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beetlbi · 13 hours ago

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If she’s old enough to kill people, she’s old enough for a cigarette

Anyway so Darlene and Stan duo makes me SICKKK and I can’t stop. Have a doodle page and then also have an extended Drabble inspired by the colored drawing!

Someone please sedate me.

EDIT: oh my FUCKING GOD YALL I cannot believe I forgot to credit the amazing and outstanding @greentea-and-honey for their OC Nep, who is the best and we all love him. I hope everyone understands they they give me psychic damage behind the scenes relentlessly

“What are you doing?”

Stan nearly jumps out of his skin. He didn't hear the balcony door open, nor the footsteps. He looks over his shoulder.

Darlene, all four foot nothing of her, is sending him one of her trademark glares from the open door. The fluorescent, too-white capital lights are still on in their “district four” apartment, and the backdrop makes her look like a tiny avenging spirit.

The apartment is decorated to be ‘nautical themed’ and according to Rico, their Capital representative, it's supposed to make them feel more at home. The decor is tacky, there's shag rugs everywhere, and it smells like cleaning products. Even the lights are too bright.

Stan holds his hand down to hide his smoke out of view.

“Nothing.”

“Are you gonna kill yourself?”

Stan inhales and then then chokes on the remaining air in his lungs, and coughs for a second, banging on his chest to clear it. “What?”

“Sometimes Tributes kill themselves before the Games.” Darlene says “Games” like it should be capitalized, like it's a very important word. “I read about it. In the forty eighth hunger games a boy from seven jammed a fork into his-”

“Okay!” Stan interrupts. “No I'm not killing myself, jesus.” He takes another drag. “I'm just standing on a balcony, no need to get worried.”

“I'm not worried.” Darlene snaps. And then Stan can actually hear the moment she fixates on what he has in his hand. “Is that a cigarette?”

Stan glances down at it. “Yeah,” he says. “Bummed some off one of the maids.”

Darlene steps closer, out of the doorway. The air here is weird, the capital doesn't have burning fireplaces or that metallic smell of a running heater, the wind carries a smell like ozone, coming from each high rise.

The view is beautiful, and it's terrible.

“Give me one.” Darlene says.

Stan scoffs. “No. You're a kid, and I stole these fair and square.”

“Give me one or I'll tell Nep. And Rico.”

Nep is their Victor mentor. Shy, quiet, younger than Stan might have thought and yet, something in Nep's eyes speak of age. He gets this look, Stan's noticed, where he looks right through everything else, like the world has just fallen away.

Nep gets that look a lot, whenever they ask questions about survival. Darlene asks most of the questions. Stuff like if they have to watch for parasites in the water or if the gamemakers have given clues about the things they're going to put in the arena. Nep always looks sad, or maybe it's disappointment. Either way, Stan can tell, out of the three of them, Darlene is the only one who wants to be there.

Or maybe Rico.

He's Capital, obviously, and dresses the part. But he's pushy and very strict about how Stan and Darlene have to “manage themselves” in front of cameras. For their image.

Rico says it's to help their chances. Stan thinks it's for Rico's image.

Stan would prefer that neither of them know that he snagged a couple cigarettes through his quick fingers. He sighs.

“You're the worst, you know that?” He groans and slides out one more from the pack, and hands it over to Darlene. “Fine. But if you rat me out, I'm cutting off your ponytail.”

Darlene snatches the cigarette out of his hand like a viper, but she still comes up to the balcony bannister to stand next to him. Stan watches from the side as she turns the cigarette over in her hands, inspecting it.

She holds it back out, wiggling it in the air. “Light it.”

“You can't say please?” Stan snarks, and she just hisses at him, like a little feral cat, or a child raised to kill. “I said I'd give you one, I never said I'd let you smoke it.”

The glare he gets in return is honestly a little funny. He's sure that Darlene thinks she's the scariest thing there is, the way she stomps around like a little terror. The effect doesn’t really work though. She bares her teeth, but Stan knows for a fact she lost her last baby tooth two weeks ago.

A pang of something shoots through him, and he sighs, fishing out his lighter.

The glare turns into a look of pure vindication, and she snatches the lighter out of his hand just as quickly, like she expects him to hold it over her head or something.

Huh. He should totally hold something over her head, it'd be really funny if she didn't kick his kneecaps in.

There's the sound of the flick of the lighter and then, as Stan looks over again, he has to stifle a laugh.

Darlene is holding the cigarette out over the lighter, trying to light the wrong damn end, and glaring at that too when it doesn't.

“You stick this end in your mouth.” Stan says gruffly, pointing. “And then light it.”

“I know how to do it.” Darlene snaps. She very obviously didn't, but she's a little brat who needs to be a snot about everything, so Stan doesn't argue.

She hands the lighter back, and then it's just the two of them standing silently on the balcony, smoking and staring out into the capital's lights.

Darlene is barely tall enough to look over the side of the wall, puffing away at the cigarette with her face screwed up. It's clear she doesn’t like the taste of it, or the feeling, but she's trying to hide it. Badly.

Stan is transported back to another time. Back when Shermie, his older brother, used to show Ford and him how to do things. Things like fish, or tie nets, or how to identify the different types of crabs that the dock workers would pull up.

Shermie would probably be appalled that Stan just gave a child a cigarette. But, well,

“If you're old enough to kill other kids for sport, you're old enough to have a cigarette.” Stan says out loud.

It's mostly just to himself, to the open air, rather than the kid standing next to him, but it breaks the silence.

Stan watches the smoke from his cigarette, and Darlene's, curl upwards into the night sky. There are no stars.

“I'm not going to kill you first.”

Stan almost startles, and then he looks over, looks down at the girl next to him.

Darlene is staring off into the capital lights too, but she continues, “In the Arena. I won't kill you first.”

“Gee,” Stan says. “That's real considerate. And all it took was a cigarette? You're an easy bribe.”

She doesn't look up at the jab. She rolls the smoke between her fingers, like she's thinking.

“Unless you're a really easy kill. Then I have to take it.”

Stan nods like this makes total sense. Like the idea of this twelve year old girl planning what situations in which she would murder him is perfectly normal, like it doesn't make him want to hysterically laugh and then maybe sob.

“Of course,” he says. “I mean, that's what I expect.”

“Good.” Darlene says.

There is another long moment of quiet. Stan's cigarette burns down into almost nothing. He doesn't reach for another one.

“And,” Darlene starts. This makes Stan take pause, because her tone is much softer, different than anything else he's heard from her.

“And you won't. I mean.” She stops, and Stan thinks this is the very first time he's ever seen her look actually uncertain.

“Are you going to kill me first?”

It's asked so earnestly. So truthfully. Like this is normal, like fucking any of this is normal. Like Stan might want to, like Darlene is asking how well she should be prepared for him to try to slaughter her, and she's a child. She's twelve, she's fucking twelve years old asking if he's gonna bash her brain in with a rock the first opportunity he gets. This is sick, it's awful and horrifying and Stan wants to throw up.

“No.” He says instead. It comes out firm, and slightly too loud. “No, I'm not going to kill you first.”

Darlene relaxes, just the tiniest fraction next to him. Stan can taste bile.

“No, I'm not going to kill you.”

Darlene doesn't mention that those are two different promises.

The cigarette smoke curls up into the dark sky, twisting and folding over itself and disappearing into nothing.

#ripping my hair out #oh my god #gf

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beetlbi · 2 days ago

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@dark-lord-of-awesomeness you cannot keep HIDING IN THE TAGS OF MY POSTS.

Emma May stood shakily as the last canon sounded.

The Career from District One, Preston or Patrick or whatever his name was, finally dead in the grass.

The game masters always wanted a final fight in a big area. Somewhere easy to see, easy to film.

The fight started just before dawn, now, the sun is coming up slowly.

"Is it...done?"

Emma May's fingers curl around the meat hook. She lost the other one in another tributes jaw.

Behind her, kneeling in the grass, her Ally, from District four, is starting to get up.

"Is it over?" He asks.

"Yes." Emma May says. The field is quiet. "Yes, it's just us now."

There is beat of silence as the last echoes of the canon fire off into silence. Emma May can almost feel the cameras on her. On Stan, on the both of them.

She turns around.

When Stan attacks her, it'd better be from the front, no surprises.

It wont be much of s fair fight, she muses. Stan is injured, scraped up and bloodied to high hell from the fight, and the fight before that. He's clutching his chest, just to to the side of his shoulder, where a blade caught him. Blood is pumping lazily down his hand and arm in rivets. He's not looking at her.

If she catches him now, finishes it now, it'll be over. If she does it now, right now, Stan wont have a chance to fight back. He wont have a chance to attack, or worse, he wont have a chance to plead.

Stan lets out a long, slow breath, and Emma May tenses for the fight.

"Well thank fuck." Stan says in a rush, and he flops backwards into the grass.

Emma May blinks into the space he was just kneeling.

"I mean honestly, for a minute there I really thought he would win." Stan continues, and Emma May can't see his face anymore in the grass height. "He went that way, I went that way, and then the hook got stuck and just-I mean wow that was close."

Emma May looks down to the corpse at her feet. Pretty soon the hovercraft will be coming to take the body. The game masters may be waiting to collect two in one go.

Stan's still talking.

"Well, allow me to be the first to congratulate you, no need to thank me, it was a team effort."

Emma May chances a step closer, and Stan is laying on his back, looking straight up at the sky. His arms are splayed, eyes closed, in no position to attack or defend himself.

"Well, I think I did at least fourty percent of the work, but don't quote me on that. I'm sure you'll be seeing statistics for the rest of your life," Stan continues. "I expect you to campaign to have, at the very least, one statute made of me, coming out of your victor spoils."

"I haven't won yet." Emma May manages to say.

Stan cracks open one eye, and looks up at her.

There is another moment of silence where they just look at one another.

"What, are we just gonna wait?" Stan finally says.

"Wait for-" it finally hits her. "You're not gonna fight me for it, are you?"

Stan manages to look almost offended at that. "Did you actually think I was gonna kill you?"

"Yes!" Emma May shouts, and she gets out of her defensive position to gesture with the meat hook. "I thought we were gonna have some sick final battle!"

"You would totally win that." Stan points out.

"I mean yeah," she agrees. "But it woulda been a good death for you! Honorable!"

Stan screws his face up. "But I don't want to kill you. I literally never have."

"Well I don't wanna kill you! Obviously!" Emma May snaps back.

Stan scoffs, and closes his eyes again. Emma May kicks him with her toe. He doesn't budge, so she does it again, harder.

"Fuck off May," he grumbles. "If you aren't gonna end me, let me bleed out in peace."

She squats down to his level, and then when that pulls too much at the tired muscles in her legs, Emma lay sits down in the grass next to him.

The field is very pretty.

Back in District Ten, the fields were all of wheat for cattle, or short for grazing. They weren't nearly as green as the forest here in the arena, so lush.

Its beautiful.

"This is so fucked up." Emma May says, and Stan snorts.

"They aren't gonna let us sit here forever." Stan says quietly. "This isn't-I mean. We aren't being quality television right now."

If she doesn't look over, maybe Emma May can pretend that Stan hasn't become her friend in these weeks they've spent in the hunger games. If she doesn't look, she can pretend she doesn't have to kill him.

"I. I'm sorry Stanley." She whispers.

Stan just shrugs.

They sit in the grass together, side by side. There's no wind in the arena, as strange as that is. No breeze, just circulating air.

Very carefully, Emma May reaches for her knife.

"Wait, wait." Stan says, and he struggles for a moment and then sits up. "I wanna do a cool speech first, can I do a cool speech?"

"You always have to have the last word?" Emma May snarks back. Her fingers curl around the handle of the blade.

Stan grins, wild and free. "Always. Its my specialty."

He takes a deep breath, and then winces at the wound on his chest, starts pressing down on it again as he starts to speak.

"Make it quick." Emma May interjects. It won't be long until the game masters get tired of this. Or maybe they're watching now, waiting for this moment exactly.

"You're gonna rush my last words? Thats mean, even for you."

Emma May just gives him a look.

"Okay, um" Stan starts. "Man this is weird. To come up with final words on the spot. I should have practiced this."

Somehow, despite the situation, that manages to make Emma May breathe hard out of her nose.

"I was never really important," Stan starts again, and already Emma May has to close her eyes to avoid looking at his sad face. "I mean, I was the spare twin, good for punching and that's about it. And then, you know, Ford got picked and I finally realized what I was good for."

Stan doesn't sniff, he doesn't tear up, he just stares resolutely over Emma May's shoulder.

"So I don't regret it. I mean, I would have preferred not to die at the hands of a scrawny lady from District ten," Emma May laughs this time, a small, choked huff that she hopes doesn't sound too pitying. She can hear the smile come back into Stan's voice. "But I don't regret volunteering, and I'm glad I did it. And, Miss Emma May Dixon,"

She looks up, lets her fingers find they're proper position. Stan smiles at her, and its the worst thing she's ever seen.

"And I'm glad that it was you. Who won. Er, who's going to win in a second after you murder me."

This time, for this joke, Emma May doesn't laugh.

She's looking up, at the near silent hovercraft that's floating above their heads, closer.

"Hold on, does it count as a win if I let you kill me, because if they don't count you as a victor after this, I'm going to file a formal complaint-"

The hovercraft doesn't look like anything the capital has made. It's clunkier, and wider. The bottom hatch is open. Light pours out from it, and even from the ground, Emma May can see heads looking down at her.

Stan is still talking.

"-rambling at this point. Honestly, just do it, because I'm getting really light headed and it's going to be super embarrassing if I die before I can make my cool self sacrifice play. I mean it's less traumatic for you, but for me-"

"Stan." Emma May cuts in. The hovercraft is coming down, towards them.

"-Ford would be so mad at me in the afterlife, if he found out I died from like. Blood loss. That's such a baby-ish way to go out, it's like draining a-"

There is a loud hum, and the two of them are consumed by light.

Stanley Pines comes to laying on an uncomfortable, hard floor, with a very bright light shining directly into his eyes.

The white unyielding glow of it breaks past his eyelids, and he squints, trying to turn away from it, block it somehow.

He can't move his arms.

That's probably not good.

There's also someone speaking very loudly over him, a lower voice that pings something in the back of his brain, but his mind is foggy and it's like moving through sludge.

Opening his eyes does not improve the situation.

Only open a crack, Stan is aware immediately that he's inside somewhere, and he can't turn his head, but he makes out the hum of a hovercraft enough to recognize that he's in a ship.

Ah. So he's been retrieved then.

Stan's always wondered what exactly happens to the bodies of the tributes when they get picked up. Returned to their families, most likely. But right after, does the capital stick them in cold storage, or dump them in the nearest pit to sort through after the games are done?

So he's dead then.

For some reason, Stan expected death to have a little less pain involved.

He aches all over, more than just the soreness of overshot muscles this is the kind of tiredness that causes actual discomfort. His feet hurt, his hands hurt, all of him hurts, really.

Theres a sharp, pressing weight on his chest, and that probably hurts the most.

The voice above him starts to fade in.

"-alright?"

"We need to-"

"-in the cabinet, there, no, there, yes give it to-"

"-too much-"

"-ar me? Can you-"

"-almost there-"

"-ey!"

"-nley!"

"-Stanley!"

The world snaps back into semi focus.

A face swims into view.

Glasses, frizzy hair, deep brown bloodshot eyes.

Ford. It's Ford.

For a man freshly stabbed, even more freshly rescued from the most horrifying moment of his entire life, Stan puts everything together pretty damn quickly, all things considered.

"Damn Ford," he mumbles out, because apparently his voice didn't get the memo that now is the time to put on the sarcasm. "You didn't even let me finish my speech?"

Ford's face turns into a funny mix of a scowl and a sort of torn, bitter grief and relief.

"It was a shit speech," he says very seriously.

Stan feels the smile drag across his face slowly. It pulls at at the cuts there, but he doesn't even care. "You can't say that to me, I just survived the Hunger games."

The pressure on his chest doubles, maybe triples, as Ford leans what has to be all eight five pounds soaking wet onto the wound.

Rude.

"I can say whatever I want, because I just saved your ass from the Hunger Games." Theres a beat before Ford says, vindictive, "and I'm older than you."

"That's cheating."

"Cry about it."

"Well," Emma May speaks up from where she's sitting. In the light of the hovercraft the dirt any blood on her makes her look like a specter of the undead. Stan would know, he punched zombies yesterday.

"You weren't kidding when you said y'all are twins."

Stan is overwhelmingly glad she's here too. He is also slightly terrified of the duo she and Ford are going to make.

"Told you." Stan says, and Ford jams something in his arm, and the world starts to go fuzzy again immediately.

"Did you just drug me?"

"It's for recovery purposes, we're still far from base and I need-just go be unconscious for a minute you knuckhead."

Alarmingly quickly, Stan's body decides to start doing just that.

"Yeah yeah," he slurs. "Missed you too Ford."

He's out before he can hear Ford's reply.