Character/Relationships: Finnick, Finnick/Haymitch
Rating: M for language, sexual content, and implied dub-con
Warnings: trigger warning for dub-con, PTSD, and forced prostitution
Notes: this fic is set pre-canon and may be slightly AU. tbh i have no idea where Annie is, she may enter the fic at a later point.
Sometimes Finnick thinks that people in the Capitol forget just how dangerous they are.
Which is ridiculous, really, there's no excuse for it. The Capitol citizens are the ones who get to watch them kill in beautiful high definition after all, they're the ones who get to see the victors pulled out of the arena streaked with other people's blood on screens fifty feet high in the city center. And yet none of them ever seem at all concerned about paying to be alone in a room with a victor, albeit long after they've had all that unappealing gore washed away.
Then again no victor has ever killed a Capitol citizen, so maybe they aren't the stupid ones.
Still, when the man hits him, for a moment Finnick's reaction isn't shame, or guilt, or tired patient tolerance—it's white-hot anger, the kind that he'd forgotten that he still had in him. Everybody knows it's a bad idea to strike a victor without warning, or maybe it's just the victors themselves that know that, maybe they don't come with those kinds of warning labels. Regardless, suddenly he's remembering that he's taller and stronger than the crimson-haired judge who's bought him for the night—which is probably why he's on his knees—and he's remembering fighting that District Six tribute at the beginning of his games, before he'd gotten his trident, remembering the way he'd grabbed his hair and dragged his head back until he'd heard his neck snap.
He isn't sure what unsettles him more, remembering that he's capable of that, or knowing that he's capable of that and that he's on his knees anyway.
"Everything all right, Finnick?" The man certainly isn't asking because he cares, they hadn't exactly set up safewords or anything—it's more in the way that you would shake an electronic device if it started to skip, impatient for it to work again.
He takes a split second to compose himself, putting on that fuck-me purr that had taken him two years to master. "Mhmm." The nice thing about it being completely artificial is that it's always there when he reaches for it. "Do that again," he says, and then when the man doesn't seem convinced, he says something that no one who could kill eight people with a trident should ever have to say. "Please."
The judge hits him again, just like he asked. There's blood in his mouth, metallic and familiar, and for a moment the whole world takes a sick, sudden tilt. Miraculously he finds some edge to dig into with his fingernails and hang on—it's not a good idea to lose it with a client, he knows that already. His heartbeat has picked up but that doesn't have to be about panic, it can be about sex, the man standing over him doesn't have to know the difference. Calm down, he tells himself. Calm down. This isn't new.
He looks up to the man and he smiles, blood at the corner of his mouth, and then he says, like some kind of idiot, "That the best you got?"
It doesn't matter that it's three in the morning, the gym is still open. It's open twenty-four hours a day, in fact, one of the perks of the Victor's Complex—he supposes they could be called perks, even though they're just about the only group of people anyway who are likely to be up at all hours of the morning feeling the desperate need to run ten miles.
He's been here alone for about an hour, which is good, this is what he needed, though it wouldn't have been unusual to see Gloss or Enobaria here as well. He'd come down here with the intention of wearing himself out, but he has yet to succeed there—he has that odd, wired feeling that he gets every once in awhile after seeing a client, jittery and hyperaware, eyes snapping suspiciously towards every small sound.
Running is good for draining some of that energy, but it's not good in that it doesn't completely engage his mind, only his body, letting his mind wander when he doesn't keep a rein on it. Hands on him—his own hands curling around the shaft of a trident, feeling the cool metal in his hands, heavy rhythmic breathing broken up with moans, heavy wet breathing choked with blood—
He stops running and leans over the machine, which slows and stops obediently in response—head propping on his arm, chest rising and falling. "Pull yourself together, Finnick Odair," he says sternly, to the unmoving track underneath his feet. There's actually a function on the machine that offers artificial motivation, an automated drill sergeant to yell at you and call you dirt, tell you to keep running and criticize your weight, but somehow he doesn't think that's what he needs right now.
It's stupid, really. He's been doing this for how long, and now, now? It seems so arbitrary, and worse, he can't keep it down. These are fine reactions to have, they're normal, as long as they can be tacked and plastered over and covered with a nice smile, but this, this is a problem, the way that it keeps rolling back to the surface with every wave.
He shakes his head and straightens again, like he's on camera. Technically he is, even here, it's just that it isn't likely anyone is going to broadcast this on the morning entertainment news. Ruin the illusion, and all that.
He runs up the six flights of stairs back to his room instead of taking the elevator, a last-ditch effort to exhaust himself before giving up on sleep altogether. It works in one way at least, by the time he gets to his floor he's bent over double catching his breath, sweat dripping. He can hear a door open down the hall, and that brings his head up to look—he isn't sure who would be awake at this hour, but when he spots Haymitch Abernathy it makes sense again. Right. Haymitch never sleeps, does he? That's what the constant deep circles under his eyes seem to indicate anyway, Finnick has always assumed.
Haymitch is regarding him with amusement and mild suspicion, clearly just as surprised as Finnick is to see him, but not too bothered—there's something about running into someone else alone and awake at three in the morning that collapses all pretense, doesn't allow for any superficial scramble for dignity. It's already a lost cause, which is sort of nice in a way.
Except that Haymitch has never seen him like this. No one has, with the possible exception of his client from earlier, who probably hadn't noticed.
"You look a damn mess," Haymitch informs him—so no chance of a repeat on the not noticing, then.
Finnick laughs. "You are probably the only person in Panem who could stumble on me shirtless and glistening with sweat and have that to say about it."
"I'm sure many members of your fan club would die to be where I'm standing," Haymitch deadpans. "Don't you have somewhere to be in the morning, Odair?" he asks, leaning on the frame of his door, arms crossing over his chest.
"Yeah, the—" Doesn't he always? It's probably a good thing he has someone to keep his schedule straight for him, he'd never manage it himself—then again if he were managing it himself he wouldn't be putting these kinds of things on it. "Capitol's Next Top Stylist—thing. I'm a guest judge." He doesn't even know if that's what Haymitch is talking about, or if it's just a general dig at his overexposure—either would be fair game, really.
"Sounds riveting," the man says. "You going to go on Capitol's Next Top Stylist with a black eye and bruises?"
"What? Oh." He'd actually forgotten about that, apparently running had been good for taking his mind off one thing at least. "No. I'm sure my prep team will fix it in the morning." It's not the first time this kind of thing has happened, after all—he'll get sighs and tsks from his team, but they'll fix it or they'll cover it up, they'll get it done. Modern medicine is so good about enabling people to take him apart, there's no real reason for them not to when it's so easy to put him back together.
"They going to fix you falling asleep on set because you were up all night?" Haymitch asks him.
"Well, there are some pretty spectacular pills on the market," Finnick drawls, raising his eyebrows—finally relents at the look Haymitch is giving him. "I can't sleep."
Haymitch doesn't respond immediately, just looks at him for a long moment. That's fine; Finnick is used to people looking. "You want a drink?"
That gets Finnick's attention back, gets him looking straight at the older man with a consideration that he usually doesn't have for that question. The answer is usually no, easily—he'd been told at the age of fifteen that drinking too much was a bad idea for maintaining his physique and he'd been reminded frequently since, a theory that's pretty well born out by Haymitch in front of him. He drinks socially, of course—he goes to a lot of parties, it's basically a requirement—but that's much different from drinking alone in your room.
Once again, a theory that Haymitch seems to prove.
"Yeah," he says. "Yeah, I do."
"Seven?"
"Seven," Finnick confirms, and he laughs in an easy, warm way that has everything to do with the clear liquor sitting on the table between them. Normally it isn't something he'd even bring up, let alone laugh about—but nothing seems off-limits right now, he's sitting slumped on Haymitch's couch with his feet propped on the table, and he's even looking over at Haymitch on the couch beside him while he says it, he can even meet his eyes. Easy.
"Seven," Haymitch repeats, and whistles—doesn't laugh, but he's clearly entertained by the whole idea. He's drunk, but he seems less drunk than Finnick even though he's probably had more of the liquor, probably been drinking before he'd invited Finnick in. Then again, Haymitch is generally acknowledged to have the alcohol tolerance of a rock, there's no way he's going to win that contest. "Goddamn. Are people in Four half-rabbit, or what? Did your mother have a litter?"
"Fuck you," he says, but there's no real sharpness to it, it's on the borderline of a laugh as well. "No, she had us all the normal way, I'm pretty sure. One by one."
"Your parents both still alive?" Haymitch barely slurs, it's impressive—the guy could probably walk a straight line and recite the alphabet backwards for a Peacekeeper at this point, and he has at least half a bottle in him.
"Yeah, so—nine." Whereas Finnick on the other hand is having to stop and reorganize his words every few seconds, make sure they're where they're supposed to be, and the words themselves are supplemented by gestures—holding two fingers up here to illustrate. "Two parents—seven brothers. Nine total."
"Shit, kid, that's a lot of collateral." Unlike most people he could have said that to, Haymitch gets it immediately.
"Well, it's seven now," he amends. "Five brothers still alive, two parents, so—seven." He goes quiet for a moment, knee bouncing against the table—the liquor sloshes against the side of the bottle, prompting Haymitch to reach out for it and rescue it from tipping. "It took me a little while to settle down."
"Ahhh." It's a sound more than a word, but he knows—Finnick can tell that he knows, the alcohol crawling burning through his bloodstream assures him in a feverish sort of way that Haymitch can understand it, he can really know—about President Snow and his stark, cool office, his blank, cool eyes, that voice telling you that your brother had been in a terrible fishing accident, and wasn't it just unfortunate that you hadn't learned to behave yourself yet. Finnick is watching Haymitch's expression raptly for the indication that he knows what that's like and he isn't sure why that feels like a lifeline.
"And then two of my brothers are married, and there's nieces and nephews, and—" he continues finally, like it's the rest of his thought that he'd forgotten before—gestures, hand falling to Haymitch's leg as he focuses back on him again. "You have any family?" he asks, and the silent suffix is left, do you have any family left. Haymitch has been at this a lot longer than Finnick, after all, and Snow has a way of knocking people down like bowling pins, the man does not bluff.
"No," Haymitch says, tips the bottle back for another drink before he says anything further. "Not anymore."
Finnick looks over—straight at him, nearly nose to nose, trying to focus, loses what he was going to say and then finds it again, it's like threading a godddamn needle right now. "I'm sorry."
Haymitch says nothing, just looks at him in return, and Finnick feels fine with this, it feels comfortable, everything feels comfortable right now. He's starting to understand why Haymitch drinks so much, it creates a kind of a buffer of mood around you—like no matter what you do, nobody can touch you.
Haymitch leans in and kisses him.
He goes very still, eyes open—and then he inhales sharply, and his hand comes down on Haymitch's shoulder, pushes himself away. It isn't a hard push, not even meant to move Haymitch as much as him, just meant to separate them, that feels necessary, the air in the room has gone thick somehow and difficult to draw in, he's dizzy again—dizzy again, for the second time tonight, this is familiar, the first time it had been someone else's hands on him and—
"What are you doing?" he asks, low and barely coherent, hand still on his shoulder.
But Haymitch is pulling away himself now, trying to untangle himself completely. "I'm sorry," he says, and it's a completely different kind of apology than Finnick's a moment ago, confused and jumbled like the alcohol had all caught up to him just now, all at once. "Look, I'm sorry, I thought you wanted—"
"You thought I wanted what?" Finnick's voice is sharpening now, as if he can get it sharp enough to cut through the choke that's trying to overtake him, the total freeze.
"I don't know, kid, you were giving me all kinds of—signals." Haymitch's confusion has broken down into frustration, he's the one throwing up his hands now, pulling himself well away.
"Signals?" At the moment he can't consider that, he can't think of it as a possibility or think about whether he can turn it off anymore, whether he had been without even trying. "What, because that's what I do?"
"No, fuck." His hand comes up to run distractedly through his hair, which only serves to make it more of a mess. "No. I'm sorry that I did that, all right? It was a mistake. Never happened, just calm down."
"I have to go." His own voice sounds too loud to him, and his hand isn't steady on the back of the couch as he starts to push himself up—is he shaking, or is that everything else? He sees Haymitch reach to steady him, and he cuts the movement off with a snap. "Don't help me."
And he sees Haymitch's hand pull back again, palm up, surrender and placation. He pushes himself to his feet on his own, which is more difficult than it should be, he isn't sure how much of that is the alcohol. He can't breathe, and that's definitely not the alcohol.
"Thanks for the drink," he says, and finds the door.