prompt : I love your writing style and I was hoping you could write one where Finnick is jealous of Haymitch's relationship with Effie!
So this ended up being just as much Odesta as Hayffie, I think...
In too deep
There was something deeply unsettling in watching Effie Trinket and Haymitch Abernathy work together, Finnick mused, as they both smiled and pretended to be interested by what sponsors had to say. They moved as one. Effie would play bait and Haymitch would go for the kill. They would never get any sponsors, obviously, not even though their boy had managed to escape the bloodbath alive with a knife and was still in the race three days later. Effie had gotten Haymitch out of the penthouse, he had been nicely dressed, shaved and sober enough to be charming to people with an overflowing wallet but Haymitch would never seal a deal. Finnick knew that in the same way he knew people were only interested in the girl from Three and the boy from Six : pillow talk. He had managed to struck some deals for his own tributes but he wasn't holding his breath on a victory this year.
Four had won just the previous year after all.
No, his money was on the girl from Seven that everyone was underestimating.
"Where's the girl?" Chaff asked, handing him a drink. Chaff was always handing drinks to everyone, it seemed, that was how he welcomed new victors. Finnick had forbidden him to try that on Annie.
"With Mags." he replied curtly.
It was usually two mentors for two tributes but Four had been granted a pass this year. Mentoring had mostly fallen back on him anyway. Mags was here to… babysit.
Chaff's eyes were knowing and bit too perceptive for his own comfort. Since the beginning of the Games, this year, he had stayed as far from Haymitch and Chaff as he had been able to without raising suspicion. He had declined invitations for drinks and had barely nodded when their paths crossed somewhere in the Training Center or on the Square. Same with Effie, he had smiled and been as polite and charming as ever was but he hadn't lingered although he had caught some glances from the escort that told him she knew more than she let on.
"How bad is it?" Chaff asked, not looking him in the eye.
How bad was it? A perfectly good and valid question.
He stared at Effie and Haymitch once again. They had left the sponsor they had been harrassing to regroup in a corner of the room. He watched as Haymitch smirked and Effie frowned before chiding him about something that could only be his manners. It only made Haymitch smirk wider. Twelve's victor had been in a good mood the last few days because he thought they actually had a chance that year. Fool for hoping, Finnick mused, he would have though Haymitch knew better than that. But maybe, hope was a contagious disease and it had come from the bubbly woman who was now smiling indulgently at her colleague.
"I don't know what you're talking about." Finnick denied with one of his wolfish smiles. It was the perfect grin, both cocky and sweet. Every woman swooned when he pulled that card. Some men too. "We're still in, if that's what you're asking." How long would his thirteen years old girl last? Not long probably. As for the seventeen years old boy… The boy thought he was the next Finnick – and how fucked up was that ? – and had snatched a trident from the Cornucopia. He would probably trip and stab himself.
Chaff wasn't everybody, though, and he wasn't very impressed by his grin. "Don't bullshit me." he snorted. "New victors are paraded throughout the Capitol their first Games as mentor. Cresta has been out of your apartments for interviews only. When you're not with her, Mags is. You barely spoke to anyone since the Opening Ceremony and now you're staring at Trinket like you're considering making a pass at her so, let me ask again, how bad is it?"
Finnick considered the matter for a few seconds. Mags had advised to keep the 'problem', as they had come to call it, between them and Finnick thought she had a point even though people were bound to ask questions when Annie wouldn't be back the next year for mentoring. She would never be back for mentoring if he had anything to say about it.
"I'm not staring at Effie." he protested. "I'm just…" He was watching the easy – despite the recurrent screaming matches – friendship Haymitch and Effie had going on. Or whatever that was, they would never admit to anything even to Chaff and him who, for the lack of a better term, were their friends.
He had spent most of the last year taking care of Annie and he was nowhere near that kind of… He didn't even know if there was a word for it. It was like Haymitch and Effie had a sixth sense alerting them of the other's presence in a room, they moved together like they were dancing : in time with each other, they shared smiles and they had an odd complicity even if they would deny liking each other or even being friends.
"Don't you ever wonder how she does it?" he asked Chaff. "Put up with him?"
Victors were all nutcases in their own ways but some were more difficult than others. Haymitch was one of the worst victors Finnick knew. His alcoholism often made him mean to any potential target he could find around him, his nightmares were so bad they could be heard from Chaff and Seeder's floor and of course there were the days his self-loathing was so strong you couldn't talk to him. Haymitch was a broken man in every sense of the word. And yet Effie managed.
"I know how she does it." Chaff shrugged, lowering his voice enough than no one could pick up on their conversation. "She loves him. That's obvious to anyone with eyes."
"That doesn't help." he snapped. "It only makes it worse."
He handed back the glass of liquor he hadn't touched and stormed out of the lounge, leaving a not so baffled Chaff behind. He bumped into Haymitch on his way out but he didn't stop to apologize. Haymitch didn't know the chance he had. He was so broken he wasn't even aware how lucky he was to have Effie taking care of him.
Who did he have? Finnick had Mags of course but Mags was like a mother to him, not someone he could… He blamed Annie for this. He blamed Annie and her innocent helplessness. He blamed Annie and her big sad eyes. He blamed Annie and her sweetness. She wasn't mad but she wasn't stable either, she was… She was so hurt and scared all the time and so… She was delicate and frail and she wasn't made to be a victor. She should have died the previous year. She was a flower and the arena would have crushed it but for that timely flood.
A flood that had cost him a few of his well guarded secret but he wasn't above blackmailing when he wanted something.
Yes, he blamed Annie. He blamed his sweet Annie who didn't realize why he insisted on taking care of her, why he had gone to Snow for special permission to keep her out of the public eye as much as possible, why he watched over her when she slept in case she had nightmares… He had been in too deep before he even realized it himself.