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“You’re gorgeous,” the man pants in his ear, body pressed heavy against his, “so- fucking pretty like this, you eager little slut, too pretty for your own good, baby—”
He tells himself that he doesn’t feel it anymore, the sharp shame of those words, the fundamental truth of it. He tells himself that it doesn’t hurt.
He’s gotten rather good at lying to himself.
Finnick Odair smiles, puts on a show, goes down easy. “Flatterer,” he moans, slut that he is and isn’t, voice pitched low and conspiratorial. He arches up towards the man, feigning desperation, thinks of lies and games and sacrifice, of how easily bone snaps under his bloody, beautiful hands, “and I love it, and I love you for it. I love you. I love you.”
When it’s over, the man pats his cheek and tells him he can’t wait to see Finnick again, don't they always have so much fun together?
Finnick thinks that he would rather be dead.
The man leaves Finnick splayed out against his mattress like a wayward doll, and Finnick is left alone to gather his bruised limbs and his ripped clothes, to call his driver.
He’s got another appointment to make.
—
Finnick sips at another colourful Capitol cocktail as he privately weighs the risks of taking yet another one of the bright pink pills hidden in his suit pocket. He’s smiling but hungover, and his head is still pounding something awful when he is suddenly pulled aside by the guest of honour. The victor is new and young and pretty, and when she turns her wide brown eyes to Finnick she is both killer and child for a single unsettling moment before she is nothing at all.
The girl - he can’t remember her name, his head hurts - whispers that Snow told her that she has to make it good and she doesn’t know how. She wants his advice. She is worried that her family will die because of her because she’s 16 and she hasn’t even had her first kiss yet and she doesn’t know how to make it good for clients. She admits this like a confession, like it hurts. She wraps her arms around herself like a child when she asks him, quiet and ashamed: Is it worth it?
Finnick has bruises on his wrists and lacerations along his hips. He can't remember the last time he’s slept. He feels-
She isn't the first, is the thing. It’s a cruel joke - year after year, Snow threatens and bribes and auctions off these child killers. And inevitably, they come to him afterwards, seeking comfort, seeking reassurance. Finnick isn’t God and he isn’t Snow, he doesn't know how to tell them that he can’t even help himself. But they find him anyways, hoping against hope, young and scared and desperate, all of them children.
If he were an honest man - and isn’t that a funny thought, an honest man - Finnick would tell them that it will never get better and it will never stop. He would tell them that their body will never be theirs again, that they’ll go to sleep with phantom hands sliding along skin and wake up screaming and this will never, ever leave them.
If Finnick was even half the person that they hoped he was, he would lean down and tell them a secret that he holds close and true: they would all be better off dead.
Instead, Finnick, beautiful liar that he is, keeps his gaze absolutely steady when he promises her that it gets better.
—
Finnick Odair is nothing but a killer to bring to heel and a thing to possess. The truth of the matter is he should’ve died in the arena; for the crime of his perverse survival, the Capitol takes his humanity. He will perform and he will play their games and they will lift him up until he swallows the sun. He will tell countless nameless, faceless people that he loves them until he is finally deemed undesirable, and then he will fade into obscurity and he will die.
This is the life that has been left for him.
—
Finnick is sprawled out on some gaudy Capitol couch, the kind designed with sharp angles and rare metals and absolutely no comfort in mind. Johanna's legs are tangled in his, a bottle lying uncapped and empty between them. Johanna twists her wrist, flicks a pocket knife absentmindedly. It glints cold as it spins through the air and there is a punched-out second where it seems like she will let the blade fall before she catches it a perfect quarter-inch from her thigh. Her body is a warm line against his. Her aim never falters. Finnick loves her and he wants to rip her apart for it, bone to flesh to tendon. He wants to scream and claw, get away from me don’t touch me why do you people keep touching me. He doesn’t move though, the pills he’d taken leaving him languid and slow and—
“Do you ever miss the arena?”
It slips out as an afterthought, unconscious and entirely honest. Johanna shifts, snapping to awareness with a victor's reflex.
“What the hell, Finnick. No. No, I don’t miss the arena, I’m not actually a fucking sociopath,” Johanna's voice is cutting, which means that he's actually managed to hit a nerve, “what is wrong with you?”
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
The thing is, Finnick knows that he’s an awful person. He burns with the certainty of it, the knowledge of all the ways he has been ruined and ruined others in turn. He doesn’t want to miss the person he was at 14, brutal and bloody, but most nights he wakes up curling his hands around a phantom trident regardless. No matter how he denies it, he misses the simple violence the games afforded him, the sheer physicality of it.
He thinks that he just misses being made animal somewhere that wasn’t at the foot of a Capitol bed.
Finnick wants to see his clients strung up and out and lifeless with the same fervent obsession that the Capitol wants him naked and begging. In the arena, he can make people who hurt him hurt. The games make him a murderer, but they also make him human.
To say this to Johanna, who for all her callous cruelty will always be better than him, would be unspeakably cruel. He barks a laugh and says nothing at all.
That night, he dreams of sex and death and blood, thinks of the sharpened edge of a fish hook and how it would slide through lecherous eyes.
It has been so long since Finnick has been anything but desirable.
—
Finnick hasn’t always been like this, except for the part where he has.
He wasn’t born charming, but he was born to the sea and he has always been adaptable. He’s smart and he’s always seen things through. Give him a chance and he’ll win with it. Give him a smile and he’ll steal your heart. Give him a game and he will always, always play.
It makes him Snow's perfect soldier, perfect whore.
It makes him who he is.
He’s always been good at working with what he’s been given. When Caesar had eyed him under bright studio lights, sold the world on what a heartbreaker Finnick Odair: District Four Tribute, would grow up to be, Finnick had chosen to follow through. Fourteen years old and determined to win, Finnick had slid his fishermen roots into slick Capitol charm, had taken one look at his potential sponsors and honed himself into something lethal and irresistible. Had given them exactly what they wanted, offered himself up beautiful and brilliant and unforgettable.
Fourteen and playing at sex for survival.
His own choices. Finnick was not born charming but he was born beautiful and he has always known to press his advantages.
And in the end, that's all that really matters, isn't it?
—
“Let me tell you a secret, little victor,” his client purrs, running a sharp stiletto nail down the line of his sternum, “I’ve always been a little jealous of those tributes you killed. There’s just something so- intimate about it. You look fantastic covered in blood. And, well, you know I’ve always liked the thrill.”
She tells him that he’s most beautiful when he kills, that he looks like art when he hurts. She bites at his ear and tells him that she wants him to hunt her down. She’s the daughter of a Gamemaker, or something of the sort. She is not afraid of him - she has never been afraid at all.
It’s been years and years since Finnick won his games. Most of his clients don’t care about his status as a victor anymore. Nowadays, they want The Finnick Odair: charming playboy extraordinaire, tame Capitol pet. But Finnick still gets the occasional client who's enamoured with the violence underlying his body. People who get off on the deaths of real children. Clients like her, who want Finnick to kill for them and kill them in turns, who love his capacity for pain. Finnick hates everyone he takes to bed, but he dreads these most of all.
But it’s been years since it mattered what Finnick wants.
So he’s chasing her, and she's shrieking, fake and delighted, and he hates her, hates her hideous ignorance and the mockery she makes of his life. He thinks she's disgusting and he hates her, sudden and irrevocable.
So he chases her and then he catches her and then he pins her down and straddles her the way she so obviously wants.
And then he puts his hands around her neck.
“You’re so fucking disgusting,” he snarls, feeling manic, like the world has slid sideways and nothing is real, “just a filthy, pathetic little girl. You don’t know what you’ve let into your bed, your house. You don’t know anything. I’m going to kill you. I’m going to fucking kill you and then you can see how intimate death can really be”.
For a moment the world falls into nothing but the clear-cut lines of his hatred and his steady, capable hands. He can feel each incremental shift of fragile bones under her neck. He’s going to do it, he thinks, hysterical. He’s going to kill her and she’s going to deserve it and it will all finally, finally be over.
He hates her and he wants to kill her.
He hates himself when he loosens his grip.
Finnick thinks of his family back in Four, who he hasn't spoken to in years but who he has given everything to save. He thinks of Johanna, and the devastating curve of her spine when she learned that she has no home left to her at all. There is no room for violence in him, anymore; he simply cannot afford the cost. Finnick forces his hands obedient and still, smoothes down his edges as he breathes out. Then he's smiling down at her like he’s harmless again, indulgent like a lover. She arches up to meet him and there's still no trace of fear in her dark eyes, only desire. Finnick's choked her hard enough to bruise; tomorrow there will be a dark handprint around her throat, and he knows that she will only love him more for it.
When she grows bored with her self-constructed games, he lets her flip him, uses his own momentum to take them both to the ground. Finnick forces himself to fall pliant, makes himself art. He goes down easy, and the moment of impact when his back hits the floor leaves him breathless and sick.
He stays down.