#unofficial title until i come up with the real title: foot f*tish fic

[vampirehizzies]

the heat of your electric touch by enobariasdistrict2/enobarias on ao3 | clato oneshot | word count: 2.5k

"You were lucky. Probably didn't get any major arteries. Come on, let's get you more comfortable," he tells her after his assessment. A brief glance downward proves him right - the blood loss doesn't seem too concerning. She only nods vigorously, breathing slowing to a steady rate as she waits impatiently for her body to adjust. When he holds out his hand between them, Clove accepts his help, allowing him to guide her to a nearby rock, his palm flat against the relatively small plane of her back. The relief she feels once seated on the cool grey stone and having pressure off her foot is immediate.

Clove accidentally injures herself and needs her district partner's help. Cato comes to the rescue with first aid that might just be too effective.

Read on ao3 or under the cut.

The steel jaws of the snare clamp around her ankle with a vicious, unforgiving clang of metal, teeth grazing the skin of her foot and tearing, before she can yank it away in time. This torturous pain draws an involuntary gasp from her, and every amount of self control she has prevents her from stumbling around clutching her foot like an idiot. The screaming of her nerve endings in that region, and the accompanying sight of blood pouring forth from the recesses of her foot, contribute to her own personal hell, but are not nearly as unbearable as the shame that squeezes her heart, a self-loathing that comes only from her own carelessness and incompetency.

Really, she is, or should be, better than this. A decade of training under her belt, only to be injured by some strange animal trap like a half-witted lower district imbecile? Much like some of the blood vessels of her foot, her pride is torn into pieces.

Clove at least has the strength to not curl into a ball and whimper on the ground the way she desperately wants to. Being idiotic enough to land in an easily avoidable trap is bad enough, but she doesn't need to look like a weakling with low pain tolerance as well. The reputation of her District is too important, the consequences of betraying a home that gave her everything too great. Unfortunately, her nervous system doesn't seem to agree, continuously attacking her with sharp signals of pain that she won't be able to ignore for much longer.

"Clove, come on, why the fuck did we stop - oh," Cato responds to his own question once he sees the issue.

Right. Yet another miserable aspect of her current situation: her ally (and the boy who has become almost an extension of her) is present to witness her humiliation. Although his words are harsh, she detects none of the frustration typically characteristic of her district partner, only a weary exhaustion that she too has been feeling the effects of.

"Listen, I can help you out with that," he offers his assistance quietly. She doesn't face him, instead glaring daggers at her traitorous foot confined by the snare trap at the base of a tree. Judging by the proximity of Cato's voice, so intense that she can almost feel the pulse of the vibrations in the air between them, he is now far closer to her than he strictly needs to be. Clove wonders if she's imagining that heat at her back being a result of his body's closeness, or perhaps it's just the Gamemakers and their sadistic temperature controls.

She removes her boot quickly and tosses it to the side of the path - whether or not she retrieves it later isn't something she cares about at the moment. Clove releases her foot, tentatively setting it on the ground to right herself, taking great care not to place too much weight on the sensitive area, and uses one of her hands to lean against the tree. Unfortunately, her hands are now both very much covered with thick blood, like messy paint splatters across skin that will congeal into a rather lovely if mildly disgusting paste, but Clove can't bring herself to think about hygiene right now.

"God, your ankle is fucked up," Cato murmurs, staring at with widened eyes in morbid fascination. Clove briefly turns her attention away from catching her breath to glower at him for his asinine statement. Unfortunately, he isn't worth the effort it would take to deliver a scathing comeback, and her rapid breaths wouldn't allow her to form a coherent insult anyways.

"I'm fine. We'll rest for thirty seconds and then keep moving," she grinds out between clenched teeth, her voice too high, blinking back tears. Cato's polite enough not to point this out, and she might have considered it a kindness on his part, that he had no interest in extending her indignity, but he could also very well be afraid of the fact that she'd tear him apart for daring to tease her. (Both possibilities are strangely heartwarming.)

Clove is not pathetic enough to be in this much pain, but they've spent hours hunting for the damned wonder-kids from Twelve and if she's being entirely honest, the tediousness of the task is getting to her - to them both. Besides, even if she did experience the sick euphoria of taking her competitors down that everyone back home had promised her, spending her days killing people was unbelievably tiring, even more so than Training had been.

(It's a secret she will carry deep down in her bones, never to be known by anyone other than herself...

or the boy who wordlessly stares at her across the campfire every night with silent understanding.)

"We both know you're not going to be just fine in thirty seconds, Clove," the boy in question mutters softly. The fact that he isn't yelling at her or degrading her for her mistake is jarring. Clove isn't used to him being so subdued. She can see his jaw clenching with irritation, but there are no signs of a classic Cato meltdown, no traces of the boy who could go ballistic at a moment's notice for even the slightest provocation. The absence of bulging veins against a reddening face, and the general lack of a hysterical outburst, is more terrifying to her than anything.

"Yeah? Then what's your plan, genius?" she replies bitterly. Her voice is far more shaky than she wants it to be, frayed at the edges with little of her typical venomous edge to her otherwise mean-spirited words.

Clove has never felt more weak in her life, especially for a technically benign, non-life threatening injury. She can only imagine the disappointment of their family and friends back home, staring at the large screens installed in the Square, watching their chosen Tributes repeatedly disgrace what the Games stood for with their failure to kill Twelves - Twelves, such easy opponents, the laughingstock of Panem. The additive pain of an incoming headache joins the ache of her ankle, the effects of both making her dizzy.

Her partner doesn't answer right away, and only conducts a silent once-over of her from head to toe, mouth slightly parted with concentration in a way that's oddly distracting. His gaze snags on the torn skin at her foot, narrowing in on the wound.

"You were lucky. Probably didn't get any major arteries. Come on, let's get you more comfortable," he tells her after his assessment. A brief glance downward proves him right - the blood loss doesn't seem too concerning. She only nods vigorously, breathing slowing to a steady rate as she waits impatiently for her body to adjust. When he holds out his hand between them, Clove accepts his help, allowing him to guide her to a nearby rock, his palm flat against the relatively small plane of her back. The relief she feels once seated on the cool grey stone and having pressure off her foot is immediate.

"Yeah, I'll be fine. We can just continue on," Clove concludes, her voice a light, breathy gasp, a fragile band that is worryingly close to breaking. She knows she has no chance of convincing him, but sheer stubbornness might work out well in her favor...

"Absolutely not," he snickers, more fond amusement than mocking. Clove inhales sharply when he suddenly drops down to his knees, unfortunately maintaining eye contact - if she didn't know better, almost deliberately. She spends far too much time viciously fighting off the salacious mental images that plague her diseased mind.

Thankfully, he doesn't seem to notice what effect the sight of him kneeling before her has, setting to work with the resolute purpose she's more familiar with from Cato. She watches him more intensely than she should as he shrugs off his backpack, taking in the ripple of his muscles and his confident movements as he pulls out a first aid kit - one of the few salvageable items from Fire Girl's little stunt on the mines. He unravels the white gauzy material and flings it over his shoulder before grabbing the ball of her foot gently and wiping away the blood with a damp cloth.

"I'm cleaning it," Cato grunts in answer to her hiss of discomfort as the searing liquid makes contact with damaged skin. "Last thing we need is you dying of something stupid like an infection," he reminds her, not unkindly, looking up to meet her eyes. Clove is stunned into silence by the impossibly soothing effect of his gaze, the delicate way he handles her foot. The little circles he rubs on the sides of her ankles render her placid, a serene calmness enveloping her as her eyelids flutter, tempted to close and simply let him massage her foot for eternity.

That simply won't do.

"You're taking too long," Clove feels the need to complain, rather childishly - if only to save face, to distract from what she's sure is very visible evidence of the effect he has on her.

Cato only grins at her cheekily. "Yeah, yeah, then do it yourself," he snaps back at her with little fire behind his words. He returns to his task with determined focus, and she's transfixed by the way he dutifully approaches his work, efficient in the way he takes care of the wound for her.

She knows that he's right - the curriculum back home had extensively covered first aid and injury recovery. Clove could have certainly taken care of this on her own - and really, before their circumstances had so drastically changed, she would have had to.

There is no help, no guide, for anyone in the Arena. Although alliances and partnerships were of incredible importance in the initial part of the Games, self-sufficiency was quite literally essential to survival. A Victor that needed assistance beyond the generous gifts of sponsors and the efforts of Mentors was practically a waste, and their Academies would never produce a Trainee who couldn't stand on his or her own, let alone clear them for the Games.

Training had in fact prepared them well for the physical demands and psychological impacts of killing 23 kids, and endowed them with practical survival/first aid skills, but the teachers never told them about some of the unsavory realities.

Long nights staring at the stars after seeing hazy electric-blue images of dead people flash across the black canvas of night sky - lives they had taken, a revelation that Clove knows should have brought exclusively pride with no residual guilt.

Or what to do with the silence that is a natural effect of fellow Careers having long since been knocked down like flies, a stark reminder that just nights before their sleeping space had been alive with the crackling of the fire and the sounds of teenage chatter.

The Academy had also never taught them how to work as a team for so long - by now, had the rule change not intervened, she and Cato would have gone their separate ways or, more likely, fought among each other for the honor of being labelled Victor, as was the expectation of any worthy representatives of Two. Instead, they'd been forced to retain the alliance for convenience.

But alarmingly, it was beginning to not feel that way. Clove had grown rather accustomed to him being an irritating thorn in her side, but somewhere into their partnership he became something other than a meat-headed brute, transforming before her eyes into someone more logical, focused, even receptive to her ideas. It certainly wasn't overnight, but she finds his ego more manageable nowadays. Rather than assuming he had automatic executive authority, he instead deferred to her. Cato constantly checked if she'd had enough to eat from their sponsor gifts, listened respectfully when she suggested something, and had even granted her Fire Girl, the kill that he wanted the most.

These were the signs of a more functional partnership, but none of this explained him holding her foot with such reverence as he cared for the wound, helping instead of hurting, willingly submitting to her needs... It should have been impossible. If anything it is unnatural for people like them to act this way.

Predators, rivals, enemies. This is what they were always meant to be, but Clove isn't sure anymore of this simple fact. She isn't sure of anything, really, only that her foot hurts less now and he managed this small crisis so well she can't help but swell with gratitude and pride for him.

The deep, throaty timbre of Cato's voice cuts through her thoughts. "Clove? You're real quiet up there. Don't tell me you're going to pass out on me over a little blood," he teases lightly, even as his pretty blue eyes glance up at her in wary concern.

Suddenly, she wants to scream in frustration for reasons that have little to do with pain. Doesn't he know who they are, where they are? He really can't be staring at her with such obvious affection, or handling her injury so gently instead of taking advantage of her weakness the way he was trained to. It isn't right, nor is it fair for him to treat her this way, to look at her so softly it hurts, to have a touch that makes her crave more.

"I just know when to shut up, unlike you." It's easy to slip back into the sultry, apathetic voice she usually speaks with, now that the pain in her ankle has been reduced, calmed into dull throbbing.

For as much warmth and concern he dares to show her, Clove will be twice as hard, twice as cruel. It's better this way, for them both.

He narrows his eyes at her in disbelief, then tightens his grip on her foot. "Way to show some gratitude, Clove, really." Cato squeezes her ankle one final time in the wounded area, not enough pressure to exacerbate the pain but certainly enough to make her flinch, before repacking the kit and rising to a stand. She ignores the pinpricks of guilt that prod at her chest when he refuses to meet her eyes.

Clove also will never admit that maybe she wouldn't have minded if he'd taken slightly longer to heal her. The heavy warmth in her foot, left behind from where he'd touched her, would have to be enough.

"Come on, Clove. We still have hunting to do," he reminds her. Hobbling over to her discarded boot, she manages to pull it back on, wincing at her ankle's protest. When Cato wordlessly offers his arm for support, still not looking at her, Clove has no choice but to ignore her pride and accept, leaning into his body far more than was probably appropriate.

"Thank you," she whispers softly into the space between them, not expecting an answer. He pulls her closer to his side in answer, almost compressing her into him. They didn't look like classic warriors, the loyal Tributes their District and country expected them to be. She doesn't even withhold the small smile that pulls at the corner of her lips.

Clove wonders how they must look to everyone back home in Two. Ruthless, courageous soldiers acting like best friends, dangerously teetering towards something more.

Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if she didn't care.