Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/202918.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Generator_Gawl
  Relationship:
      Koji/Ryo, Koji/Ryo/Gawl
  Character:
      Koji, Ryo, Gawl
  Additional Tags:
      Threesome_-_M/M/M, Underage_Sex
  Stats:
      Published: 2002-09-22 Words: 2182
****** Indulgence ******
by Wrenlet
Summary
     Gawl never has trouble sleeping. Koji and Ryo are not so lucky.
     Spoilers: Through episode six (the second DVD) of Generator Gawl, but
     not beyond.
Gawl was snoring.
Again. Still. Did it matter which? Koji finally opened his eyes with a silent
sigh, gazing up at the ceiling of their little room. He supposed in a way he
should be grateful for the noise, Gawl had never snored in what passed for
sleep back in the tower. No, he had just hung there unconscious between tests,
waiting for his friends to finish their monitoring and wake him for another...
he cut that train of thought off ruthlessly, fixating instead on the pattern of
shadows above his head.
Funny, the little things you learn to be grateful for in a brand new world.
"... Koji?"
Ryo's whisper was so faint he could barely hear it over his own pulse. He must
not have been so silent as he thought, or maybe he had shifted ever-so-slightly
on his bedroll. And he had used to sleep so still that even the sensors could
pick up no movement save his breathing... Ryo let out a quiet, disappointed
little sound and turned his head, probably thinking Koji had not been awake at
all. Hmm.
"Yes, Ryo?"
"Oh!" Even in his startlement -- pleased startlement, Koji noted -- Ryo only
whispered back to him. "I just wanted to know if you were... well, you are...."
"He's loud, tonight."
"... I like it." The return whisper sounded... well, bashful. As much as a
whisper could.
Koji moved at last, lifting and turning his head to seek out his friend's face.
Ryo, amazingly, was blushing, though perhaps only Koji could have noted the
faint change of color in a dark, moonlit room. The blond squirmed under his
gaze, shifting beneath his blanket, and Koji let a note of kindness seep into
his voice. "I like it, too."
They lay there like that for two minutes, simply looking at each other and
listening to Gawl snore. Then:
"... Koji?"
"Yes, Ryo?"
"Can I... we... ?" If they were standing and speaking to each other, Koji
imagined Ryo would be scuffing the ground with his toe.
Koji didn't need for him to finish the question, really. He scooted to the
side, silently opening his bedroll and making exactly enough room on the pallet
-- between himself and Gawl, Ryo always preferred to be as close to the blue-
haired boy as he could -- for the slender blond to slip in beside him. Ryo did
so, of course, maybe moving not-so-quietly and not-so-efficiently as Koji, but
then he had further to go. As Ryo nestled up against him, Koji carefully
tucking the blankets around them both, it occurred to him he had many things to
be grateful for.
Some not so little as others.
He closed his eyes for a moment, breathing in the clean, sunbright scent of
Ryo's hair as slender hands unbuttoned his pajama shirt and pressed against the
skin of his chest. This would be luxury unimaginable anywhere else, laying
together in the dark of the night, no schedules, no timers... no cameras. No
one telling him how good it would be for Ryo, how stabilizing an influence in
his life.
Any fool could see how good this was for Ryo. Koji could hear it in the soft
hitching of breath as he opened Ryo's pants, folded long fingers around his
lover's need. And he could do so much more for Ryo, here.
He could kiss him. So he did.
Lover... Koji liked that word. Ryo was his lover, gasping and shaking in his
arms as Koji plunged his tongue into his mouth, tasting just as deeply as the
boy would let him. Ryo was always so willing, so pliant for him, even the very
first time Koji took him aside and told him what they were about do.
"We have ten minutes," he had said. "I am to see that you are relaxed before we
take Gawl to the next phase." Oh, the heartbreakingly open expression on the
boy's face, timid and trusting and faintly pink across his cheeks. The tiny,
amazed sounds he had made... Ryo was louder, now. They both were, Koji thought,
he hardly recognized the moaning as his own sometimes. But they were never so
loud as to wake their snoring friend.
Their mouths parted with a soft, wet sound, and Koji just had to nose at the
flushed skin of the blond's face. So pretty, his Ryo. So... forward, now, in
this time; one careful hand had been busy at his waistband and now slipped
inside his pants, and how had he missed his lover nudging his own pants down
and off slender legs? Too much reminiscing, Koji supposed; too much thinking,
not enough doing. He set about doing, fetched the tiny bottle from under the
edge of his bedroll and clutched it tight, suddenly, as clever fingers coaxed a
rare gasp from him.
Ryo looked incredibly pleased with himself, but just as suddenly a tanned arm
flung itself across the boy's waist, and he froze. Wide, blue eyes locked on
Koji's face, and the poor boy's whisper was almost frantic. "He's... !"
"Asleep," Koji reassured him. And sure enough, soon there was a drowsy grumble
and a shift of blankets, and Gawl rolled away from them.
Ryo sagged against his chest, trembling, and Koji reassured with hands and lips
as well. Soon he was rolling the boy over, preparing to slick his fingers from
the little bottle when Ryo made a soft request.
"Koji... take your hair down?"
He whispered his assent into the blond's ear, reached behind his head and
slipped his hair tie free. Long fingers fanned long green hair over his
shoulder, over Ryo's shoulder and down his chest. Just as he knew Ryo liked it,
though he had never dared to ask it of Koji until they came here.
One more thing to be grateful for.
Slender fingers toyed with strands of his hair, even as his own slipped into
the heat and tightness of Ryo's body. The blond already moved in the long, slow
undulations of their sex play, the curve of his ass pushing and stroking
against Koji's hardness. Blue eyes half-lidded, the pink flush spreading down
his neck, over his chest where he caressed himself with handfuls of Koji's
hair... Koji could stroke him and watch him all night like this, if there was
not so much more pleasure waiting to be had. And besides, the only thing more
beautiful than a writhing, wanton Ryo was a sated Ryo.
Grateful, grateful, grateful.
For the slow push of his cock into his lover's carefully-stretched entrance,
for the incredible way Ryo's body welcomed him inside, for the tart-sweet smell
of Ryo's skin right there at the nape of his neck... for the languid, rocking
rhythm of their bodies, that made Koji think of nothing so much as the
inexorable push and pull of the ocean, when he could think at all...
"Koji!"
His eyes snapped open at that (oh God) *frightened* whisper, and he finally
registered that there was a hand on his hip. An extra hand.
An extra, tanned hand.
Gawl had rolled again, facing the two of them and tucked up close to Ryo's
half-naked body. Half-naked, fully-aroused body, currently impaled on Koji's
cock. Koji understood that fear in Ryo's voice, but Gawl... was still asleep?
Amazingly enough, yes, the blue-haired boy's eyes were closed, motions drowsy
and slow. And he *was* in motion, one hand stroking little circles on the skin
of Koji's hip and the other- Ryo's half-strangled gasp let him know where that
other hand must be, what it must be doing.
Koji had to rest his forehead against Ryo, limbs suddenly weak at even the idea
of the blond sandwiched between the two of them and Gawl... oh, Gawl.
"He's... asleep, Ryo, it's alright."
"But he...." Ryo's whisper sounded pained, there in the moonlight, as if he was
trying to talk himself out of something he very, very much wanted.
Something Koji very, *very* much wanted to give to him.
He lifted his head, watching the sleeping boy in front of his lover. Gawl,
predictably, was louder than the two of them put together, but thankfully not
so loud Koji feared their landlord would wake. "Look at him... open your eyes,
Ryo, look at Gawl."
He could feel the surprised quiver all through Ryo's body as he did so, both
scientists now watching the tanned boy. Gawl moved with an instinctual, feral
grace. His hands strayed over bare skin, his legs twined with Ryo's and nestled
their hips even closer together, cock filled with blood and strained against
cloth to meet the blond's aching length. Low, needy noises spilled from his
lips, which were soon nuzzling at the flushed skin of Ryo's neck.
Ryo gasped, quivering again... he *wanted* to believe, Koji could tell.
"Listen to him... he wants this, Ryo, even if he's not awake enough to say so."
"What if... what if he doesn't know it's us?" Koji could hear the 'me' buried
in Ryo's 'us'. "We should wake him...."
"He knows. Enough of him knows... he loves you, Ryo, didn't you realize?"
Soft, amazed, "No...."
He started to move again, rocking into Ryo's heat and the blond whimpered
helplessly. "He loves you... it's alright." Gawl chose that moment to grind his
cloth-covered cock against Ryo's bare one with a low growl, and all thought of
protest melted right out of Ryo.
Koji silently congratulated Gawl's timing... and then groaned himself as Ryo's
reaction clenched around Koji's own cock. This couldn't last, this heated
tangle of bodies writhing and thrusting and was that Gawl's hand in his hair?
He couldn't tell, but he wanted to think so. Koji wanted several things, and
got one of them by reaching forward and slipping Gawl's cock free of his pajama
pants, gripping his and Ryo's together in a firm, stroking fist. He got another
in the faint, strangled wail from Ryo's mouth and the fierce grunt of pleasure
from Gawl's where it was pressed against Ryo's neck.
He had just enough time and just barely enough coherency left to want one more
thing: the leisure to watch this, tanned skin against pale, blue hair and gold
shining in the sun, full-throated cries of completion spilling from his lovers'
lips... his lovers....
Ryo came first, throbbing and quaking as he spilled over Koji's hand, and Koji
thought if he had ever heard a more wonderful sound than Ryo's soft keen of
release, it could only be Gawl's ecstatic moan as he followed the blond over
the edge. Koji found his own climax buried deep within Ryo's spasming body,
gasping muffled against the nape of his neck.
They lay tangled together, panting and sweating in the moonlit room, and
finally Koji slid his hand carefully up the pair of damp, softening cocks...
pulling most of the mess up with his fingers, and letting Gawl's length slip
back under the waistband of his pants. Gawl moved then, lifting his face from
Ryo's neck.
He looked... right at Ryo, bare slits of green showing under his lids, smiled a
lazy, sated smile, and rubbed his nose cutely against Ryo's. Then his lids
dropped again, and he rolled over and slid promptly back into sleep.
And started to snore.
Ryo was shock-still in Koji's arms, staring at Gawl's back. "He... he...."
Koji tucked his face down against Ryo's shoulder and let out a faint, rare
chuckle. "He's fine." He carefully pulled out of the blond's body, taking care
of a bit of the mess before turning Ryo over to face him, arms wrapped warmly
around his slim body. "He's fine, Ryo... trust me."
Ryo sighed, tucking his head up under Koji's chin. "If you say so...." He
reached up, toying with a lock of long green hair. "Could we stay... just like
this?"
Koji closed his eyes, shaking his head minutely. "You know it isn't safe.
Masami could find us, or her mother...."
Another sigh. "I know." Ryo was quiet for a while, twining Koji's hair around
and around his finger. "... but I'd like to."
His answering whisper was uncommonly gentle. "I know." Koji could tell exactly
what Ryo was thinking of. Their first traumatic night in the past, Gawl fresh
from battle, the three of them collapsing from exhaustion and confusion in the
midst of the forest... and waking in the warmest, coziest tangle of limbs Koji
had ever imagined. Well. Had imagined before now, when he could so easily
picture those limbs naked and... he sighed, warm breath stirring Ryo's bangs.
Ryo spoke again, hesitant, questioning. "Gawl loves me?"
Koji answered without thought. "Of course he does. He wouldn't want to be so
close to you if he didn't...."
The blond boy lifted his head, fixing his suddenly-silent friend with those
clear blue eyes. He laid a slender hand on Koji's cheek, and a smile as bright
as the sun dawned on his face. "That's what I thought."
Koji swallowed, he hadn't meant... well, he hadn't meant to say so much. He
blinked at Ryo as the boy stretched up to kiss his cheek, whispering again,
"That's what I thought."
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n and copper instead of pink and
blue. He is a man, tall and too handsome. So handsome that one look at him has
her suddenly vain, and she touches the back of her neck, oddly wishing she was
prettier. He's so handsome that everyone is licking their lips and nodding in
his direction.
He looks at her, too. He's on the arm of a man with periwinkle hair and a
diamond jacket. The jewels of his date's jacket glisten in the sea-green eyes.
He bends to whisper something to the Capitol man, and they laugh together in an
intimate huddle. When they walk toward her, the Capitol man trails him like a
pet.
"Katniss Everdeen!" says the Capitol man. He's no different from the others.
"What a fantastic display this year, I must say. Finnick here was positively
raptured by you, weren't you Finnick?" His turquoise eyelashes flutter when he
looks up at the beautiful one.
"Positively," says Finnick. She remembers him when she hears his name. Finnick
Odair is a Victor, one who managed to stay on television and in the spotlight
for all these years. His green eyes run up and down her like she's on display
(which she is in the Capitol).
She remembers Finnick especially because she has seen his body on television
before. She's seen him do lots of things on television. Sometimes, when she was
alone, she would flip through the late night Capitol channels and pause for
mere seconds to look at the sex on the screen. Only for seconds. Only out of
curiosity.
"Thank you, it means so much."
At this, Finnick cocks a smile toward her. For a mere moment, she perceives it
as genuine, because he has narrowed eyes and wrinkled mouth corners, and it
seems to say, you're a liar, before it's gone. Then his face goes back to a
smooth Capitol expression. It's very practiced, very precise, very beautiful.
He takes her hand to kiss it goodbye.
Before they leave her, she smiles back at him, also genuine, also seeming to
say, It takes a one to know one.
===============================================================================
When she gets home, there is a tightness to the air. The crowd seems reluctant
to celebrate when the train rolls in. She guesses it's because they think Peeta
should have come home, too. When the two-victor rule was announced, they must
have all been filled with evangelical hope. They were supposed to be the
precedent, maybe the start of a new era.
They still cheer because she at least came home, because she is the first
District 12 victor in so many years, because they will receive delectable food
rations for a few months.
She is so nervous to see Gale and her mother. The first one she hugs is Prim,
who smells like familiar, pungent goat milk, who starts bawling in her arms.
Katniss soothes her like she would if she was waking from a nightmare, slowly
rocking her side to side. She smells Prim and feels a rush of warmth that is
long overdue. The cameras catch all this and will air the footage in a matter
of hours, but Katniss pretends that the Capitol folk are not in her peripheral.
They don't belong here.
Her mother kisses her cheek. Gale wraps long arms around her and tugs on her
braid tenuously. She regrets that their eyes meet, because when they do,
there's something terrible in them; pity, which she has never seen from Gale.
"Hey, Catnip."
"Hey."
They move their small collection of things into the new house. It takes a few
days to get used to. Katniss keeps coming home from the woods and going to her
Seam house, even opening the door and calling out before she realizes that they
no longer live there.
She is surprised by how things go on normally. It's not quite right, but she
adjusts to it like you would adjust to clothing that doesn't fit perfectly. She
still hunts with Gale, but only on Sundays, because he's taken a job at the
mines. It was inevitable and Katniss accepts that.
There are miniscule differences in their friendship now; an unspoken
resentment, unspoken fear and pity. She has been knocked out of place with him,
but she's trying to catch up, trying to get back into the rhythm of their days.
One day, she accidentally turns her loaded bow toward him while looking around
for the wandering rabbit, and she sees him jerk his own bow up slightly in
defense, then their eyes meet, and drop away from each other all in one
instant. They don't talk about it after, and they don't talk about anything
anymore. She adjusts to that, too.
For a few weeks, she walks around town and spends her money. It's death money,
but it tastes good. She stuffs her face, fattens it up. Her and Prim have candy
and cakes for dinner. She buys cattle meat, fries it in butter, eats it with
her mother as a snack. She takes large meals to the woods and gobbles it until
her belly's swollen as Gale pockets things to bring home to the kids. She buys
a bag of peppermints and sucks them til her tongue's raw. There are even days
where she eats so much, it all comes back up over the bowl of her toilet. When
this happens, she pinches the thick skin of her thigh until her eyes water.
She replenishes the apothecary stocks without asking and her mother thanks
Katniss with a tender squeeze to her hand. Not much changes between them. Her
mother was always wary of Katniss as the hunter and provider. She acts the same
way with Katniss the Victor, and really, the whole District treats her with an
extended wariness. She tries to walk through the Seam without feeling a hundred
eyes upon her. It's impossible to ignore the stares.
She starts to forget things quite frequently. Like checking the snare she sets
in the woods, and one day, Gale comes up to her with a rotten, fat beaver
that's been trapped and decomposing for days.
Night time always comes, she always dreams, and it's always them. It's always
the fox-faced girl with the arrow in her neck, and the boy with the spear in in
his chest, and all their mouths are opened for Cato's girly screams to project
through her sleeping head. But mostly, she dreams of Peeta. She dreams the
edges of him; the out of focus blonde hair close to her eyes in the sleeping
bag and his long eyelashes; his frosted cakes in the window of the bakery.
In her dreams, they are in the cave and he is deep inside her like no one has
ever been. She wakes up from these dreams wet and half way there. She finishes
herself of with her efficient fingers in the dead quiet, holding her breath,
hating herself.
===============================================================================
One morning in mid-autumn, Gale and Katniss hike silently up to the old
structure in the woods and it starts to rain. Gale wants to turn back and check
the traps before it gets too wet, but Katniss turns to look at him and feels a
sudden desperation, like she's about to misplace him, and it's like she's about
to die. When they're outside the cabin, she tugs on his arm to pull him against
the wall. She presses her torso close to his.
His eyes are full of questions, but then he just cautiously leans in and kisses
her because she put them in this position, and it's true what she's suspected-
he wants her. She tells herself that this is what she wants. After, she steps
back and tries to find it in herself to smile, but really she just has an alien
ache in her gut; emptiness that needs to be filled.
They go into the cabin. She says,
"Have you ever...?"
"What?"
"Have you ever done this before?"
He wipes at his dripping forehead. They are both chilled from being in the
rain, so he goes to the stockpile of wood and starts a small fire. He sits down
in front of it, not looking at her, not answering her.
Katniss kneels beside him.
"Have you ever been with a girl, I mean?"
Gale still doesn't look at her. The fire crackles and whistles as the moisture
is drawn out by the heat, and she unconsciously leans away from that fire. Fire
is not something she is keen to associate herself with anymore.
"Once," he says, finally.
Katniss is beyond curious, but she doesn't ask him who. She's scared. However,
fear is relative to her. She has felt worse fear than this, and compared to the
arena, this is nothing. So she stands up and removes her belt. Gale watches.
Her body is still much more manicured than it would normally be because the
prep team made her scarless and her hair subdued. She wonders if it's something
he notices.
When she's naked, she kneels down beside him again. He is breathing heavier,
looking at her body, looking between her legs and making her feel like she's
boneless.
"I want you to," she says. She is surprised at how wet it makes her to just be
naked beside him. It's so private, so intimate. She wiggles her hips the
tiniest fraction of an inch, trying to feel something. Gale grabs the back of
her head and kisses her and his tongue in her mouth makes her want to groan.
He pulls away. He takes off his shirt to show her her the angles and planes
she's already seen before. She doesn't know what to do next.
'Spread your legs," he says against her neck. She does it, feeling the
excitement build in her stomach.
His hand creeps from her knee to her thigh. She closes her eyes, and feels his
lips press against her breast and the sensitive, cold skin there.
"What do you want?" he asks with his forehead resting on her shoulder.
"Make me-" she says, not knowing how to word it. She knows the technical terms,
but she's shy to tell him. After a second he says,
"Make you come?"
And she nods.
His hand goes further up her thigh until it's teasing her at the apex, and then
he says,
"What did they do to you?"
Oddly, it makes her want to laugh.
She doesn't have time to react or respond because then his hand is there,
feeling around for the bundle of singing nerves, making electricity on her
skin. She groans and moves her hips restlessly. She wants to bite and suck. He
crooks two of his fingers deep inside her and it hurts, but he presses down on
her until it feels so good, she wants to cry.
Gale sucks on her neck, and she does something she didn't plan to do. She
fumbles around at the buttons on his pants, and hastily grabs at the flesh she
finds. It's warm and wet in her hand, and Gale gasps a little which makes her
thrust her own hips up. She moves her hand up and down him like she's seen
Finnick Odair do to himself on television.
She mouths Peeta's name. She hope Gale doesn't notice it.
He comes first, making her hand sticky and wet, and when he moans into her
shoulder, biting her and cursing, she comes almost painfully around his fingers
until all that's left in the room is the movement of his chest and the
percussion deep inside hers.
When he takes his hand away from her, she sighs with relief.
Something washes over her, some kind of clarity. She realizes that she doesn't
need all the food that's been going down her gullet. She needs this- she needs
the listless, agonizing death that Gales fingers can bring.
She wipes her hand on the floor before she gets dressed.
Gale stays sitting by the fire, and she thinks she sees his head moving gently
from side to side, as if he's saying no.
===============================================================================
She meets Finnick Odair for the second time when Snow summons her to the
Capitol, only a few weeks before the Victory Tour.
Prim and her mother worry about the summoning, but Katniss feels conflicted.
This will be the first time she's been to the Capitol without an escort. Effie
is not waiting for her at the station, Haymitch is not coming at all. She is
told to pack nothing. Something like detachment and curiosity fills her with a
strange urge to get on the train, even though, when she thinks about it, she
doesn't want to see Snow. No, she doesn't want that.
Finnick Odair is on the train instead of Effie.
He sits crossed legged on the dining room table, in his hands, he holds a
length of rope with frayed ends. He is still terribly handsome, even with
clothes on. Katniss stays standing at the entrance even when the train starts
moving toward the Capitol, feeling awkward.
"Hello," he says.
"Hello."
They are silent for a few long seconds. Then he says,
"We're having dinner at the President's. There's a dress on your bed."
She starts walking toward the compartment door, but she feels compelled to ask,
"Do you know why?"
To which he replies,
"I expect he's going to ask you to fuck one of your sponsors."
Katniss doesn't know what to feel about that, so she picks out the tangible
things that are sparked in her mind. The word "fuck" and the way it sounds
coming from that man's pretty mouth; and the echo of Gale's gasp; the grotesque
image of herself fucking a brightly colored stranger. The rest is too much to
imagine.
She goes into her train compartment and strips off her clothes, stares at her
body with an uneasy stomach, and she dresses slowly like it might be the last
time she gets the chance to dress herself, which might be true once the Prep
team is involved.
She is clamping down on her lip. Fucking her sponsors? Fucking her sponsors?
Fucking her sponsors?
Finnick raps on her door when she gets the straps on. There are buttons she
can't reach, so her back is bare. She answer the door with trepidation, because
he scares her a little bit. Her mother would call him a "handsome devil".
The rooms on the train are much smaller than the ones in the Training Center.
When he steps inside, she feels like they're in a closet space.
"I'm sorry," he says. "I shouldn't have said that."
His eyes are soft like Peeta's were. The resemblance strikes her like a white-
hot dagger. She licks her lips.
"Is that what you do? Fuck sponsors?"
He looks beyond her, at the tray beside her bed of various beverages provided
for the compartment.
"I fuck who they tell me to."
Her heart quickens.
"Is that what I'm doing here?"
He doesn't answer her, but his eyes are as sorry as Cinna's and he kisses the
top of her head like she's seen Gale kiss his brothers and sisters. She's
shaking.
===============================================================================
They get to The Capitol, where Katniss walks on through the crowds of fans and
onlookers outside the train station with Finnick on her arm. Men and women
sometimes walk through the District with their arms linked like this. She
wonders, amusedly, if this is some kind of date- only at a very strange venue,
with very devious company.
They get in the back of a car that is metallic purple, and one of the strangest
things that Katniss has ever seen. It goes so fast that she tenses up and holds
onto the sleeve of Finnick's suit jacket.
"You've never been in a car, have you?" he asks. "It's no worse than the
hovercraft."
Maybe it's the tenseness of the situation, or maybe it's desperation, but
Katniss tells Finnick,
"I'm...I'm glad you're here." But what she really means is, "I'm glad I'm not
alone."
Finnick holds her hand very tightly, enough that it makes her heart relax in
her chest. He says,
"Snow wants me to make sure you understand everything." Again, he avoids her
eyes.
"I don't understand." She doesn't. She keeps thinking about her body, Gale's
fingers, the purple and pink and orange people, the programs on television that
show men pumping into women, and all the exposed skin that she wears now, in
the tight dress.
"Sometimes...you'll have to fuck people." He looks out the window for a
stretched second. "You can blame it on your pretty face, or you can blame it on
Snow. Everyone's willing to pay a price for a Victor."
Katniss thinks about all those thinly veiled warnings that Haymitch hushed in
the corners of the Training Center. Cooperate, Girlie. It's all trouble if you
don't cooperate.
"If I don't want to?"
She knows the answer."
"Snow always likes to do it the hard way." He squeezes her hand. She thinks of
threats, of Haymitch telling her not to fuck up her post-game interviews. "They
don't tell you about this part when you win. It's not all of us, just the
desirable ones."
"What do I do?"
"Think of the people at home. It's always been for them."
She wonders who is at home for Finnick.
She starts to cry, despite herself. A part of her wants to go to sleep, another
part of her wants to go underneath all that, there is a desperate cry from
between her legs. The memory of Gale makes her heart race complicates
everything about this car ride.
The Games are over, she should feel sweet relief for that, but this is not what
finality feels like. She's opening the lid on a box of monsters worse than
mutts.
FInnick gives her a handkerchief, he wipes the corners of her eyes. "I know,"
he says, and he sighs deeply like a tired person. "I know."
They pass through more rabid crowds outside the impossibly beautiful, large
mansion. Katniss lets her smile falter, he mouth go agape as they pass through
a garden and into a foyer the size of the Seam.
That night, there is a long table filled with Capitol men and women who are
eating and then excusing themselves to vomit it all up, and then eating some
more. Some of them paid for the burn medicine she needed in the arena, and the
broth she needed in the cave, and the bread she received for killing Foxface.
Old habits die hard, so Katniss eats her fill despite feeling very sick and too
nervous. Finnick doesn't eat anything- he talks and hangs off the arms of older
men and cat-like women who pinch his ass, touch his face, beg for kisses and
pour bubbly drinks down his throat. Out of the corner of his eye, he watches
Katniss, making eye contact every now and then as if to silently talk her
through the production.
She should be making an impression on them all. Instead, she can only wonder if
the empty seat at the head of the table is where Snow is supposed to be. Snow
never comes, but she waits like the whole evening is a time bomb.
After dinner, she's still waiting for Snow to come- it feels a bit like the
countdown in the arena. She tunes out the chatter of the people in the dining
hall and remembers Claudius Templesmith's voice; Peeta across from her, and his
head shaking from side to side.
But then they are leaving the dining hall and people are letting their goodbye
touches last on her skin. She is afraid of them. She wonders which of them will
get to see the inside of her thighs.
"When?" she whispers to Finnick when they're back in the car. It's very late.
"Which one?"
"You'll get a call," he says. "They just wanted to meet you. There will always
be parties- a lot of parties."
The drive through the Capitol seems to last the whole night. Before she can
stop herself, she falls asleep in the car because of the bubbly drinks and the
food. It's a tenuous sleep that is tricked by the colorful lights passing over
her and the fact that her guard is still up, and she's still tense.
She must dream of something, of flying maybe, because she wakes and feels like
she's been somewhere else for hours.
It's Finnick lifting her, she realizes, that's why she thought she was flying.
It's too dark to tell where they are, but he sets her down in a cold bed and
that's enough for her. In the dark, she can see the light reflecting off his
skin where his collarbone and chest are exposed. She hums to let him know she's
awake, rubbing her eyes, smearing thick makeup on her fingers.
"Where did we go?"
"The Training Center," he says softly. It's so quiet. He hovers by her bed.
Eventually, she asks him to stay.
And he does.
They lie down with their clothes on, but it makes her feel warm and overworked
like bread that's been kneaded too much. She spends the silence working up the
nerve.
He takes her hand without her having to ask, which she likes. She wonders how
he can read people so well, even when he doesn't know her, even in the dark.
"I've never," she begins, but she can't finish.
"What?"
"I've never fucked anyone."
"You shouldn't have to."
"They'll kill Prim, won't they? They'll kill her."
"If you refuse," he says. "They killed my brother."
It stings to hear it, makes her chest tight, makes her eyes water.
She chokes on the air as a sad breath fills her lungs. She coughs, turning her
head away from him. She curls into a position where her back is pressed against
his side. He turns to tuck her to him, warm and soft with Capitol skin
treatments. She shifts until it's right. She doesn't know if it's right.
He is so reluctant, so slow about it, not at all like Gale. She thinks that
maybe he doesn't want to. She's moving her hips in circles against him, asking
him in a hushed and desperate voice that she'll regret using later,
"Show me how to do it."
He presses his forehead into her back, breathing, breathing, kissing the place
between her shoulders so softly, it's like his lips are just ghosts. Then he
kisses the oddest of places; her wrist, her hairline, her hip, and never her
lips.
The rest is fast. He slides off the dress as she closes her eyes, listens to
the whisper of skin and fabric, thinking of Peeta's skin sliding with hers in
the sleeping bag. He sits up, taking off his shirt with the kind of practice a
man like Finnick has. She sits up with him. She kicks the dress off the bed.
She's naked and it's no longer so warm.
In his eyes, she doesn't find desire, and she doesn't hear his breath catching
in his throught the way Gale's did. Somewhere inside her, there's guilt for
what happened with Gale, but for now there's this.
His hands on her legs, pushing them apart.
He uses his fingers first, then slides in between her and starts pushing
himself, keeping a hand on her the whole time.
It hurts worse than skinny fingers that she's used to, but he goes slow.
And then faster. He asks her to move her hips in circles like she did before,
he says that it feels better when she fucks herself on him, when her hips meet
his half way.
He tells her where to touch, where to squeeze, and she does it all with shaking
fingers.
It's too dark to see his face when he comes, but she hears him stutter. He
hangs his head against her breasts to catch his breath, sliding out of her and
making her wince.
She doesn't come. Maybe it's better that she deny herself that. She doesn't
feel the complacency she felt when it was just a man's fingers. Now, feeling
her thighs slick with Finnick, she wonders why the hollowness is still there.
They go back into their sleeping positions, with her side pressed against him,
only now they're naked and their skin sticks together with sweat and come, with
sadness and pity. She lets him hug her, trying not cry.
It shocks her. She was never this weak.
He whispers,
"Don't be scared."
Maybe it would have been better if Cato held out longer, and he would be the
one made a whore. She worries over the strangers that she will have to do this
with. She wonders if they will hold her after like Finnick is holding her, like
a friend. He never kisses her and that's how she knows there is someone,
that someone, at home for him. The person that Snow holds over his head.
Katniss waits until they're close to sleep to ask about her. He replies,
"Annie."
Annie. She apologizes to Annie in her head, then she nestles into Finnick's
arms until she can go no further.
"Thank you," she starts. It isn't easy to say. "I don't know what I'm doing."
"i'm always here, in the Capitol. Where they need me." And the words are
shrouded with contempt, but she takes what she wants from them, hoping that
he'll be here for her when she has to do what he does, when they're out with
the Capitol animals at parties- she hopes it means she will have someone to
look to. He will pick up the pieces of her when she has to follow Snow's
orders. They will make silent contact from across rooms, from across naked
bodies and they will sleep next to each other, and be the only bodies that wont
hurt to touch at night in beds.
Finnick falls asleep quickly as Katniss's pillow gets soggier. She thinks he
might be her only friend in the world.
===============================================================================
In the morning, there is a note from Snow- on beautiful pink stationary dotted
in roses that tells her the name of the man who paid for the healing salve. She
will meet him tonight at a grand inn restaurant.
She joins Finnick for breakfast in the dining room, sitting in the exact place
where Peeta sat during training, the memory tingles.
She softens bread with hot chocolate. She licks her fingers clean.
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