#and abel

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𝕔𝕙𝕣𝕠𝕟𝕚𝕔𝕒𝕝𝕝𝕪 𝕠𝕟𝕝𝕚𝕟𝕖 ꩜ .ᐟ

ᴛʜɪꜱ ʟᴏᴏᴋꜱ ʟɪᴋᴇ ᴀ ꜱʜɪᴛꜱʜᴏᴡ ʙᴇᴄᴀᴜꜱᴇ ɪᴛꜱ ᴀ ʀᴇꜰʟᴇᴄᴛɪᴏɴ ᴏꜰ ᴡʜᴀᴛ ᴍʏ ᴍɪɴᴅ ʟᴏᴏᴋꜱ ʟɪᴋᴇ ᴀʟʟ ᴛʜᴇ ᴛɪᴍᴇ (ᵕ—ᴗ—)

He doesn’t believe in them.

The evening before had not been his swan song performance, he told himself. Despite the ice feeling foreign and artificial to him, he didn’t think he’d ever skated with such a burst of emotion. There was much he’d tried to compress smaller and smaller inside of himself since the Reaping, tamping it down with misplaced bitterness and a facade of light jokes and ambivalence to the Games. On the ice, he’d laid it all out. The pain, the betrayal, the shock-- but the good too, the people he’d met, making up with Abel, the way a certain stylist occupied every corner of his mind and left him breathless. He didn’t say goodbye to the ice. There’d be so much more to skate about on the other side.

Abel saw him off to the hovercraft. Eli’s hands were shaking, he felt feverish and impatient. He’d rambled about nothing to Abel all morning long, not sure how else to burn off the excess energy and offer some kind of retribution for the lost time that was on him. When they were finally asked to separate, he dug a sturdy hug out of himself for Abel. Then an apology for the last few days, a resounding thank you for the evening prior. An I love you. But not a goodbye. There would be so much more to talk about on the other side.

Satchel was at his side in a clinical underground room. The launch tube sat empty and ominous on the other side of the room. Eli couldn’t look at it, and suddenly all of his usually easy words were lost on him. He felt like he couldn’t get enough air into himself to speak anyways. As the countdown announcements overhead counted back from thirty minutes, he started to wonder if he was even here. The fluorescent lights cast a harsh, artificial glow over everything, his skin didn’t register the rough khaki clothing, the announcements echoed in a hollow, dreamlike way through the catacombs. If he simply let himself go, would he leave his body behind here, drift away?

Satchel was the only thing tethering him. Here, they were alone again, and Satchel was liberal with his touch. Eli knew he was offering him soft reassurances, and though he couldn’t hear them or process them, it smoothed over the roughest edges of the fear clawing at his insides. At the five minute announcement, he’d fallen fully into him, trembling, feeling entirely unlike himself. 

Two minutes.

Eli pulled back to press their foreheads together, eyes squeezed shut and panic strangling the usual life out of his voice. 

“I don’t want to die, Satchel.”

“Then don’t.”

One minute.

They were out of time down here, but Eli clung to Satchel’s hand, only pulling away once the tube closed around him. He pressed his palm to the glass, and on the other side, Satchel aligned his, his fingers spreading over his own like starfish.