The Last Goodbye [Ex & Saturn Day 4]

He’d never drank before, but he found himself hopping from hay bale to hay bale collecting as many jugs of fire as he could. There was no denying the stuff was absolutely vile, but he absolutely loved it. The leftover burn after downing, the stars that blinked across his horizons, the loose muscles and limbs like linguini. Tension slipped away with every gulp until a robe of nerves lay around his ankles, and he wobbled in his bare self for a few moments, warm but not angry, pained but in a new way. A way that didn’t claw at his head until there was nothing but shreds of him left, but what definitely seemed like the whole him.

The whole him swayed in the breeze, and it hit him all too fast that he was dizzy and exposed and by all accounts drunk. An attempt to bend down and gather his clothes succeeded up to the bending part, where he toppled over and rolled onto his back. He coughed, rougher than usual, a rasp that stung his throat deep in its pits. Being drunk sucked. Exover laid in the grass. He was naked. He was silent. He had one foot, no eyes, and even less coordination. And he started to laugh.

A few moments of startlingly loud laughter later, he sat up on his elbows and smiled out over the plains, taking in a deep breath through his nose. The alcohol seemed to have eased his nasal passages open, or at least more open than before, and for the first time in two days he smelled the whole world. Not just a few flowers in his hand. Not just the smoke wafting in his face. He smelled it all, the grass beneath his butt and the hay ten yards away where some girl sat alone and the strings someone further held down to make music and the horses, he smelled the horses, and damn he wished he had a horse, how come Ronan had a horse when he didn’t, and why the hell was he being so whiny? The stars burst in his head and he fell back to the ground, flat and spinning in his stillness, and he coughed a big, rough cough and spewed lava like his mouth was a volcano, and he turned his head fast to the side to vomit away from his body, and his chest ached like an earthquake cracked through his streets and swallowed his citizens whole, and fuck his whole him was still out and his clothes were behind him and his innards covered the ground around him and what the fuck.

“Sorry, Bev,” he whispered to the rat clinging to his helmet. Then he pushed himself up to his foot, suddenly much less dizzy without the jugs of moonshine sinking his city. Clothes in hand, he hopped over to the nearest bale of hay and sat. Placing the pile of dirty clothes in his lap, he reached down beside his seat and fingered for a glass jug, a sigh of relief when cold met his touch and he brought the drink to his body and took two enormous gulps. His other hand was open on his knee, where Beverly ran in circles. In hindsight, she was most definitely scolding him for his reckless behavior, but in the moment he found it playful and light and endearing. With her spinning in his palm, Ex thought how badly he wanted to thank Mr. Todd for his kindness. And whoever else, for the other stuff. The balloons and the helmet and the arm guard and the hammock. He wanted to thank them for believing in him before he believed in himself. Part of him thought the blind victor was amongst his sponsors. Someone who would understand his plight, understand what it was like to be placed in a pitch black maze where every step was the wrong step. Someone who saw him as a viable human being.

Because he was.

He was real and he was raw and he couldn’t help it, and he didn’t want to, and he took two more big gulps of moonshine and wondered what the cold, wet feeling was on his leg. Was this how everyone felt? He was numb, a tingling throughout his body, but his head was okay, and he was great, and he took another sip, and he belched.

“Thanks!” Ex yelled, hoping his sponsors got the message. “You’re… s-sooo good!”

He burped again, and sat there with a big, goofy grin on his face, a pile of clothes on his crotch, and a rat giving up its noble crusade and curling up on his helmet. The night before he’d peeled away petal after petal of two of Francis’s sunflowers for each of his fallen allies, and afterwards he cried, and he cried until he slept, and he slept like there were nails beneath him. There, on the bale, he thought about the last sunflower and the nails pressed into him again. It would either be plucked for the Sheriff or buried with his corpse. He told himself he hoped for the ladder, but a flicker of differing passed through his mind like a meteor, and he missed seeing the sky. If he won, would they fix him? Would he see again? He hadn’t considered that, but as he downed another gulp of his drink he wondered if he was even reparable.

Either way, Finley deserved to go home to her sisters, to go home to the ocean that she loved and bragged about, that she sang stories of, go back and move forward with being the best damn sheriff and the best damn person that panem had ever seen.

Words sat in the back of his throat like bile, ready to erupt and flood out, but he held them down with another swig. He coughed again and spat out his drink and wiped his slobbering mouth on the back of his arm. Ex wanted to admit it to himself, but didn’t all the same, didn’t want to change his mission to save his friend and get her home, didn’t want to own up to his own lust for life that found its way weaseled into the trunks of his tree, couldn’t say the words “I want to live” without muddying up the entire plan, his entire purpose, but fuck it, he thought, one hand tight around the last sunflower, one hand clamped onto his thigh, nails bearing into sweating skin, blood pooling in the creases. He wanted to live. He wanted to live. He wanted to see the world around him and know where he was walking and see what his friends looked like. See Saturn’s abs and tulip boy’s hair and Finley’s family photos. Ex opened his mouth and yelled because the poor boy was drunk and his best was never enough. And it never would be.

He waited there as the hours ticked by like sand, counting the sways of the tall grass and the rustles of others underfoot. When footsteps started his way, his first thought was Finley, of the girl coming to lead him to their hammock and help him not die of alcohol poisoning, but quickly he realized the person headed his way was much larger, more commanding, and smelled like an old bath towel, soaked and sticky and rotten. Saturn.

The boy called his name and placed a hand on his back. Lifted arm cleared a path for the sweltering, wet moss of One's underarms to leak out like old milk, but he wasn't used to luxury. In fact, old milk was a staple in his life, where freshness was overlooked for ‘what can be eaten without dying.’ Sweet, stinking scent crept up his bruised sinuses and tickled his brain before Saturn thrust something into Ex's chest, and he dropped the jug of moonshine to grab it. His hat? Fingers edged the rim, certain of what it was, but uncertain why he held on. He lifted his head skyward, up to the boy that sent him daily letters and pictures of himself even though he could never fully appreciate the beauty captured on film. A hand stuck out and rested on Saturn's abs, before dropping it to his thigh. When he opened his mouth to talk, he belched like a barking dog, and his fingers curled into the boy's leg meat. “I'm think,” he said, using the other's leg to pull up and stand. “I'm think you… a lot.” And he fell forward, into the muscles and sweat, his head in the crook of Saturn's neck, and he took in a big, deep, awful breath. “M-makes me happy.”