Disclaimer: I do not own the Hunger Games.
If there is one thing that Cato can comprehend, it's rules. Stripped of all else, his every defining detail, - his strength, his looks, his libido - his grasp of those would remain. The Capitol's rules. The Academy's. His family's. His own.
This is why he doesn't feel guilty for forcing Andromeda out of his bed at two in the morning. He doesn't sleep with other people. Fucks them, sure. He has no qualms there. It's the mixing of sex with that dangerously vulnerable state of surrender known as sleep that he knows better than to practice, that he forbids himself from ever trying.
One of his rules.
Andie knows this of course. She knows his limits just as well as any of the girls he takes to bed. Still, her long bronzed legs attempt to entwine with his own as her exhausted face makes a gentle dive for his chest. Cato rolls his eyes. Not that she'll ever acknowledge them.
"C'mon, Andie," his lips tease the words into the plump skin of her right breast. "We've got training tomorrow." Faded whip marks still nip painfully at the flesh on his back, reminding him of just how much he doesn't want to be late again.
Her blonde curls tremble as she turns her head back and forth, attempting to toss his dismissal out of her ears like a dog might shake drops of water from its coat. He barely notices, too caught up in the images of a dark ponytail, a cruel smirk, that the wounds from his last censure always seem to summon to mind.
Pulling himself away from the golden haired girl's warm, needy body, he regards her more coldly, speaks more harshly, forgetting her body heat and any softness that might have momentarily seeped into him through her embrace. Gone that quickly. Any care for her, any concern.
Andie already knows how little she means to him, though; another fact she chooses not to acknowledge.
"Time for you to go," he says as he jerks the blankets off of her, reminding her of whose bed, whose world, she's attempting to invade.
Goosebumps begin to press themselves onto her skin as she groans at the sudden loss before sitting up languidly, unabashed by her bare body. "Please, Cato…"
Any tenderness she ever knew in him vanishes.
When Cato wakes up several hours later to the beeping of his 5 AM alarm, even the faintest impression of Andie's lithe body on his mattress has long faded.
The sun's light, although still muted when he departs from his house later that morning, has grown bright enough to leave his blonde hair glinting with gold when Cato steps into its path. Tossing an apple, grabbed from the bowl of fruit that his mother, surprisingly, has maternal instinct enough to leave laying out in the kitchen, up and down in his palm, Cato thuds down the steps of his front porch as he begins the walk to Clove's house.
He doesn't notice when Andie, leaning out of a window from the home directly next to his own, waves, calls his name, half-heartedly asks him to wait for her. Or maybe he does register it on some level. Her desperation. Maybe that's what has left her so dull in his eyes. Locks of hair lighter than even the ones on his own head, eyes greener than the most freshly watered grass, and, still, she's fading. Grey. Boring. Cato has never bothered to see that which he doesn't consider worthy of his attention, and, as if aware of this, she waves her hand quicker and quicker, raises her voice louder and louder, attempting to claw her way back into his line of vision.
Eyes trained ahead, he passes her right by.
The knife is never in her hands when she falls to sleep. It's close-by, naturally, tucked away underneath a pillow or laying on her bedside table, but never that immediate. Still, the blade almost daily manages to find its way into her grasp by the time that she wakes, proof of her unconscious groping for its handle. For its security. Clove smirks down at the weapon clenched tightly in her fist as her eyes blink open. There had never been any teddy bears or childhood blankets to clutter her bed. She much prefers her chosen substitute.
Silencing her alarm, she restores the knife to its place on her table and slides off of her mattress to begin her short, utilitarian morning ritual - to brush her teeth, take a quick shower, clothe herself in her standard training apparel, tie her hair back into a high ponytail, and so on.
It is the shower, Clove will surmise later, that leads to her downfall. More particularly, it's the volume of the tepid water as it sprays from the shower nozzle onto her soap clad skin. Otherwise, she has no doubt that she would have heard his entrance.
But she didn't. Clove didn't hear; and so, when she makes her way into the kitchen several minutes later, she nearly shrieks at the sight before her. Shrieks. She never shrieks, shouldn't. It's not the natural order of things for her to be caught so off guard, seized by such surprise. Then again, though, it's not the natural order of things for Cato to be somehow in her kitchen first thing in the morning either.
"Cato!"
His massive figure is busy shuffling through her cabinets, bouncing what looks to be a blushing red apple up and down in his palm, when she first sees him. A smirk tugs at his lips as he turns his head to reply to her exasperated shock. "Morning," he says, sounding smug. "Where do you keep your protein supplements?"
Clove stares at him briefly before shaking her head and storming over to him. "How the hell did you get in here?" she demands. "I keep the door locked!"
Propped up against the counter, he shrugs at her, his smirk growing as he makes a the vague noise of a noncommittal answer.
Still glaring at him, she reaches over his shoulder to open one of the cabinets he seems to have left ignored thus far. "I could have you arrested," she murmurs derisively as she pulls out one of her Academy issued protein supplements. His hand darts after hers to grab a packet from the shelf. Shifting one corner of her mouth upward, she slams the door shut on his fingers.
Cato swears but otherwise refrains from showing any sign of the pain that must, doubtlessly, be thrumming through his right hand. Instead, he simply clenches it into a fist around one of the supplement servings.
She shakes her packet open, her eyes scornful as she assesses him. "Are you going to tell me what you think you're doing here?"
Copying her movement with his own breakfast, Cato raises a sardonic eyebrow. "You didn't really think I'd let you get away with that stunt you pulled yesterday again."
Well, no. But she hadn't woken up absurdly early this morning, so, to be fair, she hadn't been attempting a repeat.
"Forget the arrest. I could probably justify throwing a knife at your neck."
Still absentmindedly tossing his half-eaten apple up into the air and then back down into his hand, Cato snorts. "Because you'd miss."
He barely has time to observe her leaning down to pull her dagger out before it's piercing its way through the air towards his fruit, piercing its core, and sending it crashing down to the ground.
"Nice shot." Clove loathes him for the way that he continues to grin as he collects the fallen apple. "How are you planning to get your dagger back?"
She crosses her arms. "I have another."
A wave of discomfort pulls at her as his appraising pupils dart down the short length of her body, scanning the tight fitting cloth of her training gear for other possible hiding places "Of course you do, little girl," he says through his chronic grin, stowing her dagger away into the training bag hanging loosely against the blades of his shoulders.
Her eyes narrow. She does have another, of course; that wasn't a lie. Still, though, she has never done well with sharing, has always been a bit possessive - especially when it comes to her knives. Attempting to force the irritated tenseness out of her muscles, she composes her facial expression into one of apathy. She's hardly about to let Cato know how annoyed his retaliation has rendered her. That wouldn't do.
Sharp nails puncture her palms as her fists tighten, her smile sweetens.
The morning only worsens from there. Walking to the Academy, although not the most excruciating experience in existence had hardly been a pleasant one; not with Cato's reminders of how many other girls would be thrilled by the gift of his presence featuring in the conversation. Their entrance into the stone halls of the Academy should have offered some relief, alleviated some of her irritation. It doesn't. Instead, it offers a sign, instructing their training level, in large block letters, to report to Viewing Room #4.
Clove groans.
"Fuck," the words resounds gratingly and low, thick with promises of bloodied, aggravated knuckles. The sentiment behind the word is wholly hers; she feels it more keenly than even the ire that's consumed her morning for the minutes prior.
But it's not her voice.
It takes her a moment to realize that someone else had spoken her silent frustration aloud, to jerk her chin over to face Cato in surprise.
"What? Not thrilled to spend a day 'learning from the strategies of past victors?" she questions mockingly. Or, more accurately, to spend the day wasting time in front of a television screen. Most of their peers seem to be.
The blonde boy beside her is, naturally, still grinning when he responds, but coldly, so much so that his reply falls from his lips like hail. "They don't have anything to teach me."
Her thoughts, exactly.
Eyes narrowing, her pale ice against his blue fire, they succumb to a moment a mutual understanding.
Tense with irritation, Clove folds herself into one of the plethora of fold-out chairs that had been set up in the Academy's viewing room, a seat, like the rest, that forces one to sit with a stiff sort of discomfiture. Although she rarely deviates from perfect posture anyway, the forced straightness of her back hardly improves her mood. Perhaps, she thinks, that's why the seats surrounding her own are so far being avoided as thoroughly as they might be if their laps were padded with blades. Her ice blue eyes, her cinched lipped frown, her compacted form all hint at the fierce frustration humming through her, as do her legs, folded, but with the top one pointed at the toes, as if ready to kick out at anyone who dares to invade her personal space. She wouldn't, of course. Attacking people in the expected manner is so rarely satisfying, in her opinion.
Clove glares at the large projection screen. It's still dark and footage-less as trainees continue to flood into the rows of chairs currently occupying the viewing room's floor space.
And she's usually so fond of the Academy. The thought doesn't resound through her mind with the sarcasm that many of her others do. She does like the Academy, genuinely enjoys the routine it usually offers - the return to the gym, to Medea, to practice. Which is why the sight of a sign directing her training level into the viewing room for a morning of rewatching old Hunger Games videos that she's already viewed at least a dozen times leaves her distinctly annoyed. Especially when it's the sixty-fifth. Again.
Clove rolls her eyes, ears already assaulted with the sound of girlish giggles at the prospect of spending several hours staring at Finnick fucking Odair.
"Do you even know how to smile?"
She snaps her head up to find Cato smirking down at her as he claims the seat to her right.
"At you?" she says without missing a beat. "No." Her words are low, without their usual fake note of sweetness; she's too irritated to bother summoning it.
Cato leans back in his seat, somehow managing to defy physics and manipulate it into looking almost comfortable. "How about in general?"
A mental shiver gnaws at her. She actually can't actually think of much that she finds more disconcerting than people who smile, people who do so genuinely rather than in her own manner of mocking hostility. Not that she's about to tell Cato this. Instead, Clove shrugs. "I was smiling yesterday. You should know, seeing as you're the one who made such a big deal out of it."
"Some people smile nicely."
"As if you ever have either."
He replies through a smirk, giving voice to her most often thought mantra, "Some people are idiots."
She turns her head away from him, staring ahead and clinging to the vain hope that he'll give up on this somewhat alarming attempt at conversation with her. It turns out, though, that sitting next to a silently smirking Cato is even more unbearable than having to put up with a speaking one.
"Don't you have a harem to harass?" she bites out finally, snapping her head over in a jerked motion to glare at him. Or at least the friends that he'd broken off from her to speak with earlier.
He shakes his head, squirming in his seat in a barely perceivable motion. The sight gratifies her for some strange reason; it's pleasing to know that, as at ease as he may look, he's no more comfortable than the rest of them. "I have the morning off."
"Right," she darts her eyes to the screen. "Finnick Odair stole your place in their hearts?"
Apparently, she says his name with as much malice as she thinks it, judging by the way Cato raises an eyebrow at her tone, anyway.
She sighs, opting for objectivity rather than anger. It takes less energy. "His games are overrated." A part of her expects Cato to argue. He, after all, doesn't seem entirely opposed to using his looks to gain an advantage wherever he can. A grin forms on his face instead, a feral one.
Leaning towards her, he says, "Could have been bloodier."
Annoyed by his proximity, but too stubborn to flinch away, Clove crosses her arms instead, wiping the expression from her face away into the dust of apathy. Still, a smirk grows on her mouth, despite herself. "Exactly."
The screen flares to life, the lights dim, and conversation fades. Clove doesn't have to look over at Cato to know that his smirk doesn't.
Clove doesn't put up quite as much of a struggle when Cato reaches for her bag upon their release from the Academy later that day - not because of any acquiescence on her part, she would insist, if asked. She's simply to busy ranting to protest at the present moment.
"And was it really necessary for him to take off his shirt eleven times?" Clove spats, kicking the dirt on the path in front of her with each step.
The corner of Cato's mouth quirks upward. "His sponsors thought so."
She rolls her eyes, his comment doing nothing to placate her. "Partial nudity shouldn't be grounds for gifts."
"What?" he raises an eyebrow at her. "He wasn't showing enough for you?"
Her disgust has grown so thick that bile might as well be rising in her throat as she glares at him for his teasing. "Of course not. I just don't think that stripping counts as a respectable method of winning the Hunger Games." Brutal violence, certainly. Cunning, sure. Anything else, she finds pathetic.
Laughter rings through the sun soaked air, grounded out from Cato's throat. "I should have known you'd be prude."
She smiles sweetly at him. "Most people are in comparison with you. Odair included."
Cato turns to smirk directly at her, slowing his pace slightly. "Tell you what," he says. "When I'm in the arena, I'll walk around buck naked. Just for you."
Lips tugging upwards, Clove manages to calm her expression into one of thoughtfulness. "Smart strategy. I can't imagine the other tributes will be much of a challenge once you've permanently scarred them all. Some might even go blind."
Still, he smirks. "That tends to happen when looking at bright, brilliant objects."
Great. Now, he's comparing himself to the sun - an apt likening, she decides, at least in one way. She grimaces at the touch of its warm rays against her bare arms. Clove can't stand either one. "Sure," she agrees, which, naturally, causes his eyes to narrow at her in suspicion. "Right before they burn themselves out."
"And take out everything else with them."
Clove's lips cinch. She can't argue with that, can't dispute the fact that she pities whoever ends up in the arena with Cato when he, inevitably, is called to volunteer for the Hunger Games. Him or Gregoric; she can't imagine it won't be one or the other. Probably Cato. He'll volunteer and then most likely win, return to District Two a victor. The thought grinds at her, scratching at the scars left by the irritation that's marred her mood all day. Only two years younger or not, the age gap is enough to almost ensure that he'll get to experience the Games before her.
The notion is not a pleasant one.
Silence claims their interaction for several moments, until Cato ruins it all. "You'll do whatever it takes to win. We all will when the time comes."
Another assertion she has trouble arguing with. They're at the porch by the time the words pass from his lips, though, so she doesn't need to answer. Instead, Clove leans over his shoulder to where her sack, plain and black just like all of the ones issued by the Academy, thumps against Cato's back alongside his own identical one, to retrieve her things.
Mute, she doesn't allow a small smirk to form on her face until she's inside her house, wondering what Cato will think when he returns home. She dumps the contents of his sack out on the kitchen counter, her lips curving further as she fingers her stolen dagger. Her water bottle may not seem as impressive a prize.
There's no shower to impede her hearing that night, to thwart her ears from catching the sound of footsteps pounding through her house at one in the morning. Sleep might have done it, deafened some other person, but hers is rarely any heavier than the flimsy white sheets that she's currently laying under.
Clove sits up slowly, gripping her knife so tightly that her knuckles appear white. She wills her hand to loosen. A dream, she considers, as a few seconds of silence send doubts up her spine. The sounds could have been nothing but figments, ghosts belonging to her subconscious.
Thud. It's louder now. Another set of footsteps sound, another piece proof that someone is, in fact, inside her house.
Her eyes dart down to the blade that she's never had true just cause to use before. Not outside of training.
The steps continue, now, in a steady rhythm, their volume increasing as they seem to approach her bedroom door.
Set firm around the knife's handle, her fingers won't relax.
Author's Note: Thank you so much to everyone who has been reading this so far! Especially to everyone who's taken the time to review: Orange Pudding, Drizzling Rain, chaffed, Jesus the Gardener, luvxas37, Marina, clatoforever, GottaLoveMEgan, thatiismahogany, and Nightlock Angel 786. I really appreciate it :)
I'm so sorry that it's taken me so long to post this chapter! I promise to try to update more frequently now that I'm out of school. Anyway, thanks for reading!