Gloss skims his lips along Blight's shoulder, his grip easing on his waist as his muscles bleed tension. He feels Blight shudder between his body and the window; watches his heavy breaths explode across the freezing glass. Covering Blight's body with his own — hard, thick bulk against trim, lean muscle — Gloss is vaguely shocked at the differences between them, so raw and clear and unmistakable. If he had the mind to be so infantilizing, Gloss could rest his chin on the top of Blight's head.
He still tastes Blight's mouth on his tongue: sweet rice pudding and chamomile tea. It's nothing like an appointment — it's substantial, burdened with a lingering sense of consequence; something scary, something desperate. The evidence is pinned against his chest, on his breath, on his hand that trembles and drips with Blight's essence. Gloss wants to do it again, almost; wants to turn the man around and bury his nose in his beard, touch his body until he forgets his own name.
Instead, Blight meets his gaze in the reflection, deep brown eyes silhouetted by the glittering Capitol, and Gloss freezes.
Washing his hands in the bathroom sink, Gloss avoids his own unclothed reflection, heedless of the remnant sweat on his chest where he'd been pressed against Blight's body as tight as he could manage. In the mirror, Blight leans against the bedroom window, naked and breathless, gathering his bearings right where Gloss left him.
Gloss isn't supposed to see him in this way, really. Isn't supposed to trail his eyes over his reflection, drinking in the bright blue glow of the Capitol as it oscillates on his freckled skin. Now, Gloss notices the things he hadn't: the fuzz on his arms and chest, the dips and curves of his thighs, and an intricate tattoo of circles inside circles, starting on the point of his shoulder and bleeding down his arm, his collar, his back.
Tree rings.
:::
"Tell me what's on your mind, Cashew."
Cashmere shoots Gloss a withering glare-smile, pours shimmering liquid into her glass, then returns her attention to the television. She looks older, mature, a composed woman with ghosts and traumas she's long learned to mask. The chardonnay in Gloss' glass gently sways with a turn of the Capitol train.
"I think they're fine," Cashmere says.
Gloss hums against the rim of his glass and takes a sip that tingles in his stomach — the warm beginning of a buzz. "I take it you're not impressed."
"Typical tributes." Cashmere sighs and sets down a tray of fruit on the coffee table before taking a seat in the chair next to him. "Not much between the ears, those two. Too full of themselves."
"So were we."
"Not excessively. We could build a strategy. These kids?" Cashmere tips her glass at the door across the way, indicating One's newest tributes. "They're just muscles and weapons."
"Often, that's all it takes."
Cashmere sighs. "You aren't wrong if at least one of our male victors is any example."
"Apologize to Cosmos right now."
Cashmere rolls her eyes. "Even if I were referring to Cosmos, you couldn't pay me enough to talk to him for any longer than the time it takes to pass his house on my morning jog."
"Oh heavens," Gloss says unconvincingly. "Then I fear I have no choice but to tell him."
"Your dedication to driving me mad is truly breathtaking."
"Thank you," Gloss says genuinely. His drink is turning him loopy already. "You know, I haven't forgotten the night you convinced me to dye your hair blue. Mom grounded us for staining the shower with Blueberry Beauty #11."
Cashmere feigns a gag and clutches her intricate braid. She looks like she did in their baby photos, her nose wrinkled and her green eyes scrunched. "I was having a nice evening before this chardonnay loosened your tongue."
Gloss opens his mouth to protest, but finds the glass in his hand is completely empty. He tips it in her direction, winks, and fills it back up. In the middle of his first sip, Cashmere lands a grape between his eyes. Perfect aim, solid landing. It bounces off the bridge of his nose and splashes into his drink.
"How lovely. So generous of you to offer a snack."
"Oh sure. Just for you," Cashmere says flatly. She smiles, lopsided and mischievous. "Next time, it'll be a knife."
The air turns cold and the mood dissolves immediately, shriveling away like a brittle thing that can't be fixed. Gloss imagines a world where the last thing he sees is the fluid flick of her wrist just before his sister's knife pierces his skull.
After they won their Games, empty threats lost their innocence and simple things became sensitive. Chess turned into a mockery of their trauma. Crafts reminded them of tribute tokens. The horrors of their past outweighed the plights in any novel they read together.
Cashmere averts her eyes and turns back to the television, and Gloss finds it fit to follow suit, adjusting himself in his chair to little effect. It's no surprise that the Capitol doesn't have chairs big enough to accommodate people of bigger sizes. Gloss should have known better than to choose a seat with arms.
Onscreen, a hundred rows of children stand at attention in front of the District Seven justice building. The atmosphere is identical to that of all other outer-district reapings. Dark expressions, restless shuffling, a few heads bowed in illegal, silent prayer.
Onstage beside the mayor, Blight Bythesda bows his head in prayer too. Gloss sets down his glass and leans slightly closer to the screen. There's a streak of gray in Blight's hair that wasn't there the last time Gloss carded his fingers through it; a tremor in his left hand that makes Gloss want to hold it still. Their assignments don't overlap as much as they did when Gloss was fresh, mysterious, and everyone wanted him in their bed. It's another thing he can never change.
Faith is a nebulous, vague thing in Seven, Gloss has been told. It has no shape, no name, no organized doctrine. Blight once described it as a different experience for everyone. Some pray to a creator, others to ghosts, and others to nature itself. Blight refused to define what he sees when he prays. Gloss suspects it's because even he doesn't know.
The escort reaps a twelve-year-old boy named Timothy Stillwater and an unremarkable girl named Johanna Mason. She looks weak, shaky, like she might run or faint or vomit. Instead, she loudly sobs.
The tributes' families weave through the dispersing crowd towards the Justice Building. The siblings and cousins are red-faced and teary-eyed. The adults either wipe their tears on their sleeves or maintain their composure with deep, steady breaths.
Blight crosses the stage and helps guide the elderly up the worn concrete steps with gentle care. One of the men, presumably one of the tributes' fathers, ignores Blight's extended hand and pulls him into a tight embrace. They seem particularly familiar with one another. Blight murmurs something the microphones can't register, waits for a nod, then guides the man into the justice building, resting his hand on the small of his back.
Gloss' burning stomach twists. "Who is that?" he murmurs.
Cashmere carefully scrutinizes him. Gloss doesn't think she knows; doesn't think he and Blight have made themselves obvious.
"Does it matter who Seven surrounds himself with?"
Gloss glances at the television where Caesar Flickerman speculates about what that unusual exchange could entail.
"Only insofar as it affects Blight's strategic performance," Gloss says. It's safe.
Almost imperceptibly, Cashmere tilts her head. She furrows a brow at him over her glass of wine, thoughtful for a moment. To Gloss' immeasurable relief, she leaves it and sets down her glass. "They make toothpaste out of mud once they've wasted what the Capitol gives them," she says after a while. "They use cloth instead of toothbrushes and rinse their mouths with river water."
Gloss knows this. Blight explained the conditions in District Seven to him a long time ago. Of course, the reality wasn't quite so barbaric; wasn't as grotesque as Cashmere is wont to believe. When they needed to make their own toothpaste, Blight, his brother, and his sister had actually made an engaging project of it. The paste was made of clay and mint oil from the earth; xylitol and baking soda from their rations. Mosaic would dig up the clay, Rosette would pick the mint, and Blight would grind it all together with a mortar and pestle.
They also cook unorthodox things in Seven. Crickets and cicadas, mealworms and dragonflies. Gloss suspects it's this practice that helped set Seven apart from the more emaciated outer districts; bugs are a source of protein most people would never consider consuming, and they're in great abundance regardless of whether other food is scarce.
Those circumstances were unthinkable until Gloss lived with them for three weeks in an arena. Blight lived that way for much of his life. He was born into it. Gloss volunteered to experience that hardship as a game.
Uncorking a bottle of some strong-smelling liquid, Gloss decides he needs a stronger drink. He knocks back a shot and sighs as it stings going down. It emboldens him.
"They don't have a choice," he says, voice alcohol-dry.
Cashmere scoffs and glances down at his glass. "You're drunk. You forget yourself."
"The Capitol provides them less than half a pound of toothpaste per family per year, Cashmere, what else do you expect them to do?"
"I'd expect any civilized family to take tesserae instead of scrubbing their mouths with mud."
"What if they don't want to increase the chances of their child being reaped?"
"It's how it works, Gloss."
"Is that fair?"
Cashmere sucks her teeth. "It's the law."
"So if a family doesn't elect to send their kid into the Games, they get to watch their kid's teeth rot out of their head. In your opinion, that's fair."
Cashmere's shoulders fall with a sigh. "Gloss, if they trained their most capable children to volunteer for the Games, the rest of their district could take tesserae without consequence. They don't do that. It's a burden of their own design."
She pauses, chewing on a thumbnail, a blizzard of thoughts churning behind her eyes. "Look. Our district learned how to play this game decades ago. Look at us. Look at our people. If the proletarians in the outer districts choose not to—"
"For fuck's sake, Cash, show some compassion."
Cashmere's jaw tightens. It's a reflection of their childhood; how she'd pull back her hair and clench her jaw moments before an argument turned into a screaming match.
"Who taught you that anyone — using our tesserae — should reward mediocrity?"
"You call it mediocrity because you refuse to accept that the Capitol relies on the majority of Panem living in s—"
"Gloss." Cashmere's tone is firmer now, serious. She levels him with sinking eyes. Gloss slowly registers her tight grip on his knee. She glances over her shoulder; the sight is slow, blurry. "Listen to me," she whispers, "Don't. Talk like that."
Gloss falls silent for an instant — silent enough to hear the tremble in Cashmere's breath. Anger or fear, he's in no condition to discern. Then Cashmere collects the bottles, takes his glass, and leaves the train car without a word.
Gloss finishes the reapings alone after that, the too-tight chair suddenly biting into his thighs and feeling even more claustrophobic. Long after reapings have ended and the sun has set, he rewinds to Blight's appearance and watches, unsettled, as Blight embraces another man and leads him along with a hand on the small of his back.
:::
District One's tributes fly through the night in a solid black chariot, blowing kisses at frothing strangers who pelt them with roses and scream their names. Tonight, One debuts a pair of outfits from Dove D'annunzio's much-anticipated Midnight Sapphire line. Brilliant headdresses twinkle like starlight and light up their eyes. They look older than tributes, their bodies barely covered in blue ribbons. Their open skin is streaked with dark blue hand-shaped smears and fingertip-trails.
It occurs to Gloss that a stylist must have finger-painted them directly. It went a little something like that for Gloss, too, when he was in their position. The stylists' hands lingered on his skin, tracing his muscles a touch too long while they took his measurements. Gloss wonders if those very hands touched his tributes tonight; used them as objects, breathing mannequins to paint with their hands for the Capitol's consumption. Experimental art projects. If the Capitol is lucky, one of them will become a product.
'District One is gorgeous tonight, Panem — absolutely breathtaking. Once again, legendary designer Dove D'annunzio has outdone himself! Sapphire has never looked so seductive.'
The beauty of the costumes, if obscenity could ever be called beautiful, drowns away, and the color and sound drown with it.
Gloss stays around long enough to watch District Seven's chariot emerge. True to its reputation, the tributes are dressed as trees. Timothy Stillwater struggles under a massive headdress of branches. Johanna Mason openly weeps.
"Look at them," Cashmere says under her breath. "They're bloodbaths. But look at the silver lining. Their last week alive, they'll have all the fresh toothpaste they could ask for."
Gloss smiles with tight, pressed lips and reminds himself of the stylists and Capitol buzzards swarming around them. Cashmere softens her eyes and sighs, trading anger for sympathy.
"The Capitol has fed and bathed them all their lives. Now they're treating them like kings." She swoops her hand over their view of the parade, indicating its glory. "No one could love them better, Gloss. Not even their own."