Breathe in, Breathe out • F Odair² •

VII

"Yes, the victors. The victors are the key."

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*Finnick POV*

Finnick Odair didn't really know what he had thought would happen if he ever kissed Athena Maris. He made himself associate the occurrence with disastrous consequences - bombs exploding, tsunamis, droughts, death (not that last one was too much of a stretch) - in a vain attempt to resist the temptation. But it had been several weeks since they had first kissed (which they had done again, several times, since then) and admitted their true feelings for each other, and none of those things had happened yet.

Not to say things weren't different now, because they were. The main difference, and the best one at all, was that even though he could still not be open about how he felt about Athena, at least she knew now. And what was more, she felt the same way. Not only did he not have to hide from her anymore, but he now had the knowledge that she felt about him the same way he did about her. He could kiss her over and over (as long as they were alone and in private) and could tell her that he loved her over and over (as long as they were alone and in private and used sign language when words felt too dangerous).

Of course, to consider the beauty of this forced him to consider the negatives that came attached to it. They still could not be open about their feelings and had to actively hide it, keep it in the shadows and in the quiet like something wrong. There was the ever-present fear that they would be found out by the wrong people, especially once they were back in the Capitol. They now had to second guess every touch, every word spoken to the other, every shared glance when they were public, fearful that even a smile a little too wide or a look that lasted a little too long might give them away.

But now that he had admitted his feelings to her and been able to be with her in any capacity that he could, he couldn't pretend he wouldn't do it all again if given half a chance. He could not pretend that the fear and the risk of it all was not worth being able to kiss her and hold her close. He thought originally that he just needed to kiss her once. All he needed was to get one kiss off of her and then he would be fine, he could move on, and make peace with never being able to be with her.

The opposite was true, however. Now that he had done it, all he wanted was to kiss her. He wanted to kiss her until he knew nothing but her mouth, wanted to taste her even when she was far away, wanted to tear down everything that tried to stand between them. Out of all the mouths his own had been, all the people Snow forced him to kiss, she was the only one that made him feel loved, made him feel safe in the face of the danger all around him, made him want to keep going. And he did not want to ever give up.

The only ones that did notice anything, though, were the ones that knew them best, the ones Finnick suspected they never could've hid it from in the first place. Mags only needed to see Finnick the day after when he asked if she needed anything from the markets, only needed to hear him say her name to realize, as though there was some difference in the way the name left his lips. She looked at him with an expression that was happy and supportive and sad and grief-stricken and worried and afraid all at once, but when he asked her why she was staring at him like that, she just signed (she still hadn't spoken since before the Quarter Quell announcement), "Nothing you don't already know."

Athena told him that her mother and sister already knew about them without her saying anything, and he wasn't very surprised by this. He could see that they knew in the looks they gave the two of them, the way they spoke to them, the way they always turned to him first if they couldn't reach Athena directly. Finnick had thought they'd be angry at him because he imagined loving him was not an easy thing, was not a safe thing, not when the Capitol was involved.