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intothe-books · 5 days ago

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catharsis.

pairings: finnick odair x reader

summary: weeks of supressing his emotions, finnick finally breaks down when he's got you back in his arms.

warnings: depictions of ptsd and dissociation, brief mentions usage of needles, the usual hunger games

word count: 5.1k

author's note: i wrote this in the middle of my writer's block

The beach is emptier than usual. It looks larger too—vast and surreal beneath the high-noon sun, which blazes from a sky so blue it almost hurts to look at. Wisps of clouds drift lazily above, forming and dissolving into shapes that never settle. The ocean, painted in shifting bands of teal and indigo, breathes with a rhythmic hush. Each wave spills onto the shore with a soft sigh before retreating, whispering secrets back into the sea.

They crash in hollow roars that fade into fizzing foam, while seabirds wheel overhead, their cries sharp and echoing in the openness. Somewhere farther down the beach, a laugh��light and familiar—breaks like fragile glass before the wind carries it away.

The air is thick with the scent of salt and sun-warmed driftwood, undercut by something deeper—earthy, ancient, like the breath of something slumbering beneath the tide. Finnick can taste the salt on his lips, sharp and mineral, as if the sea had kissed him and left its mark.

Sand clings to his damp feet, gritty and warm. Every gust of wind carries a fine mist of saltwater that cools the sunburn on his skin. The breeze tugs through his hair, tangling it with strands of seaweed scent and ocean musk.

Tiny crabs dart in and out of their holes like whispers with legs, and gulls strut just beyond the waves, pecking at sun-bleached shells. Footprints scatter across the sand, only to vanish one by one under the tide’s reach.

There’s a strange stillness in the pauses between waves, a momentary hush that feels like the world holding its breath—trying to remember something it once lost. The horizon stretches wide and endless—not with promise, but with a quiet kind of sadness, the kind that makes you feel beautifully small.

Then he hears it.

Soft. Sweet. A voice he knows better than his own.

“What are you doing, Finn?”

He turns his head and sees you standing there. You’re wrapped in a white knitted cardigan over your baby-blue sundress, arms folded gently across your chest. Your hair flutters in the breeze, and your eyes—sparkling, alive—are fixed on him like he's the only thing in the world worth seeing. A small, knowing smile rests on your lips.

Finnick smiles back. He steps toward you, slowly, drawn like a tide to the moon. There’s something about the way you look at him—like he’s the one who hung every star in your sky. With each step he takes, your smile widens.

“What are you doing, Finn?” you ask again. But this time, there’s a tremble in your voice—barely there, but it strikes him like a cold wind. There’s fear behind it.

A tear slips down your cheek. He doesn’t understand. What’s wrong? He wants to ask, but the words are caught in his throat like sea glass. He tries to move faster, but with every step forward, you drift farther away.

Finnick frowns, his pace quickening—but you keep retreating. The beach stretches out, impossibly long, the sky too bright, the seagulls crying louder now, shrill and broken.

You’re sobbing. He can hear it now.

“What are you doing, Finn?” you keep asking, over and over, your voice cracking, lost and desperate.

His vision begins to spin—slow at first, then faster. He doesn’t know if it's him or the world around him that’s turning. The sand seems to tilt beneath him. The light sharpens, then shatters. The rhythm of the waves falters. The dream begins to unravel.

The sky dims, just slightly at first—so subtle that Finnick almost misses it. The blue fades into a washed-out gray, like watercolor left too long in the rain. The waves lose their shimmer and start crashing harder, more violently, their sighs turning to growls. The seabirds no longer cry—they scream, their silhouettes swirling above like ash in the wind.

Your figure flickers.

One second you're there, the next you're not—just a distortion in the air, a mirage caught between waves. Finnick blinks hard and finds you again, still retreating, your steps too light to leave imprints in the sand. He calls your name, but no sound leaves his mouth. His throat burns as if filled with salt.

The beach is longer now. Wider. But unfamiliar. The driftwood is gone. The shells, the footprints, all erased. The sand is darker, no longer golden but muddy, slick with something that stains his feet as he runs. The ocean reeks—metallic, thick with copper and rot.

“What are you doing, Finn?” Your voice cuts through the air again, only now it’s cracked. Frantic. You’re crying harder. Your body shakes as if you’re being pulled by invisible strings.

Finnick sprints toward you, but the space between you grows with every breath. The wind howls, cruel and cold now, carrying not sea mist but smoke. Thick, black, choking smoke.

The sky has turned to fire.

And suddenly, the beach is gone.

The sand hardens beneath him, shifts into metal plates and broken earth. Jungle trees rise around him like prison bars, their roots strangling the ground. The air grows humid, heavy with heat and blood and memory. He knows this place.

The 75th Hunger Games arena.

You’re still there—but you’re not standing anymore.

You're kneeling. Wrists bound behind your back. Your dress is soaked in something dark, your hair matted to your face. A bright spotlight swings down from nowhere, bathing you in harsh white light. Everything else falls into shadow.

“What are you doing, Finn?” you whisper again—but your voice is mangled now, forced from your throat like it hurts to speak. Your mouth is trembling. Your lips are bloodied.

He tries to run to you, but his legs won’t move. The more he fights, the heavier his limbs become. The arena floor holds him fast like quicksand.

A figure emerges behind you.

Masked. Gloved. Capitol white. A Peacekeeper? No—worse. A ghost stitched from Finnick’s guilt. One of the ones who watched. Who recorded. Who paid.

The figure steps forward and grabs you by the hair, yanking your head back. Your scream slices straight through Finnick’s ribs.

“What are you doing, Finn?” you cry again, more broken this time. Begging.

“Stop!” he roars—and his body jolts upright in bed.

He's drenched in sweat, soaked to the bone, like he’s just been dragged out of the ocean. It runs down his forehead, jaw, neck, clinging to him in beads and rivulets. His chest heaves with every ragged breath, and his throat burns—dry, scraped raw, like he’s swallowed salt or screamed himself hoarse.

For a moment, he doesn’t know where he is.

The silence is deafening. His hands clutch at the sheets, still reaching for you in the dark. Your cries echo in his ears, and the image of you—broken, wrecked—sends a cold shiver down his spine. He wonders if you’re still breathing. If the nightmare was only a reflection, or if the reality you’re enduring in the Capitol is somehow even worse than his mind could bear to imagine.

He doesn’t know what to do. What to say. Not when he’s here—deep underground in the bunker of District Thirteen, safe and sound, far from the Capitol’s torture chambers and Snow’s control. Here, he doesn’t have to smile, doesn’t have to perform. All he has to do is survive another day. Another sleepless, useless day knowing that you took his place.

And if he had known the truth—that Plutarch never intended to prioritize you—he would’ve never agreed to the plan. Damn Snow. Damn Coin. Damn the so-called freedom they’re all chasing. None of it matters without you. None of it is worth it if you’re being tortured for his sake.

You weren’t supposed to be part of the plan.

You weren’t a rebel, or a soldier, or anyone important to the Capitol—not publicly. You were just a girl from District 4 who loved the ocean, who smelled like salt and sea lavender, who always laughed with your whole chest like you didn’t owe the world a single explanation. You were just his. That was your only crime.

They took you before the bombing ever started.

Snow must’ve known. Must’ve calculated exactly how much leverage you’d hold. Because when the rebels pulled Finnick out of the arena—bloody, broken, half out of his mind—he didn’t know. He had no idea you were already gone.

He only found out after.

They were in the hovercraft, headed somewhere. The wind roared outside the metal shell, and Katniss lay unconscious on the floor. Finnick had been silent for hours, staring blankly at the floor, fingers twitching like he could still feel the arena burning under his skin. His thoughts were barely stitched together, all blood and static and your voice faint in the back of his skull.

Then the hovercraft started banking in the wrong direction.

He glanced up. “Aren’t we going to Four?”

Plutarch paused, fiddling with his earpiece like he hadn’t heard the question. But Finnick could always tell when someone was lying to him. It was a sixth sense by now. The silence gave it away.

He sat up straighter. “I said—we’re going to Four, right? To evacuate the districts?”

Plutarch exhaled slowly. “There’s been a change. We’re diverting. District Four is compromised—we’re returning to Thirteen immediately.”

Finnick's blood turned to ice.

“What do you mean compromised?” His voice cracked on the last syllable. “What do you mean?”

Plutarch’s eyes flicked to Haymitch, then back to Finnick. “She’s gone.”

The world tilted. Everything dropped out from under him.

“What?” he breathed.

“We believe she was taken. Before the bombing began. We didn’t know until it was too late. The Capitol wanted insurance.”

“No. No. No—” Finnick stood so fast the hovercraft lurched. “She’s not a rebel! She’s not a part of this! She’s not—you said she’d be safe!”

“Finnick—” Haymitch tried, but it was already too late. Finnick exploded. Chairs clattered, fists swung, voices shouted. He didn’t remember grabbing Plutarch’s collar, or slamming him into the wall, or the raw scream that tore out of his throat.

“You said she’d be safe!” he shouted again. “You used me! You lied!”

Haymitch had to sedate him that day. Finnick had been shaking with rage, completely undone, his fists bloodied from the way he’d slammed them against the hovercraft walls. Plutarch had barely managed to stumble away unscathed, but not before Finnick roared something guttural and animal, something broken beyond language. It wasn’t just anger—it was grief already taking shape, a kind of hysteria that bloomed in the hollows of his chest the moment he realized you were gone.

When he came to, it was all wrong.

The lights overhead were dimmed, casting a washed-out gray across sterile walls, and the air smelled too clean—like chemicals and cold steel. There was a monitor beside him, beeping softly in rhythmic intervals that matched the frantic thump of his heart. He lay on a thin hospital bed, staring up at the ceiling as disorientation clung to him like fog. His limbs felt heavy, his mouth dry. Everything inside him was humming with something urgent, something scared.

He didn’t know where he was at first. Didn’t remember how he got here. But he remembered you. The last thing you said, the sound of your laughter, the image of your eyes looking up at him like he held the sky in his hands. He remembered thinking you were safe—tucked away in District Four, far from the Capitol, far from the Games. He remembered believing that. Clinging to that.

Then the door opened with a soft click, and the pieces snapped together like shattered glass being reassembled by force. He was in District Thirteen. That much was clear now. He’d been sedated because he tried to kill Plutarch—Plutarch fucking Heavensbee—for leaving you behind. For lying. For pretending this plan didn’t have cracks in it. For sacrificing you in the name of rebellion. His girl. The only part of this world that made sense. Left in the wreckage of a strategy that barely worked.

You weren’t a soldier. You weren’t even involved. But you loved him, and that was enough. Enough for Snow to mark you. Enough for the Capitol to drag you out of your home like you were some sort of threat. Enough for them to use you.

Days passed in a haze of tension, then weeks. Finnick asked every question he could think of—Where is she? Have they seen her? Is there a plan to get her back?—but the answers never changed. No sightings. No updates. Just stammering words and diverted eyes. It was the same every time: no one knew. No one could confirm anything. And silence, Finnick learned, is worse than the truth. Because silence leaves space for the mind to invent horrors.

Then one afternoon, when he was sitting in the cafeteria—half-staring at a cold tray of food he wouldn’t touch—the wall screens flickered to life. The sound came first, the soft applause of a Capitol audience, the too-bright voice of Caesar Flickerman introducing his guest like this was a parade, not propaganda. And then there he was.

Peeta.

His face was pale, drawn, foreign. Not the boy Finnick knew. Not entirely. But through the careful, manicured conversation, through the calculated questions and veiled threats, Peeta’s voice faltered just once. A pause. A name. Your name. A single mention, hidden in the shadows of what he could say.

It was enough.

Finnick stopped breathing. The room spun slowly, like gravity shifted sideways. You were alive. Somewhere, somehow, still breathing. Still fighting. Still there.

But that relief never came.

Because the moment hope ignited in his chest, it turned to ash. If you were alive, it meant you were in the Capitol. Which meant you were in Snow’s hands. Which meant you were enduring God knows what for the simple sin of loving someone the Capitol had already bled dry.

And Finnick knew Snow. Knew the way he twisted love into punishment. Knew how he took pleasure in breaking the beautiful things. Snow had to know what you meant to him. And if he knew, then there were no limits to what he’d do. Not to you.

Finnick swallowed bile. His hands trembled under the table. The noise in the cafeteria faded to a dull roar as panic tightened its grip on his chest.

In his mind, he could already see it. The room they kept you in. Too white. Too cold. Too silent. Surgical lights humming overhead, machines hissing, monitors blinking. Men in sterile coats moving toward you with practiced cruelty. Your wrists bound to metal. Your breath hitching in shallow gasps. And your voice—cracked, strained, calling for him even when you knew he couldn’t come.

He would’ve traded places in a heartbeat. A thousand times over. He wanted to. But he couldn’t. And that helplessness, it made him feel like he was drowning with no ocean to blame.

He spent every night after that curled up in the dark of his bunk, fingers clenched around the pearl necklace you gave him—a keepsake from another life, when love didn’t feel like a weapon. He held it like a lifeline, something to keep him tethered when the nightmares came. When the guilt came. When he imagined your voice on repeat in his skull and couldn’t tell if it was memory or madness.

And even when the tears welled in his eyes, he bit them back hard.

Because crying wouldn’t save you.

But he swore—on the sea, on his soul, on the blood in his veins—if he ever got the chance to bring you back, he would burn the whole Capitol to the ground.

"You did well, kid," Haymitch said as Finnick stepped into the control room, where Cressida and her crew were already stationed. His voice was gruff but not unkind, and the hand he placed on Finnick’s shoulder was meant to ground him—to offer comfort. But the tension in Finnick’s body didn’t ease. If anything, it coiled tighter.

His thoughts were chaos. Did the distraction work? Did they get to the Tribute Center in time? Did they find you?

The questions slammed against his ribs like tidal waves, each one louder than the last. His mind couldn’t settle, not until he saw you, not until he knew with certainty that you were out—that you were breathing.

“Where’s…” he tried, but the words caught in his throat, breaking apart before he could finish.

Because if this didn’t work—if the rescue failed—if you were still in the Capitol, or worse, if you’d been lost in the chaos of it all… then what was the point? What was the point of stripping himself bare for the entire world to see? Of reliving the trauma, the pain, the shame he’d buried so deep for so long? If the Capitol still had you, if they took you despite everything—then Finnick didn’t know what the hell he would do. Or who he would become.

“They’re on their way back,” said a soldier at the comms, without looking up. “They got everyone.”

Finnick didn’t wait. He pushed past Haymitch without a word, eyes scanning until he saw Katniss standing at one of the monitors. Her posture was tense, her hand braced against the metal panel, watching the screen as updates flickered across it in rapid, blinking feeds.

He came to stand behind her, and Katniss turned slightly—enough to give him space, enough to let him see for himself.

There you were. Slumped against the side of a stretcher, unconscious, unmoving—but alive. Your clothes were the white hospital gown, your face smudged with soot, but you were there. Real. Tangible. No longer just a figment of his hope. Finnick’s breath hitched, his knees nearly giving out as the weight that had been pressing down on his chest since the arena, since the hovercraft, since the first night without you—lifted, if only slightly.

Still, the sight of your limp body made his stomach twist. You weren’t awake. You weren’t speaking. And he needed to hear your voice like he needed air.

“She’s all right, Odair,” Boggs said from the screen, calm but firm. “She inhaled carbon gas during the extraction, but she’ll recover.”

Finnick closed his eyes for a second and let the words sink in. You’ll recover. That was all he needed. Not perfection. Not instant healing. Just a sliver of hope to hold onto. Just a future to imagine again, one where your laughter echoed against salt air and you weren’t a ghost in his dreams.

You were coming back to him.

And for the first time in what felt like forever, Finnick let himself believe it.

When the feed cut out and they confirmed the dropship had landed, Finnick couldn’t sit still.

He was like a storm contained inside four concrete walls, pacing back and forth across the dim room in relentless, sharp strides. His arms were crossed so tightly over his chest it looked like he was trying to physically hold himself together. His jaw clenched, then unclenched. Again. And again. His lips moved with muttered words no one could quite make out, though Katniss was pretty sure he was rehearsing the list of things he’d say to you when he finally saw you. Or maybe it was a prayer. Or a curse. Possibly both.

“Still no update?” he asked for the fifth time in ten minutes, eyes flickering toward the corner where Haymitch stood nursing a lukewarm cup of something caffeinated and miserable-looking.

Haymitch didn’t even glance up. “If I say yes, will you stop wearing holes into the floor?”

Finnick stopped pacing long enough to glare at him. “If you say yes, I might kiss you.”

“Well then by all means,” Haymitch drawled, waving his cup in the air, “keep pacing.”

That earned the faintest laugh from Prim, seated on a nearby bench with a small tablet resting on her knees. She’d been helping with medical inventory, but her eyes kept drifting to Finnick—gentle, understanding. Katniss cracked a quiet smile, shifting in her seat. She was trying to be patient too, though her fingers twitched against her thigh, betraying how much she wanted to see Peeta.

But Finnick couldn’t sit. Wouldn’t.

Because it didn’t matter that you were breathing through a mask somewhere in the medical wing of District 13, safe behind thick metal doors. He hadn’t seen you yet. Hadn’t touched your skin. Hadn’t heard your voice or looked into your eyes to know for sure you still remembered him. That you still knew him. That the Capitol hadn’t carved you into someone unrecognizable.

Every minute they kept him from you was a minute he felt slipping off the edge of sanity.

He turned again, hands twitching now as he made another pass across the room, his footsteps echoing soft but heavy.

Katniss watched him with quiet eyes, unsure of what to say. She had never seen Finnick like this—not in the arena, not even when Annie was mentioned in passing. This wasn’t the charming Capitol darling with the ocean smile. This was someone unraveling, pulled thread by thread in slow, agonizing silence.

Beetee sat across the room, typing steadily at one of the consoles as final data from the rescue uploaded into the system. His voice was soft, absentminded. “They’ll need to monitor her vitals before visitors are allowed. Probably just another hour—standard recovery window.”

Finnick froze mid-step.

Then turned to face Beetee with a look that made Prim’s hand tighten around her tablet and Haymitch lift his head in warning.

“She’s been monitored for weeks,” Finnick said, voice low and tightly coiled. “By people who tortured her. She doesn’t need more procedures. She needs someone she knows.”

Beetee blinked, clearly startled, then nodded. “Of course. I didn’t mean—”

But Finnick had already turned back to the wall, pressing his palms against the cold concrete, like he needed something solid to keep him grounded. His shoulders trembled—not with weakness, but restraint.

Haymitch stepped closer. “They’ll let you in the second they can. You know that, right?”

Finnick didn’t answer. Just nodded once, barely perceptible, like if he said anything else it might undo him.

He leaned there in silence for a long moment, breathing through his nose, trying to keep it together. The room had gone quiet again, save for the hum of the lights and the soft beep of a monitor somewhere down the hall.

Prim stood up and walked slowly toward him, small and steady. She didn’t say anything. Just reached into her pocket and handed him a sealed, wrapped gauze bandage—one of the ones with the calming balm built in. The ones used to help soldiers sleep.

“You’ll want to have something on you,” she said quietly, “in case she wakes up scared.”

Finnick stared at it for a second before his hand closed around it.

“Thank you,” he whispered. His voice cracked.

He was still pacing the moment the announcement echoes—You can see the rescuees now—Finnick moves without thinking. His body surges forward like it’s been launched, instinct overriding everything else. There’s no asking permission, no glancing back. Only motion. Only need. Only you.

The corridors blur around him, concrete walls and fluorescent lights streaking past like ghosts. His feet hit the floor hard, but he barely feels them. Each breath drags in like it’s being pulled through a cracked lung—fast, shallow, ragged. The pressure in his chest builds so violently it makes him feel sick, like the panic is rising into his throat, threatening to choke him before he even reaches you.

Every turn down the bunker hallways is a jolt, each one disorienting, every second spent not touching you a second too long. He blinks, but his vision still spins. There’s a high-pitched ringing in his ears that won’t stop. The world feels distant and too loud all at once, like he’s underwater and the current is screaming.

You’re here. You’re here. You’re here—but the thought offers no comfort.

Not when the other thoughts creep in faster, darker, louder. What if you’re not the same? What if he walks in and finds someone else wearing your face? What if you look at him and flinch, or worse—look through him like he’s no one at all?

His stomach twists, nausea curling in heavy waves. His hands won’t stop shaking. He clutches the gauze bandage Prim had given him like it’s the only thing keeping him upright, like he’ll fall apart completely if he lets go. His free hand scrapes along the corridor wall as he runs, needing the cold concrete beneath his fingers to remind him this is real, that this isn’t another dream, another nightmare turned sideways.

He can’t stop seeing you in the arena.

Bound, bloodied, sobbing his name through cracked lips.

He can’t stop hearing your voice, begging him in that dream: What are you doing, Finn?

His breath stutters. His ribs feel tight, constricting like iron bands. Everything inside him aches. He thinks of the way you used to look at him—like he was something whole, something safe, something beautiful. And he wonders, with dread thick in his throat, if the Capitol stole that from you. If they took the way you saw him. If they made you forget what they had no right to touch.

He rounds the final corner, stumbling slightly. His knees feel too loose, his body uncooperative, like it’s unraveling just as he’s finally about to reach you. The hallway stretches endlessly ahead, and at the far end—just beyond a flickering strip of lights—he sees it.

The door to the medical wing.

He slows as he approaches it, breath catching in his throat like a hook has sunk into his chest. His hand rises to the keypad, hovering midair as his fingers tremble violently. He punches in the code with more force than necessary, as if that might make the door open faster.

And when it does—when the seal hisses and the door unlocks with a mechanical sigh—he’s hit with the weight of it all. The silence. The sterile scent of antiseptic. The stillness.

Finnick takes a few measured steps inside before settling in the middle of the chaos. Nurses and doctors move quickly around the floor, voices raised with clipped instructions, med carts rattling across the sterile tile. Soldiers stand along the walls, still armed, still tense, their presence humming with post-mission adrenaline.

But none of it mattered to Finnick.

What mattered was you.

You’re sitting on a hospital bed at the far end of the room, near one of the triage bays, hooked up to a monitor that beeped out a steady rhythm—proof, somehow, that your heart hadn’t given up. You hunched slightly under the weight of exhaustion and bruises and whatever invisible thing still clings to you from the Capitol. An oxygen mask hangs across your face, misting faintly with each breath. A nurse beside you is checking vitals, but your eyes aren’t on her.

They’re on him.

The second you see Finnick, your whole body stills—like the air around you thinned, like something in your chest finally unlocked. Your hand trembles as it rises to your face. And then, slowly, with more defiance than strength, you tear the oxygen mask away.

“Wait—miss, you need to—” the nurse starts, but you’re already moving.

Unsteady, barefoot, half-dragging your IV line—but it doesn’t matter. Your legs carry you like you’ve been waiting for this moment for years. You run like it’s instinct. Like it’s the only thing that makes sense.

You throw yourself into him with the full weight of your body, and he catches you like instinct, like breathing, like he was born to hold you. You bury your face into his shoulder, and Finnick sways with the impact, arms wrapping tight around you, fists twisting in the fabric of your gown. You smell like antiseptic and smoke and something raw he can’t name. You’re shaking. Or maybe he is. Maybe the both of you are.

He doesn’t care who’s watching. Doesn’t care if Katniss is near, or Haymitch, or the medics scrambling to grab your IV cord. None of it exists anymore. Just you. Just this.

His chest caves. His knees buckle. He sinks to the floor with you in his lap, your legs tangled in his, your arms looped around his neck. And for the first time in what feels like a lifetime, Finnick Odair weeps.

Not silent tears. Not the kind he’s trained to hide. But full-body, broken, shaking sobs that rip through him like waves crashing against jagged stone. He clutches you harder, tighter, his face buried in your shoulder as if he’s trying to disappear inside the place where you still exist.

“I thought you were gone,” he chokes out. “I thought they took you from me. I thought—I thought I was never gonna see you again.”

You pull back slightly, just enough to look at him. Your eyes are red-rimmed, glassy, wide with disbelief and something deeper—something that still trembles like a wound. Your voice breaks when you whisper, “I thought you forgot me.”

Finnick’s breath catches like it was punched out of him. His hands cradle your face, trembling as they cup your cheeks, your jaw, your temple—anywhere he can touch.

“Never,” he says, his voice wrecked. “I never stopped thinking about you. I dreamed of you every night. I remembered every breath, every laugh, every look. I didn’t forget you, baby, I couldn’t. They would’ve had to carve out my heart to make me forget you.”

You let out a soft, wounded sound and lean forward until your foreheads touch, eyes fluttering shut, your breath mixing with his.

“They hurt me,” you whisper. “But they couldn’t take you from me. Not really.”

Finnick’s eyes squeeze shut. More tears fall. He presses kiss after kiss to your forehead, your cheeks, your lips—soft and reverent, like he’s apologizing with every inch of him.

“I should’ve been there,” he rasps. “I should’ve protected you. I’m so sorry. I’m so fucking sorry—”

“Stop,” you interrupt, your voice firm despite its fragility. Your hands grip the collar of his shirt, your forehead still pressed to his. “You’re here. I’m here. That’s all that matters now.”

And it is.

You’re here.

Alive.

Broken, yes—but still you.

And Finnick has never felt so much relief pour through his body all at once. It’s not quiet. It’s not graceful. It’s ugly, and loud, and shaking. But it’s real.

So he lets it happen.

He sobs into your skin. You cry into his chest. And the two of you sit there on the cold floor of the med wing, clinging to each other like you’re trying to fuse yourselves back together from the jagged pieces the Capitol tried to break.

He doesn’t know how long it lasts.

He just knows that this is the first time in weeks—months—he doesn’t feel like he’s dying.

He has you. And that’s all that matters.

#OUGH #OUH #OH #OUCH #finnick odair

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intothe-books · 11 days ago

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✎ masterlist ✎

this is a collection of all my one shots. more will be added as i continue to write. requests are closed!

[ key: ]

🌷 ≈ fluff

🍑 ≈ smut

🌪️ ≈ angst

💻 ≈ work in progress

!LATEST! — from the flames | b. blake 💻🍑

•finnick odair•

— the five stages » 🌪️

— hungry eyes » 🍑

— love(rs) and war » 🍑

— what friends do » 🍑🌷

— lionfish, seahorses, and dolphins, oh my! » 🌷

— beautiful mess » 🌷🌪️

— two souls, one heart » 🌪️

— nsfw alphabet » 🍑

— flower therapy » 🌪️🌷

— bad idea, right? » 🍑🌪️

— red wine: part 1, part 2, part 3 »🌷🌪️

— forbidden fruit » 🍑

— a darling and a virgin » 🌪️🍑

•bellamy blake•

— from the flames: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4 » 💻🍑

— close call » 🍑

— bioluminescence » 🌷

— pretty fixation, wicked temptation » 🍑

•gally (the maze runner)•

— relationship headcanons pt. two » 🌷

— relationship headcanons » 🌷🌪️🍑

• (more characters to be added)•

#finnick odair #LOVEERRRRR

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intothe-books · 11 days ago

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>゜))彡 . . . finnick odair masterlist ! ! !

requests: closed

🍡 = fluff , 🌪 = angst

(i don't write nsfw!!!)

What I Needed Was You 🌪

summary: years of cat-and-mouse chase, finnick is done waiting.

The Sea and The Sun 🍡

summary: you love finnick the way he loves the sea.

Hold Me Steady 🌪

summary: how do you watch the person you love most break in front of you—knowing there’s nothing you can do to stop it?

Nightlock 🌪

summary: you wished you and your lover stayed back in district 13.

Rome Fell 🌪 (alt ending for nightlock)

summary: after district four is destroyed, you and finnick return home broken—haunted by loss, guilt, and scars both visible and hidden. as you struggle to rebuild your lives and your marriage, you must face the wounds of war that threaten to tear you two apart before you can truly heal.

Stacking Seashells, Falling Hard 🍡

summary: a seashell competition between you and finnick on a random saturday afternoon.

Between Your Hands and the World 🍡

summary: finnick isn't particularly fond of the gift you received from one of your sponsors.

Two Victors, One Closet 🍡

part two, part three — discontinued for now.

summary: you hid in a closet to escape from a fan—but what are the odds of ending up in the same closet with the capitol's darling?

Hope Is A Dangerous Thing To Have 🌪

summary: finnick came back a different man. after weeks of silence and indifference, you find a locket in his cot—a reminder that maybe not everything is lost.

You're Still The One I Run To 🌪

pt 2 of hope is a dangerous thing to have

summary: in district 13, survival is routine—but when finnick’s quiet apology breaks through the silence, you begin to wonder if something lost can still be found.

Tidebound 🌪

summary: you and finnick are drawn together like the tide to the shore—even when the odds are never in your favor.

Silver Glow of Moonlight 🍡

summary: finnick finds comfort in your arms after waking up from a nightmare. (based on a req!)

Still Here 🌪

summary: you're left wounded after a gone-wrong expedition and finnick is worried to death. (based on anon's req!)

War Is Over, Now Live With The Trauma 🌪🍡

summary: finnick is still adjusting to his new life after the war. sometimes, he's still in snow's grasp but luckily, you're there to pull him out of it and remind him that it's over. (based on a req!)

As Long As You Want 🍡

summary: in a world that never stops taking, you and finnick steal a moment where only the rain, the sea, and each other exist. (based on a req!)

Nothing's Ever Gonna Hurt You, Baby 🌪

summary: it's supposed to be another normal day with your husband—but it takes a turn when you wake up to eerie silence. (based on anon's req!)

Back to Where We Began 🍡

summary: finnick's usual trip at the beach becomes something more when an old face shows up.

Crab Juice & Strawhat 🍡

summary: finnick's been haunted by lots of things—but he never expected a strawhat to be one of them.

Sweetheart of Panem 🌪

summary: finnick odair believes you somehow escaped the arena, but you're just another tribute claimed by the capitol’s game. he holds onto hope, aware that your fate was sealed long before the final blow.

Mother's Day Special 🍡

summary: you drag finnick along with you as you try to find the perfect gift for mother's day.

Like Real People Do (Honey, Just Put Your Sweet Lips On My Lips) 🌪

summary: how does the quarter quell affect between two people who love each other but can’t seem to align on how or when to admit it?

We Kissed Like Drowning Things 🌪

summary: they were each other's first love—soft, sacred, sun-warmed. then the capitol took him, and you learned that sometimes, survival means letting go of everything gentle. years later, bruised by the capitol and silence, they're trying again. but the sea doesn't always return what it takes.

Typical Tuesday Morning 🍡

summary: you got a little bored and decide to have some fun make-over with your pretty husband.

Drabbles!

golden morning 🍡

happy wife, happy life 🍡

a cat(s) between us 🍡

summer heat 🍡

#masterlist #finnick odair #OBSESSED

206 notes · View notes

intothe-books · 11 days ago

Text

We Kissed Like Drowning Things.

pairings: finnick odair x reader

warnings: the usual hunger games (death, violence, prostitutions, etc.), annie is traumatized, reader is depressed, finnick is traumatized and depressed, slowburn

word count: 14.5k

author's note: not proofread! i accidentally hit post instead of schedule🥲🥲🥲

When you were six, you met a boy with bronze curls and sea-green eyes. You were crouched by the shore, trying and failing to build a castle out of sand, only to have every small wave undo your work with careless indifference. Frustration simmered in your chest until the boy appeared beside you, his shadow cutting into the sunlight. He asked if he could help, promised that together you could build something bigger, something the tide wouldn’t dare destroy. You said yes. By the time the sun dipped below the horizon, your mother’s voice was calling your name, and just before you turned to leave, the boy offered his name—Finnick Odair—and asked if you’d like to be friends. You said yes again. And somehow, that moment, all sun-warmed skin and saltwater air, set you both on a path that carried you fifteen years forward.

At eight, the two of you ran wild through the town square, sticky fingers swiping sweets from distracted vendors, mouths stained with chocolate as laughter rang through cobblestone alleys. You always ended up back at the beach, sand clinging to your skin as you talked about everything and nothing until the sky turned lavender. Sometimes it was your mother who’d call you home, and other times Finnick’s father would arrive, stern and tired from his son’s market ruckus again, dragging his son by the wrist. But he never included you in his scoldings. No—Finnick’s father looked at you like he might’ve looked at a daughter, gentle and kind. Finnick would sulk afterward, grumbling that you were definitely his dad’s favorite. You’d blow raspberries at him in response, which only made him roll his eyes harder.

When you were ten, Finnick showed up on your doorstep with a trembling smile, a box of chocolates in one hand and a single rose in the other. He was flushed and awkward and so very nervous when he stammered out the words—"Will you be my girlfriend?" Your father nearly had a heart attack, clutching his chest while your mother just laughed, amused and endlessly supportive, even though she said, "They’re children. It’ll pass." It took three nights to calm your dad down, reassure him that no, you and Finnick weren’t eloping anytime soon. Annie, your little sister, teased the both of you mercilessly. Whenever Finnick came by, she’d grin and say, “Dad’s gonna kill you if you ever make her cry.” Finnick always rolled his eyes and promised, “I could never.”

But that promise didn’t last long. You were twelve when you came home in tears over a ridiculous argument—something about sea animals and which one was the best. You lost, and your pride was bruised, and your father, loyal to a fault, nearly turned the entire district inside out looking for Finnick, who was hiding behind a fruit stall with his heart in his throat. That night, Finnick snuck through your window with your favorite lilies clutched in one hand and your favorite chocolates in the other. You forgave him before he even spoke. Giving him a kiss on the cheek as you hugged him.

By fourteen, the two of you had settled into something that felt eternal. Your relationship was soft and strong in the way only young love can be—full of promise and warmth and long walks along the beach with no need for words. He’d sleep over some nights, and you’d eat with his family just as often as he’d eat with yours. You had your own lives too, your own interests, your own spaces. You weren’t tied at the hip, but always tied at the heart. Arguments happened, sure. But they never lasted long. A few hours later, you'd be barefoot and breathless, laughing as he chased you across the shore like nothing had gone wrong at all.

But then came the 65th Hunger Games Reaping and it altered everything you once knew.

You heard his name called, and the world tilted. Time stopped. You watched him walk up to that stage, pale and shaking, and you felt your own heart fall from your chest and crack somewhere on the Justice Building’s stone steps. You wished you could scream. You wished you could run to him. You wished you could hide him away from the world. When the Peacekeepers finally let you in, led you through dim corridors to the room where Finnick waited, it felt like a dream unraveling into a nightmare.

Because he was going, and you were staying, and neither of you knew how to live without the other.

Finnick made you promise not to wait for him—his voice thick with tears that tasted like the sea. One of his hands cupped your cheek gently, the other resting on your shoulder like he was trying to memorize the shape of you. You shook your head, burying your face in his chest, your arms wrapped around him like letting go would make everything real.

“Please,” Finnick whispered, his voice barely holding together. “When you leave this building… just forget it. Forget what we were. Everything we said we’d do, everything we thought we’d have—just let it go.”

A single tear slipped down his cheek. He tilted your chin up, gently, like he couldn’t stand not seeing your face one last time, even if it was streaked with tears.

Your breath hitched as you looked up at him, his face already starting to blur through the tears in your eyes. You wanted to tell him no—that you wouldn’t forget, that you couldn’t. But your throat tightened too much to speak, so you just nodded, slowly, even though your heart was breaking with every second.

Finnick leaned in, pressing his forehead to yours, eyes closed like he was trying to freeze time. “You’re gonna be okay,” he whispered, more like a hope than a promise. “You always were braver than me.”

You let out a shaky laugh, barely there. “That’s a lie,” you said quietly. “You were never scared of anything.”

“I’m scared now,” he admitted.

He kissed your forehead—soft, lingering, like a secret he didn’t know how to say out loud—and when he pulled back, his hands slid from your cheeks like he didn’t want to leave but knew he had to.

A knock on the door came too soon. A Peacekeeper's voice told you time was up.

You stepped back, arms falling to your sides, feeling colder already. Your fingers itched to grab him again, to hold on just one second longer, but you didn’t move.

“I’ll see you again,” you said, even though you didn’t know if you believed it.

Finnick gave you the smallest smile, eyes shining. “Yeah,” he said. “Maybe somewhere without the Games. Just us.”

And then you turned, because if you waited another second, you’d never leave. The door closed behind you with a final, hollow sound. And just like that, the boy who had built sandcastles with you, who brought you chocolate and lilies, was gone.

For the rest of the month, you moved through your house like a ghost, pacing from room to room with nerves crackling just beneath your skin. The television was always on, no matter where you were—living room, kitchen, even the bathroom while you showered. You couldn’t bear to miss a moment. Even when you tried to sleep, the static hum and flicker of the screen followed you, casting shadows on your walls. You watched as the boy you loved, the boy who once helped you build sandcastles and brought you lilies, was slowly carved into something unrecognizable. The Games stripped him bare, piece by piece, and you watched it all happen in real time.

Your father tried to pull the plug—told you that no child should be watching something so violent, so vile. You screamed, and you ran, and you ended up at a friend’s house just to sit in front of their screen instead. Every night, you whispered prayers into your pillow, begged whatever gods might be listening to bring him home. Just bring him home.

And they did.

But God, how you wished they hadn’t.

Because the boy who returned wasn’t your Finnick. He looked the same—same bronze curls, same sea eyes—but his smile was gone, and the warmth in him had been buried somewhere you couldn’t reach. The boy who used to pull you into rib-cracking hugs now stood at a distance, a stranger wrapped in skin that used to feel like home. His eyes didn’t shine anymore. They just stared, empty and far away, like he was still in the arena, still trying to survive.

At first, you tried to understand. Of course he was different. Of course the Games had done something to him. How could they not? You told yourself he just needed time. You tried to talk to him, to remind him who he was, who you were together. You begged him to come outside, to walk with you down to the beach like old times. But all you got in return was silence, or worse—polite indifference, as if you were nothing more than another face in the crowd.

And then, one day, he broke your heart clean in two. No warning. No kindness. Just words as sharp as a blade and twice as cruel. He said it was over. That it had always been over. That you needed to forget.

You didn’t understand. You couldn’t. The Games were over. That nightmare—bloody and cruel and distant—should’ve ended the moment Finnick stepped back onto District 4 soil. So why was he still breaking your heart? Why was he pushing you away like your love had been part of the price he paid to win?

“I don’t understand...” you whispered, your voice trembling as your vision blurred with tears. “You’re alive. You’re here. So why won’t you come back to me?”

You cried. You begged. And if it would’ve changed anything, you would’ve dropped to your knees right then and there. But before you could, Finnick’s father gently pulled you back, his arms steady and warm in a way that almost made you crumble all over again. He told you Finnick just needed time. That trauma like his doesn’t fade, not quickly. Not easily.

You nodded, brushing the tears from your cheeks, trying to convince yourself it made sense. But when you turned back toward Finnick, he didn’t move. He stood completely still, his face a blank page. Nothing there. No flicker of the boy you loved.

But you caught it.

The twitch of his fingers, like he was holding himself back from reaching for you. The storm caught behind his eyes, screaming silently. The slight, almost invisible twitch at the corner of his mouth, like some part of him was dying to speak.

And so you waited. Days, then weeks. Months. Two years. You were patient. Gentle. You told yourself this was what love meant—loving someone through the dark, even if they couldn’t meet you halfway. You were there when he needed help after the fire that stole his parents, when the only thing left was a hollowed house and smoke. You stayed by his side as he moved into the empty victor’s mansion, a “gift” from President Snow that felt more like a cage than a home.

Sometimes, you’d find a window left open or a door that hadn’t been locked all the way, and you’d slip inside quietly, just to leave behind a flower, or a plate of food, or a note you didn’t sign. Sometimes, you just stood outside, staring at the doorknob, wondering if today would be the day he opened it for you.

Sometimes, Mags would catch you waiting. She never raised her voice. She just looked at you with soft, tired eyes and said, “Don’t come back.”

But she always let you in anyway.

You kept coming, and she kept letting you.

Until your sixteenth birthday.

Your house was full of people, of laughter and light and plates scraped clean—but none of it felt like yours. Your smile sat too neatly on your face. The laughter felt too hollow in your chest. Your father noticed. He watched you all evening like you were glass, just waiting for the moment you’d slip out the door.

And you did—right under his nose, with Annie’s help, while the dishes clattered and your friends cleaned up. You stepped out into the night barefoot, the hem of your dress brushing your calves, your heart pounding loud enough to drown out the world. There was only one place you wanted to be.

And maybe—just maybe—you hoped tonight would be different.

The walk to his house felt endless. The streets of District 4 were quiet, hushed under the weight of nightfall, the only sound the soft thud of your footsteps and the ocean sighing somewhere in the distance. When you reached his door, you didn’t hesitate. You didn’t even knock. The back window was cracked open like always, and your fingers pushed it up with ease, slipping through like you’d done so many times before.

But this time, Finnick was waiting for you.

He stood in the middle of the dimly lit living room, arms crossed, as if he’d heard your steps coming from a mile away. His face was unreadable, his eyes shadowed by something heavy and cold.

You froze from your spot. You weren’t expecting him to be there at all. “I-I just wanted to see you. It’s my birthday.”

“I know,” he said flatly.

Something in his voice made your stomach turn. Still, you stepped closer, like you had a hundred times before. “I thought maybe tonight we could just talk. Or sit. Like we used to—”

“We’re not anything anymore.”

The words landed sharp, like ice water poured over your chest. “Finnick, don’t—”

“I’m tired,” he said, voice sharp now, clipped and distant. “Tired of you sneaking in. Tired of you acting like this is still something it’s not. You need to stop.”

You stood still, your fingers curling into your palms. “I’ve been there for you—after everything. I never stopped caring. You can’t just throw that away.”

His laugh was hollow. “You think this is some story where love fixes everything? That you showing up like a stray dog will make me come running back? Grow up.”

You blinked at him, stunned. “Don’t talk to me like that.”

“I don’t want you here,” he said, voice like stone. “I don’t want you waiting for me. I don’t want you loving me.”

You stared at him, at this cold-eyed stranger wearing your first love’s face. The silence between you stretched taut and unbearable.

Then you nodded. Just once. It felt like your chest cracked in half.

“Fine,” you whispered, barely able to speak. “You win.”

And with that, you turned. You didn’t look back. You didn’t cry, not until you were past the gates of Victor’s Village and halfway down the empty road.

You dropped to your knees, the cold mud soaking through your dress, clinging to your skin like grief itself. Your father found you there, his arms lifting you gently as if you might shatter. He carried you home without a word. You wailed into your mother’s chest, her hands cradling your head while your sister sat on the staircase above, silent, listening.

That night, something in you snapped clean.

No more waiting. No more hoping.

He killed it with his own hands.

And what took its place was colder. Not the kind of anger that burns fast and wild—but the kind that settles deep, simmering low and steady. The kind that lets you walk away without looking back, even when your heart is still bleeding.

The final year of eligibility came and went with a tension that clung to your lungs like smoke. Each reaping before had felt like a tightrope walk—every breath held, every step tentative. But this year, something shifted. Maybe it was acceptance. Maybe it was the exhaustion of bracing for something that never came. Either way, when they called two names that weren’t yours, the air returned to your lungs like a flood.

You didn’t cry. You didn’t cheer. You just stood there, heart pounding in your ears, staring at the stage until your friends tugged you back to reality. The weight you’d been carrying for years finally loosened, if only slightly.

Later that evening, you all gathered in the clearing just outside town—a quiet spot near the cliffs where the ocean breeze carried away the noise. There was music from a nearby radio, low and grainy, and someone had brought pastries from the market to celebrate. You laughed. You danced barefoot in the grass. You tilted your head back and screamed into the open sky just to hear yourself alive.

It felt like the first time in a long while that you were breathing without flinching.

But as the sun dipped lower, turning the ocean orange, something tugged at you. A ripple across your skin. A sixth sense you never could shake.

You turned toward the path that led back to town—and there he was.

Finnick stood at a distance, half-shadowed beneath the trees. His posture still, arms crossed loosely over his chest. He didn’t move. Just watched. The fading sunlight carved a line across his face, and for a moment, everything around you fell away—the music, the chatter, even the wind.

It was just him and you.

You couldn’t read his expression. Maybe he didn’t expect to be seen. Maybe he hoped you would. But your eyes met, and the moment hung heavy between you, suspended in that slow-burn ache you thought you'd long buried.

You blinked, and the world resumed its spin.

“I’ll be right back,” you told your friends, forcing a smile that didn’t quite fit. They nodded, distracted, too wrapped up in the freedom of not being chosen.

You slipped away from the crowd and into the cover of trees, your heart unsettled, like a drumbeat without rhythm. The ocean roared somewhere behind you, wild and alive, and you let the wind press against your skin, let it remind you that you were still here. Still untouched. Still standing yet still not free.

You leaned your weight against the trunk of the mango tree, pressing your temple to the rough bark. The rustling of leaves overhead mingled with the distant laughter of your friends, soft and far away, like a memory you were already starting to lose. A quiet ache bloomed in your chest, and before you could stop yourself, your mind wandered to Finnick—because that could’ve been him. That should’ve been him, standing beside you, laughing with the rest of them. But pride had built walls between you both—his heavy with guilt, yours laced with bitterness. And neither of you had the nerve to climb over.

Even after everything he’d done. Even after he broke your heart. You still yearned for him.

The crunch of boots on grass cut through the stillness, pulling you from your thoughts. You didn’t move at first—just let your eyes flutter open, fingers curling into the fabric of your skirt as your heart kicked up its pace. The footsteps were slow, hesitant. You didn’t need to turn around to know who it was. You could recognize him by his scent alone. More than that, you could feel him—like a change in the air, the way memory sometimes brushes too close to your skin.

Finnick stood a few feet behind you, and the silence between you thickened into something almost physical. Neither of you spoke. Neither of you moved.

You kept your eyes on the horizon, pretending you hadn’t noticed. But your body betrayed you. Your skin flushed with heat, your breath caught short, your jaw locked tight. Every part of you was aware of him—his presence like gravity, impossible to ignore.

Eventually, you couldn’t help it. You turned.

It had been years since you’d looked at him—really looked—and time had etched itself into his features. He wasn’t the boy who used to press wildflowers into your hands or kiss your forehead when no one was looking. His face was sharper now, his jaw more defined, his shoulders broader. He carried himself differently, like someone who had survived things he couldn’t speak of.

But it was his eyes that hit you hardest—those sea-green eyes, dulled now, as if salt and sorrow had washed the shine from them. You didn’t know what haunted him, but you knew something did. Maybe it was the Capitol. Maybe it was the cost of survival. Or maybe it was everything he never let himself say.

He looked older. Tired. Worn thin by something invisible but heavy.

You knew, deep down, that the version of him the Capitol adored—the flirt, the heartthrob, the enigma—wasn’t real. It was armor. A mask. Finnick had always been good at making people see what he wanted them to see. But underneath all of it, he was still just a boy trying to survive a world that never played fair.

And part of you—despite the ache, despite the bitterness—still believed that when he let you go all those years ago, it wasn’t out of cruelty. It was to protect you.

From what, you weren’t sure. But you had your suspicions. And that involved the Capitol.

Even now, with dark circles under his eyes, the slight sag at the corner of his mouth, the lines forming between his brows—he was still devastatingly, achingly beautiful. And that, too, made you angry.

The silence stretched, suspended by rustling leaves and the steady roar of waves in the distance. Finnick squinted at you, like he wasn’t quite sure where he was or why he’d come. There was something in his eyes when he looked at you—a flicker of recognition, but deeper than that. Not joy. Not even regret. It was as if his body remembered you before his mind did.

He opened his mouth, then closed it again. His fingers twitched at his sides, like he might reach for you—or like he was stopping himself.

And you stood there, arms crossed over your chest, heart thudding against your ribs. Not angry. Not forgiving. Just exposed.

You didn’t know what to say. And he didn’t either.

So you both stood there in the shadow of what used to be, staring across a distance that time, pain, and silence had carved too wide to cross. Not now. Maybe not ever.

The wind picked up again, carrying the sharp scent of salt and something older—something lost. Memories. Promises. The ghosts of what could’ve been.

“It’s just us,” you said, the words scraping from your throat like they'd been dragged through sand. “You don’t need to look like you’re about to throw yourself in front of me to kill somebody.”

It wasn’t a great joke—barely a joke at all—but something in it eased the tension in his face. Finnick let out a breath he’d clearly been holding, like he wasn’t sure he’d be allowed to exhale in your presence.

Then, slowly, he tucked his hands into the pockets of his shorts. You noticed the hesitation, the way his fingers twitched before they disappeared.

“I’m glad you’re safe,” he said, barely louder than the wind.

The words hung in the space between you, light and fragile. If you hadn’t been watching his face so closely—if you hadn’t been trying to memorize every line of him like this was the last time—you might’ve missed them entirely.

You blinked. Brows furrowing. Your shoulders drew inward before you could stop them, like your body was trying to shield something. That wasn’t what you expected. You thought he’d come armed with that Capitol grin, or that same cold indifference he wore the last time you spoke. Not this. Not the look in his eyes now—like he was unraveling in front of you, thread by thread, and didn’t care who saw.

He looked like he’d carved his heart out and held it in his hands, raw and bleeding, asking you to take it again. Asking you to break it all over if you needed to.

You took a small step back, instinctively. Your eyes narrowed, scanning his face as if you could spot a lie hiding behind the softness. And he saw it—that flicker of suspicion, of hurt, still sharp-edged and buried deep.

But he didn’t move. Didn’t defend himself. Just stood there, letting the silence wrap around both of you again.

You shook your head slightly, glancing away, grounding yourself in the crashing waves and the tree bark under your fingers.

“Why now?” you asked quietly. “After all this time?”

He didn’t answer right away. He just looked at you the way someone looks at something they lost and never expected to find again. And then, voice low and unsteady, he said, “Because it’s the first time I’ve seen you at peace in years.”

That silenced whatever you were going to say next. Your breath caught in your throat, a familiar burn rising behind your eyes—but you blinked it back.

You looked at him and for a moment, the years between you flickered. The memories. The pain. The boy who loved you. The boy who left. The man standing here now, trying too late to be brave.

You didn’t forgive him. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

But in that moment, you saw the wound behind the armor, and it mirrored your own.

So you nodded once. Quiet. Detached. And said, “I need to get back.”

You turned before he could reply, walking back toward the sound of laughter and life, where your friends waited and your future hadn’t yet been tangled up in his shadow again.

The 70th Hunger Games reaping arrived like a thundercloud—heavy, ominous, and buzzing with unspoken dread.

You stood at the edge of the square with your parents, your hands clasped tightly in front of you as you scanned the crowd. Your eyes searched the eighteen-year-old girls’ section until they landed on a familiar head of auburn hair. Annie. It was her last year of eligibility, and your stomach hadn’t stopped twisting since you woke up.

You’d noticed the pattern over the years—how the girl tributes were often eighteen, how the Capitol liked the illusion of a coming-of-age tragedy. Annie had barely lived her life. The thought made your heart lurch. She caught your gaze from across the square and gave you a small, nervous smile—brave in the way only Annie could manage.

From the corner of your eye, you caught a flicker of movement. Tousled blond hair. A strong jawline. Finnick. He stood on the stage near the other victors, his eyes trained on the crowd. You could feel his gaze grazing your skin, but you refused to meet it. Last year had already broken through walls you’d spent years building. You weren’t about to let him ruin your footing again—not now.

The escort began her rehearsed speech, cheerful and detached. Her voice blurred around the edges as your heartbeat thundered in your ears. You were nineteen. Safe. Annie wasn’t. This was her final year. One last time to tempt the odds.

And this year, the odds are not in your favor.

“Annie Cresta.”

The name cracked across the square like a whip.

The air stilled. Conversations stopped mid-word. Heads turned. Your breath caught, and the world seemed to tilt beneath you. All eyes were on you—because they remembered. They remembered the last time someone you loved was taken.

And just like that, you were fourteen again. Watching the boy you once dreamed of forever with get ripped from your life. Only now, it wasn’t love on the line. It was blood.

At first, you didn’t understand. Your brain scrambled, lips parting, but no sound came out. You felt the air leave your lungs and your knees nearly buckled. You turned to Annie, whose face had gone pale, eyes wide, mouth trembling.

The silence stretched unbearably long before a Peacekeeper gave a subtle nudge. That broke her paralysis. Annie stepped forward slowly, her legs wooden, like every step was a decision she didn’t want to make.

“No,” you whispered, a soundless protest as your heart slammed against your ribs. “No!” You cried out as you reached for her, but someone was already holding you back.

Your father wrapped his arms around your waist and shoulder. Your mother cupping your face and pressing you into her shoulder. You kicked, thrashed, sobbed against their hold as the reality of your situation dawned on you fully.

Annie was probably crying too now, trying not to fall apart in front of the whole district.

You didn’t have to look to know Finnick was watching.

But eventually, you twisted enough to catch a glimpse of her. Annie stood on the stage like a leaf in the wind. Her sea-green dress clung to her in the summer heat, hair stuck to her temples with sweat. She looked impossibly young. Fragile in a way that made your chest hurt.

You barely remember who the male tribute was. He didn’t matter.

Everything in your world zeroed in on the girl standing alone on the stage, blinking fast as she tried not to cry.

Then your gaze flickered to Finnick. He was standing by the Victor’s section, hands clenched into fists, jaw so tight you swore it might shatter. His eyes didn’t leave Annie. Not once. Not even when she was escorted away toward the Justice Building.

The crowd began to dissolve, families murmuring soft prayers and farewells, but you stood frozen. Your hands still trembled at your sides, and your sister’s name kept echoing in your mind like a wound that wouldn’t close.

That was the moment the Games became real in a new way. Not as a far-off threat. Not as something that might happen.

But as something that had taken someone you loved.

Your father said something about being allowed to visit her before she left. A short goodbye. A few minutes. But your legs moved before your mind could catch up, pulling yourself free from their weakened grip.

Because you weren’t heading for the Justice Building.

You were heading for Finnick.

You ran to the docks. You didn’t have to think. Your feet just knew. That’s where he always went after a reaping—where the sea could swallow the things he couldn’t say. You’d found him there before, year after year, always standing just past the last post, where the saltwater licked the edge of the wood and the wind carried the cries of gulls overhead.

Finnick stood with his back to you, shoulders drawn tight, head bowed slightly. The sea mist caught in his hair, and for a second, he didn’t look like the boy you once loved. He looked like a myth. A shipwreck still standing.

You slowed, breath catching as your gaze traced the outline of him. He was broader now, stronger, wearier. Time had carved him into something harsher—like a statue softened by storms, not age. He hadn’t heard you yet.

“Finnick?” you called, voice fragile as driftwood.

He turned. And in the space of a heartbeat, he was in front of you—arms wrapping around your waist, breath hitting your cheek, lips crashing against yours like a wave that had waited years to break.

There was no hesitation. No words. Just the kind of kiss that doesn’t ask for permission, because it already knows the answer. A kiss made of everything you’d both tried to drown—grief, longing, rage, hope. His mouth tasted like salt and sorrow, and your tears slipped down between you, catching in the corners of the kiss, but neither of you stopped.

His arms wrapped around you so tightly it almost hurt. But you didn’t pull away. You clung to him like he was a wound and you’d forgotten how to stop bleeding.

The kiss wasn’t soft. It wasn’t careful. It was teeth and tears and years of silence crumbling between you. It was desperate, broken, angry. It was everything you never got to say, poured out in gasps and shudders.

You kissed him like you hated him. Like you still loved him. Like you wished it didn’t still feel like this.

And when you finally pulled away, breathless and aching, it wasn’t relief that followed. It was the kind of silence that settled between people who knew they had no future—only history. Only ruin.

Finnick didn’t say anything. Neither did you. You just stared at each other, chest heaving, salt from the sea and your tears sticking to your lips.

This wasn’t forgiveness.

This was grief wearing love’s face.

“Promise me you’ll bring her back,” you whispered, the words trembling but edged with steel.

Finnick’s gaze flickered, sorrow rising like a tide behind his eyes. His grip on your waist faltered, and that alone was enough to send panic lurching in your chest. You reached up and cupped his face firmly, grounding him. Forcing him to look at you.

“Finnick,” you said louder, voice hoarse. “Swear to me you’ll bring my sister back.”

His lips parted, but nothing came out. Then soft and pained,“You know I can’t—”

“I’ll spend the rest of this life hating you,” you cut in, voice cracking like ice under pressure, “and the next one, too, if you don’t. I can’t lose her. Not after everything.”

He closed his eyes like it hurt to look at you, lashes brushing his cheeks as he pressed his forehead to yours, breath warm and shaky.

“That’s not fair,” he whispered, broken open.

A hollow, bitter laugh escaped you. “You stopped playing fair the day you told me to forget you. The day they took you away.” Your thumb ghosted across his jaw. “This is me returning the favor.”

Finnick’s hands curled around your waist again, tighter now. “I don’t control the Games, sweetheart.”

“But you can influence them.” You met his eyes without flinching. “You have power in that hell, even if you pretend you don’t. Use it. Use whatever the Capitol gave you—your smile, your secrets, your body, I don’t care.”

Your voice wavered, a thread unraveling. “Just bring her back to me.”

A single tear slipped down your cheek, and Finnick caught it with the pad of his thumb—slow, reverent. His eyes searched yours like you were asking him to walk through fire. And you were.

He nodded once—slowly, solemnly—as if sealing something ancient and sacred. His thumb lingered against your cheek, then trailed down to your jaw, gentle as a prayer.

“I’ll do whatever it takes,” he murmured.

And then he kissed you again.

But this one was different—less fire, more ache. Like he was memorizing your mouth. Like he was afraid this would be the last time he’d taste something that reminded him what it meant to be alive. It was a promise, a confession, and a goodbye, all tangled in the same breath.

He pulled you closer, crushing you to him as though he could will the world to stop. As though this kiss could delay the storm waiting on the other side of the sunrise.

The rest of the month was a slow, merciless bleed. You paced the floors until the wood creaked in protest. Sleep became a stranger. Your meals went cold on untouched plates. Every second was haunted by the thought of Annie—of her dying alone in an arena designed to chew innocence to pieces.

You couldn’t bring yourself to watch the broadcasts. Every TV in the house remained dark, silent like a grave. You didn’t go outside. You didn’t speak to anyone who tried to console you. Because if you were going to lose her, if the Capitol was going to steal her the way it stole Finnick, then you wanted to be the last to know. You wanted to keep the illusion of hope alive for just a little longer.

You weren’t ready to grieve her yet.

The thought alone was unbearable—it felt like the same knife, twisted again, deeper. Losing Finnick once had shattered you. Losing Annie would be the final blow. You couldn’t come back from that.

So you prayed. Harder than you ever had. Not to any god you truly believed in, but to anything listening. You whispered promises to the sea, lit candles at dawn, begged the stars overhead.

Bring her back. Please, just bring her back.

It didn’t matter if she came home broken or silenced or strange. You’d take her in any form she returned. You’d rebuild her piece by piece, hold her hand through every nightmare. You’d trade your sanity, your soul, your future—anything. Just to see her again.

Because you knew her heart. You’d watched her grow from a bright-eyed child into a girl who still believed in kindness, even in a world that tried to kill it. You knew the sound of her laugh in a crowded room. The way she curled up in her sleep. The softness in her that didn’t belong anywhere near blood-soaked soil.

If you could’ve taken her place, you would’ve. Gladly. Because this time, unlike with Finnick, you had a choice to save her.

The announcement came on a quiet evening, when the clouds hung low like they, too, were bracing for something. You hadn’t planned to be near the screen. In fact, you’d been doing everything not to be.

But your father called your name with a voice that shook. It wasn’t loud. It didn’t have to be.

You walked into the room like someone heading toward a noose. Each step dragged with the weight of too many memories, too many hopes stitched together by desperation.

The Capitol seal spun. The anthem played. You didn’t breathe.

And then, there she was. Her face is plastered on the screen as the gamemaker announces her win. But unlike a close-up shot of the victor they usually do, it’s a poster of her face.

You staggered back like you’d been hit. The world blurred as tears rushed forward with no warning, and all at once, the ache you’d been trying to smother cracked wide open. You fell to your knees in the middle of the room, sobbing so hard it tore something loose in you. She was alive. She’s alive. Not untouched—but breathing, standing. Still here.

You pressed your face to your hands, overcome by a grief that had been paused for weeks and was now finally allowed to finish its scream. Annie. Annie.

The sea carried her back to you days later.

You waited at the docks long before the train arrived. The sky was the same soft gray it had been the day Finnick kissed you goodbye. The waves lapped against the shore in a quiet rhythm. The gulls circled overhead like guardians, watchful and wide-winged.

You saw her before she saw you—standing in the doorway of the train car, framed by glass and metal and too much sorrow. She stepped out slowly, eyes scanning the crowd with a blankness that punched the breath right out of you.

She was thinner. Her lips pale. Her eyes—those green eyes—were distant, darting like she expected someone to leap at her from the shadows.

But she was here.

You didn’t call her name. You didn’t need to. Somehow, she found you.

Her eyes landed on yours like they were remembering how to be hers again. And that was it. You broke into a run and she did too, stumbling at first, then faster, until the two of you collided.

You wrapped your arms around her with a strength you didn’t know you had left, clutching her like she’d slip through your fingers if you let go for even a second. Annie buried her face in your shoulder and sobbed—not like the girl who’d survived, but like the one who finally knew she was safe.

“I’m here,” you whispered over and over, your voice cracking, your tears soaking her hair. “I’m here. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

And behind the two of you, standing by the tracks, was Finnick.

He didn’t say a word nor did he try to interrupt, but his eyes met yours—and they said everything.

He kept his promise.

The outside of the train station was packed, a wall of faces blurring into one another—cheering, gawking, reaching for a glimpse of the girl who survived. Annie clutched your hand so tightly your knuckles turned white, her small fingers digging into your palm like she was afraid the moment she let go, she’d vanish back into that arena. You leaned down, whispering comfort against her temple, but your voice was lost in the roar of the crowd. The Capitol had announced her return, spun her survival into a tale of quiet victory, and now the whole of District 4 wanted to witness the aftermath of a miracle.

You should have seen it coming. The way her shoulders tensed, the way her breath started to hitch. Her gaze flitted wildly, like she was searching for a way out. The noise, the crush of people—it was too much. She stumbled, her body trembling. You turned to her, trying to anchor her, to bring her back into the safety of your voice, but it was already too late.

Annie screamed. A raw, guttural sound that split the air like a struck bell. Her hands lashed out—not in anger but in sheer terror. And one of them caught your face. You didn’t register the pain right away. All you knew was the copper taste of shock and the wet warmth blooming from your cheek. Then the crowd recoiled. Peacekeepers surged forward. You tried to shield her, to stop them, but a pair of arms wrapped around your waist and pulled you back.

Finnick.

He caught you just as your legs gave out, holding you against his chest while Annie was wrestled from the platform. Her cries echoed, high and frantic, as the Peacekeepers restrained her and led her toward a waiting black car. She thrashed like a wild thing, like a child in a nightmare that no one could shake her from. Your heart cracked wide open watching her disappear behind the metal doors.

The medical wing of District 4’s Justice Building smelled like antiseptic and ocean salt. A doctor patched up the gash on your cheek while your parents sat silent, pale and stiff, across the room. No one spoke until a Capitol official—your district’s escort, dressed in muted tones for once—arrived with a folder clutched tightly in her manicured hands. She didn’t sit. Just read off the facts like they were weather reports. Annie was experiencing acute post-traumatic psychosis. She’d had several episodes on the train ride back. Screaming in her sleep. Refusing to eat. Moments of complete dissociation. The Capitol had deemed her unstable, unfit for interviews or appearances. She would not be presented to the public. She would not have a victory tour. Her Games were to be erased, quietly shelved. She was to be kept out of sight—"for her own good," the escort added, eyes glossed with practiced sympathy.

You thanked her, numb and hollowed out.

It was strange, the way grief and relief could exist inside you at the same time. Annie was safe. She would never have to play the Capitol’s game the way Finnick had. She wouldn’t be dolled up in sequins, forced to smile while being showed off to people with power. She wouldn’t have to go through the same things Finnick did when he’s in the Capitol to survive. You should have felt victorious.

But you didn’t.

Because you’d lost her anyway. Not to a blade or a cannon, but to something slower, quieter. Annie had come back breathing, but not whole. The girl who whispered sea shanties in her sleep and laughed like sunlight on waves was gone. And in her place was someone the Capitol couldn’t use—so they discarded her, tucked her away like something broken.

You pressed your face into your hands, sitting in a sterile room that reeked of tragedy, and for the second time in your life, you felt the Games take someone you loved and twist them into something unrecognizable.

You took care of your sister. You quit your job at the front of your family’s fishery, turned your back on the small sliver of normalcy you'd managed to hold onto, and redirected everything into Annie. Because no one else could. Not in the way she needed. Your parents tried—your mother cooked more than she ever had, your father offered quiet gestures of comfort—but it was you Annie reached for when the nights grew long and the memories returned screaming. It was you who held her through every fractured moment, every disoriented stare, every time she forgot where she was.

You moved into the mansion President Snow generously allotted in the Victor’s Village. The place was too big, too white, too hollow. Your mother did what she could to make it feel like home—curtains with warm colors, potted herbs in the kitchen, family photos tucked into glass frames—but no matter how much she softened the corners, it never stopped feeling like a cage. Everything about the house was a monument to survival, but none of it felt alive. You tried to ignore the way the walls pressed in. You tried to ignore the silence. You tried, but it never left.

This wasn’t the life you imagined for yourself. You should’ve been outside right now, maybe stringing fish with the village girls, maybe letting some hopeful boy walk you home, someone who resembled Finnick in all the worst ways—pretty, careless, distant. You should’ve been pretending that heartbreak wasn’t a part of your story. That promises never made don’t hurt when they’re never kept. That the boy you built your world around hadn't become a stranger dressed in silk and scars.

But instead, you were here. In a mansion that echoed with old grief and new fear, in hallways where your parents’ voices ricocheted like sharp stones. Your mother shouting numbers. Your father sighing in exhaustion. Their arguments wove into the background like music, and you watched Annie flinch at each crescendo, her body curling in on itself as if trying to vanish into air. Then it would be you again—kneeling, soothing, holding her as her breathing turned erratic and her eyes lost focus.

You were tired. Tired of the weight. Tired of the pain. Tired of pretending that if you worked hard enough, loved hard enough, you could undo what had already been done.

Sometimes, when the house finally quieted and your bones ached with fatigue, you’d lie flat on the cold floor of your room, staring up at the ceiling like it held answers. You’d imagine other versions of your life—one where Finnick was never reaped, where his smile never carried secrets, where you were both just two kids in love, dreaming of something small and safe. Or maybe a life where he didn’t exist at all. Maybe then your heart wouldn’t feel like it was still waiting for him. Waiting for something that was never coming back.

Your gaze drifted to the form curled up on the bed across the room. Annie’s breathing had slowed. Her face, so soft in sleep, looked like it belonged to a child again. But even peace looked haunted on her. The Capitol hadn’t just taken her sanity—it had taken her time, her youth, her quietness. You swallowed hard and looked away.

And then you remembered that day. The first time Finnick stepped off the train after his Games. You remembered the way your lungs had locked up, the way you recognized him instantly and yet not at all. He looked older, like someone had drained the color from him. There was a shine in his eyes that had nothing to do with light and everything to do with damage. He had been gilded in gold and clothed in silk, but all you saw was the wreckage.

You rose carefully, checking Annie one last time, brushing a strand of hair from her cheek before slipping from the room. A quick, hot shower to wash off the stillness clinging to your skin, and then you dressed in something simple and clean. There was an hour left—maybe less—before Annie would wake from the nightmares again. You moved quickly. Slipped through the front door, past the silent garden your mother kept trying to coax to life, past the white fences that looked like bones.

The path to the beach wasn’t long. It never was. The sea had always been near, calling to you like a lullaby too old to forget.

You didn’t stop until your feet met the sand, until you stood before the great stretch of gray-blue water and let the salt sting your lungs. The ocean didn’t ask for anything. It didn’t explain itself. It just kept going—crashing, shifting, changing, surviving.

You closed your eyes and let it drown out everything else. For a moment, just a moment, you could breathe again.

You sank down into the sand, drawing your knees to your chest as the tide whispered its hush. The sky was heavy above you, smeared with clouds that looked like they’d forgotten how to rain. The wind was colder than it should’ve been, brushing your skin like a ghost you didn’t want to name. But you stayed, arms wrapped around your legs, head bowed like prayer, as the waves pushed and pulled at the shore like they were looking for something too.

It was always the quiet that made you think of him the most.

Finnick Odair.

Even now, the thought of his name hurt in a place words couldn’t reach. It throbbed somewhere beneath your ribs, like your heart had been split open and stitched back wrong. You remembered everything too vividly—how his laughter once wrapped around you like a safety net, how his eyes found yours in a crowd like magnets. You remembered the first time he kissed you by these very shores, sand in your hair and salt on your lips, his hands trembling just enough to tell you he was scared too.

You remembered the promises. Not the grand, theatrical kind—but the small ones, whispered under breath in the shadows between curfews and the seas. He’d promised to teach you how to dive deeper, to build you a little house on stilts by the rocks where no one could find you, to grow old with you in a place where the Capitol couldn’t reach.

None of those promises were kept.

It wasn’t his fault. You told yourself that more times than you could count. But it didn’t stop you from aching anyway.

Because the truth was, Finnick didn’t come back the same. The Games took the boy you loved and sent back someone who wore his face but none of his softness. The Capitol dressed him up like a prize and passed him around like he didn’t bleed the same way everyone else did. And you had to watch—helpless—as the light in him died out piece by piece, each interview, each appearance, each year that passed.

And what hurt the most—what broke something inside you—was that he let it happen. He let the Capitol turn him into something you barely recognized. He never fought to hold onto you. He just let go.

You tried to hate him for it.

You tried to bury every tender thing you ever felt and replace it with anger, but no matter how hard you tried, it never stuck. Because you knew. Deep down, you always knew.

He did it to protect you.

He gave you up like a gift, a final desperate offering to a world that only knew how to take. He loved you in silence because that was the only way he knew how to keep you safe. And in doing so, he shattered you.

So you sat there on the sand, choking on the memories, wishing you could hold him one last time. Not the version the Capitol claimed, not the Victor they paraded on screens. Just him. Just Finnick. Barefoot, sea-soaked, thirteen. Telling you he’d love you forever with a smile that didn’t know yet what it would cost.

You pressed your forehead to your knees and let the tide sing you something soft. There were no answers in the waves, only ache. And you carried enough of that to last a lifetime.

You didn’t hear the footsteps behind you. You were too lost in your thoughts to recognize the soft thud of feet meeting sand, too wrapped in the ache of what could’ve been to notice the shift in the air beside you. The tide kept humming, but something about it changed—like it suddenly had company. You only realized someone had sat next to you when the warmth of their presence brushed against your side, quiet and steady like a second heartbeat you forgot you missed.

You didn’t turn right away.

You couldn’t.

Because some part of you already knew who it was. The weight of him settled into the earth like it belonged there, like he had always been drawn to your orbit, and you to his. And you weren’t ready—not to see him, not to unravel beneath that face again. But then came his voice, quiet, unsteady, like he hadn’t spoken all day.

“I figured I’d find you here.”

You closed your eyes. Just for a second. Just long enough to keep the emotion at bay, to swallow the thousand things you wanted to scream and instead let silence stretch between you. You opened them only when you were sure you wouldn’t cry at the sound of him.

“Don’t tell me you’re here to apologize,” you said. Your voice didn’t sound like yours. It sounded older. Tired.

Finnick didn’t answer right away. Instead, he brought his knees up, forearms resting on them, head tilted slightly toward the sea. He looked like someone trying to memorize the horizon, maybe because the present was too hard to look at.

“I don’t think I have the right words to say sorry,” he admitted. “Not after everything.”

You studied him from the side. The light caught his face differently now. The angles were sharper, the shadows deeper. His beauty hadn’t faded, but there was something hollow behind it now, something bruised. It was the kind of face you ached to touch but knew it might burn you.

It had been months since you last saw him. The last time was when Annie broke down at the station, when the Peacekeepers tried to restrain her and you lunged forward like instinct. Finnick had caught you then, his grip strong and desperate, as if loosening it meant losing you too. He’d held you like you were the only steady thing left in the world. He accompanied you to the Justice Building, stood at the far end of the hallway with watchful eyes, quiet and protective. He helped your mother when her hands wouldn’t stop shaking, helped your father when he stumbled trying to sit down, and when the doctors told you Annie could finally come home, he was still there—lingering, waiting. But after that day, you never really crossed paths again. Not truly.

Even though he lived just across the street in the Victor’s Village. Even though you caught glimpses of him now and then through curtained windows or the rustle of grocery bags left at your door. He visited sometimes, brought fruit, helped your father with the porch railings and fixed the roof when the wind tore shingles off. But you were too buried in Annie’s care—watching her every breath, terrified she'd be taken from you again. And so you both existed in proximity, orbiting the same grief but never touching. Busy in lives that revolved around a shared ruin.

You turned back toward the ocean, the sand shifting beneath your fingers.

“I used to think I’d never stop loving you,” you whispered, not meaning to say it out loud. “That no matter what happened, you’d always be the one.”

His breath caught, and that silence that stretched between you before now felt like a scream.

“I never stopped,” he said.

And god, how you hated him for saying it. Because he meant it. You could hear it in the way his voice cracked on the last word, how his knuckles whitened against his knees.

“But you left,” you said, still staring straight ahead. “You let them turn you into something I didn’t recognize. You didn’t fight for me. For us.”

“I was trying to keep you safe,” he murmured. “If they knew how much you meant to me... they would’ve used you. Like they used everything else.”

A bitter laugh slipped from your lips, tired and sharp. “And what difference did it make? I still lost everything.”

You felt his gaze on you then—heavy, full of everything he couldn’t say. Your breath hitched when his hand brushed against yours, hesitant, like asking for permission to hold something sacred.

“I miss you,” he said, the words so soft they barely reached over the waves.

You turned toward him, finally letting yourself look.

There he was. Not the Capitol’s toy. Not the Victor. Just Finnick. The boy you loved. The boy you still loved in all the ways that mattered.

“I miss who we were,” you whispered back.

The space between you closed before you could stop it. His hand slid into yours and you didn’t pull away. Not this time. His forehead came to rest against yours, and the moment held still—delicate, aching, reverent.

No kiss followed this time. Just breathing.

Just two broken people trying to remember how to hold on without shattering further.

Finnick slowly pulls away from you, as if that he had lingered any longer, he would have broken down. He plants his hands behind him and leans back on them, staring blankly at the dark horizon as the waves continue their endless crashing against the shore. You examine him in silence, drinking in the way his hair catches the breeze, how his features have sharpened with time—his jaw more prominent, his cheeks leaner, eyes more sunken, heavier. He looks like someone who’s been carried too far out to sea and barely crawled his way back.

Your eyes catch on something at the base of his neck. A bruise. Fading, but unmistakable. The sight of it knocks something loose in your chest.

You shift closer, your voice tentative as your fingers hover just near the discolored skin. “Where did you get that?”

Finnick doesn’t answer right away. He doesn’t even flinch. He keeps staring out at the horizon like he’s searching for a way to disappear.

You draw back a little, heart beating faster, already fearing the answer but needing to hear it anyway. “Was it… from someone in the Capitol?” The words taste bitter in your mouth. You hate yourself for how jealous you sound. You expect him to confirm it, maybe shrug it off like he always used to when the topic came up—half a smile, a deflection, some comment about admirers with too many teeth.

But this time, he doesn’t lie.

“No,” he says quietly. “Not someone. Everyone.”

His voice is too hollow to be casual. Too cracked to be teasing. He finally turns to look at you, and what you see in his eyes isn’t embarrassment. It’s resignation.

Your stomach sinks. “Finnick…” you breathe, dread coiling in your throat.

“When you win,” he begins, slowly, like the words are costing him pieces of himself, “they let you think you’re free. You get your parade, your crown, the cheers. And then you find out that your real life—the one after the arena—is just another performance. Another prison.”

You don’t interrupt. You can’t. You’re barely breathing.

“Snow didn’t just want me to be a victor,” he continues. “He wanted me to be… presentable. Marketable. There’s a certain kind of entertainment the Capitol values more than blood. And they paid him well for me.”

The words hit you like a punch to the chest. You look away, eyes stinging, your breath caught in your throat. “He sold you,” you whisper.

Finnick nods. “Over and over again. To anyone who had enough money or enough power. Old men. Women. Senators. Sponsors. Some of them just wanted to say they had me. Some wanted more.”

You shake your head slowly, unable to stop the tears now falling freely down your cheeks. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

“Because I couldn’t,” he says, his voice strained. “Because if I so much as hinted at it, they would’ve come after you. After your family. After anyone I cared about. I did everything I could to keep them from seeing how much you meant to me.”

You choke on a sob, your hand rising to cover your mouth. “God, I was so stupid. I thought you were just… sleeping around. I hated you for it. I thought you changed.”

“I wanted you to hate me,” he says quietly. “I needed you to. It was the only way I could keep you safe. If you thought I’d become just another Capitol puppet, maybe they’d think I saw you as nothing. Maybe they’d leave you alone.”

“She warned me,” he continued, eyes still locked on the sea. “Mags. The night I won. The Capitol hadn’t even let me sleep yet. They were already lining up people for me to meet. She pulled me into this quiet room, held my face like she used to when I was a kid, and said, ‘If you want her to live, you let her go.’ Just like that. No explanation. But I knew what she meant.”

Something cold twisted deep in your stomach. Mags—gentle, warm Mags—saying something so dire, so absolute. It made the back of your throat ache.

“They’d seen me with you,” Finnick said, his voice low and bitter. “Back home. Before the Games. They knew everything. They always know everything. And when a Victor becomes someone worth watching, the people around them do too. I thought maybe if I was careful… maybe if I kept just enough distance. But they made it very clear. You were a string they could pull if I ever misbehaved. So I cut it first.”

Your body trembles with the weight of it all. The months you spent hating him, envying his admirers, grieving the boy he used to be—all while he was being broken piece by piece behind closed doors. And you hadn’t seen it. You hadn’t wanted to see it. Because believing he’d become cruel was easier than imagining he was being hurt.

You wrap your arms around yourself, the night air suddenly colder, heavier, pressing down on your ribs. “You should’ve let me choose, Finnick,” you whisper, voice cracking. “I would’ve stayed. I would’ve fought.”

He shakes his head, a small, sad smile on his lips. “That’s what scared me. You would’ve followed me into hell if I asked. And they would’ve made you suffer for it.”

The silence that follows is thick with things unsaid, with the ache of love long buried beneath fear and sacrifice. The waves keep rolling in, the only constant sound between the two of you.

You feel the tremor in his words more than you hear it. Something inside you cracks again, like glass under too much pressure. You press your palm over his heart, feeling how fast it’s racing, as if the truth itself is clawing to escape from where he buried it for too long. You try to memorize the moment, etch it into your mind the way you did back then—his scent, the soft tremble in his breath, the way he says your name like it’s the only word that ever meant anything.

“I wrote to you,” he says, and your eyes snap up to his, wide with confusion. “After that night. Letters. Every week.”

You blink at him, stunned. “You… you did?”

Finnick nods slowly, a bitter smile tugging at his lips. “At first, I thought maybe they weren’t getting through. But then I stopped getting anything back, and I started wondering if you just… couldn’t forgive me. And then your father came to see me.”

A cold chill spreads down your spine, dread pooling at the base of your stomach. “My father?”

Finnick leans back again, looking up at the stars like he’s searching for an answer he already knows won’t come. “He said I needed to stop. That it wasn’t right for me to keep reaching out. That you were better off not being tangled in something the Capitol was obsessed with. He told me I’d ruin you if I kept holding on. And he wasn’t wrong. So I stopped.”

You’re frozen for a moment. A long, bitter moment where your mind races to piece together all the holes in your memory—after your sixteenth birthday, the way Finnick kept looking at you like he’s expecting something from you, the silence that followed. You remember asking your father once, asking if Finnick had written or visited, and how he shook his head without meeting your eyes.

Your jaw tightens as heat stings behind your eyes. “He never told me,” you whisper, voice shaking. “He never told me anything.”

“I figured,” Finnick says quietly. “He was trying to protect you. I can’t even hate him for it.”

But you can. And you do, just a little.

The betrayal cuts sharper than you expected. Because while your father kept you safe, he also kept you in the dark. He let you believe you weren’t wanted. He let you think Finnick had changed into someone else—someone cold, someone selfish. And you let that belief root itself deep in your chest, never knowing it had all been a carefully constructed lie meant to keep you apart.

Tears prick at your eyes again, but this time they’re different. This time they burn. “I hated you,” you admit, voice trembling. “For so long, I hated you. I thought you threw me away.”

Finnick looks at you then, really looks at you, and you see all of it written in his face—regret, guilt, sorrow. But not once does he try to defend himself. “That was the point,” he says softly.

You can’t stop the sob that escapes you. You turn away, burying your face in your hands as your shoulders shake. All this time, you thought he’d chosen the Capitol. You thought he’d abandoned you, turned into someone else. But he had been breaking in silence, alone, while you grieved a version of him that never really died.

You feel him move beside you, the warmth of his hand ghosting over your back, not pushing, not pulling—just there. Just steady.

“I would’ve waited forever,” you whisper. “If I had known.”

The tears on your cheeks have dried, but your skin still feels tight with salt and grief. You sit beside him in the hush that follows, your fingers curled into the sand, knuckles white. The air is thick with everything—everything he said, everything he didn't, everything you finally understand. It presses down on you like the weight of the ocean, vast and cold and merciless.

“You don’t get to do that,” you whisper. Your voice is low, sharp-edged and unsteady, trembling with everything you’re trying not to say. “You don’t get to decide that for me.”

Finnick’s head turns slowly, brows drawing together, confusion flickering in his eyes.

“You don’t get to rip me apart for years, make me think I was never enough, and then tell me it was all for my protection,” you say. “You don’t get to martyr yourself and leave me in the dark. That wasn’t fair.”

He looks away again, jaw clenching. “I—”

“No, you don’t,” you snap, voice rising despite the quiver in it. “Because if you did, you wouldn’t have let me believe I was forgettable. Replaceable. You wouldn’t have looked me in the eyes and made me feel like nothing.”

Finnick’s hands are fists in the sand now, knuckles scraped raw. “You think I wanted to do that to you?” he says, his voice breaking. “You think I wanted to see you cry every time I passed your house and didn’t look up? You think I didn’t die every time Annie tells me about you?”

“Then why didn’t you fight?” you ask, hating how wrecked your voice sounds. “Why didn’t you trust me? We could’ve figured it out. Together.”

He finally turns to you fully, and the look on his face guts you. It’s not anger. It’s not defensiveness. It’s devastation. “Because I wasn’t strong enough. Because they used me up, over and over, until I didn’t know who I was anymore. And I couldn’t ask you to love what was left.”

You suck in a breath, and it feels like broken glass in your throat.

Finnick’s voice softens, like he’s afraid the truth might shatter you now that it’s out. “You were the only thing that felt real, and I thought if I held on to you, they’d destroy you just to prove they could. So I let them destroy me instead.”

The sob that escapes you is ugly and jagged. “I spent years hating you, Finnick. Years thinking you never cared. And now I don’t even know where to put all of this—this guilt, this love, this hurt.”

He reaches for you then, carefully, like you’re a wounded bird. His fingers curl around yours, gentle and trembling. “Put it here,” he whispers, bringing your joined hands to his chest. “Put it where I kept you all this time.”

You stare at him, tears blurring your vision, your heart aching in every direction at once. “I don’t know how to fix this.”

“I don’t think we can fix it,” he says, quiet and steady. “But maybe we can carry it. Together, this time.”

You don’t respond. Not yet. The tide has gone still for now, but everything inside you is still churning. The world hasn’t shifted into clarity. If anything, it feels more uncertain than ever.

You draw your hand back slowly, fingertips brushing over the place where your palm had pressed to his chest. His heart still races beneath his ribs.

“I don’t know what to do, Finnick,” you admit. Your voice is soft, raw. “I don’t even know what to feel. It’s like I’ve been walking in the wrong direction for so long, and now I finally turned around, but everything behind me is on fire.”

Finnick doesn’t rush to comfort you. He doesn’t offer you promises he can’t keep. He just nods, eyes glassy, understanding exactly what that kind of lost feels like.

“Then we take it slow,” he says after a moment. “We wait. We try. One step at a time. That’s all we can do.”

You sit in silence after that, both of you listening to the waves breathing in and out. There’s nothing dramatic about how the night ends—no kiss, no dramatic embrace—just a quiet understanding, a fragile thread of something mending. When you finally stand, Finnick walks you home, his presence at your side solid and grounding. He doesn’t ask to come inside. He just watches you reach the porch, and when you glance back, he gives you a faint nod. No smile, no sadness. He’s just there.

Inside, the house is dark and still. But as you step into the kitchen, the lamp flicks on.

Your father sits at the table, a half-empty cup of tea cooling by his hand. He looks like he hasn’t slept all night, and judging by the silence, your mother must’ve taken care of Annie upstairs. The look on his face is hard to read—something between guilt and resolve.

You say nothing at first. You only walk past him, open the small drawer where loose keys and mail are sometimes left, and reach into the very back. You don’t even know what makes you check there. Maybe it’s instinct. Maybe it’s desperation. But your fingers brush something papery and old, bound by a fraying string.

You pull the bundle out slowly. Letters. Dozens of them. All addressed to you in Finnick’s handwriting.

Your hands tremble as you turn back to your father. “You kept them.”

He doesn’t deny it. He just exhales heavily, running a hand down his tired face. “I did.”

“Why?” The word is barely a whisper.

“Because he was already marked,” your father says. “We didn’t know how deep it went, but we knew enough. The Capitol had its eyes on him. And boys like that? They don’t get happy endings. They become warnings. Tools. Examples. I wasn’t going to let that destroy you too.”

Tears sting your eyes, but you refuse to blink them away. “You didn’t even let me decide.”

“It was for your own good,” he says. “I was trying to protect you. And if I had to do it all over again, I would.”

You clutch the letters tighter to your chest. There’s nothing more to say, not right now. The ache in your chest is too wide, too heavy. You turn and walk away, up the stairs, your father’s silence trailing behind you.

Later, in the quiet of your room, you sit on the edge of your bed, still holding the letters. You don’t open them—not yet. You’re not ready for that. But you press them against your heart, as if their weight alone can tell you everything you missed.

You lie back slowly, eyes unfocused as they settle on the ceiling. The wind outside shifts, brushing against your windowpane. You glance to the side.

Across the road, the light in Finnick’s bedroom is still on.

You don’t know what tomorrow will look like. You don’t know how much can be repaired. But tonight, you hold the truth against your chest and stare at the soft glow of his window, knowing—finally, fully—that you were never forgotten.

The year passes like the tide—slow in some places, quick in others, always shifting. At first, everything feels fragile. Annie flinches at the clink of cutlery, cries in her sleep, and stares blankly for hours. But you stay by her side through it all, arms always ready to catch her when she stumbles. You hold her through long nights, fill the silence with stories laced in childhood memories, and when words become too heavy, you sit with her quietly, just breathing beside her. You never ask for more than she can give. You’ve learned not to. You move at her pace, steady and gentle, letting her know with every small gesture: I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. And sometimes, as you lie beside her in bed, she’ll squeeze your hand before drifting off, and that squeeze says more than words ever could. It’s her way of thanking you—for staying. For drowning with her and never letting go.

You don’t mind if you’re going under too. As long as Annie’s with you, the rest doesn’t matter. You braid each other’s hair now, sit out on the porch with cold lemon iced tea, peeling fruit in the hush of late afternoons. It isn’t perfect. She still has days where she won’t speak, won’t move, where she wakes up screaming and thrashing. But she bathes herself now. She eats. She hums those ridiculous sea shanties she used to belt out as a kid.

Your father is another slow burn. At first, you barely speak. You leave the room when he enters, avoid his eyes, build a quiet wall between you made of resentment and pain. You hate him for hiding those letters, but deep down, you understand why he did it—he just didn’t want to see you hurt more than you already were. Still, understanding doesn’t make forgiveness easy. But time, as always, does its work. One quiet Thursday afternoon, you find yourself sitting with him on the porch, sharing coffee. You talk—not as father and daughter, not at first—but as two people who missed each other terribly and didn’t know how to begin again. You cry in his arms. He cries, too. It doesn’t fix everything, but it opens a door.

And through all this, Finnick is there—quietly, steadily, always showing up. He never asks for your forgiveness, never expects anything in return. He just helps. You wake up some mornings to find him in your mother’s garden, drawing water from the well or sweeping the steps clean. He shares easy laughter with your father as they work together in the yard. He reads to Annie with a voice that’s soft and careful. He never arrives empty-handed—sometimes it’s strawberries, ripe and sun-warmed, or slices of lemon cheesecake from the market. Sometimes it’s little seashell bracelets or small bundles of daisies tied with twine. Once, he brought you three lily buds—because he remembered how you like to watch them bloom.

There’s something between you. Not quite love—not yet—but the shape of it. The quiet promise of it.

When Mags' birthday comes, Finnick invites your whole family to her cottage. The house smells like salt and rosemary, the air thick with laughter and seafood boil. Mags glows with gentle pride, surrounded by the people she loves. There’s music playing from a battered old radio, someone’s whistling along out of tune. Even Annie sways to the beat, her fingers curled loosely around yours before she lets go, nudging you toward Finnick with the smallest smile.

He takes your hand gently, as if asking, Is this okay? And you nod, letting him lead you into the open space where the others have been dancing. The music is lazy and slow, something old and familiar. His palm is warm against your back. You haven’t danced in a long time—not like this. Not with someone who looks at you like you’re something soft and not already broken.

For a while, you just move, guided more by his steadiness than the music. And then, you look up.

Maybe it’s the glow of the hanging lights or the way his mouth twitches when he tries not to smile too wide. But something shifts.

You see him—not the Capitol’s golden boy, not the heartthrob everyone whispered about, not the Finnick who broke your heart by vanishing into a storm of war and secrets. You see the boy who never stopped coming back. Who brings you mangoes in the heat of summer and lilies just about to bloom. The boy who reads to your sister and laughs with your father and doesn’t try to fix you—only stand beside you.

You realize, with a jolt so quiet it feels like a breath, that you don’t hate him anymore. You hadn’t even noticed when the hatred left, only that now, in its place, there’s something else. Something tender. Curious.

Finnick says your name like a question, maybe because you’ve been staring too long, and your hand tightens just slightly in his.

“I’m okay,” you murmur, and this time, it’s true.

Finnick doesn’t say anything right away. His eyes stay on yours, searching for something—not doubt, not disbelief. Just making sure. Like he’s afraid the moment will slip if he breathes too hard.

Then, almost in a whisper, he says, “I’ve been hoping you'd be. Not rushing you—just... hoping.”

His voice is low, almost lost beneath the music. There’s no expectation in it, no pressure. Just that quiet kind of honesty that always catches you off guard with him.

You feel his thumb brush against your knuckles where your hands are still joined. It’s a small touch, one he could’ve made a hundred times before, but tonight it feels different. More grounded. Earned.

“I missed you,” he says, and though you’ve heard those words before—from him, in letters, in memories—tonight they feel new. Not the kind of missing that aches, but the kind that holds room for hope. The kind that says, I’m still here.

Your throat tightens a little. You want to say something back—something real—but the words catch on the edges of everything you’ve carried. So instead, you step a little closer, rest your cheek lightly against his shoulder. You let the music carry you both for a while, and listen to the quiet thrum of your heartbeat and the way Finnick holds you like you’re something sacred.

When the party winds down, people begin to drift out one by one, laughter fading into the night air. Your family lingers the longest. Just as your dad starts to gather his coat, Annie suddenly turns to you with an impish glint in her eyes.

“You said you’ll help clean up with Finnick, right?” she announces brightly, grabbing your parents by their sleeves and tugging them out the door before either of them can protest.

You’re left blinking at the doorway, stunned, as the door swings shut behind them. Beside you, Mags lets out a low chuckle, patting your arm before hobbling off toward her bedroom. “Don’t forget the pie tins,” she calls over her shoulder with amusement. And then it’s just you and Finnick.

You follow him back into the kitchen. He’s already at the sink, sleeves rolled up, methodically scrubbing at plates while the warm glow of the cottage lights frames him in soft gold. You grab a rag and start wiping down the counters, trying to keep yourself busy—anything to avoid standing there and letting the silence press down between you again.

It’s not awkward, exactly. The air between you feels like it’s waiting for something.

Finnick breaks it first.

“Sweetheart.”

Your head snaps toward him. His voice was soft, but it still catches you off guard.

He smirks gently, biting his inner cheek to hide a laugh. “Sorry,” he says, setting a plate in the drying rack. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“I wasn’t scared,” you mutter, grabbing a towel to dry the next plate.

“Mm, sure you weren’t,” he teases lightly.

You fall into a rhythm—he washes, you dry. Occasionally your hands brush, and each time, it makes your heart stutter in a way that’s both maddening and familiar. You glance at him once, just a glance, and catch him already looking at you. He doesn’t look away.

“I’ve missed this,” Finnick says suddenly, his voice low.

You pause, the plate in your hands halfway to the shelf. “What?”

“This,” he says again, softer this time. “You. Talking to you. Just being in the same room without feeling like I’ve already lost you.”

You set the plate down. You don’t say anything right away because there’s too much in your chest and not enough breath to say it.

“I didn’t know how to be around you anymore,” you admit. “It felt like… if I let myself be close to you again, I’d fall apart.”

Finnick’s hands are wet, and the dish rag is still hanging from his fingers, but he turns toward you anyway. “Then let me be the one you fall apart with,” he says, quiet and steady.

You’re not sure who moves first—maybe it’s you, maybe it’s him. Maybe it’s both of you at once, pulled forward by the weight of everything that’s gone unsaid between you, by the gravity of a love that never really left, only went quiet.

The space between you collapses all at once. Your hands reach for his shirt, fingers curling in the fabric like you’ve done in your dreams, like you did in another lifetime. His hands find your waist with a kind of desperation, like he’s afraid that if he touches too gently, you’ll disappear.

The first brush of his lips against yours is hesitant—testing the waters, asking a silent question. But you answer with your whole body. You rise on your toes, close the last inch of space, and press yourself to him fully, a quiet gasp slipping out as the kiss deepens.

It’s not gentle anymore.

It’s years of longing. Of silence. Of pretending. It’s the ache of missing someone who was standing right in front of you, and now you finally have him again. He tastes like sea salt and lemon and something so heartbreakingly familiar that it makes your knees weak.

You kiss him like you’re trying to memorize him all over again. Like you’re angry at yourself for waiting this long. Like you’ve just remembered what it feels like to be alive in someone else’s arms.

His hands slide up your back, anchor you to him, pull you even closer until there’s not an inch of space left. One hand cups the back of your neck, his thumb brushing just behind your ear in a way that makes you shiver. And when he pulls back, just enough to breathe, his forehead rests against yours, and you can feel him trembling a little.

“I thought I lost you,” he whispers, voice ragged.

“You didn’t,” you breathe back. “You never did.”

The air around you is thick with everything unspoken, humming like a live wire. His breath brushes over your lips again—barely there, teasing. And then he's kissing you once more, deeper this time, like he’s finally allowed to want you and he’s starved for it.

Your fingers slide up, over the line of his chest, curling behind his neck as if anchoring yourself to something solid. He sighs into your mouth, low and shaky, and you can feel the tension unraveling from his shoulders as he melts into you. Like he’s been holding himself together for too long and now, finally, he gets to fall apart in your arms.

His hands move restlessly—over your waist, your back, like he’s trying to map out every piece of you again, relearn what it means to hold you without guilt, without fear. There’s nothing rushed in the way he touches you. It’s reverent. Intentional. Like he’s afraid this moment might break if he moves too quickly.

You pull back, just slightly, just enough to look at him. His eyes are dark, heavy-lidded, pupils blown wide like he’s drunk on this, on you. His chest rises and falls with each unsteady breath and he’s staring at you like you hung the stars and he’s only now remembering how bright they shine.

“Tell me this is real,” he says, voice hoarse, almost pleading.

You nod, eyes never leaving his. “It’s real,” you whisper, and your voice trembles because suddenly you feel everything at once—years of grief and guilt and hope crashing together in your chest.

His lips part like he’s about to say something else, but no words come. Instead, he kisses you again—and this time it’s rougher. Not angry, but urgent. Needy. You respond with the same hunger, your hands fisting into his shirt as he walks you backwards until your hips bump the kitchen counter. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters but the feel of him, the warmth of his body pressed against yours like he’s trying to make up for all the time lost between you.

His hands cradle your jaw, tilting your face up as he kisses you slow and deep, like a vow. You feel dizzy with it—like you’ve waited your whole life to be kissed like this, to be wanted like this. And for the first time in what feels like forever, your heart isn’t heavy.

You’re here. With him. And he’s here with you.

You break apart again, just barely, breathing each other in. His fingers slide down to your sides, squeezing lightly like he can’t believe you’re really in front of him.

“I love you.” He breathes out. “I never stopped,” he murmurs, brushing his nose against yours. “Not once.”

And there it is again—that ache, that softness, that overwhelming truth between you. A beginning born from everything broken.

This time, when he kisses you, it’s with no hesitation. Just certainty.

Just him. Just you.

#i’m going to cry #finnick odair

351 notes · View notes

intothe-books · 12 days ago

Text

Orbit

college!finnick odair x fem!reader content warnings: ANGST summary: you meet your estranged best friend in college after 4 years. wc: 2.5k

previous part | masterlist. | part seven

Finnick had lost track of how long he’d been cornered.

The girl—Paige? Payton? Something with a P—had been talking at him nonstop since he made the mistake of agreeing to refill her drink. She was a friend of someone’s roommate’s cousin or something. He hadn’t really caught the details.

He laughed when she laughed, nodded when she looked at him expectantly. His eyes flicked across the room more times than he could count, scanning for you.

You said you might come. You never confirmed. But part of him had been watching the door like you already had.

The girl moved closer.

He took a small step back.

But the kitchen was full, and the wall hit his spine.

Then, it happened too fast. She reached up, smiled like she already knew something he didn’t, and leaned in.

“Hey, wait-”

He tried to turn his head, his hand coming up in reflex—not to pull her closer, but to push her away. His fingers tangled in her hair on accident. That only encouraged her.

And then...

Lips.

Too close. Not yours.

He was already pulling back, already shaking his head. “No, sorry, I’m-”

Then he saw you.

Through the blur of movement, through the bodies and lights—your eyes. Wide. Hurt.

And then...nothing.

You were gone.

His heart sank straight through the floor.

“Shit,” he muttered, untangling from the girl without ceremony. He didn’t even look back at her as he shoved through the crowd, ignoring the music, the laughter, everything.

He burst out onto the sidewalk, scanning in every direction like the air might hold a trace of you. Like he could still catch up.

But you were gone.

And the only thing he could feel was that hollow space where your smile had been.

Where you should’ve been standing.

Where he should’ve been standing—next to you.

Not backed into a wall. Not kissing someone he didn’t even like.

The moon was high above. Soft. Pale. Out of reach.

And Finnick felt like an idiot.

Because the sun might burn bright, but it didn’t mean anything if the moon wasn’t there to pull the tide.

He didn’t think. He just pulled out his phone.

His fingers fumbled as he tapped your contact.

You. The little moon emoji he’d put next to your name when he added your number again at the start of the semester still sat there, taunting him.

He pressed call.

One ring.

Two.

His heart pounded.

Three.

Four.

He paced the sidewalk outside the house like it might do something, like movement would make you answer.

Five.

Voicemail.

“Hey, it’s me,” he said too quickly, his voice low, breathless. “Can you- can you call me back? I, um- just…”

He trailed off, the words sitting heavy and stupid on his tongue.

“I didn’t mean for what you saw,” he said quietly. “It’s not what you think.”

There was a pause. Too long. Then he added, softer still, “Please.”

He hung up.

Stared at the screen.

He didn’t know what he expected, a call back? A text? A sign?

The notifications stayed silent.

Around him, the party roared on, doors swinging open, laughter echoing. But it all felt distant. Like he was underwater.

He tried again. Ten minutes later.

Voicemail. Again.

This time, he didn’t leave a message.

Finnick stood still on the sidewalk for a long time.

Eventually, he turned off his phone screen, slipped it into his pocket, and ran a hand through his hair.

The night wasn’t cold, but he felt like he couldn’t get warm.

He’d spent all week with you. Orbiting you again. Feeling the gravity of what you’d become—of what you’d always been.

And now, you were gone again.

Just like that.

He didn’t go back to the party.

Didn’t even glance over his shoulder as he walked away from the house, feet moving on instinct, hands buried in his jacket pockets like he could hold something steady.

The streetlights blurred a little. Or maybe that was just his vision.

He didn’t cry. Not exactly. But something inside his chest felt raw, too close to breaking.

Back at his dorm, everything felt wrong.

The room was quiet. His roommate was still out. The overhead light was too harsh. The window was open just enough to let in the distant echo of the party and the cold that crept up his spine.

Finnick sank down onto his bed, pulled out his phone, and stared at it again.

Nothing.

He opened your contact again and hit call.

Voicemail.

He hung up. Waited. Called again.

And again.

The fifth time, he left another message.

“I know you don’t want to talk to me. I get it. I just- I need you to know I didn’t kiss her. She kissed me. And I-I was trying to stop it. You weren’t supposed to see that. I swear, I was looking for you all night, I was waiting-”

His voice cracked. He cut the message off.

Paced his room. Ran a hand through his hair again and again until it stuck up in every direction.

Called one more time.

Voicemail.

He didn’t leave another message.

Just sat on the edge of his bed, elbows on his knees, staring at the floor like it might split open and swallow him whole.

Because he had felt it. All week.

The shift. The spark.

The way you looked at him like maybe the past wasn’t so far away, like maybe you were starting to see him the way he’d started seeing you again.

And now?

One second. One kiss he didn’t even want.

Gone.

You were gone.

And Finnick didn’t know how to fix it.

He’d waited so long to have you back. And now the silence hurt more than the distance ever had.

He laid on his side, curled toward the wall, eyes open in the dark.

His phone was still gripped in his hand. The screen had gone black a while ago.

Finnick stared at it anyway.

He knew you wouldn’t call back tonight. He knew that. But knowing didn’t stop the ache.

The worst part wasn’t that you’d seen him kissing someone else. It was that you hadn’t even stayed long enough for him to explain.

He must’ve hurt you. Enough to make you leave without a word. Enough to make you not want to hear his voice.

His stomach twisted. He couldn’t stop thinking about the way you’d looked. Just a flash. Just your eyes.

Wide. Wounded.

Like he’d taken something you’d barely begun to trust him with again.

The silence pressed harder against his ribs. And then, without warning... He was remembering you at nine years old.

***

You were both sweaty, mosquito-bitten, and halfway through building a pillow fort in his backyard.

It had been your idea, which meant it had to be perfect. Finnick, being Finnick, had knocked over one of the chairs on accident while trying to throw a blanket across the top.

And you’d lost it.

“You always mess it up!” you’d shouted, dramatic and near tears. “You don’t even care how long I worked on this!”

“I do care!” he’d snapped back. “You’re just being bossy again!”

You’d both gone still after that. The kind of still that only happens when kids say something they don’t really mean.

You’d turned away from him. Sat on the grass with your knees pulled up. Quiet.

Finnick had watched you for what felt like hours, guilt blooming in his chest like something slow and sour.

And then, carefully, he’d walked over and dropped a popsicle in your lap. It was cherry. Your favorite.

You didn’t look at him.

“I’m sorry,” he’d mumbled. “I didn’t mean to ruin it. I just wanted to help.”

After a second, you’d sniffled and unwrapped the popsicle.

“I’m sorry too,” you whispered. “I didn’t mean what I said.”

He’d sat beside you. You’d leaned into him a little. Just enough.

The fort stayed unfinished. But that was the first time he realized — with you, it wasn’t about being perfect. It was about showing up.

Even after everything.

***

Finnick blinked back into the dark. His throat was tight. His jaw clenched.

You used to forgive him so quickly. So easily. So completely.

Because you knew him.

You knew him.

The tears came before he could stop them. Hot and quiet.

He turned his face into the pillow. Tried to breathe through it.

But everything ached. His heart. His chest. His past.

He didn’t know if he’d get to fix this. Didn’t know if you’d ever look at him the same way again.

So he let himself cry.

For what you were. For what you’d almost become. For what he might’ve just ruined.

The moon hung somewhere above the clouds outside. He couldn’t see it. But he still felt the tide pulling.

And eventually, when the exhaustion won, Finnick cried himself to sleep.

Finnick woke with a headache that had nothing to do with drinking.

The light slanting through the blinds was too sharp. The pillow beneath his cheek was damp. His throat felt tight, dry.

For a second, he forgot why. Then he remembered. And everything sank again.

Your face. The flash of it through the crowd. The way you vanished. The silence that followed.

He sat up slowly, every muscle stiff from sleeping in the same twisted position all night. His phone buzzed on the nightstand, but it wasn’t you, and so he didn’t care.

His inbox was still empty. No missed calls. No unread messages.

But he wasn’t going to wait around anymore.

He dressed quickly, jeans, hoodie, campus ID tucked to his pocket. Shoved his phone in and left the room without a plan.

He just…started walking.

He checked the library first. The corner where you always studied was empty.

Then the quad. A few people were scattered in the grass, but none of them were you.

He crossed campus twice. Paused by the dining hall. Checked outside the student union.

Nothing.

He walked past the humanities building on instinct — the one where you’d had class together just last week. Where you’d both joked about the girl with the five different highlighters.

You weren’t there either.

He stood on the stone steps for a long time, hands shoved into his hoodie pocket, eyes scanning every face that passed.

And the whole time, one thought kept repeating: You were avoiding him.

You had to be.

You wouldn’t answer his calls. You weren’t in your usual spots. And that necklace—that moon-shaped scar on his heart—he hadn’t seen it shining on your chest last night.

He wanted to believe it meant something. That it still meant something.

But maybe he’d read it all wrong. Maybe he’d ruined the second chance he never thought he’d get.

Finnick rubbed his hands over his face. The sun was high now, beating down on the back of his neck. He didn’t feel warm.

He just felt tired.

So he turned. Walked in no real direction. Just away.

Still searching.

Because you had always been the center of his orbit. And he wasn’t ready to drift without you.

The sun was somewhere overhead when he finally stopped walking in circles and made up his mind.

If she wouldn’t answer his calls, wouldn’t show up at the library or the quad or anywhere else she usually drifted into like moonlight through a half-open window… He had one last option.

Your dorm.

He tried to remember. You’d mentioned it once—offhandedly, when you were joking about how it smelled like someone microwaved fish on your floor every Friday.

West Hall. Third floor. Room…312? 316?

Finnick wasn’t sure. But he knew the building.

And he had to try.

The walk felt longer than it should’ve. Every step dragged, like the weight of the night before was pressing into his spine, into his chest.

By the time he got to West Hall, he was sweating a little, not from the heat, but from the ache of maybe, maybe, being this close to fixing it.

He buzzed in with a group of girls carrying takeout and made his way to the stairs. Up to the third floor. Down the hall.

He stopped outside Room 316.

The door was covered stickers, polaroids, someone’s half-ripped flyer for a poetry slam.

He stared at it for a second. Then knocked.

He heard rustling. Then the door opened halfway.

It wasn’t you.

Your roommate stood there instead.

She looked…unimpressed. She had short hair with red dyed streaks and bangs, she was holding a half-eaten granola bar.

“Can I help you?” she asked flatly.

Finnick cleared his throat. “Uh. Hey. I was looking for-” He hesitated and then he said your name.

The girl raised an eyebrow. She looked him up and down slowly—not checking him out. Sizing him up.

“You’re Finnick, right?”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“She’s not here.”

His heart dropped. “Do you know where-”

“She doesn’t want to talk to you right now.”

There was no cruelty in her tone. Just truth.

She didn’t say it with malice. She said it like someone who had seen the look on your face when you got back last night. Someone who knew exactly what had happened.

“I just need to explain-”

“She saw what she saw.”

Finnick’s jaw clenched. “It wasn’t-”

“I’m sure you’ll get your chance,” your roommate said, gentler now. “But not today.”

She started to close the door.

But before she did, she added, “She’s hurt. More than she wants to admit. Just…give her some time.”

The door clicked shut.

Finnick stood there for a long moment.

Room 316. So close. And still too far away.

He found a bench across from the front steps of West Hall.

It was half-shaded by a tree, worn down by years of nervous parents and tired freshmen. He sat, elbows on knees, head in his hands, and waited.

Maybe you’d gone for a walk. Maybe you were at a friend’s. Maybe you were hiding, but not too far.

Maybe—stupidly—you’d see him from a window and come down.

He just wanted to talk. To explain.

The party. The kiss that wasn’t a kiss. The way he’d looked for you all night. The way he hadn’t stopped thinking about you since the moment you came back into his life.

The wind picked up.

He checked the door every time it opened. Every girl in a hoodie, every burst of laughter, every shuffle of feet down the steps made his heart skip—and then sink.

The sun started to slip behind the rooftops. Campus grew quieter.

Students trickled past, alone or in pairs. No one noticed the guy sitting on the bench, hunched forward, backpack beside him, the light in his eyes dimming a little more with every hour.

He didn’t even check his phone anymore.

He just…stayed.

By the time the sky turned deep indigo and the windows above started glowing gold, he knew.

You weren’t coming back.

Not tonight.

He stood slowly, knees stiff, heart heavier than it had been in years.

The walk back to his dorm was silent.

No music. No stars. Just the crunch of leaves under his shoes and the sound of something breaking quietly inside him.

When he got to his room, he didn’t bother turning the light on.

He just sat down on the edge of his bed, pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes—and let the darkness answer the silence.

#i’m now obsessed with this series #and also going insane about it #this is going to enter my car daydream rotation i can feel it in my bones #finnick odair

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intothe-books · 13 days ago

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No Papers Served | Finnick Odair

Pairing: Finnick Odair x Reader Summary: A few years back, you and Finnick separated in your marriage. When you reunite in preparation of the Quarter Quell, you're hit with a quick reminder that it wasn't legally bound. Warnings & Themes: violence KINDA, yearning, mostly light hearted, tension, kind of angst with resolution

He saw you before you saw him. He always did.

The Tribute Parade was always an affair designed to dazzle and distract. Smoke curled from the torches lining the avenue, wafting upward into the Capitol sky as cheers thundered from the balconies above. The light of hundreds of flashbulbs flickered like heat lightning across the square. Gold and crimson banners fluttered from windows. Music throbbed like a heartbeat beneath the surface of it all.

And you stood still at the center of it.

Glitter shimmered across your bare shoulders and collarbone, catching in your lashes as your chariot rolled forward. The stylists had outdone themselves. You were dressed to intimidate, wrapped in sleek fabric the color of ink and dark forests. It hugged your form like a second skin, whispering of elegance and violence in equal measure.

You could feel his eyes. After years of him admiring you, you knew exactly what it felt like when his eyes heated up your skin. You refused to look back.

The crowd loved it.

They always did.

Because your persona, the one you crafted from survival and smoke, was made for this moment. Silent. Cold. Deadly. A mystery dressed in deadly grace. You didn’t wave. You didn’t smile. You didn’t need to.

You just stared ahead, chin lifted, eyes like cut glass and the Capitol roared for it.

Your district partner stood beside you in the chariot, stiff and sweating under the lights, trying to look like they belonged there. You didn’t offer them comfort. Not because you were cruel, but because comfort made things worse. You knew that firsthand.

Up ahead, the circle of the Avenue of the Tributes widened. Firelight danced across the giant Capitol seal. You passed by chariots from the other districts -- flickers of silk, armor, feathers, fire. Every pair a tragic story, rewrapped in glitter and spectacle.

It was a horrific event, at least in your eyes. This was when it became real. Your name being called on the stage to ride back into war hadn't hit as hard as you being served up to President Snow on a silver platter, wearing your finest clothes.

Every step of the horses pulling your chariot forward echoed in your bones. Every cheer from the crowd reminded you that they didn’t want to save you -- they wanted to remember you.

And that was the Capitol’s favorite illusion: that this wasn’t a massacre. That it was theater. Entertainment. That it could be gilded enough to hide the blood.

Your spine was straight. Your gaze unflinching. But inside, your stomach churned with every passing second.

And somewhere, in another chariot, under the same false lights and fire, was the man you hadn’t touched in months, the man whose name still twisted something sharp and unspoken in your chest.

Finnick Odair.

You didn’t look for him. Not yet. Simply because you could feel him looking at you.

You'd married him. You'd spent years in love, years preparing for a future that neither of you knew would never happen. As things heated up in the Capitol with Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark, it became harder to see each other. Your expectations and loyalties to the Capitol became more demanding. Snow didn't care about your union, though of course he'd televised it and made it a huge deal -- the union of two districts.

But it was just that. You were from Seven and he was from Four. Two different districts with two different expectations from the same overlord.

Snow didn't love you as much as he did Finnick. Finnick was more useful.

He started coming home less and less until it was months in between. And finally, the last time he came home, you weren't there.

You were tired.

Tired of waiting in empty rooms. Tired of seeing your love turned into propaganda. Tired of waking up to a world that always wanted more than it gave back.

So you went home. Back to Seven. Back to the trees. Back to something real.

No papers were served. No separation announced. Snow wouldn’t allow it -- the Capitol didn’t like broken fairytales.

But the silence was enough. The absence was enough. It was unspoken, but the citizens knew. It was a tragic love story of two Victors broken up.

And now… now, you were both here again. Painted and packaged and paraded through the streets like gods on a pyre.

You didn’t look for him.

Because you didn’t need to.

Your partner's voice interrupted your thoughts.

Blight smirked beside you, casual in the way only someone long used to horror could be. His arms were folded over his chest, eyes scanning the crowd like he was counting exits instead of cheers.

“You’re doing well,” he drawled, leaning just slightly toward you. “Lover boy? Not so much.”

You didn’t look at him. You didn’t look at Finnick either. Not yet.

But something flickered in your chest. That name. Lover boy. Like it wasn’t more than that. Like it didn’t still sting. Like the burn didn’t still linger in the softest parts of you.

“Is that so?” you murmured, keeping your face placid, your smile frozen in place for the Capitol cameras. “Shame. He always did love a good performance.”

Blight chuckled low. “Well, he looked like he’d seen a ghost when he caught sight of you. Or maybe a dream. Hard to say.”

You didn’t answer. You didn’t have to. Because Blight knew you well enough to read the smallest shift in your jaw, the flicker of tension behind your eyes.

“He’s not gonna be your problem,” he added, more gently now. “Not unless you let him be.”

Nodding, you glanced up at the Capitol citizens. “I know he's not. He's smart. He wouldn't put us in any compromising positions. Drawing extra attention.”

Blight raised an eyebrow.

“Name. He looks about ready to jump into this carriage and make himself noticeable.”

“Ignore it,” you said under your breath, adjusting the fall of your costume. “We need them to believe it’s all dead and gone. Love stories don’t win wars. They win sponsors, which I've never even needed.”

Blight chuckled quietly, the sound lost beneath the cheering crowd. “No,” he said, “you haven't.”

You exhaled slowly, staring straight ahead as the chariots rolled forward. You wouldn’t give them a show. Not yet.

Not until it mattered.

Days passed. Training ensued.

It was what people wanted to see. The training room was where you revealed your skill, your tact. You were always the most interesting to watch. Your coldness, your ferocity when sparring, your wordlessness. This gained you sponsors. It also gained the Gamemakers' support.

You zipped your training suit up, tucking your braid into a bun. Then, you pushed through the doors of the facility.

It was less intimidating than it was the first time.

The training facility was large. Cold. Echoey. It was full to the brim with deadly weapons and survival scenarios, making it the ideal place to train a killer.

You already were one. But it always helped to brush up.

You'd learned quickly, through the experience you'd had and watching other tributes for years, that you couldn't rely on weapons. They were hard to find if you were looking for the special ones, the ones with the true advantage.

So, you trained in hand-to-hand and wielding knives.

It was muscle memory, by now. The way your fingers curled around the hilt of a blade. The way your feet shifted just slightly before a strike. You moved like someone who had nothing left to lose but everything to protect.

The rubber mat was cold beneath your boots as you stepped into the sparring circle. A boy from District 2 was already waiting -- broad-shouldered, cocky, and clearly amused by the sight of you. That amusement lasted about ten seconds.

The second the bell rang, you struck.

Fast, clean, efficient. You dodged the first swing and landed a quick blow to his ribs that knocked the air from his lungs. When he staggered, you hooked your leg behind his and sent him crashing to the floor. Then you knelt, knife at his throat, not even breathing hard.

You held it there just long enough to make your point, then dropped the blade beside him and walked off. Cold. Quiet. Controlled.

You were sweating. You sat on a mat on the floor, opening your water bottle and taking large sips. Heaving, you put it down and looked around, thinking. Strategizing.

You hadn't even seen him coming until he settled beside you.

He didn’t say anything at first. Just sat down beside you like no time had passed. Like you hadn’t spent years apart. Like you hadn’t almost died thinking you might never see him again.

Finnick Odair.

Still golden, still carved from the sea and salt and charm that made the Capitol swoon. But there was something different now. Tired beneath the tan. Hollow under the easy smile he offered as he nudged your water bottle gently with two fingers.

“You always push too hard on the first day.”

You didn’t respond. Not at first. Your throat was tight, pulse thudding too loud in your ears to form words.

So he kept going.

“I saw the fight. That move at the end? Brutal. Clean.” A pause. “You’re even better than I remember.”

You turned your head slightly, eyeing him. “I had to be.”

He analyzed your face like he didn't want to forget it. Like you'd walk away and disappear for months again. His eyes were just like you remembered -- easy to fall in love with, easy to stare at. Like seaglass. Aquamarine.

“I was surprised you called to explain yourself. You know,” He said quietly. “After you left.”

Your breath caught -- not at his words, but at how gently he said them. Like he wasn’t accusing you. Just remembering.

“I owed you that,” you said after a beat, staring ahead. “You came home and I was gone. I didn’t want you to think I vanished without a reason.”

Finnick’s jaw ticked, but he didn’t interrupt. He just listened. But you didn't continue. You avoided the conversation like the plague every time it was brought up by anybody. Finnick had noticed that, like he noticed every single other thing about you.

In interviews, you declined to comment on your separation. In your televised interview with President Snow, you simply told the man it was a "mutual decision." Bullshit.

“Bullshit,” Finnick echoed under his breath, like he couldn’t help himself -- like the word had been sitting in his chest for years, and now it had finally clawed its way out. He hadn't meant for his thoughts to leave where they originated.

You glanced at him. Surprised. Not angry. Tired.

“What?”

Now that it was out, he couldn't go back on it.

“What you told Snow last month. It was bullshit.”

You stared at him, stunned into silence for a moment.

The fluorescent lights above hummed. Somewhere in the distance, someone grunted as a blade hit a target. But here, beside him, it was quiet. Still. The space between your bodies felt tight -- not in proximity, but in weight. In memory.

Your voice was thin when you finally answered. “You think I didn’t know that?”

Finnick shook his head, eyes still fixed on the floor. “I think you knew. I just don’t think you cared that I had to hear it like everyone else. That I had to sit in some Capitol suite, with Snow watching me watch you, and pretend it didn’t fucking hurt.”

The words hit hard. Not loud -- he wasn’t yelling. But they were worse that way. Softer. Realer.

Your jaw clenched.

“Finnick--”

“You haven't even divorced me. You're too much of a coward to make it official, but you're telling people on TV that it was a mutual, peaceful decision,” he continued. Letting it all out. Finally. “Why'd you lie, huh?”

His eyes were full of frustration now. Anger.

You met his gaze, feeling it like a knife pressed to your throat -- not fatal, but sharp enough to make breathing hard.

“I didn’t want them to know they broke us,” you said quietly. “I didn’t want to give them that. If I told the truth, it would’ve been a spectacle. They would’ve twisted it into a new love story, or a tragedy they could sell. Something shiny. Not something real.”

Finnick scoffed, shaking his head. “So instead you made me the villain? The distant husband. The Capitol’s whore who left you behind.”

Your eyes flared. “Don’t do that. Don’t pretend you didn’t disappear, Finnick.”

“I didn’t have a choice!” he snapped. “You think I wanted to be passed around like a prize? You think I liked being pulled from you every week to satisfy the Capitol’s idea of loyalty? I did what I had to, just like you did.”

You looked away. Your throat ached. “That’s exactly why I couldn’t talk about it.”

He was quiet for a second. Then, softer: “So you didn’t divorce me because you still loved me. But you lied because you were ashamed of how we ended.”

You didn’t respond. Couldn’t.

“I needed to know if it meant anything to you,” he continued. “All those nights you stayed gone. All those months you didn’t call. But it's clear to me that I didn't mean a thing.” He hissed.

Something snapped in you. Glaring, you grabbed his hand in a tight grip, yanking him behind you. Out of the training facility. Out of the corridor. Into a lounge room, slamming the door and locking it.

Finnick barely had time to register what was happening before he was backed against the wall, your chest heaving, eyes alight with fury.

“Don’t you dare say you meant nothing to me,” you growled, your grip still firm around his wrist. “You think I went back to District Seven and lived some perfect life without you? You think I slept at night without waking up to the ghost of you in my bed? I burned for you, Finnick. Every damn day.”

His breath hitched, sea-glass eyes searching yours -- but you weren’t finished.

“You stopped writing. You stopped fighting. You let them rip us apart piece by piece, and I kept my mouth shut so they wouldn’t do worse. So they wouldn’t put a fucking target on your back. I lied because it was the only way I could protect what was left of us.”

Finnick was silent for a beat, lips parted, his chest rising and falling fast. His eyes narrowed.

“So you're blaming me? You're blaming me for you leaving when things got hard?” He hissed.

You faltered.

He stepped forward, looking down at you with a heated gaze.

“You're just as frustrating as you have been forever. And just as stubborn.” He huffed, grabbing you by your waist. He quickly switched your positions, backing you into the wall instead, pressing you closely.

You gasped, your back hitting the wall with a soft thud, his chest flush against yours. The air between you sparked like flint to steel, searing and volatile.

“I fought for us,” Finnick growled, voice low and shaking. “I fought every way I knew how. But there’s only so much fighting a man can do when the woman he loves won’t even let him in.”

Your heart was pounding, fury and grief and longing all crashing together inside your chest. But you didn’t push him away. Couldn’t. Not when his hands were gripping your waist like you were the only thing tethering him to the earth. He was so close -- he smelled the same as he had when he was yours. His signature cologne, the faint smell of sea salt, and clean linen.

“Finnick--”

“No. It's your turn to listen. You're still my wife, you never sent me a damn thing saying otherwise. I never asked you to protect me. I never asked for you to save our reputations. All I asked for was you.” He said steadily, his nose almost touching yours.

Your breath hitched, the heat of his words igniting every nerve ending. You swallowed hard, caught between the ache of truth and the desperate want swirling in his eyes. He lifted a hand to grip your jaw, to force you to look into his eyes, to see how much he meant it.

His wedding ring glinted. He was still wearing it.

Your fingers trembled as they brushed lightly over the ring, tracing the smooth metal like it was a lifeline back to a past neither of you wanted to let go of -- but neither had dared fully hold onto either.

“You still..” You trailed off.

He nodded, his hot gaze still resting on your face.

“Of course I do. I'll wear it until the bitter end.”

Frustrated tears started to meet your eyes. You threw your head back, huffing.

“Why can't you just hate me like a normal person would, Finnick?”

“Because I don't want to. Because I can't. Because you belong with me,” he hummed. “And I won't pretend that you don't.”

His voice was velvet-wrapped steel -- soft, but unyielding. It rooted you in place. Unraveled you. Broke through every defense you’d rebuilt since the day you walked away.

You stared up at him, throat tight, lip trembling. “Finnick…”

But he didn’t give you space to run. Not this time.

His forehead pressed against yours, breath mingling with yours, as intimate as any kiss. “We were never done, sweetheart,” he whispered. “Your fear just tried to convince us we were.”

You closed your eyes, a tear slipping down your cheek. He caught it with his thumb.

“We’re in the Games again,” you murmured. “We could die.”

“Then I’ll die wearing your ring and loving you. And if we live,” he said, voice low and firm, “we fix it. For real this time.”

You opened your eyes. And he was right there waiting. Always had been. While your fear of abandonment consumed you, while you hurt him repeatedly, while you ran from him, he'd always been there. Waiting.

Instead of speaking, you leaned forward, giving into your desires. You kissed him.

It was like coming home after a long trip. It was like sinking into warm sheets after a sleepless night, like exhaling after years of holding your breath. His mouth met yours with the same ache, the same urgency -- not rushed, but hungry. Like he’d been starving for you.

Finnick’s hands gripped your waist tighter, pulling you flush against him, like if he didn’t hold you close enough, he might lose you again. Your fingers found his jaw, your hand scraping softly against his stubble as your lips moved in tandem.

You broke the kiss only when air became necessary, both of you panting, foreheads pressed together, your hands still clutching each other like lifelines.

You weren’t done. You’d never been.

#WAUGH #finnick odair

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intothe-books · 13 days ago

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i'm a firm believer that finnick odair isn't the type of man to simply fuck his lover and view their time together as a passing fancy. no, he makes love to them. he deeply savors the atmosphere of intimacy the two of you share inside the privacy of your shared bedroom. to him, sex with you is love in its purest, rawest form.

he touches like the tide—

finnick’s hands skim over their skin as though it were delicate sea-glass, softened by years of storms. he memorizes each curve with the kind of awe only a man born from old poetry could possess. salt still clings to his lashes, his hair damp with moonlit mist, but his gaze—his gaze burns.

“you don’t know what you do to me,” he murmurs, lips brushing over the hollow of their throat like a prayer. “you don’t know what you are.”

he maps them slowly, reverently, with fingertips that once held spears but now hold only devotion. a shoulder blade becomes a shore. a collarbone, a crescent moon. the pulse at their neck is a drumbeat of something holy, a melodic grounding.

“every inch of you,” he whispers, pressing a kiss below their ear, “was carved to ruin me.”

his voice is low, reverent, like the sea hush before a wave breaks. “they can keep their jewels and empty promises. i'd trade them all for the slope of your hip, the warmth of your breath, the curve of your smile in the dark.”

finnick kneels—not in submission, but in adoration.

as if worship were not something done in temples, but in the quiet spaces between heartbeats.

as if salvation could be found in skin and sighs and the taste of someone who calls him home.

and when he looks up at them, his mouth against their ribs, it’s with eyes that shine not from the capitol’s cameras but from something deeper—something fragile and infinite.

love, unarmored.

worship, unashamed.

—

#this is poetic and i’m obsessed #finnick odair

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intothe-books · 14 days ago

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tumblr weirdgirls and freaks i love you all kisses mwah mwah there would not be fanfic for the charas i love without you

#ramblings

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intothe-books · 16 days ago

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could you do a finnick odair fic where they take their daughter to the beach for the first time?

sure!

Finnick Odair x fem!reader who show their daughter the beach [546 words]

CW: kid fic, post-rebellion, mention of District 13 and the Capitol, District Four!reader, Finnick saying someone's bad at beach lol, fluff

“No, no! Awe, sweetheart; don’t put it in your mouth.” Finnick coos as he takes your daughter's pudgy little fist out of her mouth, still connected to her face by a now muddy coloured string of drool as her dad tries to shake the sand from her iron clasp grip.

You simply smile as you watch the sight; your husband shoving Marina’s fist into a pale of sea water which she ultimately dumps onto her father’s lap, squealing in delight when the sand beneath her turns to mud.

“You are going to be trouble, aren’t you?” Finnick asks his daughter, though his face is dutifully lovesick. “Honey, this might be our fault.”

“What might be our fault?”

“That our child is so bad at… at beach.”

You tilt your head curiously at your husband. “Can one be bad at ‘beach’?”

“Clearly.” He snorts, nodding towards Marina who had moved onto her hands and knees and began shuffling towards a clam shell a few feet away from the blanket you were stationed on.

“And how exactly is that our fault?” You continue.

“We should have brought her to the beach sooner! Preferably immediately after birth.”

You snort, causing Finnick to look up at you through his lashes. “Once you were feeling better, of course.”

You nod at him. “Oh, of course.”

“Sweetheart, out of your mouth.” Finnick calls as he stands to put Marina in air jail, pulling the sandy clam shell out of her mouth causing the child to clap her hands together in frustration.

“Have we inadvertently raised a Capitolian child?” You ask theatrically, causing Finnick to freeze in his movements before hastily cupping his hands over Marina’s ears.

“You’re going to give her a complex, honey.” He chides.

“Finn; she was born in District 13, raised in the Capitol.” You explain simply. “Maybe she doesn’t have the District Four-”

“That’s enough out of you.” Finnick interrupts, sitting the one-year-old on his knee and handing her a teether. “Mama’s being cruel, isn’t she? Insulting you like that.”

“Being from District 13 is not an insult, Finnick.” You laugh.

“She identifies as being from District Four, okay?” He counters severely. “Both of her parents were born and raised in District Four, therefore she is a District Four baby.”

“Whatever you say, babe.”

“That’s right.” Finnick agrees, though he’s now returned to speaking to his child. “And she’s gonna be a master swimmer, hm? I’ll show you all the best places to dive for shells.”

Your smile turns soft as you watch your husband tell his sandy little girl about all the fun and trouble her parents used to get into at this very beach, how her mama taught him how to make the coolest bracelets out of the shells he found here, how she would swim with him well into the evening without complaint because he just couldn’t bring himself to call it a night and say goodbye.

How being at this beach with you was the safest and most free he’d ever felt in his entire life. How he couldn’t wait to share it with her.

You couldn’t help but agree, and you also couldn’t wait to share this place that you loved so much with the littlest, newest love of your life.

#AWE #finnick odair

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intothe-books · 16 days ago

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Evermore

finnick odair x victor fem reader content warnings: ANGST, YEARNING, trafficking of victors summary: finnick’s late night thoughts (pt. 2 of gold rush.) pt.1

masterlist.

The cool, crisp night air brushed against Finnick’s skin as he stepped out onto the balcony. He gazed out to the twinkling lights of the Capitol buildings.

He gripped the railing, tilted his head back, closed his eyes and took a deep breath in.

When he opened his eyes, he gazed up at the night sky.

He couldn’t see the stars. Not like how he could see them in four.

The stars in four were bright and sparkling, here, in the Capitol, they are dim, their sparkling glow drowned out by the extravagant golden lights of the buildings.

His thoughts move from the stars in the sky to the one star in his life.

You.

You are so much like the stars.

In Four, he could see how you glow in the sun light while you took walks on the beach. The sun would kiss your skin, painting it golden, making you look like an absolute goddess.

But the Captiol dimmed your beautiful glow.

They had a way of dulling everything pure, everything beautiful. But even surrounded by its gaudy light and suffocating luxury, you still managed to shine.

To him, you were brighter than any star.

His grip tightened on the railing and he closed his eyes again, trying to block out his thoughts.

But he couldn’t get you out of his head.

Finnick is somebody that could have anything in the world. Luxury. Money. Jewels.

He could have it all, but the one thing he truly wanted, the one thing he needed, he couldn’t have.

Like the stars, you felt so close, yet you were too far to reach.

He would always find himself looking for you in the crowds at galas. His eyes always fixated at the entrances, waiting to see you. And as he charmed and flirted with everyone around him, his gaze would always go back to you.

You always looked uncomfortable at the galas, rightfully so.

You deserved better. You deserved better than to be used by the Capitol.

You deserved to be walking on the shores of Four. You deserved to be living a peaceful life. A life with someone that could give you the life you dreamed of, one full of love and happiness.

Finnick wanted it to be him. But he knew it couldn’t be him.

It could never be him. And that was a pain he couldn’t shake away.

It was too dangerous. He knew the consequences. He didn’t want to put you at risk.

But that wouldn’t stop him from pretending that he could have it, that he couldn’t have you. Because no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t stop. You were always there, in his thoughts, in his heart.

The wind picked up, tugging at his hair, and he closed his eyes again. He could almost picture it—you and him on the beach, you leaning against his shoulder as you both watch the stars.

A soft sigh escaped him as he opened his eyes and stared straight ahead. He wondered what it would be like to hold you in his arms, what it would be like to wake up to you next to him in the morning, what it would be like to show his love for you. He wondered if you ever thought about him like this.

“Finnick,” a voice called from behind him, the tone sweet and syrupy, the kind that made his skin crawl.

He didn’t turn around. He didn’t want to.

“Finnick.” the voice repeated, now more sharper. “Come back to bed..”

His grip around the railing tightened again before he forced himself to let go.

The cold of the night faded as he stepped back into the warmth of the room, his practiced smile slipping into place as he turned to face the woman waiting for him.

But even as he walked back toward her, his thoughts remained with you. Because you, the girl from four that had his whole heart, was out there, somewhere under the same sky, under the same stars, you were there.

And you would have his heart, for evermore.

A/N: MY SHAYLAAAAAAAA💔💔💔💔💔💔

#literally one of my favorite songs ever #finnick odair

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intothe-books · 16 days ago

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newspaper - finnick odair x fem!reader

"I too used to want him to be proud of me"

Y/n was sat on the new, leather couch in the back of the train. She kept her eyes on the floor and was listening to Finnick Odair talk to this year's District four tributes.

The female tribute tapped on Finnick's shoulder. "What's wrong with her?" She whispered, making sure y/n couldn't hear her. They watched as she would twitch every now and then and never looked up from the floor.

When the train got to the capitol, Finnick went and got the girl, carefully leading her by her hand. "C'mon, love," Finnick smiled. The two tributes watched the interaction.

"She had a bad game. Couldn't handle winning very well," Finnick told them. "She's the sweetest girl you'll meet though, she just needs to get used to you guys first."

Y/n looked up and her eyes roamed the train. "Where are we, are we here," She asked, her hand going to hold onto his arm.

"Yes. Are you ready?" Y/n nodded and sighed.

"Hey, pretty lady," Johanna Mason announced, going to hug the girl.

For the rest of the very long night, y/n held onto his arm, refusing to leave his side. All the other victors were used to it. Ever since y/n had won her games, they were always together. On the rare occasion they weren't, y/n would be with Johanna Mason.

Y/n dropped Finnick's arm and hugged the older lady. "Hello."

"Hey, Finnick."

"How've you been?"

Finnick and Johanna started talking, bragging about their tributes. Johanna looked at the girl, who had a smile on her face. "How've you been, sweetheart," Johanna asked calmly.

She had heard about the girls 'freak out' a few weeks ago. Y/n had killed two peacekeepers and severely injured herself. Her leg was healing but she still walked with a slight limp.

"Good." The girls eyes were still on the ground and still wide open. "I've been good."

"I'm glad. Well, I'll see you two around." Finnick hugged her goodbye and she walked away.

Finnick looked at the younger girl. "You doing alright, love?" He whispered into her ear, earning a nod from her. "Okay, good. Remember, if anything happens, say something. We can leave whenever."

Y/n nodded her head. "Okay."

Y/n and Finnick had got into their room, it was bigger than even what they were giving in District 4. She has changed into her pajamas and was standing, waiting for Finnick, chewing on her nails.

Finnick moved her hand from her teeth. "Don't ruin your pretty nails," he said.

"Sorry." He led her over to the bed, pulling the blankets so they could lay down. "I can do it myself," she mumbled, pushing him slightly. She took the blankets from the beds, stumbling slightly over her own feet. She was mumbling something under her breath but he couldn't seem to catch what it was.

Finnick could sense something was wrong. She refused to make eye contact and she was biting on her lip. "Y/n?" He whispered, grabbing her hands when he realized that she was pulling on her hair with her left hand.

"Get away," she mumbled, pushing him with force. He stumbled backwards but didn't fall.

"Sweetheart, let's sit down."

"Stop. Just... Just stop. I can do things for myself," she told him, her bottom lip trembling. "I can... I can do things myself I don't need you to baby me. I'm an adult. I'm not 15 anymore."

She was pacing back and forth, Finnick let her walk knowing this was better than the things she normally does when she's upset. He would rather her pace than throw something or hurt herself.

"I'm not a baby. I'm 19. I'm grown, I ca-can. I can make my own fucking bed," she scoffed, raising her voice.

Finnick slowly walked over to her, he grabbed her hands to stop her from scratching at her neck.

Y/n shoved him as hard as she could, pushing him over. "I'm not a child!" She screamed at him, tears falling from her eyes. "I can do stuff."

"Let's go to the window, honey," he whispered gently.

Finnick grabbed her from behind, holding her arms to her chest. She threw her head back, trying to knock him out. Survival instincts kicking in. He picked her up and took her to the window. He knew that all she needed was fresh air. He kept his hold on her and noticed as she began to calm down.

"Y/n. You are not a baby and you are not a child. I know this. You are so strong and I'm so impressed with how far you've come."

"I just want you to be proud of me," she whispered. Her voice cracked and she started bawling.

"I am so proud of you, love. So insanely proud of you."

#SOBBINGGG #finnick odair

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intothe-books · 16 days ago

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. ۫ ꣑ৎ . finnick odair and his unwavering love for seeing his gorgeous girl in a sundress.

pairing: finnick odair x fem!reader.

summary: you are heading out to the market when your husband can’t help but stop you in your tracks just to shower you with compliments as he sees you in a pretty sundress.

warnings: another fluffy one. finnick being finnick (gentle, loving and overly sweet).

a/n: guys, im a mush. i love fluffy fics. i think finnick adores whenever you wear a sundress, but not in the weird way other guys do, yk? like this is finnick odair.

it was a warm summer day in district 4, the kind that made the sea glisten like glass and filled the air with the scent of salt and sun. finnick lounged on the porch of the small cottage you and him shared, a fishing net tangled around his fingers as he half-heartedly mended it. the task was menial, his mind wandering to his favorite distraction —you.

he heard the creak of the door behind him and the soft shuffle of your bare feet across the wooden floor. "sweetheart," he called without looking up, a lazy grin spreading across his face. "what are you up to?"

"I was thinking of heading to the market," you replied softly, your voice carrying that quiet tenderness that always made his heart stutter.

he turned his head to glance at you and froze.

you were standing in the doorway, sunlight pouring in behind you like a halo. you wore a simple sundress, a pale yellow that made your hair and eyes shine.

the fabric flowed over you like water, clinging in all the right places and swaying around your knees. you looked like you’d been plucked from a daydream, and finnick was utterly helpless against the sight.

he dropped the net, forgetting it entirely as he stood. "sweetheart," he breathed, his voice thick with awe. "pretty girl... you're gonna kill me."

your cheeks flushed a soft pink, and you fidgeted with the hem of the dress, your usual confidence retreating under his intense gaze. "It's just a dress, finnick," you said shyly, your lips curling into a small, nervous smile.

"just a dress?" he crossed the room in a few long strides, his sea-green eyes locked onto yours. "no, no, no. sundresses aren't just dresses when it's you wearing them."

he stopped in front of you, towering over your frame, his hands immediately finding your hips. his fingers kneaded the soft flesh there, holding you as if to keep you from slipping away or keeping himself from falling forward.

"you look like the ocean in the middle of summer," he murmured, his voice low and reverent. "warm, bright, and completely irresistible."

you let out a soft laugh, shaking your head. "you're ridiculous."

"and you're stunning," he shot back within a second. his lips were on yours before you could protest further, a slow and deep kiss that made your knees buckle. he held you close, his hands firm and sure, anchoring you to him as he poured every ounce of his admiration into the kiss.

when you broke apart, your cheeks were flushed, your coy smile back in place. finnick took advantage of the moment, peppering your face with kisses, starting at your forehead and working his way down to your jaw.

"my love," he murmured between each kiss. "my pretty girl. you don't know what you do to me."

your laughter bubbled up, light, and you swatted at his chest. "finnick, stop! you're going to make me late for the market."

"let them wait," he replied, grinning as he pulled you closer. "this dress deserves my full attention."

he lifted you off the ground, spinning you once as you laughed and clung to his shoulders.

you buried your face in his neck, the heat of your breath sending shivers down his spine. "hopeless," you mumbled, but the affection in your tone betrayed your word.

"hopelessly in love with you," he corrected, setting you back on your feet. he cupped your face in his hands, brushing his thumbs over your flushed cheeks. "and hopelessly weak for this sundress. you should wear it every day."

"I'll think about it," you teased, your eyes sparkling with mischief.

his grin widened. "you better, sweetheart. because every time you wear it, I'm going to remind you how much I adore you."

he leaned in, kissing you once more, long and lingering, as if the world beyond your little cottage didn't exist, —and maybe it didn’t for him the moment he got his hands on you.

finnick couldn't tear himself away from you.

he pressed his forehead to yours, his breath warm against your lips. your hands rested on his chest, feeling the steady thrum of his heartbeat beneath your fingertips. It was wild, rapid, and entirely because of you.

"you make me sound like some goddess in this dress," you said softly, your voice barely above a whisper.

"you are, sweetheart," finnick murmured, his thumbs tracing slow circles on your hips. "you don't see it, do you? how everything about you makes my world stop. the way the light catches your hair, how your smile -shy or not- makes me forget my own name. and this dress?" he let out a low whistle, his grin turning boyish. "It's like it was sewn just for you. they must've had my pretty girl in mind."

your cheeks flushed again, but there was a flicker of something else in your eyes now, —something playful. "you're laying it on thick, odair," you said, your lips curving into a small smirk.

he feigned a gasp, his hand dramatically clutching his chest. "me? thick? honey, I'm just speaking the truth. besides..." he leaned in, his voice dropping to a husky whisper. "you can’t really put the blame on me when you look like that?"

you laughed, the sound warm and bright. you tilted your head, studying him with mock seriousness. "you really do have a weakness for sundresses, don't you?"

"only when you're in them," he admitted shamelessly, his grin so wide it made his dimples deepen.

you shook your head, but the smile tugging at your lips betrayed you over and over again. "fine, I'll wear more of them," you teased. "but only if you promise not to make such a big deal every time."

"not a chance," finnick said immediately, his hands sliding around to the small of your back. "making a big deal about you is my favorite hobby. especially when you're standing here, looking like this."

your soft laughter bubbled up again, and you rested your head against his chest, your body molding perfectly to his. finnick wrapped his arms around you, holding you close as the two of you swayed gently in the warmth of the day.

"do you remember the first time you wore a sundress around me?" he asked, his voice quieter now.

you hummed, your fingers toying with the fabric of his shirt. "I do. It was the one with the little daisies, wasn't it? the one l borrowed from mags because all my clothes were too plain for the harvest festival?"

"that's the one," he said, his lips brushing against your temple. "you walked into that festival, and I swear the whole world stopped. I couldn't take my eyes off you."

"you tripped over a table trying to get to me," you pointed out, your voice laced with amusement.

he chuckled, shaking his head. "worth it. I'd trip over a hundred tables for you, sweetheart."

you tilted your head up to look at him, your eyes soft and full of affection. "you're such a fool," you murmured, but you leaned up to kiss him anyway, your hands tangling in his golden locks.

"a fool for my pretty girl," finnick whispered against your lips.

the kiss deepened, slow and tender, your world narrowing until it was just the two of you, wrapped in each other. the sea breeze flowed around you, carrying the sound of gulls and the faint crash of waves, but finnick barely noticed.

he was too busy memorizing every little detail-how the sundress felt beneath his hands, how your lips curved into a smile mid-kiss, how your laugh seemed to echo in his chest.

eventually, you pulled back, your face flushed and your breathing uneven. "I’m really going to be late for the market," you said, though your tone was reluctant.

he smirked, brushing a strand of hair from your face. "they can wait. besides, I think the market's seen enough of you for one week."

you raised an eyebrow. "oh? and what are we supposed to do instead?"

his grin turned mischievous, and he swept you up into his arms effortlessly, ignoring your surprised squeal. "stay right here. just us. I can't think of anything better, can you?"

you laughed, your arms looping around his neck as he carried you inside. "my god, you're impossible, finn."

"Impossible to resist, you mean," he teased, kissing the tip of your nose as he set you down gently on the couch.

as you settled together, the sundress bunched around your knees and your laughter filled the room. and as far as he was concerned, the world outside your little bubble could wait forever.

#finnick odair #AAAHSJSJFJSJD #HES SO

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intothe-books · 16 days ago

Note

ok but like if we’re in an angsty mood tdy (i always am) what about finnick coming back from a long trip to the capitol?

barefoot on the sand.

pairing: finnick o'dair x fem!reader

content warnings: finnick's forced prostitution and canon trauma. finnick has bruises (hickeys) and scratches from his "clients", pre-established relationship, not edited, let me know if you'd like me too add anything else!

word count: 1.1k

Finnick has had a long week.

He has spent the last seven days putting on a front and being tugged from one Capitol elite to the next, only to be treated like a toy and then discarded to one side when they milk him dry of all that he can give.

His neck is littered in varying shades of black and blue hickies, while his back is marked with the indentations of sharp finger nails that were raking up and down his skin. His muscles scream and protest with every movement he makes, and he’s relieved for the ice pack that one of the familiar Avoxes hands him when he boards the train back to District Four.

The journey home always seems to pass quickly. Maybe it’s because he dissosciates for half of it, or maybe it’s because he’s half-asleep. Either way, he’s glad when he gets off at the train station and feels the warm summer breeze fan against his face.

Its a relief to be home once again and he slips his feet out of his sandals to walk barefoot along the sand as he takes the shortcut to Victor’s Village. The faint smell of sea salt and the sound of waves lapping against the shore are enough to keep him grounded.

Your shared house comes into view and the building radiates warmth, even from outside. There’s a warm, cosy aura about it, one that he assosciates with both you and home, despite both of those things being one in his eyes.

He leaves his sandals on the balcony and slips through the back door. He makes a mental note to lovingly scold you for leaving it open but that thought is knocked right out of his head upon seeing you in the living room.

Like a cat, you have curled up in a ball on the sofa. A pair of cheap knock-off reading glasses perch on the bridge of your nose as you cradle a book in your hands, eyes narrowed in concentration. His favourite rom-com movie is playing on the television that hangs from the wall, and he knows that you must have gotten his fax about coming home from the Capitol.

As if you can sense his presence, you look up from your book and set it on the coffee table without bothering to mark your page. You offer him a smile and tilt your head, extending the invitation for him to sit with you, but without any pressure or expectations tied to it.

You know that sometimes Finnick will have an aversion to touch after being in the Capitol and you know that other times, he’ll crave your touch as a way to remind himself that he’s home, and he’s safe.

Finnick’s bottom lips trembles, and the floodgates open in what must be a record amount of time. He sinks down onto the couch next to you before crawling into your lap and nuzzling his face into the crook of your neck.

You welcome him with open arms, and comb your fingers through his golden curls as he sobs into your skin. You don’t shush him, or try to stop his crying, or tell him to ‘act like a man’; you simply hold him as he cries.

Combing your fingers through his golden curls, you scratch at his scalp in the way that you know makes him relax. Just as expected, he melts into your embrace, and you press a soft kiss to the top of his head.

It takes a while for his breathing to even out, and when it does, you ask, “Are you hurt?” Finnick hesitates, and that’s all the answer you need. “Okay.” You mumble. “Can I see?”

Again, he hesitates, but you press a reassuring kiss to his forehead, and he nods before sitting up. He pulls his shirt over his head and you swallow around the lump in your throat when you see the hickeys and scratches on his golden skin.

You push your fury down and smooth his hair out of his face. “I’m just gonna go get some things to clean you up. Is that okay?”

Finnick nods his head once, and reluctantly untangles his limbs from yours. His eyes flutter shut when you cup his face in your hands and kiss the tip of his nose. You must be gone for a minute at the most, and when you return with the first aid kit, he knows you must have had it out ready and waiting on the kitchen table for his arrival.

You sit on the sofa beside him and gently tend to his wounds, explaining what you’re doing every step of the way so that he doesn’t get overwhelmed, and showering him in words of praise to help him feel safe.

Once the gels have been applied to the bruised skin of his neck and you’ve wiped all of his injuries down with an antiseptic wipe, you close the first aid-kit and help him back into his shirt.

“Thank you,” Finnick croaks out, voice cracked and hoarse from crying. “For everything.”

Your heart cracks open in your chest at his murmur of thanks, and you reach out to run the pad of your thumb over his cheekbone. He leans into your touch. “Don’t thank me okay? That’s what I’m here for, baby.”

You settle back on the sofa and beckon him into your arms, letting him rest his head in your lap as you go back to smoothing your fingers through his hair. “Do you want to talk about it?”

He shakes his head vehmently.

You soothe him with a kiss to his forehead. “That’s okay. How about snacks?” Finnick perks up at the mention of food, and you bite back a smile. “I got all your favourites; candyfloss, salted chips, dark chocolate…” You coax.

Finnick looks up at you through his long lashes and brings your knuckles to his mouth. He presses a kiss to the skin there, a silent way of telling you that he loves you. “Popcorn?” You can’t supress your laughter this time around, and you nod. “I suppose you could twist my arm,” he mumbles in to your skin.

You reach around the arm of the sofa to grab the bag of pre-prepared goodies, and Finnick whines at the loss of contact. You shush him quietly. “‘M still here. ‘M not going anywhere, baby. I’m just getting our snacks, alright?” You empty the bag of treats into your laps. “See?”

Finnick grabs a bag of popcorn and tears into it, snapping pieces of dark chocolate and throwing it into the bag, too. He munches on his snacks, occasionally offering you the bag and letting you pick at the food. “I love you, angel.” He says between mouthfuls.

You smile softly and lean in to peck his forehead. “I love you more.”

#IM SO SOFT ABOUT HIM #finnick odair

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intothe-books · 16 days ago

Text

Vigil - Chapter 1

Summary: Using the genetic material extracted from Yusuf al-Kaysani and Nicolò di Genova, Dr. Metak Kozak initiates Project Eos as an attempt to artificially replicate immortality through forced human trials. Nine embryos are created, implanted, and birthed under controlled conditions. The experiments she conducts represent a grotesque evolution of Steven Merrick’s work.

When Copley first uncovers the program, Kozak’s records declare total failure: "Group Gamma yielded no viable candidates. All subjects compromised beyond analytical utility." But six weeks later, an anonymous lab technician leaks damning footage—a single surviving child, a three year-old male designated "IL-9" with confirmed cellular regeneration and disease resistance.

The team must address the danger this discovery represents. Nicky and Joe are confronted with a child created from their stolen blood.

A/N: A post-cannon story imagining the concept of a lab-generated immortal and how it affects the Guard. Could also be seen as an examination of parenthood. Mostly that, actually. Medical torture. Dr. Kozak is her own warning tbh. Child Abuse. Nicky is a doctor. Death. Immortal Parents. Hurt/Comfort. Illness. Blood. Angst.

11:00 AM. 30 Jan. 2025, Sheldwich, Kent County, United Kingdom.

Copley’s study smelled of eighteen year Macallan and citrus wood polish. It was a space of crisp angles and warm walnut paneling, where afternoon light slanted through floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the English countryside. Every detail was curated, devoid of personal clutter save for a single silver-framed photograph facedown on the desk. The hidden image of Copley’s late wife was the only concession to sentimentality in a room so meticulously tailored it might have been lifted from the lair of a Bond villain.

They sat in mid-century leather armchairs, tension coiled in the air. Gathering them like this was a liability. Intel could be shared remotely; discussions didn’t require proximity. Yet here they were.

Andy knew before Copley even spoke. There was something in the way he surveyed them, like the weight of an inconvenient truth was pressing down. He stood before his Scandinavian desk, crisp in a navy cashmere sweater, fingers resting on a dossier thicker than a Bible. Not with hesitation, but ceremony.

It was clear for everyone that serious news was about to be delivered, but she knew that this went deeper. They had been gathered to sit in a war room.

Booker denied the quiet itch in his hand to reach for his flask. The fact that everyone agreed to show up despite his presence and ties to Copley’s new intel had been nothing short of miraculous. The conditions of his exile had been clear, but the current circumstances demanded an annulment of sorts, a truce. He registered the heel of Nile’s boot thunking against the floor. She was the only one who agreed to sit near him. He wanted to tell her it wasn’t necessary, that the others were right to keep their distance. But the meaning behind the gesture lodged somewhere in his throat, there was a sharp feeling of gratitude.

For now, he alone knew why they’d been summoned. He wondered if she would stay so close once the truth hit.

Across the coffee table, Joe and Nicky occupied a leather loveseat. Joe’s hand masked his mouth, fingers pressed to his jaw as he leaned against the armrest, eyes unreadable. He hadn’t wanted to come. He’d argued with Nicky the entire drive, listing every reason why they owed Booker and Copley nothing of their time.

Nicky had listened then, patient, prepared. He knew Joe only needed to voice his hurt, to let it dissipate before it festered. Andy and Nile’s presence alone had been more than reason enough to go.

Now, Nicky sat perfectly still, his breaths measured, glacial.

"I've been tracking Kozak since Merrick," Copley finally began, thumb clicking the presentation remote.

The monitor sitting behind him on the glass top desk bloomed to life with a classified document header. The title "Project Eos" was written in stark black and white.

"Over six years now," he continued, "I've followed money trails through seventeen shell corporations across three continents. Dead drops in Geneva. Burner labs in Minsk."

A click. The monitor flickered, they each absorbed the blue-tinted security footage of a woman in a white coat.

Nicky could only stare. That same face had hovered over him while pieces of his flesh were carved away and dropped into plastic sample containers.

"This is in Cardiff." Copley narrated. "In a private genetics facility fronting under the guise of pediatric regenerative medicine."

Andy cut in, voice firm but tired. "Skip the build up, James. Just get to what's she's done." Get to why we're here.

Copley didn’t flinch. But when his gaze landed on Joe and Nicky, the mask slipped—just for a second. A swallow. A flicker of remorse.

“Kozak’s Project Eos attempts to artificially replicate immortality through forced human trials.” He paused. “She’s created, implanted, and birthed nine embryos under controlled conditions.”

His voice was too calm, the way surgeons would begin to present a case to a patient’s family before announcing complications.

“This was done using genetic material from you both. The nine candidates, labeled “Subject Group Gamma” were all listed as 'non-viable'.”

Genetic material.

Nicky could remember when Kozak extracted samples from a more intimate area of his body, particularly the special technique she used to procure what she wanted. When it was done to him, the act was undoubtedly degrading, but he was able to process the moment as a temporary humiliation. When she turned to do the same to Joe's unconscious form, Nicky's calm abruptly dissolved. He bucked against his restraints, unable to tolerate the sudden onset of searing anger under his own ribs.

Copley continued on, pulling him from his thoughts.

"But a whistleblower has since come forward, a lab technician recently moved from a Merrick facility in Geneva. They revealed that our previous intel was inaccurate. A false flag."

A new slide flicked across the monitor. The first horror. Autopsy reports.

"We gained the autopsy reports of the first eight subjects," Copley said quietly. "All infants. Seven died before reaching one year of age, but then there was a breakthrough. The eighth child lived to 18 months."

The details of the autopsy reports were clinical, detached. Causes of death: organ failure, hemorrhaging, neural degradation. There were only serial numbers instead of names. Nicky’s fingers tightened imperceptibly on the edge of the armrest. His eyes dialed in on the information, scanning the details as quickly as he could.

Joe didn't look. He couldn't look.

"The ninth child, named Subject IL-9, is still alive." Copley continued. "A three year-old male who demonstrates consistent accelerated healing, though they haven’t yet tested mortality."

A single photograph came next. A boy, small and pale with a shaved head, curled on a metal cot. His face was partially obscured by a black censorship bar, but what little of him was visible was unmistakable. He had Joe's nose and mouth. The child looked sickly, too young to be three. Too thin.

"What is being done to him?" Nicky demanded, voice impossibly level. He rested a hand briefly on Joe's thigh, to ground himself, to check in, but withdrew the moment he felt the muscle beneath twitch like a live wire. The act had been too soon. Some wounds needed pressure. Others needed air.

Joe bent forward, elbows on knees, face buried in his hands. His fingers dragged through his beard, rough and unsteady. The room tilted. He needed air. Needed to put his fist through something, or maybe feel someone else's fist collide with his cheek. He didn’t look at anyone. He couldn’t. His gaze fixed on the floor, on the wood grain under his sneakers, on the two birds chasing each other just outside the window, on anything but the screen where the deaths of eight children were dissected in unforgivingly clinical language.

He could only force himself to breathe. There was no other way forward, no other way to process what he was feeling from this violation—this mix of revulsion and hurt.

"The testing on the child has been...systematic." Copley's voice was measured, face souring as he carefully chose his words. The white plastic casing of the remote softly cracked under the force of his grip.

"Phase one consisted of pathogen exposure to common strains of measles, influenza, and tuberculosis. Each infection was meticulously timed to measure recovery rates." A click. Graphs of fever spikes, white blood cell counts. "They noted his immune response was 'anomalously efficient', with recovery achieved by day four of each trial."

Nicky’s jaw shifted, but his voice never changed. Always calm, always even. "How much information did you recover on his medical history?"

"It’s incomplete,” Copley began. “But the whistleblower provided us with daily vital logs, trauma and healing reports, neurological assessments, weight charts—"

"Give separate copies to me. Everything you have." Nicky interjected. He squinted as he read the numbers of a growth chart fixed on the screen. The last entry was from nearly two months ago, the child was recorded as 84 centimeters tall and weighing 10 kilograms.

"Phase two tested his resilience to environmental extremes." Copley’s mouth thinned. "Four hours in 2°C water. Five hours in a climatic chamber at 42°C. Timed oxygen deprivation just before the threshold of brain damage. Fourteen days of gradually reduced calorie and fluid intake.”

Joe rose abruptly from the love seat, his knee roughly bumping the coffee table as he stood. He crossed to the window in large strides, his back rigid, one hand braced against the window frame. The tendons in his forearms stood out like cables.

Copley continued, quieter now. "Phase three moved to physical trauma. Compound fractures—" A slide of an X-ray, a tiny femur snapped clean through. "—lacerations, burns. Healing averaged one to two hours for deep tissue, three hours for bone."

The cap of Nile’s pen snapped in her grip, but she continued to listen attentively. Those rates of healing were longer than what it took for them. Her eyes flicked over to the faces of the others, but there was no way to discern if their thoughts were following the same paths. Everyone looked ill.

For a moment, Copley showed signs of fatigue. He let the hand holding the remote fall to his side. He glanced at his desk before finishing.

“Phase four has not yet begun, but the whistleblower warned that this is when they intend to test his mortality.”

Andy’s voice cut through. "We don’t wait on this one." She stood, approaching the desk to seize the dossier prepared by Copley and Booker. "We go in and extract the boy. Steal every byte of intel, then scrub the place." Her gaze swept the room. "It has to be full sanitization. We leave no witnesses."

Copley nodded, clicking to the blueprints. "All intel indicates that he is held here, in a third floor isolation unit." He pointed the red dot of a laser at the west wing.

Booker leaned forward, tracing demolition points on the schematic. "C4 in the parking garage and ground floor support columns. Thermite cocktail here—" He tapped the server room. "—enough to melt their research into slag."

He had memorized every inch of the building: entrances, exits, corridors, stairwells, and ventilation shafts. There was no escape route not pre-mapped out in his mind, no corner to hide in that he didn't know. The rotations of security and staff, the layout of the below ground parking garage, the brand of bleach the janitors used—over the last month, Booker had funneled all of his remorse into learning every detail about this facility.

He cleared his throat before focusing tentatively on Andy, finding her unreadable mask to be steadying in some way. This was only soul he knew to report to, who he knew to follow without question.

"The largest shift change happens just before 0200. That's the time to hit. Two nurses. One resident. Guards cut to skeleton crew."

Nile’s fingers drummed a marching rhythm against the armrest. "Andy and I can breach through security. Disable cameras, clear a path." Her eyes flicked to Joe’s motionless form by the window. "Nicky and Joe take point on extraction."

Nile, who sat stiff-backed, her dark eyes flickering between the others, so accepting in the face of a reality that they all viscerally rejected. Nile had no choice in the matter, she had never known the luxury of centuries hiding in the shadows. Her immortality would always be a fight, and now, before she could even adjust, she was being thrust into a war to protect another life that would never know peace. She would never have what the others did, centuries of blending in and being able to disappear.

Silence settled after her proposal, seemingly as acceptance. Then—

"No survivors, then." Joe spoke, still facing the glass. His reflection was blurred, his words like a serrated blade, something not meant to cut clean. "What about Kozak?"

Copley was quick to answer. "Bern. She’s presenting at a private symposium tomorrow."

Andy sat back in her seat, legs outstretched. The lines around her eyes deepened as she stared at something at midline only she could see.

"We hit the lab first. Then we end this." It landed like stones—final, immovable.

"News from the lab will hit her immediately," Nile countered. "Doesn't that give her time to disappear?"

Andy didn't move, her eyes remained steady. She spoke with the weariness of someone who had seen more bodies buried than the ground could contain. "Let her run," she spoke so quietly that it might have been to herself. Then louder, with the full weight behind it: "I've hunted smarter prey. This stops now."

Copley cleared his throat. "For what it’s worth, we’ve had eyes on her financial trails for over three years. Every alias, every shell account. She hasn’t taken a step without us knowing since 2021." He looked to Nicky, then to Joe's back. "If you go for her first, we risk the boy being moved. The lab’s servers need to be melted before they can scrub the data."

Joe turned from the window, his face eerily blank, the kind of calm that came before a surge. This wasn't the absence of fury, but the absolute clarity that rage could provide when put to good use. Everyone expected him to walk out after Copley’s presentation. He had every right to. Every reason to slam the door, to vanish, to let the complex storm of shock and fear burning under his flesh fuel him through the English countryside until his legs gave out.

But he didn’t.

Surprising everyone but Nicky.

His attention locked onto Booker first.

Not Andy, not Nile, not Copley. Booker.

Because Joe knew Booker was the one who prepared this work. Because despite the betrayal, despite the fractured trust that still ached between them, Booker was the one who had always been best at this: the slow, methodical gathering of intel, the obsessive mapping of every variable. And now, he was here with them, trying to atone in the only way he knew how—by providing a way to fix this.

Joe crossed the room and dropped himself into the armchair Andy had abandoned.

"Walk me through your plan." He quietly demanded. His voice was hollowed out, the kind of tone that made the air in the room feel thin.

Joe and Booker sat and discussed for hours. Their gear was already sourced—untraceable weapons, ammunition, a van with plates that would burn clean after extraction. It was an hour's drive to Bristol, where a private plane would be waiting to take them quickly back to East London, then a second van to bring them back to Copley's house in Sheldwich. From there, they would work out where everyone would go next. Copley would monitor the situation and work through covering their tracks.

Nile and Andy joined in. The four of them hashed out the plan all afternoon, then well into the evening. Timing. Division of roles, who would be covering who. Contingency plans in the event the child was too weak at any point to be moved.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

01:17 AM. 31 Jan. 2025, Sheldwich, Kent County, United Kingdom.

The moment the intel presentation ended, Nicky didn’t join where the others were clustered around the coffee table, debating extraction plans and arguing timelines. He cornered Copley near his large desk, demanding the boy’s medical files.

To his credit, Copley didn’t hesitate. A laptop and two USB drives were deposited into Nicky’s hands without question. It was impossible to miss the flicker of guilt in the man’s gaze during the exchange. He understood what horrors he was silently delivering, he knew the pain that awaited.

For the next twelve hours, Nicky locked himself in the guest bedroom, the glow of the laptop screen painting shadows under his eyes. He operated with the urgency of someone who believed he could already be too late, racing against time to undo what might already be irreversible.

He cross-referenced every procedure, every notation, every spike or drop in vitals. His fingers worked tirelessly over the keyboard, constructing a meticulous chart—weight fluctuations, heart rate anomalies, the jagged decline of a body pushed beyond its limits. The reports were inconsistent. Sometimes his injuries closed unnaturally fast, other times his fever raged for days unchecked. Nicky knew how stress at these levels could inhibit healing. Even if the boy’s body could repair at a similar rate to them, the constant strain he was under would greatly disrupt his abilities. If Kozak’s team was truly nearing phase four, the boy would be in no state to recover quickly. His body would be eating itself alive to keep up with the pace of forced regeneration.

With this information, Nicky knew he had to work under the guiding principle that the boy was mortal. He would plan for the worst, and then hope—against evidence, against the gnawing dread in his chest—for the best.

He made an exhaustive list of the medical supplies they would need, things Copley could source quickly from his connections. Pediatric IV kits, bags of standard saline as well as lactated Ringer’s solution, nasal cannulas, oxygen tanks, a portable blood analyzer, a glucose monitor, pain killers, broad spectrum antibiotics, a child-sized pulse oximeter and blood pressure cuff...

Nicky also made a separate list of practical items and things for comfort: clothing, toiletries, toys, books. The reports had been clinical in their omissions. There was no mention of play time, of going outside, or of any schooling. Nicky had doubts about how much interaction this child received. Did someone come consistently whenever he cried? Did the staff take the time to talk to him, to teach him words? The sparse references to toys were particularly bleak. They were used only as bribes during cognitive and neurological tests, brief rewards taken away the moment the boy’s cooperation was ensured.

The grandfather clock in the hall hummed past midnight when the others finally dispersed. Footsteps retreated in different directions down the corridor, doors softly shut one by one.

Joe padded quietly into their borrowed bedroom, his face a mask when he found Nicky still sitting on the bed, laptop open on his legs.

The door slid closed behind him with a click, sealing them away from the outside world.

Neither spoke.

There was a certain weight in the way Joe moved that was all wrong. His limbs operated too cautiously, not with the calm before battle, but with the quiet of someone trying hard to control his breath, as if an undetonated bomb shared this space with them.

The silence stretched in the room, tight as a piano wire. There was only the faint crackle of dying embers in the Malm fireplace, their glow creating warped shadows across the floor.

"You should sleep." Nicky murmured, voice hardly above a whisper.

Joe let out a rushed exhale, not quite a laugh. "You first."

Nicky’s gaze flickered over him in the dim light, reading the lines of his body like a map. It was as if he could see right through his skin. The hurt was still there, simmering beneath buffering layers of calm. But even deeper under that façade, Nicky knew there was something wounded, something terrified.

Joe settled down onto one of the winged armchairs next to the vintage fireplace. They were given the largest of the bedrooms. Nicky imagined that it had at one point been used by Copley and his wife, but he would never ask. Joe's elbows rested on his knees while he began rifling through their shared suitcase, searching out his desired clothes for sleepwear. The thermal henley came off in one rough tug, the fabric catching briefly on the curve of his shoulders before he wrenched it free. His jeans followed, discarded in a heap beside the chair. He dressed for bed with the same efficiency he might use to strip a rifle—methodical, detached. He opted to wear one of their stretched out sleep shirts and a pair of joggers, glancing down at his feet and internally debating for a moment before deciding to keep his socks.

Wordlessly, he plucked his toiletry sack from the side compartment and slipped into the ensuite. His face remained distant, checked out.

Nicky waited until he returned from brushing his teeth, watching the way he traipsed over to the bed. Joe sat down on the edge, but didn't turn, didn't move to settle himself back against the headboard. His dark eyes gazed through the floor to ceiling windows that comprised the entirety of one wall in the bedroom, watching the unrelenting rain continue to fall outside.

"Talk to me."

Joe’s arms loosely crossed, his fingers gripping his elbows, his jaw taut.

"What is there to say?” He demanded softly. “Tomorrow we go in and we get him out. We burn the rest."

Nicky’s attention didn’t waver from his husband's back. "And after?"

The question hung between them, heavy with everything they could not say, sagging under the weight of all that they didn't have time to discuss.

Joe’s fingertips skimmed over the skin of his arms, a motion meant to self-soothe.

"After, we make sure no one else comes. We rip the weeds out by the roots, then salt the earth."

"That’s not what I meant—"

"I know."

"Do you?" Nicky wondered in what was barely above a whisper. "This isn’t a mission, Joe. This isn’t extraction and extraction alone. If he is—" He stopped, the words stuck in his chest, too difficult to give form.

Again, Joe had the encroaching feeling that he couldn’t breathe. He scrubbed a hand over his mouth, raked his fingers through his beard.

They submitted once more to the awful quiet. The wind outside caused the windows to rattle.

Joe's arms uncrossed, hands now resting down at his sides, his fingers unclenched only to curl again into the fabric of his sweat pants. His head bowed forward, the words scraping out like gravel underfoot.

"I can’t stop thinking about how we didn’t know."

The silence that followed was leaden.

Nicky watched the strain build through Joe's body—the rigid line of his shoulders, the way his breath stuttered before he forced it to steady. In that moment he ached to reach for him, to press his palms against the tension and work it loose with his fingers, his mouth, his whispered reassurances. But Nicky knew that it wasn't the right time, that whatever he would say would only fall flat.

"We felt Nile. We felt Booker." Joe's voice dropped lower, rougher. "How could we not feel any of this?"

This.

A child's suffering. The silent agony of the ones before him. The way their own blood had been turned against them, used to create and destroy in equal measure. Centuries of war, of loss, of resurrection. He struggled to think of a prior experience that could have prepared them for this particular feeling of helplessness

"We can't be sure how it works." Nicky said carefully. "Maybe because he wasn’t born. He was made."

Made. The implications of the word curdled between them.

Joe's lashes fluttered as his eyes slipped shut. His jaw clicked as it shifted minutely to one side.

"Or maybe because we weren’t paying attention."

Nicky didn’t have a response. The guilt was there, in both of them—a silent, aching feeling that they had fallen short.

He found himself wishing so deeply that they had the time to help each other ease into this. It was a cruel stroke of irony: that immortals who inherently had only an abundance of time, suddenly found themselves with none. There would be no slow unraveling of this pain, no gentle easing into the horror.

Joe let out a breath, his head turning to glance over his shoulder. "What are we supposed to do after we get out of there tomorrow?" The question was hushed and lost. "Because, Nicky, if he lives, if he’s ours to—"

He stopped himself, rocking slightly as he failed to continue that line of thought. Because what he was really asking was too callus to be voiced outright. How do they help a child who was never meant to be a child? How do they teach trust to someone who has only known pain? How were they to care for something born from theft and defilement?

Nicky leaned forward, his knuckles skating over the small of Joe's back. "We do what we have always done." he murmured. "We adapt."

Joe closed his eyes. "And if he dies in that lab before we reach him?"

"Then we make sure no one else suffers like him again."

An ember cracked in the fireplace, spitting crimson sparks into the darkness. Nicky blinked against the dry ache in his eyes—he'd been staring at screens and reports for over twelve hours. The medical jargon blurred at the edges, but the numbers were still stark imprints in his mind.

He closed the laptop, letting it click shut with finality.

"You haven’t read any of it, have you?"

Joe turned to properly look at him then, his head twisting in gentle disbelief.

"Why would I need to?" His voice frayed at the edges. "I know what they do in places like that. I remember."

Nicky's fingers slid down the laptop's edge before he set the device aside. He chose his next words carefully. "They infected him with tuberculosis back in November. He recovered in three days." A deliberate pause. "They broke his femur to test the rate of regeneration. Twice."

Joe flinched as if struck. "Nicolò—"

"As far as I know, they never gave him a name." The words were meant to be informative, but his tone was like broken glass, brittle and fragmented. "In the reports, he’s just IL-9."

The air left Joe's lungs in a wounded rush. He surged to his feet, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes, as if trying to erase the images flooding his mind. "Stop."

He took three stumbling steps towards the bathroom before he whirled, his composure shattered.

“How can you?" The words tore from him, accusatory, unable to hide his own disgust any longer. "How can you spend hours looking at that? It's torture. Every fucking line.”

Nicky didn’t flinch at what he was saying, even if a small part of him did feel incredulous towards the man across the room from him. His gaze held Joe's with a terrible sort of patience, aching with something too vast to name.

What was he to say? That he feared turning away from what was done somehow made him complicit? That bearing witness was the only absolution left to them? Even for someone like him, it was too self-righteous a thing to say out loud. He knew that the reality was much simpler, much uglier.

Truthfully, Nicky thought that if he focused on the broken bones, the fevers, however much blood was drawn, he wouldn't have to consider the greater violation—that this child only existed because someone had stolen pieces of them both. If he let his mind wander beyond the boy’s physical wounds, he would have to face the enormity of what had been done. Not just to this child’s body, but to himself, to Joe.

Instead of saying any of this, Nicky only blinked. And now, his own throat burned as he struggled to speak normally.

“Someone must.”

The truth sat between them like a third presence.

Because it’s a child, a child made from your blood and mine.

One that we may have failed before we even learned of his existence, before he ever received a name.

Nicky rose from the bed, his eyes never straying from Joe. His hands hovered between them as an offering—a rope cast out amongst the waves they treaded. He didn’t come close enough to touch, but enough to feel the heat radiating from his husband’s rigid shoulders.

"Maybe," he began, voice roughened from spending hours in silence, "if I know what they did, I can learn how to undo it." The words were frail sounding, the intention of hope behind them so unstable. "So when we bring him home, I can meet him where he is."

Joe’s lips compressed together into a tight line, the skin around his eyes folded. The look he leveled at Nicky wasn’t just sadness, it was the quiet devastation of someone watching their beloved grasp at threads.

"There may be no 'after' for him."

The gentleness in his tone made it worse. This careful doling out of mercy, as if Nicky hadn't already dissected every horrific possibility in the twelve hours he'd spent with those files. As if the image of a small body wrapped in sheets wasn't already seared behind his eyelids.

Nicky didn’t argue. He studied the tremor in Joe’s clenched hands, the way his husband's gaze darted to every exit but never once to the laptop on the nightstand.

"No, perhaps not." he agreed softly while stepping into Joe's space. His palms mapped the familiar terrain of Joe's arms, sliding down to pry open his stiff fingers. "But we still must plan as if there will be."

With an unsteady exhale, Joe surrendered to Nicky’s touch, letting him manipulate his wrists and hands however he wanted. Even in anguish, he was taking the time to consider his love's words, much like he always did. Though his emotions were known to burn bright, he was a man capable of immense reflection, always able to land at the core of things. Here, Nicky could see him trying to measure their needs, much like a merchant pouring over the figures in his books—what surplus still remained, what could they salvage? All of his calculations looked to be coming up short. This pain was too thick to quantify, stuffed away for survival’s sake yet hanging over their heads with mocking laughter.

Nicky guided Joe’s palms to his own ribcage, pressing them flat against the rise and fall of his breath. His large hands settled over them, anchoring them both there.

"We learn what he is—” He murmured, the bass of his voice the only steady thing in the dark. “—we learn what they made him. Then we try to become what he needs."

Joe swallowed before nodding. His eyes closed tightly for a beat, then a soft curse slipped from his lips.

Their bodies folded together.

Nicky’s chin tilted in wordless invitation, allowing Joe to press his face into the familiar hollow of his neck. They inhaled each other, finding the very scent of home—a place they had been able to carry with them for centuries because they understood that it could never be tied to a single location or physical dwelling, but rather to this life they carved out together. Nicky hummed as his husband’s hands fanned over his shoulder blades, each of them finding solace in the other's frame. They remained like this for an uncertain amount of time, listening to the sounds of their own breathing, the wet click of their throats swallowing, their syncopated heartbeats.

The silence between them had always been its own language. It was Joe who eventually chose to break it.

"It wasn't just him." He said, voice thick and trembling. He tried to steady his hands by finding Nicky's waist. "Eight others. Brought into this world and snuffed out. And we never had the faintest clue."

Nicky had avoided this, because he could not afford thinking about the others. Perhaps years from now, when enough time and distance sat between them and this revelation, he would step into a quiet church and light eight individual candles. He would recite familiar prayers, not for forgiveness, but for the grief he’d been forced to bury away. But this would be a ritual for far into the future—for a time when he and Joe had steadier ground beneath their feet, for when their family was no longer in such immediate danger. Now, they could only focus on what they still held the power to change.

“Yes.” His agreement was quiet. “But now he is all that matters.”

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

02:21 AM. 01 Feb. 2025, Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom.

Joe sat cross legged on the floor of the van, his back pressed against the metal wall.

The weather report had promised a dry night, but Cardiff exhaled a bitter, icy mist all the same. The fine drizzle floated through the air, the small droplets clinging to hair and clothes alike, needling through layers until it penetrated the bones.

The operation had been clean, until it wasn’t.

Disabling the cameras took Nile ninety seconds. Andy dispatched the entrance guards and those posted inside with barely a pause—they fell one by one as she and Nile pushed deeper, silenced by blade before their shouts could form. With each fallen guard, Andy and Nile called out their kills through the comms system. Joe and Nicky flowed a few paces behind them in perfect sync, sealing exits and watching angles. Only Booker broke rhythm from the group, vanishing into a side stairwell to descend to the lower levels, his bag filled with enough C4 to demolish a building twice as tall.

Locating the boy on the third floor cost them the most time, a dangerous amount of time. They had to force access code information from the two nurses on duty, the type of work that is never pretty.

Andy bent fingers backward one by one until one of them sobbed out a series of entry numbers.

Three minutes. A result that was nowhere near her personal best.

Nicky and Joe went in alone to collect the boy.

Fifteen minutes total.

That's all it took to breach the facility and extract what should never have been taken.

Now, the mangled security gate screamed under the van’s tires as Andy drove them away.

Joe hadn’t been able to touch him back in that sterile room. They found the boy lying in an elevated metal crib, it's barred walls looming over him more like a cage than a bed. His small body was tethered by electrodes and wires. Velcro straps pinned his arms outstretched on either side. Even as he slept, they felt the need to keep a sickly three year-old restrained.

In the van’s rattling dark, Nicky cradled the boy against his chest, swaying slightly on his knees. His gaze flickered over their gear, pausing on the thin padded mat they’d brought for the child. It had seemed practical back in planning. Now, with the boy’s shallow breaths warming his collarbone, his body too weak to properly lift his head, it felt unforgivably stark.

Something in Joe shifted. Without hesitation, he wrenched over the nearest duffel, rummaging past weapons and wire until his fingers caught on familiar fabric—a shared sweatshirt that belonged to them, threadbare from years of use, still carrying traces of Aleppo soap and sandalwood. He spread it across his lap, a buffer against the cold damp of his tactical gear. Shifting forward, he quickly lifted his vest up and over his head, tossing it aside.

"Set him down." Joe swallowed to make his voice cooperate. "It's—it's okay."

Nicky shifted, murmuring, “Fai piano, tienigli la testa…” (Easy, support his head...)

Joe’s hands rose on instinct to help settle the boy's delicate weight. His palm pressed to where the back of the child’s neck met the base of his skull, fingers splaying to support his head. The contact was like a hot spark landing in dry tender—real, real, suddenly too real. A child, a living thing made from him, taken from his body without permission, now lay cradled across his lap. Not quite his, but certainly of him.

His mind stuttered when he looked down at the boy’s face, so undeniably close to his own—from the slope of his nose, to the arch of his brows, Joe could see his own features softened into something small and fragile. A few echoes of Nicky were threaded throughout: in the stubborn set of his chin, the unique shape of his small ears. It made something sick and heavy coil in his gut. This was no miracle. It was violation given form, a life wrenched into existence without thought for mercy or consent. And yet—

The boy stirred weakly, his cracked lips parting around a soundless gasp. His fingers twitched against Joe’s thigh, the movement barely there.

Before he could think, he gently shushed him, the back of his fingers smoothing over his brow. The motion came without his explicit permission, pulled from some deep, unguarded place.

His eyes snapped up, meeting Nicky’s over the boy’s trembling body.

“Help me get this off him." He jerked his chin down towards the off-white lab blanket. The stench of bleach and something sour, like sweat gone stale, clung to the rough fabric. He couldn’t stomach the thought of the child being wrapped in anything from that place for a second longer. Not when they were meant to be taking him somewhere far away and safe.

Nicky didn’t argue, able to plainly hear the plea beneath the words. With careful hands, he helped peel the blanket off and tossed it aside. Together, they worked to swaddle him in the material of the old sweatshirt, the garment dwarfing his emaciated frame.

Around them, the others kept up their careful pretense of focus—Andy’s hands steady on the wheel, Booker’s tense silence in the passenger's seat. Nile was positioned just behind them, her head stuck between the two while she watched the road.

“What’s the time on detonation?” She demanded, directions provided by Copley pulled up on her phone.

“Don’t worry about it.” Booker dismissed her question as Andy turned onto a side street. “I gave us enough of a window.”

None of them for a single second doubted Booker’s calculations, in the same way they still trusted his ability to forge their identification papers and to iron out the logistics for the next mission. Nile's question was more about filling the silence, about not disturbing the intimacy of the moment Nicky and Joe were sharing behind her. They were giving them this, at least: the illusion of privacy in the cramped, rattling space.

The gentle clunk and swish of the windshield wipers continued against the rain. Still only a few blocks away from the lab, the aftermath of Booker’s work would come soon enough. The Tesco across the street from Kozak's facility would rattle with the force of the explosion, glass windows would shatter out into fragments against the pavement.

The lab would be left as a hollowed shell.

Nicky was already pulling supplies from his med kit, his movements fluid despite the van's jolting rhythm. A stethoscope draped over the back of his neck, he shifted to kneel before them, steady even as the vehicle lurched, his large hands hovered at the sweatshirt's zipper.

"Joe.”

His name sounded different as it left Nicky's mouth, not a summons but a tether, spoken so it wouldn't travel any further than Joe's ears.

Joe blinked, like surfacing from deep water, the sounds of the present drawing him back from where his thoughts had spiraled. His dark eyes slowly sharpened, the weight of his gaze shifting from shock to awareness. He didn't realize how tightly he had been clutching the sweatshirt, his fingers felt nearly fused to the cotton fabric.

"I need to check him." Nicky’s voice was firm but not unkind. "So I can see how to help him."

The words passed easily. Joe managed a stiff nod, his throat dry with a sort of helplessness they had been unable to shake since they were gathered in Copley's study. His hands fell away from the small body stretched across his lap.

Slowly, Nicky worked down the zipper of the jacket. He unfastened the shoulder snaps of the boy's grey medical gown, pulling back the thin fabric to reveal his bare torso. The signs of malnourishment jumped out at them, he was all sharp angles and prominent bones. Each breath he drew pulled the skin taut over his ribs.

The boy's eyes, a lighter shade of brown than Joe's, watched as Nicky warmed the diaphragm of his stethoscope between his palms. There was no reaction when the metal made contact with his chest, his half-lidded gaze continued to travel warily between the two men hovering over him.

The child’s breath sounds were guarded and shallow. When Nicky shifted the chest piece lower, he could only frown as he listened to the ragged pull of air through his lungs. He gently felt for the pulse at the boy’s carotid, finding it slightly elevated, the rhythm fluttery against his fingertips. The lymph nodes along the column of his throat were normal, though his skin still held a feverish heat.

Carefully, slowly, Nicky's hands skimmed over his narrow extremities, feeling each bone with featherlight pressure. There were no obvious fractures, no bruises or abrasions, but the joints were too prominent, the wrists too fragile. Despite the gentleness of his touch, Nicky still detected the flash of a grimace across the boy's face. He managed to free one of his small hands from the folds of the jacket. When applying pressure to the nail beds, he noted how the color drained and returned slowly—poor perfusion.

He reached for the penlight set out amongst his tools, clicking it on with his thumb.

The moment the beam touched the boy’s pupils, he jerked back with a sharp gasp—the first real reaction he’d shown since they’d taken him. His face screwed up, turning away from the light like it burned.

Joe caught him before he could retreat too far, one broad hand cradling the back of his head, the other bracing his cheek. "Shh, almost done." he murmured, his thumb stroking the curve of the boy’s temple.

Nicky worked quickly to check his pupillary response. The reaction to light was slow, but equally present. Finally, he brandished a thermometer. There was a quiet beep in the boy's ear before the digital readout confirmed what he already knew.

Low-grade fever. Dehydration. Aches. The beginnings of an infection simmering.

He began to clear away the unnecessary supplies back into his med kit, leaving out only what was needed for an IV. "He needs fluids," he said quietly. "And likely antibiotics."

Joe considered the information, his gaze trained down towards the boy. His palm lightly brushed over the crown of his shaved scalp, noting the angry red patches of irritation—a sort of allergic reaction to the electrodes' adhesive.

"He breathes like he's in pain."

The child weakly tried to turn his head from Joe's careful touch, his hands flinching at his sides.

"Tranquillo, piccolo. Fammi vedere questa mano, sì?" Nicky spoke gently to him as he settled his small arm across his knee. His fingers nimbly fastened an elastic band around his skinny bicep before he turned his palm upward. (Easy, little one. Let me see this hand, yes?) The Italian was deliberate. Not just for comfort, but as a boundary against memory. Nicky's voice and his words were nothing like the sterile English used in the lab. He knew that the boy wouldn't fully understand, but he hoped that the tone of what he said would still register. It felt important to create a distinction from the doctors he had known before, so he would eventually learn that his and Joe's hands would never seek to harm him.

Nicky knew that the severe dehydration would make finding a suitable vein more difficult, and the moving conditions of the van were not ideal for steady hands, but there was no choice. He took a moment to center himself, slipping into the focused calm he'd learned to hone over centuries. These were the same measured breaths he took when perched on a rooftop with his rifle. In moments where there was no room for error. He glanced upwards to Joe, silent understanding passed between them.

Joe's hand cupped over the boy's eyes, shielding his view from the needle.

A slight tremor ran through his small body as the needle pierced skin. There was the subtle feeling of resistance when the IV catheter met vein, then a small amount of blood filled the chamber, signalling success. The boy's breathing caught, but he didn't cry out. Nicky suspected that he was too weak to even whimper.

"Tutto fatto." He whispered, as much to himself as to the child. He taped the line in place, his thumb brushing the inside of his elbow in silent apology. (All done.)

Joe began fixing the jacket around the boy's body once more, assuring he was well covered. He sat back and watched as Nicky busied himself with hanging the bag of Ringer's solution on a makeshift hook. His husband made the necessary calculations in his head before drawing a syringe of pain medication, administering the dose directly through the IV bag's port.

Nicky's silence could often be more telling than any outburst. There was something unsettled in the calm way his eyes scanned over the child, a sort of anger kept well guarded under the water's surface. It could never be lost on Joe that the person lying across his lap was just as much of Nicky's flesh as of his own, and so this violation felt all the more heavier. What wounded Nicolò only wounded him doubly.

"He needs a name..." Joe whispered, the words raw. There hadn't been time to comb through all of the records Copley and Booker amassed before the raid, but that crucial piece of information was listed nowhere. The boy had a number, but no other title tied to him.

As the child fought against the pull of sleep, the message of what needed to be done was silently understood. What Joe was proposing was a tentative step towards trying, towards undoing, towards atonement. It was their attempt to stand between this child and a world that tried to exploit him.

It came together organically. A discussion they never once held before, but in that moment they found themselves inexplicably equipped with the answers.

"Ilyas." Nicky breathed, only loud enough to be heard between them.

Joe nodded as he exhaled, his thumb tracing over the boy’s cheekbone. The prophet Ilyas had remained ever faithful, was resurrected before bringing down fire from the sky. He was someone taken and then returned. Neither he or Nicky were particularly religious anymore, but symbols were perhaps their oldest shared tongue. This was a name that fit the person receiving it, and that fact alone brought a small modicum of comfort. What remained of life if our words and names no longer carried meaning?

"Ilyas Nicolò." Joe finished, his gaze still trained downward.

Nicky’s head tilted, just slightly, but his fingers curled around Joe’s wrist in agreement. No paperwork, no witnesses, just this: a claim, a promise sealed in the shuddering dark of an unmarked van.

#OH GIRLLLL #THIS IS SO GOOD #immortal husbands #kaysanova

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