. My characterization is wonky at BEST. Plenty of my readers are no longer reading. It took over eight months for me to give you a chapter, and it was neither long nor well written. But I'm not abandoning it anyways. And I'm not going to half-ass it either. ):D ßthe parentheses is a unibrow! Rest assured I do not have a unibrow, it just looked cute.

Please review. I'm really excited to get this started again, even if it seems like I've fallen into a fic funk.

Thank you for your time,

SparkALeah

PS: I don't know if I'll be doing another SYOT after this, but if I am, It'll be Pestilence. For now, Pestilence is on hiatus.