"I don't know, Clovia, it's a little ostentatious, don't you think?"
"Finnick Odair calling a design ostentatious? Now there's a warning sign." The two judges sitting on either side of him laugh, and he laughs along with them, head tilting back slightly to show that brilliant white smile. This is his good side, he knows that, that's why they'd put him here—and luckily today, it also lets him cheat away from that black eye, though it doesn't really matter, there's no way the stage lights and television screens are going to get through the carefully applied layers of makeup.
"All right, all right." He accepts the dig good-naturedly, as if they're very good friends and this is a very old joke between them.
"I mean, this from the man who once wore a suit that included a fireworks display." Tiberius's diamond-sheen hair glitters fiercely in the stage lights as he leans over laughing, puts a hand on Finnick's arm.
"I swear, you wear a suit with a fireworks display one time and nobody ever lets you forget it," he says, shaking his head in exaggerated mock-annoyance. "But seriously, live birds? Who wants to manage that on a red carpet? Not that it doesn't look great in front of us on this absolutely stunning model." He winks at the dark-haired girl on the the runway and she flushes bright red, which he's pretty sure she isn't supposed to do. He hopes she doesn't get in too much trouble for it, because that wink is definitely going to make the broadcast. "I'm just trying to be practical."
"Oh ho!" Tiberius chortles—loudly, for the cameras. "The new and improved Finnick Odair, he's responsible."
"Take me home to your mother and everything," he agrees blithley, with just enough of a wicked twist at the end to imply that no, you really couldn't.
"Oh, I think most of our viewers would just like to take you home," Clovia says, and Finnick's smile freezes for a second.
"All I'm saying is that if my stylist team put something like that on me, I would happily murder every one of them," he responds with a dramatic gesture, directing the conversation elsewhere as deftly as he can manage.
"Uh oh. Backstage, can we make sure we don't have any tridents laying around?" Tiberius jokes.
Smile, Finnick reminds himself. You're only allowed to make jokes about murder if you smile. He usually doesn't have to think about these things so consciously, it's usually just habit and muscle memory at this point, but he's tired—this is just his best approximation of how he's supposed to be, it's as if he's made a mask of himself and put it on. It isn't the first time that it's felt like that for him, in fact that's the way that he feels more often than not, but no one ever calls him on it. Everyone always believes him.
He catches sight of Haymitch down the hall again, but this time the man's back is turned to him—he's walking away, doesn't even see him, but Finnick isn't about to let him go.
"Hey!" He turns away from unlocking his door and calls over to him, but gets no response—Haymitch keeps walking, so he abandons the intention to get inside altogether and follows him. "Haymitch, wait."
He doesn't wait, he keeps walking, but it isn't difficult for Finnick to catch up to him—he doesn't even have to run, long legs eating up the space between them quickly until he's hovering over Haymitch's shoulder.
"Surprised you're not passed out asleep, kid." Haymitch looks over at him, looks him in the eye, which seems like a good sign.
"That is next on the schedule, believe me." He rolls his eyes, like it had just been a late night out partying. "Not enough time in the day."
He wants to ask Haymitch to stop walking, to slow down and talk to him, but he isn't sure how to say it. The man seems to pull the thoughts right out of his head, stops abruptly and swings around to look at him. "They did a pretty good job with your eye."
"You watched it?" he asks, irrationally delighted by that idea despite himself. There's no way for Haymitch to pretend otherwise, the makeup is long gone. "Doesn't really seem like your kind of thing."
"I'll be honest, I was just watching to see you fall flat on your face."
"Never." Finnick's hands go into his pockets, and his smile flashes briefly—not in quite the same way as it had on the set, but he can't really change the way that he smiles, or the way that people react to it, that's something he learned years ago in his first tribute interview, sitting across from Ceasar Flickerman and hearing the crowd roar like a wave crashing white-crested against the beach.
He could almost wish for a crowd now, for the studio audience from this morning to be here to laugh at his jokes at the appropriate times, verify that what he's saying is charming and funny, that he's getting it right.
"Listen, I'm sorry for being such a flake last night," he says, his first foray into the conversation that he actually wants to have, the reason that he stopped him. "I really shouldn't drink." He laughs, in the place of that studio audience, determinedly points out those cues himself.
"You weren't being a flake, you were having a panic attack," Haymitch says, with the tone of a person who knows he isn't going to want to talk about it, and is talking about it anyway.
"I wasn't having a panic attack," Finnick says, and the answer is scornful enough, immediate enough that it's almost convincing, like it's the most ridiculous thing Haymitch could have said.
"Right." Haymitch offers no further argument, he has no real obligation to try to make him believe it. "Well, apology accepted, I guess. Go in peace and sin no more."
"I was wondering if you'd let me make it up to you," Finnick says, and he takes a half-step closer. The changes are very subtle, the drop of his shoulder, the hood of his eyes. His hands are still in his pockets and he isn't touching Haymitch at all, and he's tired, he is, but he can do this blind, he can do this blind and deaf and half-dead, he has done this half-dead before, though in the arena it hadn't been about sex. That had come later.
He needs this to be okay between them. He fucked it up last night and he realizes that, but he can make it okay, he can do that, he can strip away a thread of himself and use it to bind it up, he's been doing that for a long time and one more thread isn't going to matter, the seams are already coming apart anyway. There are so few people in Panem who can understand, if only on a superficial level—he and Haymitch aren't exactly close, but he's a part of that knit, clinging circle of victors, close like a group of people trying to keep together for warmth and survival instead of any kind of desire. He's one of those people who Finnick can slide a glance to across the room and roll his eyes, who can look at Finnick breathing hard at the top of a staircase and know why he can't sleep. A lot of them have nothing in common at all, a lot of them get on his every nerve and there are probably some who would gladly strangle him given the option—but it's important.
He's going to fix it.
"Whoa ho." Haymitch doesn't take the bait as easily as most people Finnick tries this on, possibly because he's watched him do it to so many people before. He puts his hand on Finnick's shoulder the way that Finnick had done to him the night before, and he holds him where he is. "You don't have to do that, kiddo. We talked about this last night, it just happened. I was drunk too."
"I know I don't have to." The grin is getting sharper, and he's stepping in again—still hasn't touched him, but his head is dropping down low enough that his breath grazes Haymitch's neck. "I could anyway."
He isn't sure how many other victors he's slept with, he doesn't exactly keep notches on his bedpost. Sometimes it's like this, favors for favors—sometimes it's just about being bored, or lonely, or fucked up, it's funny how a bunch of career killers can be just about the safest place that he can find in the Capitol some days. He's fucked other victors because he thought maybe they felt that way too, but it's possible that he might be wrong about that. Maybe it's just him.
"Cut it out," Haymitch grinds out, voice staying low like he doesn't want anyone to come out here and notice Finnick backing him into a wall—like they'd be surprised by that, honestly. The only surprise might be that Haymitch is the one taking a step back—Finnick is taller than him, he's taller than most people, but Haymitch doesn't step back from anyone.
"C'mon," Finnick says, coaxing and implacable—and now his hands are moving finally, settling lightly on Haymitch's hips.
"This how you apologize, Odair?" It isn't a no, there hasn't been a no yet and that's what Finnick is banking on—though then again, he doesn't ever say no either, does he?
"Yes," he laughs quietly against the man's pulse point, teeth scraping lightly against his neck, "because I'm fuckin' bimbo." Fingers pressing in above someone else's hipbone is cheaper coin than sincerity, and besides, he takes a perverse sort of pleasure in the times he actually chooses it, instead of being wound up by a key on his back and let go. He's giving something away for free; it almost feels like stealing. "Hey, what's the difference between Finnick Odair and the President's mansion?"
He can feel the muscles move in Haymitch's throat, probably trying not to laugh, but one of his hands has come up to curl loosely into Finnick's shirt. "What?"
"Not everyone's been in the President's mansion," Finnick says, and Haymitch gives in, and laughs—pushing him back again at arm's length, but not because he's saying no, Finnick can tell just by the look on his face—he's won, or whatever the equivalent is here.
"All right," Haymitch says, and grabs him by the collar, dragging him toward his room. "Come on, asshole."