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Finnick tilts his head back and cascades crumbs into his mouth. Then, while still chewing, he scrapes the plastic clean.
Gale’s heart snares on itself. It’s the guilt that does it, of knowing he once thought Finnick a spoiled Capitol pet (and forgot that pets are captives too.) Gale believed the lies of Finnick’s excess.
But now Gale knows the truth.
Finnick collects sand dollars and scallop shells. Finnick’s bookshelves are full of spines broken from rereading. And now, Finnick downs flakes of kelp and pebbles of salt, the bread garnish that Gale dusts off before toasting. Caught, but not sheepish, Finnick smiles. On TV, that smile was sterile. In person, it’s the sun on a still winter afternoon.
“Mags couldn’t stand waste.”
Gale keeps finding lies, and Finnick keeps killing them. Of course the woman that loved Finnick knew about starving. She lived through the dark days, and a hunger games (and didn’t live through another). (How strange, she left Finnick days before Gale found him hiding in a stairwell. His teeth then, when parted with manic laughter, were daisy-white kindling.)
I love you, Gale thinks, but doesn’t say, because he’s a miner’s son, because he cannot risk showing he’s happy.
But Finnick knows better from a life spent with the ocean’s freedoms. He tilts his head, and Gale crosses the expanse of the kitchen. They kiss. Finnick tastes like the sea and feels like a future that Gale finally gets to hope for.