Chapter Text
Mike Wheeler has never had an eye for colour. His mismatched socks and striped shirts tell a story of chaos, not order; a fast, frantic, impulse-driven livelihood. A world never stopping to be watched, to be observed, to be noted. He doesn’t think about the things that he sees: the green of the grass or the pale, washed out beige of the carpet in his family’s living room. He doesn’t care for the shades of the blossoms that bloom every time winter lurches into spring, doesn’t make time to observe the watercolour shades of his sister’s eyes or the chocolate of his mother’s hair. But if anyone were to ask, he’d say that his favourite colours are yellow and blue.
He’s always loved the morning, in that way. The shades of it. The way the streaks of sunrise bleed together like spilled oils, the lilac purple and the bright orange and the soft yellow of the sun blurring into cerulean blue where the sea meets the sky. Sometimes, he can never tell where the sky begins and the sea ends. It fascinates him to no end; has ever since he was a little boy and the concept of the games was foreign and life was scraped knees and meatloaf on Sundays.
Today is July 4th, and the colours of the rising sun are particularly striking. A little starker, more vibrant; concentrated like unmixed squash in the bottom of a cup. Sweet and ripe like the summer, the colours so bright that they border on garish. Almost obnoxious. It makes him think of the overdramatic star-spangled outfits that the perfectly preened career tributes wear at the parades every year. The ones that make Nancy gag at the television.
Maybe it’s a bad sign. The change in brilliance. The sunrise is usually softer. Calmer. This feels…violent. Overpowering.
Mike takes a steadying breath and dips the edges of his toes into the water, the cold wash rushing up to meet him, and bites his tongue. It’s just a stupid sunrise. He’s already lived through sixteen of them. Survived five of them. Kept his name firmly inside the reaping bowl. Nothing is going to change. Especially not because of a stupid fucking sunrise. It doesn’t mean anything. The only thing that counts for something is that he’s lucky enough to only have his name in the bowl once. The sunrise means nothing, and yet…
The radiance of the yellow and the brilliance of the blue is inescapable, almost oppressive, reflecting off of the waves and bouncing onto the glass of his stinging eyes. He’s not crying- Mike Wheeler doesn’t cry, not on reaping days, not ever. And he’s definitely not crying because it’s the 50th games, the 2nd Quarter Quell, with double the amount of tributes. Double the chance. Double the fates. Double the odds.
And he’s definitely not crying because it’s Holly’s first reaping day ever.
Twelve years old. In retrospect, it seems so young, so fresh, so naive; though at the time he hadn’t been scared. He’d felt ready to take on the odds, even if they weren’t in his favour. He remembers it, clear as day: waking up to put on his best clothes, getting his mother to style his hair with the last of the hairspray that she had in the can. He can almost smell it now.
Mike is drawn out of his reverie when he hears the soft padding of feet on the sand behind him. He doesn’t need to turn to know who it is, because there’s only one person who would know to find him out here.
“Mike?” Nancy calls. He can hear it in her voice: the same emotion he’s stricken with. The fear.
After a long beat he spins around, spluttering when his overgrown hair billows over his eyes, and looks at her. She’s dressed to the nines with a pretty pink skirt flowing around her ankles and her hair neatly pinned back into a tight twist. With a harrumph she carefully lifts off her shoes and pads closer, sneakers clutched between her fingers. Wordlessly, Mike watches as she joins him in the water. It rises to her shins, and her jaw steels. Her throat bobs. But she’s silent like a ghost, and he can’t find that he blames her. What is there to say, after all?
“Hey,” he manages. Then, hoping it sounds light, “How’s it feel to be outta this thing for good?”
Nancy shrugs. Mike waits, and picks at the fraying threads of his shirt sleeve. “Good,” she finally answers. “I guess.” She stares off into the horizon, eyes lost. “Don’t have to sit at the kids table anymore. There’s that.”
Mike laughs. Just a little bit, because it isn’t really funny. But she needs this, he can see. Normality. Something familiar, because it must feel so strange, to not be in the reaping bowl for the first time in her living memory. Her first year, safe from the threat of the looming odds, only to be replaced by another Wheeler sibling.
“She’ll be fine,” Nancy continues, somehow sensing his thoughts. “We’ve always been, after all.” The tension radiating off of her body is palpable, but to her credit she hides it well; he only knows because he knows her. He knows her tells, and knows that she’ll put on a front for his sake. And he knows he’ll never mention it, for her sake.
He takes a tentative step towards her through the water. “Yeah,” he agrees quietly. “Fine.”
Nancy doesn’t say anything else for a while, and neither does he, but they stay. Unmoving, quiet, thoughtful. He’d never admit it, but the rise and fall of Nancy’s breaths is a lull, familiar like the District 4 waves he can hear crashing against the shore every night from his bedroom.
“You know,” she starts quietly. “I can’t imagine mom ever being…you know. Our age.” She shakes her head, and kicks her foot into the water. “Like, it would’ve been so easy. For things to be…different. If she’d been…”
Reaped, she doesn’t say. But Mike knows. Everyone knows. Everyone thinks about these things.
“I mean, she knew one of the girls who got reaped,” Nancy continues. “Helena Hargrove, I think?” She kicks the water harder, and it sprays at Mike’s trousers. But he doesn’t care. “She had a kid, and everything. Just a baby.”
She was a baby too, Mike thinks. Everyone in this fucked up thing is.
“Billy Hargrove,” she says, voice tight and clipped. “Was the year above me in school.”
Mike recognises the name, vaguely. Billy’s step-sister, Max, is in his year. They don’t talk. But she looks haunted, far-away.
“Then there’s Joyce,” Nancy breathes, and Mike’s heart squeezes. Joyce Byers. “Everytime I look at her I just…break.”
Mike knows exactly what Nancy means as he visualises the older woman in his head. She’s all jagged cheekbones and hollow deep brown eyes with a permanent frazzled, exhausted look about her. The town crazy. The batshit mom who hides away in the Victor’s village while the world falls apart around her. Or so everyone says. Mike’s not entirely sure if he believes it. Maybe she has a right to be insane. Anyone would be after surviving the games.
“Her son is in my class,” Mike suddenly juts in, surprising himself. “Will.”
Nancy bends down and threads her fingers through the gentle wash of the waves, the water rushing between the tips of them like silk. “He’s got an older brother, too,” she says. “Jonathan. He was in my year in school. Very quiet.” She stands back up, and turns to him. “What about Will?”
Mike shrugs. “What about him?”
Nancy smiles lightly. “I mean, what is he like?”
“Oh.” He stops short, because he doesn’t really know. He’d have to think about it. So he does.
Mike supposes that Will is quiet, too, just like his older brother, but looks like his mother. Dark doe eyes and chocolate brown hair, skin bright white and smooth like a bedsheet. Always doodling in the margins of his textbooks and wearing flannel shirts and covering his mouth with the sleeves. He’s nervous, jittery, the target of many bullies across the years, and in that way, Mike thinks they're similar. It’s strange that they’re not friends. Strange that they don’t talk.
But all Mike says is, “He’s quiet, I guess,” and tries to ignore the way his stomach pulls itself into knots as he thinks of the boy. It must be hard to have your mother as one of the only two living victors of District 4. It must be even harder to have no friends in school, like Will does. “Alone.”
Neither of them say a word more.
Soon it’s time to go. The sun peaks in the sky and the air turns acrid with heat, a tangy sweat blooming from the underarms of his shirt that is only because of the weather. Not because of his nerves. He’s not nervous.
Nancy taps him on the arm and then they’re wading, wading out of the water and back onto the sand. The granules cling to his damp toes and get stuck in his socks when he slips his shoes on, the uncomfortable feeling crawling up his legs. Nancy, as usual, appears unperturbed. Together they trudge up the beach, a comfortable arms length between them, and everything is suddenly heavy. Weighted.
When they reach the path that connects to the road, Mike stops. Takes one last, long, languish look back at the sea.
Wait for me. I’ll be back in an hour.