Fingertips brush fingertips as the two walk down the narrow hallway together towards the Mentor's Center, a little offshoot on the side of the Control Center, where the Gamemakers work. Two pairs of eyes, one muddy brown, the other sea glass green, meet. Shocks and trembles and shivers roam around both bodies as they discreetly touch one another. A swipe of his thumb against the heel of her hand, the tap of her pointer finger on his knee. Invisible, meaningless touches to the outsider. In reality, this is their replacement for kisses and for sweet words. Both pinkies reach out at once to touch the other, and they wrap around each other. His breathing becomes heavy, and her heart thumps wildly.
They step into the Control Center and then they break apart.
He takes his seat with Indigo, and they wait for their two short, willowy tributes to rise up. In fact, the boy is a morphling addict. Dirk can sympathize with his violent withdrawal symptoms. But hey, he's gone for a week without it. It's improvement, really. It's all her doing, but he doesn't divulge that fact to himself.
She crouches between Bex and Flotsam, eyes narrowed as the tributes rise up from their plates. It's ironic, really, that the 6 boy and the 4 girl are next to each other. Both tributes this year are capable. The girl got a 9, the boy a 10. They should do fine. It's only Ibiza's first year, so she's not really a Mentor yet. But she watches and learns the delicate craft with open eyes and ears.
The gong rings, and the pair from 2 pumps their legs to reach the front of the rush for supplies. The girl, Enobaria, sweeps up a sword and beheads her District partner with one quick sweep of her blade. Two stations down, Brutus yells while Kyla smirks silently to herself. Flotsam and Bex meet eyes worriedly. Meanwhile, several of the other Victors are celebrating quietly. Chaff, Haymitch, and Brandy have cracked open a bottle of beer and are discreetly pouring it under the table into little plastic cups. Fox and Porter share excited looks; their boy this year's a good one. And Dirk and Indigo high five. That makes Ibiza smirk despite the situation.
Then the female tribute, Bex and Ibiza's charge, is beheaded by Enobaria along with the boy from 6. She has a full pack, and she dashes away from the bloodbath, leaving three corpses in her wake. The pair from 1 and the boy from 4 stand there, shocked, and only manage to make 6 more kills before the initial fight dissipates.
"You can go for now," Bex hisses, eyeballing a deadly glare at Kyla at the 2 station. Brutus has already left, snapping his swivel chair's arms before storming out. Mascara and Zion share terrified looks, Flotsam grips the arms of his own chair tightly, Bex and Ibiza pack up along with 7 others, and Kyla just keeps laughing quietly to herself.
Bex jogs off, all in a tizzy, her aging joints creaking as she goes to deliver some paperwork to the dead girl's prospective sponsors. Dirk and Ibiza find themselves alone in the break room; the remaining 15 Mentors are locked on the screens, and the other Mentors who've lost tributes are either doing paperwork back at their hotels or going out for a drink. Dirk usually goes out for a drink, or more often a hit of morphling. But the way Ibiza looks at him gets him off more than a glittering needle filled with morphling ever could.
No more soft touches. Their lips dance across one another's, drowning out everything else.
Ibiza feels guilty that she's happy that the poor girl died in the bloodbath. If Enobaria hadn't sent the girl's head rolling from her shoulders, she would have never kissed this man. She would have never felt his hands creeping up her stomach, touching her softly as they kiss hard.
Later on down the road, she will wish that that girl had survived, just so she would have never gotten so caught up in Dirk Tautson.
"Tran!"
"Tran!"
"TRAN!"
Ibiza shoots into a sitting position. The sweaty sheets lay in twisted mounds around her body, and she begins to sob quietly.
"Dirk, still?" Ibiza meets the eyes of Bex, who glowers down at her.
"How did you know?" Ibiza asks sleepily.
"You were talking in your sleep about him," Bex mutters tiredly. "You were screaming it a bit, actually, deary. Get a hold on that, Tran."
Bex walks off, and Ibiza just growls to herself. She relocates to one of the other rooms, and then burrows under the new set of sheets and covers.
By dawn, the sheets are soiled with sweat once again, and now its Flotsam standing disapprovingly over her as she gasps for breath.
If only I could feel his pinky wrapped around mine. If only...if only he was here with me.
A/N: This one's a little shorter, but I hoped you enjoyed it! I'm really liking these flashbacks and the exploration of Ibiza, and I hope you are too! :) Review if you can, please! It really does help. :D
P.S. This one was based off of the song Hypnotic.
Until Next Time,
Tracee