Not affiliated with The Hunger Games books or the movie.

Rated M for language and [later] sexual content.

Chapter 1: honesty is for losers.

The fact that he was here again raised all alarms to Katniss Everdeen. It didn't seem right; why was he here again? The scene was blurry. Her eyes burned and she rubbed them with her palm. The scene became more clear; there he was, sitting across from her. His hair was messy, he smelled faintly of alcohol. She wasn't sure why he'd come to her house.

"Shouldn't you be at Peeta's?" She asked, looking around for the water she knew she had left on the table.

"Shouldn't you be sober already?" He asked, sitting back in the lounge chair.

"Haymitch, really." She said, knocking over a glass of water in her haste to sit up quickly.

"Yes, dear?" He asked; the humor in his voice obvious. "I'm assuming you want to blame me for that too."

"No, I'd love to blame you for everything, but I cannot think of one thing you've done today besides wake me up and give me a headache." She said, wiping up the spilled liquid with an old towel. It was the month before the victory tour and Katniss honestly didn't care whether she was sober or not. She moved around, looking for some alcohol. She found it.

"Looking for something?" Haymitch asked as he tipped the bottle up. "I figured maybe you'd let me have a drink." He shrugged his grin annoying to Katniss.

"Give me that." She said, reaching for it. He pulled it just out of her reach.

"I think the word you're looking for is 'please'." He said, and Katniss had nothing more in mind than hitting him. She moved her hand back, ready to punch. Haymitch sat the liquor down and stood up, his hand wrapping around Katniss' fist.

"Listen, we are going to do this. Whether it is what you want or not." He said, his face alarmingly close to Katniss'. "I'm tired of pussyfooting around you. It's time for me to decide for you." He said, pushing her hand away.

"I don't want to. I… I'm done with that." She said evasively.

"Really? Because Peeta has said otherwise." He said, his voice husky and low. "And I know lover boy knows you better than you know yourself."

Katniss faltered for a moment. It wasn't ideal, but maybe it was a better idea. Clearly this would be far too nerve-wracking for her mom to deal with. She bit her lip, closing her eyes as she thought of the many different things that could go wrong with the plan.

"Fine. Until I'm completely sober from everything, I will stay in your nasty hole of a home." She said, admitting defeat.

It wasn't that she couldn't live at her house. But recently her decisions hadn't been good. Her mother was busy working, and Prim was the perfect helper. It left a lot of free time for Katniss. She'd turned to something she had never wanted to do; drugs. Specifically, she was addicted to morphling. And alcohol, but the alcohol wasn't as addicting.

She wrote a note to her mom. Between Peeta and Haymitch, they had come up with a plan that would hide what was going on. It wasn't the most perfect story, but it would suffice. She could hardly go into the victory tour messed up. It wouldn't do. The story was elaborate, but involved Haymitch being the one on morphling. Katniss was the one to take care of Haymitch, in his old house. The new house had to be 'cleaned out' by Peeta (who had been willing to do the work to actually clean up Haymitch's wreck of a house). Katniss could get the medicine to get 'Haymitch' clean, and it would work perfectly.

It had started out as meaningless test. She'd found some morphling abandoned by the train tracks, and had taken it with her to her house. Her mom had been away, working for a patient. Prim had tagged along. The intial taste-test had been just a curious girl taking a little drug. But it had a major impact. Katniss became addicted. She spent hours of her day looking for morphling, and it was no wonder they kept running low on money; Katniss spent it buying morphling. She always explained it away as buying food for the hungry. One lie fell easily on top of the other. But in order to keep things peaceful, a worried Peeta and a harried Haymitch went right to work to help Katniss.

As she moved her clothes and other stuff to the old abandoned house Haymitch's parents had previously owned, Katniss felt weak and tired. It had been approximately ten hours since her last fix. The days were going to get longer; Katniss knew this. She knew just how hard this was going to be. The note she left her mom wouldn't ever be enough to explain, and how she hated lying. But honesty was for losers.

"Got everything, sweetheart?" Haymitch asked, having depleted his own liquor supply for this experiment. They were going through hell, but they were doing it together.

"I guess." Katniss said, sagging down in an old chair. The things that Peeta and Haymitch had been moving to this house were numerous, but they were all someone else's cast-offs. Neither could supply enough stuff to truly make it home.

"Good. We have a long couple of days ahead." He said with no humor or sarcasm in his voice. Katniss briefly wondered if this was what it would be like with a sober Haymitch. Sure he'd mostly sobered up for parts of the games, but surely this was nothing like what an actual sober Haymitch would be like.

The buzz started wearing off completely a couple hours later. Both Haymitch and Katniss found comfort in staring at the ceiling, counting lines in the wood. Little did they know, their journey was just beginning.