strings that snap | larry

three

He hates the fact that she sugar coats everything. He wants to know when he's made a mess of things. No one ever told him, but he knows it's all the time. 

With his phone in his hand, he thinks of who to call. He wants to call Porter but she's probably mad at him now. Disappointed in him, at least. Louis didn't deal with disappointment well at all.

"Abernathy?" Louis says, when someone picks up the other line. 

"Tomlinson." It's stoic like he's angry. There's a pause. The voice swings. "Just kidding, hotshot! How's it going?" Louis can call Haymitch one of his close friends and his toughest. He won the Quarter Quell, three years after Louis' games. Haymitch is rambunctious and young and everything Louis wishes he felt like.

Louis feels old beyond his years, if he was being honest.

"Majorly fucked up." Louis says, but for some reason he's smiling.

"Sound a whole lot proud of yourself." He can hear the grin in Haymitch's voice. "I would be if I were you."

Louis likes calling Haymitch, mostly because he knows the other Victor is lonely. He's in his village with not one neighbor. The president had gone and torn the Abernathy family apart and all Haymitch had were his fellow Victors.

"Where are you at right now?" Louis asks.

"Home, but I'll be up there in a few days." Haymitch sounds disappointed. With bullet fast trains, someone would think that getting to District 12 was a much shorter trip.

"Good." Hopefully Mags, Beetee, and Wiress would be there too. Maybe Porter would be in good health. Louis doubted it because she hadn't been on a train in ages. "What did you think of the kid?" He doesn't realize he's saying it until it's out there. 

He knows Haymitch will be honest with him. Mostly because he's not a political man. Haymitch wasn't afraid of hurting feelings and even if he was handsome, he wasn't as charming as some of the other Victors. He had always been blunt.

"I'm Louis, District Five Victor. 47th Hunger Games." He sticks out his hand, robotic. The boy he is talking to shakes it reluctantly. "Good job out there kid."

"You're a kid too, y'know." It looked like he wanted to say more. "You're only two years older." 

 He falters because the newest Victor is right. Louis was seventeen at the time and he felt like he was 30.

"And I don't need your pity." He states. 

"You don't have any of mine." Louis says, because really, he doesn't pity anyone. He's tough and wouldn't shed a tear in front of anyone. At least, he thought so. "You did what you had to do." 

"And what's that? Kill?"

"I'll tell you what advice I gave my tributes this year." He whispers like it's a secret. All four of them, he still remembers their faces so clearly. "One word of advice, the most important. Just stay alive."

Haymitch looks up at him from his seat at the dinner. "That's all?"

"Well, I tell them other stuff. I'm not that bad of a mentor." Louis chuckles. "But it's the first thing I tell them once things get serious." That's a lie. Things are always serious from the start. He wants to get to know his tributes, he really does. But he doesn't want to get too close, never too close.

"Well, hotshot." Haymitch says back. "Staying alive is just one of my many talents."

There's static from Haymitch's end, as if he is thinking. Louis interjects before Haymitch can say anything. "Give it to me straight."