some part of me stayed alive / e+a

"Av."

Hands prop him up, fire-warm and sturdy against his skin. He breathes in and catches woodsmoke and Eden and part of him falls into it further. The adrenaline is fading, a heavy tiredness taking over. He raises his head and he's there in front of him, both of his hands pressed against Avriel's skin, checking.

"I had to find you," he says hoarsely, "They took you, I-"

His mouth is dry and he doesn't know why he's trying to explain himself. The trees grow taller above their heads and he knows that something is wrong, because it no longer feels like a dream. Eden's hands are too real, the dark bruise around his eye is not something that Avriel knows how to imagine, it's too kind a wound.

"Something's wrong," he mutters, "It never happens like this."

Every other time he's had this dream, the only way to escape it was killing Eden but that in itself was inescapable. Avriel's never had this much freedom of movement at this point. It's all always been inevitable, then he wakes up.

That's why the wedding rings are still in his pocket and not on their fingers.

He reaches up slowly, his thumb finds the edge of the shiner and traces an outside path. He imagines a fist hitting Eden, his head rocking backwards from the impact, pain blooming beneath his skin like a sudden heat.

A small death.

"Did I do that?" he asks softly.

He leans into Eden's voice almost more than his touch these days. It's still feels like a rare thing, something special meant only for him. He likes the way it filters, the way it soothes him so easily. Av always wanted that for himself, for there to be someone that could heal him with just a word or a simple touch. He thought before Eden that he wasn't the kind of person who deserved that.

"I'm here."

His hand is against Eden's chest now, over his heart, guided there. Avriel can feel his heart beating, it's going quickly, too fast. Is he scaring him? His eyes are already on his face, he searches for an answer and then gets stuck on the bruising, at the root of it and the way that it probably hurts more than Eden will ever show.

"No," Eden answers him.

Had he asked that out loud or was that in answer to something else? His brow furrows, lost in the timeline of their conversation, in the overlapping seconds and the softness of Eden's voice.

They're in front of the fire and Eden is holding him and this is supposed to be the moment. He kills him now the same way he killed Areto and then he finally gets to wake up. The knives are gone though, the only thing under Av's hand is Eden's heart and the dream is going somewhere new.

He's being pulled forwards then and down. The air is strange between them, more thick than usual. Suddenly Eden is across the room but he's right in front of him but he's not even there except he always is. Even when they're hundreds of miles apart, he is still somehow there. It's as if from the moment they met, an invisible string tied them together, keeping them tethered.

And every single time Eden kisses him it still feels like the very first time.

"This is real."

"I know."

He opens his eyes and the trees are gone. They're in a room, different from the training centre. It's old, decorative, everything gilded. The designs swim slowly up and down the wall, Avriel's pretty sure that they aren't supposed to do that but it's hard to say in the Capitol. Nothing's ever as it should be.

He shuts his eyes, choosing to ignore it for now and rests his head on Eden's shoulder.

"I'm sorry," he says, wishing that he could sound less pathetic. His hand is curled up in Eden's shirt, the tiredness from before weighing him down. His foot feels like deadweight at the end of his leg, the seam itches. "I haven't really been sleeping well lately."

It's never been easy.

Avriel knew that things never would be for him, even before the day he was reaped and his life changed irrevocably, nothing before then ever was.

Every little part of his life has had pain tied to it in some small way and it's so odd how that happens, how grief builds up like that and becomes so unbearably heavy.

Things should be easy for once.

And hearing the ache in Eden's laugh over Avriel's bad joke shouldn't feel like a new scar but it does. Av turns his head slightly, hiding his gaze in Eden's neck. The fireplace keeps trying to be a campfire and Eden says that he's awake, he wants to trust that, but this doesn't feel like being awake.

It feels like no control. A dream.

He raises his hand to grip Eden's waist and he's warm beneath his touch. It'd be a lie to say that Av's never thought of Eden's body. Even before he understood what his feelings were for him, he thought about it, he had to. For a long time, communication was gestures and body language and Avriel's never been good at reading the second.

"It's okay, I love you."

Funny how those go hand in hand so easily. Avriel sits there for a long moment, holding that gift between his teeth. Eden says it like it's fact and for some reason it makes tears start again fresh. Warm and slow, moving down his cheek to land on the shoulder of the man that loves him.

That he loves.

"I love you," he whispers.

And he thinks about the day he was working on their rings and Eden gave him that folder to read. Everything he never wanted anyone to know about him in a weathered paper sleeve and he'd given it to Avriel.

"I have these nightmares sometimes-" he starts. But it's already just a half truth. After a moment he sighs and sits up slowly, holding himself up with his palm pressed into the carpet, the other still on Eden's waist, thumb sliding slowly up and down. He doesn't know how to look at Eden.

"I have nightmares all the time. Every single time I sleep. Every now and then awake too if I'm not... if I'm not good," he says softly. For a long time he figured that if he didn't talk about it ever they'd just go away after awhile, the same way the other kids in school did when he didn't respond to the pointless things they'd say about him.

"It started when I-" he pauses, gaze caught on a bed post, growing sharper by the second. "When I killed, no when my parents were killed." He knows that Eden was there at the interview last year and the aftermath of it. When his ears were ringing and his skin was burning and anything touching him felt like torture. They'd had to barricade themselves in the green room for a few hours until Avriel could be human enough to leave.

"I dream about-" he stops.

He might say the next thing and then Eden won't tell him it's okay and that he loves him.

Av squeezes his eyes shut, furling up into himself again. He retracts his hand, shame making his skin hot, dislike for the sensation making it crawl next and the underlying, nagging thought that maybe nothing is ever real.

"It's Okay."

Eden's fingers fall on Avriel's tense shoulders, sliding over his skin until he's holding Avriel again. No matter how often he tries to run away, it doesn't matter, Eden follows. All his life, Avriel didn't know he was waiting for someone like him, someone who'd wait out his difficult moments, and be his tether when he was feeling flighty.

He can't fathom a future without Eden.

The weight of Eden's head resting on Avriel's is soothing. Sometimes that's all they do. Avriel gets home from helping out his old neighbours with their broken machines and Eden curls up on him on the couch. He feels more human after, every time. Less like a figurehead that is supposed to solve everyone's problems, more like a person with his own thoughts and feelings. Eden always knows how to bring him back.

"Tell me."

Avriel says nothing for a very long moment. It's not normal, he knows that, the things he dreams about. Even now, five years later, he can still hear the strain in his sister's voice the day they buried their aunt in the graveyard. Psychopath, she'd called him. Billie was supposed to be the one person who really knew him. If that's what she thinks about him then it's probably true.

Maybe Eden would agree.

"Killing," he whispers.

A log crackles in the fireplace as it falls further into the flame and Av flinches the littlest bit. Ever since Areto, he's never been very good with fires. He doesn't even burn yard waste, just drags it out to the woods to decompose instead.

"Lot of the time, it's Areto. Fireside, like this. Sometimes Reece, often Aspen, hunting me in the dark, never ends until I kill them or they kill me," he says, tone soft, but prone to breaking. The scar on his chest burns at the mere memory of the fight against Aspen in the dark.

"Sometimes," he continues, "Sometimes it's not Areto at the fire. Sometimes it's you and I have to-"

But he can't say it. He can't say it out loud because then it's real and that doesn't make sense, it already is. But maybe if he says it this time it's real here and the trees bloom out of the wallpaper again and the palm he has against Eden's chest is holding a knife and Eden is heavy, limp in his arms.

"I'm sorry," he whispers, too fast, "I'm so sorry, E, I'm sorry I'd never." His breath hitches, tone gone frantic, too airy, his other hand tangles itself in the hair at the nape of Eden's neck. "I dunno why I dream it, I'd never."