they say the devil is in the details,
and i think they may be right
from the way i've ironed it all out before.
and they say that the devil may care,
which i am inclined to believe,
but i think they're a little off.
the devil probably does care,
a whole hell of a lot.

Sin Adams (18)

District Seven

Mia was yelling. She would not stop yelling. But what was really new about that?

Sin was sitting on their front porch, just shy of putting his hands over his ears to hide the sounds of it. He looked over at the trees, the leaves looking like they wanted to flip upside down, and he wondered if it was going to rain soon. It probably would that night, after all the reapings were over. That would probably mess up band practice—not that they couldn't play over the sound of the rain, but they were more likely to sit around in Cole's garage, watching the sky and marveling at their last reaping together.

"Are you even hearing a word I'm saying?" Mia snapped, coming around to the front of him and looking at him with wild, expectant eyes. Now Sin was listening, actually, because she'd gone and picked up her axe. Her fucking axe. The axe that had split and scarred his lip when they were eleven. He recoiled away from it before he could stop himself, and he knew that that would only be used against him. "What, scared of a little axe, Brooksin?"

Sin didn't look at her now, standing up. He wasn't going to take this today. It was his last goddamn reaping day. He wasn't going to sit there and listen to her yell at him, terrify him, when he should just be focused on how terrified he was of his last time standing in the center of that square.

"No, you're not leaving," she said, and he could hear her footsteps slamming down on the path leading out to the sidewalk behind him. "Where are you going, Brooksin?"

Sin finally turned back toward her, standing as tall as he could—which wasn't tall enough to make Mia back down, but it was enough that he felt a little braver about talking back to her. "Mia, I am tired," he said, his voice calm, despite how little he wanted to be there, standing in front of her with her axe, standing in front of her at all. "I am going to Cole's house. Is that an issue?"

She narrowed her eyes at him, but thankfully for him she also dropped her axe, tossing it aside in their yard in a way that an axe was not supposed to be tossed around willy-nilly. He glanced over at it, still not caring for whatever reason she had to have empty hands, but at least her hands would no longer be holding a deadly weapon.

"Mom and Dad want you home before the reaping," she said in a taunting voice, like she was about to tattle on him. As if they were twelve again, not eighteen fucking years old. "You're not supposed to go off with your weird friends."

"You sound like a child," he muttered, shaking his head and turning back around. Before he even got a yard away from her, her hands collided with his back, pushing him to the ground so harshly he couldn't even get his hands out to protect himself. He just barely moved his elbow in front of his chest so his face didn't knock straight off the concrete, avoiding a hell of a lot more pain by just seconds. He hissed as he felt the scrapes on his arms, dreading the thought of turning around to stand back up.

"Get up," she snapped at him. "Get up!"

He let out a slow breath through his nose, staring down at the rough concrete, at the little ant sprinting from the patch of grass between blocks to the expanse of their yard, away from where his body had crashed onto the ground. He wanted to shrink down that small and run away from her, or at least make it a quick death if she managed to squish him.

Surely their parents could hear them outside, like they always did, but it never mattered to them. As long as Mia didn't seriously hurt him, any more than she had that time with the axe, it wasn't their business. The scrapes and bruises, black eyes and busted lips, the gasps of pain as he tried to clean his cuts in the bathroom—all of that was between Sin and Mia. And it was never Mia's fault.

He wished he could just send out a signal and his friends would come, swooping him out of this situation. But they didn't even know Mia was his sister, let alone where to come running to if he did manage to send a distress signal across the town.

Finally, he stood back up, pushing himself to his feet and looking at her in the eyes—at least he couldn't give her the satisfaction of seeing the fear in his eyes behind his sunglasses. And at least they hadn't been cracked in that fall. In tilting his head up at the last second on instinct, he had probably saved them from falling down.

"You don't just go prancing around like you own the house," she said, standing over him with a snarl in her lips. He could see, just as always, that she wasn't even really angry. She just looked for excuses to throw tantrums and lash out against him, because she knew she was the favorite, because she thought she was wonderful and gorgeous and undeserving of the concept of sinking down to Sin's level. "You woke everyone up early, you took up the bathroom for, what? Half an hour?"

It had been more like fifteen minutes, which he wanted to snap out to her, but he was still sporting a black eye and other wounds on his face and neck from their last encounter. The last thing he needed was to have both eyes swollen shut, lips busted, nose broken—whatever she would do to him. If he could just appease her and slip away, it would be much better in the long run, even if it was giving up. And giving up, to her, was always just an opportunity to do worse next time.

"Sorry," he said, holding his hands up in surrender. He stepped away from her, just one cautious step back, and she seemed to breathe for a moment, watching him and trying to find fault with this. Trying to find a reason to bring him to the ground again. "I won't do it again, Mia."

She looked over him with confusion, seeing him step away but not doing anything about it. She was used to Sin not necessarily provoking a beating, but never going this far to prevent one.

He turned around after she didn't respond to him, waiting for her to approach once he started walking away. But he made it all the way out to the sidewalk, and when he glanced back over at her, she was just going to pick up her axe and put it back on the porch.

As he walked to Cole's house, he realized how much his elbows stung, and looked down to see his dirty reaping pants. The left leg had a little tear at the knee. He let out a breath. Although he generally only wore these for reapings, they were nice pants. They could've been useful even after this year. He wouldn't even bother with going back and changing them for this year, though. He didn't care, especially not enough to walk back into the fray with Mia.

Lucy and Morrell were there when he got to Cole's—which was weird, to say the least. Normally they were at home before reaping days, as most people were when someone in their family was of reaping age. Of the four of them, only Cole had aged out, and only Sin had a really strained relationship with his home life.

All three of them were sitting out in Cole's garage, Lucy strumming something out on her guitar idly while Cole told them all about something that happened at work, from what Sin picked up coming in late. Morrell was the first to see Sin coming up and they grinned, sitting up straighter and motioning for Sin to come sit down with them. "Hey!" they said. "We didn't think you'd be able to get away."

Sin shrugged after he ducked down underneath the garage door, which was partially pulled down. He slid his sunglasses up to the top of his head since the garage light was so low, pushing some of his feathery white hair out of the way, and plopped down on the seat in front of Morrell's drum set. "Well, you know," he said, never generally in the mood to explain anything about home.

He was pretty sure they thought it was his parents that left him with the black eyes and scratches and scrapes along his face, but they had stopped asking all that much when they realized Sin's answers to their questions would never be anything more than noncommittal. He didn't really care what they thought had happened exactly—he didn't need to talk about it, he just needed to get away from it whenever he could. He needed to get away from the tight constraints of Brooksin, something that he knew made him seem enigmatic, like he just came and went out of people's lives as the breeze blew him through. And he liked coming across like that.

"So what are you two doing here?" he asked Lucy and Morrell. Morrell had leaned closer to their girlfriend after she stopped strumming on her guitar, and Cole was on the floor, leaning against the couch that the other two were stretched out on. "Why aren't you at home?"

Lucy and Morrell shrugged, glancing over at each other. "We spent all last night with our regular families. I guess I just wanted to spend some time with this one," Lucy said. "We didn't intentionally leave you out, though. Neither of us knew the other was going to show up."

That made Sin feel better, although he hadn't even realized he felt a little excluded until she told him that. He just shrugged to show that he hadn't been hurt by it—or at least, whatever degree of him was upset that he'd nearly been left out was so little he hadn't even noticed it at first. "No Fen?" he asked Morrell. Fen was Morrell's other partner, another girl from their woodcutting shift group.

Morrell shook their head. "No, I'll see her at the reaping," they said.

Sin stood up and went over to where his bass was on the wall, grabbing it and coming back to sit down at Morrell's drum set. He ran his fingers over the strings and listened to Cole's story about how Henrietta from the shift before theirs was being a jerk to him after the rest of them had already left. Henrietta from the shift before theirs—which was practically her full name in their conversations about her—was always spectacularly shitty to Cole for some unknown reason. Really, it was only unknown to Cole, who had never quite figured out that dating her sister, even if the breakup had been civil, had made Henrietta from the shift before theirs angry.

"We still doing band practice tonight?" Lucy asked, playfully shoving Morrell out of her way and getting her guitar out again after Cole's story was over. "My parents want me to have dinner at home after my last reaping, but I can be here afterwards."

"My parents want me to be home, but I'm just coming straight back here after," Sin said, nodding to her. He looked over at Cole. "I mean, if that's okay with you."

Cole nodded and opened his arms out to his whole garage—or his whole house. "My door is always opened to you, buddy," he told him sincerely.

Sin's lips quirked in a quickly-stifled half-smile, looking down at the garage floor with a nod of his head. He loved these three so much it hurt, and maybe it would be less of a dull ache in his chest if it weren't for the fact that they were all he had sometimes.

He ran a hand over the scar on his lip for a moment, a constant goddamn reminder of Brooksin, even now, but it didn't matter so much. Or it wouldn't matter so much in a few months, when he managed to get himself out in the world on his own. Or maybe he'd stay with Cole for a while, he didn't know. He felt a little bad taking advantage of his hospitality like that, considering it wouldn't be the first time Sin was temporarily homeless and hiding away at one of his best friends' places.

"I'm good for practice tonight too," Morrell added.

"So we're on," Cole said, suddenly excited and standing up. "I had an idea for a song last night and I wanna hear what it sounds like with the rest of you."

"If Lucy doesn't fuck up her part like she did last time," Sin jokingly added. Lucy set her guitar down and stood up, which made him laugh and scramble to get out of his seat. "Hey, just ignore that."

Lucy tilted her head to the side, a grin on her face. "No, what'd you say, Adams?" she asked, approaching him.

He shook his head, putting his sunglasses back over his eyes and darting outside underneath the garage door, but Lucy was close behind. He ran out through Cole's yard, glancing back at Lucy coming up behind him and laughing almost hysterically as he tried to dart away from her before she could come scoop him up.

"No!" he screeched as he got himself around behind a tree and poked his head out to look at her still rapidly approaching him. "I take it back, I take it back!"

He danced around the tree with her leaning from one side to the next, ready to take off after him in whichever direction he tried to escape. He leaned his head against the bark once he knew he was trapped, the tops of his sunglasses bumping against it, and laughed as he felt himself swooped off the ground, held horizontally and flopping against her hold. His sunglasses were shaken off his face and he squeezed his eyes shut.

"Ah! Lucy, don't step on my shades," he begged, still laughing and squinting down at the ground to see that they'd already run past them, but she was turning around to go back and pick them up.

"Only because I'm nice," she said, putting them in his free hand that was dangling down instead of being squeezed against her. He slipped them back on his face and held a hand against them to keep them on as she brought him back into the garage, still hanging down at her side in her triumphant possession.

He lifted his head up enough to look at Morrell and Cole, also taking his hand off of his sunglasses to wave at them. "Hey, guys," he said, defeatedly, although he realized that the smile on his face was huge. He let out a breath and the smile deflated, but his friends would undoubtedly know that his mood hadn't gone with it. "She got me."

Cole couldn't stop laughing enough to get out what he was saying, but after a moment of trying, he wheezed, "Lucy… Lucy, put the— put the poor boy down."

She raised her eyebrows at him, pointing at him with her free arm. "You want me to get you, too, my friend?" she asked, and the tone of her voice wasn't even threatening at all. Morrell leaned his face against the couch, cackling into the fabric, and Cole shook his head, unable to stop giggling despite his hands put out in front of him defensively. "That's what I thought."

Lucy lowered Sin down onto the ground gently, and as he was lying on the cold concrete garage floor, he said up to the other three, "I guess you could call that a pretty good pick-me-up."

All three of them glared down at him. Lucy had only barely sat down and already it looked like she was about to lunge back at him, swooping him up in her strong arms again.

"Another pun out of your mouth and I'm tossing you in the trash, Sin," she warned him, and he was sure she meant it—she would get back at him when he was least expecting it, though.

"You act like puns are crimes punishable by death. Or at least punches to punrove how pun-uny I am in conpunrison," he said, and for a blissful moment he looked up at the garage ceiling, waiting for the groans and death threats to pour in from his three best friends.

"Can you at least say that in English?" Morrell asked, sounding a little bit like he would rather receive the death punishment that Sin deserved than listen to any more of his bullshit. "Please?"

"You know. Punches to prove how puny I am in comparison," he translated. "Come on, don't you speak the language?"

All three of them sighed at once, and Sin smirked from where he'd been tossed down on the floor.

The Justice Building was freezing cold. Sin hadn't stopped to think about a single thing since he'd been reaped, but now that he was alone, waiting for someone to come in for goodbyes, he realized that he was shivering. And summer was coming. Maybe it was because the weather was a little shitty that day. But the windows were closed.

He ran his hands up and down his arms and thought about band practice that night. Now they really wouldn't be playing anything to the rain. He thought about if it had been Morrell or Lucy. He knew the only place he'd want to be in that situation was Cole's garage, with the rest of the people who loved either of them. He wondered if their work group would go over there. He was sure that they'd come for Lucy or Morrell.

He didn't know why he was making himself think of it as Lucy or Morrell. That was worse. That was so much worse. He didn't want to die, or leave them, or leave everything that he was about to have in Seven away from his family, but more than that, he didn't want to watch his friends leave. He didn't want to watch them on the television, in the arena, killing or being killed or both. It was better this way.

Cole was the first to surge in, but Lucy and Morrell were only seconds behind. Sin hadn't sat down yet, so they just collided into him in a hug. He shut his eyes tightly, having no energy to move his arms and hug them back, but it felt good to at least have them close like this.

When they pulled away from him, Cole's arms stayed on his shoulders and he bent his knees enough to look Sin in the eyes—or, well, in the sunglasses—while his head was bent down. "You can do this," he breathed out, but maybe that had more to do with optimism than having any actual proof. Sure, Sin wasn't the weakest tribute, he was sure, but hell, he already had seen a bit of his competition with the other girl who was reaped. Since district partners weren't working together this year, he wouldn't be able to win with Wilda Aspen, and she was obviously as strong as Lucy, and even taller than her.

"Maybe," he said. He hadn't been able to turn off his demeanor since he was on the stage, trying to keep it cool. If Mia and his parents were to come in to say goodbye to him, they wouldn't hesitate to point out how he was already a goner if he cried up on the stage.

At least she wouldn't be able to get back at him for not giving her a fight that morning.

"Oh, fuck, Sin, don't you say maybe," Morrell snapped, with anger in their eyes. They seemed genuinely pissed at Sin and he just shook his head, pursing his lips together in indifference, although that was about as far from what he was feeling as he could possibly convey. But Morrell's eyes were full of tears, and now they were taking Cole's place, standing in front of Sin. "We can't lose our best bassist. Not if we're going to make it big." Now their voice was a lot calmer, and maybe the original comment had just been misplaced anger. It made a difference, but everything was making Sin feel a little raw right then.

Maybe he could make it home. Being a victor would give them a better shot at being able to travel around with their band. It would certainly help with expenses.

Yeah, maybe.

i am going to let my hubris get the better of me and not proofread this chapter bc i just want to publish it asap but if i go back and read it later i'll fix whatever mistakes i left behind

so there we go here is mr sinny boy from Little Knight Mik! let me know if you enjoyed and here's the question: so now we're over halfway through, can you try and predict some of the partnerships i've planned? we've only met the full duo for 3 out of the 13 pairings but i'm still interested to see if there's any partnerships you guys would be interested in seeing/think might happen!

also yeah i know that sin was in wilda's chapter question even tho we hadn't met him yet i am a Fool ignore Me