THG fic: "Spin Control" [14/23]
Title: Spin Control
Pairings: Finnick/Haymitch, Kat/Peeta
Characters: Finnick, Haymitch, Chaff, Peeta, Gale, Kat; plus appearances by Mags, Johanna, Caesar Flickerman, President Snow, Effie, Claudius Templesmith, Beetee, Prim, Thresh, Rue, District Twelve ensemble and various OC
Rating: adult
Warnings: forced prostitution & non-con; people dealing with sexual trauma; rape fantasies; self-hate; canon-typical violence; minor character death (of major canon characters); implied physical abuse of children (in the Mellark household); alcoholism & drug abuse
Summary: When Haymitch Abernathy’s alcoholism makes the prime time news, Finnick Odair is sent to live in District Twelve to pick up the pieces. But it’s hard to save a friend if you can barely stand looking yourself in the eye. And it might become impossible once that friend decides to move hell and high water to bring two of his tributes home at once, even if it should cost him his own life.
Prologue -- Chapter 1 -- Chapter 2 -- Chapter 3 -- Chapter 4 -- Chapter 5 -- Chapter 6 -- Chapter 7 -- Chapter 8 -- Chapter 9 -- Chapter 10 -- Chapter 11 -- Chapter 12 Chapter 13
Chapter 14: Touch
Two weeks later, he was still feeling elated, like the world had taken a respectful step back and conceded to just leave him be.
Finnick recognized the feeling, intellectually. He’d seen first love and all the fluttering, rose-colored excitement of it playing out in Capitol movies, read about it in novels, even in the ones from before the Dark Days - the Four black market was full of them, easier to obtain than most other kinds of stories. He’d read about what it was supposed to feel like, getting to be with somebody you liked, what it supposedly did to people’s insides. Then he’d shaken his head about the squishy nonsense and forgotten about it.
He’d assumed that the books embellished on the feelings, and romance was meant for other people, anyway.
He hadn’t expected that he’d be feeling so good.
He hadn’t expected that it would put Haymitch in such a good, relaxed mood, either - whenever he forgot to worry about things - that Finnick being with him would. It seemed almost out of character at times, except for how Finnick had just never before seen him with a good reason to be happy.
There was kissing and some touching between them now, and Haymitch especially was loath to talk about it too much but he still had yet to stop Finnick from doing anything with him. It continued to make Finnick uncomfortable to leave any decisions about how they touched each other to Haymitch; it reminded him too much of how his body was for everyone to use.
“Watch out,” he would mutter before stepping up behind Haymitch, peeling potatoes at the kitchen counter, because it was a dumb idea to approach any victor, and especially Haymitch, from behind while that victor was holding a knife.
Now, Haymitch put the hand holding it down and held very still when Finnick ran his hands down his arms, kissing the back of his neck.
He could feel the tension gradually seeping out of Haymitch when he did that, guarded at first, but plain unable to resist the sensation. Feeling him shudder and lean towards him in an involuntary way that flustered him every time he noticed he’d done it, Finnick had resolved that he’d never stop wanting to touch Haymitch, if that was what it did to him. He didn’t need to tell Finnick that nobody had touched him like that for a long time. Finnick felt awed that he was the one who had been allowed. It was no small thing for Haymitch to permit.
It also gave all the control to Finnick, because Haymitch purposefully didn’t move, until Finnick asked him, with a questioning sound, to turn around. Then he did, a small grunt escaping him when they kissed, and he fully let go of the knife, which clattered onto the counter.
It was the greatest thing. Considering that first bumbling attempt in the lake when Haymitch had reached out to him and gripped Finnick’s thigh almost too hard, the fact that Haymitch was letting him do it this way clearly was a concession, not inclination. Haymitch, after all, was an authoritative person by nature, who tended to dominate a room. And while that responsibility scared Finnick a little, it also felt exhilarating, a little like swimming, maybe really like wielding his trident. He’d started spending ridiculous amounts of time each day trying to figure out how to make Haymitch feel good in new small ways, how to touch or kiss him, how to make himself feel good by doing that.
It was a firmly above-beltline activity. They didn’t venture any further than that.
Summer bloomed early after that short winter, little blue and yellow flowers covering the Meadow. But they started escaping from the sight of the starved, desperate district population two or three times a week now to hike to the lake, towels and food in their bags. None of the Peacekeepers cared; one night, Finnick noticed two of them, the boyish lieutenant with the red hair and a captain, deliberately looking the other way when they returned home, from the rocky area behind the Village where there only were mining facilities and a weakened spot in the fence big enough for grown men.
Haymitch had progressed to short laps in the lake, eventually venturing into deeper water, too, but he seemed to be just as content watching Finnick while he exerted himself, losing himself in the exercise. Finnick had tried animating him to spar with him, desperate for a partner as he was, but Haymitch had just laughed in his face. That hadn’t changed.
They didn’t cuddle, exactly, but Haymitch would still let him lean over when they sat in the sun together after a swim, allowing Finnick to explore his frame with his fingers, running them down his bare arms and across the expanse of his belly.
“Why'd you keep doing that?” Haymitch asked once, leaning back onto his elbows, watching Finnick's hand trailing down his sternum, playing with the hair on his chest.
“What? The people I do it with are always shaved,” Finnick replied. “It's interesting. I mean, everybody's got hair on his chest. You'd think they have a problem with people overall, like they don’t want them to be the way they really are. Like, I dunno, they want us to be something else.”
“Yeah, whatever,” Haymitch said. “Not what I meant.” His breath hitched when Finnick's hand slid lower, and Finnick paused with a questioning look. But no, that had been a good spot. Still, the intensity with which Haymitch often reacted to his proximity made him think, touch seemed to be too good to bear for Haymitch, sometimes, something to get used step by step. So maybe it was a good and a bad spot at once. “Just saying,” Haymitch continued now. “You're aware most people would like for all that to not be there.” So he was speaking about his beer belly, then, as Finnick had reached a spot underneath his ribs.
Finnick shrugged. “Most people and me tend to disagree.” Most people wanted to fuck him, never mind cheer for dying children at the Hunger Games, so quite obviously, most people’s opinion was mad.
“Well if you think the way I look is just an expression of my unhappiness, or whatever else esoteric crap you've been fed, you're in for a surprise. That fat ain’t gonna go away. You don't change shape so easily anymore at my age...”
“You've still got that thing in your head where you think you aren't good enough for me,” Finnick interrupted him, and Haymitch abruptly shut up.
Watching Finnick exploring his torso, he changed gears.
“Well yeah,” he said, like it was obvious.
Finnick leaned closer to press some small kisses on his chest, pleased by how it pressed his own torso up against Haymitch's naked arm, how Haymitch automatically leaned in.
“I think you're eventually gonna figure out that this isn't for you,” he heard Haymitch’s voice, unsteady from the distraction, muffled against the top of his head. “And that's fine, you know. You're young. You'll find a nice guy or a nice girl, and you'll realize that you can have the same thing we're doing right now except with someone who isn't an old, overweight drunk who’s gotten all his tributes killed.”
“I'm forever amazed at the crap that sometimes comes out of your mouth.”
“Cute, but snappy commentary isn't gonna change the facts.”
“Is there anything at all that I can say to make you stop thinking like that?”
“Nah,” Haymitch said. “I'm just collecting the spoils of your delusion here and waiting for the day when I can say I told you so.” He vaguely nodded at Finnick's hand. “Ain't like I gotta do a lot of work.”
“If you're not okay letting me...” Finnick immediately said, retreating, and Haymitch rolled his eyes.
“You know that's not how I meant it.”
“Right,” Finnick said with a grimace.
He looked down on his own hand, putting it in place again and spreading his fingers until it reached from the thinning line of hair above Haymitch's belly button almost exactly halfway across his belly. Then moved it, along Haymitch's lower ribs, all the way down until it reached the drying waistband of the pants he used as swimming trunks, the wet material outlining his crotch. Felt for how warm Haymitch felt from the sun and how steady, and how his breath stuttered at that in a way that Finnick could feel, this trembling thing, deep inside under his palm.
“I wish,” Finnick started saying, and paused. “I wish you'd let me tell you how I feel about you,” he said, because Haymitch didn't. He just got sarcastic when Finnick tried. Not that he’d offered serenading Finnick either, but that was probably because he sensed that one too many people had already done that before him. “I like touching you. I love it, I could do it all day. I mean, I do it all day, obviously,” he added, and Haymitch snorted a laugh. Finnick's lips twitched, too. “I think you're amazing,” he said. “And really hot, seriously. Home in Four, there were a lot of people who I love but I just wanted to be gone. I didn't want them to look at me anymore. Now I'm here, with you, and I want to be here with you more than I want to be somewhere else. You’re strong and smart, you probably don’t know how smart.
“I think about touching you at night,” he quietly said. “I think about you when I, well. When I, in the shower. I’ve never much done that about anybody else, not like this. It’s never been like this." His voice died. These were things he’d never have admitted, if it weren’t to convince Haymitch.
“But you don’t believe any of that,” he added, pressing his lips against Haymitch’s shoulder.
Haymitch was quiet for a moment. “I want to, if it helps,” he said, clearing his voice when those words came out too quiet. His tone said that it was similar for him - his desire for it to be true was bigger than his need to protect himself from what he thought was the inevitable.
So maybe it was a matter of time. Finnick tried thinking like Mags, reminding himself how fortunate that was, because time was what they had most of.
Finnick liked to believe that it wasn’t just the physical exercise in the lake and from the hikes, but also his company - and maybe the trust that they had built between the two of them - that helped Haymitch sleep reasonably well in those weeks. Otherwise, his insomnia might have returned with sudden full force much earlier than June.
“Is it us?” Finnick asked hesitantly one morning, the third day in a row that Haymitch had trudged down the stairs obviously sleep-deprived, rubbing his eyes over breakfast and clutching his coffee too shakily. He hadn’t said anything about it, so Finnick had been unsure if he wasn’t maybe supposed to ignore it. “What we’re doing… is that why? Should we go slower?” Though he wasn’t sure how. He was as new to relationships that lasted longer than three weeks as Haymitch and didn’t know how to proceed.
Finnick had put down his knife, observing the light reflecting from it, because despite everything, he was hit by an abrupt pang of doubt, of how maybe he was doing something wrong. He was so used to double-checking what his partners wanted.
Now Haymitch glanced up from his plate, in the corner of his eye, then hesitated likewise, putting down his fork as if the eggs just had stopped tasting like eggs.
“Games getting close,” he said. “Just another month until it’s Reaping Day again.”
Finnick nodded, a part of him relieved, another part tensing up. There were all the obvious reasons for Haymitch - for both of them - to dread the Games, and this time would be particularly hard. It would be the first time Haymitch went back there since his breakdown. All the cameras would be on him. It would test his ability to stay sober like nothing had before.
“Should I…” he started searching for the words, but Haymitch had already nodded, resigned, admitting defeat.
“Yeah,” he said, pushing away the plate as if he’d grown tired of pretending. “Might as well.”
So Finnick didn’t leave for the night that day like he usually would have, but stayed behind and got ready for sleep at Haymitch’s place. But when he settled into his armchair, Haymitch muttered, “Might as well, if you want,” and pointed at the empty side of his bed.
Finnick crawled in next to him, trying to get comfortable on a stiff, old pillow, adorned with patterns twenty years out of fashion. Haymitch’s mattress felt too soft. There was a whole inch between them, but Finnick could still reconstruct the outline of Haymitch’s body from the way the sheet curved between them, could feel his body heat - close enough and comforting despite all that.
Haymitch twisted and turned while he waited for the sleeping pill to take effect, until Finnick remembered to reach out and put his hand on his upper arm, holding on tight. Haymitch settled in after that, used to that physical anchor, like a startle trigger but the other way around.
Just before he could fall asleep, it struck Finnick that sleeping comfortably and relaxing into the sheets meant he would eventually wake up from one of those dreams.
He’d wake up from a dream in this brightly lit room and Haymitch would be there, light sleeper that he was even when he took pills, he’d quickly figure out what it had been about, and then what?
“Everything alright?” Haymitch asked, and Finnick noticed his hand had stiffened, gripping Haymitch for real as if Haymitch was the anchor and Finnick was the one who might drown.
“Just thinking,” he said after a beat. “I’m fine.”
None of this would last, he thought, suddenly so unhappy that he felt like crying; all his resolve about the two of them vanished. Haymitch was right, it wouldn’t last, but different from how he thought. He only thought he knew Finnick. He’d find out. Like he’d so optimistically told Haymitch at the lake, Finnick had come to Twelve so that the people he cared about wouldn’t learn his secrets, but he hadn’t expected to find a new person like that here. He’d thought it would just be Haymitch, who wouldn’t care, and now Haymitch did, and it was true what Finnick had said - Haymitch was wickedly smart, good at reading Finnick in a terrifying way. It was starting all over again.
Just enjoy it while it lasts. This is the best you’ll ever get to feel.
That was cold comfort, though. At least, in the end, his sleep was restless, no room for dirty dreams.
***
Finnick returned from his workout one evening to find Gale Hawthorne sitting on his porch with his game bag lying next to him, blatantly displaying his crime here in the Village, where Peacekeepers knew not to patrol.
“Thought I’d wait,” the boy - young man now, almost - told him, pointing at the strawberries and apricots peeking out of the bag. “Got some new things on sale today that I thought you might enjoy.”
Then he nodded at the well-lit house across the lawn. “He wouldn’t open the door when I knocked.”
“He doesn’t like talking to people who take general issue with his existence,” Finnick replied and sat down next to Gale, propping his spears against the railing.
He gestured towards the boy to hand him the strawberries, picking one and letting the sweet juice of it run over his tongue before he offered them to Gale.
“What? I’m paying for them,” he said and Gale gave him a frown, then still took one. People born in Twelve never refused food.
Finnick nibbled at another, looking at the sky across the buildings above. It was nice out, the setting sun coloring the sky in vivid purples and reds, the warmth sticking around until sunset. The Village was quiet, like always, and right now, that felt nice. Three weeks from now, they would return to the Capitol and see at least one of their children off to die, but now, he was sitting here and eating strawberries with Gale Hawthorne and it was just nice.
Gale was watching him out of the corner of his eye, Finnick noticed, the way he was licking strawberry juice off his fingers.
“What?” Finnick said and stopped.
Gale hesitated for a moment.
“Do you look forward to it?” he eventually asked. “Going back to the Capitol for the Games.”
“Yes, that fills me with ecstasy every time,” Finnick deadpanned.
The boy frowned, as if he’d expected something else.
“Sure looks like it on the television,” he muttered, then picked another fruit.
Too lazy to feel offended, Finnick contemplated that for a moment, what Gale must think of him and Haymitch, what all the district thought of them. Collaborators. Sluts. Child molesters - that last one would always anger him most. They were all happy to see only what was right in front of them the way it had been filmed, and it was hard to see a difference between that and the Capitol crowds during the Hunger Games.
Finnick wanted to believe that it meant everything would be different if all these people, Capitol and districts both, were just told the truth. He didn’t want to think that human beings just were like that.
As long as Gale wasn’t reaped and didn’t win, the boy would never know the truth. But despite how he’d do wonders for their marketing, Finnick had started hoping that it wouldn’t happen to him. Gale had turned seventeen and had only two more Reapings to survive.
Right now, he was glancing at Finnick again, a slight frown still on his face. “Is it true what you said on the television, that you want things to change for Twelve in the Games?”
“Yes, absolutely.”
“How would you do it, though?” Gale said. “There’s nothing that can be done.”
Since this was Gale, Finnick knew he didn’t want an empty reassurance, but hard facts; he wanted to know the actual plan.
Finnick wondered why.
He gathered his thoughts before he replied, silently relieved that there was at least the one person in the district who had asked.
“I’ll be honest,” he soberly said. “There isn’t a lot we can do in the first couple of years, it’s a slow build. Convince the Capitol that it would be exciting if a Twelve tribute won. Right now they think it would be unusual, but ultimately boring, because Swagger and Haymitch didn’t turn out so exciting for them.” Because Haymitch had done his might to make himself unattractive to the audience fast - not that Finnick wouldn’t be doing the same if he knew how, and screw district success. “Work on building a network of sponsors. I can chat them up, but I can’t give them a good reason to stick around for multiple Games, I don’t have that kind of leverage. That’ll be Haymitch’s job, he’s the native. Convince them that they’ll look good once Twelve wins.” He paused for a second. “Sure would help if the district would trust that we know what we’re doing.”
A part of him had braced himself against Gale snorting about that, dismissing the whole plan out of hand, but his face had just hardened. “That doesn’t make our tributes less weak and starved.”
“There are plenty of weapons that weak kids can learn how to use,” Finnick said. “Especially when nobody expects them to.”
“People wouldn’t stand for that,” Gale pointed out, his eyes alert like he was watching prey, and Finnick sighed.
“No, probably not,” he agreed, then hesitated and said, although he knew it was probably a terrible idea, “Ever seen Swagger March?”
Gale’s eyes narrowed. “Swagger March is dead.”
“Yeah, I noticed,” Finnick said and nervously smirked. “I mean video footage.
“I’ve heard that Swagger was pretty popular here in Twelve, see. Everybody loved him, nothing like Haymitch and me. Apparently, he used to give speeches on the town square. I’ve seen him on tape in the Games reruns. He was a happy guy, a talker. Made a lot of jokes with the press, flirted with them, with the escorts. He couldn’t make the crowds love him, but he made the reporters like approaching him.”
Gale had stiffened. “I suppose he did what needed doing.”
Finnick nodded. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, exactly my point.”
Then he closed his mouth, because he didn’t dare say more and although he knew Gale was still watching him, he didn’t want to turn around and check the look on his face. Maybe, he got a bit of what Finnick had meant. Maybe he didn’t. Finnick wasn’t sure if he could.
They sat there for a while longer while the sun sank further down, not talking anymore.
***
A while ago, Haymitch had announced he would be paying Noreen from his own money from now on, because he had no interest in becoming indebted to Finnick - whatever that meant, considering it ultimately was the Capitol paying the housekeepers, anyway - and because he wanted to be at liberty of telling her off with full employer authority.
That was Haymitch being Haymitch, of course. He and Noreen had long developed a strange bond that Finnick didn’t pretend to understand - once, he’d walked in on them focused on a half-finished pot pie, Haymitch nodding along while Noreen listed all the reasons why he’d done a bad job and was a terrible cook, and he should have just asked her before he tried. Haymitch claimed that Noreen had grown aware that his and Finnick’s relationship had changed, deducing this from how she wrinkled her nose in disapproving ways upon entering rooms. However, she still seemed to have decided that discretion was the better part of valor; nobody had started throwing them any more disgusted looks than before on the street. Fallon had to know, too, but hadn’t said a word.
Finnick and Fallon’s relationship was very different from that, anyway. Finnick still couldn’t shake the memory of how he’d first met the young woman, trying to sell herself to get money for food. Although he knew that he could never have forgiven himself for hiring anybody who needed the job less, he still felt disquieted when she was around; he had a faint fear that he might end up flirting with her, falling into Capitol patterns, that she might think he’d hired her to keep her available for sex, that Haymitch and he both… - the moment his mind went there, it never seemed to want to stop running in circles around it. On her end, Fallon was careful with him, careful and polite and stiffly reserved, no matter he had seen her relaxed and giggling with Noreen.
But after he paid her that week, he still couldn’t help but say, “Wait,” before she could leave the room, because he couldn’t take it anymore. She paused, questioning look on her face, then stepped back in the kitchen and shut the backdoor behind herself.
“Yes, Mr. Odair?” Despite how she was such a frail young woman, she stood there like a soldier at attention.
It was hard looking her in the eye, knowing what she had used to do to make money and why.
“I’ve just, I’ve been wondering,” Finnick said, then paused, glancing at the wallet, still in his hand. She had to work for him, too, he thought, she didn’t have a choice in that either. “Since you’ve started working for me - your financial situation, is it working out for you now? Do you have enough to live?”
Although Fallon didn’t move, it still looked as if she had retreated a careful step back. “Mr. Odair?”
“If… if you need more money than I’m paying you, I want you to tell me that. And, I want you to know that I want you to work for me long-term, if you’ll have me. I don’t want you to think that you… that you have to make more money for the future, while you’re young enough to… to have other ways of making money on top of this job…”
He trailed off. It was just impossible to not dwell on it, on how even if you were safe, you still might feel that you were not, and then what? Maybe if people had a chance to get away, they still didn’t take it. Maybe they’d gotten so used to it that they didn’t think what they wanted should matter.
But Fallon, who had hesitated for a beat and looked down at the floor, now straightened herself up. Then she looked him in the eye, forcing him to hold her gaze.
“My situation is fine, Mr. Odair,” she said very clearly, filled with a hard-earned dignity that made her look beautiful, in a way that had nothing to do with sex and everything with strength. “Thank you for asking, but everything is working out for me very well now.”
Then she gave him a smile, a sparse but honest one and straightened her shoulders a bit more, before turning around and opening the back door, vanishing out of sight.
When it fell shut behind her, Finnick was still standing there with his wallet in hand.
“Good,” he muttered, although she couldn’t hear. “I’m glad.”
Maybe he’d really helped improve a little thing in the world. Maybe that meant he still had a choice in what person to be after all, be a little more like what Haymitch saw. What Haymitch and Mags both claimed they saw.
He wasn’t certain, though.
***
It was a nice degree of warm, neither pressing nor humid like it would have been in Four, a breeze bulging the curtains of the open windows and cooling down the house. They were at Haymitch’s. There had been food and a collaborative cooking achievement, to do with herbs.
Haymitch had taken a seat on the couch, relaxing back into the backrest when Finnick straddled his lap, leaning down to kiss him.
Finnick tried not to crowd, despite the fact that he was on top, taller and more muscular than Haymitch. But Haymitch, who couldn’t be considered frail himself, glanced him up and down with a faint trace of awe, running his hands very softly over Finnick’s knees when they kissed another time, and it was Haymitch’s behavior as much as Finnick’s sense of control that made Finnick feel safe, because he knew Haymitch wouldn’t venture closer to his crotch or ass or any other place people used to get themselves off. If he could trust in one thing, it was Haymitch’s self-control when they did this.
The time they spent touching each other had yet to start feeling familiar instead of like an experiment, probing and careful, but they’d both learned that flawless meant scripted and fake - things that just worked out were never real, and Finnick would have preferred either of them stopping and retreating three times over if it meant that none of them had to worry if they looked suitably fuckable from the right angle.
So they kissed, for a while, as they’d been doing a lot recently, until Haymitch’s breath relaxed into something easier that came from deeper than his solar plexus, soft and steady against Finnick’s lips. His eyes were half-shut, and Finnick carefully worked his hand under his shirt, stroking up and down his side, feeling for skin.
Finnick resisted a startling urge to move in, rub them against each other. He’d been hard for too long, feeling disheveled, and the bulge of Haymitch’s pants said Haymitch was, too.
He could have touched Haymitch all day, fighting against how it seemed like a part of Haymitch wanted to be uncomfortable about the attention on him, but the sheer sensations were too good to resist. And in a corner of his mind, Finnick was still waiting to be scared or disgusted or like none of this had anything to do with him, but he was growing just a little more assured that what they were doing with each other really wasn’t anything like that. It was an altogether different thing.
It was that wobbling, but persisting assurance that made him pull away and reach for his own shirt, pulling it over his head and dropping it to the ground next to the couch. He knew he’d soon find the tips of Haymitch’s fingers on his arms and elbows and barely gracing his thighs, and that would be all.
It felt great to both display skin and be safe.
Haymitch released a sound between a moan and a grunt when they kissed with more urgency, more verbal than Finnick, and it was obvious where this would be going this time - where Finnick wanted to go, too, because he didn’t want to stop. It filled Finnick with all kinds of emotions, anxiety and excitement and determination, interlaced with arousal.
He felt Haymitch’s hand falling on his, gripping it, telling him wait.
Finnick froze.
“You want this to go anywhere,” Haymitch said against his cheek, voice rough. “Let’s move it to the bed.”
***
“You really sure you’re alright with this?” Haymitch asked when they’d made it up the stairs, searching Finnick’s face.
“Yes,” Finnick said, exclaiming a long breath. “Yes, let’s go for it.”
He’d sat down on Haymitch’s side of the bed, wondering what would happen and if it would really be different from what he usually did. He still knew he wasn’t supposed to make such a big deal out of it - the books had certainly taught him that, never mind the talks by his mom when he was young about how the sex wasn’t the special part of a relationship, “no need to talk them into it, hon.” But it was a big deal, it was an incredibly big deal, because a part of Finnick would only believe that they could enjoy it together in an okay way once he had proof.
What he didn’t expect was for Haymitch to go rummaging through one of his drawers and to produce a truly impressive vibrator, colored a bright kind of Capitol yellow, that he thoughtfully weighed in his hand.
Finnick stared at it.
“Uhm,” he said slowly, knocked off balance. “That isn’t exactly what I’d expected.”
Haymitch threw him a grim little smirk.
“Wait for it,” he said, twirling it around in his hand and pushing on.
The room was filled with the quiet hum of high-end Capitol sex toys that rarely ever made it to the districts, never mind Twelve. Meanwhile at the base, an aggressive blue light diode came to life blinking wildly in the way Capitol phonelets did when they scanned for reception. Finnick, who was somewhat of a sex toy expert, had never seen one do that.
Then the light settled into a more sedate slow rhythm; with a faintly satisfied noise, Haymitch put it on a shelf.
“So Beetee used to have a real bizarre sense of humor when he was still young and high all the time,” he told Finnick, apropos of nothing. “He goes and builds me that thing in his secret sex toy lab or something, ‘cause clearly that’s what any victors would need on their lonesome in the district. Then decides that maybe it’s hard to relax with all that up your ass while you’ve got people listening in. So he adds a little enhancement to take care of that, too.”
Finnick was rapidly changing gears. “That thing just disabled the bugs?” he said, disbelieving. It disabled the bugs so that Haymitch could masturbate in peace?
“Yeah,” Haymitch agreed, lips twitching in an unexpected way. “Look here, the blinking thing says that it’s found one within range to intercept. Not surprised that Snow would put one in my bedroom, I gotta say. That pervert,” he added in a tone of relish that shaved about twenty years off him, as if he’d always wanted to say that. “Makes it look like a storm’s interrupting the transmission or some such. Told me nobody would be the wiser.”
Finnick couldn’t help but laugh.
Haymitch had a sex toy that disabled the bugs.
He squelched a sudden urge to ask if he’d ever actually used it for its original purpose, because that would have been… he really would like it if Haymitch was okay telling him that.
“Now if Beetee just had better taste in colors,” he said, feeling a little shaky again.
Whether somebody listened in on them or not while they had sex didn’t matter, apart from how it made them feel, and that had never counted before. Trust Haymitch to remember this thing and to show in this small way how important Finnick was to him exactly.
It had to be nerves that made him retreat ever so slightly when Haymitch slumped down on the bed next to him. He felt disoriented, not sure what would happen.
Haymitch wrinkled his forehead.
“The moment you don’t like doing something, we stop,” he said.
Finnick made himself release the breath he’d been holding.
“It’s going to be okay,” he said. “I’m just nervous. I do all kinds of things all the time. It’s not, I don’t have bad reactions like that.” I’m a pro, he meant to add as a joke and laugh, but couldn’t make himself.
“I don’t give a fuck what you do all the time,” Haymitch replied, an edge to his voice. “You wanna stop, you stop, you better not wait with it until you freak.”
“You’re the one who’s holding still for me,” Finnick said softly, because Haymitch was the one who was making it easy. Finnick was the one who’d gotten to act and make the moves so far, and he was in no way deluding himself into thinking that that was the harder part. “The same goes for you, too.”
“We’ve already had that conversation,” Haymitch reminded him. Haymitch seemed to think that Finnick was the most fucked-up between the two of them, the one who needed more protection by the other.
Remembering all the things about himself that he’d never told Haymitch about, it was more difficult to argue with his logic than Finnick wanted it to be. Fucked-up, yes, that was a good way of looking at it.
Finnick hadn’t put his shirt back on when they made their way up to the room. When Haymitch leaned back on the bed, inviting him to hover over him in the way he’d often done on the shore of the lake, Finnick was grateful that Haymitch had propped himself up on his elbows in a way that meant he wouldn’t even be able to raise his hands to touch Finnick.
But they’d moved to the bedroom to have something like sex, and the bugs were disabled so nobody but them would ever have to know this about them, and all of that made Finnick an almost jittery kind of nervous.
Kissing Haymitch still felt the same way as before, though, and that helped, his cheeks rough from stubbles and his lips soft in contrast. The black hair on his chest visible where the top button of his shirt had come loose, and everything about him just intrinsically strong and steady and masculine.
When Finnick deepened the kiss eventually and pushed him further onto the bed, Haymitch didn’t resist but just closed his eyes and fisted the sheet, stopping himself from reaching out. Something in Finnick’s chest loosened up again, filled by a sense of power and control and defiance.
“Can you get out of that shirt?” he said, retreating a bit, feeling breathless. “I want to touch you more.”
He glanced at Haymitch at that, half waiting for Haymitch to get spooked, half the direct opposite of that, for Haymitch to grow impatient and to tell Finnick to get with the program already.
But Haymitch just looked him over likewise and said, “yeah,” before propping himself up high enough to work his way out of his shirt. Finnick wanted to reach out to help with the buttons, one after the others, slide it over his shoulders and kiss them, then didn’t. It seemed like an overly intimate thing to do.
Then he was leaning over Haymitch again and running his hand along the skin above his waistband, and Haymitch, who was especially sensitive in that area, muttered “shit” in a shaky way when a full-body shudder ran through him.
“Good?” Finnick asked; it spoke volumes that Haymitch’s reply was yet again, quietly, “Yeah.” When he ran out of sarcasm, he ran strangely out of words overall.
Haymitch’s eyes were on Finnick’s chest and shoulders with an uncharacteristic kind of fascination on his face, but none of the possessive greed Finnick was familiar with.
It raised a somewhat intimidating, but also good feeling in his guts, being looked at in this way that said he was wanted, even sexually, but that didn’t say that was the same as reaching out and using him up.
Haymitch was holding still for him, and Finnick was just terribly aroused all over again, kissing his throat, his shoulders, feeling for the hair on his chest and his skin, feeling for Haymitch’s reactions to that. It still was elevating that he was doing this without remake, because somehow, that made it more different, made it more like it was theirs. More risky, too, but in a good way.
He’d have liked to tell Haymitch that he looked perfect, but he knew that that would probably be too much to bear for the other man.
He wanted to say it all the more, though, once they’d both gotten out of their pants, stripping off the underwear, too, and he got to look at Haymitch, all that skin he’d be allowed to touch, Haymitch’s erect cock heavy and flush against his belly, dark hair filling his crotch.
If Haymitch wanted to say anything like that about Finnick, Finnick was relieved that he didn’t, an unpleasant reaction creeping up inside of him even as he thought of it, not so much a feeling rather than a general cold absence of one. He just didn’t want anybody addressing his looks, he knew that. Ideally, he would have liked to be invisible.
The threat of that feeling kept lurking in the back of his mind, the memory of the way he felt when he did these things with Capitol citizens, but he firmly stayed in the here and now.
They kissed again - they kissed a lot - and they touched, or rather Finnick touched but Haymitch let him, sometimes shifting his weight or leaning in and letting him know where he wanted him to venture - his body communicating for him, and Finnick, too, glad to obey that kind of command when a verbal one would have been impossible to bear. He didn’t even think Haymitch could have verbalized what he wanted him to do, not after those years of trying to want nothing much. His body did it instinctively for him.
Finnick glanced down Haymitch’s body, thinking about taking him in his mouth, thinking that would be a thing he might like to try soon.
Hesitantly, he stroked along Haymitch’s knee and up the inside of his thigh, and, when that made the other man shudder again, wrapped his hand around his cock and pulled.
“Fuck,” Haymitch muttered in one long exhaled breath.
His hands were in the sheets again. He was visibly stopping himself from moving, pressing his eyes shut in reaction. Though when he managed, “Do you want me to…” Finnick shook his head almost reflexively, saying, “Please, just let me, I want,” his hand searching for the right pressure.
Haymitch’s thighs had tensed but the rest of his body, his torso still held upright on his elbows, went slack. Gathering confidence, Finnick reminded himself how much the other man liked just being touched, how easy that was to give. So he bent over and nibbled at his throat, pressing his cheek against Haymitch’s shoulder, inching closer on the bed so that their bodies were aligned, bronze skin against olive. Haymitch felt very warm.
It took what Haymitch would probably consider an embarrassingly short amount of time, until he grew even harder in Finnick’s hand and instinct took over. Exclaiming an almost surprised, uncontrolled groan, he came, all over Finnick’s hand, and his own belly.
“Shit,” he muttered against Finnick’s cheek, breathing hard, then, “Fuck.”
Looking at his face with astonishment, Finnick grew all the more aware of his own arousal. It had become that white, blinding, crazy thing all over his vision. He’d made this happen. Inconceivably, that was turning him on the most, never mind he’d given over a hundred people orgasms in his life without thinking there was anything to it.
Haymitch’s mouth seemed too dry to form words.
“Do you…” he said the same time Finnick managed, “Can I…” and then Haymitch said, “Whatever you want” which still was the most unexpected thing coming out of Haymitch’s mouth, really. But Finnick was having trouble thinking his thoughts in the right order, overwhelmed, so he reached out, rolled on top to straddle Haymitch and rub himself against his thigh, cock on skin, slickened by come.
There was a whimper somewhere that he realized had to have been his; he rarely ever did anything as restrained as this with anybody, and still it never felt so great.
He managed to not quite lie down on Haymitch, because he wasn’t sure if that would be alright, but still stay above him, kissing him again and feeling him just opening up to him, for long and sloppy kisses that had nothing to do with finesse but everything with hunger. This wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t flawlessly choreographed, it was improvised and bare. It was just Finnick, and Haymitch underneath him, getting what they wanted, how they wanted it, and it was so much better than even masturbating to this as a fantasy, when it was safe.
When he came, Haymitch’s thigh became even more slippery and Finnick moved against it, not thinking anymore, just disbelieving about how this was Haymitch, about how he was doing this with Haymitch, about how Haymitch was letting him come on him.
He couldn’t help but keep moving for a moment longer even after he was spent, his hips helplessly trying to push on.
Then he somehow had the presence of mind to crash not onto Haymitch but next to him, sprawling on his back all over the mattress. In the corner of his eye, Haymitch slumped back, too, the two of them making the bedframe shake harshly with their combined weight. When Finnick looked over, Haymitch was rubbing his hand all over his face, wiping away sweat.
He was swearing to himself again, and Finnick wanted to laugh, because of course Haymitch would swear like a sailor in bed. He was suddenly thrilled like a child to find that out about him - nobody else knew, nobody at all because there weren’t any bugs in here.
“Good?” he couldn’t help but ask with a probably dorky smile. Imagining what it had to look like on his face, he wanted to laugh all the more.
Haymitch gave him a long look, fond but meant to be dry.
“Right,” Finnick told the ceiling. “Stupid questions again.”
“Yeah,” he heard Haymitch say.
This hadn’t been much, Finnick tried to remind himself. Even in Four, far away from the Capitol, nobody made a big production about falling into bed with people if the opportunity arose, and there was so much more two adult men could do together. He, of all people, knew that. His oldest brother, Perri, boasting with friends about his one-night conquests, would have called anything that didn’t even require condoms a wasted opportunity.
But it still had felt nothing like he’d imagined, nothing like the books had described either, where it was all wish fulfillment and smooth and kind of vague and had nothing to do with reality. He hadn’t been scrambling to recreate that, the way he would have with some of his clients.
And despite the fact that a part of Finnick, one that he knew was a compulsive, obsessive one, was already cataloguing things he’d done that he could do better next time, others that he should repeat, he was just filled with amazement about how it had been great. It had been like nothing else and theirs and Finnick couldn’t wait to do it again, a bit differently next time.
It filled him with such a massive wave of power that he didn’t dare move, least he could somehow break it and it would be gone. It seemed to have worked for Haymitch just fine, too, and maybe, Finnick just needed to stop worrying and trust that Haymitch knew what concessions he was ready to make.
They lay there for a moment in mutual content, recovering, close enough to feel the body heat of the other, for Finnick to hear Haymitch breathe, still long and deep from way inside his lungs. He could always hear Haymitch’s degree of relaxation from the way he breathed.
Which was why he grew aware when it strained, turning flat very abruptly, and then Haymitch was already pulling himself up.
“Taking a shower,” he said, nauseated and pale, and scrambled off the bed before Finnick could move.
***
“Is it the smell?” Finnick asked when Haymitch emerged from the bathroom, his whole body filled with the tension of waiting so long for the door to open again. A person should have a right to privacy, he hadn’t dared to intrude, just kept guard.
Haymitch looked angry at himself. “Probably ain’t how you expected this to go,” he said. “Shit. I’m sorry.”
He didn’t need to tell Finnick that he’d thought it wouldn’t happen like that. It showed clearly on his face, and his skin still had an unhealthy, shaken tint. He hadn’t put his clothes back on, just wrapped himself in a towel, and Finnick thought he probably couldn’t, not the same clothes he’d worn when they got started, sex smells and reminders clinging to them.
“I’m going to take a shower, too,” Finnick declared, reaching a decision. “When I’m done, I’ll change the sheets. You wait downstairs.”
“This really ain’t what you deserve, Finnick,” Haymitch said, reaching out to grab his shoulder when Finnick tried to make his way past, giving him a beseeching look.
Finnick paused. “It’s just a shower,” he gently replied. “I’ll deal.”
Haymitch’s jaw was working, as if he just wanted to be angry again, angry at himself and safe. He looked away, though the fact that he was doing so seem to make him unhappy, too. I told you so, his face said.
“In the arena,” he said, his fingers stiffening on Finnick’s shoulder. Standing so close to Finnick, close enough to smell the come and sweat, had to be hard, but he didn’t give an inch. “It’s the arena. There was rain, but not enough of it to wash. All the water was poisoned, we didn’t dare touch it. I was in there two weeks. No way to clean up, the blood, the sweat. I got out, I couldn’t get the stench out of my nose. I just, I can’t stand it.”
He didn’t say, And then they forced me to fuck people and there were more sweat and body odors. I couldn’t leave and wash it off, they were the ones who decided when I could leave. He didn’t need to. Finnick knew how that worked well enough.
“It’s fine,” Finnick said, putting his hand on Haymitch’s and squeezing. “This is nothing.”
Finnick didn’t care how many issues there were, he didn’t allow himself to, and he resolved to refuse calling it a problem if it could be solved.
When he stood in Haymitch’s shower ten minutes later to wash away the traces of what they had done - odors he wasn’t so fond of either, honestly - it hit him how he’d always thought there was something wrong with him, because everybody else had all these triggers and he didn’t. Because Haymitch got nauseous from something like sweat and Finnick didn’t. He’d thought there was something wrong with him, but what he’d just done with Haymitch had been hard, navigating around all those obstacles. Even Finnick saw that. Some of them Haymitch’s, yes. But most of them Finnick’s. Most of this had been Haymitch keeping Finnick safe.
In that one moment, he still didn’t hate himself, he didn’t consider himself a failure or a freak, he just felt faintly relieved and strangely confident, about the both of them.
on to chapter 15
Pairings: Finnick/Haymitch, Kat/Peeta
Characters: Finnick, Haymitch, Chaff, Peeta, Gale, Kat; plus appearances by Mags, Johanna, Caesar Flickerman, President Snow, Effie, Claudius Templesmith, Beetee, Prim, Thresh, Rue, District Twelve ensemble and various OC
Rating: adult
Warnings: forced prostitution & non-con; people dealing with sexual trauma; rape fantasies; self-hate; canon-typical violence; minor character death (of major canon characters); implied physical abuse of children (in the Mellark household); alcoholism & drug abuse
Summary: When Haymitch Abernathy’s alcoholism makes the prime time news, Finnick Odair is sent to live in District Twelve to pick up the pieces. But it’s hard to save a friend if you can barely stand looking yourself in the eye. And it might become impossible once that friend decides to move hell and high water to bring two of his tributes home at once, even if it should cost him his own life.
Prologue -- Chapter 1 -- Chapter 2 -- Chapter 3 -- Chapter 4 -- Chapter 5 -- Chapter 6 -- Chapter 7 -- Chapter 8 -- Chapter 9 -- Chapter 10 -- Chapter 11 -- Chapter 12 Chapter 13
Chapter 14: Touch
Two weeks later, he was still feeling elated, like the world had taken a respectful step back and conceded to just leave him be.
Finnick recognized the feeling, intellectually. He’d seen first love and all the fluttering, rose-colored excitement of it playing out in Capitol movies, read about it in novels, even in the ones from before the Dark Days - the Four black market was full of them, easier to obtain than most other kinds of stories. He’d read about what it was supposed to feel like, getting to be with somebody you liked, what it supposedly did to people’s insides. Then he’d shaken his head about the squishy nonsense and forgotten about it.
He’d assumed that the books embellished on the feelings, and romance was meant for other people, anyway.
He hadn’t expected that he’d be feeling so good.
He hadn’t expected that it would put Haymitch in such a good, relaxed mood, either - whenever he forgot to worry about things - that Finnick being with him would. It seemed almost out of character at times, except for how Finnick had just never before seen him with a good reason to be happy.
There was kissing and some touching between them now, and Haymitch especially was loath to talk about it too much but he still had yet to stop Finnick from doing anything with him. It continued to make Finnick uncomfortable to leave any decisions about how they touched each other to Haymitch; it reminded him too much of how his body was for everyone to use.
“Watch out,” he would mutter before stepping up behind Haymitch, peeling potatoes at the kitchen counter, because it was a dumb idea to approach any victor, and especially Haymitch, from behind while that victor was holding a knife.
Now, Haymitch put the hand holding it down and held very still when Finnick ran his hands down his arms, kissing the back of his neck.
He could feel the tension gradually seeping out of Haymitch when he did that, guarded at first, but plain unable to resist the sensation. Feeling him shudder and lean towards him in an involuntary way that flustered him every time he noticed he’d done it, Finnick had resolved that he’d never stop wanting to touch Haymitch, if that was what it did to him. He didn’t need to tell Finnick that nobody had touched him like that for a long time. Finnick felt awed that he was the one who had been allowed. It was no small thing for Haymitch to permit.
It also gave all the control to Finnick, because Haymitch purposefully didn’t move, until Finnick asked him, with a questioning sound, to turn around. Then he did, a small grunt escaping him when they kissed, and he fully let go of the knife, which clattered onto the counter.
It was the greatest thing. Considering that first bumbling attempt in the lake when Haymitch had reached out to him and gripped Finnick’s thigh almost too hard, the fact that Haymitch was letting him do it this way clearly was a concession, not inclination. Haymitch, after all, was an authoritative person by nature, who tended to dominate a room. And while that responsibility scared Finnick a little, it also felt exhilarating, a little like swimming, maybe really like wielding his trident. He’d started spending ridiculous amounts of time each day trying to figure out how to make Haymitch feel good in new small ways, how to touch or kiss him, how to make himself feel good by doing that.
It was a firmly above-beltline activity. They didn’t venture any further than that.
Summer bloomed early after that short winter, little blue and yellow flowers covering the Meadow. But they started escaping from the sight of the starved, desperate district population two or three times a week now to hike to the lake, towels and food in their bags. None of the Peacekeepers cared; one night, Finnick noticed two of them, the boyish lieutenant with the red hair and a captain, deliberately looking the other way when they returned home, from the rocky area behind the Village where there only were mining facilities and a weakened spot in the fence big enough for grown men.
Haymitch had progressed to short laps in the lake, eventually venturing into deeper water, too, but he seemed to be just as content watching Finnick while he exerted himself, losing himself in the exercise. Finnick had tried animating him to spar with him, desperate for a partner as he was, but Haymitch had just laughed in his face. That hadn’t changed.
They didn’t cuddle, exactly, but Haymitch would still let him lean over when they sat in the sun together after a swim, allowing Finnick to explore his frame with his fingers, running them down his bare arms and across the expanse of his belly.
“Why'd you keep doing that?” Haymitch asked once, leaning back onto his elbows, watching Finnick's hand trailing down his sternum, playing with the hair on his chest.
“What? The people I do it with are always shaved,” Finnick replied. “It's interesting. I mean, everybody's got hair on his chest. You'd think they have a problem with people overall, like they don’t want them to be the way they really are. Like, I dunno, they want us to be something else.”
“Yeah, whatever,” Haymitch said. “Not what I meant.” His breath hitched when Finnick's hand slid lower, and Finnick paused with a questioning look. But no, that had been a good spot. Still, the intensity with which Haymitch often reacted to his proximity made him think, touch seemed to be too good to bear for Haymitch, sometimes, something to get used step by step. So maybe it was a good and a bad spot at once. “Just saying,” Haymitch continued now. “You're aware most people would like for all that to not be there.” So he was speaking about his beer belly, then, as Finnick had reached a spot underneath his ribs.
Finnick shrugged. “Most people and me tend to disagree.” Most people wanted to fuck him, never mind cheer for dying children at the Hunger Games, so quite obviously, most people’s opinion was mad.
“Well if you think the way I look is just an expression of my unhappiness, or whatever else esoteric crap you've been fed, you're in for a surprise. That fat ain’t gonna go away. You don't change shape so easily anymore at my age...”
“You've still got that thing in your head where you think you aren't good enough for me,” Finnick interrupted him, and Haymitch abruptly shut up.
Watching Finnick exploring his torso, he changed gears.
“Well yeah,” he said, like it was obvious.
Finnick leaned closer to press some small kisses on his chest, pleased by how it pressed his own torso up against Haymitch's naked arm, how Haymitch automatically leaned in.
“I think you're eventually gonna figure out that this isn't for you,” he heard Haymitch’s voice, unsteady from the distraction, muffled against the top of his head. “And that's fine, you know. You're young. You'll find a nice guy or a nice girl, and you'll realize that you can have the same thing we're doing right now except with someone who isn't an old, overweight drunk who’s gotten all his tributes killed.”
“I'm forever amazed at the crap that sometimes comes out of your mouth.”
“Cute, but snappy commentary isn't gonna change the facts.”
“Is there anything at all that I can say to make you stop thinking like that?”
“Nah,” Haymitch said. “I'm just collecting the spoils of your delusion here and waiting for the day when I can say I told you so.” He vaguely nodded at Finnick's hand. “Ain't like I gotta do a lot of work.”
“If you're not okay letting me...” Finnick immediately said, retreating, and Haymitch rolled his eyes.
“You know that's not how I meant it.”
“Right,” Finnick said with a grimace.
He looked down on his own hand, putting it in place again and spreading his fingers until it reached from the thinning line of hair above Haymitch's belly button almost exactly halfway across his belly. Then moved it, along Haymitch's lower ribs, all the way down until it reached the drying waistband of the pants he used as swimming trunks, the wet material outlining his crotch. Felt for how warm Haymitch felt from the sun and how steady, and how his breath stuttered at that in a way that Finnick could feel, this trembling thing, deep inside under his palm.
“I wish,” Finnick started saying, and paused. “I wish you'd let me tell you how I feel about you,” he said, because Haymitch didn't. He just got sarcastic when Finnick tried. Not that he’d offered serenading Finnick either, but that was probably because he sensed that one too many people had already done that before him. “I like touching you. I love it, I could do it all day. I mean, I do it all day, obviously,” he added, and Haymitch snorted a laugh. Finnick's lips twitched, too. “I think you're amazing,” he said. “And really hot, seriously. Home in Four, there were a lot of people who I love but I just wanted to be gone. I didn't want them to look at me anymore. Now I'm here, with you, and I want to be here with you more than I want to be somewhere else. You’re strong and smart, you probably don’t know how smart.
“I think about touching you at night,” he quietly said. “I think about you when I, well. When I, in the shower. I’ve never much done that about anybody else, not like this. It’s never been like this." His voice died. These were things he’d never have admitted, if it weren’t to convince Haymitch.
“But you don’t believe any of that,” he added, pressing his lips against Haymitch’s shoulder.
Haymitch was quiet for a moment. “I want to, if it helps,” he said, clearing his voice when those words came out too quiet. His tone said that it was similar for him - his desire for it to be true was bigger than his need to protect himself from what he thought was the inevitable.
So maybe it was a matter of time. Finnick tried thinking like Mags, reminding himself how fortunate that was, because time was what they had most of.
Finnick liked to believe that it wasn’t just the physical exercise in the lake and from the hikes, but also his company - and maybe the trust that they had built between the two of them - that helped Haymitch sleep reasonably well in those weeks. Otherwise, his insomnia might have returned with sudden full force much earlier than June.
“Is it us?” Finnick asked hesitantly one morning, the third day in a row that Haymitch had trudged down the stairs obviously sleep-deprived, rubbing his eyes over breakfast and clutching his coffee too shakily. He hadn’t said anything about it, so Finnick had been unsure if he wasn’t maybe supposed to ignore it. “What we’re doing… is that why? Should we go slower?” Though he wasn’t sure how. He was as new to relationships that lasted longer than three weeks as Haymitch and didn’t know how to proceed.
Finnick had put down his knife, observing the light reflecting from it, because despite everything, he was hit by an abrupt pang of doubt, of how maybe he was doing something wrong. He was so used to double-checking what his partners wanted.
Now Haymitch glanced up from his plate, in the corner of his eye, then hesitated likewise, putting down his fork as if the eggs just had stopped tasting like eggs.
“Games getting close,” he said. “Just another month until it’s Reaping Day again.”
Finnick nodded, a part of him relieved, another part tensing up. There were all the obvious reasons for Haymitch - for both of them - to dread the Games, and this time would be particularly hard. It would be the first time Haymitch went back there since his breakdown. All the cameras would be on him. It would test his ability to stay sober like nothing had before.
“Should I…” he started searching for the words, but Haymitch had already nodded, resigned, admitting defeat.
“Yeah,” he said, pushing away the plate as if he’d grown tired of pretending. “Might as well.”
So Finnick didn’t leave for the night that day like he usually would have, but stayed behind and got ready for sleep at Haymitch’s place. But when he settled into his armchair, Haymitch muttered, “Might as well, if you want,” and pointed at the empty side of his bed.
Finnick crawled in next to him, trying to get comfortable on a stiff, old pillow, adorned with patterns twenty years out of fashion. Haymitch’s mattress felt too soft. There was a whole inch between them, but Finnick could still reconstruct the outline of Haymitch’s body from the way the sheet curved between them, could feel his body heat - close enough and comforting despite all that.
Haymitch twisted and turned while he waited for the sleeping pill to take effect, until Finnick remembered to reach out and put his hand on his upper arm, holding on tight. Haymitch settled in after that, used to that physical anchor, like a startle trigger but the other way around.
Just before he could fall asleep, it struck Finnick that sleeping comfortably and relaxing into the sheets meant he would eventually wake up from one of those dreams.
He’d wake up from a dream in this brightly lit room and Haymitch would be there, light sleeper that he was even when he took pills, he’d quickly figure out what it had been about, and then what?
“Everything alright?” Haymitch asked, and Finnick noticed his hand had stiffened, gripping Haymitch for real as if Haymitch was the anchor and Finnick was the one who might drown.
“Just thinking,” he said after a beat. “I’m fine.”
None of this would last, he thought, suddenly so unhappy that he felt like crying; all his resolve about the two of them vanished. Haymitch was right, it wouldn’t last, but different from how he thought. He only thought he knew Finnick. He’d find out. Like he’d so optimistically told Haymitch at the lake, Finnick had come to Twelve so that the people he cared about wouldn’t learn his secrets, but he hadn’t expected to find a new person like that here. He’d thought it would just be Haymitch, who wouldn’t care, and now Haymitch did, and it was true what Finnick had said - Haymitch was wickedly smart, good at reading Finnick in a terrifying way. It was starting all over again.
Just enjoy it while it lasts. This is the best you’ll ever get to feel.
That was cold comfort, though. At least, in the end, his sleep was restless, no room for dirty dreams.
***
Finnick returned from his workout one evening to find Gale Hawthorne sitting on his porch with his game bag lying next to him, blatantly displaying his crime here in the Village, where Peacekeepers knew not to patrol.
“Thought I’d wait,” the boy - young man now, almost - told him, pointing at the strawberries and apricots peeking out of the bag. “Got some new things on sale today that I thought you might enjoy.”
Then he nodded at the well-lit house across the lawn. “He wouldn’t open the door when I knocked.”
“He doesn’t like talking to people who take general issue with his existence,” Finnick replied and sat down next to Gale, propping his spears against the railing.
He gestured towards the boy to hand him the strawberries, picking one and letting the sweet juice of it run over his tongue before he offered them to Gale.
“What? I’m paying for them,” he said and Gale gave him a frown, then still took one. People born in Twelve never refused food.
Finnick nibbled at another, looking at the sky across the buildings above. It was nice out, the setting sun coloring the sky in vivid purples and reds, the warmth sticking around until sunset. The Village was quiet, like always, and right now, that felt nice. Three weeks from now, they would return to the Capitol and see at least one of their children off to die, but now, he was sitting here and eating strawberries with Gale Hawthorne and it was just nice.
Gale was watching him out of the corner of his eye, Finnick noticed, the way he was licking strawberry juice off his fingers.
“What?” Finnick said and stopped.
Gale hesitated for a moment.
“Do you look forward to it?” he eventually asked. “Going back to the Capitol for the Games.”
“Yes, that fills me with ecstasy every time,” Finnick deadpanned.
The boy frowned, as if he’d expected something else.
“Sure looks like it on the television,” he muttered, then picked another fruit.
Too lazy to feel offended, Finnick contemplated that for a moment, what Gale must think of him and Haymitch, what all the district thought of them. Collaborators. Sluts. Child molesters - that last one would always anger him most. They were all happy to see only what was right in front of them the way it had been filmed, and it was hard to see a difference between that and the Capitol crowds during the Hunger Games.
Finnick wanted to believe that it meant everything would be different if all these people, Capitol and districts both, were just told the truth. He didn’t want to think that human beings just were like that.
As long as Gale wasn’t reaped and didn’t win, the boy would never know the truth. But despite how he’d do wonders for their marketing, Finnick had started hoping that it wouldn’t happen to him. Gale had turned seventeen and had only two more Reapings to survive.
Right now, he was glancing at Finnick again, a slight frown still on his face. “Is it true what you said on the television, that you want things to change for Twelve in the Games?”
“Yes, absolutely.”
“How would you do it, though?” Gale said. “There’s nothing that can be done.”
Since this was Gale, Finnick knew he didn’t want an empty reassurance, but hard facts; he wanted to know the actual plan.
Finnick wondered why.
He gathered his thoughts before he replied, silently relieved that there was at least the one person in the district who had asked.
“I’ll be honest,” he soberly said. “There isn’t a lot we can do in the first couple of years, it’s a slow build. Convince the Capitol that it would be exciting if a Twelve tribute won. Right now they think it would be unusual, but ultimately boring, because Swagger and Haymitch didn’t turn out so exciting for them.” Because Haymitch had done his might to make himself unattractive to the audience fast - not that Finnick wouldn’t be doing the same if he knew how, and screw district success. “Work on building a network of sponsors. I can chat them up, but I can’t give them a good reason to stick around for multiple Games, I don’t have that kind of leverage. That’ll be Haymitch’s job, he’s the native. Convince them that they’ll look good once Twelve wins.” He paused for a second. “Sure would help if the district would trust that we know what we’re doing.”
A part of him had braced himself against Gale snorting about that, dismissing the whole plan out of hand, but his face had just hardened. “That doesn’t make our tributes less weak and starved.”
“There are plenty of weapons that weak kids can learn how to use,” Finnick said. “Especially when nobody expects them to.”
“People wouldn’t stand for that,” Gale pointed out, his eyes alert like he was watching prey, and Finnick sighed.
“No, probably not,” he agreed, then hesitated and said, although he knew it was probably a terrible idea, “Ever seen Swagger March?”
Gale’s eyes narrowed. “Swagger March is dead.”
“Yeah, I noticed,” Finnick said and nervously smirked. “I mean video footage.
“I’ve heard that Swagger was pretty popular here in Twelve, see. Everybody loved him, nothing like Haymitch and me. Apparently, he used to give speeches on the town square. I’ve seen him on tape in the Games reruns. He was a happy guy, a talker. Made a lot of jokes with the press, flirted with them, with the escorts. He couldn’t make the crowds love him, but he made the reporters like approaching him.”
Gale had stiffened. “I suppose he did what needed doing.”
Finnick nodded. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, exactly my point.”
Then he closed his mouth, because he didn’t dare say more and although he knew Gale was still watching him, he didn’t want to turn around and check the look on his face. Maybe, he got a bit of what Finnick had meant. Maybe he didn’t. Finnick wasn’t sure if he could.
They sat there for a while longer while the sun sank further down, not talking anymore.
***
A while ago, Haymitch had announced he would be paying Noreen from his own money from now on, because he had no interest in becoming indebted to Finnick - whatever that meant, considering it ultimately was the Capitol paying the housekeepers, anyway - and because he wanted to be at liberty of telling her off with full employer authority.
That was Haymitch being Haymitch, of course. He and Noreen had long developed a strange bond that Finnick didn’t pretend to understand - once, he’d walked in on them focused on a half-finished pot pie, Haymitch nodding along while Noreen listed all the reasons why he’d done a bad job and was a terrible cook, and he should have just asked her before he tried. Haymitch claimed that Noreen had grown aware that his and Finnick’s relationship had changed, deducing this from how she wrinkled her nose in disapproving ways upon entering rooms. However, she still seemed to have decided that discretion was the better part of valor; nobody had started throwing them any more disgusted looks than before on the street. Fallon had to know, too, but hadn’t said a word.
Finnick and Fallon’s relationship was very different from that, anyway. Finnick still couldn’t shake the memory of how he’d first met the young woman, trying to sell herself to get money for food. Although he knew that he could never have forgiven himself for hiring anybody who needed the job less, he still felt disquieted when she was around; he had a faint fear that he might end up flirting with her, falling into Capitol patterns, that she might think he’d hired her to keep her available for sex, that Haymitch and he both… - the moment his mind went there, it never seemed to want to stop running in circles around it. On her end, Fallon was careful with him, careful and polite and stiffly reserved, no matter he had seen her relaxed and giggling with Noreen.
But after he paid her that week, he still couldn’t help but say, “Wait,” before she could leave the room, because he couldn’t take it anymore. She paused, questioning look on her face, then stepped back in the kitchen and shut the backdoor behind herself.
“Yes, Mr. Odair?” Despite how she was such a frail young woman, she stood there like a soldier at attention.
It was hard looking her in the eye, knowing what she had used to do to make money and why.
“I’ve just, I’ve been wondering,” Finnick said, then paused, glancing at the wallet, still in his hand. She had to work for him, too, he thought, she didn’t have a choice in that either. “Since you’ve started working for me - your financial situation, is it working out for you now? Do you have enough to live?”
Although Fallon didn’t move, it still looked as if she had retreated a careful step back. “Mr. Odair?”
“If… if you need more money than I’m paying you, I want you to tell me that. And, I want you to know that I want you to work for me long-term, if you’ll have me. I don’t want you to think that you… that you have to make more money for the future, while you’re young enough to… to have other ways of making money on top of this job…”
He trailed off. It was just impossible to not dwell on it, on how even if you were safe, you still might feel that you were not, and then what? Maybe if people had a chance to get away, they still didn’t take it. Maybe they’d gotten so used to it that they didn’t think what they wanted should matter.
But Fallon, who had hesitated for a beat and looked down at the floor, now straightened herself up. Then she looked him in the eye, forcing him to hold her gaze.
“My situation is fine, Mr. Odair,” she said very clearly, filled with a hard-earned dignity that made her look beautiful, in a way that had nothing to do with sex and everything with strength. “Thank you for asking, but everything is working out for me very well now.”
Then she gave him a smile, a sparse but honest one and straightened her shoulders a bit more, before turning around and opening the back door, vanishing out of sight.
When it fell shut behind her, Finnick was still standing there with his wallet in hand.
“Good,” he muttered, although she couldn’t hear. “I’m glad.”
Maybe he’d really helped improve a little thing in the world. Maybe that meant he still had a choice in what person to be after all, be a little more like what Haymitch saw. What Haymitch and Mags both claimed they saw.
He wasn’t certain, though.
***
It was a nice degree of warm, neither pressing nor humid like it would have been in Four, a breeze bulging the curtains of the open windows and cooling down the house. They were at Haymitch’s. There had been food and a collaborative cooking achievement, to do with herbs.
Haymitch had taken a seat on the couch, relaxing back into the backrest when Finnick straddled his lap, leaning down to kiss him.
Finnick tried not to crowd, despite the fact that he was on top, taller and more muscular than Haymitch. But Haymitch, who couldn’t be considered frail himself, glanced him up and down with a faint trace of awe, running his hands very softly over Finnick’s knees when they kissed another time, and it was Haymitch’s behavior as much as Finnick’s sense of control that made Finnick feel safe, because he knew Haymitch wouldn’t venture closer to his crotch or ass or any other place people used to get themselves off. If he could trust in one thing, it was Haymitch’s self-control when they did this.
The time they spent touching each other had yet to start feeling familiar instead of like an experiment, probing and careful, but they’d both learned that flawless meant scripted and fake - things that just worked out were never real, and Finnick would have preferred either of them stopping and retreating three times over if it meant that none of them had to worry if they looked suitably fuckable from the right angle.
So they kissed, for a while, as they’d been doing a lot recently, until Haymitch’s breath relaxed into something easier that came from deeper than his solar plexus, soft and steady against Finnick’s lips. His eyes were half-shut, and Finnick carefully worked his hand under his shirt, stroking up and down his side, feeling for skin.
Finnick resisted a startling urge to move in, rub them against each other. He’d been hard for too long, feeling disheveled, and the bulge of Haymitch’s pants said Haymitch was, too.
He could have touched Haymitch all day, fighting against how it seemed like a part of Haymitch wanted to be uncomfortable about the attention on him, but the sheer sensations were too good to resist. And in a corner of his mind, Finnick was still waiting to be scared or disgusted or like none of this had anything to do with him, but he was growing just a little more assured that what they were doing with each other really wasn’t anything like that. It was an altogether different thing.
It was that wobbling, but persisting assurance that made him pull away and reach for his own shirt, pulling it over his head and dropping it to the ground next to the couch. He knew he’d soon find the tips of Haymitch’s fingers on his arms and elbows and barely gracing his thighs, and that would be all.
It felt great to both display skin and be safe.
Haymitch released a sound between a moan and a grunt when they kissed with more urgency, more verbal than Finnick, and it was obvious where this would be going this time - where Finnick wanted to go, too, because he didn’t want to stop. It filled Finnick with all kinds of emotions, anxiety and excitement and determination, interlaced with arousal.
He felt Haymitch’s hand falling on his, gripping it, telling him wait.
Finnick froze.
“You want this to go anywhere,” Haymitch said against his cheek, voice rough. “Let’s move it to the bed.”
***
“You really sure you’re alright with this?” Haymitch asked when they’d made it up the stairs, searching Finnick’s face.
“Yes,” Finnick said, exclaiming a long breath. “Yes, let’s go for it.”
He’d sat down on Haymitch’s side of the bed, wondering what would happen and if it would really be different from what he usually did. He still knew he wasn’t supposed to make such a big deal out of it - the books had certainly taught him that, never mind the talks by his mom when he was young about how the sex wasn’t the special part of a relationship, “no need to talk them into it, hon.” But it was a big deal, it was an incredibly big deal, because a part of Finnick would only believe that they could enjoy it together in an okay way once he had proof.
What he didn’t expect was for Haymitch to go rummaging through one of his drawers and to produce a truly impressive vibrator, colored a bright kind of Capitol yellow, that he thoughtfully weighed in his hand.
Finnick stared at it.
“Uhm,” he said slowly, knocked off balance. “That isn’t exactly what I’d expected.”
Haymitch threw him a grim little smirk.
“Wait for it,” he said, twirling it around in his hand and pushing on.
The room was filled with the quiet hum of high-end Capitol sex toys that rarely ever made it to the districts, never mind Twelve. Meanwhile at the base, an aggressive blue light diode came to life blinking wildly in the way Capitol phonelets did when they scanned for reception. Finnick, who was somewhat of a sex toy expert, had never seen one do that.
Then the light settled into a more sedate slow rhythm; with a faintly satisfied noise, Haymitch put it on a shelf.
“So Beetee used to have a real bizarre sense of humor when he was still young and high all the time,” he told Finnick, apropos of nothing. “He goes and builds me that thing in his secret sex toy lab or something, ‘cause clearly that’s what any victors would need on their lonesome in the district. Then decides that maybe it’s hard to relax with all that up your ass while you’ve got people listening in. So he adds a little enhancement to take care of that, too.”
Finnick was rapidly changing gears. “That thing just disabled the bugs?” he said, disbelieving. It disabled the bugs so that Haymitch could masturbate in peace?
“Yeah,” Haymitch agreed, lips twitching in an unexpected way. “Look here, the blinking thing says that it’s found one within range to intercept. Not surprised that Snow would put one in my bedroom, I gotta say. That pervert,” he added in a tone of relish that shaved about twenty years off him, as if he’d always wanted to say that. “Makes it look like a storm’s interrupting the transmission or some such. Told me nobody would be the wiser.”
Finnick couldn’t help but laugh.
Haymitch had a sex toy that disabled the bugs.
He squelched a sudden urge to ask if he’d ever actually used it for its original purpose, because that would have been… he really would like it if Haymitch was okay telling him that.
“Now if Beetee just had better taste in colors,” he said, feeling a little shaky again.
Whether somebody listened in on them or not while they had sex didn’t matter, apart from how it made them feel, and that had never counted before. Trust Haymitch to remember this thing and to show in this small way how important Finnick was to him exactly.
It had to be nerves that made him retreat ever so slightly when Haymitch slumped down on the bed next to him. He felt disoriented, not sure what would happen.
Haymitch wrinkled his forehead.
“The moment you don’t like doing something, we stop,” he said.
Finnick made himself release the breath he’d been holding.
“It’s going to be okay,” he said. “I’m just nervous. I do all kinds of things all the time. It’s not, I don’t have bad reactions like that.” I’m a pro, he meant to add as a joke and laugh, but couldn’t make himself.
“I don’t give a fuck what you do all the time,” Haymitch replied, an edge to his voice. “You wanna stop, you stop, you better not wait with it until you freak.”
“You’re the one who’s holding still for me,” Finnick said softly, because Haymitch was the one who was making it easy. Finnick was the one who’d gotten to act and make the moves so far, and he was in no way deluding himself into thinking that that was the harder part. “The same goes for you, too.”
“We’ve already had that conversation,” Haymitch reminded him. Haymitch seemed to think that Finnick was the most fucked-up between the two of them, the one who needed more protection by the other.
Remembering all the things about himself that he’d never told Haymitch about, it was more difficult to argue with his logic than Finnick wanted it to be. Fucked-up, yes, that was a good way of looking at it.
Finnick hadn’t put his shirt back on when they made their way up to the room. When Haymitch leaned back on the bed, inviting him to hover over him in the way he’d often done on the shore of the lake, Finnick was grateful that Haymitch had propped himself up on his elbows in a way that meant he wouldn’t even be able to raise his hands to touch Finnick.
But they’d moved to the bedroom to have something like sex, and the bugs were disabled so nobody but them would ever have to know this about them, and all of that made Finnick an almost jittery kind of nervous.
Kissing Haymitch still felt the same way as before, though, and that helped, his cheeks rough from stubbles and his lips soft in contrast. The black hair on his chest visible where the top button of his shirt had come loose, and everything about him just intrinsically strong and steady and masculine.
When Finnick deepened the kiss eventually and pushed him further onto the bed, Haymitch didn’t resist but just closed his eyes and fisted the sheet, stopping himself from reaching out. Something in Finnick’s chest loosened up again, filled by a sense of power and control and defiance.
“Can you get out of that shirt?” he said, retreating a bit, feeling breathless. “I want to touch you more.”
He glanced at Haymitch at that, half waiting for Haymitch to get spooked, half the direct opposite of that, for Haymitch to grow impatient and to tell Finnick to get with the program already.
But Haymitch just looked him over likewise and said, “yeah,” before propping himself up high enough to work his way out of his shirt. Finnick wanted to reach out to help with the buttons, one after the others, slide it over his shoulders and kiss them, then didn’t. It seemed like an overly intimate thing to do.
Then he was leaning over Haymitch again and running his hand along the skin above his waistband, and Haymitch, who was especially sensitive in that area, muttered “shit” in a shaky way when a full-body shudder ran through him.
“Good?” Finnick asked; it spoke volumes that Haymitch’s reply was yet again, quietly, “Yeah.” When he ran out of sarcasm, he ran strangely out of words overall.
Haymitch’s eyes were on Finnick’s chest and shoulders with an uncharacteristic kind of fascination on his face, but none of the possessive greed Finnick was familiar with.
It raised a somewhat intimidating, but also good feeling in his guts, being looked at in this way that said he was wanted, even sexually, but that didn’t say that was the same as reaching out and using him up.
Haymitch was holding still for him, and Finnick was just terribly aroused all over again, kissing his throat, his shoulders, feeling for the hair on his chest and his skin, feeling for Haymitch’s reactions to that. It still was elevating that he was doing this without remake, because somehow, that made it more different, made it more like it was theirs. More risky, too, but in a good way.
He’d have liked to tell Haymitch that he looked perfect, but he knew that that would probably be too much to bear for the other man.
He wanted to say it all the more, though, once they’d both gotten out of their pants, stripping off the underwear, too, and he got to look at Haymitch, all that skin he’d be allowed to touch, Haymitch’s erect cock heavy and flush against his belly, dark hair filling his crotch.
If Haymitch wanted to say anything like that about Finnick, Finnick was relieved that he didn’t, an unpleasant reaction creeping up inside of him even as he thought of it, not so much a feeling rather than a general cold absence of one. He just didn’t want anybody addressing his looks, he knew that. Ideally, he would have liked to be invisible.
The threat of that feeling kept lurking in the back of his mind, the memory of the way he felt when he did these things with Capitol citizens, but he firmly stayed in the here and now.
They kissed again - they kissed a lot - and they touched, or rather Finnick touched but Haymitch let him, sometimes shifting his weight or leaning in and letting him know where he wanted him to venture - his body communicating for him, and Finnick, too, glad to obey that kind of command when a verbal one would have been impossible to bear. He didn’t even think Haymitch could have verbalized what he wanted him to do, not after those years of trying to want nothing much. His body did it instinctively for him.
Finnick glanced down Haymitch’s body, thinking about taking him in his mouth, thinking that would be a thing he might like to try soon.
Hesitantly, he stroked along Haymitch’s knee and up the inside of his thigh, and, when that made the other man shudder again, wrapped his hand around his cock and pulled.
“Fuck,” Haymitch muttered in one long exhaled breath.
His hands were in the sheets again. He was visibly stopping himself from moving, pressing his eyes shut in reaction. Though when he managed, “Do you want me to…” Finnick shook his head almost reflexively, saying, “Please, just let me, I want,” his hand searching for the right pressure.
Haymitch’s thighs had tensed but the rest of his body, his torso still held upright on his elbows, went slack. Gathering confidence, Finnick reminded himself how much the other man liked just being touched, how easy that was to give. So he bent over and nibbled at his throat, pressing his cheek against Haymitch’s shoulder, inching closer on the bed so that their bodies were aligned, bronze skin against olive. Haymitch felt very warm.
It took what Haymitch would probably consider an embarrassingly short amount of time, until he grew even harder in Finnick’s hand and instinct took over. Exclaiming an almost surprised, uncontrolled groan, he came, all over Finnick’s hand, and his own belly.
“Shit,” he muttered against Finnick’s cheek, breathing hard, then, “Fuck.”
Looking at his face with astonishment, Finnick grew all the more aware of his own arousal. It had become that white, blinding, crazy thing all over his vision. He’d made this happen. Inconceivably, that was turning him on the most, never mind he’d given over a hundred people orgasms in his life without thinking there was anything to it.
Haymitch’s mouth seemed too dry to form words.
“Do you…” he said the same time Finnick managed, “Can I…” and then Haymitch said, “Whatever you want” which still was the most unexpected thing coming out of Haymitch’s mouth, really. But Finnick was having trouble thinking his thoughts in the right order, overwhelmed, so he reached out, rolled on top to straddle Haymitch and rub himself against his thigh, cock on skin, slickened by come.
There was a whimper somewhere that he realized had to have been his; he rarely ever did anything as restrained as this with anybody, and still it never felt so great.
He managed to not quite lie down on Haymitch, because he wasn’t sure if that would be alright, but still stay above him, kissing him again and feeling him just opening up to him, for long and sloppy kisses that had nothing to do with finesse but everything with hunger. This wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t flawlessly choreographed, it was improvised and bare. It was just Finnick, and Haymitch underneath him, getting what they wanted, how they wanted it, and it was so much better than even masturbating to this as a fantasy, when it was safe.
When he came, Haymitch’s thigh became even more slippery and Finnick moved against it, not thinking anymore, just disbelieving about how this was Haymitch, about how he was doing this with Haymitch, about how Haymitch was letting him come on him.
He couldn’t help but keep moving for a moment longer even after he was spent, his hips helplessly trying to push on.
Then he somehow had the presence of mind to crash not onto Haymitch but next to him, sprawling on his back all over the mattress. In the corner of his eye, Haymitch slumped back, too, the two of them making the bedframe shake harshly with their combined weight. When Finnick looked over, Haymitch was rubbing his hand all over his face, wiping away sweat.
He was swearing to himself again, and Finnick wanted to laugh, because of course Haymitch would swear like a sailor in bed. He was suddenly thrilled like a child to find that out about him - nobody else knew, nobody at all because there weren’t any bugs in here.
“Good?” he couldn’t help but ask with a probably dorky smile. Imagining what it had to look like on his face, he wanted to laugh all the more.
Haymitch gave him a long look, fond but meant to be dry.
“Right,” Finnick told the ceiling. “Stupid questions again.”
“Yeah,” he heard Haymitch say.
This hadn’t been much, Finnick tried to remind himself. Even in Four, far away from the Capitol, nobody made a big production about falling into bed with people if the opportunity arose, and there was so much more two adult men could do together. He, of all people, knew that. His oldest brother, Perri, boasting with friends about his one-night conquests, would have called anything that didn’t even require condoms a wasted opportunity.
But it still had felt nothing like he’d imagined, nothing like the books had described either, where it was all wish fulfillment and smooth and kind of vague and had nothing to do with reality. He hadn’t been scrambling to recreate that, the way he would have with some of his clients.
And despite the fact that a part of Finnick, one that he knew was a compulsive, obsessive one, was already cataloguing things he’d done that he could do better next time, others that he should repeat, he was just filled with amazement about how it had been great. It had been like nothing else and theirs and Finnick couldn’t wait to do it again, a bit differently next time.
It filled him with such a massive wave of power that he didn’t dare move, least he could somehow break it and it would be gone. It seemed to have worked for Haymitch just fine, too, and maybe, Finnick just needed to stop worrying and trust that Haymitch knew what concessions he was ready to make.
They lay there for a moment in mutual content, recovering, close enough to feel the body heat of the other, for Finnick to hear Haymitch breathe, still long and deep from way inside his lungs. He could always hear Haymitch’s degree of relaxation from the way he breathed.
Which was why he grew aware when it strained, turning flat very abruptly, and then Haymitch was already pulling himself up.
“Taking a shower,” he said, nauseated and pale, and scrambled off the bed before Finnick could move.
***
“Is it the smell?” Finnick asked when Haymitch emerged from the bathroom, his whole body filled with the tension of waiting so long for the door to open again. A person should have a right to privacy, he hadn’t dared to intrude, just kept guard.
Haymitch looked angry at himself. “Probably ain’t how you expected this to go,” he said. “Shit. I’m sorry.”
He didn’t need to tell Finnick that he’d thought it wouldn’t happen like that. It showed clearly on his face, and his skin still had an unhealthy, shaken tint. He hadn’t put his clothes back on, just wrapped himself in a towel, and Finnick thought he probably couldn’t, not the same clothes he’d worn when they got started, sex smells and reminders clinging to them.
“I’m going to take a shower, too,” Finnick declared, reaching a decision. “When I’m done, I’ll change the sheets. You wait downstairs.”
“This really ain’t what you deserve, Finnick,” Haymitch said, reaching out to grab his shoulder when Finnick tried to make his way past, giving him a beseeching look.
Finnick paused. “It’s just a shower,” he gently replied. “I’ll deal.”
Haymitch’s jaw was working, as if he just wanted to be angry again, angry at himself and safe. He looked away, though the fact that he was doing so seem to make him unhappy, too. I told you so, his face said.
“In the arena,” he said, his fingers stiffening on Finnick’s shoulder. Standing so close to Finnick, close enough to smell the come and sweat, had to be hard, but he didn’t give an inch. “It’s the arena. There was rain, but not enough of it to wash. All the water was poisoned, we didn’t dare touch it. I was in there two weeks. No way to clean up, the blood, the sweat. I got out, I couldn’t get the stench out of my nose. I just, I can’t stand it.”
He didn’t say, And then they forced me to fuck people and there were more sweat and body odors. I couldn’t leave and wash it off, they were the ones who decided when I could leave. He didn’t need to. Finnick knew how that worked well enough.
“It’s fine,” Finnick said, putting his hand on Haymitch’s and squeezing. “This is nothing.”
Finnick didn’t care how many issues there were, he didn’t allow himself to, and he resolved to refuse calling it a problem if it could be solved.
When he stood in Haymitch’s shower ten minutes later to wash away the traces of what they had done - odors he wasn’t so fond of either, honestly - it hit him how he’d always thought there was something wrong with him, because everybody else had all these triggers and he didn’t. Because Haymitch got nauseous from something like sweat and Finnick didn’t. He’d thought there was something wrong with him, but what he’d just done with Haymitch had been hard, navigating around all those obstacles. Even Finnick saw that. Some of them Haymitch’s, yes. But most of them Finnick’s. Most of this had been Haymitch keeping Finnick safe.
In that one moment, he still didn’t hate himself, he didn’t consider himself a failure or a freak, he just felt faintly relieved and strangely confident, about the both of them.
on to chapter 15