.

vii. hijinks
✦ ✧ ✦
mischievous merrymaking that is often disruptive or rowdy

satin tessaro
fifteen / / district twelve
—

Sometimes, being in prison really fucking blows.

The guards here are legit out of their minds if they think a little guy like Satin is going to just be able to pick up giant crates of food and walk them into the communal kitchen. He weighs like… not that many pounds — he isn't meant for this life!

But it doesn't even matter how much Satin does or doesn't complain because he's still stuck with a comically-sized crate of beans, limping across a hallway stained with mold and mildew. Stinky.

"Hey, you!" Satin snaps at the man standing in front of him, a burly sort of guy that could probably bench press him. "Your crate looks light. What do you say you help ya' boy out?"

He turns around, but only to scowl at Satin from at least a foot above him. "Why should I help you, kid?"

Satin shrugs — or at least he tries to, considering how damn heavy his crate is. "Y'know, I haven't thought hard on that. I was just hoping you'd take pity on me and not ask questions."

"Well I'm not. In fact, you're lucky I'm not punching you in the face right now."

He turns around, leaving Satin with only the means to whisper "womp womp" to nobody in particular and then carry on in trying to figure out how to lift this thing.

See what he means — this prison shit fucking sucks. Satin ain't supposed to be here either! He's 'posed to be back in good 'ol Eight with his ma doing whatever she wants him to be doing. If he knew he'd end up in this joint, he never would've complained about having to do chores 'round her house.

Then again, how could he have anticipated being stuck here when he literally didn't do anything wrong?

—

The smog in the air in Tattersall's slums isn't too horrible once your lungs get used to it. Satin's pleased to say that at the young age of thirteen, his sure as hell have.

It's a bit past his bedtime, or it would be if he had a bedtime, which would be ridiculous, but Satin doesn't feel particularly unsafe. After all, he's with the Foghorns, the best and most powerful gang in all of Eight. They told Satin that, so it must be true.

They get shit done too, they're very big and strong and have lots of sharp, pointy weapons and today is going to be the best gang mission yet — they're burning down a stupid retired cop's house. Not only that, Satin has a super important role. He gets to be the distraction!

"Alright, buddy." Sneaky Fingers says, holding a molotov cocktail that Satin is unfortunately too young to drink. "You're just going to stand right here."

The house is maybe fifty feet away, and after doing some scouting, he knows that nobody's inside. Sneaky Fingers told Satin to double check, because the point is to ruin his life, not kill him. It's going to be so hilarious — the old PK is going to go home and just not have a house! Oh, Satin will laugh so hard at him, even if it's from afar.

"I'm not going to blow up, right?" Satin asks, just to be sure. He's seen the Foghorns light plenty of fires and he hasn't died yet, so that's a good thing. "I just stay here… and then what? Do I get a knife?" He wants one, and he wants one bad. It'll probably be so much fun to stab someone — way more fun than sitting at home and doing laundry.

"No need." Satin flashes Sneaky Fingers a face of disappointment. "What's going to happen is, we're going to burn down the house, and you'll stay here. If anyone asks, you had nothing to do with what happened. After all, you're a pipsqueak—"

"I am not a pipsqueak!" Satin crosses his arms and huffs. "I'll have you know, I'm five feet and three inches."

"Okay sure, whatever. You still don't look like somebody who would commit arson."

"So they won't think it's me who did it!"

"Exactly, kiddo." Sneaky Fingers pats him on the back. "Of course, if no PK is around, you're free to flee with us, but if there's somebody asking questions, we know that you'll give the best answers!"

"You really think so?" It's so awesome being trusted like this. When Satin first hit up the Foghorns, they didn't want anything to do with him. To think, this is now his twelfth official mission. He mimes wiping a tear from his eye — oh, I grow up so fast.

"I know so!" Well, he can't argue with that. "Now, stand still, and we'll give you the signal if it's okay for you to run."

"You got it, boss!" Satin playfully gives him a salute. "I'm so excited!"

He does his best to stay patient as he watches the rest of the gang douse the house in kerosene, and even set up a few makeshift bombs around its perimeter. They all look so cool and tough with their strong posture and tattooed arms — Satin can't wait to be just like them.

Every adventure with the Foghorns is way better than being stuck at home. Yeah, some of his neighbors are fun to hang out with sometimes, but they're mostly really boring. They're all so complicit to the laws in Eight and unwilling to have even a little bit of fun as a treat.

(Maybe home would be better if his ma was actually around but nooooo she's always at work, and when she's not working she's tired because of work. Satin understands that she needs to make enough money to feed the both of them, but he doesn't get why she has to be gone all the time. It feels silly to admit it, but Satin really does miss her.)

Snapping Turtle, the gang's leader, stands tall in front of the house. "Boys — not you, Satin — get ready to run. We're blowing this bad boy up in ten seconds." The rest of the gang claps and cheers. "We'll show those nasty pigs that they don't run these streets—"

"We do!" Satin and everybody else roar. "We're the Foghorns and we run these streets! We're the Foghorns and we can't be beat!" He jumps in the air like he just don't care, even if he really does care a lot. "Go Foghorns, let's go!"

"Three seconds remain!" Another gang member, Satin thinks it's the Spade King, announces, his voice a bit muffled from the cigarette in his mouth. "On your marks…" Everybody starts to squat. "Get set…" He holds up Sneaky Fingers' molotov cocktail. Go!"

He lights the bottle, throws it at the house, and then they're off!

Well, everybody but Satin at least, but hopefully he can also leave soon! For now though, he gets to watch as the flames consume the house, electrifying shades of red and yellow traveling up the walls as black smoke emits off the roof. The sound of bombs going off is like music to his ears, one after another with more and more fire.

Rubble flies, some of it getting dangerously close to Satin, but he doesn't move. After all, he has a job to do!

He coughs as the smoke travels towards him. His lungs are suddenly so tight. His head feels like it's floating away from his body. "Shit," Satin mumbles, hardly able to understand his own voice. "Shit. Shit. Shit!"

Now, he can't see anything but the smoke. Satin's eyes water. Is he going to die here? What the fuck?

But then, just as quickly as the black smoke did, cloudy white smoke fills Satin's vision. He hears footsteps coming toward him, and sighs in relief. "You guys came back to save me!"

As the fog dissipates, Satin is expecting to see Sneaky Fingers, or maybe Snapping Turtle, but it's not them.

It's two PKs, holding up guns.

Satin's first instinct is to run — but another PK grabs his arms from behind and locks him into a strong grip he can't pull away from.

Maybe the Foghorns are still here? Maybe they're gonna kick the PKs' asses, teach them a lesson for messing with Satin?

But they're still nowhere to be seen. So, he stares at one of the PKs and smiles. "I had nothing to do with any of this."

"Sure you didn't," the officer says with a sinister cackle. "Get your ass over here, you're under arrest."

—

"You've got to stop doing dumb shit," Dodge laments.

As it turns out, the guy from the line earlier is in Twelve for killing his wife and therefore had no qualms about punching Satin in the face after he begged one more time. One of the guards took him away, so he's probably in solitary getting whipped right now, but that doesn't change the fact that Satin's face hurts like a bitch.

Getting his ass beat isn't really new to him, but he sure doesn't like it. If only he was strong enough to fight back. That's typically Dodge's job though, and he wasn't there.

"I just wanted some help," Satin pleads to him. "How was I supposed to know he was going to do that?"

"People are in here for scary things, Satin."

"Oh I know. You sound like my ma."

(He hopes that she's okay. Satin still can't believe that they wouldn't even let him say goodbye to her after he was arrested.)

"If someone gives you trouble, you tell me." Dodge leans back on his rickety metal chair. He gulps when its wobbly legs nearly send him crashing against the lunchroom's brick walls.

The food is ass, by the way. Sometimes, if Satin is lucky, he harasses this skinny nerd guy named Jalen into making him soup or pasta, but he's not here today, so imitation meat and mayonnaise it is.

"I already said, I didn't think he was going to do that." Satin tries to bring a bite of food to his mouth, but gags. That slight movement on his face makes his bruise hurt again, which is fucked.

"Still."

"Aight' Dodge. I'm sorry, man."

He's been hanging out with the older boy for almost a year now. He was thrown in here for selling drugs in Six and apparently Satin reminds him of his little brother. Why Dodge is still so fond of him after all this time is a great mystery, but Satin certainly doesn't mind the protection.

"You're a good kid, Satin," Dodge tells him. "Not as fucked in the head as a lot of the kids your age who get thrown in here."

Satin smiles, knowing he's referring to the new girl in their cell block obsessed with pranking and spray paint. He might've been like that at the start of his life sentence, but he's grown up fast, or at least that's what he tells himself.

"That's probably because I don't deserve to be here."

He stands by that — the Foghorns took advantage of him. Sure, at the time he would've committed acts of violence if they told him to, but during that specific incident, all he was doing was what they asked him to, which was just standing around!

(Satin still doesn't understand why he was abandoned. First by his ma because work was more important than him, and then the Foghorns. What is it about him that makes him so easy to discard?)

"The more you tell me that, the less I believe 'ya." Dodge braves his own shitty lunch, some sorry excuse for spaghetti and meatballs, with a smile. "It doesn't matter though; regardless of what we did or didn't do, we're stuck here."

"Yeah, stuck."

Satin tries not to dwell on that, but sometimes it's hard. After all, he's still a kid. He should be outside running around, not trapped in the hellhole where the only reward somebody can earn is half an hour in the sunlight.

But alas, what's done is done, and Satin Tessaro is never getting out.

lavish tarro
eighteen / / district one
—

Garnish has got to stop with the attitude today. Lavish didn't have to take her to the roller rink, but he so generously did so, and now she just doesn't know how to act. Obviously, he wasn't expecting her to skate — siamese cats, or cats in general, can't do that. All she needs to do is not look like a judgmental prick as Lavish soars across the rink, basking in the neon lighting with his heart beating to the tune of electronic music.

Yet Garnish has failed that very simple assignment, and he's probably going to side with Gliss in their quickly-impending argument.

The Grind N' Glide is the closest thing Lavish has to a home. Technicolor beams with funky patterns project onto smooth white flooring, a single spotlight following his every move. This isn't even a formal performance or anything — Lavish is just that special to everybody who works here. Every time he turns up to skate is a special occasion, and oh how it pleases him that he's always the center of attention.

"Can you please cease this." It was only a matter of time before Gliss decided to rudely interrupt him, yelling so loud, his voice drowns out the vintage Sapphira Starlett record blasting through the speakers. He's noticeably displeased as he sits at a high table next to Garnish, fidgeting with the monocle he most certainly doesn't need to be able to see.

Lavish knew his business partner would hate it here which is exactly why he took him. Even if it's a bit intimate to let Gliss see his happy place, his miserable scowl makes it worthwhile. After all, he and the rink couldn't be more different. While Lavish and the Grind N' Glide radiate the brightest colors of the world, Gliss has doomed himself to monochrome.

He angrily waves at Lavish as he skates by him and again calls out to him, "Please, Lavish. You're acting immature."

"Am I now?" Lavish's eyebrows quirk upwards, his teeth clamping down on a piece of bubblegum, which isn't allowed in the rink, for the record — he's just above the rules. Delicately, he blows a bubble, then skates to the sidebar so he can make direct eye-contact with Gliss. He takes one of his long, perfectly manicured fingernails, and pops it in his face before skating away.

"Lavish," Gliss scorns him once more, wiping the gum off the corner of his lips. From this angle, Lavish can really see how chiseled his jawline is, not that that's a particularly noteworthy thing for him to observe.

He rolls his eyes and finally stops himself at the edge of the rink for good. There's no use delaying his announcement to the older boy. Lavish knows he's going to be further ridiculed for what he's about to say, but his mind has already been made.

He lightly rolls to Gliss and Garnish's table and takes a minute to squint at the latter. "Why do you hate me so much?" He crosses his arms.

"Why are you talking to the cat?" Count on Pissy-Glissy to ruin the moment.

Lavish bats his eyes. "Are you lonely, Gliss?"

"Glissando."

"Gliss."

He leans down and inches his face so it's close to Lavish's, almost too close, and forcefully whispers, "My name is Glissando. You know this." Dang, he should've saved the blowing-gum-in-his-face trick for this very moment.

"Whatever you say, Gliss!" Lavish hops into his seat with a laugh. Garnish puts her paw on his hand, so he directs his attention to her. "Finally, you decide to acknowledge the most important person in the room."

"Lavish please," Gliss hisses. "Can you tell me your 'big announcement' already?" He looks down at his watch. "I have places to go and people to see; this is unprofessional of you."

Lavish takes a deep breath — here goes nothing. Or rather, here goes potentially everything. Once he tells Gliss of his decision, it might as well be finalized. But he knows that this choice of his is the correct one.

So why is he holding back?

"Tell me." Gliss taps on the table with his finger, Garnish's paw following the exact same rhythm. "Just please, don't tell me you're—"

"I'm going to try and volunteer for the Hunger Games!"

That's all it takes for Gliss to snap. His pale face turns into a disturbing shade of red, veins bulging from his neck muscles. The older boy's voice is deeper than usual when he says, "Lavish Tarro, that may just be the dumbest, most asinine thing I've heard in eighteen in a half years. Why, on Panem's good earth, would you sacrifice yourself like that?!"

Lavish was expecting this reaction from Gliss, so he truly does relish in it. "Because I'm going to win, obviously."

"And how do you plan to do that?"

"I trained for eight years, just like everybody else who's been chosen and won, so it shouldn't be too difficult."

"And also like everyone else who's been chosen and died," Gliss sneers, rubbing his temples out of exasperation."You and I both know you were not sent to Valhalla with the expectation of volunteering."

Lavish can't argue with that one, unfortunately. He never really had a choice with regards to if he was going to train or not — his father bribed the admissions people into letting him in, but he never considered Lavish would make his own choice about how to end his training. Volunteering was something he was forbidden from considering. After all, he was only sent to Valhalla to make connections with the other rich kids, improve his chances at success when he eventually inherits his father's company — Tarro Co, producer of the finesttoys in Panem; not that there's much competition.

He was training to be cunning and opportunistic. It was drilled in his head every day, Lavish Tarro shall show no mercy, not in his lessons or in his talks with One's Ministry of Finance's son — that's Gliss.

But if he was raised to want everything, it's no wonder that he came to the decision that he wants it now.

Not later, when his father retires — Lavish wants it now. And he wants more than what Modish Tarro and his company could ever give him. He refuses to conform to the expectations of the prick that tried to put him in a box for eighteen years.

"You're throwing your life away," Gliss continues, ignoring that Lavish can't even look him in the eye. Instead, Gliss pushes up his monocle, the rink's lights briefly reflecting across it dramatically. "Your gambling addiction was amusing at first, I mean it. You were only risking money then, though. Are you really ready to gamble with your life?"

"Sure am!"

There was a small sliver of hope that Gliss would somehow support him in this endeavor, and that was part of the reason why Lavish was so nervous to tell him. Clearly, jokes on him. If not even Gliss has his back, that's just more proof that Lavish needs these Games. He needs to get away from the people who insist he kiss the coattails of the father who never loved him, the people who don't believe he can be anything besides that heinous man's son.

"You're ridiculous!" Gliss looks more and more exhausted with every breath. Good — let him tire himself. It's what he deserves for trying to sway Lavish away from his destiny.

"I don't need you in my life if all you're going to do is tell me no," Lavish fires back, Garnish licking the bottom of his ear to show that for once, she's on his side. "I'm sorry I want a life outside of being my father's special little heir. I know it's so hard to imagine that sometimes people don't want to follow the path their surroundings and upbringings have dictated for them." Garnish then hisses, only emphasizing Lavish's point.

"Fine. I wish you the best of luck," Gliss concedes, but Lavish doesn't believe him for a second. His face is completely stoic and cold. "Is that what you wanted to hear?"

"Please, Glissando. I don't need luck."

—

The thing that truly confirmed Lavish's decision to volunteer was when his father cut him off for even daring to consider it. He yelled and screamed for what seemed like hours, all of Lavish's worst insecurities taking center stage.

I mean, what… Lavish nervously chuckles to himself, pacing back and forth around his dormitory at Valhalla. I don't have any insecurities.

And that's a good thing because tomorrow is the first day of the next phase of his life. He hardly even needs to worry — six months is plenty of time for Lavish to stack his deck so he can draw a royal flush.

Oddly, he can't help but feel a bit lonely though. From down the hall, he hears his future district partner, Odette Celestine, throwing some kind of a party, but he sure as heck wasn't invited. He never saw a point in socializing with her during their training years. Her family is a bit too working-class to pique Lavish's interest.

(It must be nice to be surrounded by people who care about you. He doesn't even want to imagine how pitiful his time in the Justice Building is going to be — he doubts his father or even Gliss will come to visit him.)

Just kidding! That's ridiculous!

Lavish is perfectly happy to only have his cat keeping him company as he lives out the last night of his childhood! He's probably going to be so much more well-rested than Odette tomorrow, which is going to surely give him some sort of an advantage or something.

It's just that, as he finishes painting his nails a delectable checkered pattern, he's becoming more and more aware that tonight is starkly similar to the night before his first ever day at Valhalla.

Back then, he didn't have Garnish to keep him company, but he had his mother, and she was even better. Emphasis on the was… Anyway! That night, his mother gave him a reading from Tarro Co. Fortune Cards, saying it would predict his time as a chevalier. So, for sentiment's sake, Lavish feels like he owes it to her to himself a reading now.

(Hopefully it won't have the same effect it had on his mother when he read cards for her.)

(Wow! Why does he keep thinking such weird things that aren't relevant right now?)

Lavish walks past his carefully decorated walls, adorned with large glow-in-the-dark stickers that look just the the Glide N' Grind, straight from Tarro Co. He was so excited when his father finally agreed to make them for him after years of begging!

Eventually, he finds the deck of Fortune Cards underneath a pile of paperwork on his desk. Without hesitating, he sits down and starts arranging the deck into smaller piles on the surface in front of him.

From the corner of his eye, Lavish watches as Garnish makes her way around the room and onto the desk beside him. He offers her a hand, but she quickly swats it away. "You bitch…"

After shuffling the smaller piles of cards, he combines them into one, larger pile, then delicately taps on the deck. As he closes his eyes, he swears he sees himself being reunited with his mother — finally, after all this time.

Lavish shakes his head. He can't afford to fantasize about their reunion just yet.

He only pulls one card, one blessing from the cosmos that will dictate his fate. It's a man dressed in golden robes, lounging on a throne with a crown on his head — Justice.

"It's settled then," Lavish whispers to himself. "I'm going to win."

The card signals fairness and truth — he really is worthy of the victor's throne and everything that comes with it! Finally, he'll be able to live his truth as king, sitting higher than the rest of the world. The chips will fall in his favor, everything he's ever dreamed of finally his for the taking.

Lavish Tarro deserves this. He deserves justice from his mother who left him and his father who used him. He deserves justice from Gliss who never truly cared about him. The cards always tell the truth, after all. They've never lied to him before, nor will they now when it matters most.

As he holds the card to his face, Lavish knows that his risk in volunteering will bear the reward of victory.

(Or maybe it's time that the world gets justice against Lavish — the liar, the trickster, and the cheat that he is. Karma's a menace, and fate tends to work in strange ways.)

(But that would be totally crazy, right?)

charles montgomery cisco
sixteen / / district eleven
—

Under the cover of night, amongst seemingly endless rows of grapes, a hooded figure runs with a manic smile etched onto his face. He zigs and zags through the fields, trying to outrun the sound of Peacekeeper boots stomping in the dirt.

La—la—la… The sound of a violin, his first and only love rings through his ears. You can't catch me… I'm a speedy lil' thing! The stampede gets louder so his humming reaches a crescendo. Clenching his jaw, he grabs the bottle he's hidden underneath his hoodie like it's a lifeline. You can't catch me! You can't catch me!

But then the sprinklers in the field go off.

Water spritzes right into his face. The dirt beneath him turns to mud. He tries to keep his balance but he's slipping and sliding and—

"Well fuck," Charlie exclaims as he crashes down with a splat, his entire left side now filthy as a pig. "What the—"

Before he can pick himself up and book it, he looks up to see the Peacekeepers surrounding him, a blockade of white and gray accompanied by none other than Cyril and Chantal Boudet.

"Really?" The latter squints. "Mara sent you out on your own?"

He nervously laughs, dragging himself off the ground so it looks less like he just fell on his face. "Well it's a crazy story!"

"Don't need to hear it." One of the Peacekeepers pushes the brothers aside. "What do you have in your hoodie?"

"Erm… my stomach?"

"I'm not an idiot. What do you have?"

"Maybe three strands of chest hair?" The officer reaches at his belt and starts to detach his baton. "Okay, then! Maybe don't beat me—"

"What do you have?"

"Fine, fine. Okay, okay." Charlie takes a deep breath, then reveals the bottle of red wine — something called pinot noir that he's not allowed to drink but does anyway. "Happy? It's a bottle of wine. I'm sure you've never seen one be—"

The baton strikes Charlie right in the jaw. "—fore…"

It hurts like a bat let out of hell, but he doesn't let it show on his face, instead simply shrugging it off and grinning. This isn't the first time this has happened to Charlie, and it sure won't be the last either.

The Peacekeeper tears the bottle from Charlie's hands and gives it to one of his colleagues. "Dispose of this accordingly. I doubt anyone will want to buy something that's been infected by vermin."

"How's that feel, huh?" Cyril pumps his fist in the air. "Fuck-Up Chuck in trouble once more. Don't ya' people get tired of ya'?"

"Don't yours?" Charlie spits at the ground and… damn, I didn't want to lose a tooth today. Or any day, really. "I'd have thought Darius would have better things for you to do than make you act like a bootlicker to get my crew in trouble."

"Shut up. I don't care what you're going on about," another Peacekeeper says. "The three of you ought to stay in your own lanes and out of trouble. You're too old to act like zoo animals." He at least salutes the Boudet brothers. "Thank you for the report, still."

"Any time, officer," Chantal sneers as the officers disperse, eventually grabbing his brother and dipping too.

Once they're gone, Charlie really wants to spring back to life, chase after them, and find something really heavy and pointy to beat them up with. There's a problem with that though, and that problem is… it's still really dark and the adrenaline is wearing off, the full wrath of the Peacekeeper finally making his head start to throb in agony.

Well then. It would appear he'll be spending the rest of the night passed out in the middle of who-the-fuck-knows where.

Eh. Could be worse.

—

By some damn miracle, Charlie's able to drag himself back to the Rose Garden as soon as the sun starts to rise. His jaw hurts significantly less, though he reckons there's a bruise marring half his face. Somewhere along the way, he got addicted to the metallic taste of his blood where his tooth once was, but that was just a phase.

"Charles Montgomery Cisco!" He hears Mara shout as he pushes the speakeasy's creaky wooden door open. "Where the actual fuck were you last night?"

"Getting beat up," He leans against the bar counter top with a grin. "Tried to get you a bottle of wine. Clearly didn't go so well?"

Mara may not be related to Charlie in the slightest, but whenever he's in trouble, her usually-husky voice takes on a motherly tone. "What happened, hon?"

"Boudets caught me stealing from some vineyard and called the Peacekeepers on me."

"Really, Charlie? You're not a little kid anymore."

"Is there a problem with that? I tried to be helpful!"

"How many times do me and Val need to tell you?" Mara sternly shakes her head. "You don't need to steal people's liquor. We have enough!"

But Charlie and Mara both know that's not true. Ever since her husband, Tristan, got shipped off to Twelve, they've been struggling to get customers. He had a knack for steeling things that ain't belong to him, and they never ran out of booze.

In the past five years, it's been hard to get ahold of anything alcoholic. Eleven was put into "surveillance mode" ever since that Chandler Whitt asshole volunteered for the Games, and doing basically anything fun can get you arrested now. The fucker's only in town once a year, for the Reaping — like he don't even care that his homeland's gone to crap, too busy with his new fancy life in Three.

"I just wanna do what's best for everybody," Charlie assures Mara. "I knew it would be dangerous, which is why I went alone. Didn't want anything bad happening to Johnny or Fern."

"Well, they were worried sick. So do with that what you will."

"Aw shit."

Sometimes, Charlie feels like there's something deeply wrong with him. No matter how hard he tries, he lets somebody down, and lord does he try as hard as he can. He just wants to be productive and useful, yet things go wrong time and time again.

"They're in the basement if you want to see them," Mara says. "Johnny didn't want to go home 'cause he was afraid of telling your aunt that you were missing. I couldn't even get them to go to sleep."

"I get it!" Charlie's face gets hot and he snaps. "I'm Fuck-Up Chuck! It's okay — I know I'm the worst."

"You're not the worst, sweetie." From across the bar, Mara wraps her arms around Charlie's shoulders. It reminds him of a few years back when Aunt Grace kicked him out for being a bad influence to Johnny, and Mara opened her doors for him without hesitation. "You're just growing."

"I wish I wasn't." He sighs. Everybody always tells him he'll understand things "when he's older," but he's damn tired of waiting around 'till then to know how the world works. There are already days where he feels like an old man, his joints aching 'cause he pulled a muscle when he was sleeping in his too-small bed.

Why is it that Charlie's always too old to be acting like a fool, but also too young to be treated seriously and be actually valued?

Tristan used to say that being a teenager is the equivalent of being stuck in hell, and Charlie believes him more and more with every day.

"I guess I'll let them know I'm alive," Charlie says once Mara lets go. "Don't wanna be even more disappointing than I already am."

"Would you stop it with the melodrama?"

"I'm just playin' with you."

He ambles down the stairs, trying not to stumble as the floorboards get more and more flimsy. People always tell Mara that she's lucky to have property with a basement, but they don't realize how much of a piece of crap it is. It's fine though, Fern always says it's her piece of crap, and he can't judge her.

Charlie knocks on the door to her room, trying to ignore the wet dirt peeking out of the floor beneath him. "Ya' awake in there?"

"Oh, you've got to be kidding me." Instead of Fern, Charlie hears lil' Johnny's voice, and then his footsteps as he gets closer to the door. "Where the fuck were you?"

"Language!" Charlie hisses as his cousin opens the door and wraps his arms around him, already catching up to him in height at only ten years of age.

"I can say whatever I damn want!"

"Just because I was cussing at your age, doesn't mean you should too."

Fern steps out from behind Johnny and pats his tiny head. "He was really worried last night. We both were."

"I know. I'm sorry."

"Where'd you get that?" Johnny pokes Charlie's jaw, searing pain making him stumble backwards. "Oops…"

"I'm fine," Charlie says, trying yet failing to regain his footing so he doesn't fall over twice in the span of twenty-four hours. "Just a scratch."

"It looks terrible," Fern comments.

"To be fair, I haven't seen it."

"Want me to find you a mirror?"

"Not particularly."

"That's good!" Johnny bobs his head, his longish black hair waving side to side. "It's kind of hideous."

"Hey!"

Fern playfully slaps him. "You be nice to your big cousin. You're lucky he lets you hang out here."

"It's true." Charlie pats the kid on the shoulder. "You're a lucky lil' guy."

"Go play with your toys or something," Fern points to her room. "Me and Charlie need to have a big kid talk."

"No you don't!" Johnny scoffs.

"Yes we do!"

"Ugh, fine!" He blows a raspberry and rolls his eyes, then scrambles inside.

Once the door clicks, Fern's smile fades. "What did you get yourself into, Charlie?"

"It wasn't a big deal," he swears, even though he's covered in dirt and his jaw is starting to hurt again. "Ran into Cyril and Chantal and they got the Peacekeepers to track me down. That's all."

"Did you do anything illegal?"

"You better not scold my ass for it like your godmother wanted to." Charlie takes a deep breath and sighs. "I stole some fancy wine. That's all."

"You're an idiot."

"You don't need to tell me twice."

"You're lucky they didn't ship you off to Twelve!"

The two of them fade into silence, Charlie staring at the ceiling. Fern's right though, he really is lucky. A feeling starts tugging at his chest, a force telling him that life would be better basically anywhere else. "This place sucks, yanno?"

"Hey, I'll kick you out!" Fern crosses her arms and starts to frown. "I know this isn't anything ritzy —" She taps one of the paintings on the wall, which falls, as if to prove her point. "But I think a lot of people around town have it way worse."

"Woah there!" Charlie crouches over to grab the painting, happy to see the vineyard landscape is perfectly in tact. "I mean Eleven, not here here."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"Well, at least it ain't Twelve."

That's true, but here's still so suffocating. No matter what he does, there will always be a small piece of him that feels so empty. He just wishes he didn't have to grow up so tough, and that there was more to life to look forward to than becoming an adult and doing whatever miserable thing they do.

"Was that not what I was supposed to say?" Fern asks after a moment.

"Nah, you're right." Charlie shrugs. "At least we're not in Twelve."

"Hey!" Her tone rapidly switches, like she knows that if she thinks about it too long, she'll also come to the conclusion that Eleven ain't shit. "Why don't you play a song for Johnny and I? Your violin's in my room, and he was saying last night that he misses your music."

"... That could be nice, yeah."

So, he goes into the room, grabs hold of his beaten-up instrument, and starts to play an untuned melody pulled from the deepest depths of his imagination. Fern and Johnny dance and come up with the lyrics, smiling ear to ear.

Charlie smiles too, but he still can't help but wish there was more for him to smile about.

When I said this chapter would be late, I severely underestimated my talents in writing annoying teenage boys.

So yeah – that was Satin (thank you, Lance), Lavish (thank you/no thank you, Brooke and Will), and Charlie (thank you, Astral). It was a crazy amount of fun bringing these silly boys to life (or re-birthing Lavish? Lol?) so much love to the submitters. Hope they didn't piss off you readers too bad, but soon they will.

Also! You may have noticed I've been updating a story every day called "Tauromachy." Basically, SunnyJustice on tumblr/ao3 made an October prompt challenge for careers. Because there's so many of them in this here verse, I've been participating and it's been a lot of fun. Check it out if you're interested, or even write your own.

Thanks to Erik, per usual, for beta-ing as I continue to make you wait for your own child because I suck. And thanks everyone for giving this fic sm love. Truly warms my cold, dead heart or whatever. I feel pretty confident about weekly updates for intros now, so stay strapped in for that!

Question: What is your most "annoying teenage boy" quality, and what does it say about who you are as a person?

Linds. Laugh. Love.