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Now that Cashmere and Gloss look different, their clients don't request them together anymore. Not like in the beginning, when people wanted 'the set'. When it was bragging rights in the Capitol to have spent a night with the 'Twin Victors'. Cash is frightening now, with perfect straight teeth, eyebrows plucked into symmetric arches, her muscles sculpted to a degree that he can't imagine how much time she spent working out.
On the other hand, he's gained weight, and lost muscle. He's as tall as ever, and hungry as ever, but he's done, he's out of the arena, so while he doesn't have a belly, or chubby cheeks, he can definitely see himself more filled out than the lithe teenager who won in the arena. His penchant to overindulge in wine certainly doesn't help things. But he doesn't see the problem. The less they look alike, the less chance anyone will want to buy them together. And even now, like he is, far inferior to Cashmere by Capitol standards, people still want his company.
This year, Gloss is tense, eager to garner sponsor support, desperate to form alliances with the other districts, anything to help his tribute. Because the boy tribute from 1 is Augustus Braun, who he has been seeing for close to a year.
He lays back on the couch in the Mentor lounge while Cashmere plays a video game, while the other Mentors file in. They've been called in a week early, which is fine by him, more time for him to plan his strategy, to try to help Augustus win. Since the start of the 67th Games, Cashmere has been slowly, tentatively thawing on her strict separation policy. It was always like this: they could be close in the Capitol, and had to be apart at home. It all felt artificial, like he had two different sisters.
"Shoot," Cashmere curses, dropping the remote. He glances at the television screen to see she was killed in the video game.
"Want to go see if Enobaria is around?" he asks. Cashmere and him are damaged - broken from Capitol interference, from the Hunger Games themselves, but with Enobaria there too, it's easier.
"You just want to get wine drunk."
"I want to get an alliance with 2, also." He sits up, and as the video game is turned off, they both watch a preview of the Hunger Games. Augustus's face is on the screen for a moment, his smile bright as he stands before a background of 1's factories.
It's Cashmere's fault, in a way. She told him she needed space. She told him to get out of the Village. Of course he would go back to the only place he ever belonged - the academy. He just happened to get to know an underclassman.
Once they get through the scheduled festivities for the night, Gloss returns to the 1 apartment. It's busy, like it always is before the tributes enter the arena: there's him and Cash and Augustus and the girl tribute, Luxe, and Oracle and two Avox, and Cashmere's agent for her modeling job, Calpurnia, is there also. But he is always looking for a chance to sneak away with Augustus, to the roof, or his bedroom, or some hidden corner, just for an hour or two, since the time before the Games start is dwindling.
He wants to believe it will be fine, that he has trained Augustus well, that Augustus himself has trained well, that the odds will be in his favor, but it's the Hunger Games. No one expected Johanna Mason to win last year, something equally strange could happen this time. The thought turns his stomach, images of Augustus attacked by some new, unfamiliar mutt, or taken down in some freak accident flashing before his eyes each time he tries to sleep.
"Are you thinking about my untimely death again?" Augustus asks, slipping into Gloss's bedroom after Luxe has gone to bed and the Avox have been dismissed for the night.
"No," Gloss lies, but he can hear the pitch of his voice sound unfamiliar to even his ears.
"Come on, I brought your favorite wine, relax."
Gloss knows he should be helping Augustus relax, he is the one going into the arena, after all. But he accepts the wine, and they both get onto the bed, watching some mindless show with the volume low until Augustus bites his ear, a gesture for more attention.
After, when they are lying on his sheets, both a little sweatier than before, Augustus traces lines on his chest with his finger. "Have you ever thought about it… how Augustus is a strange name for someone from District 1?" he asks.
Gloss hasn't, so he says as much. He supposes, now that Augustus mentions it, it's true.
"It's a Capitol name. My parents were Capitolites." This topic of conversation itself is surprising, because in 1, at least for Career trainees, parents were very hands-off. They dropped their children off at the training academy, and housed them for the mandatory school breaks, but otherwise, children were the property of the District.
"You were born here?" Gloss asks, realizing it's his turn to speak.
Augustus nods. "We moved to 1 when I was very young, when my father was involved in a scandal. It would have been better if we had moved to 2, our names would have blended in better there, but there's too much military in 2."
"Why are you telling me this?"
Augustus's sweat has dried, and Gloss can see gooseflesh popping up on the back of his arms. He throws the blanket over them both. "It's my secret. If I die in the arena, I want you to know. But if I win, I'll restore my father's honor, prove I belong here, in the Capitol."
"You'll win," Gloss assures him.
"Then after, things will get better."
Gloss wonders what Augustus is imagining. He needs Augustus to win, can't imagine him dying in the arena, but wouldn't describe "better" as what he's feeling now - wine-drunk whenever he can manage it, whored out at Snow's convenience, more distant with Cashmere than he has ever been.
Once Augustus is in the arena, Gloss needs to get him sponsor money. The tributes from 1 are usually popular, it's true, but he can't go on precedent alone. "I need to talk to you," he tells Cashmere, as they head down to Illyria, the lounge they both frequented less, but had to admit had some clients with deeper pockets.
"What's up?" she asks, her voice low, the kind of speaking only a twin can understand.
"We need to go all in on Augustus, please," he says. "I know this sucks for Luxe, but…"
She sighs, pausing as they step through the elevator doors and adjust to the booming bass coming from the doors nearby. He hasn't told her about his relationship with Augustus, normally he wouldn't need to. But this Cash s different. She avoids him, wouldn't come near him back in 1, and only is seen with him publicly in the Capitol. He is fairly certain she has no idea.
"I know," she says grimly, and for a moment, he wonders if she's caught on to Augustus sneaking off with Gloss, or the way they seemed to know each other better than they should. "There can only be one, after all." Oh. So she just thought he was betting on Augustus to bring them more chance of victory.
He nods, considering the issue settled. Whatever works to get her agreement, he supposes. He dares not risk her ire, her confusing reactions when Augustus's life is on the line.
The arena this year is wet, a rainforest of sorts with tons of shady, vine-laden trees, mutts in the form of jaguars and monkeys, and the ground a deep, mushy mud that was terrible for running in. He tries to imagine what sort of gifts would be good, and what they would cost. Medication, maybe, or a suture kit. Leather to protect against claws and bites. Waterproof boots.
They enter the bar and get drinks, scanning the crowd for potential sponsors. Finnick is there, looking nervous, though Gloss thinks he is playing it off well enough. He's sitting at a table with a high-ranking official, who looks more than thrilled to have the first night with one of the Capitol's new toys. The woman in question is strange, Gloss recalls, wanting to talk after sex, to cuddle, wanting proper companionship. He wonders if Finnick is in any state to provide such a thing.
He looks for Johanna and sees her, being led out to the street by a tech company head rather infamous for his violent tendencies. She looks dazed, and he nudges Cashmere towards the scene. She clicks her tongue. "Well, one less night that Enobaria has to deal with that fucker," is all she says.
When they do find interested parties, they go their separate ways, the understanding clear: they need to be back by morning to help their tributes, and the money goes in the sponsor pool, first for the alliance of Luxe and Augustus, and then for Augustus alone. Gloss finishes a bottle of wine and a tab of Euphoria before he leaves with a man he's only seen in passing, but who keeps bringing the conversation back to Augustus.
Augustus has a real chance, as long as he can pull off the win. Gloss is close to losing his mind from stress and sleep deprivation, and he's sure Cashmere is the same way, especially the way she's been skipping meals and chain smoking cigarettes instead, not that he can say anything with his wine habit. She may not be personally invested in Augustus the way he is, but she does her part as a Mentor, he knows. Perhaps she thinks more glory to District 1 means more prosperity in her modeling career.
But they're both bleary-eyed and trying to forget particularly unpleasant clients when Johanna Mason comes in, taunting them, and Gloss had never previously felt Cash's particular disdain for the girl from 7, but this morning, he wants her to hurt.
"I just thought you might be sick of being someone's puppet after all this time," she says, a challenge, and he's so wound up, so afraid Augustus might die, that he knows he's broken something in her face on the first swing. A puppet? What is he supposed to do? He needs to guarantee the only person he loves beside his sister makes it out of the arena. She's still fresh, in her first season on the whoring circuit, what could she possibly know? She's bleeding terribly, but he swings again, because she's still smiling, amused at his rage.
Finally, it takes Finnick pulling at him, shouting, a glimpse of Cashmere's teary eyes before he realizes it's over: Augustus has won. He drops Johanna's limp body back to the ground, lets Finnick drag her off to Remake or wherever, and feels Cashmere's arms around him.
The way Augustus won was not very strange: he simply shot an arrow through the skull of the last remaining tribute from his perch in a tall tree. It was moderately bloody, moderately exciting, but action-packed enough that no one is calling the Games a let-down. But it's the post-Games interviews that have everyone in a buzz.
In them, Caesar Flickerman asks Augustus about himself, and Augustus explains it all: how he was born in the Capitol, how he was sent to live in District 1 while he was young, and how he volunteered for the Games during the final year that he was eligible, so that he could help restore his family's honor.
"How cavalier," comments Caesar with a strange twist of his lips, and the audience agrees, applauding. "It just goes to show, that the Hunger Games really do tie the Districts and the Capitol ever closer together."
Augustus leaves the interview with the title 'Cavalier Career,' and they depart for District 1 to await his Victory Tour.
During the 68th Games, Augustus comes with them to the Capitol. Chrome stays home, his wife having just had a new baby, and he seems pleased that there are several of them to go back each year, that perhaps he is finished, that he doesn't need to report back anymore.
Gloss had forewarned Augustus about the sex, about the clients even before he volunteered, he felt it was only fair, but Augustus did it anyways. "I figured it would be something like that," he had said. "Every time I see Mentors on television, there's a look…"
"And you still want to do it?" Gloss asked, incredulous. If he had known, at the time, what was going to be asked of him, he thinks he would have let someone else volunteer, would have lived his life out in 1. But Augustus would have still volunteered, would always have volunteered.
Augustus nodded. "It has never been just about me. It's for my dad. My mom. To show the whole Capitol."
Now that they're back in the Capitol, Gloss wonders if the gesture was completely hollow. The Capitol is always moving along towards the next thing. Certainly they love Augustus, but they don't care about what he represents, they love his body, his charm, his chivalry. They love that he belongs to them. They don't care about his father's honor. They won't let his parents move back to the Capitol, at least.
Calpurnia arrives quickly to take Cashmere away, showing her a whole list of appointments they need to get to. Augustus and Gloss attend the welcome dinner, and as predicted, Augustus has a meeting to attend with Snow. After, he comes back to the apartment and looks ill, but the tributes are still there, discussing something with Oracle and the stylist, so Gloss takes him down to Antioch.
"It… He…" Augustus, for once in his life, seems lost for words. He doesn't often drink, or smoke, but now he is eyeing Gloss's wine, and when the waiter next comes around, he orders a drink, his preferred white wine.
Sipping it, he seems to calm, just a bit. His expression dulls from panic to something unreadable, as if he's locked his emotions away. "He told me that was a bad stunt I pulled," he says, voice low under the din of the club-goers. "That I would pay for that."
"What?" Gloss doesn't even know the stunt in question.
"Revealing I'm from the Capitol, that we were banished. He doesn't want people to know that's a possibility, that there's any scandal or dissent."
"What is he going to do?" Gloss asks.
Augustus picks at the peeling top of the table with his finger, then shakes his head. "Don't know. He told me I better keep my head down, do just as I'm told from now on."
Augustus is with a client and Cashmere is in the Mentor booth when there's a knock at the apartment door on the first night of the Games. It's late, nearly dawn, and Oracle is dead asleep and the Avox are gone, but Gloss hears the knock because he fallen asleep on the couch, watching the Games, bottle of wine in hand. It spills as he wakes, a red stain spreading as the last inch in the bottle is now on the plush white carpet of the apartment.
He thinks it's Augustus home early, perhaps too drunk or tired to find his key, but to his surprise it's Enobaria, looking more frightened and tired than he has ever seen her. She is trembling, he can tell, and there's a bruise forming on her jaw. Her hair is frizzy, and she seems to be wearing some sort of lace lingerie set under a fur coat. He beckons her inside and gestures to his room, and he runs into Cashmere's room to borrow some clothes.
She changes while he gets her a glass of water, and he can feel his own hand shaking as he holds the glass. It's obvious this is a client gone wrong, so obvious she doesn't need to say a word, but he wonders if she came here looking for Cashmere and was stuck with him instead.
He hands her the water, she sips it quietly, Cashmere's pants just a little too long for her, and she sits back against his headboard. He can see bruises on her wrists as well, now that she's out of the coat and in a t-shirt. "I think we're fucked," she says at last.
He had just let himself settle down a bit, knowing she was safe, knowing whatever happened was over know, but the 'we' unsettles him. There was someone else with her? Or did she mean whatever happened affected him? Or Cash? Or Augustus? "We?" he asks, his voice weak.
"Me and Mason," she clarifies.
Oh. So some client had wanted the two 'tough girl' Victors as a set. It shouldn't surprise him, not after him and Cash. Some freak will probably want Augustus and Finnick together, too. "What happened?" he asks, the only logical question he can think of.
She sighs, placing the glass down on the nightstand, before telling him what sounds like a nightmare scenario, about four men from the banking sector who brought them to a basement parlor, about how Johanna quickly got nervous when one of them got in too close, about how Enobaria tried to put herself between them, to whisper in Johanna's ear, but Johanna was too far gone, unable to hear reason. She tells him how she bit Johanna's neck, hoping the pain would shock her back into the present, but she just took an elbow to the face for her trouble, and in that brief moment when Enobaria was recovering, Johanna had shoved one of the men, hard, and took off into the night. In the moments after, Enobaria tried to salvage the situation, but the man had hit his head and was furious, and the others held her, demanding the situation be made right.
"I did what I could, but they're going to go to Snow," she says. Her knees are to her chest, and Gloss has never seen her look so vulnerable.
"It's not your fault, it's Mason's fault," he reasons. "She shoved him."
He can hear her grinding her teeth, and the noise is strange, with her teeth carved into fangs. "You know that's not true," she says.
He knows what she means, that no one should be forced to be compliant with rape from multiple strangers in a strange place under threat to their family, but… it was like going into the arena, that was the hand they were dealt. "Where is she now?" he asks.
Enobaria shrugs.
"Well, she didn't run away, did she?"
"Don't know. She wasn't at the 7 apartment when I went by."
Gloss raises his eyebrows. "You didn't go there."
"I did. I was going to tell the old man she was in trouble, but he wasn't home either, no one was there. The door was unlocked, so I just checked it was totally empty, then I came here. I didn't want to see Brutus… like this."
"You can stay here, if you want. I was sleeping on the couch anyways."
"Ok. Thanks."
He can tell she's dead exhausted from the way she doesn't fight him on this. He has a feeling she'll be gone, off to Remake before he is even awake tomorrow morning. He takes the opportunity to interrogate this strange, compliant Enobaria as she's drifting off.
"Do you like her? Mason?" he asks. He can't imagine why she would, but he gets the impression that she does.
She nods. "Yeah. I'm sure she hates me now, though."
After the 68th Games, Gloss can feel everything coming undone. Cashmere had purchased an apartment in the Capitol with her earnings from her modeling, though it was technically in Calpurnia's name, and moves into after just a couple weeks in 1, in order to keep working on her commercials, advertising campaigns, and live appearances. It is strange to have the house beside him vacant, but alright since Augustus is there, three houses down, though really he was with Gloss more nights than not.
Except he isn't. Once Cashmere leaves, he seems to change. Her being welcomed into the Capitol seems to break something inside of him that Gloss doesn't know how to fix. He starts to go home after they hike or get groceries, or might not appear for a day or two. Once, Gloss catches him arguing with his father on the telephone.
"Maybe we should talk," Gloss suggests one night, as they're cleaning up after dinner.
"What's there to talk about?" Augustus asks. His arms remain toned and his physique perfect, unlike Gloss who hasn't kept up with training as strictly since his Games. Now, Augustus looks tensed, ready to attack. "The fact of the matter is that winning the Games was never enough, it was all empty! She wasn't born there and gets to go live in the Capitol, and my father and I will never be welcomed back!"
Gloss puts down the dish towel to face Augustus, trying to process all of this. He knows it's Augustus's dream to move back to the Capitol, but it's Cashmere's dream as well. And what Augustus is saying now is edging towards treason. "I don't know what your father did, but-"
"Nothing!" Augustus cuts him off. It had been the wrong thing to say. "Don't you get it? It was a set-up, he was framed and forced to take the fall!" Augustus is pacing now, running his hands through his hair. "I'm getting literally fucked by these Capitol assholes who screwed over my dad, and for what?"
"Hey, you need to calm down," Gloss says. "I want to help you, but you're getting carried away." It hurts to watch Augustus like this, like something is eating him up inside, like his actual soul is tortured, but Gloss feels rooted to the spot, unable to reach out and embrace him, like Augustus is too volatile at this moment.
"You want to help me kill Snow?" he asks.
Out of everything Gloss had been expecting to hear, it wasn't that. "What are you talking about?" he asks. He had bashed in Johanna Mason's face for treason that was a fraction as explicit, and now this, coming from the mouth of his own lover.
Augustus looks away, and shakes his head, disappointed. "I should have known you'd be no help, in the end. You're too comfortable here, with all your trappings. You can bear getting raped by those Capitol pigs, even sleeping with your own sister if that's what they ask for, because you're a good dog who does as he's told."
For a moment, Gloss is too shocked to even react, too stunned by this dramatic reversal from the man who held him while they slept, who whispered sweet words to him while they laid close. But before Augustus can make a dramatic exit, Gloss recovers himself. "No, you can't just walk away," he says, his voice stronger than he thinks it will come out. "I think the same things as you, a lot, actually. I'm just afraid it won't work."
Augustus looks at him impatiently, as if waiting for him to say his piece so he can leave. His jaw is clenched. But his eyes are on Gloss, inspecting him, trying to find something to latch onto. Gloss can see that he is so hopelessly alone.
"Auggie. Don't say all this to me like they aren't fucking you too," he says, his voice a little disdainful. "There are people I want to murder like I did in the arena, but I don't want to die for it. There's no protection for rebels, they have all the power."
Augustus scoffs, as if disgusted with Gloss's sense of self preservation, but he moves in closer. "So you wouldn't rat me out to Snow, you know, if I did try to work on something… very carefully? Something discrete?"
Gloss knows what Augustus is really asking: if their relationship is over or not. If Gloss can tolerate a rebel as a lover. Augustus knows Gloss would never turn him in, but could he face him? Could he accept him into his bed?
Gloss looks past Augustus, to the kitchen window, to Cashmere's empty house. For once he is glad she knows nothing of his relationship with this man, so tormented by the Capitol's machinations. And then he looks back at Augustus, and closes the distance between them. "Of course not," he says. "I love you."