AN/ Standard disclaimers to my general audience readers apply: this story will eventually contain the corporal punishment of teenagers by a parental authority figure. Disclaimer to my kink audience applies thusly: this is a story with spanking, not a Spanking Story.
If all goes according to plan, updates will be weekly. Enjoy, and please drop me a line if you like it, hate it, have ideas or questions, et cetera.
Chapter 1: Two Steps Away From the County Line
Katniss scowled at the headrest in front of her, and clenched her fingers tighter around the seat belt on her waist. There was an empty space beside her on the back bench seat of the social worker's car, where only twenty minutes before, her little sister had sat. In the trunk, there was a garbage bag full of Katniss' clothes and a few school books, and a handful of random things she'd swiped off the top of her dresser to land in the bag without really looking at them.
Katniss was furious. With the social worker, with the police, sure. With her pinch-faced manager back at the diner, of course. But mostly she was furious with herself. Because of her own stupid actions, her and Prim had been taken from their dingy little apartment in the Seam neighborhood on the west end of town, where Katniss had managed to carve out a living for them for the past several years on her own ingenuity and persistence. She had known better than to steal anything from the diner, let alone money from the register - she really had. But she'd done it anyway. Whether she'd gotten too cocky and complacent or whether she'd just been too hungry and tired to think quite right, she didn't know. At this point, she could barely remember how she'd ended up in the puttering old car, its worn seats smelling like dogs and covering her threadbare jeans in a coat of black hairs. All she could think was, my fault, my fault. Prim was gone, dropped off in front of some huge apartment on a street whose name Katniss hadn't been able to read in the dark.
Katniss hadn't even been allowed to go in with Prim or Miss Cardew. She'd had to stay in the car, smelling her new caseworker's labradors and wondering what kind of welcome her little sister was getting. Wondering if the people she was going to stay with were nice, if she would eat well, and if Prim would know now she should keep her mouth shut. Katniss could kick herself, she was so mad - she'd been afraid of getting found out by child services for a long time now, she should have told Prim not to say anything to anyone who ever came knocking at their door. If the police had just thought Katniss was a delinquent, if they hadn't gone inside the apartment and seen their mother zoned out and seen how little food was in the cabinets, maybe Katniss would just be spending a night in a jail cell to get scared straight, and maybe she'd be able to go home in the morning. She could get a new job, pay a fine, and go back to her mission in life: keeping Prim fed, safe, and happy.
But Katniss wasn't going home. She wasn't sure where she was going at all. She and Prim had been allowed fifteen minutes and given a garbage bag each to stuff their things in before they were removed from the home, and it had been more important to Katniss to try and hug and comfort Prim in the back of the car than it had been to pay attention to where they were going. That was her third mistake that night. Her first, of course, had been stealing the money. Her second had been assuming that she and Prim would be put up in the same home. Why would they separate sisters? Who would separate her from Primrose?
Panem's Department of Human Services would, apparently. They'd driven somewhere near the northern end of the sprawling city they lived in, if Katniss' sense of general direction was correct. It was a pretty ritzy part of town, so at least Katniss knew whoever was taking care of Prim wasn't doing it solely for the stipend foster homes received each month for looking after other people's kids. Katniss had thankfully been able to avoid the system herself, but had heard stories from a couple of kids in her and Prim's combined K through 12 school. It wasn't always pretty. In fact, it often was not. There was a reason Katniss tried to avoid it.
She glared out the window then, not recognizing the neighborhood but feeling more at home in the familiar setting of filthy sidewalks and broken windows. It was an obviously rough part of town, and the people that lived here were usually just as tough to handle as the streets themselves. It was where Katniss had grown up, all she had ever known, and a place she felt comfortable. The engine rumbled, sputtered, and eventually stopped when the car was outside a squat, two-story building that had once most likely been brilliantly white. Now, it was grey, with paint chipping off the bricks and rusting bars over the windows. Fulvia Cardew, her no-nonsense caseworker, barked that this was it, and opened Katniss' door on her way to the back of the car to pop the trunk. Katniss got out, apparently too slow for Cardew's liking, because the unpleasant woman snapped her fingers at her to get her moving.
Scowling, Katniss stalked around to the back of the car, grabbed her bag out, and pulled it hastily to her chest when Cardew nearly caught the end of it as she closed the trunk. The last thing she needed was for the bag to rip; her things looked trashy enough in the Hefty bag without having to be retrieved from the street as well.
Fulvia led her with a barely-there hand on her elbow, not to the front door as Katniss expected, but around the alleyway on the side of the building and into a back yard of sorts. Katniss raised a questioning eyebrow when they passed, of all things, a pen full of geese settled down for the night in the scraggly grass. Then it was up a rickety wooden staircase and Cardew was rapping on the faded grey door.
"Did I read the sign right?" Katniss asked while they waited for any kind of answer. "Are we at a boxing gym?"
"The man who owns it lives above it," Cardew explained, and Katniss thought she saw her roll her eyes. But maybe it was just a reflection on her glasses from the floodlights below. "This is an apartment. Although I'm starting to wonder if he doesn't live in the gym, itself!"
She turned and headed down the staircase once more, and Katniss had to press herself back against the railing to get out of the way in time for her to go down. Now rolling her own eyes, she followed Cardew, back down the stairs, around the building, leaving honking geese in their much louder retreat.
Fulvia wasted little time in knocking loudly on the gym's front doors and ringing the nearby buzzer. It took a full minute of this before they heard some noise from inside - an indistinct voice and some shuffling. A light came on and Katniss peeked from behind Fulvia, trying to see in the wire-lined windows. A shape from somewhere inside came forward more and more until she could make out the form of a man.
Said man just glared at them and asked through the door, "what do you want?"
"Haymitch Abernathy?" Fulvia said, then pressed on without waiting for an answer, "I'm Miss Cardew, I'm here with a foster child in need of placement."
Katniss watched the man, who looked downright exhausted. His hair was long, a sort of dishwater blond, and his face was unshaven. He pressed the heel of his hand against his brow, stepped away a bit, and pulled a clanking ring of keys off the wall somewhere to his right. He opened the front doors and Fulvia stepped in, quick and businesslike.
"Well why in hell did you bring her here?" Haymitch demanded, looking at Katniss for half a moment before returning his attention fully to the caseworker. Katniss glared back at him, though he didn't seem to notice. "Listen, I haven't had a kid here in years. There is no damn reason for you to bring me one now. Put her somewhere else. Anyway you know what happened to my… You know that I'm single, now, and I thought you didn't put kids in homes with single men."
Fulvia held up her clipboard, though she didn't show either of them what was on it.
"I am aware of your marital situation, and while we at the department do give our condolences, there really is no other place to put her. The foster system in this county, really in the whole state, is simply overrun. Katniss is… Well, to be frank, Mr. Abernathy, if you turn her away now, she will go to a juvenile detention facility."
Katniss clenched her jaw. That, she hadn't known. With a glance around the old gym and its somewhat haggard owner, she almost wondered if there was a better situation between these choices. Go to jail, or live in this dump without her sister.
Haymitch finally gave the kid a long look, who was making a fairly good effort at not looking scared, and making this effort by glaring in an almost insulting way at his gym. She was full of spit and vinegar alright, but when he looked past the obvious chip on her shoulder, he could see that she was skin and bones. The poor girl couldn't weigh more than ninety-five pounds soaking wet. He wasn't sure she'd last ten minutes in any kind of prison, even one made for kids. Not when she was scrawny and spoiling for a fight she couldn't handle.
"Well," he said, looking back at Cardew with a furrowed brow. "I don't want that to happen. But even so, what about your… rules," he said, waving his hand vaguely. "Single man and all."
"It's more of a guideline. And the fact you're so concerned speaks well about your character," Fulvia said, and he sneered at the idea. Good character was not something generally associated with Haymitch Abernathy.
"You know, she is right here," Katniss said finally, gritting her teeth. She let her bag drop, plopping haphazardly onto the gym floor beside her as she folded her arms. "If you wanted to talk about me like I wasn't here, you should have told me to go somewhere else!"
Haymitch tried not to smirk, but when he saw Fulvia Cardew getting something of a twitch near her left eye, he couldn't help but let out a short laugh.
"Suppose we should have, sweetheart. Go upstairs, then," he said, nodding to a staircase at the far corner of the gym that was closed off by a locking door. He handed her the key ring. "The little round-headed key. Go. Help yourself to the fridge."
Katniss was a little surprised and quite a bit wary. "I have a name," she said, then gave him a mistrustful look, took the key, snatched up her bag, and turned on her heel to go. She didn't like being dismissed from a conversation that concerned her own future, and she hated being ordered around.
She might have been more tempted to stick around and argue if he hadn't mentioned the fridge.
Katniss wasn't sure what else they started to talk about, as she was too far away by the time she heard their voices again to understand what they were saying. So she unlocked the door, headed up the stairs as indicated, and let herself into the apartment. The smell was musty and old, as if the windows hadn't been opened in years. Judging by the layer of dust on almost everything she could see, she wondered if Mr. Abernathy had even been in here in the last month.
It was about as faded as everything else had been downstairs, although she was surprised at how feminine some of the decor seemed. She'd expected nothing short of utilitarian. Instead, she saw coasters with flowers on them in the small living room, and the curtains even matched the couch. She didn't dwell on the look much further, instead making a beeline for the kitchen.
She was wrong about him having been up here, apparently, because there was bread on the counter and it wasn't molded at all. Maybe a little stale, but otherwise it was fine. She raided the fridge and cabinets, not finding any very interesting food, but at least there was something actually in said fridge and cabinets. Much of her anger was put on hold as she opened a can of soup and emptied it in a dubiously clean bowl. While it was heating in the microwave, she ate slices of bread straight from the bag and watched the time count down.
She was usually so focused on keeping Prim fed - and well fed, well enough not to be distracted in school - that she tended to go without, herself. What she could buy with the money scraped up from odd jobs around the neighborhood, and what puny little fish she could catch in the stream in the park near their house was usually enough to feed one person, and that person was Prim. Her mother got food stamps, but the food they got with it at the beginning of the month was usually gone fairly quickly, so the time in between firsts and the end of the food, Katniss tended to get most of her eating done at school lunch. Sometimes she would steal food from the diner she worked at, now that she'd been working there about a month. She barely made a dollar an hour in wages and it was all gone in taxes before she got her check, so her tips were about all she ever got, but they tended to be a bit light considering she wasn't the most personable waitress.
Having food so readily available in the evening was, frankly, like heaven. Even if it was simple and somewhat tasteless.
She'd slurped down the soup, ate three slices of bread spread thickly with butter, and was halfway through a tin of corn by the time the door opened and Mr. Abernathy stepped into the living room, directly across from the kitchen.
Haymitch hadn't actually spent that long talking to Cardew, only finding out that she had no idea how long Katniss would need to stay there. He to wrote down the address of Katniss' school and heard a little about how she'd gotten in trouble with the police, before the woman left him with her number and walked right out the door. Haymitch got the idea her evening had been quite interrupted by her pesky job, the one where she was supposed to care for the most vulnerable part of the population, and he found himself greatly annoyed with her. His own evening wasn't really going as planned, but he was at least trying to take the time to do things right.
By the time he walked into his apartment, he had the beginnings of a headache and a crick in his neck from where he'd been slumped over on his desk downstairs, dead asleep when they'd come knocking.
He eyed Katniss' strange little feast, but didn't comment, instead pulling the bag of bread from the counter to eat a slice, himself.
"Why do you have geese downstairs?" Katniss asked with her mouth full.
"They make pretty good friends. Not nosy," Haymitch said, and Katniss shrugged.
Haymitch found himself feeling quite awkward. He was not nearly drunk enough for this. The last time there'd been a foster kid in this apartment, Ford had been President and Keith Moon was still alive. Among other people.
Haymitch's girl would have known exactly what to say to this kid, would have known what to do to make her feel better. He was just hoping she didn't start crying or something. Then, he'd be really out of his depth.
For now, though, she seemed fine. And intent on eating everything in his cupboards. He could tell he was probably going to have to make a grocery trip sooner rather than later. He was a little fuzzy on the last time he'd eaten actual solid food, so he helped her eat whatever she'd got bored with, until she'd had her fill. It took longer than he would have expected.
"You sure can pack it away, for a scrawny kid," he snorted when she finally leaned back against the counter, seeming sated. He was surprised to see her look guilty.
"I shouldn't have," she started, picking up her bag.
"No. You eat whatever the hell you want. That's what it's there for, to get eaten," Haymitch insisted. Before she could start to argue, he turned and headed for the hallway. "Come on. Your room's this way."
She followed him into a room that, if possible, was more dusty with disuse than the entire rest of the house. She wrinkled her nose at the stale smell, set her bag on the end of the bed, and looked anywhere but at him.
"It's not much, but… Well. We tried to keep it real simple looking. For the kids to do up themselves," he explained. He walked over to the window and used his forearm to rub the dust away, dirtying his already questionable sleeve with a smear of gray. The view wasn't much.
"Anyway. I'll get you up for school in the morning."
He walked to the door, a seemingly abrupt exit, and left without another word.
"Well, goodnight to you too," Katniss muttered under her breath. She sat on the pale blue bedspread and pulled her bag onto her lap to tear it open just up under the knot in the plastic. She decided even as she pulled her pajamas out, that she wouldn't be unpacking anything inside it. After all, she wasn't expecting to be here too long. She'd get out of Mr. Abernathy's hair quickly one way or another.