Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.
Capitol Nights, chapter 36
"You kids get out, too," Haymitch demands, his voice pain-roughened and furious. Stupid pink-haired Capitolite.
"Haymitch, we can't," Peeta says helplessly. "You're bleeding."
"Yeah, that's just one of the fun parts of being violently raped," Haymitch growls at him. He closes his eyes again. "Fuck off, Peeta."
Momentarily speechless, Peeta looks at Katniss. There's no help there. Katniss is studying the floor, her shoulders hunched.
"You're hurt. You need help," he tries again.
"No, I need sleep and I need you to leave me alone. Fuck's sake, kid, do I have to draw you a picture?"
"Leave him alone, Peeta," Katniss says abruptly. Peeta turns toward her in alarm because her voice is choked with tears.
"Katniss? What's wrong?"
A scornful laugh comes from the direction of the couch. "Yeah, what could possibly be wrong? Real winner you got here, honey. The kid's going to be so intelligent."
To Peeta's shock, Katniss is openly crying now. Her voice shakes badly, but she still gets her words out all too clear. "Just leave us both alone, Peeta! We don't want your help! You can't help either of us! Stop being so fucking nice! We don't deserve it."
Peeta stares at her and wonders what's happening. Is it possible that she's drunk? He's been with her the whole evening, and he feels sure he would have noticed if she'd been drinking.
Haymitch knows perfectly well what the girl's problem is. He was eight years old when his mother was pregnant with Roen, and he remembers scenes like this well enough. Even in the midst of a hormone-driven psychotic rant, Katniss is making more sense than his mother did. It'd be a shame to interrupt her now.
"I just don't get where this is coming from," Peeta says slowly. "Of course you deserve it. You're the most amazing person I know. Please, calm down."
Katniss shrieks, loudly and piercingly. Peeta jumps back a good three feet, startlingly agile for a kid with only one good leg. Meanwhile, Haymitch scrambles to sit up, the pain temporarily eclipsed by high-octane terror and adrenaline. His heart is in his throat, his hands clenched into fists.
"Shut up! Shut up shut up shut up! He's a whore, I'm breeding stock, and you're just useless!" She whirls around and storms off toward their bedroom.
"Katniss-" Peeta says, going after her.
"Stay away from me!" The door slams, the bang as loud as a gunshot and gravid with finality.
Peeta drops into one of the chairs facing the couch and hides his face in his hands.
Just as he's about to say something to the boy, Haymitch glances down at himself and realizes the damn blanket fell away when he dragged himself up. He'd been sitting there naked during that last exchange, the blanket bunched uselessly behind him. Holding onto the back of the couch with one hand, he clumsily rakes the blanket over his lap. Even that much movement brings on a wave of vertigo which forces him to clutch the back of the couch and rest his head against the cushions until it passes.
No wonder the girl went mental. She'd seen him fucking naked and with blood and filth all over him. Fuck. He might as well have stayed in the middle of the goddamn floor where they'd left him.
It looks like there's a good chance both the kids are going to be crying in a minute, so with an effort Haymitch pulls himself together enough to speak. "Congratulations, boy. You're going to be a father."
Peeta looks up at him, parsing the words slowly. "Really? You're just now getting around to saying that?" He holds up a hand, shaking his head. "Never mind, I'll take it. Thank you."
"Thought you might need a reminder. She's pregnant. She's off her damn gourd."
"What would you know about it?" Peeta says with reflexive defensiveness.
Haymitch rolls his eyes at his tone. Off her gourd she may be, but Katniss made some valid points. "I know more about it than a dumb kid like you."
Peeta actually smiles at that. "Congratulations, Haymitch. You're going to be an uncle."
Haymitch snorts. You just can't talk sense to some people. "I'm not your brother, Peeta. I'm just the person you got stuck in the room with." Hell of a thing for the kid to say. If he could believe half of what Peeta says, he figures he'd be at least a quarter of the way to being a decent person.
"Semantics," Peeta says, still smiling.
"I bet you think all the stray dogs in the Town are your pets, too."
Peeta shrugs, indicating his unwillingness to pursue the topic. "Does she really think I'm useless?"
"Of course not." Haymitch shifts his position on the couch and winces. He doesn't want to stay out here anymore. If he falls asleep in a room anyone could walk into, he's guaranteed to have the full-on screaming nightmares. He doesn't want to be here when Effie gets back, either. "Help me get to my room, okay? It's been a damn long night."
"Yeah, of course." Peeta favors him with the sort of approving smile that means he's done something Peeta considers 'sensible'.
"Just that," Haymitch clarifies. "We're still not playing doctor."
"I won't do anything you don't agree to. I promise."
A pathetically absurd image arises in Haymitch mind as he regards Peeta and carefully doesn't say anything: the Capitol whore, clad only in a blanket and still bleeding from the attentions of his latest john, demands to be spoken to like a man. 'Carry me to my room and put me to bed, and show some respect!' Good luck with that, sweetheart. Nothing you don't agree to is a better offer than you've gotten from any other man in the last six months.
Peeta takes his arms and starts to pull him to his feet. The blanket slips and Haymitch wrenches one of his arms free to grab it, falling awkwardly back onto the couch. He hisses at the stab of pain that knifes through him with the impact. "Forget it," he says through gritted teeth. "Scram. I'll sleep on the couch."
Hoping the words won't make things worse, Peeta ventures, "You know, I have seen you undressed before."
"Not like this, you haven't."
"Alright, then, I won't look. Once you're up you can hold onto the couch and I'll wrap the blanket around you again."
"Fine."
Peeta hauls him up, keeping his face averted. The blanket slithers down over his ass, catching on the bloody raised welts left by the cane. Fifteen of them, spread over his ass and the backs of his thighs. They'd made him count. They'd actually made him count.
"Step around here so you can hold onto the armrest," Peeta urges. Haymitch obeys him wordlessly. He has to lean forward to support himself against the couch's low armrest, simultaneously being careful to stand on the sides of his feet. And now he's naked and bent over a goddamn couch. Is it even possible Peeta didn't plan it this way? This isn't a position anyone ends up in by accident. How did he not see this coming? Peeta- his mind shies away and he drags it back- even Peeta will expect to be compensated for his trouble.
A weight settles over his back, and Haymitch clumsily spreads his legs and braces himself as well as he can. It's just one more cock. How can it matter at this point?
"Come on, stand up," Peeta coaxes, taking hold of his arm through the blanket draped over his shoulders. The blond probably isn't even aware of what he just did. Apparently it's just one more thing he does without thinking, now. Peeta hadn't known things had gone that far.
Haymitch lurches upright, giving Peeta a half-grateful, half-ashamed look that he isn't sure how to interpret. They start across the room, Haymitch holding onto the blanket with one hand while Peeta holds his other arm. He limps heavily, his steps slow and jolting.
"You shouldn't be walking on broken toes," Peeta chides him, moving carefully at his side.
Haymitch makes a face and mimics Peeta under his breath, the kind of childish response he falls back on when he can't spare the attention for a properly sarcastic retort. Peeta bites the inside of his cheek to suppress an amused smile. He doubts Haymitch would react well to that at the moment.
"Fuck, Peeta, stop stop stop," Haymitch says in a strained voice. He sways, and the hand clutching the ends of the blanket together at his chest tightens in a white-knuckled grip.
"I've got you. It's okay," Peeta reassures, wrapping an arm around the injured man's back.
He's trying to walk on the edge of his feet, but his toes keep bumping the floor and it feels like spikes being driven down the lengths of his feet. The blanket rasps over his open wounds like a file and every step tears at his insides. Nothing, nothing about this is okay.
"You have to keep moving," Peeta tells him. "We're almost there."
"Fucking hurts," Haymitch mutters miserably.
He's bleeding again (did he ever stop?). A trail of red coin-sized drops marks their progress across the room, so close together that they almost form a continuous line in places. He shouldn't be on his feet. He shouldn't be here. He needs the attentions of a medic. If they were back home in District 12, Peeta would make him sit down and then run to get Elsabet regardless of what he wanted.
But they're in the Capitol, and that means Victors Hospital. Peeta shakes his head despairingly, remembering. After the Games he'd woken up strapped to a table, on his back, naked and alone. He hadn't even been able to raise his head enough to see what was missing. The medics that occasionally came into the room to hang new IV bags or change his bandages had responded to his questions only with meaningless platitudes like 'just relax', 'try to sleep', or 'you'll be fine.' When he persisted, they sedated him. Gradually he had become so stressed that he'd started to hallucinate. When they finally told him they'd had to remove his right leg below the knee and replace it with an artificial one and it was time for him to get up and learn to walk again, his shock had actually been mixed with gratitude that they were finally speaking to him.
"You're going to be fine," he hears himself say, the words echoing in his memory. Meaningless words, to him and certainly to Haymitch as well. Useless words.
Beside him, Haymitch breathes harshly in and out and then starts moving forward again. Peeta keeps his arm around the other man.
"I won't call them unless you say it's alright," he promises again, to himself as much as to Haymitch.
"C-call who?" Haymitch asks, stuttering.
"Medics."
"Don't," Haymitch says quickly. "D-damn it, Peeta, you f-fucking promised."
"I won't. Okay. I won't," Peeta hastily reassures him. "Here, lean on the wall a little."
"Not that heavy," Haymitch grumbles, but he clumsily switches the hand holding the blanket so he can brace one hand on the wall beside him.
"Sorry," Peeta tells him. "It's the leg. Sometimes it's still a little hard to balance."
"Right," Haymitch growls. "I hope I'm not hurting you." His hair is in his face, and the Penthouse shifts unsteadily between wavering bands of gold. "How much further?"
"Maybe fifteen feet. We're almost there." And then what? The bleeding needs to be stopped. Something has to be done about his toes. He probably has wounds that need cleaning. "You have to let me help you," he says rather hopelessly.
"You?" Haymitch scoffs. "You're useless, remember?"
"Haymitch," Peeta says, and the man winces. Disassociation and denial are what he needs right now, the only things that make it possible to stumble down this hallway. He's pretty sure they're the only things making it possible to breathe, or talk. And Peeta seems perversely determined to keep dragging him back.
"Listening," he declaims, inviting Peeta to shut the hell up with his tone.
"What if you die?" Peeta asks, making it worse by looking at Haymitch.
"It's not poison. You don't actually die of it," Haymitch growls. "Katniss is still alive, isn't she? There you are."
Peeta doesn't say anything else. He's hurt, he reminds himself firmly. And, You can't be a kid anymore. And, Calm and reasonable. He thinks the reminders are helping. Not that he feels calm or reasonable. Reluctantly he sets aside the impulse to gently ease Haymitch to the floor and then run to the bedroom and beg Katniss to forgive him.
She didn't want it. What he did was rape. She'd acquiesced to it; she'd even been graceful enough to participate instead of just lying there and submitting. If there was still room in their reality for him to be a teenager, he'd deny his culpability. There isn't. He can't. The stark, undeniable, irrevocable truth is that he raped Katniss. It doesn't matter why. Nothing will ever expunge his crime.
She won't accept his apologies. He's learned better than to offer them. Sometimes he thinks it would be so much better if she seemed to hate him, if she turned away when he entered the room or demanded that he sleep on the couch. As much as that would hurt, she should allow him to atone. He would do anything to earn her forgiveness.
Instead she simply gave it to him, as though it were nothing. She's far too good for him. She should have had Gale. At least she would have wanted to have a baby with him. Or she should have had someone as smart and brave as her, someone who would have thought of a way to escape or some ploy that would have spared her. She deserves so much better than the clumsiest, most self-centered, most thoughtless of the Mellark boys.
"Do you hate me, Haymitch?" he asks softly.
Haymitch casts a sidelong look at him and snorts derisively. "Don't be such a girl." He huffs, almost leaves it at that, and then mutters, "No." Teenagers. Hell's bells.
Peeta pushes the door of Haymitch's room open with a feeling of dull relief. He's suddenly exhausted. All he wants to do is retreat to his own room and curl up with Katniss. He has the wretched presentiment that he won't be able to either sleep or find the motivation to get up again once he lies down. But she'll be there, asleep next to him and breathing quietly in the darkness. Under the awful strawberry stuff her preps are currently fixated on, she'll smell like smoke and woods.
"Bed?" he asks. Haymitch gives a jerky nod and allows himself to be guided in that direction. The Avoxes have been through, cleaning and tidying everything in the Penthouse, and for once Peeta is grateful for their presence. At least there isn't the usual detritus of any lair Haymitch stays in for more than a few hours: piles of clothes, empty and half-empty bottles, furniture shoved hither and yon. How Haymitch navigates his chaotic environment when he's too drunk to even walk a straight line still baffles Peeta, even though he's watched the man do it more than once.
Haymitch lifts his left knee onto the bed and leans forward to rest his weight on his hands. He drags his right leg up onto the blankets and lies down with his back to Peeta. The blanket has slipped partway down his back and he tries to pull it up over his shoulder again. But it's wrapped around him now, and he can't pull it up without first somehow lifting his whole body off the bed for a second. He gives up, turning his face into the pillow. He tries to curl up, but the blanket restrains him as effectively as the straps on the beds at Victors Hospital. The heavy fabric clings soddenly to him. It's adhered to his skin by his own blood, trapping that other filth against him. Even the bit that came out, he can't get rid of. It's going to dry on his skin.
"Let me clean you up a little," Peeta coaxes. He can't leave Haymitch like this.
"Uh-uh," Haymitch tells the pillow. "If you want me to indulge your creepy power fetish, you're just going to have to make an appointment. No freebies."
Peeta comes around the bed so that Haymitch can see him without moving. He starts to speak, and then remembers that Haymitch doesn't like people to stand over him when he's hurt. He sits down on the edge of the bed and starts again. "You know that's not-"
"Don't you have a wife to harass with your needs?" Haymitch interrupts him. "She married you. Seems like this is her problem, now. Off you go." He raises his head from the pillow and fixes Peeta with a venomous look. "Unless you just have a preference for men, of course."
"Sh-" Peeta stops himself before he even gets the first word out. He stands up, paces restlessly back and forth a few times. Haymitch tracks his movements, presumably waiting to see if Peeta is going to yell at him or hit him or just possibly leave. His ruined hands have curled into fists, and Peeta stops and stares at him.
Haymitch sees him as a threat now. It isn't fair. He's never done anything to Haymitch except try to learn from him and look after him and befriend him.
"Okay," he says in a decisive tone. "Here's what's going to happen. I'm going to untangle that blanket from you so you can move without falling out of bed. I'll try to do it without touching you any more than I have to. But that's what I'm going to do, even if you hit me."
Abruptly the fight goes out of Haymitch. He lowers his head to the pillow, though his eyes helplessly continue to follow Peeta. "Tomorrow," he says in a tone that's dangerously close to pleading. "I'll let you do whatever you want." The words nearly choke him. "Just give me until morning, okay?"
There's nothing he can say. Peeta sinks down to the floor beside the bed. Nothing he can say. Nothing he can do. "I'll stay," he tries.
"What will that help?" Haymitch's eyes slip closed and he blinks a couple of times and shakes his head hard without lifting it from the pillow. The drugs are overwhelming him now, the drugs and the shock and the hideous tiredness. Lying down was another stupid mistake he'd had to make. Now he'll sleep, even tangled in the blanket with that indescribable filth drying to a scale on his skin. They meant for him to sleep, and they control him.
Peeta watches Haymitch struggling to stay awake, and the only words in his mind would just make this worse: Don't be scared of me, please, don't be scared of me.
"Not scared," Haymitch mutters, his words dragging and his eyes half-lidded. Peeta gives him a surprised, considering look. It changes to one of guilt after a few seconds. He must have spoken without meaning to, or noticing.
"Tired," Haymitch continues, struggling now to form the words. "Hurts." He forces his eyes open again, but focusing is impossible now. Shit. He hadn't meant to say that. His mind is getting sluggish. He can't hold onto the simple thought. It slips below the surface, until all that's visible through the thickening, dark-colored muck is a vague fear and the lingering need for something he can't name.
With the last fading bit of consciousness he twitches his foot, thumps it weakly down against the unyielding mattress. Clarity returns in a bright dazzle-snap of pain; for a moment he can't speak, can only shut his eyes and grit his teeth and clench his fists in the folds of the blanket. By the time the flare of agony starts to recede he feels himself sinking down again, sinking rapidly. Peeta's standing over him, a hand on his shoulder. Haymitch thinks the kid might be shaking him. Fuck's sake, he suddenly thinks with wholly unexpected amusement.
"Just tired," he says, quickly but carefully. This will be the last chance. If the last word Peeta hears from him before he passes out is 'hurts', he'll sit by the bed all night wringing his hands and probably convincing himself of his ultimate culpability for the Games, Katniss's teenage-mom status, and the shitty state of life in general. "Go away. Scamper back to the little wifey. I'm super." Loopiness is creeping back in. He's well aware of it, but he can't help it. He makes a final effort to collect his thoughts. "Get out, kid."
Peeta slowly withdraws his hand and steps back. Haymitch sounds a little better, a little more like himself. And he's not going to be awake much longer, anyway. And he told Peeta to leave. Decisively Peeta turns away and walks to the door. Then he stops and looks back. He can't leave.
Haymitch is asleep, still and quiet and breathing slowly. Peeta opens the door the merest crack and slips out with furtive movements, closing the door with exaggerated care. He heads for his room.
He sneaks toward his room, sneaks away from Haymitch and the things he knows need to be done. He's not a kid anymore. He'll call it what it is.