off to the races, beck/chanel

This place doesn’t feel like home when it’s empty, which is strange only because I can tell the difference. I’ve haunted a lot of places far longer than I have Chanel’s apartment, but this might be the first one I’ve ever truly lived.

Traces of her linger in the coffee stains sunken into every available surface, in the crumpled papers shoved away in odd spaces with the ink of unfinished thoughts bleeding endlessly - I make a game of finding all the scars she’s left here. I’m here too, in the scent of nail polish we haven’t managed to scrub from the carpet and the dying plants in the windowsill I swore I wouldn’t forget to water. It’s often these days I’m left to this wonderful melancholy I’ve found. Alone save for the ticking clock and a high-definition television screen only able to be turned down enough that pained shrieks go tinny and muffled.

Any other year, I’d have chewed through my wrists to escape these bound hands. I’m not used to sitting pretty miles from the training center, forcing smiles and avoiding probing questions about conflicts of interest. Guilt has worn a pit in my stomach and maybe that’s why I’m still skipping meals. A cigarette burns between my fingers instead, the only light in a living room I’ve made no effort to warm. Let shadow infect this place as I already do - we’ve always been at home in each other’s company.

The disgust I felt at Chanel being named gamemaker hadn’t lasted. A pitiful blaze that ate away at itself until all that remained was worry. I detest the way she has come to possess more of myself than I ever had, stealing little pieces until I could only recognize myself in her smiles - and those are so few and far between. I can’t help but wonder if she’s even aware of what she’s done. On the bright side it doesn’t hurt to look in the mirror anymore.

The phone rings.

That’s all it takes for adrenaline to spike, blood roaring between my ears to the rhythmic pounding of the heart now in my throat. PTSD my therapist insists I call it, but naming the way my body betrays me makes it no less pathetic.

It’s an effort to force myself off the indentation I’ve worn into the couch, phantom pain shooting up my leg as I try to stabilize on the prosthetic. Another typical agony I’ve only started noticing recently. An awful thing to no longer find comfort in your suffering. Pride doesn’t allow me to hobble over to the phone a couple feet away, so I stand until the world stops spinning and I can manage the few strides it takes to reach the offending landline without hobbling. There's no guilt in keeping someone waiting - if it's that important they'll call back. Or, hopefully, they won't.

I fucking hate phone calls.

My hand shakes when I pick up the receiver, so I brace my wrist with my right hand and pretend not to have noticed, "Yeah?" Gruff and annoyed, voice gone gravelly from neglect.



It takes a second to place the voice on the other end, given I've only ever heard it singed at the edges and saturated with stubborn mania. Chanel's little sister - Emi. She's but a fuzzy silhouette in my mind's eye - someone I've done my best not to let take shape. Because she's about the age I was when I won and that always makes it hard. "She's not in, are you okay?" She sounded small - something I can tell she does not like to be even in the short time I've known her. In spite of myself I worry.

In spite of myself.



(I know.) "Who says I wanted to?"

A long silence follows, an ambience of rustling fabric. Fragmented conversations dripping with rum and loathing. I would have hung up long ago, if not for her relation to Chanel and that knowledge does not sit well with me. I'm nauseous by the time she speaks again. A place, a request for her sister. The is the kind of love I'm incapable of understanding, more so I'm frustrated I've been dragged into the feeble makings of it.

"Oh for fuck's-" The line goes dead.

I'm cursing under my breath as I dial Chanel's private line. It goes to voicemail because she's busy.

(with those precious bloodied hands i now know the taste of, making tragedies.)

"Fuck - uh - Chanel. Hey." And I try to be better, to sound concerned instead of annoyed. Remember, there's love here and it is not mine. "Emi needs help. She sounds - she's fucked up." I wonder if I'd have turned out different if I had someone to call. When I traded innocence for cheap booze and drank until I was more poison than boy.

I wonder.

I'm shrugging on a jacket as I speak, "She's at the Pickled Lion, I'm on my way there now. I'll make sure she's safe just - hurry." There's no point in hoping I won't regret this later - I know I will. Still, I set a pace uncomfortable for my body and all the parts of it that will always be broken. Not because I'm worried but because I've resigned myself to the inevitability of it. Not heroics, but retribution.

Because I want to know what would have happened had someone come for me.

It's a horrible night. Humid air sticks to the back of my throat and every inhale burns of liquor and the more unsavory scents spilling out an adjacent alleyway. Gaudy neon signs emit a constant halogen hum and I grind up the irritability between my teeth and try to choke it all down before she arrives. Given the prickling of sweat at the back of my neck I'm doing a piss poor job and, fuck, it feels a little bit like anticipation. Work (murder and all the revelry in it) has made our time together something rare.

And fuck, if I knew I was going to be reduced to yearning I'd have let Walter run me through with that pretty little sword of his.

Chanel's arrival brings no relief. I don't look at her, she doesn't look at me. There's shadows clinging to her skin and I'm too familiar with wasting away to be bothered by it. If anything she wears the neglect well. I try not to make a habit of worrying about her, lest 'how are you feeling'? become a question we're allowed to ask each other.



"Everything is a waste of my fucking time," My voice is a gruff imitation of reluctance - not entirely honest. I make a show of pushing myself off the golden brick I'd been propped up against, like I was doing something other than absolutely nothing before the call came, like there was ever a chance I wouldn't have answered. "Though I'll admit I didn't expect to find myself on this side of teenage angst." There's something fundamentally wrong with me, the way I smile around the words and fall into step behind Chanel. In the way my heart has finally started to feel like it's beating.

She moves toward the entrance, I follow. Chanel has always felt at least a little unreachable and maybe that's what drew me to her in the first place. Even when she was right in front of me, there was some part of her that wasn't. It's hard to get attached to half of a person, whose most human parts are locked in a place I'll never see, "I'm glad you got my message." I tell the back of her head, hopefully lost in the bustle of the Capitol's night life.

We walk on, I count the steps.

The air between us feels strange, a little bit fragile.

We draw closer to a seedy club, the thrum of music pounding steady as opposed to the erratic beating in my chest. I'm not used to being so nervous, my anxieties are usually a hell of a lot more vengeful.

I’m worried I might hate everything except for her.

She looks back at me, smudged mascara collecting in dry pellets along her lashes. It's dark, hard to make out anything more than some distant emotion in her gaze. She swings away before I can make out what it is. My fingers twitch at my sides - frustration cool and almost pleasant as it beads upon my jaw and inches down the column of my throat.

Chanel is right there, within arm's reach. She has been for a while now.

If I wasn't a coward I could...



"Wait." It's a breathless little sound, a great effort to get the word out. I feel my fingers close around her wrist before I have the thought to do so, a touch too impulsive to be gentle. I realize too late I don't have anything to say. I’m too full of shame and regret to hide it from my expression. I stand there like an absolute idiot, mouth opening and closing as I cast around the confines of an empty skull for a good excuse.

Something more than I just wanted you to look at me.

"I'm sorry." For what? A lot of shit and nothing at all. I just know I've got to say something. "You look so tired."

It's a horrible night indeed.