Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/ works/7652095. Rating: Explicit Archive Warning: Underage Category: F/F Fandom: The_Hunger_Games_(Movies), Hunger_Games_Trilogy_-_Suzanne_Collins Relationship: Katniss_Everdeen/Johanna_Mason Character: Johanna_Mason, Katniss_Everdeen Additional Tags: Canon_Universe, Alternate_Universe_-_Canon_Divergence, Solo_Victor Katniss_Everdeen, Attempted_Rape/Non-Con, Implied/Referenced_Underage Prostitution, Choices, Loss_of_Virginity, Drunk_Sex, Lesbian_Sex, Cunnilingus, Vaginal_Fingering, National_Girlfriends_Day, Femslash Stats: Published: 2016-08-01 Words: 5820 ****** Choice and Freedom ****** by afterandalasia Summary The thing about the other Victors is that, no matter all your differences, they're the only ones who really understand what it's like to be a Victor. So Johanna isn't wholly surprised when Katniss appears, drunk and angry, on her doorstep in the middle of the night. What surprises her a little more is Katniss's suggestion - that Johanna be the one to take her virginity, so that the Capitol at least cannot take that from her.   (Tagged for Underage because Katniss is canonically 17.) Notes AU where Katniss wins alone, with no rebellion. General warnings for canon situations for victors in Hunger Games - forced prostitution, rape/attempted rape. Johanna and Katniss talk very explicitly about what happens to victors. I've only recently heard about National Girlfriends Day, but I'm going to pretend I misheard it as National Femslash Day, because why not. Johanna isn’t all that surprised when there’s a knock on her door in the middle of the night. The victors rely on each other; always have, always will. Whether it’s a shoulder to cry on or someone to fuck, there’s no-one who understands better than another victor. Even those who are Careers tend to come into the fold. She throws on a robe anyway, more because she likes the feel of silk on her skin than lingering modesty, and wanders barefoot to the door. A glance through the peephole reveals a young woman with dark hair, head hanging, and an absurd thought flashes through Johanna’s mind before she pushes it aside. It’s not as if this is Katniss Everdeen; this young woman is swaying, wearing some filmy blue dress, with makeup smeared on her cheeks. The Katniss that Johanna knows is far too prim for that. With a sigh, Johanna opens the door. The smell of alcohol, absurdly high heels, a blue dress, false eyelashes and smeared lipstick, and yet… she stops, Johanna Mason of all people actually struck speechless. It is Katniss Everdeen. “What the fuck?” says Johanna. Katniss looks up. Her eyes are bloodshot, slightly glazed, and she has a hand jammed against the doorframe as if to prop herself up. “I think that’s what they planned,” she drawls. The thought of Katniss drunk is not one that Johanna had ever entertained, despite the fact that Katniss shares a suite with Haymitch now. Katniss has always acted so disgusted, repulsed at the thought of alcohol, asking one of the other victors before she drinks anything in the Capitol once she realised how easily they can mask the taste here. Then it dawns on her. A seventeen-year-old girl, in her first year mentoring, pretty and new and glittering in the lights. “Did they rape you?” she says flatly. It might be a sign of how drunk Katniss is that she doesn’t flinch at the ugly word. Instead she meets Johanna’s eye and smiles a dangerous, predator’s smile. “He tried,” she said. “I stuck a knife in his cock.” Somehow, the thought of Katniss using such a word is like a bucket of cold water, shocking Johanna deeper into reality. This can’t be some dream or imagination; she would never imagine Katniss Everdeen saying the word cock. The moment of shock passes, though, and Johanna smirks in return. “Nice touch,” she says. Katniss will pay for it, sooner or later. Whether here in the Capitol or back home in the District, they would find a way to make her pay. But Johanna, of all people, knows how good it feels to take power back just for an instant. Katniss tries to take a step into the suite, stumbles, and growls. “Stupid shoes,” she snarls. She kicks off one, sending it skidding across the floor, tries to kick off the second, and completely fails. A second kick does not work either, and then she reaches down and yanks it off furiously, tossing it into the corridor behind her. “I wish Cinna was back.” Getting bumped to one of the richer Districts was supposed to be a promotion. Anyone who knew Cinna knew that he had been furious, and that it had only been a way to send him somewhere where Tributes would be less likely to listen to him. In a year or two he would get retired, or something would happen to him as well. It always did. “Why do you think I ignore my stylist?” says Johanna, stepping aside to let Katniss stagger in. The girl is shedding glitter and hairpins. “They put a wig on me, I take it off again.” They’d tried, over the years. When she had been eighteen years old and a new victor as well, her hair had been waist-length and oak-rich; now she hacks it short every year, right before the Reaping. For all the things that the Capitol can do, it has not yet worked out how to grow back hair. Katniss rubs her hand across her eyes, smearing navy and silver over the bridge of her nose and her right temple. “Some stupid fluttery bird,” she says, and even drunk she can make her voice drip with disdain. “Make me into some…” she gestures to herself, and her next words come out thick with disgust; “virgin sacrifice.” She takes another staggering step, then gives up and throws herself down onto the huge, curved couch. The insolence is all Katniss even if the clothes aren’t, even if the words aren’t. Like the Capitol can’t get to what’s underneath. When Katniss’s eyes become a little too thoughtful, Johanna has an idea of what’s coming. “Did they do it to you?” she says, the words coming out clearer, sharper. “At first,” Johanna admits. There’s no point in lying, not tonight, not to a girl who has just nearly been sold herself. “But then there was an accident.” She thinks it was an accident. Tells herself it must have been, it wasn’t convenient enough for the Capitol. “And then it was just me. No more leverage.” Katniss looks at her with eyes that are half a challenge and half terror. “I’m not losing Prim.” “Then you’ll be fucked by whoever pays to fuck you.” says Johanna simply. She should feel bad about saying something like that, so baldly, but frankly she’s almost impressed with herself that she had the restraint not to say whoever pays to rape you. She closes the door and moves to stand in front of Katniss, folding her arms across her chest. There’s a long, unsteady pause. “I’m a killer,” says Katniss finally, her eyes never leaving Johanna’s. “They made me that. How much worse can this be? It’s just my body, not my head.” Her lips have the curve of a sneer in them, but her words carry a lance of pain. Johanna knows that, as well. That when you kill someone, it doesn’t quite sink in at first, and then it hits in waves of self-hatred that can either drown you or erode you away to your hardest edges. It’s not hard to guess which one happened to Johanna. “So, what?” says Johanna. “You’re going to fuck the next one? It’ll probably be tomorrow. Maybe the day after. This one won’t let you stick a knife in him.” “I’ll keep Prim safe,” Katniss replies, but this time there’s just a hint of waver in her voice. Her mouth closes, she blinks a couple of times, and swallows. “Can I get a drink?” she adds, voice just a little darker. “Good thing you asked me, and not Haymitch. I’ll get you something that doesn’t taste like it should go in an engine.” Of course, all the suites have well-stocked bars. Johanna walks over to hers, and grabs the first bottle she sees that won’t taste of alcohol at all, bending low to get it from the bottom shelf. It’s only as she straightens up and turns around that she realises Katniss is still looking at her. “What?” says Johanna. “Most of the Capitol’s seen it anyway.” “Why?” says Katniss. “When they used to rape you?” Hearing that word on her lips is far worse than the word cock. There was something almost comical about cock, something absurd in hearing Katniss fucking Everdeen use it, but rape sounds dark and ugly in a way that Johanna hasn’t heard in years; she’s grown so used to hearing about it, from the other victors, that it’s part of their life. She supposes that someone new to their little world would still be shocked. Johanna shrugs. “There were still offers, at first. And sometimes I thought about them, if they were promising money for my tributes. But why should they pay for what they see for free?” Even standing up, her robe is skimming the top of her thighs, and she didn’t bother cinching it too tightly over her breasts. “So after a while, the offers stopped. And I fuck who I want to fuck, instead.” “Does that work?” Katniss looks shrewd, despite the way that she’s lounging back across the couch. “For me.” Johanna sits next to her, opens the bottle, and takes a swig. It’s sparkling and tastes fruity in an indistinct sort of way, without being overpoweringly sweet. “Not for everyone. Not for Finnick.” Katniss takes the bottle, but pauses for a moment at the mention of Finnick’s name. Ah, and there’s that moment of realisation. It’s not the first one that Johanna’s seen. “Why does he do it, then?” says Katniss. Taking the bottle back, Johanna takes a long drink before replying. It’s late, and she hasn’t eaten, and when she isn’t in the Capitol she doesn’t drink all that much. At least it makes for cheap dates. “At least it gives him some power,” she says finally, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “Some choice, you know? He might not decide on everyone he fucks, but at least he gets to choose some of them.” “Does that work?” She considers it for a moment. “Yeah. It works.” As much as anything ever can. Katniss reaches over and takes hold of the bottle, but doesn’t tug, just leaves her hand resting there for a moment. Then she slides it down, hand brushing over Johanna’s. “Maybe I should fuck someone,” she says. “At least then I won’t be a virgin.” The Capitol can reconstruct that, as well, with their medicine. Johanna knows some victors who have been sold as virgins several times. But that’s all part of the façade, the pretence; the victors themselves know that it’s all a lie. “You could,” Johanna agrees. “Half the Capitol wants to pay to fuck a victor. The other half would if they had the money. Or you could ask one of the other victors.” Katniss pulls up the hem of the top layer of her dress, and uses it to wipe off her lipstick. It smears bloody red on the fabric. “You do that?” “Yeah,” says Johanna, with another shrug. “Pretty much any of us will. We’ve been there. Pick carefully, though,” she adds, smirking, “Unless you’ve secretly got the hots for Chaff.” Normally, Katniss would probably have looked disgusted, but now she laughs bitterly. Johanna can’t decide whether she prefers this Katniss or not: she talks more, seems to care less about what people think of her, but there are so many jagged edges and so much pain in her voice. It’s different than the girl that Johanna first met on the Victory Tour, six months ago, when Haymitch introduced them. “So that leaves, what? Gloss,” Katniss started counting sloppily on her fingers. “Brutus, Beetee, Finnick… Spark?” “If he isn’t off his head on morphling,” notes Johanna. “Besides, Cashmere would probably oblige as well.” Or Cashmere and Gloss together, but she isn’t sure that Katniss is quite ready for the idea of threesomes just yet. “Or Lyme. Not Annie.” That’s Finnick’s leverage, though she won’t say that. Whatever their history, Johanna knows that she owes him that. Katniss looks over, dark-eyed, and runs her hand over Johanna’s again. “Or you.” Is that supposed to be some clumsy attempts at seduction? Katniss was probably wearing some silly fake nails when she went out, because her nails are clipped very short like they always do in preparation for them. Johanna has the image of her plucking them off one at a time and letting them flutter down like autumn leaves in some garish colour. Neon is all the rage this year. “Why?” Johanna raises an eyebrow. “You want to fuck me?” Ordinarily, Katniss would blush just from a wink from Finnick, but now her cheeks barely colour even where the powder has been rubbed away. “Would you?” “Would I what?” Johanna pulls the bottle from Katniss’s grasp and takes another swig, closing her eyes. She’s preparing her words, thinking of the difference between enjoyable sex and getting something out of the way, and closes her eyes just for a moment, but then looks down sharply at the sound of shifting fabric to see that Katniss has managed to pull off her dress. Katniss gives her a look that is all challenge. “Fuck me,” she says. If she was supposed to be sold tonight, it at least explains why her dress was so easy to remove. Beneath it, her lingerie is hardly anything, wisps of blue silk and white lace that really don’t hide anything. Johanna can see the outline of Katniss’s nipples, the pink of her areola through the lace, each rise and fall of them as she breathes. Johanna can’t help but look her over, the small breasts, the flat stomach with its faint suggestion of muscles even slumped like this, and as her eyes flit to the apex of Katniss’s thighs the girl parts them. Between the silk and the tiny slip that the fabric is, there’s already plenty for Johanna to see, soft pink skin. “Well?” says Katniss. “When we first came here, you could barely look at me in my short skirts,” says Johanna. It had been pretty funny, sure, seeing Katniss look away from Johanna’s cleavage and thighs, but that was a long way away. “Yeah, well. That was before I found out that the Capitol wanted to rape me,” Katniss says, with bite. “And I’d rather ask you, and if you say no ask someone else, and keep asking, than wait and see who they give me to.” “Do you want me to have sex with you?” Johanna drops the word, making sure that they aren’t hiding behind a veil of profanity. She sets the bottle aside, undoes her robe and slips it back off her shoulders, revealing her own work- hardened body. “You want to get up tomorrow and say good morning to me knowing that we’ve had sex, and see me next year, and the year after?” “Yes,” says Katniss. Part of Johanna wonders why. Why her. But then she realises that maybe she’s the closest thing Katniss has to herself, young and angry and from a District of old-fashioned manual labour. “Fine.” She climbs fully onto the couch, crawls across to Katniss, cups her face in one hand, and kisses her. For a split second, Katniss acts like she doesn’t know what to do, sitting there with her lips slack, then she moves to kiss back clumsily. How much is drink and how much is inexperience, Johanna doesn’t know, but maybe tonight will help with at least one of those. She drags her tongue along Katniss’s lower lip, and Katniss hesitates before opening her mouth, still passive, still receiving. “Kiss me back,” hisses Johanna, and scrapes her teeth over Katniss’s lower lip. At that, Katniss draws in a sharp breath and pushes up, back into Johanna’s touch, with pressure behind her lips and actual movement of her tongue in return. It’s still clumsy, still wet, mouth dragging over Johanna’s cheek as Johanna moves to straddle one of her legs, but she tries, jabs of tongue and nips of teeth, and one of her hands comes up to wind into Johanna’s short hair. It can’t get a grip, and slides down to settle on her neck instead, but that was always the point. Johanna shifts so that her thigh is pressing against Katniss’s crotch, and rocks with her their kisses, not enough for Katniss to notice at first until Johanna starts to feel wetness against her skin, slick through the silk. “What are you–” Katniss begins as Johanna slides down her throat, but then she cuts off with a gasp as Johanna licks the base of her throat instead. Johanna brings her hands up to cup Katniss’s breasts through her bra, cupping their slight curve. For years, the fashion in the Capitol has been for large, round breasts, and they never do quite feel real, never quite move like this beneath Johanna’s touch. She sucks and nibbles at Katniss’s nipple through the fabric, stroking and gently kneading at the other breast, and when she glances up Katniss’s head is thrown back, shoulders arched back as she pushes into Johanna’s touches. When she pulls the bra aside on the other breast and swaps her mouth to it, Katniss actually moans. Johanna can feel it going straight to her own vagina, pooling wet heat and an awareness of her own pulse. Katniss’s hands grope blindly at her back, then one slips down to cup Johanna’s nipple and pinch awkwardly. Johanna responds with just a press of her teeth around the nipple, instead of to the side, and Katniss bucks and makes a choking sound. It’s not the time to play rough, but there’s nothing wrong with being a little firm, she figures. She undoes Katniss’s bra in one fluid move, so quickly that Katniss might not have even noticed, then pulls up and looks down at the girl. Katniss’s hair is a mess, even more so than when it came in. In her squirming against the couch she has dislodged a couple of extensions, and Johanna slides them out and tosses them aside in turn. Then she stands up for a moment, grabs Katniss by the waist, and turns her so that she’s lying lengthways on the couch, despite a squeak of protest. “What?” says Johanna. “You expect me to fuck you while you’re slumped like that?” She snorts. “You’ll get a crick in your neck, for a start.” Katniss props herself up on her elbows. “You could have moved to a bed first.” “What, and miss the true experience of Capitol glamour?” Johanna drawls.  It makes Katniss give a snort that sounds at least vaguely amused. She pushes Katniss down, or at least tries, because this time Katniss fights back and turns it into a struggle, making Johanna draw on muscles she hardly has to bother with in the Capitol. For a moment, she can’t escape the stab of worry that Katniss will take it too seriously, will think the fight is real, but Katniss’s lips are parted and her eyes are shining and it’s arousal, not fear, in her eyes as Johanna finally manages to bring her weight to bear and press Katniss into the couch. She kisses Katniss’s throat, her neck, the curve of her breast, tasting the chemical sweetness of the moisturiser that someone must have told her to use, and only releases her arms to move further down. Somehow it’s still a surprise how wet Katniss is as Johanna pulls down her underwear, and it’s still a little disappointing as well that she’s been completely waxed, stripped down to skin and nothing more. But that’s the Capitol fashion; a year ago it had been neatly trimmed landing strips, and the year before that it had been carefully trimmed hearts and stars and who knew what fucking shape. Johanna takes a petty pleasure every year in turning up to the Remake Centre with the most wildly overgrown pubic hair she can manage, just to see the stylists try to hide their looks of horror. But, as Katniss said, it’s just her body. So Johanna just throws the underwear aside and runs her hands down Katniss’s thighs, mouths hot and wet at the line of Katniss’s hip that’s just tangible now through her skin. Amazing what a year on good food will do. She slips a hand up between Katniss’s thighs, and runs her fingers light and teasing along the length of her sex, the touch slick with desire. Katniss makes a little gasping sound, like she’s not sure what noise she should make at all. There’s teasing, and there’s cruelty, Johanna figures. She uses her fingers to part the lower lips and lets her mouth follow the line of Katniss’s hip to the crease of her thigh to her sex, and Katniss breathes harder with each brush of Johanna’s tongue and catch of her lip. Katniss tastes like salt, and fuck, that’s the last thing that Johanna is supposed to think. Because she isn’t the sea, she’s the mines and the woods and the earth, and Johanna concentrates on the way that Katniss gasps when Johanna’s tongue brushes even lightly over her clit. She’s already wound tight, wet, muscles clenching when Johanna’s fingers even move over her entrance. “Been a while since you’ve jerked off, huh?” says Johanna, replacing her tongue with her fingers lest Katniss take it upon herself to hate her even more. She scrapes her teeth against Katniss’s thigh as she waits for a response. Katniss hisses at the touch, hips twitching. “Why do you care?” she says. “Hey, I appreciate it being easier. But you might be less of a bitch if you get in a good orgasm now and then.” With a turn of her hand, Johanna has her fingertips pressing against Katniss’s entrance, and a jerk of Katniss’s hips is what actually brings them in, hot and wet around Johanna’s fingers and fuck, it gives the fire a whole new meaning. Katniss actually moans. “See?” “Does that work? For you?” That makes Johanna laugh. “Yeah, sure. You should see how much of a bitch I am when I can’t get off.” Her fingers slide so easily into Katniss, but hey, she’s been in the Games, in the woods, perhaps it’s no wonder that even as a virgin there’s no blood or pain for her. Johanna’s hymen had been long gone as well. As it is, Katniss’s hips tilt up as Johanna slips her fingers in as deep as they will go, with a long soft moan that is almost relieved, almost comfortable. Johanna uses the other hand to pin down Katniss’s hip, because hitting a moving target only ever makes things harder, and lowers her mouth to Katniss’s clit again. Katniss gasps, probably overstimulated, the double touch of fingers and tongue doubtless new and intense. But the thrust of her hips and the encouraging sounds from her mouth are more than clear enough, and Johanna sucks hard and uses her tongue flat and firm, just gently rolling with her fingers rather than going for the over-fast thrusting that Capitol porn always seems to tend to. Gasping, arching her back, Katniss more receives than takes, but one fumbling hand winds into Johanna’s short hair. That had been part of why she had cut it short – demanding hands, hands which try to steer her by the hair so that they could fuck her face – but she can feel that Katniss’s hands are just looking for somewhere to hold, some stability, and through Johanna’s hair she grounds herself to her own cunt in some bizarre cycle that must work, because Johanna feels the tension starting to wind in her. It isn’t good, to fuck like this, Johanna knows it. Angry and raw and drunk, and this isn’t how it should be. But at least they choose it, and that is the same victory that Johanna claims whenever she fucks some stranger in some club, whenever she uncrosses her legs in some interview to reveal to all and sundry that she isn’t wearing underwear. This is mine. And this is Katniss’s, her pleasure, and Johanna finds the rhythm of it in the movement of Katniss’s hips. Good food might soften the lines of her, but it only strengthens the muscles beneath; Katniss wraps her legs around Johanna, heels against her back, but it still does not feel like a cage as she gasps and moans. Johanna uses her tongue more sharply, precisely, finding now the spots that make Katniss’s hips buck rather than roll, uncontrollable with bolts of pleasure. The rhythm quickens, in time with the pounding of Johanna’s heart in her ears, the rushing she can hear as Katniss’s thighs tighten. Johanna has to move her free hand, grips Katniss’s thigh instead, and the little strokes of her fingers quicken with her tongue until Katniss is making cracking, formless sounds, might just have been saying please, and coming from Katniss Everdeen of all people it ends up hot itself. Katniss’s hand tightens as she comes, her hips lifting and heels pressing down, but Johanna continues to draw her on and ride out the waves, the feel of a body pulsing with pleasure around her. Only when Katniss falls back, legs slipping slack, panting as her hand relaxes in Johanna’s hair, does Johanna look up again. She can see Katniss heaving for breath, but nothing more than her stomach and small breasts and the underside of her chin. But the silence says a lot as well. Johanna pushes herself up to a kneeling position, wiping her mouth with the back of her hands, as Katniss’s hand slips free and falls to the couch beside her with a dull thud. “Sex suits you,” said Johanna, and Katniss looked up with a sober wariness starting to alight in her eyes again. “At least, this does. You looked almost happy then.” Katniss dropped her head back to the cushion. “Well, I stopped giving a fuck,” she replied. “Sometimes that’s enough.” Because Katniss does look beautiful, not soft in her satedness – she still has her edges, eyes as grey as steel and teeth that click like blades – but shining. It’s not that stupid fake glitter of the Capitol; it’s something inside her, something that really does burn, and burns brightest of all when it’s Katniss’s choices that have ignited it. Fuck, she admires the girl. Johanna can’t help thinking of it, and her eyes are tracing Katniss’s makeup-smeared face when Katniss pushes up and grabs Johanna by the arm again. “Your turn,” Katniss says. It’s just as determined, just as fierce, and when she pulls Johanna straight into another kiss she pushes into it far more than before. There’s a tangle of limbs, knees knocking against each other and the couch getting in the way, until Katniss rolls Johanna onto the couch and straddles her thighs, looking pleased with herself. The smile fades as her fingers trace circles on Johanna’s breasts, around her nipples. The touch is more a tease than anything else, whether Katniss means it that way or not, turning Johanna’s skin to gooseflesh despite the warm room, despite the warmth that seems to radiate from Katniss to encircle Johanna’s lap. “I won’t do this for them,” says Katniss, bitterness seeping back into her voice. “They might fuck me, but I won’t fuck them back.” She pinches Johanna’s left nipple, enough to make Johanna shift and gasp. But hotter in her stomach is the way that Katniss is looking at her, focused and determined and wanting, all her extensions knocked loose and her lipstick rubbed away, leaving her eyes burning through as if even the Capitol can’t cover up the Girl on Fire behind it all. Katniss Everdeen never wants anything, not compared to the rest of them, barely even wants the food and the clothes that the Capitol forces upon her. As if wanting is some sort of sin, something that only other people do, that Katniss is too fucking good for. It’s what makes her so fascinating to the Capitolites, who have never thought that there are people who don’t spend their lives in a state of constant want. But this is the woman in the girl, the part of Katniss that does want, and it thrills Johanna enough to know how privileged she is to see it at all, let alone be the focus of that want. And then Katniss moves in one sweep, taking her weight on her hands so that she can shift and slide down between Johanna’s legs, and Johanna expects a mouth at her breasts but does not expect the contact to come right at the base of her stomach, almost at her cunt, or for Katniss’s hair to be suddenly brushing her inner thighs. She isn’t complaining, though. Not just because this is what Katniss wants, and therefore what Katniss needs, something she can claim on her own terms. Because, as well, Katniss’s mouth is hot and wet and clumsy on Johanna’s slit, licking all the way along, still tasting and testing and learning. Unlike Johanna’s immediate search for those places that will get the response, Katniss is still uncertain, and usually it would be intensely unerotic to feel her tongue going from firm to soft to pointed, for her to be searching and nuzzling and seeming to reach Johanna’s clit only by chance, but there’s something so real about it, so unlike the fake candy shit of the Capitol, that Johanna plants her feet against the couch and tilts her hips to offer herself to Katniss’s mouth. “There,” she says, without even meaning to, as Katniss’s mouth sucks gently at her clit. Katniss pauses, glances up, and then very deliberately lowers her mouth to do the same thing again, and the sure intentional way that she does it is far hotter than it has the right to be. BecauseKatniss Everdeen is sucking on her clit, and kneading her thighs with hands that all the Capitol creams in the world can’t quite make soft, and Johanna moans and closes her eyes and just allows Katniss to taste her, gives what she can in the open line of her thighs and the encouragement of her sounds. She was wound so tight by the time that Katniss went down on her that perhaps it is a good thing that Katniss isn’t exactly skilled. Coming in five seconds like a teenage boy might have been worth a laugh, but Johanna wants to enjoy this, wants Katniss to enjoy it, and from the way that Katniss’s tongue explores her Johanna is pretty fucking sure that Katniss is enjoying herself, in ways that she would never admit. Katniss’s tongue flirts at her entrance, and then Katniss squirms round and brings one arm between Johanna’s legs as well, fingers tracing over the sensitive bare lips of her cunt. Pushing herself up, Johanna saw something calculating in the girl’s eyes, or gauging at the very least. “Do you want them?” said Katniss. “My fingers?” “Talking real dirty there,” Johanna said, with a curl of her lips. Katniss scowled. “Do you want me to fuck you with my fingers, or just my mouth?” The words come out so hard, so Katniss, that Johanna bursts out laughing, propped up on her elbows where it makes her stomach ache to laugh this hard. It only makes Katniss scowl harder, until Johanna manages to rein herself in again. “Yes,” she says, “fuck me with your fingers. Do whatever you fucking want.” Before she has even lain her head back down, Katniss is sliding two fingers into her, a little roughly but eagerly, searching out the heat in Johanna in turn. Johanna feels her gasp against her skin, but it is only a moment before her mouth sets to work again, hungry and pulsing, and Johanna simply closes her eyes and lets the want roll over her. It’s just them, nothing and no-one more or less, and they’re free to do what they want to who they want for one moment, no matter how ill-advised it is. And it is that thought, more than Katniss’s clumsy fingers inside her or the mouth sucking harder now at her clit, that tips Johanna over into orgasm. She groans, feeling the pleasure like a wall that comes crashing, crashing, crashing down over her like a thrill that runs through each muscle and flushes through her from her core out to the tip of each finger. Katniss’s mouth is too much in its wake, but Johanna appreciates the thought, and as she curls her toes to feel herself coming together again she only drops her hips away from Katniss’s mouth. Katniss sits back, lips and chin shining, and there’s something obscenely beautiful about how she ignores it to fix her eyes on Johanna instead. “Feel better?” says Johanna. Katniss pauses for a moment. “Yes,” she says, sounding more than a little surprised by it. Johanna shrugs. “Told you that a good orgasm would do you good.” Huffing, Katniss turned and flops back against the couch, sprawling naked and careless and then pulling Johanna’s feet into her lap. It feels weirdly intimate, which is even weirder considering they’ve just fucked, but Katniss starts massaging Johanna’s ankles in a distant, distracted sort of way. “No matter what happens, they won’t be the first to fuck me,” she says, eyes on the distant wall. She snorts, all derision and no humour. “For all they rape me, at least they won’t manage that.” The word rape had been ugly before she fucked Katniss; afterwards it seems worse, the threat of the Capitol looming too close. “Well,” says Johanna, “just remember. They can’t stop you from fucking who you want as well.” “Good,” says Katniss, colder. Johanna wonders if Haymitch has told her about the rebellion that almost was, about the hope that he had seen before Katniss had turned on Peeta and killed him and proven the Capitol right that the Districts only ever really cared for themselves. Animals, that needed the minds in the Capitol to keep them in line. At first, it had bewildered Johanna how people could believe that of themselves. Then she had realised that she had believed it for years without even thinking. Haymitch barely stirred out of his hopelessness last year. She doubts that he’s any better this. “I should introduce you to Finnick. Properly introduce you,” Johanna says. “What, so I can fuck him as well?” “If you want,” says Johanna carelessly, and that makes Katniss laugh as well, even if there’s an edge to it still. “But.” She lets the word hang in the air until Katniss looks around. “He understands. As well.” “In the morning,” says Katniss. She pushes Johanna’s feet aside again, and for a moment Johanna thinks that Katniss is about to leave when, instead, the girl flops down onto the couch half on top of and half beside her, a tangle of sweaty limbs and the smell of drink and sex. “Now shut the fuck up.” Hell if Johanna knows where Katniss had learnt to swear like that. But then again, it is turning out that there was more to Katniss than she had previously shown. “Whatever,” she replies, and puts an arm around Katniss. Katniss doesn’t respond, but Johanna has her suspicions that she misses this as well, just being able to touch. They’ll need showers in the morning, but it doesn’t matter. They lie there in silence for a long time, or at least as silent as the Capitol ever gets. There’s the thrum of noise and music from outside, windows not good enough at keeping out the noise. Johanna thinks that she might feel Katniss breathe, “Thank you” against her shoulder, but she can’t be sure. It doesn’t matter. She remembers, all the same, what it was like. Please drop_by_the_archive_and_comment to let the author know if you enjoyed their work!