This is part of the 52 stories in 52 weeks challenge by ourwritingtherapy on tumblr. Week 8 : A creepy story.
Ok, I didn't go easy on the creepy aspect and it deals with victors prostitution so there will be some dubious con mentions in there. Nothing is extremely graphic but I suppose the aim of the challenge was to make people ill-at-ease so feel free to give this one a pass. (I won't even complain, promise).
Dealing
'Tell me you love me'.
Words whispered in his ear, nails digging dangerously in the flesh of his lower back…
"Haymitch."
Haymitch blinked back to the present and stared at the worried woman standing in front of him, blocking the path to the bedrooms… Not that he had made any move to get out of the elevator. The doors had closed twice already, he suddenly realized, and she had been forced to jam the button to open them. Twice.
'Don't make me ask a third time.'
"Shouldn't have waited up." he mumbled and finally pushed past her.
He caught a whiff of her perfume and he couldn't decide if it was a comforting smell or a sickening one. The wig was bright pink, had been bright pink all day, a little blinding with the sparkly gems hanging here and there. The make-up had been bright too but it was smudged now. As if she had tried not to cry and failed. Or maybe it was just smudged because it was five a.m. and she had been up all night.
"Haymitch." Effie insisted warily. "She…"
"I know." he snapped and continued straight ahead, careful not to look back at her, careful not to slump his shoulders like he wanted to, careful not to let her know just how much it fucking hurt… He didn't want to let her know for various reasons he didn't really feel like going into at the moment. Most of them had to do with pride. A lot of them had to do with something else he preferred not to dwell upon. "I saw."
The sponsor pledge papers were burning a hole in his pocket.
He had caught a glimpse of the feed just as the sponsor was signing them off, just as everything he had done that night had become superfluous. Useless. Meaningless.
How that woman had laughed…
'Better luck next year, Haymitch… You know you can always count on me.'
A hand trailing down his chest with a proprietary attitude that left him sick to his stomach, fingers groping him through his pants, squeezing tight… A slap on the ass and the door.
The night air, not even fresh enough to clear his mind.
Puking in her neighbor's rose bushes…
He shouldn't have gone there in the first place. He had known all along Twelve wouldn't win the Seventy-first Hunger Games any more than they would ever win. The girl had had spunk, though. And she had managed to survive for five days. Not a quitter, not a whiner, smart enough to listen when he had told her to stay clear of the Cornucopia, to avoid fights with the Careers… Smart enough to choose survival stations over fighting ones in training…
Yeah, she had been smart.
But smart didn't save you from deadly mosquitoes when you were chased by a crocodile mutt through an equally deadly swamp.
All they would have managed to send her with the money he had gotten would have been a bottle of water anyway.
It all felt so…
"Haymitch."
Again, his escort's voice intruded, brought him back to reality. He was staring at his bedroom's closed door and he didn't have a clue how long he had been standing there.
She reached around him, careful not to touch him, and turned the handle.
He walked inside like an automaton and found himself at a loss once he was in there. By reflex, and because she had an annoying habit of bossing him around, he looked at Effie.
"Do you want me to help you?" she asked softly, a bit uncertain.
"I want booze." he answered. Because he needed to get shit drunk. To forget. He had been sober when he had gone there because that had been requested, expected, but if he had known… If he had known he would have swallowed a whole bottle. Never again. Never that one. Never…
'Tell me you love me.'
A sweet request in the form of a kiss against his neck, fingers that caressed and hips that rocked so gently… Not too bad. Not too difficult. Just close your eyes and pretend. Picture Effie under you. The voice intruded and he ignored it because those words… His body might be but those words weren't for sale.
She didn't like that though.
The sweetness turned sour. The kisses became bites, the caresses became scratches…
'Tell me you love me.'
'Don't make me ask a third time.'
'You're a disobedient pet. I will have to punish you.'
"Here." Effie offered and he stared at the bottle of whiskey she was holding for a moment before snatching it.
When had she left the room and how long had she been gone? He wasn't sure. His fingers were shaking too much and she had to unscrew the cap for him. He took a long deep swing but instead of bringing him relief, the liquor only made his stomach churn harder.
"I am going to help you out of your clothes now." she warned. "Is that alright?"
'Strip for me. Make it a good show.'
"Don't talk to me like that." he spat. "I ain't a fragile thing you need to coddle. I'm fine."
Her features were schooled into a blank mask and he couldn't tell what she was really thinking. Not that it mattered much anyway. Her fingers were shaking too. He had never bothered buttoning the waistcoat, it was gaping open on his chest and she simply pushed it off his shoulders at the same time as the jacket. They flopped to the floor and she didn't make any move to pick them up or toss them in the hamper like she usually would have insisted on because haute couture and what not. He figured she might want those clothes burned almost as much as he did.
The shirt was next.
It had been left untucked and quite a few buttons were already undone at the collar. Her jaw clenched when she caught sight of the reddish marks on his chest but she didn't say anything, she simply continued undressing him. Sometimes, her fingers brushed against his skin and he shivered. He wasn't sure if it was because he liked it or because it disgusted him. Maybe a little bit of both.
Once the shirt was gone, her blue eyes roamed on his chest. Assessing.
He watched her do that while taking a long gulp of whiskey, unable to chase the thought that she was inspecting him the way a child would inspect a toy someone had borrowed. For damages. To see if he was still good for use.
That was all victors were to Capitols. Toys.
And there Effie was, forced to share her personal sex toy, probably irritated because someone else had…
She brushed her fingers against a bruise on his ribs and kept her eyes averted but at the way she was frantically batting her eyelashes he knew she was fighting back tears.
"Take the wig off." he ordered.
"I beg your pardon?" she whispered and it sounded distracted, broken.
"Take the fucking wig off before I do something I'm gonna regret in the morning." he growled.
Like toss her on the floor and fuck her in a pitiful attempt at getting revenge on the Capitol. The urge was there. Use her. Hurt her. Just because she had a pink wig on her head and parrot make-up on her face and he couldn't tell the difference between her and…
'I know you like it.'
'Tell me you like it.'
He hated it. He hated it but you didn't say that to sponsors willing to give you money for a night of your time. You said what they wanted to hear. You did what they wanted you to do. You smiled and moaned and let them used a fucking riding crop on you if that floated their boat just because you didn't have a choice when you were a third rate victor with a third rate District nobody else would be willing to sponsor and you had a kid depending on you for survival. You did what you had to and you never thought about it again afterward.
So his mouth formed the words, his throat gave them sound, even as he forced himself to keep still, to stay there on his stomach and not to panic at the manacles that imprisoned his wrists. He was reasonably sure he could have broken free but that would have landed him in even more troubles. The riding crop wasn't so bad. She didn't know how to use it to really hurt. This was just a sick fantasy. Just…
'Tell me you love me.'
As if the fourth time would be the charm…
"You can. If you want." Effie offered, not looking at him. "Do whatever you want to me. If it makes you feel better."
It would make him feel better. For the time it would take him to realize he had hurt her when she wasn't the one he was angry at. She wasn't innocent by any means but she wasn't rotten like the rest of them either. She was his friend. His team. His lover more often than not lately. He had blurred lines before, used her as a symbol of the Capitol, but not lately and not like that.
"Get that shit off you." he insisted and turned toward the bathroom.
He pretended really hard he didn't hear her gasp when she caught sight of his back.
He turned the shower on and shed his remaining clothes. The room was already steamy by the time he stepped under the scalding stream of water. It smelt like lemon and he struggled with the settings for a couple of minutes, grumbling under his breath at this city always making everything fake, including tap water.
Eventually, delicate graceful fingers came in sight, tapped on the monitor and the lemon smell slowly receded. She was careful to keep her distance. The shower was large enough to fit at least three people so it wasn't difficult for her not to touch him. He didn't turn around.
By the second time he had washed his whole body with the mint scented shower gel he usually avoided because it smelled too strong, he finally relaxed and reached behind him. She immediately plastered herself to his back, her arms sneaking around his waist. He felt her sigh of relief between his shoulder blades.
"You were gone far longer than I thought you would be." she confessed.
"Yeah, well…" he scowled and then shook his head. "Give that one a black dot. We're never going there again."
Her color-coded sponsor files had their uses. There were already a couple of them that were bearing a not under any circumstances mark. She had been the one adding most of them but he had never asked if it was through personal experience or hearsay. He was pretty sure he didn't want to know.
"What did she do?" she asked and seemed to regret the question as soon as she asked it.
He whirled around so fast she yelped when he pushed her against the glass wall, pinned her there with his hips, wrapped a hand around her throat… She immediately grabbed his wrist, never at ease with that. She feared being chocked. He knew that. He respected that. It just took him a second to remember. The fact that her damp hair was now blond and that her face was bare helped.
She didn't look like an escort anymore.
She looked like a woman.
And it made all the difference.
He slowly let his hand fall from her throat to her shoulder, watch the tension leave her body when his thumb followed the line of her collarbone…
"She wanted me to tell her I loved her." he snorted and then he started laughing because how crazy was that? "I wouldn't so she went all dominatrix. Can't have District pets disrespect you and all…"
There was a nasty glint in her blue eyes and he wondered how long it would take her to ruin that sponsor's reputation, to bring her down a peg or two with her own particular set of weapons. A lot of people underestimated Effie – he had too in the beginning – because she looked harmless if not a little stupid. Their mistake. She was a master at pulling strings and she was very patient with her schemes.
"She hit you." she growled.
He heard the noises of buckles but didn't turn his head to check. He clenched his jaw, buried his face in the pillow, half hoped he would suffocate and pass out…
Something cool between his cheeks…
Joyful laughter as if she was having the time of her life…
'Tell me you love me.'
His lips remained pressed together. He wouldn't say it. Not to avoid this. Not to spare himself. He would say a lot of things, pretend a lot of things but not this. Love was… Love was out of bounds. And those words were too scary, too precious, too…
'As you wish, Haymitch. You should relax.'
"She had a strap-on." he heard himself say even though he had promised himself he would keep that part to himself.
But it was sex and in matters of sex, Effie knew everything about him. Which was probably why her eyes grew wide and her lips parted a little in… Shock? Dismay? Compassion? She knew very well just how much he didn't like that kind of playing. There wasn't anything wrong with it, really, he knew it floated some men's boat but it didn't really do anything for his boat. They had sold him to men sometimes, long in the past, and he hadn't liked it one bit, it had left him with an insidious panic to even go there. Biology was a hard thing to control though. And the fact that the sponsor had made him come like that.
"I will kill her." she breathed out. An offer and a promise all rolled into one.
The sincerity of the sentiment helped him relax a little because, that was the thing, she wasn't a violent person at all but she might do just that if he said yes. Or, more likely, she would hire someone to do it for her, eventually get caught and have her tongue cut off for her troubles.
He shrugged. "I never said what she wanted to hear. I won. It's fine, sweetheart."
He briefly cupped her cheek and then stepped back, leaving her free to move around.
"No, it is not." she lamented. "I want to help. Tell me… Tell me what I can do to help."
He knew what she wanted to hear. She wanted him to tell her to get down on her knees or to brace herself against the wall… She wanted him to fuck her, to take it out on her, because she felt guilty. Because she was an escort. Because she was Capitol. Because she was a part of the system.
He was a little tempted but, mostly, he was exhausted and he didn't feel good about the idea of more sex right about now. He wanted to get into bed, drink some more and then sleep the day away.
"You wanna… You wanna sleep with me?" he hesitated.
That wasn't something he asked her often. He disliked having someone in his bed at night, afraid he would hurt them during his night terrors, but it wouldn't have been the first time they had fallen asleep together and she knew how to deal with his nightmares. She knew how to get away in time and toss things at his head until he woke up.
He was asking more for her peace of mind than his anyway.
He carefully didn't let himself think about what it meant that he was maybe more concerned about her than himself. Denial was an easy state to enter after a while.
"Just sleep?" she clarified with a light frown, confused by the wording.
They didn't sleep together – they fucked, they had sex, they screwed… Sleeping together was too gentle a term for what they did together. So it must have been meant literally.
"Yeah." he shrugged. "I'm wiped."
She studied him strangely for a second and then nodded. "Alright."
"Alright." he echoed and turned off the tap.
He watched the rivulets of water glide down the drain, promising himself that by the time there would be no more, he would have buried everything deep deep down and he would forget all about it.
It wasn't his first time with a sponsor.
It probably wouldn't be the last.
He could deal.
Let me know your thoughts!