Warning: These one-shots feature heavy subjects, including alcoholism, drug abuse, suicide and torture... so far. Now adding: depression, cheating, heartbreak, underage, implied prostitution, suicidal thoughts, someone having acid thrown on them, smut, implied rape/non-con, self-harm. I'll add more as the story wears on, just in case.

Disclaimer: Credit goes to HannahSongla for the story idea. Please go check out her Hayniss story similar to this - Sweetheart. Credit goes to Suzanne Collins for the verse and the characters. I don't really own anything but the text of these one-shots. And no, that doesn't mean the song lyrics or the playlist. Enjoy c:

AN: Fifty-fucking-chapters of The Sound of Liquor and Tears. That's halfway to 100. We're halfway to 100 chapters of this story. WOW. What the fuck. I didn't think I'd commit to it for as long as I have. I thought I'd get to fifteen chapters and get bored. But, TSOWAT is still going. I still manage to pull inspiration from somewhere - out of my ass, probably - and keep this story going. That's bad-fucking-ass. Thanks to everyone who's favorited, who's followed, who's reviewed, who's even PM'd. And to those that didn't do all that, but still took the time out of their day to read the fucking story. If you're reading this right now, I owe you a big FUCKING thank you. So... THANK YOU. You guys are what keep this going. Maybe I'll stop at 100. Maybe I'll go until 1,000. Who knows. But, no matter what I do with this ficlet thing, you are what's important to me. So again, a big FUCKING thank you. I love you guys. I genuinely do - from the bottom of my heart. Every viewer, every favoriter, every follower, every viewer, every reviewer. I love the hell out you. Thank you, and enjoy this VERY hard-worked-on chapter.

Song: Grapevine Fires by Death Cab for Cutie

The wake up call to a rented room
Sounded like an alarm of impending doom
To warn us it's only a matter of time
Before we all burn

Finnick takes her to a string of parties when she comes into the Capitol, whispering in her hair about electricity and fried nostrils and men that made him feel so good he forgot what he was. He forgot about the play lands of gods and monsters and little children that didn't quite grasp the concept of Hell.

Katniss gets addicted to the ride.

Katniss is high on what sex feels like and drugged up on what she thinks love is. She's never felt more alive than she does now, and she wonders why she ever let herself be dragged under by blue eyes and burnt blonde hair and the promise of a Class Six life. There's coke in her veins and it's setting her on fire like no way Cinna ever could. She feels rich, rich with the feeling of roses grazing between her shoulder blades and the sweet feeling of hands pulling, pulling, wanting, touching, replacing that shell of a girl with someone who thrives on the streetlights of the night. When she laughs she feels like a diamond, twinkling under the forgotten souls of stars and happiness, and she twirls, twirls, twirls so that the flames eat her alive and spit her out again.

And when she crashes in the morning, there's a soft tablet that rests on her tongue that makes her forget. Makes her forget the feeling of cold between her thighs and disapproving azure and the scent of whiskey on the breath of a man with no face.

It's not what she wants. It's what she needs.

She tells Peeta to fuck off and climbs into the lap of some pretty stranger with cat-like orange eyes and long flowing red hair.

It's the stolen innocence of a sad girl high on false happiness.

And then Haymitch comes. And he's a pretty black rose, trapped in a garden where only white roses grow and painted white to hide the beauty of ebony petals beneath. He's electric, not like the way she needs but like the way she wants. She finds that all the glittering spotlights are nothing if he's not there to shimmer with her, to dance and love and feel the way morphling gets her high and liquor brings her down.

Haymitch is blue fame and it's tantalizing.

"What do you dream about, sweetheart?"

"Getting drunk on sex and love and everything that's passionate."

She wants to take him away from this - all of this. She doesn't miss the way his muscles contract with stories, scars of a broken man and a shattered past as he pulls on his shirt that smells like sex and drugs and rock and roll. She watches when he moves, like the fluidity of a synthetic flame that never seems to burn out, a candle that's forever protected by cupped hands and the need to light a cigarette. Protected by her.

She loves him and she loves hard and it fucking hurts. She hates when things hurt. She's done with things hurting. She just wants to feel good.

So she whispers all her secrets into his skin and drags her ruby colored nails down his chest. He feels like the blood of a child, of a wilted rose that's already blackened around the edges. She doesn't care - she just cares about the way he fists at her hair when he comes hard and fast like the sounds of a child's scream caught up in a nest of tracker jackers and he's poetry. Real and alive and steadfast under her burnt fingertips.

Peeta takes to the pretty new red-headed Victor from Four. Her name is Anastasia and her eyes are a shade of familiar grey that Katniss has only ever seen in the mirror.

Katniss supposes everyone needs their drug. Even if their drug is fake love that likes to skip rocks on he lake of broken hearts down North.

They're all trapped in a city of smoke and screens, where cotton candy is the mantra and real life can't penetrate. They're caught up in the faux smiles and the way everyone pretends, pretends, pretends. But she has Haymitch and Peeta has his Anastasia and Finnick has men that make his skin crawl in ways that he would never let his Annie experience.

Katniss' Haymitch makes her feel good, like the coked up sex she used to search for in nightclubs that injected rhythm in her veins and let her pretend she was in Paradise. He's the sound of radios on her flesh and it's good - it's not great and they're too broken for happy but it's good and Peeta's good and everything is okay.

And that's all the back road queen ever wanted.

And we watched the plumes paint the sky gray
As she laughed and danced through the field of graves
And there I knew it would be alright
That everything would be alright