THG fic: "Spin Control" [9/21]
Title: Spin Control
Pairings: Finnick/Haymitch, Kat/Peeta
Characters: Finnick, Haymitch, Chaff, Peeta, Gale, Kat; plus appearances by Mags, Johanna, Caesar Flickerman, President Snow, Effie, Claudius Templesmith, Beetee, Prim, Thresh, Rue, District Twelve ensemble and various OC
Rating: adult
Warnings: forced prostitution & non-con; people dealing with sexual trauma; rape fantasies; self-hate; canon-typical violence; minor character death (of major canon characters); implied physical abuse of children (in the Mellark household); alcoholism & drug abuse
Summary: When Haymitch Abernathy’s alcoholism makes the prime time news, Finnick Odair is sent to live in District Twelve to pick up the pieces. But it’s hard to save a friend if you can barely stand looking yourself in the eye. And it might become impossible once that friend decides to move hell and high water to bring two of his tributes home at once, even if it should cost him his own life.
Where’s My Victor? If you’re looking for the Peeta/Kat bits but don’t want to bother with the whole story, I’d recommend starting at around Chapter 17, where that gets going for real, though they do make their share of appearances before that too. Gale’s appearances will be scattered through the fic more evenly. Gale and Peeta both make their first appearance in Chapter 6. Kat, probably Chapter 11. Chaff is featured prominently as well.
“Spin Control” on LJ: Prologue -- Chapter 1 -- Chapter 2 -- Chapter 3 -- Chapter 4 -- Chapter 5 -- Chapter 6 -- Chapter 7 -- Chapter 8
Fic on AO3
Chapter 9: The Victory Tour
“Hey, kid,” Finnick said, catching up to the Seam child with long strides. “I’m looking for a girl called Fallon. Long black hair. About this tall.”
The boy stared at him defiantly. “I don’t know any girl.”
“If you tell her to come to my place tonight and she does, you can come over tomorrow at noon and I’ll give you a coin.”
The boy’s eyes turned round. “She’ll be there,” he rushed to say and raced off.
“Tell her to bring a friend!” Finnick called after him.
Everybody on the street was staring.
Finnick gave them his best brilliant smile, thinking fuck you all for once in his life and sauntering off.
It felt good.
***
Handling Haymitch was harder.
“Wake up, sleeping beauty!” Finnick shouted, kicking the kitchen door shut with his heel. “Your prince has emerged from the sea to wake you up with a little kiss and a big bowl of soup!”
Silence was the only answer. Not having expected any better, Finnick steeled himself and cleared a spot on the counter with a sweep of his arm. He just hoped that nothing had come alive inside the bacterial breeding grounds of rotting food in the sink.
Then he spread out the vegetables he had bought at the merchie market and the Hob, half of which he didn’t know by name. But ever helpful Greasy Sae had explained to him what to do with them for a small fee.
Determined to make as much noise as he could while searching for useable pots and the knives, Finnick didn’t look up at the noise of steps in the doorway, the shadow of Haymitch falling onto the floor.
That was also easier than facing up to how gaunt and slack the other man had become, still clean but not neat, nothing like the force of nature he’d used to be, always commanding the room. Finnick resolved, then and there, that he would get Haymitch back to his old, surprising physical strength, his usual weight. He wanted - he needed - the old Haymitch back.
Chopping away at what Sae had told him was a local turnip mutt, a moment passed before Haymitch eventually spoke up, sounding faded and tired.
“What the fuck is this all about?”
“I’m making soup.”
“Smartass, yeah, I got that far,” Haymitch replied. “And I suppose you don’t know anything about cooking, but you’re hoping I’ll jump in and help you out with my secret Victor’s talent, and this will all be a real peachy bonding session. I’ve seen that movie, pretty sure.”
Finnick chopped on. Remembering Tobin McKenzie butchering a child the way he would have cut up a steak, there was a distinct possibility that Finnick himself looked like he was going at the turnip close-combat style. The thought made him smirk at the vegetable. Like Tobin probably had thought too, he wouldn’t care as long as it worked.
“Well, that would be too easy, now would it?” he shot back. “So no. You can sit down at the table and enjoy the sight. I will be here, with the zucchinis. You need to eat, see. Three times a day, they say, would be ideal.” Grabbing the turnip bits, he dumped them in the pot. “It so happens that I need to eat three times a day, too, so we’re going to be combining these two things from now on. That means you’ll have to follow my diet plan, but I’ll venture a guess and say that mine’s better than yours.”
There was a moment of pause, while Haymitch seemed to process that.
“Cute,” he said, unimpressed.
“I try,” Finnick modestly replied, and Haymitch snorted at him.
“You know,” the other victor said. Finnick finally glanced around to see he was leaning in the doorframe, arms folded in front of his chest, as if ready to leave at the first infraction. Definitely not sitting down at the kitchen table. “I’m reasonably sure that you and I already had a conversation about how I want you to leave me the fuck alone.”
“You know, you’re a lot wittier when you aren’t such a mess.”
“You’ve never met me when I wasn’t a mess.”
“I’m not joking, Haymitch. You don’t get a choice. You need to eat.”
“So they kept telling me in rehab, too,” Haymitch replied evenly. “Now explain to me how exactly this here is going to be different. Because from where I’m standing, all I’m seeing is other people running my life for me without asking my permission.”
Finnick clenched his jaw, chopping at the vegetables harder than was necessary. “The difference is that they don’t care about you,” he said. “And I do. A lot. And I hate seeing you like this, okay?”
Surprisingly, inconceivably, that shut Haymitch up.
The thing about surviving the arena was, Finnick thought, you couldn’t even once afford to second-guess your strategy. You had to settle on a course of action, and then you stuck with it, at least until something went completely wrong. You couldn’t afford to get swayed, you couldn’t afford to doubt yourself or consider new angles half-way through. You wanted to win. That was all you wanted. You couldn’t afford to care about anything beside that.
If he wanted to win at the Games of District Twelve, he needed Haymitch in good health and ready to face life. If Haymitch really wanted to escape from it all, he had to prove to Finnick that he wanted it more than Finnick wanted him to stick around. They’d be opponents, until that was battled out.
“You gonna leave me alone after, if I go along with your little nursing home routine,” Haymitch eventually said, not bothering to phrase it like a question.
Finnick serenely shook his head, adopting his best housewife voice. “We’ve already got plans after dinner, honey.”
“Oh for the love of a dead canary,” Haymitch muttered, out of energy and out of replies.
“Soup will be ready in an hour,” Finnick said. “How about you try getting some sleep until then.”
***
“So this is Fallon Corksmith, from the Seam,” Finnick introduced the girl, careful not to touch her when he stepped between her and her friend, his hand hovering over her shoulder. “And that’s Noreen Lockley, also from the Seam. Fallon can’t work in the mines because she’s got night blindness. Noreen can’t because she has a baby boy. So Fallon will be my housekeeper, and after she’s helped Noreen clean up your house, Noreen will be yours. Ladies,” he added, pointing at Haymitch. “That’s Haymitch Abernathy. Remember that I’m paying you to ignore him if he should say anything unpleasant. Well,” he added after a pause. “Remember that I am the one paying you. No need to be nice to him if he should try to make you uncomfortable or fire you, which he can’t do. Now good luck with the house.”
The two young women gave each other a look that was part just determination of doing a good job for the two bizarre victors, part disbelief about how this was happening to them. Finnick thought Haymitch had to be an unpleasant kind of legend to them rather than a person, somebody who they knew existed but had never expected to encounter in the flesh, never mind while sober. Both of them wore aprons and had bought cleaning supplies at the little shop in town, courtesy of Finnick’s money. When Noreen, who was a sturdy young woman with a big nose, walked past Haymitch, she gave him a sharp look that said to either keep his snide comments or his hands to himself, and Haymitch raised his hands in disgruntled mock defense. Finnick decided that they would get along swimmingly.
“This is going too far, Odair,” Haymitch said with a low growl, once they were alone in the living room.
Finnick sat down on the armrest of the couch.
“No,” he said. “No, it really isn’t.”
“I’ve said to you before that you’ve got no right trying to run my life for me. I’ve got no plans to become your pet project because you’re so alone in the district of your own choosing.”
“Well, somebody has to do something, and it’s not looking like it’s going to be you.” Faintly, Finnick was surprised at how calmly they were talking about this, considering how royally pissed Haymitch had to be. But he guessed that neither of them had learned how to speak up about what they needed; it was certainly hard for Finnick to speak up right now, having to force himself to remember how this wasn’t different from fighting for your life. They’d only ever learned how to keep their mouths shut and think twice - a camera might catch it and they’d never get to take it back. Even now, there could be bugs in this room.
He took a deep breath, remembering how probably nobody was listening in, how it didn’t matter anyway, how this was even what the Capitol would expect him to do. Not that that wasn’t by sheer coincidence, like it always would be. “This isn’t about staying sober, Haymitch. I mean, that’s good, but you’re not alright. You’re miserable. I know you don’t want me here, but now I am, so don’t act like I can’t see it.”
“Ah, I see. Is this where you think that ‘friendship,’ or whatever shoe fits, gives you a right to shape my life to your expectations? Because I’ve done twenty years in this house without any ‘friends’ caring what I was and wasn’t doing, and it worked just fine.”
“Yeah right, apart from how you ended up choking on your own vomit at the foot of a stairway!” Finnick exclaimed in exasperation.
Haymitch’s expression grew blank, like a window blind rattling into place.
Well, great.
“Nobody has ever cared a fuck what I was doing in my spare time in Twelve,” Haymitch growled, and Finnick knew he wasn’t talking about his district, where he was telling himself that he was living in isolation by his own choice.
“Asking for help would have been a start,” Finnick retorted, thinking of the other victors, people like Chaff, and Mags who delighted in playing everybody’s grandmother. “Don’t tell me you ever thought to go to anybody with your problems even once, during Games at least. You don’t have stay on your own, it’s a choice. Nobody is forcing you to hole up here and suffer entirely alone.” Staying in contact with victors from other districts was a little inconvenient due to the censorship, but it was perfectly doable.
So maybe Finnick hadn’t contacted his family yet, either, since he’d come here. But that was completely different, obviously, he thought and bristled.
“Nobody’s fucking business,” Haymitch huffed, like all of this was flustering him, making him exhausted and angry and helpless, because this kind of conversation, Finnick realized, just didn’t happen to him. He always sent out strong cues that said he didn’t want anybody to get involved, in an environment where people respected each other’s privacy because they had so little of it that it had become a precious gift to grant it. He didn’t know how to not shut people out.
Haymitch, Finnick thought, had been punished for staying alive first by Snow and then by his district and probably had made himself forget how to ask for anything.
Though if Finnick ever brought that up, he knew he’d be laughed out of the house.
He hesitated, kicking the side of the couch with his heel in thought and staring at a spot on the wall while he very carefully phrased words.
Time to change gears completely.
“The thing is this,” he said with a lot of focus, pausing, and starting anew. “The thing is, I mean, I’d like to give you a little speech here about friendship, and all that, about how important you are to me. And, you know. You are.” He shrugged, like it wasn’t a big deal, because it wasn’t. Though he thought maybe it was also good for Haymitch to see that it wasn’t. It probably was one hell of a big deal for Haymitch, and that made Finnick just a little bit angry. “I mean, we all know this is fucked up. I want you to be well because you’re my friend, I want you to be sober because of my family, all of that, yes. I think it’s really important that you stay sober even just for your own good. I can’t stand seeing you like this. But that isn’t all there is.”
Haymitch harrumphed, non-committing, though he seemed to be listening. Not ready to buy any of what he probably considered Finnick’s bullshit, but listening. It was interesting how telling him, This isn’t because I like you was getting the job done, but feeling angry like this, Finnick got it suddenly. There were reasons Haymitch would accept and others that he’d just refuse to believe were true, possibly because he didn’t know how it should be possible, or because he was scared to believe that somebody cared. That was weird, thinking of Haymitch as scared, but this was the man who wasn’t able to sleep anymore and who had to be scared of quite a lot of things, in the privacy of his head.
Finnick took a deep breath. “This district?” he said in a measured tone, glancing up at Haymitch. “It sucks.”
“No kidding.” Haymitch snorted a derisive laugh.
Finnick tried to make his lips twitch. “Yeah,” he said. “I mean. They don’t like me a lot here, right? They don’t like you either, but they like me even less. Can’t stand the blinding beauty, I assume,” he added sardonically. “And I know, I know you’ve got your way of dealing with that and, okay, I don’t think it’s a very good way, it certainly won’t work for me. But it’s yours. But I don’t… I’m not going to make it in Twelve, Haymitch,” he forced himself to say, brutally honest, doubly self-aware about every word. “I’m going to be here for good, but I don’t know how to… how to deal, here, like this. With you like this, on my own. I can’t… I need a friend, okay? I need you in one piece. I can’t make it without you in one piece.”
“Oh now come on, kid…” Haymitch said, rubbing his face as if willing himself to wake up more, to actually participate in this conversation for real, wake up from that vicious stupor of exhaustion and anger.
But Finnick waved it off. “I’m calling it the way it is,” he said grimly. “I’m not going to claim I’m doing this just out of the goodness of my heart. I don’t want to end up alone here like you, with nobody to talk to except for the tributes, okay? So, you know what, I know that taking care of you isn’t going to make your life any better. I know that some food, and some sleep, aren’t going to make this suck any less for you. I don’t know, I guess it could be even harder? But they’ll make it suck less for me. And there are ways out of that. We can figure this out together, it’s just a bunch of practical problems, right? You just have to let me help you with them.”
When he looked up again from the spot he had been staring at, Haymitch was just looking at him, his face unreadable. Still, Finnick held his gaze. He remembered how he hadn’t been able to look Snow in the eye, how he hadn’t be able to look at Mags anymore. Looking at Haymitch, it was easy now. For a moment, he didn’t know why, until it reoccurred to him that he had made a choice, that it was him calling the shots - acting rather than reacting, not just enduring the misery. It wasn’t that it felt mind-blowing or even good, but just natural. Strangely absent of pain. This was, Finnick thought, what life should feel like. Like maybe it sucked, but like it was still his.
“You’ve carved yourself a pretty new tombstone here, huh?” Haymitch eventually said blankly.
Finnick raised his hand, paused it in mid-air. “You don’t understand,” he said. “I don’t want any tombstone at all. For either one of us. We get enough of those at the Games.”
There were obvious replies to that, snarky comebacks that he’d opened himself up to with those words, and he could read every single one on Haymitch’s face in that moment - A little too late for that, isn’t it? would be one of them, and especially, Oh wow, you’re in for a big surprise after a couple years of mentoring this district, kid.
But Finnick thought of Bee and Raif and of twenty years of kids just like them, seeing them off to die. He thought, you didn’t lose yourself in the white liquor like that if you didn’t hope against hoping, every single time anew, that they might make it anyway, that this year might be the year it all changed - so much easier to think of yourself as the guy who lost them because he had been too drunk anyway, rather than the guy who didn’t actually have it in him to win. Haymitch had always looked out for the younger victors whenever he was sober enough, not half as jaded as he wished to appear, because Haymitch wanted to hope that it would be better for them. He wanted for everybody’s, Finnick’s life to be better than his. He wanted to be able to believe that the Finnicks and Johannas would, somehow, find a way of breathing freely, like he himself hadn’t since his Games.
So none of those comebacks came out of Haymitch’s mouth, and silence stretched between them.
There was a bump somewhere above them on the upper floor, making both of them startle a little until they remembered that they weren’t the only people in the house. Looking towards the ceiling, they could faintly hear Fallon and Noreen talking to each other, cleaning up whatever they had dropped.
The atmosphere in the room was suddenly too tight, so Finnick said to diffuse it, conversationally, “You know, I am a little worried that they’ll steal some of your stuff. They’re pretty desperate.”
“Nothing that can’t be replaced,” Haymitch said and shrugged it off.
Then he turned and left the room, never even looking at Finnick again, as though the conversation was finished. But this time, Finnick got a clear sense that he’d just won this argument for good.
By unusually dirty means, but like he and Chaff had once agreed on the air, good sportsmanship wasn't how you won a Games.
***
Getting permission for direct calls to other districts was a pain; forms had to be filled out and Games-related reasons had to be given. Finnick hadn’t even considered calling home yet, not wanting some surveillance agent hearing him struggling for words. Now Finnick made Effie clear a connection to District One, telling her a harebrained tale of a Games strategy consult that exciting her quite a lot. Then he asked the switchboard to dial about the last One victor interested in helping out Twelve.
Since they both knew how the Games was played, they spent about half an hour chatting about tributes using broadswords versus spears, until they trailed off towards polite goodbye chitchat and Finnick asked what sleeping pills she would recommend for nightmares.
“Is this a joke?” Cashmere replied after a moment of pause.
Finnick smirked at the phone. “You know I’d never joke about anything to do with you and I in bed,” he said, having learned from the mistake he’d made with Effie.
“Save it for the tabloids, Odair,” Cashmere said. “You know it’ll only help my district in the Games if you start falling apart. I suppose whatever in the air of Twelve that has made Abernathy so useless as mentor is starting to affect you as well.”
“Give us a decade and the two of us will be kicking your ass together,” Finnick replied pleasantly. “Now tell me about the pills. I know you folks all take them, and we don’t have a professional here who I could ask.”
“Well, you’ll probably want something that’ll knock you out all the way,” Cashmere said.
They were a little weird in One and Two, but they were still good people despite that.
***
Just because Finnick had talked Haymitch into letting him help figuring out healthier ways of coping didn’t mean he didn’t have to bully the man into obedience every step of the way. Getting Haymitch to take the sleeping pills was hard. Getting him to lie down on a proper bed instead of sleeping on the couch, on a regular schedule and at an appropriate time instead of whenever he just couldn’t hold himself upright any longer, was even harder. Not helped by the fact that Finnick didn’t know if the thing with the lights was just a way for Haymitch to keep himself awake, or something else.
“You think I’m afraid of the dark?” Haymitch asked him in a tone like he thought Finnick had lost it, when Finnick eventually, delicately brought it up. As if the whole thing would be hilarious if it wasn’t the most intrusive indignity Haymitch had suffered through ever since they’d stopped selling him for sex. Finnick was just as aware of that as Haymitch had to be. But in the business of survival, you didn’t always get to bother with dignity.
Finnick gave him an undeterred shrug. “I don’t know anything,” he replied, because sometimes, the only way of dealing with Haymitch’s crap seemed to be countering it with some crap of your own. “You’d have to tell me things for that. Communicate, you know, talk to me - I’m sure you’ve got that concept here in Twelve, too. What I know is that you go to quite a lot of pains to make sure you’ll never walk into a dark room after sunset.”
Haymitch opened his mouth for what was likely meant to be a more or less backhanded insult, then closed it again abruptly. Took a breath. Sighed. Probably remembered that he had agreed to this, so he could just as well do it honestly. “Just makes it harder,” he admitted grumpily. “To remember. Where I am.” Almost angrily, he waved it off. “Easier when I can see that I’m not there. If it’s just dark and there’s some noise - I kind of think I might suddenly be back there. This way, I focus on something, whatever, something I see, and I’m fine.”
While Finnick hadn’t known that Haymitch had a problem with flashbacks, or some variation of flashbacks anyway, he also couldn’t say it surprised him. A lot of victors did. Accidents happened in Mentor Central all the time, painful to watch for everybody, because watching another Games presented the most terrifying trigger of all.
“Go to bed,” he ordered Haymitch. “We’ll keep the lights on and I’ll remind you where you are at all times, too.”
Can’t all be meant to be a killer like me, Finnick thought, who’d never experienced a flashback in his life. It made him feel almost mournful for himself, which was strange, but looking at Haymitch now, he suddenly thought he would have deserved something, just a small thing, that proved he was a victim, too. It was the strangest thought.
He pulled up an armchair next to Haymitch’s bed and got comfortable with a book, ignoring how they were both adult men and shouldn’t be having any of these problems.
They also shouldn’t have been forced to fight in a death match as teens.
Putting his feet on the bed, he made sure they came to rest against Haymitch’s shin, offering that physical anchor to reality, out of an impulse.
He thought of how Haymitch had always been so unafraid of touching people, of how he connected with the other victors in this physical way, how that might have also been a way for him of reassuring himself of his surroundings, of reality, of how not everything was like the Games even in the Capitol, where everything looked like it could have been taken from the fairytale arena of Haymitch’s Quell. Then, he thought of eleven months a year alone in Victors’ Village with nobody to touch and decided that retaining that ability was a reason for hope.
“Cashmere says you’re not going to dream while you’re on that stuff,” he told Haymitch. “We’ll wheedle you off it again later, once you’re back on a schedule. So you shouldn’t have any dreams tonight. But if you do, I’ll wake you up and remind you where you are. Without getting close enough to be hurt, yes, so don’t worry about that. And once you’ll wake up, I’ll be here.”
“You gonna sing me a lullaby, too?” Haymitch replied with a snort.
“If it would help,” Finnick replied blandly and focused on his book, which he had bought from the book lady in the Hob and which was apparently a novel from the old days, possibly about a war, probably banned. He’d actually thought he’d read it to Haymitch, if that helped him relax enough to sleep, but there wasn’t a reason to share that plan if it turned out unnecessary. If it was what helped little children, if it helped now, he wouldn’t be picky. Picky people didn’t survive as long as he had.
“You need to sleep, too,” Haymitch pointed out, another way of challenging Finnick, informing him how pointless all this was. “Can’t keep this up for more than a couple of days, and you’ll be back where you started.”
“Watch me,” Finnick said.
He heard the victor twisting and turning, trying to find a more comfortable position in the same bed that he hadn’t slept in since he came home. It took a while until Haymitch exclaimed a small grunt and reached out to turn off the direct light of the bedside lamp, covering the bed in soft shadows. Finnick refused to raise his eyes off his book and acted like he didn’t notice when in a motion already sluggish from the pills, Haymitch’s hand hesitantly reached out and withdrew a knife from a drawer of the nightstand. He curled his fingers around the heft, half tucked under the pillow.
Through all of that, he never lost body contact with Finnick, which could almost have been a coincidence if they weren’t who they were.
We all need something different to keep going, Finnick thought. We all need something, though.
It felt strange to think that about Haymitch just as much as he was thinking it of himself.
***
The situation, very slowly, relaxed into something that approached acceptable, then transformed into something that was even okay some of the time.
Fallon and Noreen knocked on their respective doors every day, slowly changing Haymitch’s house from a ruins into a place to live, and eventually into something remarkably clean; Finnick’s barely lived-in house, Fallon just cleaned once, then kept pristine.
Finnick hadn’t let the women take charge of the cooking, although they would gladly have taken up the chore for the generous amount of money they were paid. Slowly, he realized how good an idea that had been, appearing on Haymitch’s doorsteps three times a day and equipping the other victor with company on top of food, another thing he thought Haymitch had been in dire need of - a life that included more people than just him. Finnick himself cherished the opportunity of learning something new. He started enjoying being responsible for something as essential as food, figuring out the vegetable mutts of Twelve, no matter he would never be a celebrity chef. It definitely filled him with satisfaction to see Haymitch regaining at least some of his weight.
Haymitch had spent two decades on his own, and Finnick thought, maybe he’d been hiding out from Finnick partly because he’d just forgotten how to interact. He seemed to be most comfortable when he was griping at Noreen, especially once she started griping back; short but scathing sarcasm competitions started ringing through the open windows towards Finnick’s house sometimes.
Finnick still brought a fair share of their food from Gale Hawthorne. The young man would appear in the evenings during the school week, in the mornings on the weekend, occasionally reserving the good bits for Finnick, a nod at the fact that Finnick had become his best and richest customer. Every now and then, he would throw glances towards Haymitch’s house, knowing Finnick bought enough for two, but Gale never said a lot and was generally very clearly living by a need-to-know rule.
Finnick in return refrained from asking who his hunting partner was, although he really wanted to know.
“Your aim is getting better,” he’d said one day, checking over the three squirrels he had bought, each of them shot square in the eye.
Gale’s eyes had flickered up from the coins he was counting. “Not my aim,” was all he said, and Finnick knew that even that little bit of confirmation was a gift coming from Gale.
Whoever the person was, they either just never tagged along for the deals or were just too disgusted by the idea of selling to somebody like Finnick.
It seemed like a small thing when Haymitch decided to accompany Finnick into town for the first time, just appearing at his side one morning when he got on the way, though Finnick knew it was anything but. Cold autumn winds were already blowing through the streets of Victors’ Village harshly at that point, reddening their cheeks, making Finnick take note of how the other man’s face wasn’t looking so sunken anymore, how his skin had started taking a healthier shade again.
Finnick couldn’t stop smiling to himself for the rest of the day, unnerving Haymitch utterly by deciding to buy him one of Peeta Mellark’s decorated cakes. His pleasure seemed to startle the other victor, who retreated into a particularly grumpy mood for the rest of the day. But he didn’t vanish into the confines of his house any faster than usual. And he did polish off the cake in no time, snorting at the suggestion of sharing any of it with Finnick; he possibly left some for Noreen and her boy, though.
Haymitch wasn’t drinking. More importantly, he was sleeping. Slowly, all through autumn, he was regaining his weight and started filling out his more familiar wider frame. Finnick had been right. Food, sleep and fluids didn’t solve all problems, but they solved some and they did enable you to maybe consider dealing with some of the others.
Finnick would have nodded off in the armchair next to Haymitch’s bed a million times over if that was what it took to pull the other man out of his depression. And currently, it was looking like it was. He was slowly starting to believe that he could really convince Haymitch to try tackling a sober, new kind of life.
***
Two days before the start of the Victory Tour, the town council’s preparations for the Twelve stop were already in full swing when Finnick dialed Mayor Undersee’s number.
“I have a couple of requests for the Victory Tour reception,” he said, not waiting for the mayor to carefully compose himself on the other end of the line, undoubtedly trying to figure out how to tell the new victor where to shove such demands. Haymitch was guaranteed to never have made any. “I know wine and local liquors are traditional, but I want you to take all the alcohol off the menu. Actually, I don’t even want any dish that’s been cooked with alcohol on the table that night. Toasting with juice, I think, would be a nice change.”
There was a moment of pause. “I see,” Undersee eventually said, and he probably did. The ‘Abernathy situation’ had to have been one of the banes of his existence. “This is a sports event with children, after all.” His voice had next to no infliction. “Alcoholic beverages would be inappropriate. The menu will be changed.”
It was amazing how rarely it was necessary to actually say things aloud.
***
“He looks good,” Bunita Noxton said, leaning against the Justice Building balcony and showing off her endless legs as if entirely unaware of her stark unearthly beauty. It was part of what had made her so popular in the Capitol, of course, her arrogance and cheekiness coupled with the kind of looks that made everybody blink and look twice. She wore her black hair short; it directed attention towards her high cheekbones and pale skin. Standing next to Finnick, her male counterpart, they presented a blinding sight; Finnick didn’t need the cameras going off at them all night to know that.
Even now, in her late thirties, Bunita, who the Capitol insisted on referring to as “Bunny,” still spent so much time hopping Capitol beds that she rarely ever was allowed to mentor. This year had been an exception, and that exception had saved District Ten’s new victor Tobin McKenzie’s life. Nobody could work sponsors like a whore.
The party was wafting all around them on the balcony patio and inside the building. Stars were shining brightly in the icy sky, heralding first snow, according to Haymitch. Finnick followed Bunita’s eyes to the balcony three windows over, where the man himself was leaning on the railing and quietly, seriously talking to Tobin, who to Finnick seemed pale and shaky and like he hadn’t stopped feeling overwhelmed since he’d left the arena. They’d dressed the boy in crimson as a reminder of the blood smeared all over him when he emerged from the guts of that dead horse. That sight, more than anything, gave Finnick a certainty that Tobin would never be sold. He was handsome enough, now that they’d cleaned him up properly, and hadn’t even gotten close yet to understanding how lucky he was.
Haymitch, meanwhile, was looking equally presentable with his carefully styled black curls, both sober and collected - which now that Finnick had met the senile Twelve stylists thought of as a minor miracle. But Haymitch looked good by himself. If he was craving the alcohol at this particular moment that had to so much remind him of his Games, it didn’t show. He wasn’t anywhere near fine, but he was talking to people tonight, both Finnick and Bunita, making an effort. He’d taken Tobin aside for a chat, and the man who’d been refusing to face his nightmares a months ago never would have been able to do that.
“One hell of a thing, being the first stop on Tour,” Bunita continued in her Ten drawl that the Capitol couldn’t get enough of, sounding like nothing ever really mattered to her, when everybody else would have come across as provincial with that accent. She’d laughed a lot during her Games, taunting the camera, providing them with a show from start to finish in a unique way, cold-blooded and ruthless and smart in her delivery. “I remember I got here, I was eighteen, I knew nothing, thought I knew everything. Abernathy was maybe, I don’t know, twenty-two. He was hot. Bit drunk, but just for the fuck of it, I think, not the way he got later. But cute, with those curls. I’d seen the way he won, I thought he was a hero. My mentor, that was Cooper, she was weird, she kept creeping me out with her hints about the Capitol and sex stuff and not explaining. Was sure Abernathy would have all the answers. Didn’t, of course. Tried to flirt with him a bit. He said something, like, keep that up and they’ll never stop loving you, then laughed at me lots. Didn’t get it at the time, but he was right, of course. They didn’t.”
She paused for a moment, companionably, high-priced whore to high-priced whore. “Hear he made it his business to tell the newcomers something nice at their reception, later on. Tried to ease them in, since he was the first they got to meet. Felt responsible, I gather, which is stupid, but if any of us were all that smart, we wouldn’t have won. Then I remember how Lyme bitched about him one year - think that must have been during one of Two’s three consecutives, Enobaria or Rubin - how they’d shown up here with one of their good little victors, and he got so piss drunk, couldn’t keep up the good work. You know how the Careers can get, like they know everything, when they know nothing. No offense,” she added, a nod at Four’s recent rise to Career circles, though she sounded like avoiding offense ranged low on her list of priorities. Being what she was, the Careers and Bunita clashed badly. Knowing he was lucky that she didn’t choose to look at him like that, too, Finnick waved it off.
“It’s hard here for a victor,” he said. “Harder than any other district, I think. I think you’ve got no idea how hard. I wouldn’t stand the first chance of making it here without him.”
Bunita nodded easily. “Figured as much after that news coverage last Games,” she said. “It’s good to see him getting his shit back together like this. I’ve got no clue…” She paused for a moment, staring at Haymitch and Tobin, still talking, Tobin ducking his head, Haymitch’s low, grim chuckle reaching their ears. He was on tonight, maybe more for Tobin’s benefit than for the camera. “I’ve got no clue what to tell the boy,” Bunita continued. “What the fuck do you tell them? Never thought I’d see Abernathy, of all people, figuring that out quicker than me. He used to be sharp, until he wasn’t anymore.
“This thing with the water drinking tonight, it’s a good thing,” she added. “You’re doing a good thing. Next time you produce a victor here in Twelve, we’ll do that in Ten for your reception.”
It was said like it was nothing, but Finnick knew Bunita, knew the victors, and he suddenly could picture it, all the stops on tour for Haymitch and his victor, no trace of liquor, not even the local beers and sparkling wines for toasting, a path of abstinence cleared on at least that trigger ride. It was a small thing, but the thing was, people cared. They couldn’t do much more than watch on most of the time, but keeping Haymitch honest was as good a way of defying the Capitol quietly as any. All they needed were the cues.
He thought what he liked best about that promise was the assumption that Twelve would have another victor one day, and that Haymitch would take him on Tour.
on to chapter 10
Pairings: Finnick/Haymitch, Kat/Peeta
Characters: Finnick, Haymitch, Chaff, Peeta, Gale, Kat; plus appearances by Mags, Johanna, Caesar Flickerman, President Snow, Effie, Claudius Templesmith, Beetee, Prim, Thresh, Rue, District Twelve ensemble and various OC
Rating: adult
Warnings: forced prostitution & non-con; people dealing with sexual trauma; rape fantasies; self-hate; canon-typical violence; minor character death (of major canon characters); implied physical abuse of children (in the Mellark household); alcoholism & drug abuse
Summary: When Haymitch Abernathy’s alcoholism makes the prime time news, Finnick Odair is sent to live in District Twelve to pick up the pieces. But it’s hard to save a friend if you can barely stand looking yourself in the eye. And it might become impossible once that friend decides to move hell and high water to bring two of his tributes home at once, even if it should cost him his own life.
Where’s My Victor? If you’re looking for the Peeta/Kat bits but don’t want to bother with the whole story, I’d recommend starting at around Chapter 17, where that gets going for real, though they do make their share of appearances before that too. Gale’s appearances will be scattered through the fic more evenly. Gale and Peeta both make their first appearance in Chapter 6. Kat, probably Chapter 11. Chaff is featured prominently as well.
“Spin Control” on LJ: Prologue -- Chapter 1 -- Chapter 2 -- Chapter 3 -- Chapter 4 -- Chapter 5 -- Chapter 6 -- Chapter 7 -- Chapter 8
Fic on AO3
Chapter 9: The Victory Tour
“Hey, kid,” Finnick said, catching up to the Seam child with long strides. “I’m looking for a girl called Fallon. Long black hair. About this tall.”
The boy stared at him defiantly. “I don’t know any girl.”
“If you tell her to come to my place tonight and she does, you can come over tomorrow at noon and I’ll give you a coin.”
The boy’s eyes turned round. “She’ll be there,” he rushed to say and raced off.
“Tell her to bring a friend!” Finnick called after him.
Everybody on the street was staring.
Finnick gave them his best brilliant smile, thinking fuck you all for once in his life and sauntering off.
It felt good.
***
Handling Haymitch was harder.
“Wake up, sleeping beauty!” Finnick shouted, kicking the kitchen door shut with his heel. “Your prince has emerged from the sea to wake you up with a little kiss and a big bowl of soup!”
Silence was the only answer. Not having expected any better, Finnick steeled himself and cleared a spot on the counter with a sweep of his arm. He just hoped that nothing had come alive inside the bacterial breeding grounds of rotting food in the sink.
Then he spread out the vegetables he had bought at the merchie market and the Hob, half of which he didn’t know by name. But ever helpful Greasy Sae had explained to him what to do with them for a small fee.
Determined to make as much noise as he could while searching for useable pots and the knives, Finnick didn’t look up at the noise of steps in the doorway, the shadow of Haymitch falling onto the floor.
That was also easier than facing up to how gaunt and slack the other man had become, still clean but not neat, nothing like the force of nature he’d used to be, always commanding the room. Finnick resolved, then and there, that he would get Haymitch back to his old, surprising physical strength, his usual weight. He wanted - he needed - the old Haymitch back.
Chopping away at what Sae had told him was a local turnip mutt, a moment passed before Haymitch eventually spoke up, sounding faded and tired.
“What the fuck is this all about?”
“I’m making soup.”
“Smartass, yeah, I got that far,” Haymitch replied. “And I suppose you don’t know anything about cooking, but you’re hoping I’ll jump in and help you out with my secret Victor’s talent, and this will all be a real peachy bonding session. I’ve seen that movie, pretty sure.”
Finnick chopped on. Remembering Tobin McKenzie butchering a child the way he would have cut up a steak, there was a distinct possibility that Finnick himself looked like he was going at the turnip close-combat style. The thought made him smirk at the vegetable. Like Tobin probably had thought too, he wouldn’t care as long as it worked.
“Well, that would be too easy, now would it?” he shot back. “So no. You can sit down at the table and enjoy the sight. I will be here, with the zucchinis. You need to eat, see. Three times a day, they say, would be ideal.” Grabbing the turnip bits, he dumped them in the pot. “It so happens that I need to eat three times a day, too, so we’re going to be combining these two things from now on. That means you’ll have to follow my diet plan, but I’ll venture a guess and say that mine’s better than yours.”
There was a moment of pause, while Haymitch seemed to process that.
“Cute,” he said, unimpressed.
“I try,” Finnick modestly replied, and Haymitch snorted at him.
“You know,” the other victor said. Finnick finally glanced around to see he was leaning in the doorframe, arms folded in front of his chest, as if ready to leave at the first infraction. Definitely not sitting down at the kitchen table. “I’m reasonably sure that you and I already had a conversation about how I want you to leave me the fuck alone.”
“You know, you’re a lot wittier when you aren’t such a mess.”
“You’ve never met me when I wasn’t a mess.”
“I’m not joking, Haymitch. You don’t get a choice. You need to eat.”
“So they kept telling me in rehab, too,” Haymitch replied evenly. “Now explain to me how exactly this here is going to be different. Because from where I’m standing, all I’m seeing is other people running my life for me without asking my permission.”
Finnick clenched his jaw, chopping at the vegetables harder than was necessary. “The difference is that they don’t care about you,” he said. “And I do. A lot. And I hate seeing you like this, okay?”
Surprisingly, inconceivably, that shut Haymitch up.
The thing about surviving the arena was, Finnick thought, you couldn’t even once afford to second-guess your strategy. You had to settle on a course of action, and then you stuck with it, at least until something went completely wrong. You couldn’t afford to get swayed, you couldn’t afford to doubt yourself or consider new angles half-way through. You wanted to win. That was all you wanted. You couldn’t afford to care about anything beside that.
If he wanted to win at the Games of District Twelve, he needed Haymitch in good health and ready to face life. If Haymitch really wanted to escape from it all, he had to prove to Finnick that he wanted it more than Finnick wanted him to stick around. They’d be opponents, until that was battled out.
“You gonna leave me alone after, if I go along with your little nursing home routine,” Haymitch eventually said, not bothering to phrase it like a question.
Finnick serenely shook his head, adopting his best housewife voice. “We’ve already got plans after dinner, honey.”
“Oh for the love of a dead canary,” Haymitch muttered, out of energy and out of replies.
“Soup will be ready in an hour,” Finnick said. “How about you try getting some sleep until then.”
***
“So this is Fallon Corksmith, from the Seam,” Finnick introduced the girl, careful not to touch her when he stepped between her and her friend, his hand hovering over her shoulder. “And that’s Noreen Lockley, also from the Seam. Fallon can’t work in the mines because she’s got night blindness. Noreen can’t because she has a baby boy. So Fallon will be my housekeeper, and after she’s helped Noreen clean up your house, Noreen will be yours. Ladies,” he added, pointing at Haymitch. “That’s Haymitch Abernathy. Remember that I’m paying you to ignore him if he should say anything unpleasant. Well,” he added after a pause. “Remember that I am the one paying you. No need to be nice to him if he should try to make you uncomfortable or fire you, which he can’t do. Now good luck with the house.”
The two young women gave each other a look that was part just determination of doing a good job for the two bizarre victors, part disbelief about how this was happening to them. Finnick thought Haymitch had to be an unpleasant kind of legend to them rather than a person, somebody who they knew existed but had never expected to encounter in the flesh, never mind while sober. Both of them wore aprons and had bought cleaning supplies at the little shop in town, courtesy of Finnick’s money. When Noreen, who was a sturdy young woman with a big nose, walked past Haymitch, she gave him a sharp look that said to either keep his snide comments or his hands to himself, and Haymitch raised his hands in disgruntled mock defense. Finnick decided that they would get along swimmingly.
“This is going too far, Odair,” Haymitch said with a low growl, once they were alone in the living room.
Finnick sat down on the armrest of the couch.
“No,” he said. “No, it really isn’t.”
“I’ve said to you before that you’ve got no right trying to run my life for me. I’ve got no plans to become your pet project because you’re so alone in the district of your own choosing.”
“Well, somebody has to do something, and it’s not looking like it’s going to be you.” Faintly, Finnick was surprised at how calmly they were talking about this, considering how royally pissed Haymitch had to be. But he guessed that neither of them had learned how to speak up about what they needed; it was certainly hard for Finnick to speak up right now, having to force himself to remember how this wasn’t different from fighting for your life. They’d only ever learned how to keep their mouths shut and think twice - a camera might catch it and they’d never get to take it back. Even now, there could be bugs in this room.
He took a deep breath, remembering how probably nobody was listening in, how it didn’t matter anyway, how this was even what the Capitol would expect him to do. Not that that wasn’t by sheer coincidence, like it always would be. “This isn’t about staying sober, Haymitch. I mean, that’s good, but you’re not alright. You’re miserable. I know you don’t want me here, but now I am, so don’t act like I can’t see it.”
“Ah, I see. Is this where you think that ‘friendship,’ or whatever shoe fits, gives you a right to shape my life to your expectations? Because I’ve done twenty years in this house without any ‘friends’ caring what I was and wasn’t doing, and it worked just fine.”
“Yeah right, apart from how you ended up choking on your own vomit at the foot of a stairway!” Finnick exclaimed in exasperation.
Haymitch’s expression grew blank, like a window blind rattling into place.
Well, great.
“Nobody has ever cared a fuck what I was doing in my spare time in Twelve,” Haymitch growled, and Finnick knew he wasn’t talking about his district, where he was telling himself that he was living in isolation by his own choice.
“Asking for help would have been a start,” Finnick retorted, thinking of the other victors, people like Chaff, and Mags who delighted in playing everybody’s grandmother. “Don’t tell me you ever thought to go to anybody with your problems even once, during Games at least. You don’t have stay on your own, it’s a choice. Nobody is forcing you to hole up here and suffer entirely alone.” Staying in contact with victors from other districts was a little inconvenient due to the censorship, but it was perfectly doable.
So maybe Finnick hadn’t contacted his family yet, either, since he’d come here. But that was completely different, obviously, he thought and bristled.
“Nobody’s fucking business,” Haymitch huffed, like all of this was flustering him, making him exhausted and angry and helpless, because this kind of conversation, Finnick realized, just didn’t happen to him. He always sent out strong cues that said he didn’t want anybody to get involved, in an environment where people respected each other’s privacy because they had so little of it that it had become a precious gift to grant it. He didn’t know how to not shut people out.
Haymitch, Finnick thought, had been punished for staying alive first by Snow and then by his district and probably had made himself forget how to ask for anything.
Though if Finnick ever brought that up, he knew he’d be laughed out of the house.
He hesitated, kicking the side of the couch with his heel in thought and staring at a spot on the wall while he very carefully phrased words.
Time to change gears completely.
“The thing is this,” he said with a lot of focus, pausing, and starting anew. “The thing is, I mean, I’d like to give you a little speech here about friendship, and all that, about how important you are to me. And, you know. You are.” He shrugged, like it wasn’t a big deal, because it wasn’t. Though he thought maybe it was also good for Haymitch to see that it wasn’t. It probably was one hell of a big deal for Haymitch, and that made Finnick just a little bit angry. “I mean, we all know this is fucked up. I want you to be well because you’re my friend, I want you to be sober because of my family, all of that, yes. I think it’s really important that you stay sober even just for your own good. I can’t stand seeing you like this. But that isn’t all there is.”
Haymitch harrumphed, non-committing, though he seemed to be listening. Not ready to buy any of what he probably considered Finnick’s bullshit, but listening. It was interesting how telling him, This isn’t because I like you was getting the job done, but feeling angry like this, Finnick got it suddenly. There were reasons Haymitch would accept and others that he’d just refuse to believe were true, possibly because he didn’t know how it should be possible, or because he was scared to believe that somebody cared. That was weird, thinking of Haymitch as scared, but this was the man who wasn’t able to sleep anymore and who had to be scared of quite a lot of things, in the privacy of his head.
Finnick took a deep breath. “This district?” he said in a measured tone, glancing up at Haymitch. “It sucks.”
“No kidding.” Haymitch snorted a derisive laugh.
Finnick tried to make his lips twitch. “Yeah,” he said. “I mean. They don’t like me a lot here, right? They don’t like you either, but they like me even less. Can’t stand the blinding beauty, I assume,” he added sardonically. “And I know, I know you’ve got your way of dealing with that and, okay, I don’t think it’s a very good way, it certainly won’t work for me. But it’s yours. But I don’t… I’m not going to make it in Twelve, Haymitch,” he forced himself to say, brutally honest, doubly self-aware about every word. “I’m going to be here for good, but I don’t know how to… how to deal, here, like this. With you like this, on my own. I can’t… I need a friend, okay? I need you in one piece. I can’t make it without you in one piece.”
“Oh now come on, kid…” Haymitch said, rubbing his face as if willing himself to wake up more, to actually participate in this conversation for real, wake up from that vicious stupor of exhaustion and anger.
But Finnick waved it off. “I’m calling it the way it is,” he said grimly. “I’m not going to claim I’m doing this just out of the goodness of my heart. I don’t want to end up alone here like you, with nobody to talk to except for the tributes, okay? So, you know what, I know that taking care of you isn’t going to make your life any better. I know that some food, and some sleep, aren’t going to make this suck any less for you. I don’t know, I guess it could be even harder? But they’ll make it suck less for me. And there are ways out of that. We can figure this out together, it’s just a bunch of practical problems, right? You just have to let me help you with them.”
When he looked up again from the spot he had been staring at, Haymitch was just looking at him, his face unreadable. Still, Finnick held his gaze. He remembered how he hadn’t been able to look Snow in the eye, how he hadn’t be able to look at Mags anymore. Looking at Haymitch, it was easy now. For a moment, he didn’t know why, until it reoccurred to him that he had made a choice, that it was him calling the shots - acting rather than reacting, not just enduring the misery. It wasn’t that it felt mind-blowing or even good, but just natural. Strangely absent of pain. This was, Finnick thought, what life should feel like. Like maybe it sucked, but like it was still his.
“You’ve carved yourself a pretty new tombstone here, huh?” Haymitch eventually said blankly.
Finnick raised his hand, paused it in mid-air. “You don’t understand,” he said. “I don’t want any tombstone at all. For either one of us. We get enough of those at the Games.”
There were obvious replies to that, snarky comebacks that he’d opened himself up to with those words, and he could read every single one on Haymitch’s face in that moment - A little too late for that, isn’t it? would be one of them, and especially, Oh wow, you’re in for a big surprise after a couple years of mentoring this district, kid.
But Finnick thought of Bee and Raif and of twenty years of kids just like them, seeing them off to die. He thought, you didn’t lose yourself in the white liquor like that if you didn’t hope against hoping, every single time anew, that they might make it anyway, that this year might be the year it all changed - so much easier to think of yourself as the guy who lost them because he had been too drunk anyway, rather than the guy who didn’t actually have it in him to win. Haymitch had always looked out for the younger victors whenever he was sober enough, not half as jaded as he wished to appear, because Haymitch wanted to hope that it would be better for them. He wanted for everybody’s, Finnick’s life to be better than his. He wanted to be able to believe that the Finnicks and Johannas would, somehow, find a way of breathing freely, like he himself hadn’t since his Games.
So none of those comebacks came out of Haymitch’s mouth, and silence stretched between them.
There was a bump somewhere above them on the upper floor, making both of them startle a little until they remembered that they weren’t the only people in the house. Looking towards the ceiling, they could faintly hear Fallon and Noreen talking to each other, cleaning up whatever they had dropped.
The atmosphere in the room was suddenly too tight, so Finnick said to diffuse it, conversationally, “You know, I am a little worried that they’ll steal some of your stuff. They’re pretty desperate.”
“Nothing that can’t be replaced,” Haymitch said and shrugged it off.
Then he turned and left the room, never even looking at Finnick again, as though the conversation was finished. But this time, Finnick got a clear sense that he’d just won this argument for good.
By unusually dirty means, but like he and Chaff had once agreed on the air, good sportsmanship wasn't how you won a Games.
***
Getting permission for direct calls to other districts was a pain; forms had to be filled out and Games-related reasons had to be given. Finnick hadn’t even considered calling home yet, not wanting some surveillance agent hearing him struggling for words. Now Finnick made Effie clear a connection to District One, telling her a harebrained tale of a Games strategy consult that exciting her quite a lot. Then he asked the switchboard to dial about the last One victor interested in helping out Twelve.
Since they both knew how the Games was played, they spent about half an hour chatting about tributes using broadswords versus spears, until they trailed off towards polite goodbye chitchat and Finnick asked what sleeping pills she would recommend for nightmares.
“Is this a joke?” Cashmere replied after a moment of pause.
Finnick smirked at the phone. “You know I’d never joke about anything to do with you and I in bed,” he said, having learned from the mistake he’d made with Effie.
“Save it for the tabloids, Odair,” Cashmere said. “You know it’ll only help my district in the Games if you start falling apart. I suppose whatever in the air of Twelve that has made Abernathy so useless as mentor is starting to affect you as well.”
“Give us a decade and the two of us will be kicking your ass together,” Finnick replied pleasantly. “Now tell me about the pills. I know you folks all take them, and we don’t have a professional here who I could ask.”
“Well, you’ll probably want something that’ll knock you out all the way,” Cashmere said.
They were a little weird in One and Two, but they were still good people despite that.
***
Just because Finnick had talked Haymitch into letting him help figuring out healthier ways of coping didn’t mean he didn’t have to bully the man into obedience every step of the way. Getting Haymitch to take the sleeping pills was hard. Getting him to lie down on a proper bed instead of sleeping on the couch, on a regular schedule and at an appropriate time instead of whenever he just couldn’t hold himself upright any longer, was even harder. Not helped by the fact that Finnick didn’t know if the thing with the lights was just a way for Haymitch to keep himself awake, or something else.
“You think I’m afraid of the dark?” Haymitch asked him in a tone like he thought Finnick had lost it, when Finnick eventually, delicately brought it up. As if the whole thing would be hilarious if it wasn’t the most intrusive indignity Haymitch had suffered through ever since they’d stopped selling him for sex. Finnick was just as aware of that as Haymitch had to be. But in the business of survival, you didn’t always get to bother with dignity.
Finnick gave him an undeterred shrug. “I don’t know anything,” he replied, because sometimes, the only way of dealing with Haymitch’s crap seemed to be countering it with some crap of your own. “You’d have to tell me things for that. Communicate, you know, talk to me - I’m sure you’ve got that concept here in Twelve, too. What I know is that you go to quite a lot of pains to make sure you’ll never walk into a dark room after sunset.”
Haymitch opened his mouth for what was likely meant to be a more or less backhanded insult, then closed it again abruptly. Took a breath. Sighed. Probably remembered that he had agreed to this, so he could just as well do it honestly. “Just makes it harder,” he admitted grumpily. “To remember. Where I am.” Almost angrily, he waved it off. “Easier when I can see that I’m not there. If it’s just dark and there’s some noise - I kind of think I might suddenly be back there. This way, I focus on something, whatever, something I see, and I’m fine.”
While Finnick hadn’t known that Haymitch had a problem with flashbacks, or some variation of flashbacks anyway, he also couldn’t say it surprised him. A lot of victors did. Accidents happened in Mentor Central all the time, painful to watch for everybody, because watching another Games presented the most terrifying trigger of all.
“Go to bed,” he ordered Haymitch. “We’ll keep the lights on and I’ll remind you where you are at all times, too.”
Can’t all be meant to be a killer like me, Finnick thought, who’d never experienced a flashback in his life. It made him feel almost mournful for himself, which was strange, but looking at Haymitch now, he suddenly thought he would have deserved something, just a small thing, that proved he was a victim, too. It was the strangest thought.
He pulled up an armchair next to Haymitch’s bed and got comfortable with a book, ignoring how they were both adult men and shouldn’t be having any of these problems.
They also shouldn’t have been forced to fight in a death match as teens.
Putting his feet on the bed, he made sure they came to rest against Haymitch’s shin, offering that physical anchor to reality, out of an impulse.
He thought of how Haymitch had always been so unafraid of touching people, of how he connected with the other victors in this physical way, how that might have also been a way for him of reassuring himself of his surroundings, of reality, of how not everything was like the Games even in the Capitol, where everything looked like it could have been taken from the fairytale arena of Haymitch’s Quell. Then, he thought of eleven months a year alone in Victors’ Village with nobody to touch and decided that retaining that ability was a reason for hope.
“Cashmere says you’re not going to dream while you’re on that stuff,” he told Haymitch. “We’ll wheedle you off it again later, once you’re back on a schedule. So you shouldn’t have any dreams tonight. But if you do, I’ll wake you up and remind you where you are. Without getting close enough to be hurt, yes, so don’t worry about that. And once you’ll wake up, I’ll be here.”
“You gonna sing me a lullaby, too?” Haymitch replied with a snort.
“If it would help,” Finnick replied blandly and focused on his book, which he had bought from the book lady in the Hob and which was apparently a novel from the old days, possibly about a war, probably banned. He’d actually thought he’d read it to Haymitch, if that helped him relax enough to sleep, but there wasn’t a reason to share that plan if it turned out unnecessary. If it was what helped little children, if it helped now, he wouldn’t be picky. Picky people didn’t survive as long as he had.
“You need to sleep, too,” Haymitch pointed out, another way of challenging Finnick, informing him how pointless all this was. “Can’t keep this up for more than a couple of days, and you’ll be back where you started.”
“Watch me,” Finnick said.
He heard the victor twisting and turning, trying to find a more comfortable position in the same bed that he hadn’t slept in since he came home. It took a while until Haymitch exclaimed a small grunt and reached out to turn off the direct light of the bedside lamp, covering the bed in soft shadows. Finnick refused to raise his eyes off his book and acted like he didn’t notice when in a motion already sluggish from the pills, Haymitch’s hand hesitantly reached out and withdrew a knife from a drawer of the nightstand. He curled his fingers around the heft, half tucked under the pillow.
Through all of that, he never lost body contact with Finnick, which could almost have been a coincidence if they weren’t who they were.
We all need something different to keep going, Finnick thought. We all need something, though.
It felt strange to think that about Haymitch just as much as he was thinking it of himself.
***
The situation, very slowly, relaxed into something that approached acceptable, then transformed into something that was even okay some of the time.
Fallon and Noreen knocked on their respective doors every day, slowly changing Haymitch’s house from a ruins into a place to live, and eventually into something remarkably clean; Finnick’s barely lived-in house, Fallon just cleaned once, then kept pristine.
Finnick hadn’t let the women take charge of the cooking, although they would gladly have taken up the chore for the generous amount of money they were paid. Slowly, he realized how good an idea that had been, appearing on Haymitch’s doorsteps three times a day and equipping the other victor with company on top of food, another thing he thought Haymitch had been in dire need of - a life that included more people than just him. Finnick himself cherished the opportunity of learning something new. He started enjoying being responsible for something as essential as food, figuring out the vegetable mutts of Twelve, no matter he would never be a celebrity chef. It definitely filled him with satisfaction to see Haymitch regaining at least some of his weight.
Haymitch had spent two decades on his own, and Finnick thought, maybe he’d been hiding out from Finnick partly because he’d just forgotten how to interact. He seemed to be most comfortable when he was griping at Noreen, especially once she started griping back; short but scathing sarcasm competitions started ringing through the open windows towards Finnick’s house sometimes.
Finnick still brought a fair share of their food from Gale Hawthorne. The young man would appear in the evenings during the school week, in the mornings on the weekend, occasionally reserving the good bits for Finnick, a nod at the fact that Finnick had become his best and richest customer. Every now and then, he would throw glances towards Haymitch’s house, knowing Finnick bought enough for two, but Gale never said a lot and was generally very clearly living by a need-to-know rule.
Finnick in return refrained from asking who his hunting partner was, although he really wanted to know.
“Your aim is getting better,” he’d said one day, checking over the three squirrels he had bought, each of them shot square in the eye.
Gale’s eyes had flickered up from the coins he was counting. “Not my aim,” was all he said, and Finnick knew that even that little bit of confirmation was a gift coming from Gale.
Whoever the person was, they either just never tagged along for the deals or were just too disgusted by the idea of selling to somebody like Finnick.
It seemed like a small thing when Haymitch decided to accompany Finnick into town for the first time, just appearing at his side one morning when he got on the way, though Finnick knew it was anything but. Cold autumn winds were already blowing through the streets of Victors’ Village harshly at that point, reddening their cheeks, making Finnick take note of how the other man’s face wasn’t looking so sunken anymore, how his skin had started taking a healthier shade again.
Finnick couldn’t stop smiling to himself for the rest of the day, unnerving Haymitch utterly by deciding to buy him one of Peeta Mellark’s decorated cakes. His pleasure seemed to startle the other victor, who retreated into a particularly grumpy mood for the rest of the day. But he didn’t vanish into the confines of his house any faster than usual. And he did polish off the cake in no time, snorting at the suggestion of sharing any of it with Finnick; he possibly left some for Noreen and her boy, though.
Haymitch wasn’t drinking. More importantly, he was sleeping. Slowly, all through autumn, he was regaining his weight and started filling out his more familiar wider frame. Finnick had been right. Food, sleep and fluids didn’t solve all problems, but they solved some and they did enable you to maybe consider dealing with some of the others.
Finnick would have nodded off in the armchair next to Haymitch’s bed a million times over if that was what it took to pull the other man out of his depression. And currently, it was looking like it was. He was slowly starting to believe that he could really convince Haymitch to try tackling a sober, new kind of life.
***
Two days before the start of the Victory Tour, the town council’s preparations for the Twelve stop were already in full swing when Finnick dialed Mayor Undersee’s number.
“I have a couple of requests for the Victory Tour reception,” he said, not waiting for the mayor to carefully compose himself on the other end of the line, undoubtedly trying to figure out how to tell the new victor where to shove such demands. Haymitch was guaranteed to never have made any. “I know wine and local liquors are traditional, but I want you to take all the alcohol off the menu. Actually, I don’t even want any dish that’s been cooked with alcohol on the table that night. Toasting with juice, I think, would be a nice change.”
There was a moment of pause. “I see,” Undersee eventually said, and he probably did. The ‘Abernathy situation’ had to have been one of the banes of his existence. “This is a sports event with children, after all.” His voice had next to no infliction. “Alcoholic beverages would be inappropriate. The menu will be changed.”
It was amazing how rarely it was necessary to actually say things aloud.
***
“He looks good,” Bunita Noxton said, leaning against the Justice Building balcony and showing off her endless legs as if entirely unaware of her stark unearthly beauty. It was part of what had made her so popular in the Capitol, of course, her arrogance and cheekiness coupled with the kind of looks that made everybody blink and look twice. She wore her black hair short; it directed attention towards her high cheekbones and pale skin. Standing next to Finnick, her male counterpart, they presented a blinding sight; Finnick didn’t need the cameras going off at them all night to know that.
Even now, in her late thirties, Bunita, who the Capitol insisted on referring to as “Bunny,” still spent so much time hopping Capitol beds that she rarely ever was allowed to mentor. This year had been an exception, and that exception had saved District Ten’s new victor Tobin McKenzie’s life. Nobody could work sponsors like a whore.
The party was wafting all around them on the balcony patio and inside the building. Stars were shining brightly in the icy sky, heralding first snow, according to Haymitch. Finnick followed Bunita’s eyes to the balcony three windows over, where the man himself was leaning on the railing and quietly, seriously talking to Tobin, who to Finnick seemed pale and shaky and like he hadn’t stopped feeling overwhelmed since he’d left the arena. They’d dressed the boy in crimson as a reminder of the blood smeared all over him when he emerged from the guts of that dead horse. That sight, more than anything, gave Finnick a certainty that Tobin would never be sold. He was handsome enough, now that they’d cleaned him up properly, and hadn’t even gotten close yet to understanding how lucky he was.
Haymitch, meanwhile, was looking equally presentable with his carefully styled black curls, both sober and collected - which now that Finnick had met the senile Twelve stylists thought of as a minor miracle. But Haymitch looked good by himself. If he was craving the alcohol at this particular moment that had to so much remind him of his Games, it didn’t show. He wasn’t anywhere near fine, but he was talking to people tonight, both Finnick and Bunita, making an effort. He’d taken Tobin aside for a chat, and the man who’d been refusing to face his nightmares a months ago never would have been able to do that.
“One hell of a thing, being the first stop on Tour,” Bunita continued in her Ten drawl that the Capitol couldn’t get enough of, sounding like nothing ever really mattered to her, when everybody else would have come across as provincial with that accent. She’d laughed a lot during her Games, taunting the camera, providing them with a show from start to finish in a unique way, cold-blooded and ruthless and smart in her delivery. “I remember I got here, I was eighteen, I knew nothing, thought I knew everything. Abernathy was maybe, I don’t know, twenty-two. He was hot. Bit drunk, but just for the fuck of it, I think, not the way he got later. But cute, with those curls. I’d seen the way he won, I thought he was a hero. My mentor, that was Cooper, she was weird, she kept creeping me out with her hints about the Capitol and sex stuff and not explaining. Was sure Abernathy would have all the answers. Didn’t, of course. Tried to flirt with him a bit. He said something, like, keep that up and they’ll never stop loving you, then laughed at me lots. Didn’t get it at the time, but he was right, of course. They didn’t.”
She paused for a moment, companionably, high-priced whore to high-priced whore. “Hear he made it his business to tell the newcomers something nice at their reception, later on. Tried to ease them in, since he was the first they got to meet. Felt responsible, I gather, which is stupid, but if any of us were all that smart, we wouldn’t have won. Then I remember how Lyme bitched about him one year - think that must have been during one of Two’s three consecutives, Enobaria or Rubin - how they’d shown up here with one of their good little victors, and he got so piss drunk, couldn’t keep up the good work. You know how the Careers can get, like they know everything, when they know nothing. No offense,” she added, a nod at Four’s recent rise to Career circles, though she sounded like avoiding offense ranged low on her list of priorities. Being what she was, the Careers and Bunita clashed badly. Knowing he was lucky that she didn’t choose to look at him like that, too, Finnick waved it off.
“It’s hard here for a victor,” he said. “Harder than any other district, I think. I think you’ve got no idea how hard. I wouldn’t stand the first chance of making it here without him.”
Bunita nodded easily. “Figured as much after that news coverage last Games,” she said. “It’s good to see him getting his shit back together like this. I’ve got no clue…” She paused for a moment, staring at Haymitch and Tobin, still talking, Tobin ducking his head, Haymitch’s low, grim chuckle reaching their ears. He was on tonight, maybe more for Tobin’s benefit than for the camera. “I’ve got no clue what to tell the boy,” Bunita continued. “What the fuck do you tell them? Never thought I’d see Abernathy, of all people, figuring that out quicker than me. He used to be sharp, until he wasn’t anymore.
“This thing with the water drinking tonight, it’s a good thing,” she added. “You’re doing a good thing. Next time you produce a victor here in Twelve, we’ll do that in Ten for your reception.”
It was said like it was nothing, but Finnick knew Bunita, knew the victors, and he suddenly could picture it, all the stops on tour for Haymitch and his victor, no trace of liquor, not even the local beers and sparkling wines for toasting, a path of abstinence cleared on at least that trigger ride. It was a small thing, but the thing was, people cared. They couldn’t do much more than watch on most of the time, but keeping Haymitch honest was as good a way of defying the Capitol quietly as any. All they needed were the cues.
He thought what he liked best about that promise was the assumption that Twelve would have another victor one day, and that Haymitch would take him on Tour.
on to chapter 10