The Taste of Blood, The Hunger Games, Cato/Clove, training, vicious
trigger warning for blood and violence
When they first fuck, there is blood on the floor.
He had lashed out, taking his sword and cutting viciously at a fellow trainee’s arm. It was not clean, and there had been cries and blood and a tense anger that vibrated through the room. Cato had stood there after he struck, chest heaving, red and flesh dripping from his sword. While the trainers and healers and others ran around, his eyes locked on her. Laughing. Her smirk was wide, white teeth flashing as she laughs at him. His rage has not cooled yet, and it only boils hotter as she laughs. He does not remember her name, because she is not important to him - yet - but he knows the thin knives that she uses to pin her hair up, the small slivers of metal that she carries with her wherever she goes.
They have carried his victim out of the training room, cancelling the rest of the sessions for today, giving Cato fierce glares, but not daring to punish him. They all fear him, the trainers, his fellow Careers, the medical staff. All of them fear him, but not her. Not the laughing girl with the knives.
She is the last to turn to leave, still chuckling to herself as she heads to the door.
He lets the sword clatter to the floor, red splattering, and he leaps across the room. But she is quick, too, turning again to face him, steel at the ready. The slam into the wall together, his hand pinning on of her wrists to the wall, her knife pressed to his throat. She is grinning, still laughing, and the cool metal on his neck does nothing to chill his rage. “Stop laughing at me,” he hisses, mouth pulled back in a snarl. She laughs harder, head tilting as her dark eyes take in every twitch of his eyes, every bead of sweat that rolls down his face and arms and neck. His hand tightens on her wrist, twisting it, and for the first time he sees something other than mockery in her eyes. A flash of pain. He grins. “What’s your name.” It is not a question from him, but an order.
The pain is gone in her eyes now, and a smirk has replaced her grin. “You don’t know by now, Cato?” she teases, pressing slightly harder with her knife, drawing the thinnest red line on his throat. This time, pain appears in his eyes. “We all know your name, because we just can’t escape the perfection that is Cato. Brutal, bloody, Cato.” She is joking again, and for a moment he considers snapping her wrist. But that knife is so very, very close and so very, very sharp, sharp like her tongue, so instead he sneers.
She is wearing red; red like the blood on the floor, red like the rage that blinds him. There is something about her that draws him in. Well, no, not drawing him in. But it gets to him, sinking into his veins and his bones. She gets to him. She is not afraid. The other tributes avoid his eye, drop their voices low when he is near. Everyone else worships the ground he walks on, steps out of his way, and only speaks when spoken to. She has a bite to her, a sharpness like her knives. And he likes it. She is his match, he knows it instantly. We’ll be in the arena together, and I will kill you. You are mine to kill. My perfect kill. And he presses lips to her, bruising and forceful, and she drops her knife, wrenching her wrist free and gripping the back of his neck, nails digging in.
When they fuck, they are fighting. It is a battle, a first impression, a fight to stay on top, to emerge victorious. Against the wall, she squirms against his weight, trying to get a firm holding on his shoulders as his mouth trails down to her collar bones, leaving bite marks and bruises in its wake. Her mouth is parted, and he wants to hear her say his name, but she only breathes heavily, inhaling suddenly as one of her arms wraps around his neck. His hands are roaming now, one gripping her hip, rough fingers, still stained with blood, squeezing and pulling her towards him. The other is beginning to work at her shorts, exploring below the waistband. She hisses as a finger slips down there.
He is shocked when she pushes him away; shocked by the rejection, and by the force at which she hits him with. Cato stumbles backwards, face twisted in confusion, but she is still smirking. I want to cut off your lips, stupid girl, he thinks, but she acts faster than him. Clove is on him in a second, swiping his legs out from under him and slamming him to the ground. “If it’s a fight you want, it’s a fight you’ll get,” she whispers in his ear as she jumps on top of him.
They struggle together, tearing clothes, tugging hair, biting and pinching and twisting and pushing. His hands are rough and worn, leather like the hilt of his sword. Her fingers are as sharp as knives, leaving cuts all over his skin. But they move in harmony, a strong, forceful harmony, switching constantly between top and bottom.
She does not cry his name, and he has yet to remember hers.
When they are done, he watches her as she dresses, tugging back on the slightly torn clothes. Her hair is a mess now, and she knots and braids it quickly, pinning it back up with the knives. Cato lies still, propped up on his elbows, taking in every sharp angle of her body. Memorizing it. Later he will dream of her, but not in the way boys his age are supposed to dream of girls. He will play her murder over and over again in his head, imagining it, perfecting it. She is his to kill now.
And he is hers. Clove’s fingers had traced so much of his body, clawing at shoulder blades and scraping his waist. She discovered his weak spots, pictured separating the bone and muscle with her knives, smirked as she saw the metal puncturing his skin. He would be hers in the end, and the Capitol - no, all of Panem - would see their most memorable kill.
She moves to go without looking back. “Wait,” he calls out, sitting up. She stops, still not facing him. “You’ve got a name, don’t you?”
Now she turns, smirking, staring at his abdomen before walking back out. When she is gone, he looks down and lets out a high pitched hiss of disgust. CLOVE, it reads in bright red letters, the blood just beginning to trickle out from the wound.
He hadn’t felt a thing.