sirens and smoke . Lemour

[анзие (Anz)]

The city speaks memories into his cross-legged frame, his hands pressed white into his knees as Leon tries for calm, for indifferent, for anything but a raw nerve. He can see the path his chariot took through his parade, years and years and years and years ago. Where he met Patricia that one time, can still smell the smoke and feel her company. Snow’s mansion, where he’d pressed the scraps of Nat’s mockery into Glamour’s palm. See his penthouse with its open windows, and picture the place they’d spent many nights before. See Anarcha in hers - smiling.

(He didn’t stop by hers this time. Does it matter, if he’s doing it for nothing?)

What a game it must have been for Glamour - ever the Gamemaker. Ever playing by the Capitol’s rules. And what an idiot Leon must look to everyone who knows them.

He’s not playing. Not anymore. Won’t ever play again - not for the Capitol, not for Glamour, not for his tributes. He’s been shaped too much by them, by the rules they make.

(His heart aches, quietly, for the boy and the girl this year, the ones he’s preparing to fail.)

Footsteps rouse him from the swirl of his thoughts, but Glamour says nothing. Does Leon really expect him to? It was a game.

Leon rests his forehead against the glass and says to his reflection. “You can take it back.” The oasis echoes his words, the false sea lapping over a false beach. Agonizing nights drove him to this moment - wondering if. If he should keep this paradise and continue paying his debt. “It’s yours. Sell it, or something. It doesn’t matter to me.” His fingernails are white pressing against the glass. “You don’t matter to me,” he tries to say, the words tripping out as a lie.

Then, the truth rips itself from his chest and Leon says, “All this time you spent on me just to see me like this - was it worth it? Is being Snow’s pet so worthwhile to you?” He looks over his shoulder, too late realizing that he’s in tears and Glamour is only a blur against the background of gold and blue. “Was seeing me fail year after year not enough for them?” Did they have to send you, too?

He takes a short, stuttering breath, turning away again and says, “I hope you get her, someday. Or at least, I hope you find someone you give enough of a damn about that they don’t end up like me.”

His fingernails are white on the glass, and he wishes the city would speak quietly.

LEON KRIGEL

mieux vaut prévenir que guérir

sorry not sorry

[Baby Wessex d9b [earthling]]

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Glamour Kinkade

your compliments look good on me

[attr="class","Glamscroll"]

Glamour fingered the rose pin on his lapel, the cool metal soothing his nerves. The pin would allow him passage in and out of Training Center, a privilege which had been revoked years ago. It was only after the Bachelorette (and several rigorous interviews with none other than Peacekeeper Tucker) that he'd been given a second chance. Dick had been quite clear about that; Glamour wasn't a trusted confidante of the President any more, but he was a valuable servant. As long as he served, he would be allowed to exist in Capitolite society again.

How he chose to spend his time, in lieu of Gamemaking, was the question he chased all winter. It wasn't that he didn't pine for Leon but he often forgot to call and barely wrote besides. Instead, he hustled. He auditioned to be an anchor but while building his career as Gamemaker, he'd burned a few bridges. Maverick Miles absolutely despised him. So, that avenue closed. He tried modeling but the pay wasn't what it should have been. He thought of working as a stylist but to be relegated to something less than the maestro of the Games rankled him.

By the time the Seventy Fourth rolled around, he was no closer to a steady paycheck or a new passion. But he still had his penthouse and his friends, such as they were. He woke up the morning of the Reaping with his heart pounding. Soon enough he'd had his lover back in his bed and everything else would sort itself out. He spent the day airing out his apartment, ordering an extra cleaning and stocking all the vases with flowers from Four. He'd lost the oasis he'd built for Leon, but he did his best to make his home welcoming. Perhaps they would even spend time together in the Four compartments in the Training Center, once the tributes shipped out. He didn't find the idea so distasteful as he once had.

When finally it came time to see Leon after months and months, he found his heart not racing, but aching. It had been so long and he never knew what to expect from his lover - a quality he usually loved.

“You can take it back. It’s yours. Sell it, or something. It doesn’t matter to me. All this time you spent on me just to see me like this - was it worth it? Is being Snow’s pet so worthwhile to you? Was seeing me fail year after year not enough for them?”

When Leon paused, Glamour started. He'd been listening, mostly, but also he'd been lost in the blue sea of his lover's eyes. He sighed, making the gesture more dramatic by lifting and dropping his shoulders.

“I hope you get her, someday. Or at least, I hope you find someone you give enough of a damn about that they don’t end up like me.”

"Get who?" Glamour said, even though he knew. He rolled his eyes and stood, if only to allow himself the freedom to gesticulate. "Is that what this mood is all about? Katelyn Persimmon? Please. She and I might have been able to come to a professional agreement, nothing more than that. She's a smart girl. But she's still a girl. And even if she looked like - I don't know - Dior Macallan, you are the only person in this entire country that I would have this ridiculous conversation with again and again."

He stopped his pacing, reached into his pocket, and produced a black box. "I'm tired of apologizing for who I am, Leon. I can no more change for you than ask you to change for me. And I haven't. Ever. Despite the opposition it puts us in, despite having to weather the storm of your moods. I love you and will love you for who you are." He put the box gently in Leon's hands as he sank to both knees. "I may have failed at a lot of things since meeting you, but loving you isn't one of them. I just want you to love me, all of me, back."

[the ring]

[анзие (Anz)]

Warmth. Glamour's palms are warm on the back of his, cupped together in a cradle around the small velvety box. Words - ”You left,” or maybe ”I hurt loving you,” - have dried out on his tongue, the implications of the gesture exploding from the center of his chest like the stubborn remnants of electricity after a lighting strike crackling out from his lungs to the tips of his fingers. The pads of Glamour’s fingers nurture the sudden thunder of his heart, heat like a blanket laid over his skin; Leon drags his gaze upwards to meet Glamour’s, too dazed to care that he looks the part and unable to think past you’re insane.

His throat remains constricted, a bubble of breath weighing heavily on his tongue and withholding all of the things he could possibly say in response - ”Why?” remains a question, and ”I can’t,” sounds helpless, uncertain, confused - maybe it’s for the best, Leon thinks, remembering to take a breath. Glamour smells like red wine and jasmines under the sharp sting of his perfume. Something hurts above his lungs.

Leon looks, instead, down at the box sitting innocuously in his palms, silken tufts brushing on his skin with every twitch of a muscle. (”But you left,” and ”I don’t understand,” clamor for voice in his head.) Glamour’s hands fall away as he lifts the top, a gentle pop lingering between them with the air that remained in his lungs. (”This can’t work,” screams over ”I tried to hate you and I can’t,” like a child demanding attention.) Set in a bed of black velvet, the ring reflects light across the brass band, a modest stone set dead center between two vertical lines of gleaming gold - “I just want you to love me, all of me, back.” (”I fell for you without trying,” replaces ”I just wanted to win your game.”) He can’t quite meet Glamour’s eyes again. (”You mean something,” whispers beneath ”Do you mean this?”) His hands drop back into Glamour’s, heart stuttering in place of his tongue.

(”You helped me in Four,” lingers a moment longer than ”We’ll tear each other apart.”)

(”This doesn’t mean anything,” but that first night is drowned out by ”I think I love you,” says his memory, a heartbeat steady beneath his ear and forgetting the waste land the sea left behind.)

(”I won’t,” dies away in place of) “I want to.”

LEON KRIGEL

mieux vaut prévenir que guérir

trust kay to turn a break up into an engagement :x

[Baby Wessex d9b [earthling]]

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Glamour Kinkade

your compliments look good on me

[attr="class","Glamscroll"]

There's a moment when Leon manipulates the box and ring with both of his salted hands, leaving Glamour's lotioned palms empty. It's only then that he really registers what he's done. The ring that he picked out a month prior - in the midst of interviews and ambitions - the ring that he carefully locked away in his safe, the ring that he only took out that morning and put in his pocket, so that it might inspire him to design the perfect proposal before Leon departed in a few weeks. That ring, which was now in Leon's silent possession, which Glamour had given him without even asking the most important question.

The panic pools in his stomach. He lets his body stop by inches, until his ass is rest on his heels. His knees are digging into the carpet and he's utterly helpless. It's so much worse than being choked by Benedict Tucker; at least then he knew that his life was ebbing in the Peacekeeper's grasp. Here, now, his life is at another branching point but he doesn't have any idea what the consequences will be if the worst should happen. His palms are slick with sweat and he just wants to run the fuck away -

"I want to."

Leon's hand is cool and steady in his hand. Glamour strings his fingers through his lover's and lifts. His other hand cups the side of Leon's face. He exhales long and slow, trying to dispell the urge to fly. He's terrified of the uncertainty, of not knowing if Leon will reject him. He's never been closer to the possibility, not since the Sixty-Seventh. And he's also never been closer to being assured of a life filled with his soulmate.

"That's what I'm asking for. No more Bachelorette, no more gossip, no more wondering about whatever anyone else says about us. Whatever happens, I will always love you. No more games," he says, and hears it as soon as it leaves his mouth. He smirks, winks and then sobers enough to continue. On the carpet of his apartment, on both knees, Glamour puts his heart in Leon's hands. "I would do anything for you. I want to spend the rest of my life proving that to you, if you'll let me. Blaise Napollyon Krigel, will you marry me?"

[анзие (Anz)]

Mental scars speak in vivid pictures, overlaid with a buzz of words wrapping Leon in layers of doubt like blanket after blanket draped over his shoulders. The false comfort pulls him away from the possibility of actual warmth - as it has done since his teens, sending him tripping into one set of arms after another. Once the sets of arms matter they are never within his reach, his feet stumbling back away when they came close. After Finn, and after the blows that sent them both spiraling down hoping to catch each other before they fell, Glamour became the first to break that wall. But the scars spoke and soaked them through the bone in the hopes that they drowned.

These same whispers die in flickers of imagined air, rendered speechless by the question and the promise all at once. Leon feels privilege on his cheek, smooth skin circling the bone there - but modesty in the touch on the back of his hands. His eyelids flicker shut before the pad of Glamour's thumb brushes beneath it, light pressure on his lash line as his nail catches on the lashes. "Will you marry me?" Glamour says, and Leon licks his lower lip nervously as a single, angry, manipulative, desperate whisper reminds him of what he's lost to be here with this man. Of who he's lost. 

He wants to. 

His memories of Owen and Scout look betrayed. 

Nat, on the other hand, smiles. He stretches languidly on their couch at home, feet propped on the table despite Arissa's eye roll at his behavior, and grins at his brother. Leon's seventeen again, months before his reaping, and in a fit of anger during an argument, he's suddenly vulnerable to his brother's judgement at his habits. Suddenly, he's seventeen and Nat's alive and it's the first time his little brother has ever sworn at his family.

"That's fucked up, Le. But fuck it. I support you." The memory is so sharp that Leon opens his eyes for a startled moment, remembering the moment of silence before he started lecturing his brother on his use of language around the house, for fuck's sake, Nat, don't you ever fucking swear at me again. 

Leon's words came more out of relief than anything, and Nat just sat there looking like a cat that's got the cream. 

Turning his face into Glamour's palm, he nods. "No more games," he says, squeezing Glamour's hand. "Yes."

LEON KRIGEL

mieux vaut prévenir que guérir