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This year, two tributes can win, so long as they come from the same district.
"You need to sleep," Tony said after he'd helped Steve lie down on a patch of moss. "Tomorrow, I'll try to find some herbs that might be able to help with the infection."
In the faint light of the dying day that illuminated the small cave they had crawled into to seek shelter, Tony saw the sheen of cold sweat that clung to the skin of his fellow tribute. He put the back of his hand to Steve's forehead, feeling it burn. The fever was getting worse.
Steve looked like death had warmed over.
Not a lot was left of the well-groomed, handsome son of the only nurse of the district. Steve's once golden hair was dark and matted, his skin ashen and littered with cuts and bruises. He had lost a few pounds since they had been sent to the arena. He was still larger and broader than Tony, who had always been a little short for a boy of seventeen and a little underfed. Even the shadows of hunger and fatigue that haunted all children of their district were more pronounced than usual. Steve was looking worse than Tony had ever seen him. It would be a miracle if he survived the week.
But he kept these thoughts to himself. It was no use confronting Steve with a truth neither of them liked to face when he was this weak.
He fiddled a little with the thin blanket from one of their backpacks to give himself something to do. His hands shook again. They had never truly stopped since he'd set foot in this graveyard.
"You need to sleep too," Steve rasped. He reached out and carded one trembling hand through what was left of Tony's dark curls. The ashes of the artificial fires still clung to him. They had burned a good few centimeters of his hair. He was lucky to have escaped the blazing hell with both his ears still attached to his head, albeit one of them was no longer functioning.
Tony shook his head and averted his eyes. For some reason, he couldn't bear to see the look of concern in Steve’s blue gaze. Something in his insides stirred painfully. "I'll keep watch. Brock, Tyberius, and the other careers are still out there. They'll be hunting us for sure. There aren't a lot of other tributes left for them to massacre."
Steve looked unhappy. "But Tony -"
Whatever he had meant to say next was lost when he began to cough and hack. Hastily, Tony helped him turn onto his side to make it easier for him. He strained his one good ear to listen for approaching footsteps, for the faintest trace that they were no longer alone, that someone heard Steve.
But the only thing that disturbed the nightly quiet was the steady pitter-patter of the stream nearby and the occasional hoot of an owl.
Steve groaned quietly and screwed up his face when the pain in his leg shot through his body. Lost as to what the best course of action was, Tony did the only thing he could think of and began to brush Steve's bangs from his forehead while shushing him softly. That was what his mother had done to him during the long and cold winter nights when they had run out of medicine and coal, and his frail body had been plagued by tremors.
Back when he had still had one parent left.
"I'm sorry," Steve pressed out. He drew a shallow breath through his clenched teeth. "Do we have some water left?"
"N-no," Tony said quietly and pulled the small bottle from his backpack. "I'll go and get some. We need to be ready to move tomorrow anyway. It's too risky to stay in one place too long."
He made to stand up, but Steve caught his wrist.
"Don't go," he whispered.
"I'm not going far," Tony said and tried to pry Steve's hand away. "I'll only go to the river. It's barely fifteen meters."
"Then take this," his fellow tribute said, and pushed his own shield into Tony's hands. "I have no use for it here anyway. I can barely walk without you, no less fight."
Tony looked at the round metal disk in Steve's hands. In its silver middle, the eagle of Panem was engraved. He had seen what Steve could do with it when he was up to form. But now his arms trembled so hard that he nearly dropped it.
"Alright," the younger of the boys agreed reluctantly. "I'll be back in a minute. Try to rest your head."
He slung the shield over his shoulder, checked that his knife was safely in its holster on his belt, and sat up on his heels to go - until he remembered that they were supposed to be the most tragic lovers Panem had ever seen, and that he had expectations to meet.
Without pausing to give himself time to panic at what the people back home would think, Tony leaned down and surprised Steve by pressing their lips together.
The angle was awkward. Their noses bumped together. It was a little off-center, too.
But the soft hum he could hear Steve utter carried a faint, pleased note. He closed his eyes, but Tony kept his open. All over the country, he knew the people would be glued to their screens. The sponsors would be delighted, and the gamemakers pleased. The only thing that sold almost well as bloodshed was love.
Steve's lips moved against his, and Tony was pulled back to the present. He tasted faintly of blood, and the mint leaves they had chewed after their meager dinner. It had consisted of nothing but roots and the handful of berries that Tony had been able to find before the night had fallen. But underneath the grime and the dirt, Tony imagined he could make out something else, something he couldn't name.
Before Steve had the chance to cup Tony's face with his hands, he pulled away. A heat he wasn't familiar with crawled up his neck. His ears were burning, and he felt embarrassment he couldn't explain well up inside him.
"I gotta go, " he mumbled and swept from the cave before Steve had any chance to stop him a second time.
The moon hung low in the sky, a large and pale circle, half-concealed by heavy rain clouds. Tony stuck his head out of the cave, careful to keep himself concealed. His heart began to race. He drew his weapon and looked around for possible threats. When he failed to make out any movement but for an owl that soared across the sky, he replaced the knife and crept forward and down the riverbank. The forest in the distance lay quiet and dark, luring him in with a false sense of security, but there was no such thing as security in the arena.
These were the Hunger Games.
Still, Tony would have preferred it over the cave. He liked neither the sense of vulnerability the open riverbed gave him nor the feeling of being trapped under the earth. If only Steve would have been able to walk, he would have dragged him to the trees to find shelter.
With a shudder, Tony remembered the yellow pus that had seeped from the infected wound on Steve's thigh when he had undressed him the day before, exactly where he crouched now to refill their bottles. The skin all around the deep slash had been an angry red, and thin lines had spanned the limb like cobwebs. It had smelled horrible, and Tony had been close to losing what little he had eaten. But he'd bitten the inside of his cheek and breathed through his mouth while he had methodically washed Steve before cleaning and bandaging the wound, always keen to keep his gaze from straying too far up Steve’s muscular thigh.
Experimentally, he sniffed his own clothes and scrunched up his nose. He stank of sweat, smoke, blood, and dirt. He'd been tempted to join Steve and wash properly, but something had held him back. He wasn't sure whether it had been the idea of undressing in front of Steve or being confronted with the outlines of his own ribs that were visible beneath his skin. He hadn't seen his own reflection since the hovercraft. And he wasn't sure he wanted to.
Maybe...maybe it had been both.
Tony's thoughts strayed back to his fellow tribute.
Steve, thoughtful, strong, talented Steve, who knew how to capture the sunset over the forest on paper with only a handful of lines, and who had helped his mother to care for countless of injured workers so they would to live to see another day.
Steve, brave, bold, idiotic Steve, who had proclaimed his undying love for him, the orphan who’d lost his parents to the Capitol when he'd been nothing but a child, in front of the whole country on live television, and who had pushed Tony aside when the sword of Johann had come down to end him.
Tony could still hear the jeers and the gleeful shouts, could still see the weapons glint in the sunlight whenever he closed his eyes.
The careers of districts one, two, and four had cornered him in the fields behind the cornucopia a few days ago. Tired and hungry, he had ventured into the unknown, painfully aware that he needed to find something to eat if he didn't want to starve to death. But in his exhaustion, he'd walked right into the trap they had set up for him. Until that point, Tony had managed to avoid direct confrontation, but it had seemed that the time to kill or to be killed had come.
He had run as fast as his shaky legs would carry him, dodged arrows and knives, ducked under branches, and jumped over rocks until he had hit a wall. Sure that he would never see his home again or hear his best friends' laughter, he had sent a prayer to whoever would listen as he came to the realization that it was finally over. But then, suddenly, out of the blue, the silver shield he now carried on his back had shot towards him, like a streak of lightning.
Steve had jumped from the rock above him, coming from who-knew-where. His eyes wild and his fists balled he had knocked out two careers before they’d had any chance to regroup. His shield had collided with the third attacker's skull, splitting it open. Blood had spattered. Screams had echoed. The cannon had sounded.
"Run, idiot!" Steve had shouted at Tony, who had stood there, frozen in shock at this unexpected turn of events. "Run! What are you staring at?! Get out of here!"
Tony hadn't needed being told twice. Turning on his heel, he had bolted. A throwing knife had grazed the side of his arm as he fled. A sharp pain had shot through him, but he had ignored it. Only when his head had spun from the loss of blood and he had brought enough distance between himself and the murderous gang, Tony had allowed himself to pause. Before he had been able to do more than wrap a strip of fabric tightly over his bleeding arm, Tony had fainted right where he had stood.
It had been nearly morning the next day when he had come back to his senses, painfully aware of every inch of his aching, bruised body, and the first coherent thought that had come to the forefront of his sluggish mind had been the memory of Steve coming to his rescue.
Tony still hated himself for giving in to his exhaustion. He had missed the projection of the fallen tributes the night prior, and he’d had no idea if Steve had been killed in his attempt to save Tony or if he had managed to escape the mob.
Haunted by his guilt and worry, too tense to cry, Tony had sacrificed the last of his provisions to pacify his grumbling stomach and hurried back to where he suspected Steve to have gone – if he had survived. As he had jogged along the edge of the forest, Tony had wondered why he knew where to look for Steve or why he cared so much what became of him.
Before the arena, they had hardly spoken to each other, had only known their names and faces the way all children knew each other from school or the town square. And now they were tributes, human sacrifices for the amusement of the masses that didn’t really care who lived and who died as long as the last moments of their life were gruesome enough.
Tony had no idea if Steve’s love declaration had been sincere or not, and, even if it were, how he felt about it. There had been no moment of privacy for them to speak about the situation Steve had maneuvered them into with his sad blue eyes and his pouty smile. But whatever Steve was pursuing with this game of his, it was working. They were still alive, and that was all that mattered. Thanks to him, they had a chance of getting back home.
No matter how much more difficult the games had become due to Steve's actions, or how annoyed Tony was that Steve, Fury, and Hill had taken the decision who he loved from him, all Tony knew for certain was that he couldn’t bear the idea of hearing the cannon and seeing Steve’s face in the nightly sky.
Thanks to Steve, Tony didn't need to kill him.
A soft chiming forced Tony to come back to reality. He looked up, his hand already on his knife. Something silver was slowly gliding towards him. Realizing at once what it was but unable to believe his eyes, Tony jumped up and caught the little parachute before it could fall into the water.
With trembling hands, he opened the small container that was tied to it. A strip of paper fell into his lap.
Up your game, loverboy.
Tony scowled at the note written in Fury’s scrawl. He huffed under his breath before he could reign his emotions in. What was that old pirate thinking, giving him orders like that?
But then his curiosity got the better of him, and he pocketed the note to unscrew the lid of whatever their mentor had managed to get them. It was not food, something they would have needed very badly, but a bundle of clean bandages and small, brown bottle containing two, unusually large pills. The label on the side read Morphix and Naproxen .
“Fury,” Tony breathed, awestruck despite himself. He held the bottle to the light. Whoever had sent it must have paid a fortune. “Thank you.”
Tony remained standing for another moment, sure that his face was currently plastered over the screens in all twelve districts. He ought to give the audience something to talk about, so he closed his hand around it and kissed his knuckles. Certain he had done enough to please the crowds, he hastily pocketed the medicine, shoved the parachute and their water bottles into his backpack, and clambered back to the cave where Steve was waiting for him.
“Tony!” Steve exclaimed when he finally crawled back into the tiny space. He tried to stand up, but the little color that had returned to his face after their sparse dinner vanished at the sudden movement, and he looked nauseous once more.
“Hey,” Tony whispered. He deposited their weapons next to them and knelt by Steve’s side.
Steve immediately took his hands in his. “Where have you been? I was worried. You took so long. I feared the worst.”
“Silly.” Tony shook his head. His mouth twitched into a lopsided smile. “The cannon would have told you.” He looked at their intertwined fingers, and his stomach did a weird little flip. “Got a surprise for you,” he said and nodded to his backpack.
“A surprise?” Steve echoed, puzzled. “Food?” he added, hopeful.
Tony grimaced apologetically. “No. But something equally awesome.” He pulled the parachute from the bag, and Steve’s eyes became as round as coins.
“Wow,” he breathed. He turned the silver capsule in his hands. “I’ve never gotten one before.”
Tony’s eyes shot up to Steve’s face. “Never?”
Steve shook his head. “No. Have you?”
Tony nodded. “Once. When that wall of fire chased me.” He pulled the right sleeve of his singed jacket up and showed Steve the angry red scar tissue that stretched from his elbow to his wrist.
“Tony,” Steve breathed, horrified. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier? You carried me all the way here.”
Tony shifted, not meeting Steve’s eye. “It’s nothing. Your injury was much more serious. I wanted to,” he argued lamely. For some reason, he felt the need to defend himself.
Steve took hold of Tony’s arm. His touch was gentle, and his fingers were soothingly cool on the throbbing flesh, but Tony jerked nevertheless. He was about to open his mouth to ask Steve to release him and take his meds when the other boy raised his forearm to his face and placed a tender kiss to the over-sensitive flesh.
A tingling that Tony couldn’t identify where it had come from traveled down his spine, as if hot water was running down his back.
“S-stop it, idiot,” he mumbled, a little ashamed by how flustered he sounded. “You wanted to drink something, didn’t you?”
Steve chuckled quietly at the flush that made Tony’s cheeks burn but obediently took one of the bottles and emptied it. Then he looked apprehensive at the pills in the small glass container that Fury had sent them.
“What is it?” Tony wanted to know, having opened the second bottle and noticing Steve’s hesitation.
“I,” he paused, clearly uncomfortable.
Tony cocked his head, prompting him to continue.
“I can't swallow pills that big. They make me gag,” he admitted miserably.
Tony goggled at him. “How did you take your meds until now? You're the son of a nurse.”
“My Ma always gave me syrups or powder whenever I came down with something,” he said, staring a hole into the floor.
“You…you’ve got to be kidding me,” Tony groaned, having a hard time restraining from rolling his eyes. Steve said nothing in return, but his ears were bright pink.
Fury, you bastard , Tony thought in exasperation. You knew this, didn’t you?
He closed his eyes for all of four seconds, chasing away the mental image of their one-eyed mentor smirking smugly at the screens that showed the pair of them.
It was no use.
Swiftly, he took the meds from Steve, placed one of the pills on his tongue, took a large mouthful of water, and unceremoniously grabbed Steve’s face.
Steve, who had been gaping at him in confusion, was not at all prepared for the attack and easily permitted Tony to stick his tongue down his throat. Just like that, pill and water switched mouths. Only when Tony felt and heard Steve gulp did he draw back.
Spit and water glistened on Steve’s chin, and his cheeks were redder than poppies.
Tony wiped the back of his hand over his mouth.
“There,” he said defiantly. “Not that difficult, was it?”
Steve opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, giving a very good impression of a goldfish. Then he began to snicker.
“What’s so funny?” demanded Tony, though he thought he knew what made Steve laugh. He had a hard time staying serious. It had been a while since he had had any reason to smile, no less to laugh. Certainly nothing in the arena or in the Capitol had sincerely amused him.
“Your face,” Steve snorted, his eyes bright and fixed on him. Tony felt himself pout even more.
“Keep your voice down, will you?” he grumbled. “We don’t want to be found.”
But Steve hoisted himself up with surprising strength given his condition, wrapped his large arms around Tony’s waist, and pulled him into his lap. Tony squeaked embarrassingly as he slumped against Steve’s chest. Nobody the age of eighteen had any right to be as huge as Steve was.
“Keep your voice down, will you?” Steve echoed, and Tony threw him a dirty look.
“You’re way too cheerful, you know,” he muttered, as he rearranged himself in Steve’s lap, careful not to put any weight on the other boy’s injured thigh.
“Sorry, sorry,” Steve said quietly and buried his face in Tony’s neck. His breath ghosted over Tony’s skin as he spoke, and it made goosebumps rise on Tony’s arms. “Just one moment, please. I’ve been wanting to do this for so long.”
There was that treacherous blush again, crawling up Tony’s face. He was surprised he even had enough blood in his body left. He allowed Steve to pull him even closer, and when he found that just keeping his hands hovering in mid-air looked rather stupid, he began to rub up and down Steve’s back. Hopefully, it looked less awkward than it felt, or Fury would never let him live this down if he and Steve managed to get out of this hellhole alive.
“You need to take the other pill too, you know?” he said after a while.
Steve nodded, but it was another minute before he raised his head from Tony’s shoulder to look at him. Their noses were barely ten centimeters from each other.
“Can you, umm,” he stuttered, suddenly weirdly shy. Tony raised an eyebrow. “Can you do it again?”
Tony had feared something like this would be coming. He would have preferred for Steve to take the meds the ‘normal’ way, but Fury had given him too good an opportunity to play the caring, lovesick boy to bypass it. If he backed out now, the audience would start whispering. And a whispering audience was not a generous one.
“Of course,” he therefore said and fished the remaining pill from the bottle. He took another large mouthful of water and proceeded to lean in. But this time, Steve was prepared. He framed Tony’s face with his strong but gentle hands and guided him forward until their lips met.
It was a lot less hurried than the first time.
Perching on Steve’s lap gave Tony a good boost in height, and it was much easier to guide the pill into Steve’s mouth with his tongue.
For the second time, he felt and heard Steve swallow. He made to pull back – only to find Steve holding him in place.
Tony made a noise in the back of his throat and tightened his hands on Steve’s shirt. But Steve wouldn’t budge. He had his eyes closed once again, and then, all of a sudden, there was his tongue in Tony’s mouth!
Soft, warm, but also a little demanding, he caressed Tony’s lips, his tongue, followed the ridges on the roof of Tony’s mouth, and swallowed the helpless little gasps that escaped him.
Their mouths worked in unison, and with each stroke of Steve’s tongue, each nip and each touch, another inch of Tony’s body lit up from inside. When he then proceeded to nibble teasingly on Tony’s bottom lip, the shorter boy could not help but moan and squirm.
“Thanks for the meal,” Steve whispered against his swollen lips what felt like a small eternity later.
Tony blinked. He hadn’t even noticed that he had closed his eyes at some point. For a while there, he had completely forgotten that they weren’t at home, that this wasn’t the garden on top of the training center, but that they were sitting in a damp cave in the arena, injured and starving. He also hadn’t realized that the rushing in his one good ear was not only his blood pumping furiously through his veins but that it had begun to rain softly.
“N-no problem,” he croaked out in response, feeling utterly stupid. He was hot and cold at the same time, trembling and shaking, aroused and ashamed. Steve was close, so close that he could count the freckles on his nose and saw the tiny specks of green in his astonishingly blue eyes even through the darkness of the night. He seemed to glow with a kind of electricity that Tony had never seen before.
“Sleep?” Steve asked quietly after another moment or two in which all Tony did was stare into Steve's eyes, while Steve gently held onto his waist.
Tony seemed to have lost the ability to form coherent sentences, so he only nodded and allowed Steve to manhandle them into a halfway comfortable position on the moss. Tony’s head was cushioned on his chest, and Steve immediately wrapped one arm around him.
“I should, uh, I should keep watch,” he said weakly when he spotted the shield and the knife lying forgotten beside them, and was reminded of their situation, of the danger they still were in.
But Steve only pulled him a little closer, squeezing his waist. “Nobody’s gonna come for us in this weather. You need to sleep too.” His words had begun to slur together. The medicine Fury had sent them was already having an effect on him.
“But -” Tony wanted to argue, but Steve pushed his nose into his hair and kissed him on the forehead. Tony stilled immediately, his heart beating so hard that he was certain the whole arena could hear it.
“Please,” Steve mumbled, his eyes falling shut and his breathing evening out. It was scary how fast state-of-the-art drugs were. “Stay.”
Tony was torn between wanting to give in to Steve’s request and sleep and his fear of being found by the remaining careers. However, with each second that passed, leaving Steve’s embrace seemed more impossible. He was warm and familiar, the only refuge in a world of pain and agony, and the only link to his home that Tony had left. He had risked his life and his future to make sure Tony stayed alive.
Absent-mindedly, Tony found himself snuggling closer.
Exhausted but unable to find sleep, even after Steve had long since fallen victim to the sedative, he touched his lips with the tips of his fingers again and yet again, determined to memorize the feel of Steve’s kiss.
Of all the empty ones they had shared for the cameras, of all the plastic hugs and promises of love and adoration, this one felt…different.
It felt more real than anything else that had happened since Tony’s name had been drawn at the reaping. It was the first kiss that he wanted to belong to him and only him, the first kiss he wished nobody had seen. It was the first time Tony hoped that Steve's feelings were more than just a publicity stunt.
It was the first kiss that made him hungry for more.