GUESS WHO HAS THE HAYFFIE BUG?
Okay, the premise of this one is that Haymitch goes to the weird 12-step-program thing after Effie comes back, so they have a chance to reunite.
This will be so, so, so short! (EDIT: Haha, no it won't. I'm terrible)
I LOVE HAYFFIE! This is my new thing. I love them together, they're perfect, and, go!
—
Haymitch is seated on a low metal bench in the cafeteria, enjoying some gray sludge and a glass of water carrying that unpleasantly metallic tang that you can only find here in District 13. The food here is awful.
He looks at the gray walls, scanning the faces at the tables with cunning precision, looking for anyone he recognizes. But he's mostly alone now. Katniss and Gale have gone off somewhere, probably to make out in secret or whatever that girl does, and he's pretty sure everyone else who gives a damn about him is dead.
But at least there is silence— sweet, beautiful, recently-not-so-elusive silence— although, the only thing that does now is remind him of the people he has lost.
He spoons the slop into his mouth and grimaces, but there's Plutarch Heavensbee at the next table, watching him. Haymitch offers him a leering smile and pretends to be literally eating it up. All of it. President Coin, her lies, this prison. He can feel it all in the spoon as he chokes down what has sardonically been named "oatmeal".
Maybe, and the thought comes to him when he thinks of District 12, maybe this is how this stuff is actually supposed to be prepared. He's used to the hard, grainy oatmeal of the coal mines and thatched houses, and the fresh-if-a-bit-tainted water from the streams. Maybe this is what everyone has been eating.
That's an even worse thought.
Haymitch scowls. He wants his liquor, here and now. But he knows that would be a death wish, with Heavensbee watching him and Coin breathing down his neck every second. So he usually waits until he got back to his cell— sorry, room.
Suddenly, there's a voice behind him, startling him from his thoughts. Years of practice allow him to hide this easily, and so the slight hunch of his shoulders is well masked by a facade of boredom. The voice calls, "Haymitch!"
He turns on the stool at the sound and sees Katniss Everdeen walking quickly towards him with the familiar hurriedness of her gait, sharp and aligned with the ground.
She looks happy, the Victor notes, eyes narrowing. Maybe she and that Gale boy really were getting busy in a closet somewhere. But he brushes off the thought. He's completely sober as of now, because his morning bottle of white liquor was taken by someone— he's pretty sure it was Katniss— and it makes him foggy.
"Haymitch," Katniss says again, quieter as if she's starting a conversation. "You're gonna be so annoyed." But her face is still split into that stupid smile.
Her eyes are misty, like she has been thinking about crying. Haymitch immediately senses the premonition, and drawls unhappily, "Oh, no. What blithering idiot did they bring in to 'help you' with your 'campaign' this time—"
"Effie's back," Katniss interrupts, cutting Gale a meaningful glance.
"Oh, grea—" Haymitch starts without hearing her, but then The Mockingjay's giddy words reach his ears and he stops. Everything stops.
His heart skips a beat, albeit an unimportant detail.
He feels his face heat up, probably from the sudden sobriety, but then, perhaps not. His voice comes out softer and quieter than he anticipated: "What?"
Gale, the shifty kid, rocks between the balls of his feet and his heels. "Your Capitol girlfriend was rescued last night."
Katniss laughed, and Haymitch's mouth downturned into a scowl. But he couldn't hold it for long. His eyes were soon drifting in between the rows of people, searching stupidly for the bright colors and many faces of his escort, the one who had stayed so much longer than all the others. "Is…" he said, and got his tone in control. There was no reason to be elated at this news. At least, no reason that the kids knew, and he didn't want to blow his cover. "Is she here?"
Katniss, still battling a smile at the appearance of someone safe and familiar (Haymitch had never experienced the feeling before, but he maybe liked it), beckoned to someone standing in the fray of the next cafeteria table.
Out from a shroud of chattering, robotic people, stepped Effie Trinket.
Instead of just skipping a beat, Haymitch's heart stopped.
Her face was bare except for a few traces of eyeliner, revealing her creamy skin and lips the color of the inside of a seashell twisted up into a smile. Her blue eyes, cloaked in none of their feathery grandeur, locked onto his face instantly. His jaw dropped.
She was wearing gray overalls that were soft and hugged her figure, thank God, (he had a tendency to thank God at inappropriate times) and since wigs weren't really allowed here, soft tendrils of blonde hair escaped from a gray silk rag knotted over her head. He could tell that she was uncomfortable without her elaborate, silly Capitol fashions, but in that moment, his escort looked shy and ashamed and barefaced and damn it, she took his breath away.
"I miss coffee," Effie said. "And wigs."
At least her accent was unaffected; his heart twisted, though, at how traumatized she sounded. He knew that Snow was ruthless in terms of torturing people, but still. Effie— their Effie— had been through that, and she looked cracked, like porcelain.
Before he knew it, he was running.
There wasn't too big a distance between them, but it felt like forever as he shoved himself off the metal bench, "oatmeal" spilling onto his tray, and launched himself at the bubbly, petty Capitol woman who he used to hate.
Haymitch lifted Effie Trinket into the air, (without those heels and towering wigs, she was positively tiny, and weighed about three pounds) her body lean and bony, and hugged her.
Hard at first, and then she gasped in pain like a fish out of water and guilt flooded him and he loosened his grip, but still she held on.
It was clear that she hadn't expected him to show any affection for her at all, but quite to the contrary, his eyes were wet by the time he pulled away.
She didn't smell like perfume anymore, but he swore that the woman didn't sweat, so she didn't smell like the other unwashed bodies that stung the cafeteria with their odor. When he pressed his nose against her cloaked hair for another, shorter embrace, his mind rejoiced at the scents of vanilla and strawberry and disdain and something else that he could only describe as Effie. He'd forgotten how good someone clean smelled. He'd forgotten how good she smelled.
"Effie." He said, a bit out of breath from wringing the tears out of her. Because, yeah, she's crying now. Her words come out breathy and scared. "Haymitch, I missed you so much… you have no idea, I mean, I asked to see you as soon as they brought me back but they said I needed time to h-heal…"
Haymitch clenches his jaw. The kids are watching. His victor, his pick, is watching them. With an annoying, amused little smile on her face. He knows he'll never heard the end of it. He knows it will probably get him in trouble with Coin, and to think of it, a lot of other people, too.
But honestly, shoot him when he gives a damn about what anyone thinks, especially two kids, and especially President Coin.
So he kisses Effie Trinket.
He'd normally do it rough and possessive like in the movies, to throw her off balance (it's so fun to get her flustered), but she feels so fragile under his fingers, her blue eyes like fractals of glass. Instead, he is as soft as need be, their lips moving in tandem as if they've practiced this little dance before. They have, in all respects.
Her eyes close after a second— he feels the newly normal lashes brush his crooked nose as they flutter down. Then she wraps her arms around his neck, tasting like bubble gum and that stupid, expensive Capitol candy and crap, he likes it all.
Katniss is wheezing behind him like he punched her in the stomach, and he smiles into the kiss. It's always worth it to make her get that stupid "what the" look on her face, which he's sure she's wearing.
As always, Effie doesn't stand for any funny business, and keeps it chaste even when he tries explicitly not to. So proper, even when propriety is as worthless as fashion. The difference is, one she can't just discard like a second skin.
So when he begins to trace her jaw with a line of peppery kisses, she shoves him away in disgust. "Manners! Honestly! Do you think of nothing else than… than coitus?" Effie asks, appalled. Haymitch laughs, and pretends to be indignant: "Yeah! Sometimes I think about murder. But other than that, sex and murder are kind of my two options in the thought department."
Her cheeks go bright red. Haymitch turns to see Katniss and Gale, looking queasy but a bit reassured. Katniss herself has a newfound twinkle in her eye. She had forgotten how good the familiar sound of her mentor and escort bantering was. She just never thought about… Haymitch and Effie. In that way.
But she can almost see Haymitch's thoughts, radiating from his brain: Believe it, sweetheart.
Haymitch suddenly finds it hard to speak, looking down at Effie. A strand of her hair is in his fingers. It's soft and blonde and somehow clean. Her eyes, although shattered, are not irreparable. "I, uh. I missed you, Effie." He says, his hands going to her waist. She cups her hands over his shoulders as if preparing to waltz, and he hates the idea of it, but he likes it.
She's so beautiful. She was before, when she first stumbled out of his compartment with the taste of liquor of her breath and smudged lipstick. But now she's so beautiful. Her eyes are so blue that they steal the breath from his lungs and leave a searing heat behind.
He thought she had already broken down, but she's still that bubbly little pixie she always has been, and has no limit to what her tear ducts can contain. Those four words seem to lift the floodgates. She buries her bare face in his gray button-down shirt.
He looks back at Katniss, worry etched in his features. The Girl on Fire looks sadly at Effie, and murmurs, "She was there for a long time, Haymitch. And she didn't tell them anything— not a single thing. You know what that—" She blinked furiously. "You know what that can do to a person."
And then, Haymitch felt Effie's scars.
He wrapped his arms around her, trying to hold her, rock her so that this gray, cold district might go away and be replaced by just the two of them. But his fingers brush across the skin of her back, covered by a simple gray shirt and her overalls, and he finds the scars.
Some are long and superficial, some are short and ugly and raised. He feels the blister of a burn on both her shoulder blades in perfect squares. His fingers are excellent at detecting different kinds of injuries and scars— they had to be, in the Games. But now he wished they were less skilled, wished he didn't have to know what she went through. The small woman without her six-inch heels and bereft of makeup has been torn apart.
When she stops crying, he kisses her again, and she blushes. "Look at me, making a scene."
He can't help but roll his eyes. Manners-obsessed, and self-centered but just barely on the edge of not-self-centered. He suddenly realizes that all this time, he has been so incomplete without her. So he tries. "Well, you're my scene."
Even Katniss groans under her breath, and Effie shakes her head in mock disapproval. "Horrible. C minus. You'll have to do better."
He laughs. "I'll do you bett—"
She shrieks and hits his chest. Katniss tugs on her braid and remarks, "Ewww. That wasn't even a joke or anything."
Effie rolls her eyes. Haymitch chuckles deep in his throat. "Tell you what. I'll work on my lines if you help me work on Katniss's. Her big shoot's tomorrow."
He sees the gratitude in her eyes, but she fluffs her head wrap with delicate precision and says airily, "Good enough."
And for now, it is good enough.