Work Text:
She was drinking with Haymitch rather than fucking him as she'd planned, sitting on the couch in the Twelve apartment, passing a bottle of thirty-year whiskey aged in charred oak barrels. Trust District One to make booze too fancy. She'd have preferred the kick of real district rotgut right now.
Fuck Finnick and his precious Annie. “I fucking hate him,” she slurred. He was warm, sitting beside her on the couch, and she wanted to lean on him, strong and solid. Maybe it was the alcohol. “I fucking hate her.” That girl was everything that had been taken from Johanna by the Capitol.
“You can’t change it, Johanna. Might as well accept it. Besides, would never have worked with you two,” he said, hand rubbing her shoulder lightly, soothingly. She should have figured trying to seduce a long-term whore was like trying to seduce a brick wall. But this felt good anyway. Better than fucking either Rye or Spark did because Haymitch understood. She needed to drown it out somehow. No wonder he drank.
Taking a drink, knowing his own lips had just been there, feeling the burn of the liquor in her throat and her belly, it felt like the sweetest kind of kiss shared between them--better than fucking, better than anything. “You’re too fierce for our Finnick anyway," Haymitch went on. "He’s too damn laid-back. You wouldn’t respect someone that won’t give you a bit of a fight now and again.” That was true. Sometimes she'd pushed Finnick hoping he'd press her back, but he never did. It just made her feel like more of a bitch. Maybe sweet little Annie hated sarcasm.
She looked over at Haymitch, elegantly dressed in his frock coat--he'd been out on his way to an appointment. Only a few this year, she thought. He was a fast-dimming star. But he'd been fucking strangers for twenty years with nobody to reach out and catch him, and the thought of being like that terrified her. Finnick had been her hope that she might salvage something out of the total ruin that was her post-Games life. But he wanted someone innocent and normal. Like he was normal himself? "What, you think I want to be like you instead, old man?" she said angrily. "Thirty-five-year-old whore with nobody and nothing?"
"Hey, I've got this to keep me warm," he said with a smirk, shaking the bottle and taking another sip, but she saw the flicker of pain in his expression and knew she'd wounded him, scored a hit on his damn implacability. The mingled feeling of victory and shame burned hot, so she drowned it with another slug of whiskey. He sighed, shaking his head and brushing his hair out of his face with an impatient flick of his fingers.
"It was a stupid idea anyway, you know," she felt compelled to say it before he could point it out. "We're from different districts. It never could have been more than...what we had." Fucking each other for sanity against the whoring during the Games--that wasn't much.
The way he nodded, he could have told her that two years ago. "You ain't the first to need that in your early years." She wondered if he'd been stupid enough to fall for his fuck-buddy. Probably not. "Look, pity the little idiot some, if anything. He's just handed Snow his heart on a damn plate."
At least he didn't try to tell her that she'd be fine, she'd find someone. He understood how fucked up she was, respected it even if he didn't fear it like most people now feared her. She couldn't let anyone too close. Nobody from Seven would understand or withstand what she'd become, and she wan't going to give Snow any more leverage. She thought about her mom and dad, and Bern and Heike, ripped to shreds by forest cats. "Ha. I'm never giving him anything he can hurt me with again," she said, not sure whether in that moment she meant Finnick or Snow or maybe both.
"That's the smart play. Not always the easy one, I'll grant." Maybe he knew she was talking about both of them. She wondered if the kid he'd been had longed for someone. Or maybe even beneath all the sarcastic and indifferent bullshit, he still did. But he was right. It was safer this way.