Chapter Twenty Three | Nor calmed with any word that's known to man,
"A villain, that is hither come in spire
To scorn at our solemnity this night."
1.5, 63-64 Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare
Soft pants fill the air, gasps full of shaky sounds that crest the edges of their physical bodies. It's a sound that Gloss very much likes, especially when his name gets trapped between the breathy noises.
"Don't stop – " Elara moans, throwing her head back as her fingers clench into his hair. Her legs tighten around his face, but he forces them open with one heave of his hands, sending her a smirking glance as he does. His tongue continues his efforts, lapping against her clit with abandon as if he's never tasted anything so good in all his life. He sucks at her, draws her skin between his teeth very gently, circles a thumb over the top of her clit and watches as she shivers into the mattress and tries to clench her thighs around his head again.
He chuckles against her and she moans, "Gloss – mmm! Please – "
His touch slows and he raises himself up, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand as he raises his eyebrow at her. "Please? You're being very polite this evening, Winston."
He squeezes her thigh playfully, and she moans, "I want you inside me." There's a touch of demand in her voice that is far more addicting than he's prepared for, and he swallows as a shudder tries to overpower him.
He can't help himself. When she gets like this, insisting for him – when she opens her legs and tries to pull him towards her – he changes from a stubborn, obstinate man to a fool with no willpower at all. He falls into her every time, with no hesitation. He can't deny her, because denying her would be denying himself, and he's clearly never been very good at doing that otherwise he wouldn't even be here right now.
"Please, Gloss," she breathes, looking up at him with eyes far softer than any he had ever seen. What emotion colors the blue tones of them? He pauses. There is a word that comes to mind. A word that shudders against his own heart, too, despite his best efforts.
He crawls into her arms and nearly sighs out as he presses himself against her body. She's warm and soft, and she provides a type of comfort that he cannot seem to find anywhere else. When he slides into her, he knows why.
There is no one in the world like Elara Winston.
Her legs open for him, hands tracing down his body as he thrusts into her. Her fingertips trace the muscles of his chest and spiral down his abdomen, delighting in the flex of his skin beneath her touch. She watches him through half-lidded eyes, hair mussed, cheeks flushed, moaning indelicately as he increases his pace. It's like she can't get enough of him. Like the mere thought of him stopping would be sheer agony.
Unfortunately, that's exactly what he does when the phone suddenly rings, splintering through the room.
Elara immediately throws herself into a sitting position. Their bodies separate. He grumbles, but can't exactly stop her when she reaches over to grab the phone on her bedside table. She turns away from him when she answers it, pausing only a moment to ensure that her voice isn't filled with the dark undercurrents of her desire for him.
Then she warily asks, "Hello?"
Gloss glowers at her back, not necessarily upset at her for answering the phone, but more so at the fact that whoever this dumbass is whose calling her, they had interrupted what was going to be a very good time. Also, because nothing good comes from a telephone call at night in the Capitol, and they both know it.
Her voice is drawn when she murmurs, "…I understand. Yes. I'll be there soon." And when she hangs up the phone, she turns to him with an expression he knows very well. The familiar lines of carefully dampened pain are hard to hide, when one knows what to look for, and he does.
"Last minute client," she laughs humorlessly, just a small bark of sound that's quickly swallowed back when her eyes dance away from his. Gloss feels something clawing up his chest at the thought of her leaving him now. That's a familiar feeling, too, full of a shattering, wrenching anguish that leaves him breathless but for want of her.
With a shaky inhalation, she whispers, "I'm sorry…I have to be there in half an hour."
He closes his eyes and lifts a hand to rub at his forehead. His own voice is terse when he mutters, "Fine." It's a concrete intensity that he clings to, lest he surrenders to the trembling temptations that threaten to alter his words. He figures that one of them should at least try to be strong.
Elara swallows thickly and moves to stand up, but he grabs her arm and heaves her back into him, bending his body over hers and burying his face against her neck before she can leave. Their skin presses together and he shivers with the remnants of his desire for her, which always seems so voracious and insatiable. It is a creature all its own, thundering its way between their bodies and coveting what shouldn't be coveted – but falling into the tantalizing lure nonetheless, time after time. It is eternal and relentless, his need for her. Just when he thinks he has a handle of it, that he has successfully wrangled it into a form and a shape, it escapes him yet again like fog that slips through his fingers. Is it elusive, ambiguous, and overmastering.
Perhaps, if it was only physical desire that he feels, it would not get the better of him as it does, but he has long stopped deluding himself into believing that particular lie.
Love is a terrible thing. He hates it and craves it all at once.
"I'll be here," he tells her, pressing his words against her skin and holding her tight to his chest. Her nails dig into his shoulders, clinging to him like a weed that's seconds away from wilting. She breathes in deeply and holds it, like she's hoping that in doing so, some of his strength might be passed to her.
Gloss turns his head to look at her, and says, "Hey, it's okay. It's okay, Elara."
She tries very hard to blink away her tears, but it doesn't matter if they fall or not. He kisses the corner of her eye and she laughs again – another short sound that isn't really a laugh, but is more of a pained grimacing noise that smarts through her entire body.
"…I hate this. Gloss, I – "
"You don't have to explain anything to me," he softly cuts in, pushing his forehead against hers. "I hate it too."
She closes her eyes and angrily swipes her hands beneath her eyes, pressing over her eyelids as she bitterly whispers, "I can't cry. If I start, I'll never be able to stop."
It's just that the thought of leaving him now of all times, only to go to another man, with her body already blazing with desire for Gloss, and her heart already burning for Gloss, and her thoughts already full of Gloss – she does not know if this is torture, but it certainly feels close to it.
He sighs and pulls her back against him, glancing at the time over her shoulder as he rubs a hand over her back. He squeezes her tight and murmurs, "You can fall apart later. I'll put you back together."
She shakes a little and thoughtlessly begins to say, "God, I lo – " then swiftly cuts herself off with a clearing of her throat, stopping the words before they can appear. Telling Gloss that she loves him is probably not a good idea.
He pulls back, studying her face closely. After a long moment, he chuckles lowly at her and she cringes playfully.
"Probably not a good time to say that," she tells him, trying to lighten the mood as much as she can so as to save some face. He just smiles softly and hums.
"…Well, you are about to go off with some other guy, so I think we should probably hold off on those kinds of sentiments for now," he whispers to her, voice low and burning – beautiful and simple – and she nearly starts crying all over again.
He sweeps his hand over her cheek and presses a kiss to her lips, chaste and gentle and barely there, before pulling back and sighing, "You should get dressed. You can't be late."
He tries very hard to keep his voice as light as possible, even though he'd much rather shout and scream and yell. For her sake, he'll wait until she leaves. This isn't her fault. The fault here lies entirely with the Capitol and with the man who runs it, who manipulates the Victors into doing whatever the hell he wants them to do; who threatens them when he doesn't get his way; who turns their lives into a nightmarish purgatory that never ends.
"Okay," she breathes, and gets up, fishing for the clothes she has only just removed. He helps her get dressed, buttons up her shirt for her, tries not to think that in just a matter of minutes, some other man will be removing them all over again. He tries to keep his thoughts on when she will return to him, but it's hard. It's hard.
"I'll see you soon," he tells her once she's dressed, and she nods to him.
"See you soon," she weakly parrots back, and takes her leave.
When she's gone, Gloss sits back down on the edge of the mattress and puts his head in his hands, breathing deeply around the clawing pain and anger that threatens to keel him over. Is 'see you soon' all they're allowed? Do they not deserve more than that, or will those words haunt them until they die, playing forever in the background of their soundtrack? Temptations and avarice both have their places, but – maybe he's being foolish, but he doesn't think that love should suffer such anguish as this.
Unfortunately, at this point, suffering is all he knows how to do.
"The announcement is coming up," Amelia says, glancing over at the television as she goes to sit beside Elara, who has been sprawled on the couch for most of the day. There's little for her to do in District 5. Since she's a Victor, she doesn't need to make money – she's got enough of that already. She had attempted to work a few shifts at the local school for a while after her Games, just for something to do, but having a job is hard when she's called away to the Capitol every couple of weeks. Besides, she hadn't been very good with the kids. The administration had been more relieved than not when she had taken her leave of the place.
She glances at Amelia as her sister shifts Elara's legs off the couch and sits down where they were laying. The atmosphere between the two sisters has been much better since the harsh words spoken in the past. Amelia had even apologized to her later on – sort of. The girl is far too tempestuous to outright apologize, but from the way she's been acting recently, Elara knows that she's trying to make it up to her. She doesn't blame Amelia for what she had said. There is a lot of truth to those words, but they were spoken in anger.
With a groan, Elara pushes herself up and throws her arms over the back of the couch. She stretches her legs out in front of her and says, "The Quarter Quell is less than a month away. It's about time Snow tells us what to expect."
Amelia grunts, grabbing some popcorn out of the bowl she'd brought with her. Elara thinks it's a little ridiculous that she made popcorn for this, but…well. Amelia doesn't need a reason to eat popcorn, so it's not really that surprising. She sighs and reaches for some herself, grabbing a handful before her sister can horde it all to herself.
"Oh, here's it is! Finally," Amelia huffs, and crosses her legs as the nation's emblem unfurls on the TV screen, and then the camera pans to the President's mansion. The most important man in Panem steps up to the podium and the crowd on the TV goes crazy, cheering for him in ways that makes Elara blanch. If they knew how truly despicable that man is, she wonders if they would call his name with such singular idealism.
"Thank you," the president calls, lifting his hands. It takes a few minutes for the crowd to calm down enough for him to speak. Elara almost wishes that the moment could be dragged out a little bit longer. She's dreading this announcement. The last two Quarter Quells in Panem's history had been terrible in their own right. She shudders to think what this one will bring, especially with the unrest currently dividing the country after the last Games.
Katniss and Peeta had upset the balance, and Snow will do anything within his power to restore it.
The moment the crowd's cheering dies down, Snow begins his speech. He talks at length about the rebellion and the onset of the Hunger Games. He speaks about the previous Quells and what was asked of Panem's citizens during that time in the country's history. His speaks about his predecessors and their role in initiating the Games, paying great detail to the awful consequences of the rebellion that had sparked them. His reasons for doing so are obvious enough: he wants to instill fear into the hearts of the rebels that, even now, wait for their time to take his power. Elara just wishes he would get to the actual announcement so that she can turn the TV off and not have to listen to his voice.
She soon regrets that thought, when President Snow calmly looks out into the crowd of his loyal followers – and into the camera at those who are not – and says, "On this day, the start of the 75th Hunger Games and the 3rd Quarter Quell, as a reminder to the rebels that even the strongest among them cannot overcome the power of the Capitol, the male and female tributes will be Reaped from their existing pool of Victors."
At first, she thinks she hears him wrong. When Amelia drops her bowl of popcorn all over the floor in total shock, though, she knows that she hasn't.
She stares at the screen as if she's frozen, eyes trained to President Snow's face. His expression is blank, as if he had just commented on the weather and not given an order that would send half of his Victors to their deaths in one fell swoop. Even his eyes don't seem to give his malice away. They are also blank. Unfeeling.
Her reaction comes very slowly, as if trickling through her as a misty rain might slowly overtake the district. The humidity sparks the air first, making it heavy with moisture and thick to inhale. The mist comes second, skirting over the entire place like a fog, its tiny raindrops just barely grazing skin. And then – then the heavy rain comes, with the scathing winds that blow through bodies with invigorating destruction, displacing the rain in every direction until it becomes a maze of water that none can escape.
Amelia reacts first. She throws the overturned popcorn bowl loudly on the ground and turns to Elara with wide, frightened eyes. Then, grabbing her sister's arm as if she thinks she might disappear on her right then and there, she angrily exclaims, "You can't! You can't leave me! Elara you can't!"
Elara, though, can only sit there on the couch with Amelia bracketing herself against her, shaking her arm like it's a lifeline. She doesn't respond. She's forgotten what words are.
Another Games? Another arena? Is this possible?
Victors and their families are supposed to be immune from the Hunger Games. Once they win, they never have to go back, and their siblings and children never have to face the fear of being Reaped. That's the one good thing about being a Victor. It's the only good thing.
When she won her Games, she was guaranteed immunity. She shouldn't be all that surprised to hear that Snow has revoked that right. Nothing ever lasts in his city. Nothing worthwhile, anyway.
"Stop it, Amelia," she finally says, her voice a hoarse and broken sound that makes Amelia shake her head. She tries to pull her arm away from the constant shaking, but her sister has it in a death grip and isn't about to let go. She turns to her and tensely says, "I'm not going to leave you. Stop saying that."
She's never seen Amelia like this before. Her sister is always so collected. Her usual expression is set into a devil-may-care nonchalance, and she scoffs at silly things like emotions and rules. But right now she's got tears welling up in her frantic eyes, and it makes Elara's chest feel tight and restricted.
She doesn't even realize she's crying until she feels the tears on her cheeks. Amelia starts crying too at the sight of her strong sister breaking.
"You are gonna leave," she cries. "District 5 never wins the Hunger Games. Never."
Elara wipes her eyes and weakly snaps, "I won the Hunger Games. Have a little faith."
Amelia, though, is beyond that point. She hiccups and wails, "You're going into the arena with trained killers this time! You'll never make it!"
Elara swallows thickly and refutes, "We don't know who's going to be Reaped yet – "
"You're going to die and leave me here all alone!" Amelia cries, close to sobbing now. Elara, half shocked to see her in such a state but mostly just heartbroken at it, tugs her sister into her arms and they shake together in tears on the couch.
She draws her fingers through her sister's hair and kisses her head, whispering, "I won't. I won't leave you. I promise."
Amelia only cries harder. "Don't make promises you can't keep."
Elara sighs and doesn't respond. She just gathers Amelia against her and whispers, "Fine. But I can promise you this: I'll do everything in my power to come back to you. I love you, you brat."
Amelia sniffles and punches her shoulder weakly. The only thing she says is a teary, "I know."
But Elara can hear what she's actually saying.
I love you, too.
What a strange pair they make. As she runs her fingers through Amelia hair she thinks that maybe it isn't so strange after all. In her own experience at least, the people she loves most of all are the people she remains silent with.