Chapter Text
Prologue
There was that one time he talked to Haymitch during the 71st Games. It was the first year they made Finnick mentor a tribute in between sleeping his way through the Capitol, the third year since Haymitch himself had fallen into a pit of booze; it was in some alley behind some club. Finnick would never even remember who the client had been that night or what they had done to make him react the way he did. It couldn’t even have been anything bad - there hadn’t been terrible clients that year, nobody weird, nobody who made him pee on things or fucked him with a household item. But those Games had still been the first time his subconscious decided to inform him that it refused to take that shit from him anymore; it had been when every client had made him tremble and threaten to shatter into little bits, while he was only trying to save lives.
All he’d remember of that part of the night later was a client’s hands on his bare chest and lips on his throat, a wall pressed against his back and the psychedelic lights of a dance floor flashing all around, bright reds and blues. Making an excuse and feeling bile rise before he had even made it out of the club. Stumbling into the alley to greedily breathe in city air and, just, meaning to puke it all away.
His skin was crawling, as if those had been the antennas of insects touching him instead of fingers. His hands on his knees the only thing keeping him balanced, Finnick couldn’t stop heaving, cold summer air caressing his bare shoulders. Even that sensation felt intrusive; it would have made him scream if he hadn’t been too busy retching.
Looking back at it later, he’d probably been slipped some drug that night.
Finnick couldn’t even remember how Haymitch had been out there alongside him or why – it wasn’t exactly where the cool kids hung out, though maybe Haymitch had followed him out, maybe he’d bumped into him on his way to the back door. Maybe, Finnick thought later, Haymitch had been on the run from something as well. But when his stomach was finally empty, Finnick was too exhausted to wonder why the other man had shown up, leaning against the wall and waiting him out, his familiar heavy frame – so unusual in both the districts and the Capitol – a strangely steady presence in the corner of his eye; it didn’t even make him jump. Haymitch was holding not a flask, but a bottle of water out to Finnick wordlessly, thick smell of booze accompanying the gesture. He always smelled of booze these days – always very clean underneath in a surprising way too, but always of booze.
“So is this drugs or shock?” the Twelve victor asked in his gruff way while Finnick took a sip, as if it were the most normal inquiry to make in a dark Capitol alley.
I hate this life, Finnick helplessly thought, swirling the water in his mouth and spitting it out. “Nothing,” he managed, wiping a tear out of the corner of his eye angrily. “It’s nothing. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. It just… keeps happening like this.” It was simply a dangerous reaction to start having to his clients, losing control over the situation like that.
“Seriously, kid? Hunger Games is what’s wrong with you,” Haymitch said dryly. And, even more conversationally, “Sometimes it just hits you like that. It might stop again after a while.
“Did for me – these things come and go.”
He nodded at the back door of the club. “You gotta get back in?”
“When has the answer to that question ever been no?” Finnick bitterly shot back, and Haymitch laughed in that slightly unhinged way that he’d adopted alongside his excessive drinking.
Finnick tried to join him, but instead he felt himself shuddering and the nausea creeping up again, so he leaned against a dumpster, too tired to mind the dirt and grime that would end up smeared all over his bare arm. Maybe his date would like that. Closing his eyes, he just breathed, deep and calming breaths, the way they taught you to breathe if you went swimming in the ocean and lost control amidst the waves.
The other man’s hand was on his arm, rubbing abashed circles and he could hear Haymitch making a sound, something gruff and loath of the situation overall and strangely soothing.
“I hate going back every time. I wish I didn’t have to,” he heard himself say abruptly, as if the unexpected touch had made something come loose. He opened his eyes to stare at the wall. When he heard Haymitch starting to reply, he continued vehemently. “Not back in there.” He nodded at the club. “Back home. District Four.” His eyes were still burning from the tears that were threatening to spill over, from the bile in his throat. It was one of those days when everything hurt. “I hate that they – Mags, my parents, everybody – that they have to see me like that, like I’m...” But he ran out of words at that point. Collaborator. Slut. Killer. Saying it aloud would make it even more real, so he just bit his lip. It still felt swollen, from the kissing.
“Aw, kid, listen…” Haymitch said in a strained voice as if he was suddenly finding himself wildly out of his depth, his hand still on Finnick’s shoulder, as if he had decided that he would try and hold him upright physically for lack of better options.
“I don’t know how they can stand to look at me anymore,” Finnick managed, feeling like he was running out of air.
So much for his breathing technique.
Those were things Finnick Odair had never said aloud and he was surprised now to hear them coming out of his mouth, that dirty secret that he’d been keeping to himself. He had hated being back in District Four this year. He’d been relieved that Mags had been gone on Victory Tour with Annie Cresta, whom he had managed to avoid despite Mags’ insistence that they should meet, because Annie seemed gentle and kind and had gone through enough in the debacle that had been her Games. She should get to stay away from people like him.
It wasn’t the worst secret Finnick kept about what kind of person he had become, but it was the most pressing right now. He was supposed to be a hero back in Four, for heaven’s sake.
Finnick Odair really, really didn’t think of himself as a hero.
The hand on his arm vanished while Haymitch, very calmly, unscrewed the lid of what was actually a flask this time. It appeared underneath Finnick’s nose alongside the sharp stench of something so high-proof that it might have been sold as a disinfectant rather than a drink. Gratefully, Finnick tilted his head and let it run down his throat when it was handed to him.
Then he was coughing as a wildfire burned down his throat and lungs, and he was working hard on not toppling over. He could hear Haymitch guffawing, patting Finnick’s shoulder sympathetically. It always surprised Finnick on those rare occasions when Haymitch happened to touch him, how strong the other man felt, even to Finnick, who was amongst the tallest and most muscular of young victors and had four inches on Haymitch. He was always surprised when Haymitch touched him, period.
“Might settle your stomach, I thought,” the other victor said. It wasn’t an apology. Finnick was still coughing. The alcohol rushed straight to his head, making him feel light.
“Dissolve my stomach, more like,” he said roughly. “What is that? Machine oil?”
“Hob liquor. White,” Haymitch said, which explained nothing much.
His hand remained firm on Finnick’s back when Finnick bent over to puke again, though, even though there was nothing left inside of him but the water and the booze and bile. When he would go back in to serve his client, the spot on his shoulder where Haymitch’s hand had been would feel oddly empty all night; he just wasn’t used to that kind of support anymore, not when his family didn’t know how to give it and he’d rather die than talk to Mags about sex.
It never occurred to Finnick that Haymitch had never told him whether he knew that feeling, that shame of having to look people he loved in the eye after having been made almost Capitol.
If it had, he might have considered that there were no such people left for Haymitch.
There was another world, somewhere, in which the victors of Panem made contact with District Thirteen in that year, during those Games, and everything changed when the rebellion began. Haymitch sobered up somewhat, just for a little while but long enough for everything to turn out differently. Finnick gained new hope and went to make new friends back home; he went to meet Annie Cresta and became a happier man.
This was not that world.