talk me down }} nemo x tate blitz

There have been so many nights that I've spent alone like this last one. I can't believe that I forgot what it felt like to lay there in silence, wondering who might actually love me. It used to be that I only had to use one finger to count them but I know that there are more now. I know that I have to use two hands.

I'd never known how much I hated being alone until I'd met Tate. Before him I thought I could do it, just keep going like that, stealing a bit here and there to scrape together money for my parent's drugs, maybe even something to eat every now and then. Now that I've tasted what it's like to be warm without wearing three sweaters, to be held without it hurting, to go to sleep with a full stomach, I don't think I can go back to before.

My hands are still in front of me. The rest of the world is shaking like the earth is shifting. I watch entranced as the boy who is not Tate is led away from the stage off to the Justice building to wait for his train. I watch as Tate turns on the spot.

Our eyes meet then for the first time since last night.

I always forget how dark his eyes are. Whenever I think of Tate all I can remember is how soft his voice is and how safe it feels when he's resting his chin on the top of my head with his arms wrapped around my chest. I don't remember his eyes being dark. In my head they shine.

He runs.

Right at me, he's running.

I take a step back. Growing up in the slums the term 'fight or flight' is a saying held near and dear and I'm a very fast runner and I don't want to fight him, not again.

I stay there, right there in that spot. People are yelling and the crowd is thinning but I feel like if Tate wanted to, he could do whatever he wanted to me. Right now, he could do any goddamned thing he liked. I didn't mind as long as it wasn't him walking towards that Justice building. I didn't mind as long as he wasn't dead.

He reaches me and I shut my eyes, a tear falling lopsided out of the corner of my left one. It runs down the tracks of my scar and drips down my chin.

His hand is on my back, pulling and pushing me forwards, into him. His other goes on my cheek and suddenly he's kissing me.

In public?

In public.

In the games square, at the reaping.

"Try to volunteer for me again and I'm sicking Cal on your ass, you hear me?" he says.

His voice sounds mad but he isn't mad at me, not really. There's a tremor in it, like a crack in a pane of glass, one blow from shattering into a hundred pieces.

I wrap my arms around his neck and kiss him like I haven't seen him in a week. I don't have a joke for him this time or a stupid pun. I don't know what to say, to make him stop being mad at me.

"I don't want to sleep alone tonight," I say, voice shaking. It doesn't make sense.

I curl my fingers up in his hair and pull him as close to me as I can get him. I pull him so close that even if they decide that it's a mistake, that they're taking Tate anyway, they won't be able to take him without me.

"I'm sorry."