It's wrong.
They shouldn't be here.
He shouldn't be frantically bunching the soft fabric at the back of that grossly exorbitant cotton dress, the cost of which could likely have kept his family in good grain and lard for a month. He shouldn't be committing to memory the needful, keening sounds birthing from the depths of her throat each time his tongue sweeps across the tiny slopes at the crest of her mouth, when his teeth ravage her pink, swollen lips— the taste of her. His lungs should not be growing saturated with the essence of violets and aged oak she evokes. His synapses should not burn at the feel of her flaxen tresses — softer beyond his most ambitious fantasies — tangling through the fingers lost at the nape of her neck.
No, they should not be there— in the shadowed alleyway between the shoe shop and the butcher's, close enough to casually reemerge into the mass of spectators beyond at a moment's notice, but hidden enough to veil their indiscretion.
Viewing is still mandatory. Peacekeepers will be keeping rounds to make sure everyone in the square has eyes glued on that commanding screen. But, after a days of watching horrors they'd only ever witnessed in fevered nightmares, their inclination to care is tragically waning.
Yes, they play a dangerous game.
If the wrong person, some despot with nothing to lose by alienating a good trader, or some sycophant trying to incur social favor through outing the transgressions of one in her lofty status saw them, the repercussions would be dire. Never mind, the cost in bloodied flesh exacted by lashes for violating this oppressive system's laws. Still, they ran the gambit, dodged the keepers, learned the maneuvers. Anything for these few moments of solace, found in the arms of someone necessary.
Because this was wrong and they should not be there, but they'd be damned if they'd give up this small lot of comfort they'd been able to carve amidst this misery of a day. Because she'd been cheated of a mother long before she'd had a chance to know her… lost to the memory of a sister taken by this very atrocity that threatens to take one of the few people she even bothered allowing herself to care for.
And he'd lost, too.
So much, he'd lost.
He'd watched stoically as they called away his partner, his best friend, the one young woman he'd grown to have feelings for beyond any girl he'd known. They'd taken her. He'd watched them parade her on fire, make her beautiful, giddy, memorable… desirable.
No. He had made them all believe her desirable. And how he loathed him for it.
He'd been forced to watch them play out that warped angle, his insides withering— even when it'd been obvious she'd had no part in its divination. He'd watched the boy's plots and ploys to keep her away from harm, though she did nothing to reciprocate his efforts. She'd even gone as far as trying to kill him herself. He'd grinned for the first time in a week that day.
Then, he'd watched as she was taken from him again, in an intangible, immaterial way. He watched her lose herself to him in a damp, miserable cave. And his heart shattered anew.
So, yes. This was wrong. It was dangerous.
They tasted the salt of tears on the other's lips and their pants and heated breaths intercalated with whimpers every so often. There was a desperate kind of urgency to the scrape of her nails across his bicep, the tug of her hair to gain better access to the crook of her neck.
Her skin was soft but too pale, her hair silky but the wrong shade, her eyes blazing but with smoldering oceans instead of molten steel. She wasn't a substitute for what was taken, but she knew of this kind of hollowness— a loss to the Games. And she was there for him. She'd been there from the momentthey'd stepped out of the Justice Building after their goodbyes.
So, on a day like today, when they'd been forced to watch hours of their friend splayed unconscious in a pool of her own blood, until the boy beside her had roused from his own ailing a few moments ago to tend to her injury in shock, they found themselves in their secret spot between shops. Her back braced to a stack of wood shipping crates, as they desperately searched for a few moments of respite from the despair in each other's arms.
Because, yes, it was callous and dangerous and maybe even a little selfish… this odd tryst they were foolhardy enough to risk. But, then, just a peek around the corner of that alley at the screen in the square validated their daring.
They ventured little by comparison.