consider the sea
Finnick/Cinna, mentions of Finnick/Annie, Cinna/Angst
PG-13/superlight R; sex + swearing, the usual deal.
Suzanne Collins owns The Hunger Games. Title from VersaEmerge, consider the sea.
--
Finnick says, "You made me a wave."
Cinna looks up at him; he is so beautiful it's kind of blinding. "Flames didn't fit," he tells Finnick, squinting a little. "You're wearing clothes now."
Finnick laughs. "Yeah," he says. His fingertips hover over Cinna's barely drying paint, over the white crest that blends into his two-dimensional hair and the shine of his eyes. "I thought it was supposed to be a sketch?"
Cinna shrugs. "I work fast," he says. "Not to be creepy, but you're inspiring."
Finnick's mouth twists, bitterly. "Youngest ever to win the Games," he says.
Cinna blinks. There is a white smudge of paint on the back of his hand. "You look like the sea," he tells Finnick, because he thinks it might be rude, to say that he forgot. "I need to thank the professor, for asking you to come in. This is the most work I've done all week."
Finnick stares at him for a moment, eyes unrelenting, holding Cinna's. He is wearing a white t-shirt that falls open over his collarbone, and loose white linen pants. Someone is trying much too hard to make him look innocent. "Can I have it?" he asks. "The painting. When you're done."
Cinna almost says, why would you want it? but instead he says, "Of course."
--
It's weird, because Cinna goes to art school in the Capital, and out of an entire sexually liberated city, art school is the place where everyone goes to fuck: but Finnick, who at fourteen years old survived the Hunger Games and never quite fit anywhere else, is the best Cinna has ever had. This is, of course, something that Cinna will never tell Finnick, because his ego is immense in all the places that don't matter.
Finnick sometimes looks at Cinna and says, low-voiced, you are so young, to which Cinna replies, invariably, you're just a dinosaur. Cinna will never say I wish you could be young, because his mother drinks too much, and wishes are about as good as fishes when you don't have a fire on which to cook them. But that does not stop him wanting to.
Right now Finn is between patrons; he laughs and tells Cinna he doesn't care about money, anyway, and Cinna's secrets will be worth the effort to puzzle out of him. The curve of his hand on Cinna's cheek is nothing but gentle; Cinna cannot help but think that in Finnick's place, he would be nothing but bitter. Sometimes Finn has nightmares, when he's at Cinna's or Cinna is at his; Cinna never knows what to do about them so he presses his cheek to Finnick's shoulder, just staying put. Solid.
Finnick asks Cinna if he loves him, one morning after dark, and Cinna blinks, and pauses for too long before he says, "I don't have any kind of frame for comparison."
That makes Finn laugh, and kiss him, sort of sweetly, for Finn. "For someone from the Capital," he tells Cinna, "you're disarmingly honest."
Cinna says, "Thank you," while his words stick to his mouth, because he means it.
--
A month before the 70th year of the Hunger Games, Finn smashes a vase that looks like fire that Cinna just brought back from school. "I can't do this," he whispers to Cinna, in the darkness of his bedroom. "I can't send them to die, not again."
Cinna doesn't know what to say, so he presses his lips to Finn's, and when they fuck it's electric, enough to keep thoughts of dying children off anyone's mind. He lets Finn shake apart underneath him, and knows this will be the last time; Finn was always in this for Cinna's secrets, not to divulge any of his own. He whispers, I love you into the line of Finn's neck, by which he means also, I would give anything not to have you do this, but he knows he has done it where Finn will not hear, and that he will never ask the reciprocal.
Finn is sort of crying when he tells Cinna I need you, and all Cinna can do is murmur I'm here and bring him to climax, to hold him close as he shatters and mends again.
Afterwards, Cinna tries not to sleep but he drifts off anyway, to the beat of Finn's heart; he is saddened, but not surprised, to wake and find himself alone in Finn's bed. Finn's cynicism, after all, has cost him far more than Cinna's naivety.
--
Finnick introduces him to Annie at a party, where they pretend to barely know each other. The party's for victors, and Cinna gets in because his mother thinks he needs to network; he concedes because he's spent too much time dreaming about fire.
Everyone has been talking about her for quite some time; Cinna has watched the games and, thinking of Finnick, found himself hoping against hope for the victory of District 4. She is tiny, fragile and delicate and shaking against Finnick's shoulder; Cinna kisses the back of her hand and she blinks at him, surprised. "I'm Annie," she tells him, stepping out a little from the protection of Finnick's bulk to just look at Cinna, head tilted a little to the side, like a bird. "Are you friends with Finn?"
Finnick is still like the sea, back of his eyes roiling, uncertain like the waves. His fingers are twined with hers, like if he lets go she'll die, or maybe the other way around.
This is who you love, Cinna thinks. Out of all the beauties of the Capital, you pick this little broken girl. "Hey there," he says, gently, because she is still above all else a frightened child (like Finnick, even though he doesn't know it, or refuses to show it). "My name's Cinnamon, but my friends call me Cinna."
"He called you Cinna," she observes. Her dress falls in a pale gold sheath to just above her knees: her stylist knows better than to put her in something elaborate. It would just show up the cracks (though he can't help picturing her in wings, soft and white and feathered, stretching out behind her, so that maybe one day she could fly away). "Can I call you that?"
Cinna almost says, I don't know how to help you, but instead, he says, "Of course."