When Luck Runs Out

Dinner, Date, and Death

    Down a small hallway there were a couple of elevators, their doors rusted shut, and I was sure they wouldn't open even if we tried. Thankfully though, there were stairs leading up, old concrete ones, for fire escape and stuff like that, horribly unattractive but they served their purpose. However, as we climbed to about the seventh floor, I really wished that the elevator was in use. Obviously I was having more of a rough time than John was, who was cruising up easily and was barely out of breath.
"God, you make it seem easy." I groaned, panting on the railing underneath a sign marked ten.
"Sometimes physical fitness won't kill you." John insisted.
"Oh, ya, I forgot. Didn't you take those stupid runs every once and a while?" I asked.
"They weren't stupid! And yes, I did, because how else am I going to stay in shape?" John pointed out.
"I've never taken a run in my life, they seem totally pointless, and I'm still thinner than you." I debated.
"Well you don't eat anything!" John insisted.
"Fair point." I agreed.
"Come on Sherlock, we should get to at least fifteen." He insisted. I groaned, but stood straight up again, and started my way up. Five floors later we arrived at our destination, prying open the door and walking into a dark, deserted hallway. There were barely any windows, and no electricity, so the only light provided came from the lights from opened doors, streaming through the windows.
"I wonder, if this were real, what could've happened?" John asked.
"It's not real." I pointed out.
"I mean, if it were." John snapped.
"Zombies." I guessed, poking at a wooden door that was hanging feebly on one hinge.
"Improbable." John decided.
"Anything's probable in this hell of a world." I pointed out.
"Yes, but even a dictator like Snow can't bring people back from the dead." John insisted.
"Watch your mouth John, remember, cameras everywhere." I warned.
"Oh, right, sorry." John muttered, looking around as if some camera crew was going to try to duck out of his sight.
"Let's just get a room." I decided. John snorted, and I hit him in the arm. "Seriously not the right time." I snapped, and John just shrugged.
"If Greg were here..." he started.
"Please don't talk about that insufferable idiot." I insisted.
"Hey, just because he talks too much doesn't make him a bad fighter. He could take you out in one swing." John pointed out.
"Anyone could take me out in one swing, it depends if I fight back or not." I debated. John poked his head into a room, where the wooden table was impaled into the wall. Maybe not the best place of residence.
"I don't think it'll matter, you're not really the best of fighters." He insisted.
"It depends." I shrugged.
"On what?" he asked.
"On what's at stake." I pointed out.
"Your life is at stake, what's more motivating than that?" John asked.
"Your life, of course." I pointed out, as if that answer should be obvious.
"You are like a modern time Romeo, you know that?" John asked.
"Romeo was extremely winey, and terribly naive." I pointed out.
"Spot on then." John laughed.
"Shut up, that makes you Juliet." I debated.
"She was a strong female lead." John insisted.
"She was what, twelve?" I asked.
"That's how things were back then." John shrugged.
"I'd hate to live in those times." I decided.
"Like these are any better?" John asked.
"Well, for one thing, back then I'd probably be forced into a marriage with some eleven year old girl. At least here I can pick my choice of companion." I pointed out.
"But back then you weren't thrown into the games." John insisted.
"The games, as horrible as they are, brought us together." I pointed out.
"And for that I wouldn't take back a minute of it. These games however, I would be very happy to leave them." John decided.
"And I'll make sure you do." I agreed.
"Leave them with you." He insisted.
"That's impossible, and you know it. Let's just focus on staying alive now." I sighed, poking open a door that looked relatively intact.
"That looks inhabitable." John guessed. I nodded, walking into the room, which had both windows intact, and was filled with sunlight. I walked inside, where the room was pretty much untouched, other than some end tables and lamps fallen, showing signs of some sort of struggle.
"This looks very nice." John decided, examining the couch for any insect infestations or something. I opened the cabinet and found a stale loaf of bread, but nevertheless it was food, as long as it was semi sort of edible I'd eat it.
"Brilliant." I decided, pulling it from the cabinet and putting it on the counter.
"Yes, food!" John exclaimed happily.
"Do you want to open the fridge, or should I?" I asked. John sighed, examining the quiet fridge with silent fear. It stood there innocently, but I had seen what happened to the food in a nonworking fridge, things get ugly fast.
"I'll be a man." He decided.
"Yes well, you are in this relationship." I decided, standing back and holding the glass nervously, as if a giant rat were going to spring forth and eat us.
"Alright, here goes nothing." John decided, taking a deep breath and yanking the door open. Immediately I smelled that horrible rotting smell, and saw a bunch of cockroaches scurry away from a pile of rotted, moldy, something...
"Close it!" I cried in horror, covering my mouth with my hands in an attempt to get the horrible smell away from my nose. John slammed the door closed, looking very much ready to throw up.
"Well, nothing edible there, nothing I want to even try to eat either way." He decided, walking back over to the living room to get a little bit of fresh air.
"So, home sweet home?" he asked.
"For now." I agreed. I went into the back hallway, where there was a moldy old bedroom and a chipped bathroom, but that was pretty much it. There was a closet, but it only had some moldy towels and an old rusted vacuum cleaner.
"Come on John, let's change that bandage." I decided, grabbing the most sanitary looking sheet from the closet and walking over to where he stood, looking out the window.
"Do you think this is too easy?" he asked.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Water, food, no danger so far, it's too easy." He decided.
"I think that just means they want us to fight it out better." I guessed.
"I think that just means that whatever they conjure up for the final battle, it'll be devastating." John guessed.
"It's only devastating if we're on the wrong side of the fight." I insisted.
"Serve the pain, not receive it." John summed up.
"Precisely. But now we shouldn't be worried about the game makers, or the other tributes, not now. Let's make sure we make it to the final battle, and that means cleaning out that cut." I decided, holding up the sheet. John nodded, peeling off his jacket and sitting on the couch, looking very apprehensive.
"You don't think it'll get infected, do you?" he asked nervously.
"I can't say really." I admitted. "We should just make sure it doesn't." I unknotted his makeshift bandage, peeling it away from the sticky blood and throwing it on the floor. The wound, as I said before, wasn't deep, but it needed to be cared for the best we could or it could get a lot worse. I tore the sheet into a long strip, wetting another chunk and dabbing it into the water.
"This might sting a little bit." I warned. John braced himself, grabbing onto my shoulder for support, and I dabbed the cut with the cloth. Instantly his grip tightened to a deadly grasp, his fingers digging dangerously into my shoulder as I cleaned off the excess blood. Other than that, John was a good patient, he didn't push away or flinch, he just sat there, grimacing in pain and cutting of circulation to my elbow.
"Well there Mr. Watson, I think you're in good shape, as long as you eat healthy and get plenty of sleep. I would provide a painkiller, but we're in the games and I'm sure I'd steal them to satisfy my morphine addiction." I decided, finishing playing doctor and tying off the bandage finally.
"Wow, it really makes me feel better, your twelve years at med school and all." John decided.
"That's me, always doing what's right, because I love all people and my main goal in life is prolonging their lives. Just so they can be around to annoy me even more." I insisted with a large, sarcastic smile.
"Are you saying I annoy you?" John asked, I could tell that he was kidding, but it still caught me a little bit off guard.
"Of course you don't annoy me; my only goal in life is keeping you alive as long as possible." I pointed out.
"I was kidding, jerk." John insisted, punching me lightly in the arm and pressing a kiss to my forehead.
"What do we do now?" I asked.
"I say we go to the other rooms, try to find some more food, water, weapons maybe." John insisted.
"Of course, good idea." I agreed. "But we should be able to tell where we are stationed." I decided.
"Okay, I'll carve an X on the door maybe?" John shrugged.
"Too obvious, how about we carve an X on the ceiling, one door down." I suggested.
"You little survivalist you." John laughed.
"Oh shut up! I'm shocked you were able to make it a day without me, with such poor common sense." I pointed out.
"I thought I did alright!" John insisted.
"You literally left a blood trail." I pointed out.
"Maybe I didn't, and it only appeared to you because it knew I wanted you to find me?" John suggested.
"That's rubbish." I decided, walking back out into the dark hallway and, taking John's knife, carved a large X on the ceiling, one door away.
"What if we come the other way?" John asked. I sighed, but walked to the other neighboring door and carved an X on the ceiling.
"So if we get lost, just look up, stay on floor fifteen, and look up." I decided.
"Yes sir." John laughed, and I just gave him a quizzical look, shoving the knife back into his hands and starting the search for food. John thought it was a good idea to split up, which I knew would be a lot more economical, but with the imminent danger of other tributes, I refused to let him out of my sight. It took us all afternoon to collect what we can, and even that wasn't much. We found a jar of peanut butter, looking pretty much airtight, a bag of potato chips that probably expired thirty years ago, a juice pouch, and a power bar, still wrapped. Overall it wasn't the worst we could've done, especially for the games. If this were some sort of woods setting we'd probably be eating bark, and even that might be poisonous. We also collected a couple of kitchen knives, butter knives, dulled to the point that they were just stubs, but they'd do alright to stab someone with. When we got back to our room, which I honestly never would've found without the large X's marked above our heads, we walked into the room and locked it. I pushed a chair under the handle and jammed the curtain rod under the door, doing my best to make sure it wouldn't open unless we let it. Over all it seemed pretty sturdy, but as the light faded a new danger awaited, the darkness. John had managed to get a couple of matches and a candle, so we ate next to that, the dim light flickering over our faces as we spread peanut butter over a slice of bread. It was actually a very nice meal, almost like a candle lit date if you twisted it enough. 

"We should only have one piece, save it." I decided as John reached for another.
"Fair enough. Who knows how long we'll be here, and there's two of us." John agreed.
"Do you think they'll play the death toll this time?" I asked, looking out the window as if expecting the blue light to appear just as I thought of it.
"I think the main idea for this thing is mass chaos, splitting us up in the beginning, not showing us the deaths, it's the Quarter Quell, we can't pretend anything is going to be easy." John pointed out.
"Fair enough." I agreed. John sighed, wrapping up the bread and setting his head on his hands, staring blankly at the table in front of him.
"You don't think they'll find us here, do you?" he asked.
"I don't know, I honestly don't know. There are so many rooms in so many buildings, it should make it difficult, but I'm sure they'll be some sort of catch." I guessed.
"We're safe for tonight though, right?" John asked.
"Yes, for tonight." I agreed, but I couldn't be sure. Nothing was certain in the games; everything would try to kill you, whether it be another tribute or a seemingly harmless bug on the ground. It was the Capital's design, and that meant it was deadly.
"How can they have a camera in every room?" John asked. I looked around the walls, trying to see if I could spy our capital stalker that was undoubtedly there.
"My guess is that there are some for every building, and they follow us around through the walls." I decided.
"You're smarter than I give you credit for." John decided.
"I've got a lot of qualities you probably over look." I guessed.
"It's hard to see talent when you're too busy staring at the beauty outside." John decided.
"That's a problem you probably don't have." I guessed.
"Sherlock have you even looked in a mirror? There's a reason every girl in the Capital wants to meet you." He pointed out.
"Guess what Molly told me?" I asked, a knowing smile creeping on my lips.
"What?" John laughed.
"She did fancy me. I told you she did, and I was right." I pointed out.
"Ah, someone's getting a punch in the mouth when I get back." He decided.
"Not anymore. She said the moment she saw me smile at you she knew how terrible her chances were." I pointed out.
"Didn't she say she knew you were gay all along?" John asked, taking my hand and interlocking our fingers one by one.
"So she claims." I sighed.
"Sorry, but it was terribly obvious." John pointed out.
"No way! You had no idea until I told you!" I insisted.
"Sherlock, I may have been a little bit on the naïve side, but I certainly wasn't under an impression that you were straight." John defended.
"Oh stop, even I didn't know!" I insisted.
"Then it must pain you to know that everyone else knew you better than you knew yourself. No heterosexual man uses three hair brushes." John pointed out.
"Oh, ya, thanks for telling the whole world that!" I snapped.
"You kind of had it coming." John insisted.
"I most certainly did not." I muttered.
"Definitely did." John shrugged.