making up for all this mess. (johanna, finnick, ensamble • m • 1/1)
Title: making up for all this mess.
Author: plural-entity.
Rating: M.
Warnings: Triggers for rape.
Words: 3,780
Characters: ensemble. (Finnick/Johanna, Finnick/Annie.)
Summary: This is called survival.
Author Notes: First time writing Finnick/Johanna. First time in a while writing sex. First time writing rough sex. Perhaps a little nervous? I took lots of liberties with this past. Written for upupa_epops’s Adult Theme Comment!Ficathon.
idrilka prompted: Rough sex
Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies, possessed by light.
Tell me we'll never get used to it.
When she’s Reaped, her mentors are an ailing woman in her late eighties who requires a mechanical chair with wheels and a thirty-something brawler who won his Hunger Games by stealing the weapons of his fellow tributes to use against them. Her fellow tribute is an eighteen-year old young man who, like most of District 7, throws around giant logs for a living. A young man who once gave her older sister flowers and asked to hold her hand on the way home from school.)
(She watched, hidden, as he placed flowers on her empty grave. There was nothing to send home.)
She is newly fifteen years old, 5’6, 115lbs wet. She has been working in the lumbar fields for exactly seven months.
Johanna Mason takes the Reaping stage in a worn green dress and bare feet. She tries to stuff the tears that threaten to break as she listens to her mother let out a broken cry in the crowd behind her, as she shakes hands with the male tribute she will train with, and then try to kill. She does not know what is louder-her mother’s sobs, her baby brother’s joining wails, or the blood roaring in her ears.
Juju Snuffin, their Capitol escort, places a hand on her shoulder and turns her around to face the audience. A periwinkle thumbnail digs painfully into her collarbone, and she bites her lip, stares at the cameras to avoid watching her mother fall to her knees.
Later, on the train to the Capital when she is dressed in new clothes and smells like daisies, they sit around the table and eat like equals. Her and her fellow tribute trying too hard to control their rabid indigestion, Juju Snuffin trying to ignore the fact she still refuses to wear her shoes, and their mentors-the man’s called Brix and the old lady’s Sage-just trying to ignore them.
Sage uses a cane to stand to her feet and looks her up and down. She takes Johanna’s hands in her own and examines her knuckles, traces a thumb over the calluses in her palms. She grips her by the chin and twists her head left and right. It isn’t until the old hag pries opens her mouth to glance at her teeth like she were livestock that Johanna slaps her away.
The old woman laughs and slowly lowers herself back into her wheeled chair, taps her cane against her knee thoughtfully.
“You’ve got spunk,” she rasps, as though amused. “But you’re weak.”
When she opens her mouth to protest, the woman reaches up and slaps her hard across the face.
Tears spring to her eyes, and Johanna gasps, clutching her reddening cheek.
“I’m sure you’ve been taught to climb trees,” says Sage. “You’ve been taught which plants are safe to eat, which leaves you shouldn’t wipe your ass with, which wood burns best. I’m sure you could start a fire in your sleep. But do you have the guts to slit someone’s throat? Could you find the underside of a ribcage fast enough to pierce the heart? Could you strangle someone in their sleep? You have spunk, but we’ll see whether you have the heart to be a murderer when the real moment comes.” When Johanna says nothing, merely stares with tear-tracks running down her face, the woman simply nods.
Sage picks up her wine glass and takes a drink. “You’ll play sweet. You’ll play simpering. You’ll play helpless. You’ll win the sponsors who don’t want to see you suffer, then die.”
It comes down to her and a seventeen-year old girl from District 5.
When the girl fights back, and knocks away the hand-scythe, she strangles her until the girl’s face turns blue.
Sage passes away in her sleep before Johanna makes it back home to District 7. She does not cry.
Johanna’s sixteen years old when she meets Finnick Odair for the first time, cloistered around the Training Center as their newest Tributes prepare for their chariot ride around the City Circle.
She has been a Victor for not even a full year yet, her life still doesn’t seem real. Her family has finally settled into their new home in the Victory Square of their District, her little brother has his first new toy since he was born, and her mother is learning how to make real, home-cooked food. She hadn’t been the one to kill her tribute counterpart, but there’s a bit of guilt that sticks in the back of her throat like she should have done something. She visits his grave every so often, the one next to her sister’s. She doesn’t leave flowers, though.
He’s nineteen, gorgeous and charming, and of course, she knows who he is the moment he walks into the room.
She might have only been eleven when he won, but one doesn’t simply forget what it looks like when a man is gutted with a trident.
Finnick is as dangerous as his smile is alluring. So when he walks up behind her and tells her that her hair is pretty, asks her if she’s hiding any knives up her dress, she smiles back at him just as seductively.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?”
His green eyes sparkle. “I’m not the only one.”
She snorts and takes a sip of champagne, moves to turn away. Finnick’s fingers close delicately around her wrist, and he tilts his head close to her ear, as though he were pressing a kiss to her cheek. She feels like a caged animal.
“A pretty girl like you,” he whispers, breath fluttering her hair, “some would do just about anything to know your secrets.”
“Good thing I’m pretty handy with my daggers,” she whispers back, tilting her head up a fraction. She leans into him just slightly, intentionally spills her champagne glass down the front of his baby blue dress shirt. He jumps away, though he doesn’t look angry. She has the gall to smile behind her perfectly manicured fingers as she fakes an apology, then pretends to turn away in embarrassment. Brix, now her mentoring partner, tells her to stay away from the District 4 victor. If she knows what’s good for her. She tells her partner that she wants nothing to do with the men in this place.
Brix gives her a sad look before they turn to greet their lambs, clad in fake leaves and bark.
That evening, the mentors are invited out to a party, one where they are supposed to schmooze and make nice with the richest people in the Capitol. Attendance is not required, but the guards stationed at the exits give the impression that it is a silent mandate.
Johanna follows behind Brix as he introduces her to everyone; lets The People meet their newest victor. Current mentors and old victors accumulate in corners and talk about fashion, politics, trade. Nobody discusses the Hunger Games. It is a quiet sort of understanding that it isn’t polite to harass potential sponsors. She learns early on that getting sponsors has absolutely nothing to do with her-not really, not until the Games start and she sees if one of their tributes can break away from the pack and look important. Right now, this party is about socializing, about forgetting that twenty-four lives sit in the palms of their hands, and in three days, twenty-three will be dead.
Whenever one drink is emptied, another one is pressed into her palm. She drinks too much, and having never been drunk before, her mind is fuzzy. She consumes so much sweet food, she feels as though she will vomit all over their pretty, pretty shoes.
She feigns fatigue and tries to beat a hasty exit sometime around 2am-leaving Brix to fend for himself amongst the dogs. Halfway down the hallway, Johanna slips her heels off to carry them, unsure of her footing. She braces her hand against the wall and stumbles her way to the elevator. A body slides in behind her.
It’s a sponsor, a heavily tanned and tattooed man in his late sixties whose wife is back at the party, following around Finnick Odair because he oozes charm and sex appeal. She thinks that maybe he just wants to talk, so she smiles sweetly and tries to remember through the fog what Brix instructed her to do. She places a hand on his bicep, tilts her head, makes her smile all teeth.
One of his leathery hands covers her pretty smile and the other slides inside the high slit of her dress, slips between her thighs.
The doors close before she can scream.
She sits in the elevator for a while afterward, curled in the corner on the floor, clutching the tattered remains of her dress to her chest. Nobody comes for a very long time-or maybe it’s no time at all, and she just can’t tell. In all honestly, she doesn’t know how long it’s been, hours or minutes. She closes her eyes and tries to breathe, tries to remember that the Hunger Games are over, she won, she’s safe now, she’s safe.
When the doors finally open, it’s Brix and Finnick, both of them sweating and out of breath.
She flinches when Brix kneels down next to her, tries to put a hand on her shoulder.
“I’m fine,” she manages to say, rubbing the back of her hand against her cheekbone. It comes away streaked black and purple with makeup. Mingled in are splotches of red. She doesn’t know when he even touched her face, except for the hand over her mouth. She begins to shake.
Finnick’s shrugging out of his shirt, the stain from her champagne quite evident but dry. He hands it to Brix, who thanks him, and drapes it about her shoulders.
He doesn’t try to glance around the barrier the big man makes with his body, just fiddles with something in his pocket, rocks back and forth on the balls of his feet. Finally, not looking at her, he whispers, “I tried to warn you. I’m sorry.”
“I’ve got her now, Odair,” Brix murmurs as he tries to coax Johanna to her feet. When it seems she won’t comply, he just lifts her in his arms, careful of where her dress no longer covers her. “You might want to get back to the party. I’m sure they’ll miss you.”
Finnick nods, but before he leaves, he touches Johanna’s bare foot with just the tips of his fingers.
Her tributes die at the cornucopia, in a blood bath that leaves both of them unrecognizable. She remembers her sister, torn and broken, remembers how they only sent home a certificate signed by President Snow. Their bodies won’t go home either.
Johanna doesn’t pay attention to any of the other tributes after that. She spends her time in the back of the broadcasting area, drinking. She considers it building a tolerance, because to be around these people for the rest of her life-which will surely be long and miserable now-she will need to become well acquainted with alcohol. She knows that Brix never lets her out of his line of eyesight, for which she is both thankful and annoyed. She will not let anyone get the drop on her again.
Also annoying, Finnick seems to always have something sweet to say when he passes her. His words are saccharine but his green eyes are sad. She wonders if that’s how he’ll keep apologizing.
When the sponsor from the night before steps up beside her, fingers brushing her elbow, not even Brix is fast enough to stop her from kneeing him square in the groin.
“Touch me again, old man,” she snarls, smashing her glass on the ground next to him for emphasis, “and I will end you.”
She tries to call home that night.
The number is disconnected.
She rushes to Brix’s room, bangs on the door until he stumbles out of bed and lets her in. She breaks down, kneels before him on the ground and grips his bathrobe tightly between her fingers.
“Please,” she begs, forehead pressing to the ground. “Please.”
The next morning, an envelope is slipped under the door to her compartment.
Inside are two death certificates.
Finnick’s tributes die the next day, trying to save one another.
There are still seven tributes left, and by the end of the night, he has disappeared from the broadcasting room. She tracks him down later, at the poolside. He’s naked down to his underwear, a plain pair of tight black shorts, lying beside the pool, like he collapse as soon as he tugged himself from the water. He’s glistening wet, bronze hair a stark halo on bright marble floor. He does not say anything to her and she doesn’t say anything to him, just slips the catches on her shoes and hikes her dress up. She sits down next to his feet and slides her legs into the cool water, flicking her toes.
His eyes fix on a bruise on her thigh, five small circles.
Johanna arranges her dress so that the bruises are covered, and kicks, enjoys hearing the splash of the water.
There’s an empty bottle of some alcohol, bobbing around the center of the pool. It’s something with a name that she can’t pronounce, something that is ridiculously strong and ridiculously expensive. She wishes that he would have saved some for her.
“Were you close to either of them?” asks Johanna quietly, not looking at him.
Finnick makes a grunting noise, turning his head to the side along the floor. She lets her brown eyes meet his green ones.
When he doesn’t answer, she figures he must be that drunk, and clarifies, “Your tributes, I mean, were you-”
“I know what you were asking,” he interrupts, voice low and gruff. It might be from alcohol. It might be from anger. It might be from crying.
“I’m sorry.” She doesn’t know if she’s ever done this before. Johanna Mason doesn’t apologize. “That was rude of me.”
“I’ve been a mentor since I was fifteen. I’ve mentored ten kids. One of them has lived.”
Johanna purses her lips.
It wasn’t something that she had wanted to think about-the mortality rate of their job. They raised pigs for the slaughter. They dressed them up before they let them out for the wolves to devour. And the entire time, they smiled and made nice with the folks who ate it up. Besides the numbers of kids that would now die because they weren’t strong enough, fast enough, smart enough to do what she herself had done-she also has to remember the names of twenty-three other tributes. She has the names on two death certificates that she keeps hidden in the bottom of her dresser drawer. Perhaps she should start keeping a ledger.
Finnick sighs. “And he killed himself when he came home.”
“I’m sorry,” she says again, the words foreign on her lips.
“Don’t be,” he says, sitting up, the muscles in his shoulders rippling. “We should get back to the party. Who knows what’s happening?”
When he dries off and steps back into his clothes-not as though he needs them-they step into the elevator together.
Johanna’s feet are bare, heels hanging from her fingertips at her side, and she toes the carpet lazily. Finnick braces his hands behind his head, shirt half-unbuttoned and his tie dangling around his neck. They glance at each other at the same time when the dinging elevator slowly continues to approach the twenty-fifth floor. At the twentieth, she drops her heels and slams her palm down on the EMERGENCY STOP button.
“What-”
She raises up on her toes and crushes her mouth to his, sliding a hand into his hair. She grips hard and lets herself fall back to flat feet-her hand drags him roughly down with her, and he groans painfully into her mouth. His back is arched at an awkward angle, and her neck is cramping from trying to crane up to accommodate what she can’t force. But he doesn’t pull away.
Johanna lets go of his hair to unbutton his shirt the rest of the way, pushes his tie from his neck, scratches her fingernails down his abs.
Finnick hisses and pulls his head away, grabbing her hands. “What the fuck,” he whispers, forehead knocking into hers as he breathes heavily, holding her arms out to either side.
She shrugs. “It seemed opportune.”
“You’re sixteen,” he says, shaking slightly. “Aren’t you supposed to want to wait for love or something?”
“You know what happened in this elevator,” sighs Johanna, stretching her neck forward to nip at his chin. “I’m a murderer. Do I look like the type of girl who’s expecting marriage and children and happily ever after?”
His grip on her wrists slip slightly, and she bites his collarbone, licks the indentations she leaves in the skin.
She bites his ear.
“Fuck me, Finnick.”
Finnick’s head drops back and knocks into the wall before he surges forward, presses her between himself and the elevator doors. He lowers his head and growls, seizing her roughly by the back of her head with one hand and the hip with the other. He tangles his hands in her short spikes, pulling until she whimpers, until he can see the tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. He kisses her until she’s beating at his chest to get him to stop, until there’s no longer air left in her lungs. When he finally lets her mouth go, she pants against his throat for a second before biting his adam’s apple.
He lets go of her hair to grip her by the ass, lifting her. Her legs spread and wrap about his hips. Guiltily, his hand falls into a familiar spot on the still-there bruises he spotted at the poolside.
When his grip starts to loosen, and she slacks slightly in his grip, Johanna arches her back and tugs viciously at his hair. She can feel some strands giving way under the strain, and Finnick lets out a strangled sound that’s halfway between a moan and sob. She takes his bottom lip between her teeth and grits until she can taste the copper tang of his blood. Then she licks it and presses her tongue between his ragged lips to swipe at his. He lets her play for a moment before he bites her tongue, and she gives a very short, muffled squeal.
He holds her up with his body and one hand at her ass, uses the other to undo his belt, let his slacks slip to his ankles.
For a moment, Finnick pauses and pulls away from her mouth. He can see a smear of red under her nose. He wants to ask her if she’s sure, if this is really what she wants. But instead, she thrusts her hand down between him and grabs him roughly, tugging-all dry skin and calloused palm on his hot, aching flesh. She palms his head and then smears the precum glistening in her hand against his chest.
“I don’t have a condom,” he says into her neck, leaving indentations all along her shoulder, marking her skin.
Johanna slips a hand down the back of his open shirt and drags her nails up his back, grinning and breathing through her teeth when he makes a pained noise against her skin. She digs her nails into his shoulder until she’s sure she’s drawn blood and then draws them back down the scratches she’s sure she just made. “Don’t care.”
He presses her dress away from her legs to make space and presses closer, penis brushing her inner thigh and leaving a wet spot against the silky skin there. He tugs her underwear to the side and presses two of his fingers against her entrance, finds her achingly dry.
Finnick groans. “You’re not ready.”
She lets out a small, frustrated shriek and grabs him again, tugging roughly so that he cries out.
“It’s not made of rubber,” he hisses angrily, pressing forward anyway as she leads him toward her cunt.
“Stop being such a bitch,” she snaps back waspishly, dropping her fingers down further to slide against his balls. Finnick’s brows furrow deeply as he feels them tighten in immediate response. The head of his penis is pressed against her cunt, warm and welcoming. She rocks her hips forward, and he tries to fight the urge to sink down into her to the hilt, to pound her like she’s used to this type of treatment.
Johanna sighs and slacks against him, wrapping an arm about his neck. She kisses his nose and lifts her hand to smooth the wrinkles in his forehead. He opens his eyes to meet hers. She licks her lips, still tastes blood, and presses them chastely against his.
Finnick slides home inside her, with a little resistance-but there is too much force behind his thrust for it to be much of a deterrent for him. Johanna tugs his hair and bites her lip clean through to keep from screaming. However, she keeps her torso bobbing, ignoring the burning pain that each pull and push draws from her. He fingers her clit to try and make it easier, sucks her nipple through the thin material of her dress and presses kisses between her breasts.
Eventually, their thrusts become easier, her channel slicker and he meets her kisses breath for breath. She trembles against him, and he thumbs her again, rubbing circles in time with the rocking of his hips to send her crashing over the edge. After she recovers, he thrusts for a few more minutes before pulls out and cumming on the elevator wall between her thighs. Some of it may have gotten on her, but he isn’t paying attention as he sags. She unwraps her legs from about him, and shakily finds her feet.
She straightens her top and tries to recover some dignity.
When it appears that won’t happen, Johanna lets her underwear fall the rest of the way to the elevator floor and pats his cheek. She leans up to brush her lips against his, before she leans to the side and presses the red button on the elevator panel again. She presses the button for the floor underneath the broadcasting room, where everyone is still sure to be-she’ll find her way back to her compartment on her own.
“I think I’ll take the stairs, now,” she says, breathless.
Finnick nods.
When the elevator doors open, she bends to scoop up her heels and then walks out alone.
finis.
Author: plural-entity.
Rating: M.
Warnings: Triggers for rape.
Words: 3,780
Characters: ensemble. (Finnick/Johanna, Finnick/Annie.)
Summary: This is called survival.
Author Notes: First time writing Finnick/Johanna. First time in a while writing sex. First time writing rough sex. Perhaps a little nervous? I took lots of liberties with this past. Written for upupa_epops’s Adult Theme Comment!Ficathon.
idrilka prompted: Rough sex
Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies, possessed by light.
Tell me we'll never get used to it.
When she’s Reaped, her mentors are an ailing woman in her late eighties who requires a mechanical chair with wheels and a thirty-something brawler who won his Hunger Games by stealing the weapons of his fellow tributes to use against them. Her fellow tribute is an eighteen-year old young man who, like most of District 7, throws around giant logs for a living. A young man who once gave her older sister flowers and asked to hold her hand on the way home from school.)
(She watched, hidden, as he placed flowers on her empty grave. There was nothing to send home.)
She is newly fifteen years old, 5’6, 115lbs wet. She has been working in the lumbar fields for exactly seven months.
Johanna Mason takes the Reaping stage in a worn green dress and bare feet. She tries to stuff the tears that threaten to break as she listens to her mother let out a broken cry in the crowd behind her, as she shakes hands with the male tribute she will train with, and then try to kill. She does not know what is louder-her mother’s sobs, her baby brother’s joining wails, or the blood roaring in her ears.
Juju Snuffin, their Capitol escort, places a hand on her shoulder and turns her around to face the audience. A periwinkle thumbnail digs painfully into her collarbone, and she bites her lip, stares at the cameras to avoid watching her mother fall to her knees.
Later, on the train to the Capital when she is dressed in new clothes and smells like daisies, they sit around the table and eat like equals. Her and her fellow tribute trying too hard to control their rabid indigestion, Juju Snuffin trying to ignore the fact she still refuses to wear her shoes, and their mentors-the man’s called Brix and the old lady’s Sage-just trying to ignore them.
Sage uses a cane to stand to her feet and looks her up and down. She takes Johanna’s hands in her own and examines her knuckles, traces a thumb over the calluses in her palms. She grips her by the chin and twists her head left and right. It isn’t until the old hag pries opens her mouth to glance at her teeth like she were livestock that Johanna slaps her away.
The old woman laughs and slowly lowers herself back into her wheeled chair, taps her cane against her knee thoughtfully.
“You’ve got spunk,” she rasps, as though amused. “But you’re weak.”
When she opens her mouth to protest, the woman reaches up and slaps her hard across the face.
Tears spring to her eyes, and Johanna gasps, clutching her reddening cheek.
“I’m sure you’ve been taught to climb trees,” says Sage. “You’ve been taught which plants are safe to eat, which leaves you shouldn’t wipe your ass with, which wood burns best. I’m sure you could start a fire in your sleep. But do you have the guts to slit someone’s throat? Could you find the underside of a ribcage fast enough to pierce the heart? Could you strangle someone in their sleep? You have spunk, but we’ll see whether you have the heart to be a murderer when the real moment comes.” When Johanna says nothing, merely stares with tear-tracks running down her face, the woman simply nods.
Sage picks up her wine glass and takes a drink. “You’ll play sweet. You’ll play simpering. You’ll play helpless. You’ll win the sponsors who don’t want to see you suffer, then die.”
It comes down to her and a seventeen-year old girl from District 5.
When the girl fights back, and knocks away the hand-scythe, she strangles her until the girl’s face turns blue.
Sage passes away in her sleep before Johanna makes it back home to District 7. She does not cry.
Johanna’s sixteen years old when she meets Finnick Odair for the first time, cloistered around the Training Center as their newest Tributes prepare for their chariot ride around the City Circle.
She has been a Victor for not even a full year yet, her life still doesn’t seem real. Her family has finally settled into their new home in the Victory Square of their District, her little brother has his first new toy since he was born, and her mother is learning how to make real, home-cooked food. She hadn’t been the one to kill her tribute counterpart, but there’s a bit of guilt that sticks in the back of her throat like she should have done something. She visits his grave every so often, the one next to her sister’s. She doesn’t leave flowers, though.
He’s nineteen, gorgeous and charming, and of course, she knows who he is the moment he walks into the room.
She might have only been eleven when he won, but one doesn’t simply forget what it looks like when a man is gutted with a trident.
Finnick is as dangerous as his smile is alluring. So when he walks up behind her and tells her that her hair is pretty, asks her if she’s hiding any knives up her dress, she smiles back at him just as seductively.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?”
His green eyes sparkle. “I’m not the only one.”
She snorts and takes a sip of champagne, moves to turn away. Finnick’s fingers close delicately around her wrist, and he tilts his head close to her ear, as though he were pressing a kiss to her cheek. She feels like a caged animal.
“A pretty girl like you,” he whispers, breath fluttering her hair, “some would do just about anything to know your secrets.”
“Good thing I’m pretty handy with my daggers,” she whispers back, tilting her head up a fraction. She leans into him just slightly, intentionally spills her champagne glass down the front of his baby blue dress shirt. He jumps away, though he doesn’t look angry. She has the gall to smile behind her perfectly manicured fingers as she fakes an apology, then pretends to turn away in embarrassment. Brix, now her mentoring partner, tells her to stay away from the District 4 victor. If she knows what’s good for her. She tells her partner that she wants nothing to do with the men in this place.
Brix gives her a sad look before they turn to greet their lambs, clad in fake leaves and bark.
That evening, the mentors are invited out to a party, one where they are supposed to schmooze and make nice with the richest people in the Capitol. Attendance is not required, but the guards stationed at the exits give the impression that it is a silent mandate.
Johanna follows behind Brix as he introduces her to everyone; lets The People meet their newest victor. Current mentors and old victors accumulate in corners and talk about fashion, politics, trade. Nobody discusses the Hunger Games. It is a quiet sort of understanding that it isn’t polite to harass potential sponsors. She learns early on that getting sponsors has absolutely nothing to do with her-not really, not until the Games start and she sees if one of their tributes can break away from the pack and look important. Right now, this party is about socializing, about forgetting that twenty-four lives sit in the palms of their hands, and in three days, twenty-three will be dead.
Whenever one drink is emptied, another one is pressed into her palm. She drinks too much, and having never been drunk before, her mind is fuzzy. She consumes so much sweet food, she feels as though she will vomit all over their pretty, pretty shoes.
She feigns fatigue and tries to beat a hasty exit sometime around 2am-leaving Brix to fend for himself amongst the dogs. Halfway down the hallway, Johanna slips her heels off to carry them, unsure of her footing. She braces her hand against the wall and stumbles her way to the elevator. A body slides in behind her.
It’s a sponsor, a heavily tanned and tattooed man in his late sixties whose wife is back at the party, following around Finnick Odair because he oozes charm and sex appeal. She thinks that maybe he just wants to talk, so she smiles sweetly and tries to remember through the fog what Brix instructed her to do. She places a hand on his bicep, tilts her head, makes her smile all teeth.
One of his leathery hands covers her pretty smile and the other slides inside the high slit of her dress, slips between her thighs.
The doors close before she can scream.
She sits in the elevator for a while afterward, curled in the corner on the floor, clutching the tattered remains of her dress to her chest. Nobody comes for a very long time-or maybe it’s no time at all, and she just can’t tell. In all honestly, she doesn’t know how long it’s been, hours or minutes. She closes her eyes and tries to breathe, tries to remember that the Hunger Games are over, she won, she’s safe now, she’s safe.
When the doors finally open, it’s Brix and Finnick, both of them sweating and out of breath.
She flinches when Brix kneels down next to her, tries to put a hand on her shoulder.
“I’m fine,” she manages to say, rubbing the back of her hand against her cheekbone. It comes away streaked black and purple with makeup. Mingled in are splotches of red. She doesn’t know when he even touched her face, except for the hand over her mouth. She begins to shake.
Finnick’s shrugging out of his shirt, the stain from her champagne quite evident but dry. He hands it to Brix, who thanks him, and drapes it about her shoulders.
He doesn’t try to glance around the barrier the big man makes with his body, just fiddles with something in his pocket, rocks back and forth on the balls of his feet. Finally, not looking at her, he whispers, “I tried to warn you. I’m sorry.”
“I’ve got her now, Odair,” Brix murmurs as he tries to coax Johanna to her feet. When it seems she won’t comply, he just lifts her in his arms, careful of where her dress no longer covers her. “You might want to get back to the party. I’m sure they’ll miss you.”
Finnick nods, but before he leaves, he touches Johanna’s bare foot with just the tips of his fingers.
Her tributes die at the cornucopia, in a blood bath that leaves both of them unrecognizable. She remembers her sister, torn and broken, remembers how they only sent home a certificate signed by President Snow. Their bodies won’t go home either.
Johanna doesn’t pay attention to any of the other tributes after that. She spends her time in the back of the broadcasting area, drinking. She considers it building a tolerance, because to be around these people for the rest of her life-which will surely be long and miserable now-she will need to become well acquainted with alcohol. She knows that Brix never lets her out of his line of eyesight, for which she is both thankful and annoyed. She will not let anyone get the drop on her again.
Also annoying, Finnick seems to always have something sweet to say when he passes her. His words are saccharine but his green eyes are sad. She wonders if that’s how he’ll keep apologizing.
When the sponsor from the night before steps up beside her, fingers brushing her elbow, not even Brix is fast enough to stop her from kneeing him square in the groin.
“Touch me again, old man,” she snarls, smashing her glass on the ground next to him for emphasis, “and I will end you.”
She tries to call home that night.
The number is disconnected.
She rushes to Brix’s room, bangs on the door until he stumbles out of bed and lets her in. She breaks down, kneels before him on the ground and grips his bathrobe tightly between her fingers.
“Please,” she begs, forehead pressing to the ground. “Please.”
The next morning, an envelope is slipped under the door to her compartment.
Inside are two death certificates.
Finnick’s tributes die the next day, trying to save one another.
There are still seven tributes left, and by the end of the night, he has disappeared from the broadcasting room. She tracks him down later, at the poolside. He’s naked down to his underwear, a plain pair of tight black shorts, lying beside the pool, like he collapse as soon as he tugged himself from the water. He’s glistening wet, bronze hair a stark halo on bright marble floor. He does not say anything to her and she doesn’t say anything to him, just slips the catches on her shoes and hikes her dress up. She sits down next to his feet and slides her legs into the cool water, flicking her toes.
His eyes fix on a bruise on her thigh, five small circles.
Johanna arranges her dress so that the bruises are covered, and kicks, enjoys hearing the splash of the water.
There’s an empty bottle of some alcohol, bobbing around the center of the pool. It’s something with a name that she can’t pronounce, something that is ridiculously strong and ridiculously expensive. She wishes that he would have saved some for her.
“Were you close to either of them?” asks Johanna quietly, not looking at him.
Finnick makes a grunting noise, turning his head to the side along the floor. She lets her brown eyes meet his green ones.
When he doesn’t answer, she figures he must be that drunk, and clarifies, “Your tributes, I mean, were you-”
“I know what you were asking,” he interrupts, voice low and gruff. It might be from alcohol. It might be from anger. It might be from crying.
“I’m sorry.” She doesn’t know if she’s ever done this before. Johanna Mason doesn’t apologize. “That was rude of me.”
“I’ve been a mentor since I was fifteen. I’ve mentored ten kids. One of them has lived.”
Johanna purses her lips.
It wasn’t something that she had wanted to think about-the mortality rate of their job. They raised pigs for the slaughter. They dressed them up before they let them out for the wolves to devour. And the entire time, they smiled and made nice with the folks who ate it up. Besides the numbers of kids that would now die because they weren’t strong enough, fast enough, smart enough to do what she herself had done-she also has to remember the names of twenty-three other tributes. She has the names on two death certificates that she keeps hidden in the bottom of her dresser drawer. Perhaps she should start keeping a ledger.
Finnick sighs. “And he killed himself when he came home.”
“I’m sorry,” she says again, the words foreign on her lips.
“Don’t be,” he says, sitting up, the muscles in his shoulders rippling. “We should get back to the party. Who knows what’s happening?”
When he dries off and steps back into his clothes-not as though he needs them-they step into the elevator together.
Johanna’s feet are bare, heels hanging from her fingertips at her side, and she toes the carpet lazily. Finnick braces his hands behind his head, shirt half-unbuttoned and his tie dangling around his neck. They glance at each other at the same time when the dinging elevator slowly continues to approach the twenty-fifth floor. At the twentieth, she drops her heels and slams her palm down on the EMERGENCY STOP button.
“What-”
She raises up on her toes and crushes her mouth to his, sliding a hand into his hair. She grips hard and lets herself fall back to flat feet-her hand drags him roughly down with her, and he groans painfully into her mouth. His back is arched at an awkward angle, and her neck is cramping from trying to crane up to accommodate what she can’t force. But he doesn’t pull away.
Johanna lets go of his hair to unbutton his shirt the rest of the way, pushes his tie from his neck, scratches her fingernails down his abs.
Finnick hisses and pulls his head away, grabbing her hands. “What the fuck,” he whispers, forehead knocking into hers as he breathes heavily, holding her arms out to either side.
She shrugs. “It seemed opportune.”
“You’re sixteen,” he says, shaking slightly. “Aren’t you supposed to want to wait for love or something?”
“You know what happened in this elevator,” sighs Johanna, stretching her neck forward to nip at his chin. “I’m a murderer. Do I look like the type of girl who’s expecting marriage and children and happily ever after?”
His grip on her wrists slip slightly, and she bites his collarbone, licks the indentations she leaves in the skin.
She bites his ear.
“Fuck me, Finnick.”
Finnick’s head drops back and knocks into the wall before he surges forward, presses her between himself and the elevator doors. He lowers his head and growls, seizing her roughly by the back of her head with one hand and the hip with the other. He tangles his hands in her short spikes, pulling until she whimpers, until he can see the tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. He kisses her until she’s beating at his chest to get him to stop, until there’s no longer air left in her lungs. When he finally lets her mouth go, she pants against his throat for a second before biting his adam’s apple.
He lets go of her hair to grip her by the ass, lifting her. Her legs spread and wrap about his hips. Guiltily, his hand falls into a familiar spot on the still-there bruises he spotted at the poolside.
When his grip starts to loosen, and she slacks slightly in his grip, Johanna arches her back and tugs viciously at his hair. She can feel some strands giving way under the strain, and Finnick lets out a strangled sound that’s halfway between a moan and sob. She takes his bottom lip between her teeth and grits until she can taste the copper tang of his blood. Then she licks it and presses her tongue between his ragged lips to swipe at his. He lets her play for a moment before he bites her tongue, and she gives a very short, muffled squeal.
He holds her up with his body and one hand at her ass, uses the other to undo his belt, let his slacks slip to his ankles.
For a moment, Finnick pauses and pulls away from her mouth. He can see a smear of red under her nose. He wants to ask her if she’s sure, if this is really what she wants. But instead, she thrusts her hand down between him and grabs him roughly, tugging-all dry skin and calloused palm on his hot, aching flesh. She palms his head and then smears the precum glistening in her hand against his chest.
“I don’t have a condom,” he says into her neck, leaving indentations all along her shoulder, marking her skin.
Johanna slips a hand down the back of his open shirt and drags her nails up his back, grinning and breathing through her teeth when he makes a pained noise against her skin. She digs her nails into his shoulder until she’s sure she’s drawn blood and then draws them back down the scratches she’s sure she just made. “Don’t care.”
He presses her dress away from her legs to make space and presses closer, penis brushing her inner thigh and leaving a wet spot against the silky skin there. He tugs her underwear to the side and presses two of his fingers against her entrance, finds her achingly dry.
Finnick groans. “You’re not ready.”
She lets out a small, frustrated shriek and grabs him again, tugging roughly so that he cries out.
“It’s not made of rubber,” he hisses angrily, pressing forward anyway as she leads him toward her cunt.
“Stop being such a bitch,” she snaps back waspishly, dropping her fingers down further to slide against his balls. Finnick’s brows furrow deeply as he feels them tighten in immediate response. The head of his penis is pressed against her cunt, warm and welcoming. She rocks her hips forward, and he tries to fight the urge to sink down into her to the hilt, to pound her like she’s used to this type of treatment.
Johanna sighs and slacks against him, wrapping an arm about his neck. She kisses his nose and lifts her hand to smooth the wrinkles in his forehead. He opens his eyes to meet hers. She licks her lips, still tastes blood, and presses them chastely against his.
Finnick slides home inside her, with a little resistance-but there is too much force behind his thrust for it to be much of a deterrent for him. Johanna tugs his hair and bites her lip clean through to keep from screaming. However, she keeps her torso bobbing, ignoring the burning pain that each pull and push draws from her. He fingers her clit to try and make it easier, sucks her nipple through the thin material of her dress and presses kisses between her breasts.
Eventually, their thrusts become easier, her channel slicker and he meets her kisses breath for breath. She trembles against him, and he thumbs her again, rubbing circles in time with the rocking of his hips to send her crashing over the edge. After she recovers, he thrusts for a few more minutes before pulls out and cumming on the elevator wall between her thighs. Some of it may have gotten on her, but he isn’t paying attention as he sags. She unwraps her legs from about him, and shakily finds her feet.
She straightens her top and tries to recover some dignity.
When it appears that won’t happen, Johanna lets her underwear fall the rest of the way to the elevator floor and pats his cheek. She leans up to brush her lips against his, before she leans to the side and presses the red button on the elevator panel again. She presses the button for the floor underneath the broadcasting room, where everyone is still sure to be-she’ll find her way back to her compartment on her own.
“I think I’ll take the stairs, now,” she says, breathless.
Finnick nods.
When the elevator doors open, she bends to scoop up her heels and then walks out alone.
finis.