𝐂𝐫𝐮𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐅𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐬 [𝐅𝐢𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐤 - 𝐇𝐮𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐫 𝐆𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐬]

12 | 𝐂𝐫𝐨𝐜𝐮𝐬

Content warning at the end notes: please skip down and check if you feel like you should!

N E O

— I FEEL NEW AGAIN. The alcohol turns me bright and bold, enough so that I can assimilate comfortably with the staggering Capitolites as Finnick and I make our way back to the Training Centre the morning after my Victor Crowning. The sunrise hides itself behind the tall shelf of mountains that curl around the edge of the Capitol, but the sky is a burnt amber sort of colour and it reminds me of the tourmaline broach I had when I was little, long before I found myself in Middle Canyon for the first time. Finnick's hand is clasped in my own and our conversation has descended into choked up laughter and humoured looks holding inside jokes. When we get to the rotating door of the Training Centre, Finnick drags me in for a kiss against the spinning glass walls of the entrance — it's more of a press of mouths, teeth, smiles, drunken idiocy that ruins me for life — and I can recall now how the orange light curled its fingers through the halo of Finnick's hair and turned him gold again for a moment, not longer bronze, not third place. First in my eyes.

When we stumble out the door we find ourselves on the outside of the building again and Finnick has this awful proud smirk as he pushes me through again and kisses me again, and again, like each one is a new promise, a new chain, another thing to drag us together, to and fro, painful friction like the sea scraping against the coast, like the mutual erosion of broken tides and shattering rock.

"Come up?" He rasps against my chin, and my throat fills with stones, stuck open with a stiff jaw, but when he pulls away and leans down, pressing the side of his nose against mine, feeling sun-warmed and smelling of dusty sunlight, his eyes are brimming with clarity, with hope, with that look I've only ever seen on Teff before — that look of finally making a choice that belongs to you alone.

The question is whether I want it too.

"You don't," Finnick exhales, all molten sweet, so painfully harmless as he tucks his arms under my own and pulls in closer, nuzzling his face into the space above my ear, along the exposed line of the scar running from my temple like a diadem. "I just want— but if not, 's okay." He's still smiling, holding me softly, like my answer won't change a thing: like he's near just to be near, not with the goal of getting more.

"Thanks," I say, squeezing my hand tight around his own where it rests on my arm, locking me in. But its gentle, somehow, too. His head falls onto my shoulder for a moment, completely limp, a little hum coming from the back of his throat.

"There's stuff I should tell you," Finnick says abruptly, face hardening a little again, the skin around his eyes tensing infinitesimally as his head bolts up. Pulls away just enough that I can view him wholly rather than in only distorted pieces of freckled cheeks and greyish eyes and rolling throat and spit-shone lips. His pupils are rapidly dilating, black swallowing that sea-mist blue, and he unhook one of his hands from me to press at the skin beneath his ear. It looks red and inflamed, like the spot's been attacked by mosquitos. The air about us in the small space of the elevator shifts, souring into something that sets my teeth on edge. Something about the boy I'd spent the last ten or so hours with becomes foreign and new, losing his hard edges and biting intellect. Finnick's broad frame begins to droop and I panic, holding him upright by the shoulders and propping him against the glass wall. His hands sit on me, uncurled, lax, held there only by the fabric of my rumpled shirt.