angel aguilar. capitol.

Silly boy, the world has been bending itself to you for as long as you can remember and you never even asked it to.

Your mother was kind, kinder than anyone in the Capitol has any business being, and you can remember many long nights spent cradled in her arms, humming you tunes and smiling down at you with such softness you've never been able to find in anyone else. The tenderness when she used to tuck your hair behind your ears, push it back and out of your face. You remember her cutting it herself, thin shears making their way around your head with such care and attention to detail.

She never did trust anyone else to handle you.

You don't remember it as selfishness though, only ever remember it as love. You wanted to be with her as much as she always wanted to be with you, let yourself be her darling little boy and be doted upon hand and foot. Taught kindness and how to share. Taught not to pull little girl's hair when you wanted their attention, not to push when you were angry and instead to use your words, not that you were a child much prone to the dramatics of emotion. That was one thing that all your teachers loved to boast about, how you never lost your temper, how you could never be antagonized.

You never lost your cool.

You thank your mama for that one. And when she dies, you never stop looking for someone else to share your love with instead.

It happens to you too young, you know. You're eighteen when she gets sick, which is old enough by a mile by District standards to be completely on your own, but eighteen and alone in the Capitol is a dangerous place to find yourself. You're the one who never gets upset though, and you don't panic. You accept your loneliness until you're walking through the Fashion Sector on your way to work at the little seamstress shop you managed to score a delivery job at when a photographer stops you, says something about the light that you don't fully catch and don't start to understand for several months.

But that's your moment. Pack slung over your shoulder, broad grin at the opportunity to meet someone you haven't ever before, to have something new and exciting happen. It's intoxicating, and you're born for it.

He asks your name, for your contact information. Demands your release on the photo, which again you don't understand but you sign the little line anyway and go to work.

The lines of your face show up on a gallery wall a month later, and the calls come in quickly after. You have a rule with yourself about saying no to things, so you go to every shoot, answer every call and say yes, absolutely, you would love to go to the shoot. Quickly, the paychecks grow and your face appears in front of cameras that take pictures for magazines, run ads on Saturn TV for fashion moguls. It kicks you in the stomach when your face is 50ft tall, made up of thousands of pixels on a billboard on Fashion street. The attention, you don't know how to distinguish it from real love, and that's enough for you. Even if it isn't real, if they don't really love you and they just love your face, the way that you grin, the shape of your shoulders and what they look like standing behind a girl with wind in her hair.

You look for love in every moment, and you find it everywhere.

It's your superpower, really.

Bright eyes and brighter smile, it's light that you spread, love that you bring to every room. It doesn't matter if it wasn't there before, you brought it, can't help but fill up every space that you are in with kindness and grace. It can make you foolish, silly boy tumbling into the beds of strangers. You fall in love at the drop of a hat, and fall out of it just as easily, don't blink and it's coming and going.

It's all love, at the end of the day. It really is.