Chapter Text
I wish you could take me upstate
To the little place you would tell me about
When you'd sense that I want to escape
Texas is a landlocked state
It's a little bit far away
From the water, from the home
That I've wanted to make
It's somehow in the city
You make it there
And you make it anywhere,
Mitski, Texas Reznikoff
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It's the first time they're sleeping in the same bed since the move to Seven.
Escapism to Haymitch was imperative, and Chaff would make the necessary pilgrimage to wherever kept his mind in a place of saneness.
A self-sacrificial trek for a self-destructive man. Easy to detonate, difficult to dismantle when mechanized by the worst of his suffering.
Simply put, Seven was better than Twelve or Eleven. The bed was larger, and the lighting of every bulb more intimate.
Together they scrawled a life that drew itself from the blisters of war.
Chaff is tardy when it comes to returning to their room at night. He occupies himself with age-long exercise and ruminations on housekeeping and renovation.
The house was behind Seven's Victor's Village, claimed by trees and wrought with silence. It was a structure that had pretended to die outback like a wounded animal; praying that the predator would not return to it. Safety stayed itself in the overhead brush of leaves. Quiet kissed it gently.
There was nothing to change about it — their living no different to the standard wide domestic home, only born in the shape of a neglected and then tended cabin.
Chaff relinquishes himself to exhaustion, finally, when the weights in both his arms serve their course in bleeding him tired.
Although Snow and the torture had eroded a small amount of muscle mass, his body was dead set on its return. Only could he find certainty in a eternal look of masculinity, one that might've been ephemeral were that he dead.
The house hums its tune of nothing, betrayed by the creaking stairs under him. The floor skirt underneath his bare feet brushed velvet where skin was dry. He trapses towards the eternity of the bedroom, sluggish once he had made his way to the head of the bed.
Certain as death, he watched the look of silver eyes and their deprived awakening. He knew that Haymitch would wait for him rather than sleep half the night with the bed empty.
“Any luck with the exercise?” He drawls, tenor miffed and throaty. His husband lies stiffly; a fly unflinching in a willing web.
“Some. Some, I guess.” Chaff shrugs, stretching out. He feels his muscles contract and his back popping gently, relief blooming where his joints were sore. He removes his sweat-sullied vest and loose sweatpants, blue moonlight leaping across his dark chest. Like a boat passing, he wades into the ocean of their bed.
Still numb to the verb, Haymitch only watches. Chaff admires his eyes. The thing about Haymitch wasn't just his charisma; but the windows of his sight.
Those steel tickets to swooning bodies and sultry responses were a weapon of their own; and yet, they regarded Chaff kindly. Almost innocent, when allowed to shed the skin, and breathe alone in nude.
“I think you should limit it to an afternoon a day. No point running anymore. Here's our stake.” His voice advises, firm with acceptance and disgruntled by the possibility of a challenge. “I want you here all the time. Life isn't worth it if I see you once around a few hours.”
Chaff chuckles, bringing Haymitch's stiff wrist to his mouth, and kissing sweet the pulse point which thrummed under his pecking lips. “You have me all the time. I spend a little time preoccupied at night, and you think the world world has lost itself without me.”
Haymitch furrows his brow, but accepts this — laying his hand over Chaff's grip. “It had, once. And you were burned coming back to me. I can prevent something like that when you're in my line of sight.”
Chaff understands. Haymitch had always been a man of fierce protection and flimsy concern, making himself sick with fate unpreventable. Chaff wouldn't leave him this time, that was certain, but the assurance wasn't. Not enough to woo his decade-of-two love.
He mouths down a line where Haymitch has shown a vein, tasting the slosh of blood through unblemished skin.
“You know I hate you worrying. All that stuff's over. What we've got now is the freedom to be close to each other, but you gotta understand how that means that you can't restrict me. Need you to be easy on me when it comes to how I spend my time, babe.” Chaff continues, parsing his other wrist from the bed and kissing it languidly.
“I am easy, Chaff.” Haymitch huffs, thinking to regain power over his tingling limbs. He doesn't, though.
“Not when it comes to where I go. Sexually, sometimes, maybe, but you're a poor job of a man who doesn't worry. All I want is for you to be casual. Take yourself away from your anxiety. You got me back. I got you equally to me. I want you to have the reins of my life and our love, but I don't want you to chain me to it.” Chaff kisses both of his wrists, slowly, cunningly.
Sensual in his stern words, Haymitch responds in scrambling thought. “...Right, sure.” “And I won't chain you to it neither, ‘cause I love you. And you're too wild to be held down by a damned thing.”
Chaff grins over olive skin, smelling clean soap against his husband's flesh. This is what makes their arrangement worth it, and his survival paramount.
“Just by you,” Haymitch hums. “I'm not interested in going astray. I love you.”
“I know. And I'm here ‘cause I love you too, H. You're the only thing worth mattering.”
Their bed matters. The house and the green outside matters. Tiredly, still firing, they matter together as quietly as possible, well away from the stains that bought them to fruition.
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