There was an almost too delicate way in which your hands moved over him, without fully touching, always avoiding direct skin-to-skin contact as if you knew his thousand secrets and didn’t want to add any more. With the tips of your fingers, you brushed over fabrics, pushed aside a stray lock, adjusted a strand of gold that fell like a memory. He watched you in the mirror’s reflection, measuring shoulders and waist, murmuring things with that half-smile that sometimes answered your questions and other times ignored them, because he knew you knew more than anyone.

You had incorporated District 4 into his outfit without making it explicit: the deep blue of the depths, the cut that fell like a wave, the small shell-shaped clasps hidden under the lapel. The Capitol demanded shine, white, gold, and cream; you accepted gold only in select points. You chose fabrics that would cover him without suffocating, that would leave him exposed when it mattered and protected where the world perhaps shouldn’t look too closely.

You paused then, and he noticed immediately. Like a fish skimming the surface, disturbing the water and revealing its movement.

“You’re frowning.” He spoke with a slightly teasing smile. He didn’t need to ask what you were looking at; it was clear from the subtle way your lips curved that you had found a careless mark left by a sponsor on his skin.

When you finished adjusting the last detail, Finnick barely turned his head, just enough to see you without the mirror’s reflection. The room was closed, with no cameras or intruders; for a few seconds, it was only the two of you.

Your annoyance was so clear. He remembered well how you reacted when you first learned about the 75th Hunger Games, the way your eyes had betrayed what you were thinking at that moment. Oh, believe him, he hated the idea of going back to the arena too.

And he knew, too, that you wanted to land a few punches on Snow.

“Don’t do anything that’ll get you killed.” The words came out dry, direct, as if a command, but in his voice vibrated a plea.

Finnick turned to face you then, with that mixture of pride and dread that tore at him every time he thought of you. Inside, he remembered the nights with sponsors, the way he sometimes gave his body to buy one more day for the two of you. He remembered Snow’s voice like a perpetual winter: cold, menacing, always weighing loss and gain.

Finnick leaned slightly toward you, lowering his voice, making sure no one else was nearby:

“Just wait, okay?” he murmured. “I’ll come back alive… and you better be here.”