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Death is better for them. Trust me, is the third thing Finnick Odair says to him, right after Hi, I’m— and That’s right.
It’s not the least bit difficult for Peeta to pick him out of the crowd. The mansion is filled with Capitol residents, all manner of glitter and glamour and excessive opulence dripping from the tips of their gaudy headdresses down to their tear-shined shoes; Finnick Odair still gleams golden amongst them. Finnick Odair glows the brightest. Finnick Odair looks up, catches his eye, and Peeta feels an inexplicable tidal wave pushing him towards him.
Peeta watches Finnick excuse himself from his circle of admirers with a small, dazzling smile. Something in his gut twists, and Peeta doesn’t understand the reaction. Then again, he hasn’t understood anything really, since the end of the Games; not about himself nor the people and the world around him.
“Hi,” Finnick says with the same smile on his face, perhaps a little wider, his eyes hard and bright. “I’m—”
“Finnick Odair,” Peeta finishes for him. Peeta knows who Finnick is, of course. Everybody knows who Finnick Odair is. If you didn’t know before, you’d know after.
Finnick’s smile doesn’t falter for a second, but his eyes do flash. He pauses for a second before responding, “That’s right.”
Peeta doesn’t quite know what to say in response. It’s one thing to pretty up for the cameras and crack jokes for the crowd if it means that it might help you survive your worst living nightmare. It’s quite another to be ordered to wear a mask for the rest of your life.
He misses Twelve. Which is a sentiment he doesn’t understand because life was tough back in Twelve. People were dirt poor. People were starving. Katniss nearly— KATNISS—
“Death is better for them.”
Peeta’s head snaps back up. Finnick is sipping on his glass of champagne, turned away and eyes scanning the crowd.
“Death is better for them,” he repeats, turning back to Peeta, no longer wearing a smile. He doesn’t look quite like the Capitol’s Golden Boy anymore, Peeta thinks in the moment. Peeta looks at him and sees a Victor.
“Trust me.”
Finnick gets called away then by a lady wearing very little and caked in glitter body paint. He tips his glass to Peeta and offers another small, charming smile.
Peeta doesn’t see him the rest of the night.
.
The requests that come in at the start are eclectic.
He’s invited to join an all-star cake making competition, and he’s told to show off his decorating skills, to roll up his sleeves at every opportunity, and to crack as many jokes as he can. He’s summoned to an old lady’s house where he spends two hours sitting in front of the fireplace listening to her tell him about her cats. He’s made to accompany an eleven-year-old girl to a birthday party.
Then the real work comes in.
Peeta’s first is a man: young, lithe, good looking, with dark hair and wild eyes. He’s lucky, in relative terms. The man is patient, and generous in bed.
Peeta still feels like crawling out of his skin when he finds himself climbing the marble steps up the porch of the Victor’s Village in the Capitol, a sprawling mega-complex shared by all Victors across the districts to use when they’re in the Capitol for events or hired on special request. He pauses when he reaches the front door, hand on the golden handle, polished twice a day to sparkle even in the dimmest of lighting.
Peeta isn’t sure how long he stays in place, still as a statue with his hand on the handle, his mind in places faraway. It could be minutes. It could be hours. Soft footsteps sound behind him when he finally snaps out of his thoughts, and who else would it be but Finnick Odair, walking back to the Village from the same thing, undoubtedly, like it’s nothing at all.
Finnick takes one look at Peeta and purses his lips.
“How long have you been standing there?”
Peeta blinks. “I’m not sure.”
Finnick approaches slowly, eyes never leaving Peeta’s. Peeta looks at him and imagines looking at the sea.
“Your hand is like ice,” Finnick says, eyes flicking down to Peeta’s fist clenched so hard around the handle his skin had turned completely white. Finnick’s fingertips are warm where they barely brush against the back of his hand. Slowly, Finnick covers his hand with his. The warmth spreads. Peeta feels his hand slowly relaxing, his fingers slowly uncurling, relaxing into the comforting heat that Finnick’s hand provides until their fingers are intertwined.
Wordlessly, Finnick leads him away from the front door and round the side to the pool. He lets go of Peeta’s hand to remove his shoes and socks, rolling up his trousers to his knees. Peeta mimics his actions silently, pausing only when Finnick bends down to sit at the water’s edge, his feet splashing and kicking at the water’s surface as he turns a brilliant, lopsided grin up at Peeta.
“Well?” He reaches a hand up, palm upturned and inviting. Peeta finds himself craving Finnick’s warm skin again. He smiles and shakes his head slightly, bending down to sit by the pool, deciding to wait for the urge to pass as the soles of his feet break the water’s surface.
“They keep the pool heated throughout the year,” Finnick chuckles when he sees Peeta’s eyes widen. “It’s great for skinny dipping when the weather’s cold. Just like now, actually.”
He quirks a suggestive brow at Peeta, leaning in closer. It’s an ill-timed joke, all things considered, but Peeta finds himself laughing all the same, leaning away from Finnick and shaking his head, darker thoughts from earlier ebbing away like the retreat of a sudden wave. He kicks his feet and the water parts for them to break the surface. He kicks again, and again.
“Here,” Finnick elbows him. Peeta turns to find Finnick holding out a piece of rope. He picks it up, rolling it between his thumb and forefinger. The fibres are coarse, rough beneath his skin. The pool’s water is warm around his feet. Finnick glows where he sits beside Peeta, ever smiling and ever charming as he takes out another piece of rope.
“This is a reef knot,” Finnick’s fingers fly over and around the rope, tying and untying a knot, “and this is a two half hitches.”
Peeta looks down at his own piece of rope, coarse beneath his fingertips, wondering why Finnick’s hands are porcelain-smooth instead of covered in calluses. He tries the reef knot, but messes it up badly. Finnick laughs, tilting his head up to the heavens and splashing around with his legs and feet. It’s an infectious, electrifying sound. Peeta laughs along with him.
So Finnick shows him the knots again, and Peeta tries, and fails, again. He doesn’t think about how between him and Katniss, he’s the slower learner. He doesn’t think about Katniss, or the Games, or the Tributes who died at his hand, or the special requests that will continue to come in. It’s dark by the time they stop, the pool lit aquamarine with underwater lighting.
“It gives me just one thing to focus on,” Finnick says softly, fingers moving deftly over the rope to tie another complicated-looking knot.
“It drowns out the rest of the world,” Peeta replies. Finnick looks up from his rope. Peeta wonders if this is what drowning might feel like.
“Yeah.”
Peeta doesn’t understand Finnick. He’s not the open book everyone makes him out to be.
“What comes after?” Peeta asks. Finnick narrows his eyes, the corners of his lips curling suggestively.
“After what?”
“After winning,” Peeta says without pause. Finnick’s Cheshire grin doesn’t fall, but his eyes darken.
“You already know,” he says simply. Peeta waits for him to continue.
“What you did today. What you did yesterday. And what you’ll do tomorrow,” Finnick pockets his piece of rope, pool water splashing in the silence of dusk as he makes to stand. Peeta does the same, holding out his piece of rope to Finnick with an open palm. Finnick shakes his head.
“Keep it,” he says, then sweeps his arms out in a grand gesture for Peeta to lead them back to the front door.
The golden door handle isn’t as cold and isn’t as nerve-wracking this time. It’s because of Finnick, Peeta knows.
The door swings open to an empty foyer. Finnick's voice rings out as Peeta takes a right while he takes the stairs.
“Welcome to the aftermath.”
.
His dreams are always the same.
He’s back at the Cornucopia. He’s back with the Career pack, sweet-talking them into an alliance and pretending to betray Katniss. There is the booming of the cannons. There is the growling of the Mutts. There is a body next to him. There is blood on his hands. Katniss is with him. Katniss is in front of him. Katniss is Katniss is KatnissKatnissKatniss—
.
“If you can’t sleep,” Finnick startles him in the kitchen one morning, sauntering in with a sloppily tied robe and a glass of orange juice in hand. His chest is just as tanned as his arms. Peeta has the fleeting thought that he’d like to see Finnick’s broad back bare, too.
“We have things here in the Capitol for that.”
Peeta blinks. “I beg your pardon?”
“You could tire yourself out, of course,” Finnick sidles into the seat beside him at the kitchen counter, reaching over to help himself to Peeta’s toast, “run a couple miles a day and collapse into a hopefully dreamless sleep. But it doesn’t always work. So we have things for that.”
Peeta watches him bite into the piece of bread and tear a chunk out. His teeth are practically luminous. There isn’t any part of Finnick Odair that isn’t dazzling.
“Our rooms aren’t anywhere near each other,” Peeta equivocates. Finnick hears the interest in his tone anyway and grins.
“Have you met Johanna Mason yet?”
The thing with Finnick, Peeta finds, is that he’s like the ocean; calm and inviting on the surface at times, but a raging current just below; endlessly beautiful; quick to change, and quick to surprise.
“I got lucky,” Peeta says one afternoon in the middle of a knot-tying session that fails to calm his nerves, his mind straying to his latest call with Snow and his new client for the night. “Cato would’ve won if not for the Mutts the Gamemakers brought out at the end.”
Peeta expects Finnick to smile boyishly and say something charming. Crack a joke, perhaps. Say something suggestive in a seductive purr. Instead, he frowns, fingers flying over his rope as he launches into another complex knot Peeta will never know the name of.
“Are you sure you’re the lucky one?” Finnick asks when his knot is finished, rope laid to rest on the table.
It’s a rhetorical question. Peeta pushes away from the table and leaves.
His question replays endlessly in Peeta’s mind for the rest of the long night.
.
It’s much later that he meets Annie Cresta. Annie is absolutely lovely, in every sense of the word. It’s no wonder that Finnick is in love with her. Finnick looks at her how Peeta imagines he must have looked at Katniss.
The thought drives a stake through his heart, not unlike how Cato’s sword had ripped through hers.
It’s much, much later that he realises Finnick had said them. Not death is better for her. Death is better for them.
Peeta wonders if death is better for them too.
His daylight hours are increasingly spent in the Capitol. His dreams become relentless. They turn vicious, and vivid. He wakes up screaming from some of them, throat sore and drenched in cold sweat. Finnick wakes him up one night, physically hauling him up by his shoulders and shaking him till it registers that it’s not real, it’s not real, wake up, you’re safe. His arms wrap around Peeta, who clings to him desperately, fingers digging into his forearms as he sobs himself back into a restless slumber.
Seeking Finnick out in the dead of night becomes a habit when he’s in the Capitol. Finnick either never has his door locked, or deliberately leaves it unlocked when Peeta is there. He crawls into his bed when his dreams awaken him and cries himself back to sleep in Finnick’s arms.
Time passes. Peeta’s new life doesn’t change. They sit by the pool, feet soaking in the warm water, tying knots while gossiping about Capitol residents or in tense silence. Peeta masters the reef knot and two half hitches. Finnick eventually shows him the bowline on a bight. Peeta teaches him how to make a starter for sturdy doughs, and how to paint dainty decorations onto cakes. Finnick’s the first person Peeta’s eyes seek out at any Capitol gathering or event; Finnick is his only friend in the Capitol, maybe his only friend now after everything; Finnick is the sole existence keeping him grounded in reality after the Games.
So when it happens, it doesn’t blindside Peeta like a spear from out of nowhere. In fact, it isn’t surprising at all. Peeta’s being shaken from his dreams again by Finnick, sweat dripping down his face and a messy mix of that night’s client and the seventy-fourth arena behind his eyes, when his arms shoot out towards Finnick’s face, palms pressing Finnick’s ears flat and fingers digging into the base of his skull as Peeta pulls him in for their lips to meet.
Finnick’s lips are soft and taste like the coconut cupcakes his mom still makes and sells back in Twelve. Realisation dawns, and all it is is an ‘Oh. This is what it is.’ He expects Finnick to pull away. He expects Finnick to laugh about it when they part and say something witty. He doesn’t expect Finnick to pull his hair, tilting his head back so he can deepen the kiss and swipe a tongue across his lower lip. This is completely unexpected, and Peeta gasps, presenting the opportunity for Finnick to take what he wants.
Finnick’s exactly like the ocean, Peeta thinks, as their hands stop clawing at each other’s heads. Peeta moves a hand to clutch at the front of Finnick’s robe as Finnick’s arms wind around Peeta’s waist, pulling him in closer. Finnick’s calm and collected on the surface, hiding a turmoil of emotions inside.
“I shouldn’t have come back alone,” Peeta gasps when they break apart, warm, fresh tears spilling over his cheeks. Finnick brushes a thumb against them, kissing the tracks of his tears tenderly.
“I know.”
.
“You know,” Peeta begins. The day is warm in the Capitol, and Finnick and Peeta stand on the balcony overlooking the city, bare arms pressed into the other. “I never got to see the ocean when I was in Four.”
Finnick smiles. “I’ll take you there. Next time we’re in Four.”
A breeze blows from behind them, gently ruffling Finnick’s hair where the sunlight hits. Finnick looks like he’s made of gold. Finnick’s eyes look exactly like the sea. Finnick’s so dazzling Peeta wonders how he can stand to look at him for so long. Then he wonders how long before he won’t be able to anymore.
“I lied when I said that this is all there is.”
Peeta turns to the city. “I’ve never heard you admit to lying before.”
Finnick chuckles. “I’m an honest guy, I don’t do it often.” This earns a small laugh from Peeta. Finnick continues, “If I told you that change was on the horizon, would you be interested?”
There’s a hard edge to Finnick’s tone that Peeta hasn’t heard before despite them spending so many of their hours together now. He takes his eyes off the Capitol to find Finnick’s, a dark, stormy sea of green about to unleash its secrets.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
Finnick shakes his head. “This is an all-in situation.”
Peeta has lived and won. Peeta has loved and lost. Peeta’s learning how to live again, as rubble in the aftermath.
“I’m here because I’m a Victor, right?” Finnick quirks a brow, but a smile creeps onto his lips. Peeta’s heart does a little somersault. “I know how to win when the stakes can’t get any higher.
Tell me.”