Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/677909.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Choose_Not_To_Use_Archive_Warnings, Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence,
      Underage
  Category:
      F/M
  Fandom:
      Hunger_Games_Series_-_All_Media_Types, Hunger_Games_Trilogy_-_Suzanne
      Collins, Hunger_Games_(2012)
  Relationship:
      Cato/Clove
  Character:
      Cato_(Hunger_Games), Clove_(Hunger_Games)
  Additional Tags:
      Knifeplay, Bloodplay, Masturbation, Clothed_Sex
  Stats:
      Published: 2013-02-10 Words: 4173
****** Knife's Edge ******
by unconventionaled
Summary
     There's nothing that Cato likes more than Clove and her knives.
Notes
     Vaguely inspired by Placebo's Pierrot the Clown. Also this makes me
     really sad because I try to forget that I ship these two because they
     both end up DEAD.
She was eight and she met his eye across the training arena. Mostly they let
the little ones in (he didn’t consider himself a little one, even though he was
only nine) to watch the older pupils and get a taste for fighting. He certainly
hadn’t twirled a knife between his fingers like he’d been born with it attached
to him. Normally he didn’t care about the “little kids”. Cato was old enough to
try constantly to get involved, to do as much as he possibly could. Only three
years before he could be reaped and he fully intended to make the most of them.
Of course, there was no real danger of him going into the games until he
volunteered, but he took the whole thing seriously anyway. Pure coincidence
lead to him meeting her eye, seeing the way she turned her blade as she
pretended to listen to the instructions during a sparring demonstration. He
would have dismissed her as useless, never going to see the Arena, but
something in her eyes told him she knew all of this already. Cato’s stomach
clenched.
---
A year later, he learned her name for the first time. They didn’t let the
trainees fight each other until they were ten when they had their first
tournament with blunt instruments. Not to hurt each other, but to get the feel
for working against someone else who was holding nothing back. Just in case a
young one accidentally got into the Games. He’d won. Everything. His lip was
split open and bleeding, his skin gleamed with sweat, but he’d beaten every one
of his peers. They’d always known he was good, but the look in everyone’s eyes
said something different now. It said he was a future victor.
She leaned against the wall, reigning queen, the haughtiest nine-year-old he’d
ever met with that shrewd look in her eyes as she sized him up. “You want
something?” He grinned. She had to be impressed, the girl-with-the-knives. She
had to.
Sliding the blade of her knife under her fingernails, she half-looked at him.
“You’re not always going to be the tallest and strongest. Straighten up your
form. Or someone will get past your guard.”
Cato gaped. He’d just been victorious. He was king, for the moment, and she had
the audacity to try and steal his throne, shatter his crown? Towalk away? Years
later, he realized it was respect that made her say that, the desire not to see
him die. In the moment it just felt like emasculation. 
“Hey!” he called after her. She turned. “Hey, what’s your name?" 
“Clove.”
Clove. Spices and winds, all wild girl. He would say something to best her but
his mind went blank. Clove. Her eyes burned in his mind for the rest of the
night, pierced only by the knife that always hung between her fingers.
 
                                      ---
The first blood she drew (that he saw) splattered across the floor, glinting
like something precious. If was her first practice tournament with real weapons
and of course, she won. She’d never let him beat her at anything without her
permission. That was how Clove was. One of her braids had fallen loose and
swung around her face as she spun and ducked around the boy who looked like he
could crush her skull in his palms. Her clever face showed only intensity,
focus never once flickering as the knives she fought with flashed in and out
(no throwing allowed, that would kill). Cato resisted the urge to scoff. They’d
give her daggers, throwing knives, anything she wanted in the Arena. How could
they not?
He let himself fall into a daydream he’d slowly begun constructing, the one
where he mentored young, went to the Capitol the year she was Reaped. Assuming
she’d be 18 by then, he’d have been a Victor for at least a year. Maybe two.
Ostensibly he’d be there for his male tribute but it would be her and he’d show
them there was no alternative but to give her sharp, light steel. Something she
could hurl. Bury in the back of this cretin who had nothing on her. He’d never
see her coming. In a real fight, Clove already would have downed him before he
could even touch her.
A collective yell wakened him from his daydream, brought him back to the scene
in front of them just in time to see the arc of blood, the lovely pattern it
made on the ground. There it was, blood and beauty. The knife was still held in
her hand and she had a second one pressed against his jugular, able to dig in
in a flash of motion if she wanted to. Her blades gleamed with the same dark
wetness that she’d drawn on the floor, two long furrows making their way down
the other twelve-year-old’s arm. Cato’s stomach clenched.
He caught up with her as she was leaving, barely damaged (save for a bruise was
beginning to form on the underside of her jaw and something that looked like a
burn mottling her shoulder). “Nice work, Clove.”
She shrugged and ran a finger over the blade that she’d put back into her hands
with the possessiveness of a lover as soon as she was allowed. “I’d have done
better if I hadn’t had to pull my hits.”
Cato didn’t, couldn’t argue, just shuddered somewhere deep inside and watched
her walk away. Pretended he wasn’t staring at the determined set of her
shoulders, the fierceness in her eyes. She didn’t regret the blood. Only that
there wasn’t more of it.
His forehead pressed, hot on cool, against the wall of the shower that night.
Here were the things he knew: he shouldn’t be thinking about her like this.
Clove was twelve, and there was, as Cato had discovered, a world of difference
between being twelve and thirteen. He knew he couldn’t get the image out of his
head, the quick strike and the sudden welling of blood, the way he’d seen her
lick her nails clean when she’d thought no one was watching. He knew his cock
throbbed in his hand, harder with every time that montage played in his head.
Clove, with her knives. Fighting. Clove, drawing blood. Fingernails. Clove.
Giving in, Cato closed his eyes and let his mind take him where it would, to a
place where she threw those knives with unerring accuracy, even looking at him,
and he couldn’t decide whether to watch her or the spurt of blood as she cut,
cut, cut. He could almost imagine that it was her fingers running along the
underside of his cock, thumbing the slit so that he jerked his hips into his
own hand, a moan involuntarily escaping his throat. That she might trail her
blade down his chest and take control like she had from the first moment he
spoke to her and that he could come so hard he saw white and stars and nothing.
His cock pulsed in his hand, shooting off with his cry of pleasure not quite
suppressed because for a moment spatters of blood appeared behind his eyes and
he knew quite certainly that the Clove in his head had made a cut.
Quietly, Cato cleaned himself up as if he could scrub off his shame. This was
wrong, he knew that, but he couldn’t get her out of his head. Nothing and no
one made him quite so happy or quite so insane as Clove did.
 
                                     --- 
At fourteen, she began training extra hard.
Clove had always worked to be the best, the strongest, the most difficult to
beat, but this was something else. This was violent, careless. Cato could see
from a glance that she honestly didn’t care if she hurt one of the other
trainees, only bothered not to kill them because she’d get in the kind of
trouble she didn’t need for a transgression that large. She trained like a
dervish, every inch furious skill, every target she aimed at slain. Those five
bullseyes, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, when Clove tossed her knives like
she didn’t even need to aim to hit the direct center. Each hit echoed through
Cato’s chest and straight to both his heads. 
He stopped what he was doing entirely to watch her work. Leaned against the
wall, all arrogance and well-toned muscle and stared at her like he could eat
her alive. Every one of her throws was perfect, to the point where her
classmates would let her pin them on a target board, even knowing the risk.
Because sometimes her throws weren’t perfect. 
Sometimes Clove hurled one of her deadly projectiles and it sliced into
someone’s skin. Took off a layer, cut deeply, cut them open. Sometimes she’d
turn and meet Cato’s eyes right after her victim’s scream finished rending the
air. Sometimes there’d be a splat of blood on her cheek and always she’d walk
over and pull her knife out of the board or even wall where it had stuck.
Often Cato had to immediately excuse himself for the restroom. He’d hide in the
men’s and get himself off quickly, rubbing his cock and playing it again and
again in his head: Clove, slender limbs, flash of steel, and the sudden pain,
the way she shared it with him. That agony she caused. It never failed. He
convulsed and came violently, release rushing through his veins even as his
hands were coated in come and he needed to get back to the training arena. 
The secretive smiles Clove gave him when he walked back in made him wonder if
she knew what he was doing. Made him wonder if she liked it. Maybe he was
biased, but she didn’t have to hit people ever. Not if she didn’t want to. Of
course, she could just be preparing for the Games, for her Arena, when she’d
have to throw her knife right into someone’s heart without a compunction (the
thought of it made Cato shiver in anticipation – how was he ever going to sit
still with the stylists while watching her?) Part of him hoped it might be for
him anyway. That she might know how much it affected him and enjoy it, or
better. That she might enjoy it just as much.
 
                                      ---
In District Two, there was no “ladies first” as in some of the higher numbered
districts. Male and female tributes were equally impressive, equally valued, so
there was no hope that a scrawny, underfed girl would be eclipsed by a slightly
less scrawny, taller boy if they put him second. District Two didn’t need to
indulge in such petty concerns. He volunteered, of course, but it still sent a
shock through his body when they picked him. It was usually the eighteen-year-
olds who got their chance. No one protested, though. They knew he’d win.
Cato strutted up to the stage, grinning at the raucous applause. Seventy-fourth
Hunger Games, meet your new Victor. He could all but hear the certainty
emanating from every member of his District. One and Four might have someone
good, but he was better. They wouldn’t have a chance against him. He almost
pitied them. Almost.
Arms crossed over his chest, Cato waited for his counterpart to be chosen. He
didn’t hope for much. Someone worth making an alliance with and someone with a
distinctly easy to snap neck when she ceased to be useful. If she was a good
partner he’d kill her quickly, without fuss. She would be from his district,
after all. He owed her that much.
Aurelian Argent, District Two’s Escort, fished around in a glass bowl
dramatically, chasing little slips of paper with his gaudily beringed fingers.
Cato resisted the urge to roll his eyes. All of Panam knew the man was a
flaming homosexual, he didn’t have to make it even more apparent. He drew out a
paper with a flash of his artificially white teeth, snapping it open into the
mike so that the pop echoed around the crowd. “This year’s female Tribute…
Clov-“
A buzzing that might not exist outside of Cato’s head drowned out the rest of
Aurelian’s words. Cato couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, because this was
wrong. She was only fifteen. It wasn’t her year to volunteer yet. Someone had
to take her place. Someone had to volunteer for her.
Silence reigned. No one dared stand up in Clove’s stead. Not her. It was widely
known in District Two that she was a favorite to win. That when she got her
chance, you stepped aside and gave it to her. Secretly, some of the girls who
would have volunteered were probably relieved that they wouldn’t be up against
Cato, that the boy their year might be easier. 
She stepped forward like a queen, not bothering to look at anyone, just staring
straight ahead with a triumphant twist to her mouth. As she passed them, people
began to applaud, their hands slamming together until she was pushed to the
stage by a deafening roar. Cato and Clove! Clove and Cato! Between the two of
them, District Two had a winner this year for sure. 
That ought to have heartened Cato, but in all his imaginings, he’d never once
thought of this. He’d have to go through the girl with the knives to become a
Victor. He’d have to kill her to win. His stomach knotted.
Almost as if she’d had the same thought at the same moment, Clove turned her
head to meet his eyes, eyebrows raising in a flicker-flash so quick he couldn’t
quite be sure it happened until he saw the point of a knife sticking out from
between her fingers, palmed at some point. His mouth ran dry almost instantly.
She could bring him to his knees with a word if she wanted, and he knew,
suddenly, that if it came down to her and him he’d never be able to win.
 
                                      ---
He kissed her for the first time on the train.
For about a second it was Cato’s kiss as the full weight of his body pushed her
much smaller one up against the wall of her room. He dug blunt teeth into her
lip and grabbed her hips, Clove soft and female and pliant under him. That
didn’t last long. She arched her back and took over, twisting one hand in his
short hair and standing on her tiptoes to press into him mercilessly. She
yanked him towards her and even though she was the one pinned against the wall,
Clove was also very much in charge.
In the few snatches of thought he managed to glean when not completely
distracted by her lips on his, her hand tracing down his chest and the way her
leg hooked around his (which completely blew his mind) Cato wondered when Clove
had learned to kiss. He’d had a few quiet trysts over the years but never any
long-term relationship, and neither had she. But she clearly had some kind of
experience with the way she blew through him like a hurricane, leaving him
struggling just to keep up.
Something cold trailed down his neck, making him start. She smirked into his
mouth, lips curving with that easy superiority as he jumped, not letting him
move. Cato’s mind raced even as Clove sucked on his lower lip, but it wasn’t
until the blade ran down his neck, ice-cold and thin-edged that he realized
she’d stolen a knife from the dinner table.
He realized he was well and truly fucked.
--- 
She stole a pair of throwing knives from the Training area, so much like the
one back in District Two. Difference was, where there the others viewed them
with respect, here the inspired flat out fear. Cato liked it. Liked the way
those from the lower districts edged around himself and Clove, liked the way
they stared at her knives, thudding ominously into dummy bodies, and swallowed.
He liked how he knew they were imagining it was them. Their corpses she was
making, rather than just those of stand-ins. At dinner, they sat next to each
other and he knew she had the knives on her because every so often she’d stroke
the back of his hand with a blade between bites. Normally stoic, Cato gasped
and shivered so much that Aurelian asked if he was coming down with a cold.
Clove smirked into her drink and ran the flat of her blade across the front of
his pants. Cato bit his lip. 
She tortured him mercilessly through dinner. Either a flat or a sharp edge kept
running into his skin, under his shirt, across his growing erection. He was
half-hard and trying to listen to appearance strategies while Clove ran her
hand up his thigh. She didn’t have to do much and his imagination would supply
the rest. Just flipping her knife left him driven beyond distraction, because
she could use it like a fifth limb. Play him like a puppet as she cut into his
skin with a gleam in her eye that swallowed him whole. Clove was a cobra and
for her (only her) he'd be swallowed whole.
"I'm done." She pushed her chair back from the table and stood up right in the
middle of the lecture. Cato didn't need to be psychic to realize that she
thought the entire thing was stupid and had no intention of entertaining anyone
else's ideas for the rest of the night. "May I please be excused?" A mockery of
a question. Clove was leaving no matter what anyone thought about it. The
adults just blinked, and she apparently took that as a dismissal. "Coming,
Cato?"
He needed no more invitation. The second he stood, he turned away from the
table, trying to hide his erection. Even so, Cato wondered if it was
pathetically obvious that he trailed after Clove like a puppy. If the mentors
thought that he was compromised when it came to her (he refused to admit that
that was a possibility), they'd be less likely to send him aid, saving the
resources for her. District Two would have a victor. Which meant that one of
them had to die. But that thought tied his stomach in knots in a bad way, so
Cato pushed it away, focusing on Clove's quick steps, drawing her further and
further ahead of him, on the way she leaned against the door to his room with
her eyebrows raised.
Opening the door, she gestured for him to enter as though she owned the space,
as though he'd just been waiting on her word. Part of him had. Because she was
twirling her knives and her slim white fingers worked so quickly around the
sharpness of the blades that he could too easily fill in the blood, the
slickness and the cut. 
Knife as an extension of her arm, Clove pointed to the bed. Her eyes,
devastatingly clever, followed him. Followed his steps, followed the movement
of his body under his clothes. She burned into him. "Lay down, Cato." As soon
as he had, she crossed the room, straddling him. Her center pressed against his
cock through their clothes, hardening him further. She smirked, and it wasn't
kind. "You like this, don't you? You've gotten all worked up... by what? Me
playing with you a little bit? Do you like to hurt, Cato?" He didn't reply.
They were both taunters, but he could say nothing to her, only take her sing-
song mockery because she rocked ever so slightly on top of him and the friction
did absolutely maddening things.
Clove dug her blade into the collar of his shirt. The fabric, so much more
resilient than human flesh, tugged at the blade, not wanting to slice. She
pressed harder. Cato jerked as her knife pieced right below his collarbone.
"Fuck," he hissed. He could hear his shirt finally rend, but the only thing he
could focus on was the way Clove's legs tensed around his hips when she saw the
first blood, the darkening of her eyes as she stared at him with unbridled
lust. Thank god for Avoxes. They'd take away his ruined shirt and not be able
to tell anyone that it had been destroyed. No one needed to know about this.
The Capitol had the right idea about keeping secrets.
"Ouch." She pushed the halves of his shirt forcefully to the side, running her
finger down the line of blood that had welled up. "You got cut." Deliberately
slowly, Clove slipped her finger into her mouth. Cato watched her lick the
blood away with bated breath. Even if he knew what was happening, how and why,
it still enthralled him, captivated him. Part-metal animal, all wild. That was
Clove. Slowly, she again dragged her knife down his chest. The cold of the
blade and the heat of his own blood made Cato groan. Her incisions were
shallow, she wouldn't hamper him for the Arena, but he felt every bit of the
cut, every bit of Clove's utter glee radiating down when his jaw tensed in
pain. His cock twitched. Every time she shifted, the way she braced herself on
his shoulder and put all of her weight on his body, he could feel all of it and
it all ran straight between his legs, the kind of sensation that was impossible
to ignore. She should have been named Athena, for a long-ago Goddess of War. It
would suit perfectly.
"You're making a mess," Clove muttered. She pressed her lips to his chest,
tongue crawling across the cut she'd made. When she bit him, his back arched
and he ground into her, ignoring the way she laughed. "You're going to bleed,"
even left-handed, even not watching, he knew she was making a perfect line down
his abdomen, running right to the edge of his pants and god did he want her to
just breach that edge and take his cock in her hands, or use her tongue with
the same great effect that she swirled it across his bloody skin, "everywhere."
To anyone else that would probably be a threat but Cato heard it as the
darkest, most wonderful-sinful of promises. Her hair trailed over the already-
sensitive skin she'd cut as she progressed downward and Cato murmured "fuck" so
quietly he didn't even know if she'd heard him until she laughed.
Stopping just shy of the bulge in his pants she slid back up his body, ending
with her pussy against him and Cato thought he could feel wetness even though
both their pants which should not be physically possible but maybe it was. Her
knife dipped down to his skin and she ground into him, the twin pressure
unbearably good. His hands fisted in the blankets, not daring to touch her, to
profane her body. Judging from the way she licked her own lip, the force of her
calves against his hips as she rocked, Clove was doing just fine on her own.
She nicked his collarbone and bent over to suck on it, her body flush against
his. Cato could feel every curve. He didn't often have self control problems
but the way she drove her hips against his made his mind go blank and if she
kept playing with those knives like they were part of her own body he was going
to embarass himself thoroughly.
Clove's hiss of enjoyment was all but drowned out by the moan wrenched from
Cato's throat when she bit down and his hips canted involuntarily up, thrusting
into her. The constraints of his pants were unbearable and she began to roll
her hips even more fiercely, her cuts haphazard and even more shallow, a bit
like when she threw knives, her eyes glazed over and fuck the friction was
going to do him in. With any other girl he'd try to get her off first he'd do
something more elegant but this was Clove and he'd been fascinated with her and
her knifes and the cuts she made since the beginning of time so he just thrust
up into her, his cock throbbing as he shot off in his own pants, a veneer of
his own blood covering his torso.
Somehow, even as Cato was falling, Clove found it in herself to laugh, to lean
down and lap blood off of his skin as she slid her fingers into her own pants
and he couldn't quite see what she was doing but before too long she'd keened
and shuddered, rolling to lay beside him in a liquid pile of limbs. He didn't
dare touch her. Her knives were still somewhere on her person and he wasn't
risking that. No. This was her game, the only way he'd ever be able to express
the fascination that had overtaken him since the first time he'd seen her.
Clove rolled of the bed first and he made no move to follow. She raised her
eyebrows, smirked. "Same time tomorrow?" It was all Cato could do to nod.
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