hunger games fic: by the grace of god i do not rest at all
by the grace of god i do not rest at all. cato/johanna. r. au. Cato wins the Hunger Games but he's not sure exactly what his prize is. He falls into bed with Johanna, and then maybe something more permanent.
So, okay, there was Clove and the thing is - the thing she was there and then she wasn’t, then she was dead, her head smashed in and her eyes wide open, and that was wrong because she was supposed to kill him, sharp smile and a flick of her wrist. Wait, that’s not right either, he was supposed to kill her with his bare hands, supposed to steal her last breath for himself with the press of his hands and a gentle squeeze as her eyes shuttered close.
Or wait. Maybe, maybe that’s not right either. Maybe they were both supposed to win, and the rule change was meant for them. Clove would’ve wrapped her tiny legs around his waist and they would’ve fucked and drank and smiled their way through the rest of their lives.
Or wait. Maybe, maybe Cato’s just confused because Johanna wraps a tiny hand around his wrist and forces another drink into it, and Finnick laughs at them both but won’t stop staring at Johanna and maybe sometimes Cato wakes up with Clove’s name on his lips, in his head, her face pressed into the inside of his eyelids, and maybe he will spend the rest of his life trying to actually live it.
His room is quiet, the silence heavy in the air, and Johanna throws up in the bathroom.
He can hear her from the bed, see her even, her tiny body wracked with heaving and it almost makes him smile.
“Need some help?” he asks, lounging on his king sized bed, the drapes pulled tight across the windows. There’s an empty bottle, the bottom sticky and amber, on the floor next to the bed. He doesn’t believe in using glasses - when he didn’t feel like taking a pull straight from the bottle the shallow dip of Jo’s belly button worked just fine.
“Fuck off,” she murmurs, her arms wrapped around the porcelain. Her back rounds as she pukes again, a shudder running up her back. She looks so impossibly fragile he almost wants to laugh.
Johanna makes a noise, something wretched, something uneven and broken, before finally flushing the toilet.
“Don’t you dare use my toothbrush,” he yells.
The rush of water from his faucet hits the sink and Johanna, still naked, still tiny, sticks his toothbrush into her mouth and says, “Too late,” with her lips slanted up into a smile.
Later that morning, her hands pinned over her head and his teeth sinking into the slope of her shoulder, he growls beg for it as his tongue slides down between her breasts.
She arches her back off his sheet and says, eyes fluttering open and shut, absolutely not.
At Academy, they made them study the tactics of the Victors. He was too much of an obvious threat to ever attempt to use Johanna’s strategy, but Clove was in the same class and made him watch, murmuring to him under her breath the entire time.
Johanna’s first kill was a boy, someone larger than her, someone too much like Cato, and her axe fell heavy on that perfect part of the spine. The boy’s neck split and Johanna was covered in his blood. She was covered in his blood and she smiled at the camera, her lips curling up into something wicked, and Cato lost his breath.
Clove wrote notes and Cato just watched and now she’s dead. Johanna’s smile is even meaner in person, and her laugh sounds hollow.
She told him, “Fuck what they want,” her voice low in his ear, eyes burning bright, and he will never remember if it is Johanna or Clove.
Finnick clears his throat. The bar is empty and it’s Cato who reaches over the counter and easily grabs two full bottles of something, something thick and sweet and syrupy. Finn flinches but Cato clenches his teeth and swallows.
“What are you doing, Cato?” Finn asks, soft, tired.
Cato’s good at being a Victor. It’s all he’s ever known, all he’s trained for, but he wonders sometimes if he sounds like that, tired and weary and worn down. Johanna told him to wait for it, it’ll all catch up to him and she hopes she’s there to witness it. She told him that and then rolled off of him, her fingernails trailing across his stomach as he shivered into it. Johanna tells him a lot of things, though.
“Drinking,” he says, trying for indifferent. His shoulder comes up in a shrug almost on it’s own.
Finn runs a hand through his hair and his brow furrows.
“You know what I mean, Cato.”
In the back corner an old man, his skin dark with silver etchings, snores loudly. A hand is wrapped around his half-empty glass and he hiccups unevenly. Cato sniffs and looks away. He tosses back another shot.
“What’s the matter Finn?” he sneers, his teeth aching from the sugar, his mouth thick with it, “Worried that she thinks about me when you fuck her?”
Finnick sips from his glass and his eyes focus on Cato, razor-sharp. The lights are low and the shadows settle across his chiseled face dangerously. Cato stares at him and smirks.
The music changes, something low and thrumming, and Finnick wears his smile like a weapon.
“Just….be careful,” he says, “She gets hurt pretty easily.”
“Yeah?” Cato asks, feigning ignorance, like he didn’t know Jo well, “and who’s fucking fault is that Finnick?”
The song ends and Finn looks at him, surprised, before clapping him on the shoulder.
“Okay,” he murmurs, more to himself than anyone else, “you have a point there, I guess.”
He leaves by himself; Cato finishes his bottle and then calls Johanna.
He met Johanna before Finnick, before Haymitch. He met Johanna after Clove, obviously. He wonders what would have changed, if he’d met her before.
“Congratulations,” she told him, her hair dark and long, straight and shiny. Her fingers were wrapped around a glass of wine and the knuckles were white. She almost never drinks wine, he knows now, she told him one night. Too sweet, she shrugged. And then, not strong enough.
“Thanks,” he said stiffly, his jacket too tight around his swelling shoulders.
She took a sip of her wine and it stained her teeth red. She smiled and he saw red, saw it dripping from her mouth, saw freckles for a moment and then her small body pressed against him.
“How about I get you a drink?” she said, those teeth still red, her hair still dark. His jacket was silver and her dress was purple.
He grunted something then, and looking back on it he remembers how her smile faltered at the corners, the way her shoulders were bare and thrown back too far. Finn wasn’t at this party. Finn came later, and sometimes Cato thinks that’s the only reason she bothered talking to him at all.
He always had a thing for brunettes.
“How about I get you one instead?” he asked, his smile stretching across his face. Johanna tossed her head back and said, “I’ll have two of whatever you’re drinking.”
He remembers thinking she looked beautiful. He never told her that.
“What’s up with you and Finn?”
It’s the day before the Quarter Quell. This year the Tributes are all related, and Cato thinks about his sisters. His tributes cried on the train, their hands entwined, the 17 year-old brother and 14 year-old sister.
“Nothing,” he says, avoiding eye contact. A girl, blonde and bodacious, dressed in nothing, waves at him from across the room. Johanna flips her off.
“You’re lying,” she hisses, eyes narrowed at him, and she crosses her arms in a huff. The contestants line up for interviews and Johanna taps her foot impatiently.
“I said it’s nothing. Jesus Christ, Jo, leave me alone.”
“Gladly,” she spits, before spinning around on her heel and marching towards Finnick.
“Gladly,” she told him, and Cato almost said wait, fine, I’ll tell you but instead he didn’t. Instead, he stuffed his hands in his pockets and heard, don’t be such a pussy and it was Clove’s voice, high and malicious, that he heard.
It was Clove’s voice he heard, and that’s why he didn’t go after Johanna.
Haymitch says, “Hey blondie, I hope you know what the fuck you’re getting yourself into.”
The glass in Cato’s hand is empty; he shakes it in Haymitch’s direction and Haymitch just laughs.
“You’re in love with her,” Haymitch slurs. Cato bristles at the accusation.
“Fuck off, Haymitch,” he says. Thi is another party, another appearance. Johanna is in Seven and Finnick is in Four. At least, that’s what she told him. He didn’t really believe her. They both knew Johanna was never going to go back to Seven.
Haymitch stares at him for too long, claps him on the shoulder with something like affection. Cato shrugs the hand off.
“I know you,” he whipers, pointing a dirty fingernail in his face, “and I know Johanna better, and what you feel for her?”
He pauses; Cato leans in without realizing.
“This is as close as we get now. This is as much as our broken, bleeding hearts will allow us.”
And then Haymitch passes out, his body finally giving up against the constant battle against alcohol, and they never talk about it again.
Clove used to look at him, all sharp edges and the hormonal heart of a teenager, and his own would stupidly swell. Being with Johanna isn’t like that. He was a killer then, in the Arena, but now that he’s a Victor he’s not sure what he is anymore. It’s strange, how easily he snapped those necks and tore apart those bodies, the muscles tearing and veins popping at his request, and how ferociously he could still feel things. Clove was one of them. Winning was another. Now, with Jo, with Finn, it’s the strangest thing. He cares so much he could burst but he won’t let himself. It is a constant struggle between man and monster and he thought this would be easier, that he expelled the monster in the Arena or that he’s always only been a monster but Johanna changed all that. Johanna changed everything for him and sometimes he thinks Finn changed everything for her, and that Annie changed everything for Finn.
This can not be healthy, he realizes one morning over breakfast when he is missing Johanna. This can not be healthy but he doesn’t know how he could function any other way.
Johanna looks at him and it’s hungry, it’s desperate, her eyes hollow and it is all he can do to bury his face in her neck and try to breathe.
It’s all touch with them, her palms pressed flat to whatever piece of skin she can reach, his mouth sliding over the slope of her spine, her shoulder, her leg.
He wakes up one morning with Johanna’s hair on his pillow and realizes he knows her better than he’ll ever know Clove. He tries to remember her (Clove) in the mornings but all he gets is the glare of the sun and her braids, tied tight, and the briefest sound of her voice, thick with sleep, as she murmured good morning, Cato.
Cato doesn’t cry, he thinks it’s a waste of time, but Clove kisses him in his dreams and now he thinks it might’ve really been Johanna all this time. It’s just that everything is so much harder than he thought it would be.
Johanna says, still half-asleep, “Why are you staring at me, you fucking weirdo,” and he can barely manage, “I’m not.”
“Is this what it’s like with Finn?” he asks her, his arm draped over her stomach as a hickey blooms fresh on his neck.
Johanna slides out from under him. Even in the dark he feels her stare, knows the way her teeth are grinding against each other and the precise shade of grey her eyes are when she’s mad.
“That’s none of your fucking business,” she says calmly, already moving off the bed even though it’s hers.
Cato stretches out in the space she left behind and gets comfortable. He’s never been one to back away from a fight.
“Are you this quiet with him?” he sneers, his face twisting grotesque, twisting mean. Jo stares at him blankly, her shirt half-on, and he wants to hit her.
“I bet you can’t shut up with him,” he continues, unable to stop, the words bleeding from his mouth like a wound, “I bet you love saying his name. You probably fucking scream it for him, don’t you?”
It takes a minute for him to recognize that she is staring at him with pity.
She starts, the words whisper soft, with Jesus Cato.
“Don’t worry,” he spits at her, interrupting whatever horrible thing he knew she was going to say, “I’m leaving.”
In the five minutes it takes him to pull his pants on, she stays at the foot of the bed, half-dressed, hand pressed to her mouth in surprise. He wishes he knew her before her Games.
She didn’t try to stop him. He won’t forget that.
Finn shows up at his door with a bottle of great scotch and some sort of new drug. That’s the only reason Cato lets him in.
He says, “I don’t know what it is about her but I - I can’t,” and Finn shakes his head in agreement. The bottle stands between them on the table. Finn reaches for it first and Cato pulls out glasses for them.
“I fell in love with Annie first, and Jo second,” Finn admits. Cato never thought he would say it out loud. He wonders if Jo’s even ever heard it.
“I love her more,” Cato says. He’s surprised to find he mostly means it. Finn smiles at him.
“What are you expecting here, Cato?” Finn asks, his expression resigned. “You can’t have a happily ever with Jo for fuck’s sake.”
“Maybe you never gave her a chance,” Cato says without thinking.
Finn leaves after that, the bottle still three-quarters full on the table like a peace offering. Cato thinks he might be sick.
His male tribute kills her female one. Johanna shows up to the Victor’s room with her face drawn into a scowl. She hits him on the back of his head as a greeting. It only makes him smile.
“Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, huh.”
Cato slices into his steak and chews.
“Wish I could say the same for you.”
Johanna rolls her eyes. Sponsors chatter in the background, and Cato spies a woman painted green wrapped around Finnick.
“Don’t be such a dick,” she complains, stealing his steak away.
“Don’t be such a bitch then.”
She smiles when she takes a bite. He lets her steal his drink.
Finnick stays in his corner the entire night.
He met Johanna at a party, and her dress was purple, the color of a bruise, mottled and ugly. They fucked thirty minutes later, her legs wrapped around his waist while her head rammed against the bathroom stall. She slid a hand between them and rubs, frantic.
“Not so fast,” Cato said, knocking her hand away as his tongue twirled around her nipple slowly.
“Not so fast my ass,” Johanna managed, voice high-pitched and almost needy.
Cato’s hand grabbed her two wrists and pinned above her head, her legs still wrapped around his waist, her legs still trembling.
“So eager,” he grunted, thrusting harder at every syllable. Johanna bit her lip and refused to close her eyes, refused to make any more noise at all and he found that infuriating.
She was quiet until all her muscles shivered underneath her skin, and Cato got an unbearable amount of satisfaction from that, her body going slack in his arms.
“We might make a Victor out of you yet, kid,”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“You’ll find out soon enough,” she said, makeup smudged under the lighting, the front of her dress wrinkled. She didn’t smooth it.
The crowd outside roared and all he saw was her profile, the slope of her nose, the sharp press of her cheekbones and she said, “That’s our cue, Two,” and walked out laughing.
Cato watched her leave.
So, okay, there was Clove and the thing is - the thing she was there and then she wasn’t, then she was dead, her head smashed in and her eyes wide open, and that was wrong because she was supposed to kill him, sharp smile and a flick of her wrist. Wait, that’s not right either, he was supposed to kill her with his bare hands, supposed to steal her last breath for himself with the press of his hands and a gentle squeeze as her eyes shuttered close.
Or wait. Maybe, maybe that’s not right either. Maybe they were both supposed to win, and the rule change was meant for them. Clove would’ve wrapped her tiny legs around his waist and they would’ve fucked and drank and smiled their way through the rest of their lives.
Or wait. Maybe, maybe Cato’s just confused because Johanna wraps a tiny hand around his wrist and forces another drink into it, and Finnick laughs at them both but won’t stop staring at Johanna and maybe sometimes Cato wakes up with Clove’s name on his lips, in his head, her face pressed into the inside of his eyelids, and maybe he will spend the rest of his life trying to actually live it.
His room is quiet, the silence heavy in the air, and Johanna throws up in the bathroom.
He can hear her from the bed, see her even, her tiny body wracked with heaving and it almost makes him smile.
“Need some help?” he asks, lounging on his king sized bed, the drapes pulled tight across the windows. There’s an empty bottle, the bottom sticky and amber, on the floor next to the bed. He doesn’t believe in using glasses - when he didn’t feel like taking a pull straight from the bottle the shallow dip of Jo’s belly button worked just fine.
“Fuck off,” she murmurs, her arms wrapped around the porcelain. Her back rounds as she pukes again, a shudder running up her back. She looks so impossibly fragile he almost wants to laugh.
Johanna makes a noise, something wretched, something uneven and broken, before finally flushing the toilet.
“Don’t you dare use my toothbrush,” he yells.
The rush of water from his faucet hits the sink and Johanna, still naked, still tiny, sticks his toothbrush into her mouth and says, “Too late,” with her lips slanted up into a smile.
Later that morning, her hands pinned over her head and his teeth sinking into the slope of her shoulder, he growls beg for it as his tongue slides down between her breasts.
She arches her back off his sheet and says, eyes fluttering open and shut, absolutely not.
At Academy, they made them study the tactics of the Victors. He was too much of an obvious threat to ever attempt to use Johanna’s strategy, but Clove was in the same class and made him watch, murmuring to him under her breath the entire time.
Johanna’s first kill was a boy, someone larger than her, someone too much like Cato, and her axe fell heavy on that perfect part of the spine. The boy’s neck split and Johanna was covered in his blood. She was covered in his blood and she smiled at the camera, her lips curling up into something wicked, and Cato lost his breath.
Clove wrote notes and Cato just watched and now she’s dead. Johanna’s smile is even meaner in person, and her laugh sounds hollow.
She told him, “Fuck what they want,” her voice low in his ear, eyes burning bright, and he will never remember if it is Johanna or Clove.
Finnick clears his throat. The bar is empty and it’s Cato who reaches over the counter and easily grabs two full bottles of something, something thick and sweet and syrupy. Finn flinches but Cato clenches his teeth and swallows.
“What are you doing, Cato?” Finn asks, soft, tired.
Cato’s good at being a Victor. It’s all he’s ever known, all he’s trained for, but he wonders sometimes if he sounds like that, tired and weary and worn down. Johanna told him to wait for it, it’ll all catch up to him and she hopes she’s there to witness it. She told him that and then rolled off of him, her fingernails trailing across his stomach as he shivered into it. Johanna tells him a lot of things, though.
“Drinking,” he says, trying for indifferent. His shoulder comes up in a shrug almost on it’s own.
Finn runs a hand through his hair and his brow furrows.
“You know what I mean, Cato.”
In the back corner an old man, his skin dark with silver etchings, snores loudly. A hand is wrapped around his half-empty glass and he hiccups unevenly. Cato sniffs and looks away. He tosses back another shot.
“What’s the matter Finn?” he sneers, his teeth aching from the sugar, his mouth thick with it, “Worried that she thinks about me when you fuck her?”
Finnick sips from his glass and his eyes focus on Cato, razor-sharp. The lights are low and the shadows settle across his chiseled face dangerously. Cato stares at him and smirks.
The music changes, something low and thrumming, and Finnick wears his smile like a weapon.
“Just….be careful,” he says, “She gets hurt pretty easily.”
“Yeah?” Cato asks, feigning ignorance, like he didn’t know Jo well, “and who’s fucking fault is that Finnick?”
The song ends and Finn looks at him, surprised, before clapping him on the shoulder.
“Okay,” he murmurs, more to himself than anyone else, “you have a point there, I guess.”
He leaves by himself; Cato finishes his bottle and then calls Johanna.
He met Johanna before Finnick, before Haymitch. He met Johanna after Clove, obviously. He wonders what would have changed, if he’d met her before.
“Congratulations,” she told him, her hair dark and long, straight and shiny. Her fingers were wrapped around a glass of wine and the knuckles were white. She almost never drinks wine, he knows now, she told him one night. Too sweet, she shrugged. And then, not strong enough.
“Thanks,” he said stiffly, his jacket too tight around his swelling shoulders.
She took a sip of her wine and it stained her teeth red. She smiled and he saw red, saw it dripping from her mouth, saw freckles for a moment and then her small body pressed against him.
“How about I get you a drink?” she said, those teeth still red, her hair still dark. His jacket was silver and her dress was purple.
He grunted something then, and looking back on it he remembers how her smile faltered at the corners, the way her shoulders were bare and thrown back too far. Finn wasn’t at this party. Finn came later, and sometimes Cato thinks that’s the only reason she bothered talking to him at all.
He always had a thing for brunettes.
“How about I get you one instead?” he asked, his smile stretching across his face. Johanna tossed her head back and said, “I’ll have two of whatever you’re drinking.”
He remembers thinking she looked beautiful. He never told her that.
“What’s up with you and Finn?”
It’s the day before the Quarter Quell. This year the Tributes are all related, and Cato thinks about his sisters. His tributes cried on the train, their hands entwined, the 17 year-old brother and 14 year-old sister.
“Nothing,” he says, avoiding eye contact. A girl, blonde and bodacious, dressed in nothing, waves at him from across the room. Johanna flips her off.
“You’re lying,” she hisses, eyes narrowed at him, and she crosses her arms in a huff. The contestants line up for interviews and Johanna taps her foot impatiently.
“I said it’s nothing. Jesus Christ, Jo, leave me alone.”
“Gladly,” she spits, before spinning around on her heel and marching towards Finnick.
“Gladly,” she told him, and Cato almost said wait, fine, I’ll tell you but instead he didn’t. Instead, he stuffed his hands in his pockets and heard, don’t be such a pussy and it was Clove’s voice, high and malicious, that he heard.
It was Clove’s voice he heard, and that’s why he didn’t go after Johanna.
Haymitch says, “Hey blondie, I hope you know what the fuck you’re getting yourself into.”
The glass in Cato’s hand is empty; he shakes it in Haymitch’s direction and Haymitch just laughs.
“You’re in love with her,” Haymitch slurs. Cato bristles at the accusation.
“Fuck off, Haymitch,” he says. Thi is another party, another appearance. Johanna is in Seven and Finnick is in Four. At least, that’s what she told him. He didn’t really believe her. They both knew Johanna was never going to go back to Seven.
Haymitch stares at him for too long, claps him on the shoulder with something like affection. Cato shrugs the hand off.
“I know you,” he whipers, pointing a dirty fingernail in his face, “and I know Johanna better, and what you feel for her?”
He pauses; Cato leans in without realizing.
“This is as close as we get now. This is as much as our broken, bleeding hearts will allow us.”
And then Haymitch passes out, his body finally giving up against the constant battle against alcohol, and they never talk about it again.
Clove used to look at him, all sharp edges and the hormonal heart of a teenager, and his own would stupidly swell. Being with Johanna isn’t like that. He was a killer then, in the Arena, but now that he’s a Victor he’s not sure what he is anymore. It’s strange, how easily he snapped those necks and tore apart those bodies, the muscles tearing and veins popping at his request, and how ferociously he could still feel things. Clove was one of them. Winning was another. Now, with Jo, with Finn, it’s the strangest thing. He cares so much he could burst but he won’t let himself. It is a constant struggle between man and monster and he thought this would be easier, that he expelled the monster in the Arena or that he’s always only been a monster but Johanna changed all that. Johanna changed everything for him and sometimes he thinks Finn changed everything for her, and that Annie changed everything for Finn.
This can not be healthy, he realizes one morning over breakfast when he is missing Johanna. This can not be healthy but he doesn’t know how he could function any other way.
Johanna looks at him and it’s hungry, it’s desperate, her eyes hollow and it is all he can do to bury his face in her neck and try to breathe.
It’s all touch with them, her palms pressed flat to whatever piece of skin she can reach, his mouth sliding over the slope of her spine, her shoulder, her leg.
He wakes up one morning with Johanna’s hair on his pillow and realizes he knows her better than he’ll ever know Clove. He tries to remember her (Clove) in the mornings but all he gets is the glare of the sun and her braids, tied tight, and the briefest sound of her voice, thick with sleep, as she murmured good morning, Cato.
Cato doesn’t cry, he thinks it’s a waste of time, but Clove kisses him in his dreams and now he thinks it might’ve really been Johanna all this time. It’s just that everything is so much harder than he thought it would be.
Johanna says, still half-asleep, “Why are you staring at me, you fucking weirdo,” and he can barely manage, “I’m not.”
“Is this what it’s like with Finn?” he asks her, his arm draped over her stomach as a hickey blooms fresh on his neck.
Johanna slides out from under him. Even in the dark he feels her stare, knows the way her teeth are grinding against each other and the precise shade of grey her eyes are when she’s mad.
“That’s none of your fucking business,” she says calmly, already moving off the bed even though it’s hers.
Cato stretches out in the space she left behind and gets comfortable. He’s never been one to back away from a fight.
“Are you this quiet with him?” he sneers, his face twisting grotesque, twisting mean. Jo stares at him blankly, her shirt half-on, and he wants to hit her.
“I bet you can’t shut up with him,” he continues, unable to stop, the words bleeding from his mouth like a wound, “I bet you love saying his name. You probably fucking scream it for him, don’t you?”
It takes a minute for him to recognize that she is staring at him with pity.
She starts, the words whisper soft, with Jesus Cato.
“Don’t worry,” he spits at her, interrupting whatever horrible thing he knew she was going to say, “I’m leaving.”
In the five minutes it takes him to pull his pants on, she stays at the foot of the bed, half-dressed, hand pressed to her mouth in surprise. He wishes he knew her before her Games.
She didn’t try to stop him. He won’t forget that.
Finn shows up at his door with a bottle of great scotch and some sort of new drug. That’s the only reason Cato lets him in.
He says, “I don’t know what it is about her but I - I can’t,” and Finn shakes his head in agreement. The bottle stands between them on the table. Finn reaches for it first and Cato pulls out glasses for them.
“I fell in love with Annie first, and Jo second,” Finn admits. Cato never thought he would say it out loud. He wonders if Jo’s even ever heard it.
“I love her more,” Cato says. He’s surprised to find he mostly means it. Finn smiles at him.
“What are you expecting here, Cato?” Finn asks, his expression resigned. “You can’t have a happily ever with Jo for fuck’s sake.”
“Maybe you never gave her a chance,” Cato says without thinking.
Finn leaves after that, the bottle still three-quarters full on the table like a peace offering. Cato thinks he might be sick.
His male tribute kills her female one. Johanna shows up to the Victor’s room with her face drawn into a scowl. She hits him on the back of his head as a greeting. It only makes him smile.
“Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, huh.”
Cato slices into his steak and chews.
“Wish I could say the same for you.”
Johanna rolls her eyes. Sponsors chatter in the background, and Cato spies a woman painted green wrapped around Finnick.
“Don’t be such a dick,” she complains, stealing his steak away.
“Don’t be such a bitch then.”
She smiles when she takes a bite. He lets her steal his drink.
Finnick stays in his corner the entire night.
He met Johanna at a party, and her dress was purple, the color of a bruise, mottled and ugly. They fucked thirty minutes later, her legs wrapped around his waist while her head rammed against the bathroom stall. She slid a hand between them and rubs, frantic.
“Not so fast,” Cato said, knocking her hand away as his tongue twirled around her nipple slowly.
“Not so fast my ass,” Johanna managed, voice high-pitched and almost needy.
Cato’s hand grabbed her two wrists and pinned above her head, her legs still wrapped around his waist, her legs still trembling.
“So eager,” he grunted, thrusting harder at every syllable. Johanna bit her lip and refused to close her eyes, refused to make any more noise at all and he found that infuriating.
She was quiet until all her muscles shivered underneath her skin, and Cato got an unbearable amount of satisfaction from that, her body going slack in his arms.
“We might make a Victor out of you yet, kid,”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“You’ll find out soon enough,” she said, makeup smudged under the lighting, the front of her dress wrinkled. She didn’t smooth it.
The crowd outside roared and all he saw was her profile, the slope of her nose, the sharp press of her cheekbones and she said, “That’s our cue, Two,” and walked out laughing.
Cato watched her leave.