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“I just think it’s messed up to have the arena be one giant fish farm,” Beau says as he runs his hand through his bleached hair. Back when he was a tribute, he was a brunette with a buzz cut but since all the other victors from District One are blonde, he eventually had to follow. The result is that, as a group, they always look like they stepped out of some kind of myth with their light skin, light hair, and flowing robes. Conceptually, it gives them a cohesive edge few districts have.
Peeta isn’t supposed to focus on that but Beau has been complaining about the arena for days now and he’s sick of hearing the same thing over and over again. He came to the rooftop to relax, only to have Beau and Artemis follow him like ducklings. On the way up, Beau was talking nonstop while Artemis rolled her eyes and winked at Peeta as though they were in on the same joke.
“I’d be happy if was a real fish farm instead of mostly empty ponds. Then we at least wouldn’t have to worry about sending down rations all the time,” Artemis says as she sits down next to Peeta and leans against him. When he tries to move back a little, she picks up his left arm to snuggle against his chest. He tries not to sneeze when her red curls tickle his nose.
Beau throws her a disapproving glance and then raises his brows at Peeta, as if waiting for a cue to attack.
Peeta sometimes wonders how he constantly ends up in a group of three with them. He likes them both and since Artemis is only a year younger than them, it makes sense in a way but the two rarely get along.
“As if your tributes know how to catch fish,” Beau says with a scoff. “We’ve all seen the footage of how they lost a sword because the boy threw it in a pond and hoped for the best.”
Artemis sits up, probably ready to hurl insults at him, so he adds, “The point is that the arena is made for one set of tributes only. The rest of us are fish fodder.”
Artemis sighs and leans her head against Peeta’s chest without protesting. No matter how much she hates to agree with Beau on anything, they ultimately share the same opinion when it’s about District Four. In the early stages in the arena, Careers usually work together because they pick allies on potential abilities, so Peeta assumed that Career victors, too, viewed each other as kindred spirits. But somehow, there’s a rift. Districts One and Two are the most obvious rivals when it comes to absolute numbers since they supply the most victors. But what often seems to unite them is a shared dislike for–
“What’s this?” a voice asks behind them. “A secret youth group meeting?”
Peeta instantly flinches and tries to lift his arm off Artemis, only to have her wrap her arm around his chest like a cat not wanting to get up. This is what he worried would happen. There are two reasons why he always goes to the roof on his own. One is that he genuinely wants to be alone sometimes. The other is that this is where he always hopes to meet that one person he rarely catches on his own.
Finnick smiles with his hands in his pockets when he strolls over to them but raises his brow when he skims over Peeta and Artemis. All Peeta wants is to explain that it’s not what it looks like, even if part of him wonders whether it would even matter to Finnick.
“So what are we talking about?” Finnick says cheerfully, completely ignoring Beau’s glare when he sits down right next to him.
Beau scoffs. “If you think it’s a youth group meeting, why do you assume you can just join in? Aren’t you in your thirties?”
Artemis snorts a laugh at that but hides her grin behind her hand when Finnick throws her a look.
“Twenty-nine, actually,” he says, still smiling.
“You look younger. Twenty-five tops,” Artemis says. Her voice jumps a little, probably in part because she tries not to laugh and because she isn’t immune to his charm either.
That’s probably why they all hate him so much. It’s impossible not to want to be seen by him. He’s a magnet pulling everyone in. She proves that when he flashes her an extra bright smile and her grip around Peeta’s chest tightens a little.
Beau, meanwhile, is still in attack mode. He grimaces, cracks his neck as though to get ready for a fight, and then chooses to use words instead. “So who did you have to fuck to get an arena made for you? One of the Gamemakers?”
This time, something in Finnick’s expressions shifts. The corners of his mouth are still raised but the smile doesn't reach his eyes when he turns to Beau. “What makes you think the arena is for me?”
“It’s a fucking fish farm,” Beau says as though he can’t believe he has to spell it out.
“So? All your tributes know how to swim,” Finnick says. He sounds almost too calm.
Beau grimaces incredulously. “How is that even remotely the point? Even if they can swim, they don’t know how to catch fish or tell how deep the water is. Don’t tell me you’re completely oblivious of how rigged this whole thing is. Why else are your tributes the ones who killed the most people so far? They literally drowned Peeta’s boy the moment he got off his plate.”
Peeta winces when all eyes are suddenly on him. He had no intention of being pulled into the whole discussion. When it comes down to it, nothing is fair but none of them can blame each other for the system they live in. But here he is, being pitied for one small part in a game that no one in his district is supposed to win, no matter what the arena looks like.
Artemis pats his chest with a sad sigh and hugs him more closely as if he’s an injured person who needs her warmth. Even Beau looks almost sorry that he mentioned it. It was a sickening scene when the boy died and Peeta will never get used to seeing those things but none of them are innocent in this.
The worst part is that he has trouble thinking about all the implications because his brain only latches on one thing. Finnick’s eyes are on him now and he feels a shiver running down his spine because he can’t read his expression. When Finnick’s gaze shifts away from him, he feels both relieved and desperate like a plant being denied sunlight.
“Isn’t it a little hypocritical to pretend that you care about the District Twelve tributes?” Finnick asks, an edge to his voice. Beau seems about to retort, but Finnick just continues. “Statistically, they’re most likely to be slaughtered by the tributes from the districts with Academies, so if it hadn’t been mine, one of yours would have attempted the same. In fact, from what I remember, both of the Twelve tributes last year were killed by the male tribute from One. So what are we discussing here? That it should have been your tributes doing the killing?”
This is exactly the kind of thing Peeta hates so much when other victors discuss the arena. They always talk about strategies as if they’re not all connected in their need to save children.
Beau frowns. “The point is that the arena–”
“Ah, yes, the arena,” Finnick says. “Right. That must have been my doing because fish ponds mean that my tributes survive no matter what, right? So what about the one last year? District Two is an arid region, so they should have had the advantage in a desert arena. Who do you think convinced the Gamemakers then? Artemis perhaps? Did you blame it all on her, too?”
Beau throws Artemis a glance but doesn’t respond. His face is a mask of stone.
“Odd then that, in the end, the winner came from Six,” Finnick says. “Almost as if the design of the arena only has a small impact on the actual odds of survival, just the way age and previous training have.”
Beau eyes him for a moment and then asks, “So you're saying you had nothing to do with it? The arena just happens to look like that and this isn’t about you being under pressure because your district only seems to produce failures?”
“This is pointless,” Artemis mutters and Peeta agrees. It’s futile discussions like that that continue to divide them. Almost all of them lose their tributes every year but rather than blame it on the people who force children into the arena, they blame it on each other.
Just when Peeta thinks that the discussion can’t get any worse and wonders how to ease the tension, Beau adds, “I mean, if we’re talking about statistics, how about we look at yours? Who wouldn’t be desperate in your situation? The way I see it, you’re the only former tribute from Four who isn’t either dead or crazy.”
Artemis sharply sucks in the air through her teeth and Peeta straightens up a little. Finnick rarely loses his composure but there is a limit to everything. The smile is completely wiped off his face.
For a second, he looks as though he is ready to throw hands.
But then his expression changes again.
When he puts one hand on Beau’s thigh, Beau tries to move away but Finnick keeps him in place, running his hand up the inside of his leg. “You seem awfully interested in me,” he says, his voice familiar in a way that makes Peeta feel a pit in his stomach. Finnick used the same voice on him before.
Beau catches Finnick’s wrist before his hand can reach his crotch but Finnick doesn’t let that deter him. He already leans over to him, running his free hand up his neck. Beau stares at him with wide eyes but doesn’t fight him off even though they’re similar in height and build. He often talks about that, about how he could take him on if they were both in the arena, but in this moment, none of his usual defiance seems left.
“Did you picture it?” Finnick asks, breathing against his neck. “The things I would do to someone to make them change the arena for me? Did that turn you on?”
It’s sickening to watch because it’s the exact same. That’s what Peeta keeps falling for, too. He probably always looks just as helpless as Beau who holds onto his back as if he’s drowning. Peeta wants to look away but finds himself staring like a spectator from the Capitol.
Finnick does this to everyone. Peeta hates that thought.
Beau gasps when Finnick is on top of him, one thigh between his legs, one hand on his chest. It’s then that something shifts. Finnick throws Peeta a glance before pushing Beau flat on the bench. When Beau, suddenly aware of the change in pace, tries to shove him off himself, Finnick holds one of his arms down and climbs up, putting his knee on his chest and his other hand on his neck.
“Seems to me like you’re projecting,” Finnick says, his voice unusually cruel. “Just because you roll over like a dog in heat doesn’t mean that everyone does. If I could request an arena, I wouldn’t get a few small ponds with murky water, I would get an ocean and end the Hunger Games in a day.”
Beau grabs his arm and tries to push him off him but only produces gurgles when Finnick keeps him in place.
“Shit,” Artemis says and jumps up before Peeta can even begin to make sense of what he sees.
“Finnick, stop!” Artemis says sharply and tries to pull at Finnick’s arm but he just shifts his weight until it’s all on Beau’s chest. She quickly tries to put him in a headlock but Finnck elbows her hard enough that she falls back. “Peeta! Help!” she shouts.
It’s only then that Peeta snaps out of it. He scrambles to his feet. Artemis is trying to pull Finnick’s hands off Beau’s neck to give him air, so Peeta figures he has to attack from a different direction. He gets behind him and tries to get his arms below Finnick’s to lift him up, even if he has no hope of getting very far with that because Finnick is heavier and stronger than him. Peeta was a decent wrestler as a boy but he also often just had the advantage as one of the few kids who weren’t starving.
But then he finds Finnick going slack below him and almost falls backward when he lifts him off Beau with too much force.
When Beau starts coughing, Artemis instantly leans over him as a shield. Once Peeta gets Finnick off the bench, he moves in front of him to block him, even though he doubts that Finnick plans any further attacks. Finnick’s expression is perfectly apathetic, as if he himself doesn’t know why he is in this situation either.
“Let’s leave first,” Peeta says, lightly pushing him toward the exit. Finnick looks down at him, suddenly smiling more fondly than throughout the rest of the exchange. It’s confusing, so Peeta tries to focus on moving him forward without looking him in the face.
They’re almost at the door toward the elevators when Beau shouts, “You fucking asshole! You’re just as crazy as your girlfriend!” The last word is barely more than an angry hiss because his voice starts fading.
For a split second, it seems as though Finnick is about to turn back but then he just blows a kiss over his shoulder while Peeta pushes him a little more urgently.
It’s only when the elevator doors close that he can take a deep breath. Up until the last second he was worried that either Finnick could dash back or that Beau would follow them and make it all even worse. He's tired of these moments when other victors forget that they aren’t tributes any longer.
“I think you can let go of me now, Peeta,” Finnick says.
Peeta looks down at the wrist he’s still grabbing and then at Finnick who smiles at him as though this is any other day. Unlike Beau, he doesn’t think that Finnick has lost his mind but there is an incredibly irrational side to him that makes him wary. For the moment, it feels safer not to loosen his grip.
“What were you even thinking?” he asks. “What’s the point of antagonizing other mentors? Do you want to fight everyone in District One when they come to retaliate?”
Finnick just shrugs. “Not sure if the others would side with Beau. Augustus keeps calling him a diva behind his back and Cashmere made sure not to tell him about the vineyard picnic they were all invited to. That’s why he’s still here.”
Peeta grimaces. He would assume that victors would always stand with the others from their district but that has been his mistake all along. They all survived an arena in which they actively wanted someone else from their district to die. Teamwork in the Hunger Games is always a temporary matter and alliances can kill the unprepared. It’s a grim truth.
“That doesn’t explain why you would stoop so low as to attack him,” he says. Because even if everything he says makes sense, Finnick is supposed to be one of the levelheaded victors. That’s the main reason why Peeta decided to trust him despite being a Career. Even if he likes them, he still trusts him more than Beau and Artemis.
Finnick’s smile falters. Peeta thinks he knows what this is about. If Beau hadn’t mentioned Annie, Finnick probably wouldn’t have snapped the way he did. Everyone has a weak spot, even a living legend.
It takes Finnick a second. He frowns at his own reflection but then puts on the same grin again that signals that he’s going to deflect.
“I guess I was just in a bad mood,” he says dramatically. “Here I was, hoping to catch some alone time with my favorite fellow victor, only to find him hugging a girl. You should cut me some slack. Most people make poor choices when they’re heartbroken.”
They’re empty words. Peeta knows that and doesn’t mean to react but finds the heat rising up his face.
Before he can even begin to decide how to counter, Finnick looks at the elevator buttons and says, “So what’s next? Are you planning to come with me?”
Peeta follows his gaze. He only pressed the button for Finnick’s floor because he was focused on getting him out of the way before anyone could get hurt. Since Finnick seems calm now, he could instead get off on his own floor and be done with it. But if it was that easy, he wouldn’t constantly be in these situations.
“I was invited to a party later tonight,” he says.
Finnick nods, looking at the display above the elevator door. “Me, too, but the way I see it, we still have some time before that.”
It’s another of those moments when the safest choice would be to decline. But what then? Peeta would return to his apartment, check if Haymitch was still breathing, and then continue to watch the arena where his remaining tribute is slowly bleeding to death. Before the party, when he plans to get her a sponsorship, he can’t do anything but watch. That’s why he was talking to Beau and Artemis after lunch in the first place. He doesn’t know why Finnick is toying with him but it’s not as if he doesn’t have his own selfish reasons.
When the elevator stops, he lets go of Finnick’s wrist and takes his hand instead. Anything is better than being alone.
Entering the District Four apartment always feels like stepping into a strange dream. The District One apartment is too bright because it’s adorned with too many gold and crystal ornaments, making Peeta feel even poorer when he compares it to the practical design on his floor, but in District Four, everything feels surreal. Maybe his view is warped because his heart is always racing when he ends up here.
Finnick leads him along the corridor, his hand warm.
At the door to his room, Peeta stops, accidentally causing him to trip.
When he turns around to him, Peeta says, “I don’t want to clean up later, so I don’t want to do anything.”
Finnick frowns. “You want to go back upstairs?”
“No, I just–” Peeta says, grimacing. “Can we just– I don’t know. Rest?”
It’s a stupid risk. They both know why Finnick keeps bringing him here, so there is no point in asking for anything beyond that. It’s just a physical thing, nothing more. But part of him still wants to test the outer boundaries.
Finnick searches his gaze for a moment but then just shrugs, letting go of his hand. “Sure. Fine with me.”
For a moment, Peeta thinks that he made a grave mistake.
He sits down on the much too soft bed, trying to suppress a groan when his knee starts throbbing. In the rush upstairs, he must have put too much pressure on the prosthetic leg.
Finnick, meanwhile, ignores him. He has his back turned to him as he pulls his tight shirt over his head and rummages through a drawer for a fresh one. Usually, when Peeta sees him in any state of undress, it’s with an intention but this feels different. It’s as if he forced himself into a much too intimate scene.
When Finnick changes his pants, too, Peeta tries not to stare and instead pulls himself up the bed to lean his back against the headrest. In an attempt to look at anything but Finnick, his eyes land on a book on the nightstand. It’s clothbound and looks more worn than anything else he usually sees in the Capitol, so he suspects that it must be from District Four. It’s like a small glimpse at a version of Finnick he will probably never see.
“You can have a look if you want,” Finnick says, looking at him from the vanity mirror where he rubs some kind of lotion on his face. “It’s a poetry collection.”
Peeta hesitantly picks it up. “I didn’t know you like poetry.”
Finnick shugs. “I don’t but the people here like when you use flowery language on them, so I memorized a few lines.”
Peeta huffs a laugh because that does sound like something Finnick would do. He’s beginning to think that the difference between Finnick and other popular victors isn’t that he is somehow more gifted than them but that he is more willing to play different roles. Some of the pages in the book are dog-eared, probably to mark the poems worth remembering. Peeta flips open one of the pages and then looks up when the weight on the mattress shifts because Finnick flops onto it.
When Finnick crawls up to him and leans over him, Peeta isn’t sure if he has it in him to protest. But rather than try anything, Finnick just wriggles his head under Peeta’s arm and collapses on his chest. He faintly smells like lotion.
“What are you doing?” Peeta asks when Finnick wraps one arm around his chest. It’s the same thing Artemis did earlier.
“I wanted to check if this is as comfortable as it looked,” Finnick says, his breath warm even through the fabric of Peeta’s shirt.
“Is it?” he asks, gingerly resting his hand on his shoulder.
Finnick shifts his head a little but doesn’t respond. He doesn’t move any further, so Peeta figures that to be his answer.
They stay like that for a long moment. Peeta struggles to flip through the book with one hand while trying not to move too much. When Finnick’s breath is so even that Peeta thinks he must have fallen asleep, he idly ruffles his hair.
It’s strange. Everything in this place is strange but he can’t bring himself not to cling to small moments like this.
It doesn’t matter if it’s all just a game.
“Artemis was looking for you,” Beau says as he picks up a glass with a bright blue drink off a tray. They stand in front of a buffet that contains nothing but liquids, some labeled as food, some as liquor. The party is hosted by a company selling diet drinks but Peeta still hoped for something solid to eat. His stomach has been churning since he was offered something that tasted like fermented milk.
“When?” Peeta asks, looking around. He hasn’t seen Artemis all evening because he ended up hitching a ride with Beau after Haymitch left without him.
Beau doesn’t look at him but at the hall. “Earlier. When you disappeared with that asshole.” His tone is almost a little too casual.
“I’ll look for her later,” Peeta says, picking up something that looks suspiciously like frog spawn but smells like strawberries.
Beau scans him up and down with a cool expression. They usually get along because Beau tends to see Peeta as a harmless bystander but there’s something guarded about him now. Peeta has noticed something like a wall ever since that ride to the venue with the others from District One. While everyone was chatting, Beau just stared outside.
“You weren’t with him, were you?” he finally asks.
It’s an accusation but Peeta isn’t completely sure about the aim. It could be because Beau sees Finnick as an opponent and thinks that Peeta is betraying him by switching sides. Or it could be connected to the way he just gave in when Finnick manhandled him. The scene is still burned inside Peeta’s mind, so it would be even more vivid for someone as proud as Beau.
Whatever it is, honesty is rarely the right path in the Capitol, so Peeta says, “I made sure he got off the elevator on his floor and then went to the bar across the street to look for Haymitch.”
Beau nods, suddenly disinterested. “Right.” He drinks a sip, then seems to catch the eye of someone at the other end of the room, and pats Peeta’s shoulder as he stalks off. “See you later.”
Relationships in the Capitol are fickle.
When it comes down to it, they’re a group of strangers asked to interact with each other once a year despite only knowing the worst of each other. They smile and lie and then spend time together anyway because they can’t leave and because spending time with other victors still feels more sincere than with any of the Capitol citizens.
Peeta still doesn’t feel ready to take the next steps but does his best to charm the people dressed in bright clothes who ask him ridiculous questions. He laughs and chats and tries not to feel sick at every drinkable meal he is offered and the way some of the people touch him as though he is livestock on a market. He hates this world. He hates how he is stuck in the middle of it.
That is why he’s thankful for the small moments. He is thankful for Johanna who hands him a piece of bread she pulls out from a hidden pocket in her flowery skirt, and for Haymitch who pretends to throw up and makes him sit down with him right when a guy in a yellow suit tries to shove his hand down Peeta’s pants. He is glad when Artemis dances with him, when Wiress warns him of an orange drink, when Brutus invites him over to a circle of guys playing cards. And he likes it a little too much when Finnick pulls him over to a dark corner.
Finnick, clearly intoxicated, cups his face with a bright expression and Peeta feels his heart skip a beat but also has to laugh. “Why do you smell like chicken again?”
“They have a drink that tastes like rotisserie chicken but without the calories,” Finnick says happily and doesn’t wait for a response before kissing him as if the next menu item is him.
It’s a game.
It’s not real life.
Even if that’s true, Peeta figures that there is no point in denying himself the few moments that do not fill him with dread.