Finnick Odair | Victor of the 65th Hunger Games (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fishermansweater) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
farsickness2021-03-30 08:22 pm
fishermansweater) wrote in farsickness2021-03-30 08:22 pm
🔱 new to town with a made-up name | OTA
WHO: Finnick Odair + OPEN
WHEN: Late March, early April
WHAT: Being Less Crazy, investigating, spying, scoping out the market, and sort of trying to make friends?
WHERE: Gazin
WARNINGS: Vague reference to prostitution in the river/market prompt. The thread with Annie (treadswater) contains descriptions and depictions of mental illness.
NOTES: You can also hit me with a wildcard if you want, Finnick will be scoping things out a lot. Feel free to use this as a catchall!
The Inn
It's taken some time, and a lot of discussion between Finnick and Annie, but they have something like a strategy now.
Of the two of them, Finnick is the one who's best at reading people. He'd always been good at it, even before he'd been forced to rely on knowing how to understand people as a survival strategy in the Capitol. He knows how to use charisma, and good looks, and fame -- though here that last part hasn't seemed to work so far. But back before he'd been famous, when he'd just been another district kid, he'd still been good at knowing how to get people to do what he wanted, and how to charm them.
Annie isn't good at charm. And Annie's been in Gazin longer than him, and wants to know what he thinks about the people here.
So Finnick's out and about among the people of Gazin and the other guests of the inn. He spends a lot of time in the inn, usually sitting near the fire nursing a drink for much longer than he'd need to -- a trick he'd learned to fool people in the Capitol, to look like he was drinking when he wasn't, much -- and ready to strike up a conversation with anyone who looks like they want one.
He's recovered from the burns that had covered his face when he first arrived, leaving only patches of pale pink against the golden-tan of his skin, and he's dressed more like the other people here. Anyone who hadn't seen him out in the woods in those first days wouldn't be able to pick at a glance just how wild and prepared to fight he'd been when he first arrived, but anyone good at noticing these things might see the way he keeps his back to the wall if he can, or the way he pretends he's not watching the doorway when he definitely is.
Or the way he's watching all the people around him, offering only a cheeky grin of acknowledgment if he's seen.
The River and The Market
The other part of their plan is to try to find a way to make some money if they need to. Annie had sold some jewelry when she arrived, and if it comes to it, Finnick still has the golden bangle Haymitch had given him which as something of a connoisseur of fine things, Finnick thinks is probably made of actual gold from District One and will probably be worth a decent amount to sell. But it's never good to have to fall back on your last defence, so they need a way to make some money fairly quickly, and that means fishing.
(Finnick has other marketable skills, but none he cares to use here.)
So he spends a lot of time by the river, exploring it up and downstream, and can often be found with his trident studying the water and looking for fish. But it's still too cold to spend much time up to his knees in the riverwater, so he resorts to a method that involves spending a little less time in the freezing water, and starts setting some traps just upstream of Gazin. The traps are fairly simple, rudimentary things, woven as best he can out of sticks and grass and a little rope purchased in town. They'll do for a little while, until the weather's warm enough he won't freeze if he tries spearfishing.
And he catches enough that he has extra, even after offering some to the innkeeper in partial payment for his and Annie's board. So he heads out into the market one day to look for anyone he can sell to. He can be found in conversation with a fishmonger, trying to negotiate the possibility of occasionally selling some of what he catches. And in the meantime he learns a little about the fishing fleet that operates out of the nearby port at the mouth of the river.
"Thanks," he eventually tells the man. "I'll be back if I have more to sell."
He's painfully aware how obvious it must be that he's an outsider, a fact probably not helped by the fact that he now smells faintly of fish as he heads back towards the inn.
But he lingers, a while, because a market is as good a place to watch people as any. He stops at other stalls and strikes up conversations with the vendors, though he's aware that he doesn't have much money to spend. Nor does he actually need most of what he's looking at, but he's interested in what he can learn about the people, about how this place works, or how they say it works. So he asks the man selling pots about how to get a stall at the market, and he asks the woman with the spices how hard it is to get them here, and he watches for their reactions.
And if he sees anyone he recognizes from the inn, he'll give them a smile and a greeting for good measure.
WHEN: Late March, early April
WHAT: Being Less Crazy, investigating, spying, scoping out the market, and sort of trying to make friends?
WHERE: Gazin
WARNINGS: Vague reference to prostitution in the river/market prompt. The thread with Annie (treadswater) contains descriptions and depictions of mental illness.
NOTES: You can also hit me with a wildcard if you want, Finnick will be scoping things out a lot. Feel free to use this as a catchall!
The Inn
It's taken some time, and a lot of discussion between Finnick and Annie, but they have something like a strategy now.
Of the two of them, Finnick is the one who's best at reading people. He'd always been good at it, even before he'd been forced to rely on knowing how to understand people as a survival strategy in the Capitol. He knows how to use charisma, and good looks, and fame -- though here that last part hasn't seemed to work so far. But back before he'd been famous, when he'd just been another district kid, he'd still been good at knowing how to get people to do what he wanted, and how to charm them.
Annie isn't good at charm. And Annie's been in Gazin longer than him, and wants to know what he thinks about the people here.
So Finnick's out and about among the people of Gazin and the other guests of the inn. He spends a lot of time in the inn, usually sitting near the fire nursing a drink for much longer than he'd need to -- a trick he'd learned to fool people in the Capitol, to look like he was drinking when he wasn't, much -- and ready to strike up a conversation with anyone who looks like they want one.
He's recovered from the burns that had covered his face when he first arrived, leaving only patches of pale pink against the golden-tan of his skin, and he's dressed more like the other people here. Anyone who hadn't seen him out in the woods in those first days wouldn't be able to pick at a glance just how wild and prepared to fight he'd been when he first arrived, but anyone good at noticing these things might see the way he keeps his back to the wall if he can, or the way he pretends he's not watching the doorway when he definitely is.
Or the way he's watching all the people around him, offering only a cheeky grin of acknowledgment if he's seen.
The River and The Market
The other part of their plan is to try to find a way to make some money if they need to. Annie had sold some jewelry when she arrived, and if it comes to it, Finnick still has the golden bangle Haymitch had given him which as something of a connoisseur of fine things, Finnick thinks is probably made of actual gold from District One and will probably be worth a decent amount to sell. But it's never good to have to fall back on your last defence, so they need a way to make some money fairly quickly, and that means fishing.
(Finnick has other marketable skills, but none he cares to use here.)
So he spends a lot of time by the river, exploring it up and downstream, and can often be found with his trident studying the water and looking for fish. But it's still too cold to spend much time up to his knees in the riverwater, so he resorts to a method that involves spending a little less time in the freezing water, and starts setting some traps just upstream of Gazin. The traps are fairly simple, rudimentary things, woven as best he can out of sticks and grass and a little rope purchased in town. They'll do for a little while, until the weather's warm enough he won't freeze if he tries spearfishing.
And he catches enough that he has extra, even after offering some to the innkeeper in partial payment for his and Annie's board. So he heads out into the market one day to look for anyone he can sell to. He can be found in conversation with a fishmonger, trying to negotiate the possibility of occasionally selling some of what he catches. And in the meantime he learns a little about the fishing fleet that operates out of the nearby port at the mouth of the river.
"Thanks," he eventually tells the man. "I'll be back if I have more to sell."
He's painfully aware how obvious it must be that he's an outsider, a fact probably not helped by the fact that he now smells faintly of fish as he heads back towards the inn.
But he lingers, a while, because a market is as good a place to watch people as any. He stops at other stalls and strikes up conversations with the vendors, though he's aware that he doesn't have much money to spend. Nor does he actually need most of what he's looking at, but he's interested in what he can learn about the people, about how this place works, or how they say it works. So he asks the man selling pots about how to get a stall at the market, and he asks the woman with the spices how hard it is to get them here, and he watches for their reactions.
And if he sees anyone he recognizes from the inn, he'll give them a smile and a greeting for good measure.
no subject
Okay enough that when Finnick grins at her, sharp and bright as a dolphin's grin and just as trustworthy, she smiles back up at him.
There is a small 'humph'. But it's after the smile.
"Play nice, Finnick," she says, mild and amused. "Met anyone interesting?"
no subject
There are many things that Finnick had to be for the Capitol. Seductive. Desirable. Demonstrative. Available.
Not nice. For all Snow had forced him to be, he could be as cruel and dismissive as he wanted to be, so long as he did what his patrons were paying for. And sometimes, he was. Sometimes, he didn't want to bother with nice or with the effort of being genuinely sociable, so he just played the Capitol's games with the Capitol's people and got away with it because he was a victor.
Here, he's apparently not that. So he does have to make the effort, because he seems to have no reputation to rely on, and acting outwardly uncaring, cavalier, and arrogant like he's used to doing won't make them friends.
So he has been being nice. Mostly.
"I'm nice," he says, the lightness in his voice belying the things that had gone through his mind.
"Chatted with some more merchants today. Sold some more fish to the guy in the market, talked a bit about the fishermen he usually buys from. He gets stuff in from the coast but he doesn't get much freshwater fish."
no subject
She's on more secure footing as her boyfriend continues. Of the two of them, she's the one who had to look for work before becoming a victor. She's still been a victor since she was nearly nineteen, but it's something a bit more grounded. They have things to sell, but if they can secure something more consistent...
Well. She'd feel better.
"Does he sound like he'd be interested in more freshwater?"
They could hire a boat, surely.
no subject
But here, it's something they can do. They need a way to make steady money, not immediately, but eventually. Soon. And for all Finnick's skills, only one of them is something he can see himself making money with (and being able to live with himself).
It's why he'd been talking to the fishmonger.
"I think he might be. Apparently there's a fishing fleet operating off the coast west of here, but sounds like there might not be a lot of people fishing in the river."
no subject
And work with Finnick.
In the open.
"We could rent a boat, I'm sure. Or. Hopefully. I don't trust our boat-building skills that much yet."
They could build a boat. A small row-boat. They both know how, but it'd take time, and resources, and there's a decent chance they'd wind up in the drink. And renting could establish a connection, and everything runs on connections.
no subject
Neither of them had been trained particularly as freshwater fishers. Annie's family had been shrimpers and his had been deep-water fishers. But they know enough. They'd studied, and they'd learned, and a lot of what they'd learned was general enough to be useful here.
He bends his head down closer to Annie, so he can look into her eyes. She likes the idea; it's obvious from the light in her face.
"We really could do it. Earn our way here."
He never has, before.