#princess nell

The trigger warnings start arriving right away, by the way : Finnick’s pov in the middle of a Capitol night isn’t pretty but it is realistic and rings true. Spin Control is in many (most?) respect a trauma fic and if you don’t get that during the opening you’ve missed an important detail.

Anyway, I do like that the first thing we see of the two main characters is in contrast with what we are presented with in the books. Finnick is vulnerable as fuck, in the middle of a breakdown, and Haymitch is still drunk but almost explicitly kind which, well. Katniss almost only sees the more abrasive side of him.

(Not to say that Haymitch is a nice person, per se. He’s capable of being kind, we see that mostly from his Hunger Games tape in Catching Fire and in a few moments where he tries being supportive of Katniss in Mockingjay (though even there you have to look for it, imo) but he doesn’t ever appear like the nice and smiling type to me, even if you somehow took the Games and everything else away)

“I hate going back every time. I wish I didn’t have to,” he heard himself say abruptly, as if the unexpected touch had made something come loose. He opened his eyes to stare at the wall. When he heard Haymitch starting to reply, he continued vehemently. “Not back in there.” He nodded at the club. “Back home. District Four.” His eyes were still burning from the tears that were threatening to spill over, from the bile in his throat. It was one of those days when everything hurt. “I hate that they – Mags, my parents, everybody – that they have to see me like that, like I’m...” But he ran out of words at that point. Collaborator. Slut. Killer. Saying it aloud would make it even more real, so he just bit his lip. It still felt swollen, from the kissing.

“Aw, kid, listen…” Haymitch said in a strained voice as if he was suddenly finding himself wildly out of his depth, his hand still on Finnick’s shoulder, as if he had decided that he would try and hold him upright physically for lack of better options.

I really like this bit, because we’re very much Haymitch there, in a way. We read ‘I hate going back every time’ and assume Finnick means the club, the clients, the whole mess of it and it makes sense because it’s horrible—and then he says it’s Four, and suddenly there’s this sense of ‘but shouldn’t it be a break for you’? Like Haymitch, who either doesn’t care about what people (who, it’s worth keeping in mind, are not close to him because everyone he loved has been dead for twenty-one years at this point) think of him in 12 or is firmly in the process of training himself out of it, we’re left a little at a loss, trying to readjust the image we had of Finnick and to figure out how to deal with it.

(Interestingly, having left my parents’ home since I last read Spin Control, I find myself understanding the sentiment a lot better, though. Obviously Finnick and I have very different circumstances but I do get what it’s like to go back to a place where you should be free and comfortable and to find yourself faced instead with a version of you you literally can’t stand, whether that’s really what your family thinks of you or what you’re projecting on them (or both). This tidbit used to make sense in an abstract way for me, it’s less abstract now x))

And then, of course, Haymitch breaks out the booze. Which sounds kind of like a joke when you say it like that but then again, it’s not like he’s got anything else to offer at that moment and he knows it. Haymitch doesn’t have experience with Finnick’s problem, doesn’t have a solution for it or a way to get Finnick out of his shitty situation because they live in a dictatorship and no one really gets an out...so he shares the only thing he’s found to deal (or pretend to deal?) with this whole mess : the alcohol. It makes for a humorous moment on surface (I like the image of Finnick trying not to cough himself to death, ngl) but it’s actually really sad.

When he would go back in to serve his client, the spot on his shoulder where Haymitch’s hand had been would feel oddly empty all night; he just wasn’t used to that kind of support anymore, not when his family didn’t know how to give it and he’d rather die than talk to Mags about sex.

This is the first time in this story where I really want to hug both of these men and put them in blanket burritos like they aren’t grown adults and fully capable of killing me one handed, but rest assured it certainly isn’t the last. I wonder how long it’s been since Finnick was on the receiving end of that kind of platonic touching tbh (I’m not sure how much his family knows exactly, or how much of a damper the knowledge puts on their physical interactions, but i feel like it’s probably a reasonable question to ask) and of course Haymitch has probably been touch starved for the past twenty years or so which, ouch. Makes me wonder if he was overly conscious of his hand afterwards, too.

There was another world, somewhere, in which the victors of Panem made contact with District Thirteen in that year, during those Games, and everything changed when the rebellion began. Haymitch sobered up somewhat, just for a little while but long enough for everything to turn out differently. Finnick gained new hope and went to make new friends back home; he went to meet Annie Cresta and became a happier man.

This was not that world.