War Is Kind
They are a bellowing, billowing war coming up around from the horizon.
Effie kisses him quick and soft, her body pliant against his in the wilderness and haziness of a cold wine swallowed too fast. She laces her fingers with his and pushed him into the soft bed, covers enclosing them into a world foreign to all but them. Hands ghost up shirts and legs lock together and rhythm is restored — an equilibrium is set in the nights of dying children and celebrating politicians.
The city laughs tonight, but the mentor and escort cry into each other in the only way they know how.
They are a climbing, clambering war speeding fast around the corner.
Haymitch tells himself it's just fucking. Mindless touch-and-go's reserved for lonely nights like these. Forgotten bottles littered on the floor to be resurrected after the deed is done. They don't hold each other — no they lie next to the other, smoking cigarettes and drowning in the dying breathes of rotting lungs. They talk some, but mostly they lie there, hands brushing the other at times, but it's all shared solitary sadness for hours.
Yes, it's just fucking.
That's why he doesn't feel anything (or tries to) when a red-faced Effie brings home a flower from an admirer requesting a date that night.
They are a slowly moving war inching towards their way.
Redfaced Effie continues to blush on for years until she comes to his hotel room (the first time in forever) in the middle of the night with mascara stains and a furious handprint stamped around her wrist.
She walks into his arms when he opens the door and cries because there's no one left in the laughing city who would cast a less pitying look than Haymitch.
She doesn't want pity.
And Haymitch doesn't give it to her.
He just guides her to the sofa and pushes her into the cushion, comforting her in a way only he knows how.
Her arms circle his neck and he presses kisses down the length of hers; lips dance upon lips and she falls asleep next to him before the act can even see the start.
He doesn't mind.
Not really.
Because she's hurting and he relishes the moment she knows pain.
They are a calm and cool war, the rest before the wreckage.
They're back to not speaking, an elementary stage thought to be reserved for awkward first years together and the beginning of a series of morning afters.
The silence hurts her, but she doesn't say anything about it. She'd rather not talk if it were to break the fragile constant she has in her life. Haymitch is good to her in his own way, and he made her coffee this morning. And if it's worth mentioning, it's just how she likes it.
Effie looks up from the papers she's reading and glances over her shoulder to look at the man who knows her far too well. It warms her to see that he's staring right back at her too.
He looks down and grimaces.
She turns back and blushes.
They are a war beginning.
Effie and Haymitch are fighting again. It's really nothing, really it's not a surprise. He had spilled tea all over her at a dinner party, and he laughed and she fumed and dragged him all the way to the nearest bathroom to help her clean it off.
"It says women's restroom, not men's, so you're on your own—"
"Oh no you don't, you brute! So help me god, you better hope this doesn't stain!"
So she's locked them in a powder room — because god forbid someone catching them in the same room in private (think of the scandal!) — and she takes off her dress and hands it to him to clean. She sits at a chair and watches him fumble to rub the stain out, slightly worried it will never come out and slightly amused that she's this comfortable to be half naked around a man like him.
Not like it matters. Eight years of fucking puts some Capitol marriages to shame.
Not like she'd marry him.
"Can you help me out here? It's your fault for being so damn close to me, anyway, Princess," Haymitch grumbles. He throws the rag he's been using to the side and crosses his arms.
Effie comes around ad pushes him aside and mumbles swears under her breathe. "Useless, you are," she whispers as she runs her dress under cold water and snatches a new rag from his hands.
As she cleans, he watches her. He loves her body — she's stellar, honestly, and her skin is too nice to be buried in white. Her hips sway as she yells at him for being so fucking stupid, but he can't hear her, not with the rhythm of her body so loud in his ears. He stares at Effie and wonders why he's never realized how lucky he is. Because at this rate, they'll be fuck buddies for a very long time.
For a pretty little thing, she's got terrible taste in men.
"There, done," Effie says suddenly. She turns and a little thing right on her left hip bone, half hidden by black lace, catches his eye.
"What is that?" Haymitch asks, pointing to it.
Effie looks down. She narrows her eyes. "This? I've had this for two years now."
"What is it?"
"A tattoo."
"No shit, sweetheart. Of what?"
Effie rolls her eyes and bends down to pick up her dress. "We've been at it a few times since I got it and you haven't seen it? How observant of you..." She puts her hands on her hips and sighs. "It's a bird. And the word exist. See?" She pulls down on her underwear slightly for him to see, then snaps it back in place.
"Why?" Haymitch comes closer, staring at the design with wonderment. "Why the bird?"
"That," she starts to say, slipping into her dress, "is for you to figure out later. Come on. We don't want people to think we're involved!"
They are a war at its peak, the surging storm rumbling through mountains and skyscrapers and crowds and everything there is in their way.
She crosses her legs and sits proper on the sofa, running her thumb on the remote control absentmindedly. Haymitch watches her from a distance, watches how her nerves set in and how she plays the part of a fallen bystander caught in the wrong place in the wrong time.
She must've been an actress in a past life. She's so good at hiding what she knows and what she feels.
Haymitch walks over and sits down besides her. She looks up, smiles, and leans into him.
She starts crying, but it isn't the first time she has in front of him.
He kisses her, but it isn't sweet like he wants it to be.
He leaves her, and it shatters him.
Bur war is kind to those that never have fought.
On the hovercraft, he prays that will be the case.
It isn't.
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NOTICE: I will be on semi-hiatus writing wise and on tumblr until December. I'm sorry my readers! I'll hope to see you before then! :(