A/N: Written for the 2011 April Showers Drabblethon at the Day_by_Drabble LJ community.
Sea Change
The waves lap at their feet as they walk along the shore in the Victors' Village, and though a slimy strand of seaweed tangles itself around Finnick's toes and he knows that when he returns to the Capitol his stylists will bitch at him about what saltwater does to the skin, for now he enjoys the feeling of having the filth of that place washed away and replaced with the grime of this one, if only for a short while.
He's in District 4 for Annie, but, leaning against her as she wraps her arms tightly around his waist, it seems to Finnick that he is the one having his sanity restored by this visit home. And when she tilts her face up to his, wordlessly asking him for a kiss, he forgets this is just a visit as he gives in to his mutual desire.
He allows his eyes to close as he touches his lips to her dry ones, slides his tongue along them to taste the salt of skin and sea, entangles his fingers in the damp net of her hair, savoring all the sensations he tries to ignore when he's with the people Snow sells him to in the Capitol. The sand shifts beneath his feet, pulling him down deeper into the thick wetness of the shore even as Annie's fingers press against the bare skin of his back, drawing him in deeper to her, like a Siren. Finnick tightens his embrace around her, prepared to sink down into the sand with her, to let the waves roll over them like a blanket, as if the sea were their bed, but just as his knees start to bend, something keeps him upright.
With a gasp that's lost in the roar of the waves, he breaks the kiss.
"Finnick?"
"I'm sorry," he says, backing away from her with an uncharacteristic lack of grace as the seaweed wrapped around his foot catches on a rock and snares his steps. "I can't."
"Can't what?" Annie's green eyes darken, reflecting the color of the water, Finnick knows, though he can't help noticing the clouds billowing on the horizon and thinking that somehow the brewing storm is somehow linked to her mood. "Can't love me?"
"I love you, Annie," he tells her, unable to bear the thought of hurting her by allowing her to think otherwise. And yet, wouldn't that be kinder than letting her think he is cruel? "I just can't be faithful to you. All that stuff in the news and on the gossip shows about me…A different women every night…" Or man. "It's all true."
He expects Annie's face to crumple like a shanty hit by a tidal wave, in pain or disgust or both, but she is stolid, a rock; the eyes he's usually as comfortable swimming in as the ocean are now unfamiliar waters of unknown depth. His own gaze flicks downward to watch his foot as he tries, unsuccessfully, to kick free of the knot of seaweed.
"You can't be faithful," Annie repeats, drawing out the syllables as she works to comprehend his meaning. "What, you mean like you're a sex addict or something?"
Finnick can't help but laugh at that-the gravely laugh of a washed-up wreck of a man which startles him because he's so used to hearing the other, horrible celebrity sex god laugh he gives in pressrooms and bedrooms. He'd have to be seriously lacking sanity to be addicted to the kind of sex he has. But it's better for Annie if she thinks he is, so he swallows the bitter remark he wants to make about it being other people who are the sex addicts, he the addiction.
"Or something," he says instead, and turns back to toward the Victors' Village, leaving Annie to believe the worst of him-which is that the worst of him is true, and that he doesn't care that it is.
Only, when she finds him later that night, sitting on his dark back porch looking out at the sea, it's apparent that Annie doesn't believe what he meant her to at all.
"You can't be faithful," she says, looking up at him from the foot of the porch steps, "because you really can't be. They won't let you be. But you would be if you could."
Finnick's heart seems to struggle against his ribcage like a fish caught in a net. Annie can't know his secret exactly, but the idea of her coming close to guessing is…He lets out his breath, and instantly, his heart slows to a normal rhythm, at which he isn't sure it's beaten since before he was reaped for the Games.
His heart beats as if he is…free.
"How do you know?" he asks her, hoarsely.
Annie mounts the stairs and climbs up to him, slowly, the seascape behind her giving the effect that she's a nymph rising out from the deep.
"In the Capitol you're with a different man or woman every night." She doesn't seem to notice that Finnick flinches at the source of his shame, and the ease with which she speaks of it. "Here, you're never with anyone but me."
Gently she nudges his knees apart as she slips to stand between between them, and although the part of Finnick that interrupted their earlier kiss protests again now, his hands find their way onto her hips as her fingers weave into his hair.
"I never want to be with anyone but you again," he says, wanting to cry at the thought that if Snow has his way, as he always does, Finnick will be with Annie far less than he will be with anyone else.
"You won't be." Annie's words are a breath on his mouth. "Not in the way that matters."
As he pulls her down into his lap to kiss her, the tide rolling in beyond them with a roar, Finnick decides that it's high time to stop letting President Snow have his way.