THG fic: "Spin Control" [12/22]
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 18, 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, Chapter 11. Chaff is featured prominently as well.
Prologue -- Chapter 1 -- Chapter 2 -- Chapter 3 -- Chapter 4 -- Chapter 5 -- Chapter 6 -- Chapter 7 -- Chapter 8 -- Chapter 9 -- Chapter 10 -- Chapter 11
Chapter 12: Spin Control
A first wave of spring warmth hit the district out of nowhere in April, and Finnick decided that the time had come to go swimming.
“Is this where you go crazy again?” Haymitch asked him dubiously when he announced his plans during breakfast that morning, though he was lacking in malice; the look he threw Finnick across his kitchen table, chewing on a piece of bread roll, was almost fond.
Finnick snorted at him. “Why, just because you take issue with work-out routines, there’s something wrong with swimming, too?”
“Water’s gonna be cold, Odair,” Haymitch pointed out in a disbelieving voice. “This ain’t District Four, where the sun even shines out of people’s asses.”
“Oh, I’ll swim in the cold, and you’ll be right at my side.”
Sometimes Finnick wondered if anybody from the Capitol ever bothered listening in on this, day in and out, but if they did, he guessed they had more important things to do than stopping two victors from committing the minor offenses of leaving the district and having some fun. Not that the latter one wouldn’t be an unforgivable crime to Snow, but Snow also probably had better things to do than reading surveillance reports on fifty-something victors that hadn’t raised any red flags all year. Chances were that the Capitol had more important things to do with its resources.
Haymitch harrumphed. “I don’t have a swimsuit.”
Finnick smirked suggestively at him.
“Skinny dipping,” he drawled.
Haymitch’s face grew dark.
“…or just underwear will do,” Finnick amicably changed gears.
Now it was Haymitch’s turn to snort.
“I don’t know why I keep doing these things for you,” he muttered around a mouthful of bread.
It left Finnick feeling ridiculously pleased with himself.
***
The day was warm, but the sun had never breached the trees; the forest itself was cold and glum. Every now and then during their hike, though, a beam would make it through and cover a patch of greenery in brilliant gold.
It wasn’t anything like an afternoon at sea in Four, hitching a ride on his father’s shrimper with a vague plan to dive in head first, sun sparkling hotly above. But Finnick eventually came to the conclusion that he didn’t mind. He didn’t want another Four. He wanted something different, something new, something that he’d helped create.
Haymitch spent most of the hike uncharacteristically quiet and focused on his steps, but when he spoke up, it was to point out landmarks or bird mutts in the trees that he knew Finnick, still new to forest life, would get a kick out of watching. They both knew most of the Panem fauna from the Games, but it was different to get to know this new wilderness that he’d never thought he’d be a part of. The arenas were well-measured, well-tempered creations meant to entertain and kill, perfectly artificial, and this was nothing like that. Last autumn’s foliage had left dried puddles of mud behind, and they found bird nests on the ground that had been abandoned when the flocks left for winter, wind or other animals knocking them down.
Halfway through the hike, Finnick still broke into a ramble about fishery and ocean tides and what to do if your boat engine died off shore, filled by a quiet need to remind himself of who he was; Haymitch let him go for it, listening closely, asking questions about this and that as if it might just come in handy one day.
The trees cleared up to make way for their lake, the water gleaming brightly, as wide as eyes could see. The moment they reached the clearing, the air heated up above them; sun fell onto their faces, heralding the very first glimpse of summer.
They dropped the bags with food and changes of clothes that they’d brought at their usual spot, in the grass close to a patch of shore.
“You go ahead,” Haymitch said, gesticulating towards the lake. “Get it out of your system. I’ll be here where it’s dry and nurse my dignity as long as I still have any of it left.”
Finnick snorted at him, but still resolved that he wouldn’t allow Haymitch to feel awkward once he got him wet. Though all he said now, categorically, was, “Everybody should know how to swim.”
He was already pulling himself out of his shirt, working his pants open while it sailed to the ground. He didn’t need to be told twice. Smirking at Haymitch when the other man made a face, but Haymitch had already gotten comfortable in the grass, looking quite at ease otherwise. And Finnick’s attention was already drawn in by the lake, the water unfolding, not the ocean he was used to but begging him in nevertheless.
He knew better than to just dive into foreign waters, so he waded in at the shallow end, water tickling his calves and knees and crotch. It was so cold that his breath hitched; muscles all over his body contracted reflexively. But it was wet and it gave him a different chill to realize how much exactly he had missed this.
Kicking off the ground, Finnick refused to balk at the temperature. He took off, covering distance with long powerful strokes. It was only moments until the warmth of exertion started filling him, and the water just became that mighty custom-made mass.
There was nothing special about swimming in Four. He’d always been at home in the water, unable to even remember a time when he hadn’t known how to swim. As he reached Reaping age, he’d taught it to younger relatives from the inland villages like a good Four boy was expected; on his father’s and uncle’s boats, his brothers and he had always just dived in once they were out in the open, when it was just them and the waves and that tickling sense of depth.
Here, swimming was a gift. Finnick spun through the lake, feeling for the perfectly even rhythm that his breath had settled into, motions his muscles automatically corrected, another kind of home - as if this was his own body still. Strands of hair glued to his temples on emerging strokes, no matter what it would look like on camera, the sandy, cool scent of the freshwater filling his nostrils almost parenthetically.
It was exhilarating; even in Four, when he swam, the sea had never let him forget that he could never bend it to his will. He could never conquer the water. But he could play it, use it to swim with the tides or against them, ducking away under waves or letting them carry him along. He didn’t have to conquer the world to be in charge now, both free and safe.
As far off shore as it got, he curled into himself in a measured, smooth motion and let himself sink. The noises of the water and forest cut off, and nothing was left but a cloudy wall of underwater life, the last strands of dead winter algae wafting by, schools of fish rushing out of sight in alarm. It was perfect down here, it was calm - as if the world was standing still. An ocean could never be that calm.
It wasn’t quite that he’d never want to leave this place in that moment, but he’d certainly always want to come back, because it was his already.
It felt like the Capitol could never hurt him down here. It felt ludicrous to think that he would never be the one in his life who decided what to do and where to go. It felt as if the Flickermans and Templesmiths could never mean anything to him but as a challenge to be taken. As if he could play with the media, too, like with the sea, letting him carry him along.
When he broke to the surface again, his lungs weren’t even all that greedy for air yet, still so used to the exercise. Finnick spread out his arms, sprawling out on his back like he had wanted to do for months, feeling light. The sun was directly above, so bright that it seemed white amidst the spring sky. He could feel every tendon in his body bending to his will, making it placidly relax onto the lake.
“I can’t keep it? I thought I could keep it,” he remembered saying to Flickerman at fourteen and then bringing his trident home, the way there had been nothing Snow could do. He remembered sprawling in his chair at the talk show leisurely and the way the cameras had captured the way he’d offered them the incentive of skin. “You want me to mentor for Twelve?” he’d asked the crowd and changed his life. “Sure. Why not?”
Why not, indeed, Finnick thought and smirked at the sun, okay with his world and his life, just in that instance.
It didn’t pay to forget all the things that he still had the power to do, all the decisions that he still could make, especially with a friend like Haymitch who gave him a lake as a gift. He wouldn’t sink, he was too good a swimmer for that.
It took a good long while until he spun around and made his way back to the shore.
***
When Haymitch had undressed and was wading into the water after Finnick, there was a carefully bland edge on his face that told Finnick there were things going on inside of him that he really didn’t want Finnick to be part of.
It was obvious that it had a lot to do with dressing down in front of someone else, after having been told for so long that his body wasn’t living up to the standards - no matter a part of him had probably made himself unappealing to Capitol people on purpose and therefore safer, that also had to mean he thought that he was, indeed, hard on the eye. But obviously, it also had to do with literally leaving the element he was comfortable in, entering a foreign one that he didn’t know how to master, lacking an ability he probably thought he should already possess. The majority of victors knew how to swim; there actually was a group who joined up during Games every year to use the opportunity of visiting the plush Capitol facilities.
Finnick realized that he had trouble taking his eyes off Haymitch, getting his first opportunity to look at him dressed in that sparse way without layers of clothes and Capitol costumes covering him up - he didn’t think Haymitch was unappealing at all. Haymitch had eventually filled out his normal heavy frame again through winter, though it looked healthy on him now, exactly the right weight. Finnick still felt drawn to his beer belly; Four had food but not that much food, and in the Capitol, people who looked like that wouldn’t have the social status to meet people like Finnick.
At least, he had the good sense to focus on something else when he noticed Haymitch’s eyes on him in turn. He shouldn’t be looking. He himself grew uncomfortable when other people scrutinized him like that, too.
That was all.
“You know you don’t actually have to do this,” he felt obliged to say. While he loved the water, it was clear on Haymitch’s face that the other man wasn’t so sure. “We can still always call it a bad idea and just go home.”
“Little late for that now,” Haymitch said after just a moment of contemplation and trudged into deeper water after Finnick with a focused look on his face, as if unsure what to do with his arms while he did. “Just save me once the cold gives me a heart attack.”
Then he glanced at the water all around with a faint expression of distaste and added to himself, “This better be good,” making Finnick smile. Haymitch wouldn’t allow anybody to get that close unless he was trusting that person a lot, that was a fact.
Of course, all Haymitch ever seemed to expect from others at all was a little kindness and respect from fellow victors, and even that, he didn’t demand. Begging him to follow into even deeper water, until it reached Haymitch’s shoulders and Finnick’s chest, Finnick tried to imagine how lonely and just exhausting that had to be.
“I’m going to teach you how to stay afloat first,” he said, thinking that in his own way, Haymitch already was an expert at that. “So if you end up in deep water without me or if your strokes don’t work out as they should during practice, you won’t sink. It can take a while to get the hang of it, but it’s fairly easy after that. Either you do it by treading water, or you just float on your back.”
Haymitch gave him a doubtful once-over.
“Tell me you’ve done this before.”
“Teaching? Sure, dozens of times.” The Capitol had a lot of romantic ideas about Four and their idyllic lifestyle of frolicking on the sunny beaches, but the part where they all swam like fish just happened to be true. It was too big an arena advantage to not be taught excessively, and everybody helped out.
Haymitch grimaced. “Alright,” he said. “Good luck trying.”
Finnick hesitated. “Can I touch you?”
“Sure, do that,” Haymitch said and froze only barely when Finnick did, stiffening and, a beat later, already rapidly relaxing into his touch when Finnick moved to stand closely behind him, hands on his back. Finnick told himself that there was nothing special about that; Haymitch had never been afraid of physical contact, and they’d touched plenty of times when Finnick guarded his sleep. But this was still different. Seeking out touch and relaxing were two different things. Haymitch felt cool and sturdy underneath his hands and like his body had decided to trust Finnick.
He proceeded to show Haymitch how to go slack for Finnick to tow him, sparked by a distant fear that something might go wrong in the middle of the wilderness, nobody close enough to help. Then he taught him to tread water, so that he wouldn’t have to rely on Finnick. They didn’t venture further out. Finnick cherished the thrill of knowing he could sink but that he just wouldn’t; instinctually, he tried to reproduce that sense of safety and control for Haymitch.
“Lift yourself up onto your back,” he said. “And hollow out your spine. Spread out your arms… I’m going to be holding you upright for now. Here …” he said, placing his palm flat above Haymitch’s solar plexus, tickled by feeling the thick hair on his chest underneath his fingers. “That’s where you have to lift yourself above water to stay afloat. And breathe. Always focus on your breath. You can’t actually panic if you breathe into your belly evenly.”
A moment later, he had Haymitch floating, one careful hand flat in the hollow of his back from underneath, making sure it really felt like he was supporting him, not like his hand could vanish. He was standing closely to Haymitch again, all that skin spread out in front of him. Nobody he’d slept with had hair on his chest either. Then he looked at the other man’s face, the black curls floating around him in the water and his focused expression, slight frown on his forehead, eyes turned to the sky.
He listened to Haymitch breathing in and out measuredly, adjusting his own breath to him until their chests were rising and falling in tandem. The body underneath his hand was much too tense for comfort again, tackling this new thing, but following his orders to the letter - perfectly still.
Nobody had ever seen Haymitch Abernathy like that, Finnick thought, although all the world thought it had seen everything there was to know about him in his Games. And nobody had ever held him up like that. Nobody else had ever even gotten close enough to think to ask for permission.
He’d planned on letting go after a moment, but then, he couldn’t make himself. Instead, he loosened his grip after a soft, whispered warning until it was just his fingers brushing across Haymitch’s spine, the faintest anchor hopefully conveying that Haymitch was doing it himself now, but he wasn’t doing it alone.
It awoke a weird pull inside of him that said he wanted to move in again and touch more like before. It just, overall, was hard to even look away, making the world tremble a little.
Then Haymitch lost his balance, reeling, and Finnick’s hand slid between his shoulder blades, instinctually pushing him into a standing position when he splashed back into the water abruptly.
“That was great,” Finnick informed him, strangely out of breath. “You’re doing great.”
Combing the wet hair out of his face, Haymitch was having a hard time hiding the faint expression of satisfaction on his face.
“Thanks, Miss Calina,” he said scathingly and Finnick snorted a laugh, somehow pleased that Haymitch even remembered who his Games teacher had been.
“Calina taught me to fight with the trident,” he said. “My dad taught me to swim.
“And Mags taught me everything else.”
“I’m crushed,” Haymitch said, brushing more thick strands of hair out of his eyes. They became considerably longer when they didn’t curl, touching his shoulders. “I thought I’d taught you at least how to spend a whole Games smashed.”
“You’ve taught me better things than that,” Finnick softly said, remembering the mess that had been this year’s Wintermas. Again, he noticed how close he was standing to Haymitch in the cold water; again, a part of him wanted to lean in, and since Haymitch wasn’t shaking him off, he compromised by not stepping away, not quite ready to question the impulse. “The Games aren’t everything that matters.”
“Yeah, looking at you, what matters most is apparently swimming in a freezing lake in spring.” Haymitch smirked, apparently trying to diffuse the compliment without having to retreat entirely. He didn’t move away, either, and he didn’t hurry with his nod across the lake. “Lesson’s finished for today. You go and do some more of that thing where you’re a dolphin mutt. Might be a while before it gets this warm again. Or before we’ve stopped sneezing from the colds we’re catching right now,” he added good-naturedly.
Finnick grinned, feeling happiness spreading throughout him and using its momentum to spin into a chest stroke, hearing Haymitch complain loudly behind him when water had probably splashed onto his face. Just for the fuck of it, he adopted a dolphin kick once he was off, though Haymitch would neither see him do it underwater nor know what it was called.
Spinning onto his back and looking towards where he’d come from, he saw Haymitch carefully, with measured motions retreating towards a slope of rock growing out of the water a little closer to the shore, holding onto it while he got comfortable to observe Finnick. Finnick couldn’t decide what he liked more about that - that Haymitch didn’t take the first opportunity to escape from the lake although it really was icy if they didn’t move, or that he was keeping an eye on Finnick.
Finnick thought that this had to be what it felt like to be a normal person with a normal life, a man who made his own decisions and who commanded his own life. A man who had people who loved him waiting back ashore. People who knew who he was and still chose to wait, close to him even.
He’d always have speculated that that kind of realization would feel empowering, but now he was surprised to discover that mostly, it made him feel adrift and free.
For his last lap back to Haymitch, he dove under and cut through the cold underwater vortexes of the lake before he breached the surface again, smirking at Haymitch just few yards in front of him. He was perched on a rock ledge in the water, Finnick saw, precariously, holding himself in place with both hands. He was looking like his heavy strong self that Finnick had hoped all autumn and winter would eventually reemerge, except very wet and very cold.
“You’re bizarre, you know that?” he called out to Finnick, smirking at him when he picked up the last threat of their conversation. “Aberration of a victor of some sort.”
“What’s wrong with enjoying ourselves for a change?” Finnick shot back, spreading his arms.
“The complete lack of booze while we do so, for example,” Haymitch replied and Finnick was in motion again, covering the last of the distance before he was directly in front of Haymitch, refusing to acknowledge how maybe that was a little too close for two friends.
“You don’t really mean that,” he said, not having to shout anymore.
Haymitch looked him over, still holding onto his rock. “Yeah, I don’t.”
His eyes were caught by something on the height of Finnick’s Adam’s apple before they moved higher, and Finnick remembered how he’d seen Haymitch look at him like that before, in that lingering way that he was trying to hide.
Before he knew what he was doing, Finnick had closed the distance between them and propped his feet on the ledges left and right of Haymitch, holding on to the rock under the water with his feet and above by hand, as close as it got to the other man without touching, surrounding him. Finnick hovered, holding himself still. You did that with another victor, you ran the risk of being attacked and pushed away just out of reflex, if nothing else.
“Now what would this be about, Odair?” Haymitch said, leaning back against the rock, in a cautious way, but making no move to free himself. After that, he held himself still - tense, but in a good way, in a very aware way.
Finnick wasn’t a stranger to people reacting to his body, sometimes even to the person people in the Capitol had decided he was, and he could feel that pull emanating from Haymitch now. Unlike in the Capitol though, it set a flock of butterflies free in Finnick’s belly, so abruptly that it almost hurt. Haymitch was different. Haymitch almost knew who Finnick was.
“I want… I don’t…” His mouth was too dry to form the words, and all his brain seemed weirdly out of order now that he was trying to say... he wasn’t even sure what. He just clung to that feeling of liberty. “Can I…”
“Shit,” Haymitch muttered, but his eyes were on Finnick’s mouth, and Finnick was leaning in before he could stop himself, suddenly feeling Haymitch’s lips under his. They were fuller than Finnick’s, weirdly soft compared to the harsh scratch of his chin. Something inside of him gave when Haymitch’s mouth fell open under the pressure of his lips with a startled little grunt - compliant in an unexpected way.
They were both freezing, Haymitch had to be freezing from the way his cheeks were feeling against Finnick’s, but Finnick forgot all about the cold; he didn’t even move in to stay warmer. They weren’t touching at all apart from kissing, and Finnick instinctively stayed away, frozen in place because this, including this freedom of not having to touch at all, was amazing.
Haymitch’s hand slid on his thigh, holding him in place tightly, and Finnick flinched, letting go of Haymitch’s lips in a startled way. His mind wasn’t working properly anymore.
“Sorry,” Haymitch muttered against his throat, his hands both gone, breathing out harshly. Finnick could feel how he was holding still, an unspoken offer to Finnick to just do it the way he wanted - needed - that it was okay for him to make that call. So Finnick leaned in again.
They didn’t even have to touch if they - if Finnick - didn’t want to, but Finnick - licking across Haymitch’s lip by pure instinct and feeling him shudder - was terrifyingly hard despite that, despite the cold, just from knowing he could lean in whenever he wanted and Haymitch would be there.
It was nothing - nothing - like fighting in the arena.
It was nothing like in his dreams.
A shudder ran down his spine when he realized how different everything he felt right now was from the things he’d done before. When they finally let go, they were both breathing hard and they’d somehow upset the water; it was splashing all around them. Haymitch made an aborted, out-of-character small sound when they did. Finnick hung his head, still holding onto the rock, trying to regain his composure and any kind of clarity of mind.
He felt elated, like more than just the water was holding him up.
He looked at Haymitch, whose eyes said he couldn’t believe this was happening. Maybe thinking it a little bizarre, even, but, closing his eyes when they returned to the kiss. Either one of them made another sound when their lips met; Finnick wasn’t even sure who it had been.
Then Haymitch muttered, “Stop,” and tensed all over just a second later, harshly, saying, “Fuck, Odair.”
They stopped in mid-motion.
Finnick’s eyes snapped to Haymitch’s face, seeing how it was working.
As if he’d burnt himself, he let go of the rock and floated back into the water on his back, not bothering to search for the ground with his feet, before he could even think.
Of course, he immediately assumed this was a trigger reaction, like other victors had them, that he’d done something by accident, before he even could recall that Haymitch claimed he didn’t have those, that that was probably a bullshit lie.
Haymitch, anyway, was looking anywhere but Finnick, anger at himself written on his face in a helpless way, definitely anger about what had just happened between them.
“I need to get out of here,” he muttered more to himself than to Finnick before Finnick could even consider acting on his need to touch him again, from seeing him struggle with whatever was happening.
Haymitch was faintly swearing under his breath about the water and the cold, arranging his body - awkward in the water - to get off his ledge and get his feet back on the ground and very carefully, determinedly make his way to the shore.
Finnick looked after him, his mind reeling from so many impressions at once.
It occurred to him that Haymitch and he had just kissed.
Haymitch and he had kissed, and it had been nothing like kissing any of his clients. He hadn’t once spared a thought on technique. No careful eye had been kept on whether the body underneath his was having the wrong kind of reaction, or if his own had. None of it had been scripted.
That realization strangely knocked him off balance, water tilting around him, until another moment later, he was able to remind himself that it didn’t matter, he couldn’t fall in here.
Only once Haymitch had almost reached the shore did he think to kick off and follow him out, catching up and wading out to Haymitch viciously toweling off his hair, an angry expression on his face and not even once looking at Finnick.
Finnick’s cheeks were suddenly feeling hot. He was desperately trying to focus on how they both were shaking now that they were dripping wet; the sun having retreated behind a cloud for a stretch, goose bumps covering both of them.
A moment later, they were saying things to each other, things that seemingly just came out of their mouths, like, “Put on that sweater, you look like you’re fucking freezing” and “Sun still goes down early, we better get going.”
“Not a word,” Haymitch growled a warning at him when Finnick handed him one of the backpacks, lingering when he did so and thinking there had to be something he could say to make this stop.
The two of them had kissed, and something about it had completely gone wrong despite the way it had felt great.
on to chapter 13
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 18, 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, Chapter 11. Chaff is featured prominently as well.
Prologue -- Chapter 1 -- Chapter 2 -- Chapter 3 -- Chapter 4 -- Chapter 5 -- Chapter 6 -- Chapter 7 -- Chapter 8 -- Chapter 9 -- Chapter 10 -- Chapter 11
Chapter 12: Spin Control
A first wave of spring warmth hit the district out of nowhere in April, and Finnick decided that the time had come to go swimming.
“Is this where you go crazy again?” Haymitch asked him dubiously when he announced his plans during breakfast that morning, though he was lacking in malice; the look he threw Finnick across his kitchen table, chewing on a piece of bread roll, was almost fond.
Finnick snorted at him. “Why, just because you take issue with work-out routines, there’s something wrong with swimming, too?”
“Water’s gonna be cold, Odair,” Haymitch pointed out in a disbelieving voice. “This ain’t District Four, where the sun even shines out of people’s asses.”
“Oh, I’ll swim in the cold, and you’ll be right at my side.”
Sometimes Finnick wondered if anybody from the Capitol ever bothered listening in on this, day in and out, but if they did, he guessed they had more important things to do than stopping two victors from committing the minor offenses of leaving the district and having some fun. Not that the latter one wouldn’t be an unforgivable crime to Snow, but Snow also probably had better things to do than reading surveillance reports on fifty-something victors that hadn’t raised any red flags all year. Chances were that the Capitol had more important things to do with its resources.
Haymitch harrumphed. “I don’t have a swimsuit.”
Finnick smirked suggestively at him.
“Skinny dipping,” he drawled.
Haymitch’s face grew dark.
“…or just underwear will do,” Finnick amicably changed gears.
Now it was Haymitch’s turn to snort.
“I don’t know why I keep doing these things for you,” he muttered around a mouthful of bread.
It left Finnick feeling ridiculously pleased with himself.
***
The day was warm, but the sun had never breached the trees; the forest itself was cold and glum. Every now and then during their hike, though, a beam would make it through and cover a patch of greenery in brilliant gold.
It wasn’t anything like an afternoon at sea in Four, hitching a ride on his father’s shrimper with a vague plan to dive in head first, sun sparkling hotly above. But Finnick eventually came to the conclusion that he didn’t mind. He didn’t want another Four. He wanted something different, something new, something that he’d helped create.
Haymitch spent most of the hike uncharacteristically quiet and focused on his steps, but when he spoke up, it was to point out landmarks or bird mutts in the trees that he knew Finnick, still new to forest life, would get a kick out of watching. They both knew most of the Panem fauna from the Games, but it was different to get to know this new wilderness that he’d never thought he’d be a part of. The arenas were well-measured, well-tempered creations meant to entertain and kill, perfectly artificial, and this was nothing like that. Last autumn’s foliage had left dried puddles of mud behind, and they found bird nests on the ground that had been abandoned when the flocks left for winter, wind or other animals knocking them down.
Halfway through the hike, Finnick still broke into a ramble about fishery and ocean tides and what to do if your boat engine died off shore, filled by a quiet need to remind himself of who he was; Haymitch let him go for it, listening closely, asking questions about this and that as if it might just come in handy one day.
The trees cleared up to make way for their lake, the water gleaming brightly, as wide as eyes could see. The moment they reached the clearing, the air heated up above them; sun fell onto their faces, heralding the very first glimpse of summer.
They dropped the bags with food and changes of clothes that they’d brought at their usual spot, in the grass close to a patch of shore.
“You go ahead,” Haymitch said, gesticulating towards the lake. “Get it out of your system. I’ll be here where it’s dry and nurse my dignity as long as I still have any of it left.”
Finnick snorted at him, but still resolved that he wouldn’t allow Haymitch to feel awkward once he got him wet. Though all he said now, categorically, was, “Everybody should know how to swim.”
He was already pulling himself out of his shirt, working his pants open while it sailed to the ground. He didn’t need to be told twice. Smirking at Haymitch when the other man made a face, but Haymitch had already gotten comfortable in the grass, looking quite at ease otherwise. And Finnick’s attention was already drawn in by the lake, the water unfolding, not the ocean he was used to but begging him in nevertheless.
He knew better than to just dive into foreign waters, so he waded in at the shallow end, water tickling his calves and knees and crotch. It was so cold that his breath hitched; muscles all over his body contracted reflexively. But it was wet and it gave him a different chill to realize how much exactly he had missed this.
Kicking off the ground, Finnick refused to balk at the temperature. He took off, covering distance with long powerful strokes. It was only moments until the warmth of exertion started filling him, and the water just became that mighty custom-made mass.
There was nothing special about swimming in Four. He’d always been at home in the water, unable to even remember a time when he hadn’t known how to swim. As he reached Reaping age, he’d taught it to younger relatives from the inland villages like a good Four boy was expected; on his father’s and uncle’s boats, his brothers and he had always just dived in once they were out in the open, when it was just them and the waves and that tickling sense of depth.
Here, swimming was a gift. Finnick spun through the lake, feeling for the perfectly even rhythm that his breath had settled into, motions his muscles automatically corrected, another kind of home - as if this was his own body still. Strands of hair glued to his temples on emerging strokes, no matter what it would look like on camera, the sandy, cool scent of the freshwater filling his nostrils almost parenthetically.
It was exhilarating; even in Four, when he swam, the sea had never let him forget that he could never bend it to his will. He could never conquer the water. But he could play it, use it to swim with the tides or against them, ducking away under waves or letting them carry him along. He didn’t have to conquer the world to be in charge now, both free and safe.
As far off shore as it got, he curled into himself in a measured, smooth motion and let himself sink. The noises of the water and forest cut off, and nothing was left but a cloudy wall of underwater life, the last strands of dead winter algae wafting by, schools of fish rushing out of sight in alarm. It was perfect down here, it was calm - as if the world was standing still. An ocean could never be that calm.
It wasn’t quite that he’d never want to leave this place in that moment, but he’d certainly always want to come back, because it was his already.
It felt like the Capitol could never hurt him down here. It felt ludicrous to think that he would never be the one in his life who decided what to do and where to go. It felt as if the Flickermans and Templesmiths could never mean anything to him but as a challenge to be taken. As if he could play with the media, too, like with the sea, letting him carry him along.
When he broke to the surface again, his lungs weren’t even all that greedy for air yet, still so used to the exercise. Finnick spread out his arms, sprawling out on his back like he had wanted to do for months, feeling light. The sun was directly above, so bright that it seemed white amidst the spring sky. He could feel every tendon in his body bending to his will, making it placidly relax onto the lake.
“I can’t keep it? I thought I could keep it,” he remembered saying to Flickerman at fourteen and then bringing his trident home, the way there had been nothing Snow could do. He remembered sprawling in his chair at the talk show leisurely and the way the cameras had captured the way he’d offered them the incentive of skin. “You want me to mentor for Twelve?” he’d asked the crowd and changed his life. “Sure. Why not?”
Why not, indeed, Finnick thought and smirked at the sun, okay with his world and his life, just in that instance.
It didn’t pay to forget all the things that he still had the power to do, all the decisions that he still could make, especially with a friend like Haymitch who gave him a lake as a gift. He wouldn’t sink, he was too good a swimmer for that.
It took a good long while until he spun around and made his way back to the shore.
***
When Haymitch had undressed and was wading into the water after Finnick, there was a carefully bland edge on his face that told Finnick there were things going on inside of him that he really didn’t want Finnick to be part of.
It was obvious that it had a lot to do with dressing down in front of someone else, after having been told for so long that his body wasn’t living up to the standards - no matter a part of him had probably made himself unappealing to Capitol people on purpose and therefore safer, that also had to mean he thought that he was, indeed, hard on the eye. But obviously, it also had to do with literally leaving the element he was comfortable in, entering a foreign one that he didn’t know how to master, lacking an ability he probably thought he should already possess. The majority of victors knew how to swim; there actually was a group who joined up during Games every year to use the opportunity of visiting the plush Capitol facilities.
Finnick realized that he had trouble taking his eyes off Haymitch, getting his first opportunity to look at him dressed in that sparse way without layers of clothes and Capitol costumes covering him up - he didn’t think Haymitch was unappealing at all. Haymitch had eventually filled out his normal heavy frame again through winter, though it looked healthy on him now, exactly the right weight. Finnick still felt drawn to his beer belly; Four had food but not that much food, and in the Capitol, people who looked like that wouldn’t have the social status to meet people like Finnick.
At least, he had the good sense to focus on something else when he noticed Haymitch’s eyes on him in turn. He shouldn’t be looking. He himself grew uncomfortable when other people scrutinized him like that, too.
That was all.
“You know you don’t actually have to do this,” he felt obliged to say. While he loved the water, it was clear on Haymitch’s face that the other man wasn’t so sure. “We can still always call it a bad idea and just go home.”
“Little late for that now,” Haymitch said after just a moment of contemplation and trudged into deeper water after Finnick with a focused look on his face, as if unsure what to do with his arms while he did. “Just save me once the cold gives me a heart attack.”
Then he glanced at the water all around with a faint expression of distaste and added to himself, “This better be good,” making Finnick smile. Haymitch wouldn’t allow anybody to get that close unless he was trusting that person a lot, that was a fact.
Of course, all Haymitch ever seemed to expect from others at all was a little kindness and respect from fellow victors, and even that, he didn’t demand. Begging him to follow into even deeper water, until it reached Haymitch’s shoulders and Finnick’s chest, Finnick tried to imagine how lonely and just exhausting that had to be.
“I’m going to teach you how to stay afloat first,” he said, thinking that in his own way, Haymitch already was an expert at that. “So if you end up in deep water without me or if your strokes don’t work out as they should during practice, you won’t sink. It can take a while to get the hang of it, but it’s fairly easy after that. Either you do it by treading water, or you just float on your back.”
Haymitch gave him a doubtful once-over.
“Tell me you’ve done this before.”
“Teaching? Sure, dozens of times.” The Capitol had a lot of romantic ideas about Four and their idyllic lifestyle of frolicking on the sunny beaches, but the part where they all swam like fish just happened to be true. It was too big an arena advantage to not be taught excessively, and everybody helped out.
Haymitch grimaced. “Alright,” he said. “Good luck trying.”
Finnick hesitated. “Can I touch you?”
“Sure, do that,” Haymitch said and froze only barely when Finnick did, stiffening and, a beat later, already rapidly relaxing into his touch when Finnick moved to stand closely behind him, hands on his back. Finnick told himself that there was nothing special about that; Haymitch had never been afraid of physical contact, and they’d touched plenty of times when Finnick guarded his sleep. But this was still different. Seeking out touch and relaxing were two different things. Haymitch felt cool and sturdy underneath his hands and like his body had decided to trust Finnick.
He proceeded to show Haymitch how to go slack for Finnick to tow him, sparked by a distant fear that something might go wrong in the middle of the wilderness, nobody close enough to help. Then he taught him to tread water, so that he wouldn’t have to rely on Finnick. They didn’t venture further out. Finnick cherished the thrill of knowing he could sink but that he just wouldn’t; instinctually, he tried to reproduce that sense of safety and control for Haymitch.
“Lift yourself up onto your back,” he said. “And hollow out your spine. Spread out your arms… I’m going to be holding you upright for now. Here …” he said, placing his palm flat above Haymitch’s solar plexus, tickled by feeling the thick hair on his chest underneath his fingers. “That’s where you have to lift yourself above water to stay afloat. And breathe. Always focus on your breath. You can’t actually panic if you breathe into your belly evenly.”
A moment later, he had Haymitch floating, one careful hand flat in the hollow of his back from underneath, making sure it really felt like he was supporting him, not like his hand could vanish. He was standing closely to Haymitch again, all that skin spread out in front of him. Nobody he’d slept with had hair on his chest either. Then he looked at the other man’s face, the black curls floating around him in the water and his focused expression, slight frown on his forehead, eyes turned to the sky.
He listened to Haymitch breathing in and out measuredly, adjusting his own breath to him until their chests were rising and falling in tandem. The body underneath his hand was much too tense for comfort again, tackling this new thing, but following his orders to the letter - perfectly still.
Nobody had ever seen Haymitch Abernathy like that, Finnick thought, although all the world thought it had seen everything there was to know about him in his Games. And nobody had ever held him up like that. Nobody else had ever even gotten close enough to think to ask for permission.
He’d planned on letting go after a moment, but then, he couldn’t make himself. Instead, he loosened his grip after a soft, whispered warning until it was just his fingers brushing across Haymitch’s spine, the faintest anchor hopefully conveying that Haymitch was doing it himself now, but he wasn’t doing it alone.
It awoke a weird pull inside of him that said he wanted to move in again and touch more like before. It just, overall, was hard to even look away, making the world tremble a little.
Then Haymitch lost his balance, reeling, and Finnick’s hand slid between his shoulder blades, instinctually pushing him into a standing position when he splashed back into the water abruptly.
“That was great,” Finnick informed him, strangely out of breath. “You’re doing great.”
Combing the wet hair out of his face, Haymitch was having a hard time hiding the faint expression of satisfaction on his face.
“Thanks, Miss Calina,” he said scathingly and Finnick snorted a laugh, somehow pleased that Haymitch even remembered who his Games teacher had been.
“Calina taught me to fight with the trident,” he said. “My dad taught me to swim.
“And Mags taught me everything else.”
“I’m crushed,” Haymitch said, brushing more thick strands of hair out of his eyes. They became considerably longer when they didn’t curl, touching his shoulders. “I thought I’d taught you at least how to spend a whole Games smashed.”
“You’ve taught me better things than that,” Finnick softly said, remembering the mess that had been this year’s Wintermas. Again, he noticed how close he was standing to Haymitch in the cold water; again, a part of him wanted to lean in, and since Haymitch wasn’t shaking him off, he compromised by not stepping away, not quite ready to question the impulse. “The Games aren’t everything that matters.”
“Yeah, looking at you, what matters most is apparently swimming in a freezing lake in spring.” Haymitch smirked, apparently trying to diffuse the compliment without having to retreat entirely. He didn’t move away, either, and he didn’t hurry with his nod across the lake. “Lesson’s finished for today. You go and do some more of that thing where you’re a dolphin mutt. Might be a while before it gets this warm again. Or before we’ve stopped sneezing from the colds we’re catching right now,” he added good-naturedly.
Finnick grinned, feeling happiness spreading throughout him and using its momentum to spin into a chest stroke, hearing Haymitch complain loudly behind him when water had probably splashed onto his face. Just for the fuck of it, he adopted a dolphin kick once he was off, though Haymitch would neither see him do it underwater nor know what it was called.
Spinning onto his back and looking towards where he’d come from, he saw Haymitch carefully, with measured motions retreating towards a slope of rock growing out of the water a little closer to the shore, holding onto it while he got comfortable to observe Finnick. Finnick couldn’t decide what he liked more about that - that Haymitch didn’t take the first opportunity to escape from the lake although it really was icy if they didn’t move, or that he was keeping an eye on Finnick.
Finnick thought that this had to be what it felt like to be a normal person with a normal life, a man who made his own decisions and who commanded his own life. A man who had people who loved him waiting back ashore. People who knew who he was and still chose to wait, close to him even.
He’d always have speculated that that kind of realization would feel empowering, but now he was surprised to discover that mostly, it made him feel adrift and free.
For his last lap back to Haymitch, he dove under and cut through the cold underwater vortexes of the lake before he breached the surface again, smirking at Haymitch just few yards in front of him. He was perched on a rock ledge in the water, Finnick saw, precariously, holding himself in place with both hands. He was looking like his heavy strong self that Finnick had hoped all autumn and winter would eventually reemerge, except very wet and very cold.
“You’re bizarre, you know that?” he called out to Finnick, smirking at him when he picked up the last threat of their conversation. “Aberration of a victor of some sort.”
“What’s wrong with enjoying ourselves for a change?” Finnick shot back, spreading his arms.
“The complete lack of booze while we do so, for example,” Haymitch replied and Finnick was in motion again, covering the last of the distance before he was directly in front of Haymitch, refusing to acknowledge how maybe that was a little too close for two friends.
“You don’t really mean that,” he said, not having to shout anymore.
Haymitch looked him over, still holding onto his rock. “Yeah, I don’t.”
His eyes were caught by something on the height of Finnick’s Adam’s apple before they moved higher, and Finnick remembered how he’d seen Haymitch look at him like that before, in that lingering way that he was trying to hide.
Before he knew what he was doing, Finnick had closed the distance between them and propped his feet on the ledges left and right of Haymitch, holding on to the rock under the water with his feet and above by hand, as close as it got to the other man without touching, surrounding him. Finnick hovered, holding himself still. You did that with another victor, you ran the risk of being attacked and pushed away just out of reflex, if nothing else.
“Now what would this be about, Odair?” Haymitch said, leaning back against the rock, in a cautious way, but making no move to free himself. After that, he held himself still - tense, but in a good way, in a very aware way.
Finnick wasn’t a stranger to people reacting to his body, sometimes even to the person people in the Capitol had decided he was, and he could feel that pull emanating from Haymitch now. Unlike in the Capitol though, it set a flock of butterflies free in Finnick’s belly, so abruptly that it almost hurt. Haymitch was different. Haymitch almost knew who Finnick was.
“I want… I don’t…” His mouth was too dry to form the words, and all his brain seemed weirdly out of order now that he was trying to say... he wasn’t even sure what. He just clung to that feeling of liberty. “Can I…”
“Shit,” Haymitch muttered, but his eyes were on Finnick’s mouth, and Finnick was leaning in before he could stop himself, suddenly feeling Haymitch’s lips under his. They were fuller than Finnick’s, weirdly soft compared to the harsh scratch of his chin. Something inside of him gave when Haymitch’s mouth fell open under the pressure of his lips with a startled little grunt - compliant in an unexpected way.
They were both freezing, Haymitch had to be freezing from the way his cheeks were feeling against Finnick’s, but Finnick forgot all about the cold; he didn’t even move in to stay warmer. They weren’t touching at all apart from kissing, and Finnick instinctively stayed away, frozen in place because this, including this freedom of not having to touch at all, was amazing.
Haymitch’s hand slid on his thigh, holding him in place tightly, and Finnick flinched, letting go of Haymitch’s lips in a startled way. His mind wasn’t working properly anymore.
“Sorry,” Haymitch muttered against his throat, his hands both gone, breathing out harshly. Finnick could feel how he was holding still, an unspoken offer to Finnick to just do it the way he wanted - needed - that it was okay for him to make that call. So Finnick leaned in again.
They didn’t even have to touch if they - if Finnick - didn’t want to, but Finnick - licking across Haymitch’s lip by pure instinct and feeling him shudder - was terrifyingly hard despite that, despite the cold, just from knowing he could lean in whenever he wanted and Haymitch would be there.
It was nothing - nothing - like fighting in the arena.
It was nothing like in his dreams.
A shudder ran down his spine when he realized how different everything he felt right now was from the things he’d done before. When they finally let go, they were both breathing hard and they’d somehow upset the water; it was splashing all around them. Haymitch made an aborted, out-of-character small sound when they did. Finnick hung his head, still holding onto the rock, trying to regain his composure and any kind of clarity of mind.
He felt elated, like more than just the water was holding him up.
He looked at Haymitch, whose eyes said he couldn’t believe this was happening. Maybe thinking it a little bizarre, even, but, closing his eyes when they returned to the kiss. Either one of them made another sound when their lips met; Finnick wasn’t even sure who it had been.
Then Haymitch muttered, “Stop,” and tensed all over just a second later, harshly, saying, “Fuck, Odair.”
They stopped in mid-motion.
Finnick’s eyes snapped to Haymitch’s face, seeing how it was working.
As if he’d burnt himself, he let go of the rock and floated back into the water on his back, not bothering to search for the ground with his feet, before he could even think.
Of course, he immediately assumed this was a trigger reaction, like other victors had them, that he’d done something by accident, before he even could recall that Haymitch claimed he didn’t have those, that that was probably a bullshit lie.
Haymitch, anyway, was looking anywhere but Finnick, anger at himself written on his face in a helpless way, definitely anger about what had just happened between them.
“I need to get out of here,” he muttered more to himself than to Finnick before Finnick could even consider acting on his need to touch him again, from seeing him struggle with whatever was happening.
Haymitch was faintly swearing under his breath about the water and the cold, arranging his body - awkward in the water - to get off his ledge and get his feet back on the ground and very carefully, determinedly make his way to the shore.
Finnick looked after him, his mind reeling from so many impressions at once.
It occurred to him that Haymitch and he had just kissed.
Haymitch and he had kissed, and it had been nothing like kissing any of his clients. He hadn’t once spared a thought on technique. No careful eye had been kept on whether the body underneath his was having the wrong kind of reaction, or if his own had. None of it had been scripted.
That realization strangely knocked him off balance, water tilting around him, until another moment later, he was able to remind himself that it didn’t matter, he couldn’t fall in here.
Only once Haymitch had almost reached the shore did he think to kick off and follow him out, catching up and wading out to Haymitch viciously toweling off his hair, an angry expression on his face and not even once looking at Finnick.
Finnick’s cheeks were suddenly feeling hot. He was desperately trying to focus on how they both were shaking now that they were dripping wet; the sun having retreated behind a cloud for a stretch, goose bumps covering both of them.
A moment later, they were saying things to each other, things that seemingly just came out of their mouths, like, “Put on that sweater, you look like you’re fucking freezing” and “Sun still goes down early, we better get going.”
“Not a word,” Haymitch growled a warning at him when Finnick handed him one of the backpacks, lingering when he did so and thinking there had to be something he could say to make this stop.
The two of them had kissed, and something about it had completely gone wrong despite the way it had felt great.
on to chapter 13