SLAM!
"Argh!" I yelled madly, swinging my knife around as I was woken deep from my sleep. I groaned as the world swam before me and I put down the knife in favor of grasping the table. If someone was going to attack me, they would have already. "Wazz goin'on?"
"Where do you keep your alcohol Haymitch?"
Dumbstruck and shocked my vision focused and I was face to face with a distressed looking Peeta. I shook my head to revive my brain, did Peeta just ask where I kept my booze. "What did'ya say?"
"Where do you keep your alcohol Haymitch?" Peeta asked again in a tired voice.
I pointed towards one side of the room that was purely cupboards and storage area. "Anywhere in that wall." He raised an eyebrow at me before shrugging and heading over to the wall. I stared as he took out three bottles. "Your not gonna drink all of those are you?"
"Why do you care?" Peeta snapped back surprising me. Katniss I would expect that from, but not from calm level headed Peeta. He must have seen my surprise because he then gave a sigh and apologized. "Sorry Haymitch, I just need something to make it all go away."
I silently watched as he downed the first two bottles. The effect of the alcohol seemed to be instantaneous on him. He fumbled trying to open the third bottle and his eyes were blood shot. I gave a snort of amusement as he struggled with opening the third bottle of booze. "Give it here." Wordlessly he handed it to me and I opened it with ease. As I watched him drink the third bottle, I decided enough was enough.
It was time for me to get my own bottle of booze to drink.
No way was I going to allow Peeta Mellark to drink booze in my house without me joining in.
I walked over to my wall of booze and grabbed a few bottles for myself before plopping myself down at my kitchen table and drinking the lot of them. Peeta had finished his way through his third bottle and got back up for more. "Bad day Peeta?" I slurred as I became intoxicated.
He snorted into his bottle of booze and spilt it on himself. 'Bad day doesn't even begin to describe what happened to me."
"What d'ya do? Stub your toe?" I chuckled at my own joke.
"Shut it Haymitch." Peeta snarled. "This isn't funny."
Before I would have been shocked, surprised, impressed. But now I was just plain drunk. "Someone's angry." I whistled amused.
"Ya, I am. You would be too!"
"Aw, what happened to ya Lover Boy?" I asked slightly serious, but mostly mocking.
"DON'T CALL ME THAT!" Peeta stood up so fast that he knocked his chair over to the ground. "Don't call me that."
"You musta really had a bad day if you're this temperamental. Normally it's Katniss that's angry and scowling all the time." I snorted as seriously as humanly possibly.
"Don't, don't mention her." Peeta told me in a strained voice. "Please, don't mention her."
I looked at his pained expression, the way he clung to the bottle of booze as if it was his lifeline, the dead look in his eyes; it was probably the way that I had looked when I saw my girlfriend shot before my eyes. "She told you didn't she."
He didn't say anything, he didn't need to, and he just kept looking deep into that bottle of his as if it could solve all of his problems.
"Can't say it'll get any better for ya." I told him unsympathetically. What he needed now wasn't sympathy or comfort, it was the truth. "You'll have to keep up the charade when you're in the Capitol, and Snow will probably demand that the two of you marry."
Only when I said those words did he look up from his bottle. "No! How can you expect me to marry her knowing that she doesn't love me? That her heart belongs to him." He snarled the end of his sentence. I already knew who he was talking about.
"Doesn't matter. If you don't marry her, they'll kill all of those that you love. Your families, your friends, and especially her." I looked him in the eye to make sure that he understood. "As hurt as you are now, you can't say that you don't love her and that it'd kill you to see her shot right before your eyes."
He averted his gaze and stared at his bottle once again. "No, I can't say that." He whispered quietly.
"Then get ready come the next couple months, you'll be back in the Capitol where you'll have to be madly in love with Katniss again." I raised my bottle up high and clinked it against Peeta's. "Welcome to the lovely and screwed life of a Victor Peeta."