half of my heart | {jacinta/colt}

"She's wearing red, that's all I'll say."

It practically went without saying: the sun would rise in the East, Mace would have another pregnancy announcement, Teddy would mumble his way through another interview— Jacinta would wear red. It had become her signature look, all thanks to Colt's hard work, and he saw more and more fans lining the streets and sporting the color of their favorite victor like war paint every day. Some of them managed to pull it off well enough; others looked outright ridiculous. He'd seen one too many shirtless boys with blood-red paint covering their scrawny torsos for his taste. It was futile, honestly. She was too good for all of them.

Besides, none of them could pull it off quite as well as her.

Colt resented the fact that he would not be the first person to see her in his latest masterpiece— they'd asked for extravagant and he had delivered— but sometimes the pieces fell in ways out of his control. He was told to be one of the first to arrive at the sponsorship banquet and Jacinta couldn't show up right away. It would make her seem too desperate. As far as Colt could tell, Jaci genuinely thought the Pryce boy had a chance of making it out; he wouldn't be the one to ruin that for her over a dress.

The interviewer smiled at him, lowering her microphone and gazing into one of the many cameras that swarmed the area.

"You heard it here first, folks! I'm Crescent Caroul—" her voice was lost to a crowd as Colt took the opportunity to walk away. The fame was nice sometimes; others it was fucking exhausting. He'd been a well-known name before, but a lifetime of standing next to a Capitol icon like Jacinta Salazar was incomparable to any other level of exposure in his line of work. He may have had his hesitations at first, but there wasn't a day that went by where Colt did not regret agreeing to work as her stylist.

Any moment now, he thought. Most of the big names had already arrived. There was Teddy, stuttering into a wall of cameras and trying his best to answer a crowd's worth of questions. Not everyone shared his muse's grace, he supposed.

He knew from the moment she arrived, sleek black car slowing to a halt at the mouth of a velvet red carpet. The crowds hushed for a moment, holding their breath for what came next, and as the driver opened the door, a bare leg stepped from within.

Instantly, flashes of camera light burst forth like a storm of lightning as Jacinta stood.

"I outdid myself," he said, politely kissing her on the cheek while the fans cheered at her. To be honest, he could've given her a goddamn slip and a pair of heels and she would've made it work; she did the work for him most of the time. Still, he offered her his arm so that he could escort her inside.