Chapter Text
Finnick clutched his communicuff tightly and hoped, hoped Haymitch would pick up. As soon as he heard the click of the call connecting, he said, “She’s dead. You’ve got to help me.”
“Kid?” Haymitch’s voice sounded a little slow. Not slurred, though. He’d probably been drinking, but at least he wasn’t wasted.
“My client,” Finnick said. “She died. I didn’t do anything to her, I swear. She just started sweating and farting a lot, and then she just died.” Finnick could feel his heart racing. The last time a client had died on a victor’s appointment, Snow reaped Gloss as punishment. Of course, Cashmere had killed her client. That’s why her younger brother was reaped. But Snow could decide Finnick was at fault. It didn’t matter that he was innocent. Snow had already blinded Finnick’s brother Jonah. What if he decided to reap him as well? Jonah would have no chance. He’d die in the bloodbath if he was lucky. Finnick’s breathing got quicker and louder.
“Slow down,” said Haymitch. “You’re at Celeste Badeaux’s, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And what happened?”
“We had dinner. And then we went into the parlor-“ Capitol people needed a lot of names for rooms because they had too many- “to have a drink. And she wanted to show me pictures of her cats. We kissed a little and the she started sweating and farting and she said her chest hurt and then she fell over dead. Her cook’s an avox. He checked on her and shook his head at me. He wrote down that he was going to get a doctor, just to be sure, I guess.”
“Somebody’s got to declare her dead. It’s a legal thing.”
“I didn’t do anything to her,” repeated Finnick. “Snow can’t blame me for it, right?”
“It sounds like her heart heart gave out,” said Haymitch. “Badeaux was what, eighty? Sometimes old people just die.”
Yes, Badeaux was very old. Finnick didn’t know her exact age, but based on her appearance he’d been dreading sex with her. He didn’t like the way she smelled, the way her skin felt. “Snow could still blame me though.”
“Maybe,” said Haymitch. “I don’t think so, but maybe.” He paused. Finnick thought he was probably taking a drink. “When did the avox leave to get the doctor?”
“Just before I called.”
“Okay, you need to get out of there. Badeaux was a big deal. Once word gets out that she’s dead, the media is going to show up, and you can’t get caught in a photograph.”
“Will you come get me?” Later, Finnick would think back and hate how desperate he sounded, how badly he wanted Haymitch to swoop in and save him.
“There’s no way I’ll get there before the doctor. It’s a half-hour drive from the apartments to there in good traffic, and this is not good traffic.”
“So I’ll walk home.”
“Do you have a disguise?”
“No.” Of course. He couldn’t just walk through the city, especially not the way he was currently dressed, in overly tight, skimpy clothing. Finnick wasn’t thinking straight.
“There’s an alley on the west side of Badeaux’s house. I’m going to send someone for you.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know yet. Whoever I can find.” Haymitch hung up.
Finnick and his client hadn’t really started anything sexual, so he was still fully dressed. He decided he didn’t have time to get rid of all the signs Celeste Badeaux had been entertaining a guest. There were two place settings in the dining room, two wine glasses in the parlor. There were a few drips of food on the tablecloth, enough that even if Finnick threw the dishes in the garbage, it would be clear two people had been eating there. Nothing to be done about it now.
There was a quilt draped over the sofa. Finnick grabbed it and wrapped it over his shoulders, deciding it was better to be more covered-up than less. He looked back at Celeste Badeaux’s body. He wasn’t at all sorry she was dead. She had been nice to him, but then she’d also paid the president for the privilege of having sex with him, so he wasn’t going to shed any tears for her. He went back to the dining room, where they’d had steaks with mushrooms, potatoes, and some kind of green leafy vegetable that wasn’t lettuce. The dining room led to a balcony, which he stepped onto, looking up at the sky. That let him figure out which direction was west. He normally kept track of directions quite well, but he hadn’t paid much attention while Victors’ Affairs was driving him to the appointment.
He slipped down the hall, down two flights of stairs, and out into the promised alley on the west side of the estate. He took a moment to be grateful Haymitch knew the city as well as he did. Then it occurred to him that if Haymitch knew the layout of the Badeaux estate, it was probably because he had been there before. On an appointment. With Celeste Badeaux. Ew.
The alley was pretty empty, besides a few garbage cans and a stack of wooden pallets. Not a lot of places to hide. Then he spotted a fire escape ladder hanging from the second floor. He jumped to reach it. Too high. So, he grabbed a pair of pallets and stood on them. Jumping from his improvised platform, he was just able to grasp the lowest rung of the ladder and pull himself up. He’d still be visible if someone was staring right at the fire escape, but between the darkness and the fact that very few people bothered to look up, he would be pretty much shielded from view.
While he waited, Finnick heard a car pull up. No siren. He couldn’t see the car or who got out of it, but whoever it was entered the Badeaux home. Probably the doctor. The fact there was no siren meant that Finnick was right about Celeste being dead. If there had been any chance of resuscitating her, the doctor would have rushed over.
Then there were two more cars. Reporters, probably.
And then a very fancy car pulled into the alley. Someone got out of the driver’s seat. Finnick couldn’t see who, not without moving and potentially giving away his position. A man’s voice called out – loud enough to carry, but no louder than that, “Sixty-fifth? I’m here to bring you home.”
As codes went, calling Finnick “Sixty-fifth” was hardly subtle, but it was certainly better than shouting “FINNICK ODAIR!”
The man continued, “Fiftieth sent me.”
Finnick recognized the voice, but he couldn’t place it. It wasn’t another victor. And it wasn’t anyone he knew in Victors’ Affairs. Then it clicked: Caesar Flickerman. Finnick had sat for several interviews with Caesar and generally found him to be pleasant enough, but Finnick was hiding in this alley because he had to avoid the media and Caesar was the media.
Besides, of all the people Haymitch could have called, would Caesar Flickerman really be on the list? Yet, Caesar had referred to Finnick as Sixty-fifth and Haymitch as Fiftieth. Victors weren’t usually called the number of their games – that was an in-joke between Finnick and Haymitch, stemming from the day they had met, when Finnick had been too deep in shock to remember Haymitch’s name. And how would Caesar know to reference Haymitch anyway? The other victors knew that Finnick and Haymitch were close, but the public certainly didn’t.
“I was told to say, ‘There are no bugs in foxholes’,” said Caesar. “I don’t know what that means. I hope you do.”
That cinched it. The Foxhole was an adult club that Haymitch frequented, where Finnick and Haymitch had met up on occasion to have conversations they needed to be completely sure were unmonitored. Haymitch sent Caesar.
Finnick dropped his blanket to the ground. He swung down from the fire escape, using the blanket to muffle the noise of his landing. He looked Caesar in the eye. Caesar was dressed in a navy blue suit with shoulders so wide and sharp his jacket looked more or less like an inverted triangle. His hair was gold—not shiny blonde, but the actual color of gold jewelry. His eyes were gold too.
Caesar opened the passenger-side door and Finnick got in the car.
“Your friend told me you were in a bit of a pickle,” said Caesar, buckling himself into the driver’s seat. “He said you needed a discreet ride back to the victors’ apartments.”
“Yeah,” said Finnick. “Thanks for helping me out.” He shifted his shoulders, looked up through his thick eyelashes. “I guess I owe you a favor.” He knew what the favor would be. He’d always known Caesar in a non-sexual context, and there was something a little sad about losing that, but he figured sex with Caesar wouldn’t be so bad. Certainly better than whatever would happen if he got caught by a photographer in a tawdry tryst with Celeste Badeaux.
But Caesar said, “Not at all. Haymitch, on the other hand, promised me a little something.”
Oh. That was worse.
Caesar continued. “He’s been ducking my requests for an interview for almost a year now.”
Huh. That wasn’t nearly as bad. Actually, Finnick didn’t know which Haymitch would hate more—sex with Caesar or an interview—but somehow trading off sex seemed much more unsavory than trading an interview.
“So,” said Caesar conversationally, “what were you doing at Ms. Badeaux’s estate?”
Haymitch might have trusted Caesar to get him to the apartments, but that didn’t mean Caesar was completely trustworthy, certainly not with Finnick’s secrets, so he gave a generic answer: “She’s wanted to meet me since she saw my games.” He said this with a tone that mixed bashful and cocky, as if he were a bit embarrassed by his celebrity, but had nonetheless decided to embrace it.
“Of course!” said Caesar, as if nothing could be more obvious. But then he looked to the side, taking in Finnick’s dress. “I’m just surprised she invited you over at this hour.”
He's guessing, thought Finnick, stomach sinking like a stone. And he can’t be allowed to know. Snow made it clear that Finnick was not to let any member of the public know he was having sexual appointments. So Finnick used a trick he’d employed many times before: admit to a small transgression to cover up a deeper secret. He’d done it to his parents plenty of times. If he admitted he’d snuck off under the docks, they’d be satisfied they had uncovered the buried truth and stop digging long before they figured out he and his friends had executed an (admittedly unsuccessful) heist, trying to steal cigarettes and candy from the local corner store.
“Can you keep a secret?” asked Finnick, putting just a little seductive purr in his voice. He wasn’t as skilled as the older victors at using flirting to get what he wanted, but he wasn’t an amateur either.
“My lips are sealed.”
“She normally sponsors Two. I was trying to poach her for Four.” Most of the public knew the victors were protective of their sponsorships, enough that it would be considered rude and unsportsmanlike to coax another district’s sponsor into defecting. So, Finnick was confessing to doing something underhanded, though not actually prohibited by any sort of rules. It didn’t really explain why he was at an old lady’s house after midnight, dressed in sexy clothes, not unless Caesar inferred that Finnick was literally seducing Celeste’s sponsorship. But Finnick was counting on the idea of not-quite-cheating at the games to be salacious enough to distract Caesar.
“Ooh,” said Caesar, “a bold move!”
“You won’t tell, will you?”
“Of course not. I’d hardly be a good interviewer if no one could trust me.”
That didn’t make any sense to Finnick, but he decided it was going to have to be good enough for now.
When they arrived at the apartments, Caesar dropped Finnick off at the gate. He didn’t try to enter the campus, not even the parking garage. He seemed to know the limits. Maybe he’d tried to go on-site before and gotten told off. Or maybe he just understood discretion. Whatever the reason, Finnick thanked him profusely for his help. He walked off as if he were heading to the inner district apartments, just in case Caesar was watching from the gate. Once he was confident Caesar’s car was out of sight, Finnick turned and made his way to the outer district building.
Haymitch greeted him with a hand on his shoulder. “I really think this is all going to be okay,” he said without preamble. “Victors’ Affairs was mostly concerned with whether you were seen leaving.”
Finnick nodded. The more he thought about it, the less likely it seemed that he would be blamed for Celeste Badeaux’s death.
“The doctors will look over her body to decide exactly what happened, but based on what you told me, it sounds like a heart attack,” said Haymitch, “which means there was nothing you could have done.”
Finnick blurted out, “How do you know Caesar?”
Haymitch’s facial expression said, ‘Seriously? Right now?’ but he answered. “Interviews. Media events. Same as you.”
“I don’t know him well enough to call him in the middle of the night to ask him to secretly escort a teenager out of the alley behind a dead woman’s house.”
Haymitch pursed his lips. “Back in the fifties, I saw him at parties now and then.”
That wasn’t news. Of course Caesar went to high-society parties. Caesar was rich and powerful. “You mean he booked appointments with you?” Finnick knew some of the victors had ‘relationships’ with repeat clients. Haymitch had explained these were not real relationships, because you couldn’t care about someone and buy them. But sometimes it felt like a relationship to the client, enough that the clients gave gifts and did favors.
“No, I mean Caesar got where he is by being available to the kinds of people who make decisions.” Haymitch’s eyes met Finnick’s. “I mean that clients were booking him.”
“Caesar’s a prostitute?” asked Finnick, incredulous.
“I don’t think he does it any more. And I don’t know if he was ever paid in money or just access. But yeah, he slept his way up the ladder.” Haymitch shrugged. “If there hadn’t been the time pressure, he wouldn’t have been my first pick to send after you, but I knew he was covering an art gallery opening just a few blocks from the Badeaux estate.”
“Why would he do it—sell himself, I mean? It doesn’t sound like he had to.”
“Dunno. Maybe he wanted to be on TV really bad. Or maybe he never saw it as a big deal. Or maybe he liked it. Or maybe he was being forced, just in a way we don’t know about.”
“Weird.” Finnick couldn’t imagine selling his body voluntarily, though he supposed there were people who did. Gloss’s mom was a prostitute, and as far as Finnick knew, no one forced her. Finnick had always assumed she needed the money and had no other choice, but now that he thought about it, Gloss had never said that. Maybe she did have other job options and just picked that one. The idea was interesting enough that it distracted Finnick from worrying about Snow and the dead Celeste Badeaux.
“You gonna be able to sleep tonight?” asked Haymitch.
Finnick heard what Haymitch wasn’t saying: Do you need to sleep in my bed? Do you need me to keep watch? Since Finnick had returned to the Capitol after his victory tour, he had been making an effort to stay in Twelve’s apartments only when he really needed to. When he stayed there every night, it made the other victors think that there was something untoward going on. Not that sleeping over only occasionally completely quelled the rumors, but it didn’t look quite as bad. And there was the fact that Haymitch really didn’t want to be in a bed with Finnick. He would do it if Finnick begged, insisted, needed. Not for anything less than that. Haymitch had never wanted to be Finnick’s tutor, both because he had no interest in spending time with an emotionally unstable teenager and because he couldn’t stomach the thought of having sex with a traumatized, underage boy. And they didn’t have sex. Until they did.
( Except they didn’t really because it wasn’t Haymitch who did it. It wasn’t him. It wasn’t his hands and his voice and his breath and his cock and- )
Since then, Haymitch had found it hard to look at Finnick. Being in bed with the kid evoked an almost unbearable level of shame.
And, if Finnick was very, very honest, he still found it hard to look at Haymitch, the memory of their night together refusing to stay in a quiet, buried corner of his mind where it belonged.
“I’ll be fine,” said Finnick. “I’m just going to wash off my makeup before I go back to Four.” His current look strongly suggested he had been at a sexual appointment.
Haymitch made a vaguely affirmative grunt as he poured himself another drink.
Finnick felt the tiniest bit disappointed that Haymitch didn’t argue or offer to let him stay. He ignored that feeling, cleaned himself up, and went back to Four’s apartments.
The next day, he staggered blearily out of his personal apartment to Four’s central rooms. He stopped at the double doors that separated the individual suites from the shared space. Graig Keaney was at the kitchen table with his uncle, Ray. Graig was familiar to Finnick. He won his games a decade ago and spent most of his time in the Capitol with clients. Ray, on the other hand, was mostly a stranger. They’d met a few times before, but had never really talked. Finnick estimated he was forty or fifty. There was a family resemblance with Graig but – there was no other way to say it – Ray was ugly. His chin was weirdly uneven and his eyes were small and squinty. Between his age and appearance, Finnick thought it unlikely that he still got sexual appointments, but he was apparently good at arranging sponsorships.
Graig and Ray were arguing about something. Ray gestured to the television, which was on but muted. “How can you do that to Gemma?” asked Ray. Finnick glanced at the TV. There was a gossip show on, displaying a photograph of Graig making out with a much older woman. Gemma was Graig’s wife. It sounded like Ray was criticizing Graig for cheating, but that couldn’t be right. Ray had to know that Graig wasn’t doing this voluntarily.
Graig brought a bite of breakfast to his mouth and made a grumbling noise.
“I know all the victors let celebrity go to their heads, but I would have sworn my brother raised you better than this.”
“Gemma understands,” said Graig simply. He was normally pretty gregarious, so Finnick read his blank tone as frustration.
“Gemma puts up with it.”
Finnick decided to interrupt and rescue Graig from his uncle’s strange criticism. He pushed the double doors all the way open, leaning down on the knob to ensure they creaked. “Good morning!” he announced, a little too loudly. He plopped down at the breakfast table, ostentatiously stealing some of Graig’s sausage.
But Ray wasn’t done. He gestured to Finnick, not breaking eye contact with Graig. “This one came home past midnight last night, all dolled up. You should set a better example.”
“I wasn’t out partying,” said Finnick, picking up on what Ray was implying. He quickly made up a lie for why he’d been wearing sexy clothes late at night. “I had a photoshoot. It was for a commercial for some kind of hair gel or something, and they wanted to show me posing in the moonlight.”
Ray blinked a few times, registering this. “You be careful,” he said to Finnick. “Don’t wind up like the rest of them.” He set down his coffee and left Four’s suite.
As soon as Ray was gone, Graig let out an enormous groan. “Sorry you had to see that,” he said. “Ray’s not a bad guy, but he’s...he’s got a strange way of coping.”
“What’s that?”
“He just pretends it’s not happening. He’s not crazy, he’s not delusional. I’m sure he knows it’s true deep down. But he just keeps telling himself that no one’s being forced, that all the victors are just sluts who happen to love sleeping with Capitol strangers.”
“But...didn’t he get appointments?” Moreover, didn’t he mess up at an appointment? Finnick had always assumed that Graig was reaped to punish Ray, though he decided not to mention that directly.
“Yes. I’m sure of that. Some of the older victors confirmed it. But he never got that many, because he, uh…”
“Never caught the eye of the clients,” said Finnick diplomatically.
“Right.” Graig smiled at the euphemism. “He definitely doesn’t get sexual appointments any more. He’s here now because there was storm damage to his arena. It’s a tourist attraction now. His games weren’t all that popular, but the arena was an elaborate network of caverns, so it’s always been a favorite for Capitol families to visit. He’s raising money to repair it.”
“Why would he care?”
“The more people visit arenas where Four won, the more sponsors we get.” Graig sighed. “Like I said, he’s not a bad guy. He cares about Four.” He shook his head. “I guess there are worse ways for victors to handle the strain.”
Finnick wondered if Graig meant that as a dig at Haymitch’s drinking. He knew Graig disapproved of his supposed relationship with Haymitch. Then it occurred to him that quite a lot of the victors had unhealthy habits.
“Must be tough for you," said Finnick.
“We were close before I was reaped. The reality is that a lot of victors have tough relationships with family, for a lot of reasons. I try not to dwell on it.” Graig sipped his coffee. “You still get along with yours, right? Do your best to keep that as long as you can.”