The streets smell like rust and motor oil, black spills adorning the railing. Last night's rain failed to rinse anything clean. There’s still a slight mist clinging to the tracks behind the train yard where Riff waited. He leaned back against a concrete pillar, cigarette from the pack he bought at the black market placed behind his ear, blood crusted on his knuckles from a fight that happened yesterday.

He had avoided going to see you that night, already knowing how you’d reprimand him for risking his life by acting like a fool in front of the peacekeepers. He could hear your voice even now. Still, he wouldn’t trade your presence for anyone else’s.

Not that he’d ever tell you that, though he’s sure you already know. You were the only person he’s kept around his entire life besides Tony. One of the only people he put an effort into keeping.

He wanted to keep you away at first, turn his back on you and pretend you didn’t exist. He figured it was the only way to make it through in the districts. Who knows, he might’ve had to face you in the arena if you were that unlucky.

But the moment you began to drift away, he caught you and brought you right back, it would’ve been better to face the consequences when the time came instead of denying himself of you. Of your soft touches and rare kisses. Which you never initiated, something he wasn’t sure if he liked or not.

Riff wasn’t with you, not officially anyway. Then again, he’s never been with anyone officially for long. Just people that come and go, like he’s known his whole life. And you respect yourself enough to not lie around waiting and praying that one day he’d tell you he wanted to be with you and only you.

He’s not too sure he likes that either.

It’s felt like a lifetime since he last kissed you, behind the depot at the loading dock. A kiss he ended too early and regretted it every day after. It was only two more before that one. Each one as electric as the last, full of words he didn’t allow himself to tell you.

He sighed, taking the cigarette from his ear and placing it between his lips, brows furrowing as he lit it up. He didn’t tell you to meet him here, but it’s practically routine for every reaping day. A final chance to say what you wanted while you were still free.

His days of worry were over, though, last year being the final one. Lucky in his life, for once. But now the only one that is left is you.

He tries not to think of the possibility, but it eats him up every time. As distant as he is, he doesn’t know what he’d do without you. And Riff doesn’t believe there is a God but he can’t stop himself from praying that the reaping would spare you for a final year.

He exhales the smoke when he hears your footsteps on the gravel, finally. He doesn’t look up, only flicks off the ash of his cigarette. “You’re late,” he muttered. “You forget ‘bout me or somethin’?”

It’s a half-joke, but he finally takes the chance to look at you. You’re all cleaned up for once, free of grease smeared on your cheek and oil spills on your clothes. Courtesy for the capitol, he assumes.

His eyes scan over you when you sit beside him, taking a drag of his cigarette. “C’mon, girly,” he drawled. “Don’t look like that. Last year until you’re livin’ like the rest of us.”

You sit in silence for a moment, the type of silence Riff has always hated. You don’t lean on him, and he doesn’t offer. There’s space between you, like always. Not enough to be strangers. Too much to be lovers.

“You’re not gonna get picked,” he says finally, his eyes burning into your profile. “You’re lucky like that.”