{ the skin i'm living in ; coen/ike

i wont cry for you

He had always wondered what it had felt like for Sue Tate.

There's a rusty spring that screams to him when he collapses into the futon in their living room, shadows of the forests draped across his sweat soaked skin, pulling and twisting their way through his body as his eyes drift to the television screen. 

Her head falls to his shoulder and in an instant he feels his heartbeat jump in his chest, teenage reaction meddling its way into a grown man's heart. Even after all this time, she still makes his heart swell and his words stutter, makes sweat cling from his pores and nervousness lace itself into his voice. 

These shadows, thrown like knives from the branches of the forest, they hiss and disintegrate in her presence, sunlight of her beauty too strong even for the death dealt shadows of the tree trunks. Gently, delicately, he finds solace in the kiss he plants on top of her head, in the arm that wraps around her body and lays to rest on her hip. If he holds his breath and ignores the constant tick of the grandfather clock in the next rom, he can swear he hears her heartbeat jump, too.

Maybe he's just lying to himself. 
Maybe it runs in the family.

She brushes her thumb on his kneecap, eyes focused hard on the carpet floor instead of on the screen in front of them. He'd always found beauty in the chill of the silence, in the way it left one's mind to wander, to dream, to encompass and to adventure. And her? He'd found through the years that she looked for the romantic lure in the screams of the sun, in the chaos of the warmth and the fire. When they'd first found each other, he'd worried that'd be the thing to break them apart. Not the torn hearts of their past, not the broken pieces of their future, but instead the screaming silence of the presence.

Instead, it brought them closer.

"Awfully silent, tonight." She says, voice like scarlet as she lifts her head from his shoulders, ripping the screams of the warmth with it. Her eyes long to look into his, to connect like they had before the 70th Games suffocated them in its shadow, drowned them in its fury and threw the poltergeists of the past at them with every corner they turned.

It takes him five ice cold seconds to rip himself from the television screen, and five more for his eyes to find their place in hers. Three seconds later and he forces a lie of a smile onto his lips.

"What, do you want me to scream for you, or something?" 

He smiles, she smiles. His smile drops, hers remains, eyes blazing bright in the silence of the moment. One second passes and she laces passion with the kiss she plants on his lips and the hands she rests on his cheeks. She pulls him in, cloaking him in flames and the warmth of her body and for a second

one second, then two, then three
he gives in

Moving hand from waist to chest and laying her gently upon the couch, eyes snapped closed lips together-

on the fifth second, he stops. 
On the tenth second, he pulls away, shaking his head. 

"I'm sorry, I..I can't." He pulls himself together in the midst of a shattered love session, smearing ice and shadows across his body like some kind of armor. His eyes drift away from his wife, taking in every thread of the carpet that lines the floor and every grain of wood that is in the television stand before resting on the television itself. It is day three and Sue Tate clings to his weapon like it is his life line, blood dripping in his beard and lies dripping from his lips and with every second that goes by he hears to commentators scream about the fight his half-brother is in. There are two dead already, both from Sue's alliance and there are flames that lick the air, clinging to the death metal of the cornucopia before scattering into the air. 

He has glued himself to a boy he never knew, to a boy he never even tried to contact. For Sue Tate's entire life he had burnt every single bridge that had connected them. And now, he stands amongst the rubble, desperately trying to hammer smoldering nails back into the remains of his relationships. 

His wife rises from the couch, wiping tears from her eyes and ice from her skin. 

As painful as it is, he turns to her, taking solace in the change of cameras to a different fight. "Honey, I'm sorry. I just...if he's going to die, I have to see it. I-"

On the beginning of his final word flames erupt from her spirit and she spins her body towards him, fists clenched and eyes burning with the fury of a broken fire. "Coen Tate, for the past six weeks you haven't even bothered to look at me. You sit here day and night watching him-

watching a boy you know nothing about." 

Her words are an icepick and her husband the ice. Cracks appear in his armor, but just like fire ice has its own defense. Her husband rises, forehead creased in backwards frustration.

"A boy I barely know? A boy I barely know?! I have known of him for his entire life-" 

She softens, flames dying but ice does not melt when there is no flame to destroy it.

"Eighteen years and I did nothing to contact him, nothing to know him. If he is going to die in that arena, then I am at least going to know the one thing I can about him." 

"Coen..." 

"I'm going to know his struggle." 

She storms from the room and on the screen, the Cornucopia falls. 

At three thirty in the morning they sit in each other's arms, dried tears staining their cheeks in the moonlight. The house is empty but there is no silence to accompany it, to assist it in its ways. Instead, his fingers had traveled to the record player and placed one delicate piece onto its track.

It had no name on it, long since erased with time, but it spoke of a man named Bobby and freedom and coal mines.

Her voice fills the house and his wife's head rests on his chest, breathing in every jumped up heartbeat he can muster. 

He'd found silence to be lovely, at one point. 
But sometimes, the sone of a heartbeat is just as good.

---

He knows as soon as the words leave his mouth that they are mistaken, laced in a poison that has been injected into their bloodstream with every backwards affair his Father had ever known. 

He flinches and she hardens, seconds ticking by with the bang of a grandfather clock as his half-sister contemplates her reply. "Tea, please." 

He had never attempted to contact any of them, yet he'd tried to absorb every single detail that his Father would spill to him amongst piping hot coffee. They would meet the first Saturday of every month, hiding in the fall of the sun at sunset, when the shadows of the trees were just long enough to reach them and grab at their ankles, strangle and choke every truth and indecency that they clung to their lips. 

He had never blamed his father for leaving him, and he had never blamed his father for what he was doing to all of them. To Sue, to Daniel, to Blair to Marz to her- to his half-sister that stands next to them, footsteps sending burning echoes throughout the house. 

His wife is silent but he sees the fire in her soul, dancing and taunting as she looks over the girl she'd heard about when the moonlight lit up their room every night. She had never grown tired of it, never silenced him and his broken past. 

Far too often, those who have been broken know the feeling all too well. 

"I'm not like Dad." She says the words with as much venom as she can muster, but Sue Tate stole every ounce of venom from their blood when he died in the Games, so her voice stumbles and stutters and falls to the fury and the flames it harnesses, smoldering amongst the ticks of the grandfather clock and the echoes of their footsteps into the kitchen. 

He takes one two three four five seconds to contemplate his reply, swooshing around the words of the blood of his family of his people inside his mind before he finally sighs, feeling the rays of the sun dance across his face as he steps past into the light of the window to his wife. He grips the edges of the tray she's placed the drinks on, glancing out the window to the shadows of the trees before whispering to his wife. 

"Can we have a moment?" 

Her hand cradles her stomach and she stares at him for five seconds ripped straight from the heart of eternity, before nodding and making her way out of the room, casting a broken smile to his half-sister. 

"I do not think any of us are quite like Dad." He says, making his way to the table and setting the tray down. There is no malice in his voice, no half-pledged venom or anger. But there is emptiness, and sometimes that is worse than any of the former. 

The steam of the drinks reaches his hands and wraps itself around the digits, warming and heating the ice that he has worked so hard to maintain above his skin. It is only when he lowers himself into a chair that he realizes his half-sister has not done the same, making her way to the table with shaky knees and broken hope bones but refusing the seat that could fix it. 

He doesn't blame her for not wanting to do this.
After all, he never did it himself.

He knew this was coming the moment his Father mentioned another family, and another family and god he had tuned out after that because he could not force himself to listen any longer, to hear the pain his Father had caused. He could not force himself to blame him, either, too aware of the demons his Father held to use them against him. 

It was silent, but there was no beauty that had laced itself into it. Only raw, poison laced emptiness. When his half-sister speaks, he nearly wipes sweat off his brow. 

"I'm sorry, I-" Her voice throws itself to the emptiness and his eyes rise to meet hers, taking in every ounce of sadness that her silence can offer. 

It is short lived.

"Maybe I shouldn't have come. But I needed- I wanted to know you, to see my brother just once."

She trails off and his eyes falter and drop to the table, staring for a half second before he raises a hand to stop her from saying any more, gripping his coffee with the other hand.  

"Stop." 

He rises, dragging with him every icy shadow that clings to his skin, white knuckles gripping his coffee cup with such force as to shatter it just like Sue Tate had shattered in the Arena. "Excuse me, for one moment." 

He strides past her, engulfing himself in the echoes of his footsteps as he makes his way towards the living room, sipping his coffee. 

And just like he had the night he'd refused his wife's love he places record to record player, song to silence. Her voice fills the room, and his fingers turn the volume up just loud enough so that it could be heard in the kitchen.

"When my wife and I feel stress, or are fighting, we like to turn the record player on. It is a luxury few people get to enjoy, but everyone deserves." 

He shakes his coffee mug gently as he stops in front of her, staring down at the girl he'd never gotten to know.

"Don't doubt yourself, Ike." 

His eyes falter.

"By coming here today, you've done what I could not do for years on end." 

With a broken smile he looks up at her, before beckoning to the table.

"Now please, sit with me. I believe I owe you what my Father never allowed himself to give you." 

He takes another sip, burning the poison off his tongue.

"Answers."