hunger games fic dump
i'll keep your memory vague, gale/katniss, pg13
“Hey,” Gale says, his mouth dry, joints stiff.
Katniss looks over her shoulder and her mouth splits into a pretty grin.
“Hey,” he says again, louder this time, his body barreling through shrubs and branches towards her.
She turns left, the trees dense, and the last thing he sees is the flick of her braid in the air.
Gale stands there alone, and he hears a rustle.
“Gotcha,” she says, her hands pressed flat against his back, pushing him slightly. He can’t see her smile but he hears it anyways.
He would’ve stumbled forwards, feet catching on brances, but Katniss’ hands fist in the thin fabric of his shirt and she says, “It’s a good thing I’m nice,” teasingly, whisper soft next to his ear.
Gale reaches an arm around and drags her forward, the bag of dead rabbits heavy in one arm, and drapes the other arm around her shoulder.
“I’ll get you back for that,” he says.
Katniss’ hands drop away and she shrugs out of his arm.
“You wouldn’t dare,” she laughs, her head bumping against his shoulder.
The gate looms head somewhere, silent and harmless. This is before the Games.
He should’ve known then.
In the Games, the First ones, mostly, he spent too much time thinking about her. The woods were too quiet without her, with only one pair of feet stalking about. The snap of branches is too loud and he gets distracted easily.
Rory asks, the light filtering in gray and early through the window in their kitchen, “Why don’t I come with you?” his voice nervous.
“Absolutely not,” Gale tells him. There’s no reason for it. Rory is old enough, by now.
“Maybe another time, buddy,” Gale amends, trying for warmth, roughing Rory’s hair lovingly. His mother stirs in the room over and Rorody nods once, biting his bottom lip.
“Okay,” he mutters, voice tinny and high in the small room.
Gale stands alone in his kitchen and wishes for Katniss.
Gale is in the town center during the cave.
It is raining in the Arena and Peeta’s dying, but in Twelve the sun is almost too hot, sweat pooling at the dip of his spine, staining his shirt.
Katniss kisses Peeta and Gale feels Madge Undersee’s hand slide over the top of his own.
“You know it’s for show, Gale,” she says. The sun glares off her blonde hair and Gale closes his eyes against it.
Her wrist twists and she catches his fingers in her own.
“I know,” he says, the words sticking to his throat.
Madge’s Mockingjay pin flashes bright gold on screen.
“Gale,” she says, her eyes bright.
“Catnip,” he smiles, arms swallowing her whole.
Even then, it was different.
I missed my chance, he thinks.
She breaks out of the hug first.
He used to dream of her, in the woods, by the lake.
“Gale,” she would always say, her voice rumbling against his skin.
His hands are flush on her and he couldn’t get enough. She had just come back from the Games and he wanted to reach out and pull her close, feel her entire body in one piece pressed against him. He wanted to be so close their bodies tangled, so their bodies fit together like he knew they would, he wanted to feel her underneath him. He wanted there to be no Peeta. She kisses him and his attitude shifts, a hand slipping carefully into her shirt, the skin there warm, waiting, and she says his name again.
“God, I love you,” he says, the words slipping into the air between them, her mouth brushing against his jaw, “you have no idea how much I love you.”
Katniss smiles and her mouth opens.
He always wakes up before she says it back.
it does not move like love. finn/jo. r.
Her mother used to say at night, Johanna already half-asleep, her fingers running through the tangled ends of Johanna’s hair, “I fell in love with your father on accident,” her voice dreamy and sweet.
It sounded romantic when she said it, admirable even. Johanna wanted to love like that, when she was young.
She wakes up to Finnick’s arm, heavy, draped across her stomach like a shackle. It doesn’t feel so admirable anymore.
“It’s silly to love Finnick Odair,” someone warned her once. Johanna didn’t love him then. It was simply an observation. The glass in Johanna’s hand was empty and she shook it impatiently.
“He belongs to too many people,” they continued, voice low and hushed. The ice cubes crashed into each other in the glass. Johanna never heard that part; she was yelling at a waiter.
Strangely enough, Finnick feels the most like hers naked. He turns from Finnick to Finn, her voice quiet, lilting. His skin is smooth and unmarked, beautiful, and Johanna wants to bite at it. She wants to ruin it until Finnick wears his scars on the outside, until he seems as vile as she does. Jo is a snarling monster of a girl, churlish, razor-sharp. Finn’s smile just glints brighter off her edges. She drags kisses down his stomach and wants to make him mean, make him match her, make his smile twist in the same way as hers.
Jo never succeeds. She has Annie to thank for that.
Before he left, Finn fingered her in her hospital bed. The bed was narrow and Jo never once thought it was a goodbye. Her wrists shook and she came quietly, with a long hiss. His wedding band was cold inside of her and she will replay this over and over again on lonely nights, on nights Finnick doesn’t exist anymore.
She’s never sure if it meant I love you or I hate you but it seems fitting either way. Love and hate were hard enough to distinguish between, let alone when there was all that blood and violence in between them. Jo thinks Annie might’ve destroyed them and Finn died knowing she saved them. The line was always so, so thin with them and Jo remembers feeling everything. She remembers being too young not to.
In her Games, Finnick mostly pitied Jo.
She was a slip of a girl, her face sliding into place as the axe severed into bone and muscle and flesh, the blood staining her fingertips red. She had a thousand different smiles, each one sharper and more dangerous than the last.
Finnick’s own mouth ached, mingling with sponsors, and on-screen Johanna killed another.
“She’s awfully vicious, isn’t she?” a man with diamond eyebrows tittered. Finnick’s stomach did two quick, neat flips and he finished his drink.
“It would appear so,” Finnick said, smiling.
Johanna hit her mark again. And the crowd went wild.
Johanna rarely dreams anymore. She’s afraid of what she’d see if she did.
an emptiness, a heaviness, a void. victor!Cato. Johanna. Finnick.
So, Cato wins.
Surprised?
He’ll never admit it, but so was he.
Clove said, armed to the teeth, the tip of a blade peeking out from underneath her sleeve, “What do you want most?”
You, he thought first, involuntarily, his arm resting on her thigh. The manufactured sky was cloudless and Clove’s face turned towards it so he could only see her profile.
And then, “To win, of course,” and he meant that too.
She laughed into his mouth and said, “Sorry about that, then.”
Johanna’s a bitch and he’s a bastard, or so he’s told. It makes sense that they end up fucking a lot.
Finnick walked in on them, once.
Johanna was naked and on top, her hands pressing Cato into the mattress, head thrown back, sweat sliding down her spine.
Finnick said, “Don’t mind me,” his voice straining and a blush rising in his face.
Johanna said, “Don’t worry, I won’t,” still rocking on Cato, not turning around.
Afterwards, Cato rubbed at the back of his neck and murmured, “Finn’s gonna be pissed at me now. Happy?”
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned,” she told him, eyes closed and half-asleep in the warm pitch black of her room, “it’s that Finnick couldn’t give two shits about who I sleep with when I’m not fucking him.”
“Quit with the pity party,” he sneered.
“Don’t even start with me, kiddo,” she drawled and that, like usual, shut him right up.
Cato comes home one night to Finnick in the hallway, slumped against his door, his fingers curled a nearly empty bottle of vodka.
“Finn?” he asks, fumbling with his keys.
Finn’s head lolls up at that, his eyes trying to focus on the large blond mass in front of him. His face lights up when he realizes that it’s Cato.
“Cato!” he exclaims, hiccupping loudly. It takes him three tries to get up, and Cato finally huffs and drags him through the door of his apartment. He pries the bottle out of Finnick’s clutch and finishes the bottle himself.
He said, “Wanna know something funny?” and Cato says, “Not really.”
Finnick’s eyes narrow and he points a finger in Cato’s face.
“Well, I’m gonna tell you anyways,” he slurs. Cato rolls his eyes.
Finnick falls on his way to the couch. Cato watches and laughs, pouring a fresh glass of whiskey.
Finn says, “We’re both fucking Johanna.”
The glass shatters in the sink.
“Fuck, I spilled my drink,” Cato murmurs, ignoring Finnick.
“And you know what I think?” he continues, gesturing with his hands, his face too animated. Cato’s never seen him this drunk before and admires his commitment to the task.
“I think that we both kind of love her,” Finnick states.
The shards of crystal sparkle in the sink and Cato tries to clean it up after taking a swig straight from the bottle. He slices his index finger open on a large, jagged piece and stares at the blood pooling before applying pressure.
“I think we both kind of love her,” Finn says again, drunk and determined, “but I think we both love other people more.”
Cato’s grip tightens on the edge of the sink and he says, “Stop, Finn.”
Finn ignores him and says, “I love Annie and you love Clove and Johanna loves both of us.”
The apartment is silent. Cato debates kicking him out.
“It’s not fair to Jo,” Finn whispers, and then he passes out.
In Two, his mother kissed his cheek and his father shook his hand, beaming. His sisters, Poppy and Chiffon, clung tight to his legs and it was impossible to pull them off.
Clove’s mother has the same hair as her daughter.
She says, “I just wanted to thank you, for doing everything you could.”
Her shoulders are frail and hunched, the skin around her eyes puffy and red. She is, noticeably, alone.
Cato clears his throat and nods once.
“No problem,” he says, because he thinks Clove would hate it if he said I’m sorry and he doesn’t know what else to say.
He manages to stay in his brand new big house in the Victor’s Village for a week before his skin starts to crawl. The bar in the dining room is only stocked with two kinds of scotch.
Cato calls Johanna and says, “I’m coming back.”
Her laugh is grainy and low through the phone; he twists a finger in the cord and watches it slowly turn purple.
She says, “We all do, eventually.”
His sisters cry when he leaves but his parents don’t. Cato takes that as some sort of sign.
The train ride is silent and he remembers:
you haven’t won this thing, you know and either have you, smartass.
One of them said, you’re an idiot and then they were kissing, his palms on either side of her head against the glass, the world passing them by too fast.
and we're off to the races. cato/clove. pg13.
Cato turned eighteen on a cold day in the winter.
His hand-to-hand combat teacher swings at him and Cato ducked too late. The knuckles hit a perfect spot on his cheekbone and he felt the bone crack underneath his skin.
Cato dropped to the floor and his teacher pulled him up again, said, “You only have a year left to get better at this, Cato,” before dropping him off at the hospital wing.
He wakes up to Clove in the chair next to him, carving her initials into his hospital bed, humming something low and repetitive.
“Hairline fracture,” she said casually when his hand went up towards his face, “I wouldn’t touch it if I were you.”
Her mouth split into a smile and he sighed, rolling his eyes.
“Don’t look so smug,” he leered, “it doesn’t agree with you.”
She laughed at that, her fingers splayed open on his forearm,
“Happy birthday, Cato,” she trilled into his ear, those small hands everywhere, “What are you gonna wish for?”
Cato, disgruntled and disappointed, said, “For you to go away.”
Clove narrowed her eyes into slits and something turned in his stomach.
“As you wish,” she spat.
Before she left, she leaned in to kiss him but instead she pressed the heel of her palm to the fracture and pressed down, hard.
Clove says, “If you kill me,” and Cato laughs.
“If?” he says, his arms behind his head, the sun beating down on them warm and gentle.
“If,” she repeats, running a finger down his flexed bicep, “you should do it with your hands.”
Cato sits up on his elbows and shields his eyes to look towards her. Clove is ripping out grass by the handful, her blade flat on the ground. He only sees the one tucked into her boot after looking for it.
The wind whistles around them, sharp, and blows her hair into her face. Cato can only see the small point of her chin, the slope of her nose, the apples of her cheeks flushed pink. She almost looks her age.
“Not with a knife?” he asks curiously, nodding towards the bulge in her sock. Clove sighs and reaches out, grabbing his hand in her own, admiring it briefly in the afternoon light before letting go.
Her mouth smiles and she says, “No. Those are mine.”
And then, a moment later, “If you touch them, I’ll kill you.”
The tent is quieter with just the two of them, with everyone else dead or hiding.
Clove sleeps with her head on his chest and her hair spills, dark and silky, along his shirt.
She wakes up one night to one of his hands holding onto the ends of her braids, the other spread wide on her lung.
“So,” she teases, eyes sparkling and lips pink, “you kinda like me, huh?”
There’s something dangerous in the corners of her mouth, her smile wider than usual, her teeth flashing pointed and even whiter.
Cato’s hand falls from her lungs to the tie around her pants; Clove audibly gasps when he unties it carefully.
“I guess you could say that,” he growls, and it sounds menacing in the early light of dawn. It sounds driven mad with lust, it sounds almost perverse. It sounds like the farthest thing from love he could manage.
The air is cold on their naked skin and Clove bites down on his shoulder, hard.
Her hips cant up towards his and he gets even deeper, his hands gripping too tight on her bony hips.
She whispers, is that all you can do into the sweat-slicked space of skin where his neck meets his shoulder. Her fingernails scratch at his back and her breasts press against him.
Cato thrusts again, grunting, and she squeezes around him, smirking quickly before her face goes a little slack, her breathing erratic, and he wonders if that’s what it’ll look like when he kills her.
She says, "Not bad, I guess."
Cato traces the line of her jaw and murmurs, "Better than anyone else."
He didn’t hear her scream his name. If he had heard them, he would’ve ran, he would’ve ran fast enough, and he would’ve saved her.
Instead, he was searching for fresh water and when he heard the cannon boom, he thought that’s my girl and headed back to the Cornucopia.
“Clove,” he starts out, his hand cold around the water canteen.
And then he sees a body, tiny and bleeding, and he sees Clove.
The canteen drops and the water pools at his feet; Cato drops to his knees and mud smears on his pants.
Her body feels small in his hands, her head lolling like a rag doll and Cato feels nauseous. His stomach twists into knots and he sets her down, gently, under the tent in just enough time before he grabs at the ground with his fists and retches all over the dirt.
He’s wiping the back of his mouth and he almost hears, Jesus, Cato, you’re no help at all her lips curling into a smile, her eyes wide and vicious.
He pukes again and it’s all acid and bile, burning hot and disgusting up his throat.
The Capitol takes her body back and Cato’s fist tightens around her blade.
The mutts have human eyes, he notices.
A mutt sinks its teeth in between two ribs, the muscle tearing, and that’s when he starts to cry.
“Clove,” he whines, arms thrashing.
“Clove,” he says again, as his spine breaks clean in half.
“Clove,” he says, one last time, and then he is dead.
you like your girls insane. finnick/annie. finnick/johanna. r. spoilers through Mockingjay.
Finnick dies. That really, really fucking sucks.
Annie’s pregnant with a little boy in District Four and Johanna can’t bring herself to visit, can’t bring herself to even leave the little apartment she has in Seven, the walls painted purple and an axe cabinet in the hallway where a coat closet should be.
Finnick told her, looking out of the corner of his eye, shaking his head, “I don’t know what to do with you half of the time, Jo.”
The hospital walls were white and the fluorescent lighting made his ring glare at her.
Johanna flipped over to her side and away from Finnick.
“That’s nothing new, Finn,” she murmured, and then he left.
Annie rocks back and forth on her heels, the motion wearing the carpet thread bare underneath her pale, small feet.
Finnick paces around her, gritting his teeth, and shoots a look over to Jo.
“You could help, you know,” he says, exasperated. Annie hasn’t been sleeping well, he told Jo over the phone. Annie’s been having nightmares, he told Jo.
Jo said, Well yeah, obviously, we all do, but came over anyways.
“I don’t know what you want me to do, Finn,” she states, carefully slicing an apple and tossing the skinless wedges into her mouth.
“I don’t speak crazy,” she says, and cuts out the core.
Annie’s eyes water at the sight of the knife and she cries into Finnick’s shoulders, tired and broken and stupidly beautiful.
Finnick sighs and sits them both down, his lips pressed to the crown of her dark head, his hand smoothing circles into her back.
“We both know that’s not true,” he whispers, glaring. Jo shrugs.
The Capitol is the best excuse for bad behavior a girl could ask for, so Johanna slides her hand into Finnick’s pants underneath the table and squeezes gently.
“Jesus, Jo,” he whispers, his hand clenched on the hard shiny wood tabletop, his eyelids fluttering shut for a second.
The people around the table look over at them, frowning, and Johanna twists her face into a mask of concern and mouths, Tourettes apologetically.
She finishes him off with a graceful flick of her wrist and he yells, oh, fuck me so loud Johanna says, “I agree with Finnick. We really can’t wait before rolling out the next round of Victor specials.”
The crowd murmurs in agreement and Johanna feels the press of Finn’s fingers against her underwear, the gentle nudge as he pushes them aside and slips them into her.
She bites her lip so hard it bleeds.
Annie’s hair falls down her shoulders, dark and lovely and delicate. Johanna fingers the edges of her short hair, the ragged uneven lines of the cut, and laughs.
“I don’t know what you want me to say, Jo.”
Johanna shifts her weight from foot to foot and crosses her arms.
“I don’t need you to say, anything, Finn,” she sulks.
“I’ll always love her more,” he says, and that - that is him being mean and honest and selfish. That is him being Johanna, as far as he’s concerned.
Johanna’s mouth is a pretty little oh when she laughs, color rushing high into her cheekbones, her teeth white and peeking underneath that pink.
Johanna says, “Don’t you think I already knew that?”
Even then, he is the first one to leave the room.
“Who’s Annie?” she asked Finnick, a long, long time ago.
It was dark outside, late or early or whatever, and Haymitch was passed out the couch.
Finnick’s tumbler is half-full and he rolls it between two open palms. He didn’t really know her yet, didn’t really care about her yet. Before he loved her, he kind of hated her.
Johanna’s drunk. She finds it’s hard not to be, these days.
He says, eyes hooded, “No one.”
“Okay,” she shrugs, and finishes his glass for him.
a sound that was something like crying. gale/katniss. pg13.
Katniss kisses Peeta and there it is -
Gale thinks, Katniss Katniss Katniss stop doing that I love you it should be me why didn’t I why couldn’t I
Gale thinks, Catnip.
Gale thinks a lot of things, but his heart hurts too much to say them out loud.
Madge Undersee kisses him in her doorframe, strawberries pressed beneath them, and her blouse comes back red. The sun beats down on them and throws her features into shadow. Gale squints.
“Oops,” she mutters, rubbing at the stain.
Gale’s fingers wrap around her wrist and he pulls her closer, fingers gentle on her jaw and she tastes sweet. Her hair falls in her face and he doesn’t push it away. Madge’s hair is just as blonde as Peeta’s and Gale thinks, briefly, watch this, Catnip before pushing the thought away, ashamed.
“How much do I owe you?” she says, inches away from his face, the pads of her fingers soaked red and fresh.
Gale sighs, the corners of his mouth dropped into a frown, and he says, “Nothing. You ruined most of them anyways.”
In the woods, Gale trips over too many branches because he hears Gale around every corner and imagines the flash of her braid around every curve of a tree.
Hazelle watches him closely out of the corner of her eyes and Gale can feel it.
“Mom,” he whines, his fingers calloused from stringing bows by himself.
“What?” she asks innocently, her eyes wide. There’s some kind of soup on the stove and she stirs it slowly, the smell drifting into every corner of the small kitchen.
Gale scuffs his shoe on the floor and mutters, “Stop doing that.”
He sounds like Rory and he winces.
Hazelle says, “I’ve seen the way she looks at you, Gale,” her voice soft and gentle and Gale feels like he’s going to throw up.
“You don’t know anything, Mom,” he manages, pulse racing, before storming out of the house.
Gale comes home from school one day to find Prim on his doorstep, her little blonde head fitted neatly to the curve of Rory’s shoulder.
She’s crying.
Rory looks up at him, his hand smoothing circles onto Prim’s fragile back, and mouths what do I do? frantically, his eyes wide and nervous.
Gale almost laughs at the panicked look on his little brother’s face. He raises his eyebrows and Rory shoots him a look that says, not now, Gale.
Prim hiccups, once, then twice, and Gale sits down next to them both.
He says, “C’mon, Prim. You know Katniss is gonna be okay.”
Rory’s hand is still on Prim’s back and she twists her head up to look at Gale, tears streaking her face. Her eyes look bluer than ever and Gale searches for Katniss in her face. He doesn't find as much as he wanted to. There's something in the set of their mouths that is alarmingly similar, but it's not nearly enough. He lets out a breath he didn't know he was holding.
“Even if she is,” Prim wails, taking staccato, uneven breaths, “she’ll be different.”
Gale’s mouth drops open but no words come out. Something twists painfully in his stomach and he thinks that flashes along his face because Rory takes Prim hand and quietly takes her inside.
She’ll be different, Prim said.
Gale never allowed himself to imagine Katniss back at home, with her braid and her flat boots and her smile after shooting a deer, not really.
Or maybe that’s a lie. Maybe he’s imagined it too many times and every single time she is still the Katniss he knows, the Katniss he loves. She’s still Catnip and she still smiles at him in the woods.
She’ll be different, Prim said and suddenly his throat closes up.
Katniss says, “Gale, you don’t understand.”
The woods are loud, birds fluttering about, rabbits bouncing everywhere.
Gale feels sick.
He says, “I guess not.”
scenes of a bedroom, mostly. johanna/finnick. pg13.
Finnick says, “We really shouldn’t be doing this, Jo.”
His brow is knit and he frowns.
Johanna hugs her knees to her chest and lights a cigarette. Her back rounds and Finnick sees the knobs of bone pressing through her skin. She exhales in his face.
“Polite as always, Jo,” he murmurs, waving away the smoke.
Johanna smirks and some ash drops onto the white sheet.
“Common courtesy goes out the window after you fuck me,” she says unapologetically.
“Didn’t realize there was any before,” he laughs.
She inhales slowly and in the dim light, Finnick can see shadows ghost across her expanding lungs. Johanna twists around and offers him the half-burned cigarette. Finnick eyes it for a second before caving, the cigarette perched in between two fingers. She licks her lips when he pulls the cigarette to his mouth.
He says, “You’re a terrible influence.”
Her toes curl around his calf and she slides further down the bed. Finnick flinches; her toes are cold. Johanna arches her back so her breasts are on display and she smiles something wicked.
“If that isn’t the pot calling the kettle black…” she whispers, and Finn puts out the cigarette in a cold cup of coffee on the nightstand.
Finnick was the first Victor she met.
He remembers that she was dressed in green, dark green, tight and backless. She was only fifteen and she barely filled it out, but she cocked her head to the side and said, “You’re not that good-looking.”
He lifted his drink to his mouth and took a long, hard gulp.
“You are,” he leered, smile stretched across his face, frozen in place.
Johanna rolled her eyes and said, “Does that work on your Capitol conquests?”
That’s when he thought, okay.
“Usually,” Finn responded, his smile relaxing.
Johanna said, with a wave of her hand, “Make yourself useful and get me a scotch or something.”
Finnick wandered off towards the bar, shaking his head. When he leaned against the neon orange structure, Haymitch asked, “Did you meet her yet?”
Finnick smiled and grabbed two whiskeys from the Avox.
“Yeah,” he said “you’ll think she’s a pain in the ass.”
Johanna yelled, “Hey, pretty boy, I’m still waiting on that drink,” from across the room, waggling her fingers.
Haymitch laughed and clapped Finn on his back.
In Four, Annie’s spine curves neatly into Finnick’s.
Someone says, Well, isn’t that sweet, the tone acidic, and Finnick opens his eyes.
There is no Johanna, only Annie, and it takes him hours to fall back asleep, his nose buried in Annie’s dark and wonderful hair that smells like the sea.
“If I had to do it differently,” Johanna says, small and lonely.
Finnick leans against the door frame and crosses his arms. The edge of wood bites into his shoulder but he stays there and listens. She stretches in the bed and takes up all the space.
“Where am I supposed to sit?” he asked lightly, the door hinge bruising his bicep.
Johanna stares at him like he’s an idiot.
She says, “You look perfectly comfortable right there.”
That’s when he moves towards the bed and pushes her to the side, settling into the mattress easily. Jo shifts once, her breasts brushing his chest, a hand pressing against his thigh. Finn palms the curve of her hip and Jo shifts again, away from him, a thin sliver of space in between their bodies.
“You were saying?” he teases, and Jo sighs.
“Before you rudely interrupted,” she starts.
In the dark, Johanna’s edges blur and sometimes when he looks at her, all he sees are big eyes and dark hair.
“Sometimes I don’t think all that killing was worth it, Finn,” she says, her fingers wiggling on the sheets, inches away from his.
Finnick remembers her Games, the moment she sunk the blade of her axe deep into the stomach of a young boy, the wood blending with her arm so it was one large, deadly appendage. Caesar Flickerman yelled, ladies and gentleman this is a gamechanger and on screen Johanna wiped the blood off her blade.
He kisses her softly and Johanna’s eyes flutter shut.
He says, jokingly, “You met me, didn’t you?”
She says, voice horribly broken, “And isn’t that the truth?”
In the dark, Johanna’s spine curves against him neatly, too.
keep your prison locked up. gale/johanna. pg13.
“You have a drug problem,” the doctor tells her.
Johanna’s hair is short and two machines beep at her. The doctor pushes his glasses up his nose and checks something on a clipboard. He’s an old thing, his hair white and feathered, his shoulders depressingly droopy. She crosses and uncrosses her legs under the cheap white sheet, staring at the doctor blankly.
Johanna says, “Doc, I’ve got bigger problems than that.”
The hallways are long and overly decorated, the carpets thick and walls carved out of a deep, rich mahogany. Her fingers trail along the indented panels, the sunken squares, and it’s nearly quiet.
Johanna’s robe hangs off her skinny frame, baggy and loose. It shuffles around when she does, rubbing against her skin. She’s not proud of the things she would do for a cheeseburger. The cheap material of the garment sneaks underneath her foot and she almost trips. It’s impossible to sneak up on anyone like that.
Gale Hawthorne looks at her from the other end of the hall, confused, and scratches at the back of his neck.
“I didn’t think they let you out, yet.”
Johanna rolls up a sleeve and smirks, one side of her mouth curling up, her too long nails scratching against her arm.
“Good behavior,” she drawls, leaning against the wall. Her mouth trips into a smile and she tugs at her hospital gown.
Gale looks at her for a minute, casually, like she’ll break. Johanna ignores it and raps her nails on the wall.
“Since when?” he says, and then bursts into laughter.
It turns out they won’t let her live alone - drug addiction, PTSD, all-around unpleasantness. All of those things can be exacerbated without another warm body around to tease. Or so they say.
Gale says, “Um, I guess I need a roommate?”
Johanna sits, shocked and silent, across from him.
“What?” he says, face open, as he sticks his finger into her dinner and steals a wedge of potato.
Johanna is drunk and halfway to black out.
Their couch fits both of them and Gale’s keeping up with her nicely.
He says, “Shouldn’t we, I don’t know, leave this room?” or slurs it actually, the words running into each other.
Johanna’s head lolls towards Gale on the black cushion, the TV flashing something unimportant on the screen. Her fingers wrap around the neck of her beer bottle, sweating cold into her head, and she tilts her head back to finish it off.
“I kind of hate everyone else,” she mutters into the empty bottle before tossing it in the general direction of the garbage can. She misses. Gale’s bottle soars in the air seconds later and lands perfectly in the pail.
Gale laughs at that, his hand dropping onto her thigh. She raises an eyebrow and shifts into his touch.
“Didn’t think you had it in you, Hawthorne,” she says, arching her back off the couch lazily.
“You never give me enough credit,” he whispers, thumb tracing her jaw line.
The next morning, Johanna wakes up to Gale’s breath on her neck. He wakes up moments later, and Johanna says, “You have morning breath.”
Gale flips her over and spreads her legs, the sunlight filtering in through the closed blinds, her fingers pulling at his hair and he says, “I don’t hear any more complaints, Jo.”
Twenty minutes and two orgasms later, Johanna lies, sated and sleepy, her arms draped over Gale’s torso.
“I’ll make breakfast,” she offers, yanking his t-shirt over her head and Gale raises an eyebrow.
“And what, exactly, are you capable of cooking?” he asks.
“Well in that case,” she says, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, “you can try and fend for yourself.”
He says, “I kind of like you.”
Johanna’s half-asleep and can only manage, “Yeah, whatever. Me too, I guess.”
pick me up and take me like a vitamin, johanna/finnick, r
Johanna tells Finn, smile sharp, fingers deftly twisting the cork out of a bottle of wine, “I don’t feel bad for you because you’re pretty, Princess.” The bar is a long, clean line of mahogany that crosses through his dining room. She leans against it casually, eyes half-lidded. The windows behind her filter the sun in red, sunset leaking into the apartment. Johanna turns her head towards it.
Finnick shifts his weight on the couch; his knee cracks loudly. A laugh rumbles out of his chest, slowly, as he stands and walks towards her.
“I don’t think I was asking you to,” he says, voice light. Johanna smirks, the bottle opening with a soft whomp. The tip of her tongue licks the corner of her mouth.
Johanna’s hand is wrapped around the bottle and his hand is wrapped around hers. She drops it first, the mess of liquid spilling over the floor in a deep red rush. That’s when he kisses her, the edge of the bar digging into her spine, his mouth bruising her more than anything else.
“Tell me if I should stop,” Finnick mutters into her skin, his hands spread along her ribcage, her lungs fitting neatly under the press of his palm as she arched her neck back so he could reach the spot behind her ear.
This is not their first time, but Finnick prides himself on being a gentleman when he can manage it. He tweaks a nipple and Johanna squirms underneath him, nips at his shoulder.
“Shut up,” she gasps, fingers digging into his shoulders, trying to get some leverage as she places one of his hands in her pants.
Finnick moves his hand slowly, one arm propping her against the bar even as she rubs against him faster. Johanna moves against him with some sort of desperation, and she scrabbles at his belt.
Johanna’s mouth is warm and aggressive, her tongue swirling over him gracefully. Finnick’s arm slips, and he knocks three glasses onto the floor. He can feel the vibrations of her laughter and that’s when he pulls her off her knees, her gaze pointed and serious.
“I wasn’t finished yet,” she says, the corners of her mouth quirked up as she drags a finger down the length of him.
There reaches a point with them, always, when Johanna is teasing teasing teasing all naked and kind of beautiful, and her fingers and her mouth and her body are too much and Finnick’s thoughts haze over. He stops thinking about Annie and all that blood and he can only feel the liquor, only Johanna around him and Johanna underneath him and she is so small. This is that point.
He lifts her up roughly before thrusting in, deep, and Johanna gasps, the gargle of a moan trapped in the back of her throat, and he teases it out of her.
“Neither am I, Jo,” he whispers into her ear. She closes her eyes.
i heard the streets were paved with gold, finnick/johanna, pg
They met on a roof.
Johanna’s stylist had put her in red, short and tight and backless and Finnick was wearing gold.
It was a party, in her honor. Johanna was fifteen and Finnick was eighteen and both of their glasses were empty when he walked over and said, “I must congratulate you on your brutality.”
Johanna’s face was half in shadow, the high press of her cheekbones underneath all that perfect skin elongated, the sneer of her mouth even harsher.
“Finnick Odair,” she said, twisting the empty tumbler around in her hand, “an honor, I’m sure.”
The city sparkled beneath them, all silver and shine and sleek. Finnick stepped up next to her, peering over the edge casually.
“How about I go get us another round?” he asked.
Johanna looked up at him through all those eyelashes and laughed.
“How about you go get us a few bottles?”
A breeze rushed by them and ruffled her hair; she smelled curiously like pine and vanilla. Johanna was still staring off the balcony and there was something hypnotizing in it, something so terrible and interesting Finnick found himself wanting to stay.
“Don’t jump over without me,” he teased.
At the bar, Haymitch was slumped over, muttering about something. Finnick clamped a hand on his shoulder and moved him over to the couch before reaching over the bar and grabbing some scotch.
Johanna was gone when Finnick got back, the space at the edge of the balcony incredibly empty. He peered over the edge until he heard a sharp laugh.
Johanna was spread out on the couch lazily, legs taking up all the extra space, her elbow propping up her head.
“And here I was hoping you’d jumped,” he said, fingers tight around the bottles, smile open and wide on his face.
She sat up slowly and reached out for the nicer bottle.
“You told me not to jump without you. And who am I to derail someone’s suicide mission?”
He watched the line of her throat as she swallowed, the white of her knuckles against the bottle. He couldn’t believe how small she was, how thin her wrists were, the boyish set of her hips.
Finnick took a gulp.
“Ready to go?” he asked, the liquor coursing through his veins, tilting his head towards the drop off.
Johanna’s bottle was already half-empty.
“I thought you’d never ask.”