#gloss ritchson x yn | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ilguna · 1 month

Note

Piano Sessions: "Out of the Woods" + Gloss, maybe reader and Gloss are exes. Reader included in revolution plans during Catching Fire and trying her best to keep Gloss safe from a distance? Up to you if the reader is successful or not!

☼ out of the woods (Gloss Ritchson) ☼

warnings; swearing, death, death mention, weapon use, ehh gore, blood, the usual hunger games shit.

wc; 3.9k

notes; Piano Sessions: songfic, Out of the Woods by Taylor Swift. the beginning is deceiving, it hits more at the end.

There’s been a few times in your life where you’ve looked back and wished that you could change the outcome of a situation. This usually happens after you’ve made a mistake that you won’t be able to fix.

An off-handed and angry comment you can never take back, that will ultimately end up destroying the person on the inside. It will be the first thing they think of when they look at you, silently wondering if everyone else around them feels the same. And it will be the one thing they’ll hold onto tighter than any other uplifting compliment you’ve given them in the past.

A ruined friendship which had been caused by jealousy and vindictiveness because you’d been quietly growing apart, never bothering to acknowledge it. Instead of cherishing the happy memories and promising to always be there, even when you’re not close, you chose to set the bridge on fire. This left you in a pile of ash and rubble, with an empty space in your heart and an incessant need to continuously fill it.

A shattered heart done with the intention to protect you from himself. No matter how many times you reassured him or begged him to stay, he had his mind made up, telling you that it was for the best. He would never be able to give you the amount of happiness that you deserved. The evidence against that didn’t matter, resulting in you being left behind.

And finally, a decision that has been made for you, bringing you into a situation that you can’t back out of. The layers are too thick, and peeling away at them only ruins the bigger picture, but the further you get buried, the more trapped you become. So, you pick at the paint, hoping it’ll placate your own selfish needs while the others around you continue on as planned.

This is not where the list of mistakes ends, unfortunately. In fact, these aren’t even all of the major ones you’ve made. If given the opportunity, you could probably go on forever, recounting every regret you’ve had in your life, and the way you handled it. The few you’ve listed are just the ones that come to the surface when you’re throwing another pity party.

They’ve been happening a lot more frequently. As much as you try to stop it, by distracting yourself or getting your feelings off your chest—once it starts, it won’t stop. It’s gotten to the point where you don’t even bother to pull yourself together afterward anymore, you simply brace for the next wave that’s inevitably going to come. In the past, you’d only look back at what you’d done when you’d yet again fucked up, but that doesn’t seem to matter now.

A part of you believes that it’s these mistakes that have led you to this point in time. After repeatedly breaking the swear you’d made to pay attention to feelings and actions other than your own, the only way to straighten you out is through the worst punishment. Which is reliving the same event that you’d barely survived the first time around. It’s a rude awakening.

If you were more careful, if you were kinder, if you’d paid more attention, if you stood up for yourself, then you wouldn’t be standing in another Hunger Games arena.

It opened your eyes a little bit. It’s why you’ve been very critical of your actions as of late. All it’ll take is one misstep and a domino effect will begin, and you’ll find yourself with more regrets you won’t be able to live with this time. It would tear you apart if someone innocent died because you couldn’t hold it together.

The last thing you want is to end up in a worse position than you’re already in. Which, to its credit, isn’t exactly terrible. A lot of victors came together to make this alliance possible for a very noble cause, but it’s not exactly what you had in mind when you were drawn out of that bowl in District Eight.

A rebel alliance is a death wish.

In your defense, when Johanna approached you with the offer of joining her, you thought it was done with innocent intentions. She didn’t mention anything about ulterior motives, which you have since assumed it’s because she thought you were already on board. You weren’t. And looking back at it, you should’ve asked more questions.

The issue is that you didn’t feel the need to. You and Johanna are friends, you have been for a couple of years now. You knew that the invitation was coming, and as much as you should’ve been off-put by how long it took her to ask you—there are a lot of familiar victors that have been reaped alongside you.

Out of all the victors that could have possibly got drawn this year for the Hunger Games, it seems as if all the important ones lost the draw, including you. And now that you’ve been talking to Johanna, you can see that it’s no coincidence. The Gamemakers did it on purpose. This has got to be the most nightmarish lineup in Hunger Games history.

Johanna needed time to talk to Finnick and Haymitch about what they were going to do about it. While they expected some interference, they didn’t exactly think that they’d pull out Cashmere, Gloss, Brutus and Enobaria. The best competitors they could’ve grabbed to put up against Katniss and possibly succeed at taking her out and effectively killing the rebellion.

From what you heard, Haymitch put together a list of victors that he thought would be perfect for this alliance. He was mainly focused on skills and what they could bring to the table, while also considering if they’d mix well together with Katniss and Peeta. Katniss being the main concern, obviously.

You, of course, were on this list. As soon as Johanna heard your name come out of Haymitch’s mouth, she pounced at the idea of inviting you. She knew that she could get you to agree, and in the end it would work out in their favor. However, she purposely didn’t take your feelings into consideration.

If you knew the whole story, the allies, the intentions, the sacrifices and the end goal from the beginning—you would not have agreed to join. You cherish your friends and you respect what you’re doing. And while you’d like to be on the right side of the rebellion, you have your own wants and needs.

Johanna made the decision for you.

If you’d made it yourself, you’d be with Gloss, your ex boyfriend. The one person you care about more than anything, the one that you haven’t stopped chasing. The worst part is that he did end up asking you to be in an alliance with him, but you had to tell him no. If he’d gotten to you before Johanna did, you’d be with the Careers right now, keeping a close eye on him.

Now you have to protect him from a distance.

“Go ahead. Try it. I don’t care if you are knocked up, I’ll rip your throat out.” Johanna suddenly snaps.

You tear your eyes away from the jungle’s treeline to look at your allies, who are standing in a tense circle. Katniss has a hand on her knife, knuckles pale from how tight she’s holding it. Johanna has her eyebrows raised expectantly, waiting for Katniss to actually make a move.

“Maybe we all had better be careful where we step.” Finnick breaks the tense silence, giving Katniss a pointed look. He takes the coil of wire that Beetee had risked his life to grab in the Cornucopia, setting it on the scientist's chest. “There’s your wire, Volts. Watch where you plug it.”

Peeta hauls Beetee into his arms since he’s no longer resisting. “Where to?”

“I’d like to go to the Cornucopia and watch.” Finnick says, your face drops completely. “Just to make sure we’re right about the clock.”

Your lips part, intending to object to Finnick’s idea, but the group disperses before you’re able to get one word out, shuffling to the nearest sand strip. Your feet stay glued to the ground, not wanting to follow them.

The only person that notices this is Johanna. You watch as she raises her hand, fingers snapping aggressively in the air to get your attention. Or maybe to get you moving. Either way, you shake your head at her.

“Earth to (Y/n). Let’s go.”

You shake your head gently. “No.” The single word almost cuts her off from how harshly you spit it. “The Careers might not be there now, but they’re going to show up. Why wouldn’t they?”

“We have an advantage on them.” Johanna waves your concerns off. “It’s open water. They won’t be able to sneak up on us.”

“They will.” You tell her.

“(Y/n), there’s seven of us and four of them.” She leans all of her weight onto one hip. “I think we’ll be able to take them.”

I don’t want us to, you think.

If you can help it, you want to keep a barrier between your group and theirs for as long as you can. You know that once contact is made, it’ll be a free-for-all. And that warning you gave to Gloss the night of the interviews won’t mean anything when he’s fighting for his life. His sister’s life.

“But that’s not what you’re worried about.” Johanna says, “Isn’t it?”

You press your lips together, face hardening. You don’t give her an answer when you walk past her, following the others who have almost reached the Cornucopia. Johanna scoffs behind you.

She’s so insensitive.

Peeta carefully lays Beetee down in the bit of shade the Cornucopia provides, and then backs off to wipe the sweat from his forehead. Beetee calls out to Wiress, causing her to come over and crouch beside him. He places the coil of wire in her hands. “Clean it, will you?”

Wiress nods and beelines for the edge of the island, getting down to her knees so that she can repeatedly dunk the coil in the water. Johanna’s just making it to the Cornucopia when Wiress begins the song about the mouse again.

“Oh, not the song again.” Johanna complains, rolling her eyes. “That went on for hours before she started tick-tocking.”

The song suddenly stops as Wiress jumps to her feet, standing rigid as she points to the jungle. “Two.”

You follow her finger, finding a wall of fog creeping onto the beach. This must be what Finnick was telling you and Johanna about earlier. When it started early this morning, Katniss thought it was a result of the rain—the blood rain your half of the group was caught in. It wasn’t until she could smell the sweetness, did she realize that it wasn’t natural.

Finnick said that it felt like his skin was melting off his body when it touched him. The longer it went unwashed from his body, the more the poison sept into his system. The paralyzing effects got so bad that they couldn’t control the spasms in their bodies. It was particularly bad for Peeta, because he’d been involved with a force field accident that afternoon.

In the end, Mags sacrificed herself so that they wouldn’t have to worry about carrying her over Peeta.

“Yes, look, Wiress is right. It’s two o’clock and the fog has started.” Katniss says.

“Like clockwork.” Peeta murmurs. “You were very smart to figure that out, Wiress.”

Wiress simply smiles, going back to singing and dunking the coil. “Oh, she’s more than smart.” Beetee says. “She’s intuitive.” All attention is turned to Beetee, who’s finally coming back to life. “She can sense things before anyone else. Like a canary in one of your coal mines.”

“What’s that?” Finnick asks.

“It’s a bird that we take down into the mines to warn us if there’s bad air.” Katniss says.

“What’s it do, die?” Johanna asks sarcastically.

“It stops singing first. That’s when you should get out. But if the air’s too bad, it dies, yes. And so do you.” Katniss murmurs, walking away to head into the mouth of the Cornucopia.

The conversation ends there. Johanna half-shrugs, following her inside, but for her own reason. You find a box that doesn’t contain anything important to close and sit on top of, staring off at the water, occasionally glancing at the jungle. Johanna pokes around the building until she finds a pair of axes. A mischievous smile crosses her face just before she launches one of them at the golden Cornucopia.

It sticks with ease.

Peeta, who sits in front of you, has drawn a circle into a large leaf that he plucked from the jungle. He uses his knife to map out the arena the best he can, with the Cornucopia in the middle and the twelve strips branching out from it. There’s even circles to indicate the waterline and the jungle.

“Look at how the Cornucopia’s positioned.” Peeta tells Katniss.

She’s leaning over his shoulder. “The tail points toward twelve o’clock.”

“Right, so this is the top of our clock.” He says, going on to scratch the numbers one through twelve around the face. “Twelve to one is the lightning zone.” He labels it so in a tiny print, working clockwise to fill in the wedges that you know.

“And ten to eleven is the wave.” She says.

Finnick and Johanna emerge from the Cornucopia, armed with their preferred weapons. It makes you nauseous to think about who they’ll be using them against.

“Did you notice anything unusual in the others?” Katniss asks you and Johanna, but you’ve seen nothing but blood. “I guess they could hold anything.”

“I’m going to mark the ones where we know the Gamemakers’ weapon follows us out past the jungle, so we’ll stay clear of those.” Peeta says, drawing diagonal lines on the fog and wave beaches. He sits back. “Well, it’s a lot more than we knew this morning, anyway.”

A heavy feeling suddenly weighs in your chest, causing paranoia to creep back into your mind. You glance up, eyes on the jungle, observing it in the new light, but also to make sure that no one has snuck up on you. Your heart seizes in your chest, as you’re met with your worst fear.

Before you can think it through, you’re on your feet, running at them—him. She doesn’t matter, Wiress doesn’t matter. Her throat is slit so wide open, she’ll be dead in a matter of seconds because of the waterfall of blood running down her neck. He, however, can be saved.

If you can move fast enough.

A cannon booms, right as Gloss lets Wiress slide to the ground. From the corner of your eye, you watch as Cashmere rises from her crouch position from the outer side of the Cornucopia, knife in hand, ready to attack your allies.

The sound of whistling air makes your eyes widen. Arrow. You jerk to the left to block Gloss from the assault, taking it in the back of your shoulder. The sharp pain forces tears into your eye involuntarily, the momentum throwing you off balance, making you trip over Wiress’s body.

You barely have enough time to wrap your arms around Gloss before you’re diving over the side of the island, plunging into the warm water with him. At first, it’s fine, but the longer you’re underwater, the more you begin to panic, kicking your legs, flailing your arms. It isn’t until Gloss grabs you, pulling you up, are you able to breathe.

“I thought I told you—” You begin immediately, dissolving into a coughing fit.

On the night of the interviews, you warned him. And it hadn’t been once, you managed to pull him aside twice to make sure the message got through. The first time was just before Cashmere’s interview was about to end, you had a minute to talk, so you dragged him down an adjacent hallway.

Out of habit, you’d reached up to straighten out his suit, fixing his collar. It was a gesture that you’d done over a dozen times before while you were dating. When he broke up with you, it stopped, but only because he didn’t like that you were still insisting on taking care of him. He thought you deserved better, and he didn’t want you to get hung up on him.

It’d been so long since the last time you fixed his clothes that you froze in the middle of it, looking into his eyes to make sure he was okay. You couldn’t find the normal annoyance that he tried so hard to hide in the past. He was vulnerable at that moment, and if you didn’t know any better, you’d say that he was almost out of it—his doubt.

“I want you to be careful in the arena, Gloss.” You said, hands retreating, palms falling onto your dress. “It’s going to be terrible in there, nothing is going to happen the way you expect.”

“That’s how it always is.” He told you, eyes flickering down the hall. “It’s not going to be any different.”

“Yes it will.” You shook your head. “You’re going to be at a disadvantage from the get-go. It may seem that the Games are catered to the Careers this year, but you’ll be wrong. You need to take extra care of you and Cashmere. I don’t want you going into plans half-baked.”

Gloss pressed his lips together. “If you’re so worried about me, then why don’t you join us?”

“I can’t.” You whispered. “It’s too late now.”

“How do I know you’re not trying to sabotage me?”

You blinked, a pout forming. “When have I ever set you up to tear you down?” You countered.

The two of you stood in silence, eye contact underwavering. He was searching for an explanation in your eyes, one that he wouldn’t find, despite how intense you were making it. You were trying to instill it in his brain. He needed to trust you. You needed him to trust you.

“Gloss Ritchson!” A voice shouted down the hall. “It’s time!”

He looked past you, taking his first step to go around you. You grabbed his wrist, causing him to hesitate. “Trust me, please.” You begged him. “It’s my turn to protect you.”

It must’ve felt like a hot iron touched him, because his whole body flinched at the reference to your break up a year ago. His face twisted, lips parting, but no words came out. All he could do was move forward, toward the waiting staff at the end of the hall. You watched him go, and then crossed your fingers that it had worked.

You were trying to shock him into considering it, by using his own words against him. The night the two of you broke up was a hard one, but it wasn’t sudden. You’d seen it coming for weeks at that point. Gloss was constantly in his head, and it was showing through his mask.

His eyes wouldn’t light up the same when he saw you, he’d always find something else to look at to distract him. He wouldn’t include you in conversations, even if you were standing right there. His touches became infrequent and rare, as if he was afraid that he’d break you if he applied the gentlest touch.

You two were crashing, and there was nothing you could do about it. You tried bringing Cashmere into it, but she said she couldn’t help. She didn’t know what Gloss was up to, and she didn’t want to get in the middle of it. She wanted to preserve the friendship that you two had delicately formed.

When Gloss had finally decided he was done torturing you, or came to the conclusion that it’d be better to set you free, you were trying everything you could to hold on. You knew how much he hated to see you cry, and you tried to use that to your advantage when it came to convincing him that you were happy with him. That it’d hurt more if he left you now.

It got him emotional, but it didn’t have the same effect that you wanted. He told you that it was to protect you from the Capitol. They didn’t like that you were dating one of their darlings, when they had other ideas for him. Gloss didn’t want you and your actions to be under scrutiny each time you were with him. He didn’t want you to be miserable, so his solution was to leave.

You tried to tell him he was making a mistake. That in a room full of people, you’d always look for him. And you were never going to move on if you could help it. This made him more stubborn, more determined to push you away, but you’re persistent, and he knows this. A year later, as you promised, you haven’t dated anyone since. You haven’t even looked at anyone in that way, either.

Well, you had a feeling that shock wasn’t going to be enough. So, after the interviews, you caught him one more time. The lobby was dark and packed full of victors, prep teams, escorts, stylists and Peacekeepers alike. Still, you picked him out of the crowd, a grip so tight that you might as well have been handcuffed to him.

He searched your face in the darkness, eyes wide, reaching for you. A pair of hands clamped on your shoulders, yanking you away from him, starting to direct you to the elevators.

“Pay attention in the arena.” You told him. “Do you understand, Gloss? Do not act on whim.”

And then you let go, the Peacekeeper threw you into an elevator with Woof, and you were sent up eight floors. It was the last time you were able to talk to Gloss. You’ve been under the impression that it worked, until now.

A cannon blasts.

“(Y/n)?” Gloss has one hand on the rock island to keep you from drowning in the water.

“I thought I told you to be careful.” You manage to get out hoarsely, the salt water fucking with your throat. “This is not careful. You need to go.”

“What?”

“If they see you here, they’ll kill you. It’s bad enough you killed Wiress. Go, Gloss, before they catch you.” You push his shoulder. “Please.”

“You saved me.” He insists. “Why?”

Your allies are beginning to shout, looking for you. You glance over your shoulder, but all you can see is the black rock. “Please, baby, please.” You beg him. “We don’t stand a chance if you don’t listen to me.” You grab his shoulder. “Go and be careful of the jungle, it’s a clock.”

You turn now, grabbing the edge of rock to pull yourself up, water weighing you down. The second you’re visible, several heads turn, a wave of relief moving through the group. You get to your feet, wrapping your arms around your upper body, feeling the water run down your legs.

“The Careers were just here.” Peeta pants. “Where’d you go?”

You open your mouth to give them some lame excuse on why you jumped ship, when the ground jerks beneath your feet, sending you flying to the ground. The rock that the Cornucopia sits on begins to spin, going from zero to a hundred is the blink of an eye. The force begins to pull you toward the lake.

The lake that Gloss couldn’t have possibly escaped in that short amount of time.

this was part of my 3k celebration!! which took place in fucking october and im still completing requests holy hell.

8 notes · View notes