Renly Baratheon (age 18), District 2

"You two did wonderfully!" Varys, our Escort, chirps happily. I smile and help Jeyne down from the chariot. She looks a little ill--the chariot was moving faster than I think it should've been--but then she manages to smile too. I'm glad. She did really well.

"Hmph." Our mentor Petyr Baelish says coldly. "You did fine. Nothing out of the ordinary, and certainly nothing to get you noticed."

Jeyne's face falls so I add, "It's only the first day we're here. What did you expect? We're careers so people are bound to sponsor us anyway."

He rolls his eyes and sneers. "You're so...naive, Baratheon. No one's bound to do anything. And certainly not fucking Capitol people."

He stalks off.

"Well, I think you two did well." Varys says, sounding small. I smile at him; it's not his fault. "I better go talk to him and make sure he doesn't do anything stupid..."

He starts to walk away too. "Wait!" Jeyne says. "What are we supposed to do?"

"Mingle, dears~!" Varys chirps again. "I'll work on sponsors!"

And then he really does walk away. I sigh and Jeyne looks at me.

"So now what?" she asks.

"Mingle." I grin a little. I don't want to be in a large crowd like this, practically alone. But we have no other option. "Um...should we talk to people?"

She shrugs. "We're careers, so I guess we can."

I look around at the people around us--and most importantly, the other tributes. No one really interests me. I catch the ice-grey eye of a guy--Twelve I think--and for some reason, he's naked, painted head to toe in black paint, with yellow paint on his eyelids. Fucking terrifying. He glares at me and I look away.

"Did you see that?" I ask Jeyne. She raises her eyebrows.

"What?"

"The guy from Twelve. The one with black paint." I shudder. "Behind you, but don't look."

Of course she looks. The guy walks slowly in our direction. Jeyne turns back to me. "Sorry..."

"It's okay." I say with a small smile. "He's probably a nice guy. Twelve has nice poor people, right..?"

"It's bad to make assumptions that all poor people are nice." a deep voice says close by, and we both turn. The guy from Twelve crosses his arms over his bare chest, his eyes cold.

Awkward...

"Renly Baratheon, District 2," I say warmly, and I stick my hand out for him to shake. He stares at it, then back at me. I almost let it drop back to my side when he finally takes it. His hands are large, cold and grain-y. When I take my hand away, it's lightly dusted in black from the paint. Oh well.

"Ramsay. Twelve."

"Nice to meet you." I say. He says nothing back. Rude.

"Interesting costume," I continue. He laughs coolly.

"You like it?" I feel myself tensing up: I didn't mean it like that. He continues "Gods, I hate it. My stylist is a fucking idiot. You look decent." I blush. I'm in a simple white suit, and Jeyne's in a pretty lacey white dress to match. "You're not exposed, at least."

"Worse people could be exposed." I say stupidly. He raises an eyebrow.

"Mm. I suppose."

"Your Reaping was really nice," Jeyne pipes up, and he turns his weird cold eyes to her. "It's unusual for an outer district like Twelve to have a volunteer. It was really br--"

"What? Brave?" he sneers. "I didn't do it for honor, or bravery, or anything else you fucking careers value over all else. I did it because I couldn't stand my fucking home--not like you'd understand." He nods once. "Excuse me. I need to find my partner."

He disappears, sleek, into the crowd. Our jaws drop.

"Wow." Jeyne says softly.

"Very..." I tap my chin, looking for a word. "Very...brash. That's polite, right?"

She giggles. "Yeah. As opposed to him."

"Oh hush, he's probably not educated. He doesn't know any better."

"You really believe that?" She raises an eyebrow. "He seemed like he knew what he was talking but like, he didn't have time for us."

"I repeat: rude." I say. She giggles.

Someone taps my shoulder and I turn. "We weren't talking about--"

My stomach flips and my cheeks heat up. It's the blonde guy from Three. Gods, he's cute.

"Hi," he says shyly. "I--um, I saw you talking to District 12 and you didn't beat him up and you seemed...um, decent, so I thought maybe I'd say hi...so you wouldn't kill me right away in the arena..."

"Kill you?" Jeyne says incredulously. "He's not going to kill anybody--especially y--ow!" I step back on her toes.

"But...you guys are tough careers." Three says, looking between us.

"'Tough'. Uh huh." Jeyne says. He still looks confused.

"Anyway, I'm Loras." he grins easily and my heart melts.

"I'm Jeyne. He's Renly."

"Are you okay?" Three--Loras says gently, peering deep into my eyes. He has beautiful eyes--get a hold of yourself!

"What? Yeah. I'm great." I grab his hand and shake it. "Nice to meet you, Loras. I'm--she already told you. Yeah. We--um, we have to go. Bye. See you in training if you--if you want."

Before I can make an even greater fool of myself, I grab Jeyne's hand and pull her towards the elevators. One comes immediately, thank the gods, and I hurriedly get in as the doors close.

"Renly. What. the. hell?" Jeyne bursts out laughing and I groan and close my eyes.

"Kill me before I ever see him again. That was so embarrassing."

"But why...? Oh, I'm so stupid. You like him, don't you? You do, admit it!"

I groan again. "He just has a pretty face. A really pretty face. I'll get over it once I kill him. Yeah. Good plan, right?"

"...no. Not at all." she smirks. "But he is cute. You have to talk to him in training, you have to Renly--"

"Whoa. No. He thinks I'm mentally retarded or something." I say quickly.

"No he doesn't!" she wiggles her eyebrows. "Besides I swear he was looking at you the same way as you were looking at him."

My heartbeat speeds up. "R-really?"

She smiles. "Yeah. He was stuttering and everything, and blushing."

I raise an eyebrow. "Maybe he was just shy."

"I don't know... I don't think that was it." The elevator doors open at Two and she gets out. I follow her thoughtfully.

"Promise me you'll at least talk to him once more? Before you kill him?" she says.

I grin slowly. "Okay. But just once. And I'll probably mess up."

She shrugs before opening the door to our suite. "It'll be worth it."