they lived on the moon : haobin

to please yourself or to please an entire nation who wants you dead

the tributes were all waiting around their chariots, anxious for the ceremony to start, and hao swore he wasn't staring but he was fucking staring. 

i mean, how could he not, with what sung hanbin was fucking dressed in? his outfit was made of pure fucking gold, studded with all these tiny colorful gems that literally made him dazzle. he looked like a god, and despite himself hao couldn't seem to tear his eyes away. 

but then said boy turned and made eye contact with him, and suddenly he wished he was anywhere else. 

he tore his eyes away as quickly as he could, making himself busy with his chariot, running his hands over it like he had some purpose (he absolutely did not). he tried to keep his head down even as he could feel hanbin's eyes on him, until a presence was next to him and his eyes were naturally starting to squint from the light reflecting off of hanbin's clothes. 

"you were staring." 

hao let out an embarrassing mix of a grunt and a hum, and the sound that was meant to be a casual affirmation that was supposed to make him sound aloof and uncaring instead just made him look like a fucking idiot. 

hanbin laughed. at him. good god could this day get any fucking worse. 

"your outfit is kind of impossible to ignore," hao tried, really really hoping he sounded as nonchalant as he told himself he was. 

hanbin obviously took it as a compliment, because even though hao's eyes wouldn't travel higher than hanbin's neckline he swore he could see the happiness radiate off of the other's face. 

"yours too," hanbin returned, looking hao up and down. 

zhang hao glanced down at himself, and suddenly felt impossibly exposed and embarrassed in his tight black leather jumpsuit that he wasn't quite sure even tied into the coal mine theme of his district at all. the stylist had told him he'd look sexy and he'd been too nervous - no, bored, he told himself, not nervous - to say no but he was starting to regret letting the frivolous capitol people do whatever they wanted with him because now here he was, and here was the impossibly attractive sung hanbin of district 1, and god he hoped the blush he could feel forming on his face wasn't showing through all that makeup they caked on him earlier. 

"thanks," hao managed to squeak out, and then his mentor was pushing him into his chariot at the same time that hanbin's was dragging him away and the lights all flashed on and they started moving and hao couldn't focus on anything. his cheeks still felt annoyingly warm. 

the whole event went by in a blur, and although the female from his district (who he had finally learned was named silver) was waving and sending kisses to the crowd as per their mentor had advised, hao stood still. 

was it really his job to please these people? to make them like him enough to maybe help him stay alive? 

the games themselves were fucked up, but the fact that hao was expected to act like he enjoyed this, to act like he liked these people, all for them to joyfully clap and cheer as he was delivered like a lamb to the slaughterhouse was just so fucking ballistic and hao could not for the life of him get his arms to lift, get a smile to graze his face, no matter how hard he tried. 

so he stayed still, he stayed silent, and he stayed aware of the fact that silver was most likely going to be getting a lot more sponsors than him after this. 

before he knew it, it was interview time, and he was watching on a monitor as hanbin giggled and joked with the interviewer. hao was tuning out most of it in order to better focus on how cute hanbin's pink cheeks were, but he did catch onto the very obvious point hanbin made sure to get across multiple times: he was going to survive. no- he was going to win. 

hao didn't doubt it. 

most of the interviews were about as boring as they could get. the guy who had made out with that boy at the reaping, whose name hao now learned was jiwoong, sat completely silent the entire time and refused to say a word. there was also a boy from 4- park gunwook, they called him- who was absolutely murderously insane. everyone could tell. hao wondered if hanbin had a contender for victor because holy shit. not only was this kid massive and rippled with huge muscles, but there was something about the look in his eyes that was terrifyingly not right. something that told hao that if there was anyone to avoid in the arena, it was this boy. 

he watched, only semi interested but trying to be supportive, as silver stuttered her way through her interview, making a few cute little jokes and earning a good amount of pity applause from the audience. she was innocent and sweet, hao would give her that. but that, he was afraid, was nowhere near enough. 

finally it was his turn, and though he had absolutely nothing planned, he did have to admit it didn't go as terribly as he'd worried. the crowd was engaged, he was engaged, and although nothing that he said had any real value at all, he left the stage with a roar from everyone watching and a thumbs up from his mentor, and he was satisfied.