Prompt :) waaaay post mocking jay, Effie visits 12 and she and Haymitch get drunk one night and start showing each other their body scars from the rebellion/ games/ life... One thing leads to another and things get kissy naked steamy angsty hot ;D
Hey people, just a small warning that I've decided to up the rating a bit. I don't really do smut per se but it's getting a bit mature in some of the prompts so I upgraded it to T. :)
A while lasts forever
"The baby is beautiful." Effie sighed, a tad wistfully.
Haymitch grunted without any commitment. "It wails, it poops and it barfs." He shrugged. "But you and I have very different definition of what's beautiful, so… Whatever."
Effie sipped her wine slowly, watching him from her side of the couch. She had toed off her shoes and discarded her wig hours ago before curling up against the armrest closest to the fire, winters were cold in Twelve and this one wasn't any exception to that rule. She had come as soon as she could after Peeta's phone call, she had been so impatient to meet the new addition to the Mellark family… And the baby girl was truly beautiful despite Haymitch's opinion.
She kicked him gently in the thigh with her foot. "She's got you wrapped around her little finger, hasn't she?" She couldn't help her teasing smile. Haymitch was as taken with the baby as they all were, she could tell. He had pretended all day long not to care one bit but each time the baby had cried, he was the first to urge Katniss to do something about it. Peeta had to talk to him for half an hour before he relented to hold the baby but once she had been nestled in his arms, there had been no tacking her back. Effie thought it was sweet.
"Don't know what you're talking about." he grumbled, taking another mouthful of wine. He hadn't bothered with a glass, of course. He was drinking straight from the bottle. She had chided him for his poor manners but she didn't actually mind. She was used to see him drink like that, it seemed normal. Normal was good. Normal was a hard thing to get by since the rebellion.
"You are going to spoil her rotten." she predicted, holding out her glass to him.
"Hadn't you had enough? Since when do you drink that much?" He rolled his eyes but he still poured some of his wine into her glass. "You're going to give me a run for my money if you go on like that."
How much did she had to drink exactly? She couldn't tell. There were two empty bottles not counting the one he was clutching. He was drunk but not too much and, as to her, she was feeling that buzz that comes with the perfect amount of alcohol. She was relaxed. Once again, relaxing was good. Relaxing didn't happen that much either since the rebellion. Wine helped more often than not. She certainly developed a taste for it in the last few years.
"What happened to your hand?" he asked.
She instinctively brought her left hand closer to her chest and curled up tighter. The gash on her palm wasn't as terrible as it had been. It was mostly healed now but you could still see the reddish pink slithering line of the wound.
She fidgeted a little but shrugged. "Clumsy. I fell. Weren't you always claiming that I would break my neck with those heels?" The heels weren't to blame. Work was hard to come by and she had to move out of the fashionable neighborhood to a less glorious part of town, nobody wanted to employ a former escort, the Hunger Games and the once Capitol famous were things of the past. Working as a model was out of the question. Working in the medias as an hostess, despite Plutarch's best attempts, hadn't worked out either. She had tried to become an event-planner but that hadn't worked out either. So now she was working as a temp secretary wherever she found work, which wasn't as regularly as she would have liked. She lived in a neighborhood where people didn't always bother to carry their trash to the bins and, as a consequence, she had tripped over an old bike wheel when she was walking home one night. It really could have been worse than it had been. She had just nicked her hand and scratched her knees.
"Still waiting for that to happen, sweetheart." He didn't look particularly convinced and he was watching her with a little too much acuity for someone who had drunk as much as he had that night. "How are things in the Capitol? And don't give me the bullshit you fed the kids."
She swallowed her glass of wine in one go and motioned for him to refill it. He did but slowly, as if he was questioning her drinking habits which, really, was the kettle calling the pot black.
"It's late, Katniss and Peeta are going to wonder where I've disappeared. I should go." she said, but she didn't move. Peeta had offered her their guestroom and she had accepted, knowing that Haymitch wouldn't mind if she invited herself over at his house but also knowing he would never suggest it in the first place. Except that now that she was supposed to go back to Katniss and Peeta's and their happy family life… She was having second thoughts. She was happy for the children, she truly was, she loved them as if they were her own, but… It was somehow easier to be with Haymitch than it was to be with them. She didn't need to put up a show with Haymitch – and she probably didn't need to put up a show with the children either but she had always done so and it was probably better to let them think of her as their silly frivolous friend from the Capitol. Haymitch had seen through that front a long time ago.
"That bad?" There was a frown on his face and his mouth was pinched. How much did he know? How much insight did he have on her situation? She knew Plutarch was keeping an eye on her, he was the one finding her jobs more often than not. How much did he tell Haymitch?
"Are you spying on me?" She was careful to keep her voice light but she also made sure to let her annoyance show. "I don't like that."
"Yeah, well… I don't like the idea of you living in a two-room apartment." he shrugged.
She flushed in embarrassment and put down her glass on the coffee table with a bang. "There are three rooms actually. Tell Plutarch to get his reports right."
"The bathroom doesn't count." Haymitch retorted. "A kitchen and a living-room. He said you don't even have a bed."
She slipped her feet in the worn-out heels she kept polishing so they looked new and started buckling the straps. "Not that it is any of your business, but I have a sofa-bed, thank you very much."
"Why didn't you call?" He put the bottle down. "You could have come here. You're always welcome here, you know that."
"You don't own a phone." she reminded him, struggling with the strap of her left shoe. It was beginning to loosen and it was hard to put on.
"The kids do." He waved her argument away.
"Katniss and Peeta don't need to know of my financial difficulties." she snapped. "And you are not going to tell them. I'm warning you." She stood up too quickly, forgetting for a while how much wine she had drunk, and the room spinned around her. "Oh."
Haymitch was on his feet in a matter of seconds, holding her forearms to steady her. "Easy." he said. "Sit down." She let him help her back down on the couch and didn't comment when he took off her shoes again, not even when he pulled too hard on the delicate straps. "I have a guestroom too, you know?" he mumbled. "I don't know why you needed to stay at the kids'."
She rested her head against the armrest and put her legs on his lap as soon as he had leaned back. "If you wanted me to stay here, you should have invited me, Haymitch."
"I've just told you you're always welcome, haven't I?" he pointed out, taking back his bottle. "Now. Victors still get their monthly allowances. I have more money than I care for, how much do you need?"
She closed her eyes in mortification because, for one tenuous flitting seconds, she was tempted to accept. "I don't want your money."
"You don't want my hospitality, you don't want my money…" His hand fell on her ankle and stayed there. "Is there anything you will take from me?"
She chuckled. "Your wine."
His mouth twitched but he still leaned in to grab her glass from the coffee table and handed it to her. "Go slow, though. Tipsy you, I know how to deal with. Drunk you is another territory entirely."
She shook her head in amusement. "Are you afraid I will try to take advantage of you, Haymitch?"
"See?" he snorted. "You're already spurting nonsense."
She studied him closely and then avoided his eyes, staring at the wine she was slowly twirling around in her glass. The light weight of his hand on her ankle was comforting. "Is it? Nonsense?" She was careful not to glance his way. She wasn't sure why she was throwing those things out there when whatever hypothetical potential spark between them had been buried still-born years ago.
When his thumb softly stroke the inside of her ankle she couldn't help a small shiver.
"Why won't you accept my help?" he asked. "That's nonsense to me."
"I don't need your help, Haymitch." She took a sip of her glass, letting the heavy wine roll on her tongue. "I get by. Let it go."
"Plutarch said you refused a job as a model." he insisted. "Why? It's work. It never bothered you before."
She waited for the bitterness and the resentment but it didn't rise like it used to. She probably was too tired for that. Or maybe the alcohol was dulling the pain.
"Did he tell you that they wanted me because of what happened to me?" She didn't meet his eyes. She couldn't. "They didn't want my face, just my back."
"Why your back?" He was frowning, she could tell from his voice alone.
"Because of the scars." She forced a smile on her lips. It was easy. She had been smiling for years on a whim. Part of the job. "Plutarch's idea, actually. A campaign to convince nostalgic Capitol citizens of the pain Snow's dictatorship had caused."
His hand ran up to her knee and back to her ankle slowly, in an attempt at comfort. "Were you vexed because they didn't want your face or is it the scars the problem?"
He probably was only teasing but she couldn't help an annoyed movement. "I should go back to the children's."
"It's late." Haymitch pointed out. "You should stay here."
"It's three houses over." she replied with aggravation, but she didn't move. Wine was still buzzing in her system just enough that she felt good but not so much that she didn't feel in control. She kept staring at her glass, though. Her glass was safe.
"We all got scars, sweetheart." Her eyes shot up to meet his. He had a sad smile on his lips. "It's not necessarily a bad thing. Scars tell stories."
"I'd rather forget my stories." she confessed, finishing her glass of wine in one go. She didn't have to ask for a refill, he did it automatically. "Nothing good to remember."
"Scars aren't always bad." He pulled up his sleeve to show her his elbow. There was a patch of whiter skin there. "Fell from a tree when I was twelve. My brother never let me hear the end of it. He laughed for three days straight." He shrugged. "See? Good memory."
"Falling from a tree is a good memory for you?" she asked dubiously.
"Seeing my brother laugh is a good memory." He avoided her eyes. She didn't remember him even mentioning his brother when he wasn't too drunk to think coherently. She knew what had happened to his family. She had pieced it together from his nightmares and his drunk mutterings those nights she had helped him to bed. "Falling from the tree, not so much. Hurt like hell."
"I have one on my right knee." she said, on a whim. "I tripped on the stairs when I got my first heels. Mother was livid."
His hand ran up an inch higher than her knee and his thumb retrace the small scar there. It was tiny and insignificant. She didn't mind that one.
"Told you those heels would be the death of you one day." he joked, his grey eyes twinkling with pleasure at being right at her expense. "You mother probably thought you had gone and killed yourself."
"Oh, no…" Effie smiled at the memory. "She was mad because I bled all over my new dress and the carpet she had just gotten cleaned." Her smile widened a bit. "She was so mad she missed a step, tripped and clutched the butler who had rushed to help… He tried to held her back but she still fell back and he ended up with her wig in his hand. She was livid. Simply livid." And it had been glorious.
Haymitch didn't seem to get what was funny, though. Probably a Capitol thing, she thought. Her mother had always been so stiff and strict, seeing her fall on her bum, hair loose, had been a sight to behold.
"How old were you?" His hand covered her knee.
"Ten or maybe eleven." She couldn't remember.
"You put heels on at ten?" He sounded horrified.
"That's nothing." she laughed. "My first job as a model, I had to wear those shoes… Monstrosities. The straps clawed into my skin but I couldn't take them off before the photo shoot was over. Look, there's still a scar." She propped herself on the cushion to sit up and pointed at a fine line in the inside of her ankle. It was weird because the hand he had placed on her knee was trapped against her stomach but he didn't pull it away and she didn't comment on it. "Your turn."
"Is this a game, now?" Haymitch asked, a teasing smile on his lips.
He put the bottle of wine on the ground and slowly undid the first three buttons of his shirt before pulling the collar so she could see the oddly shape scar on his shoulder. "Remember that night Chaff and I fall into the mirrors of the Training Center main hall?"
She let her fingers reshape the scar. "I remember having to fetch you from the infirmary. I wasn't pleased."
"You're never pleased." he snorted, letting go of his shirt.
"You could have gotten seriously hurt and I was the one who had to apologize to everyone because you and Chaff were too drunk to care." she replied with sternness. "So, no, I wasn't pleased."
He searched her eyes for a few seconds and then squeezed her knee. "Your turn."
She hesitated but pushed her dress up a little on her thighs – much higher than decency allowed – noticing the tightening of his hand on her knee but not commenting on it. The next scar was a clear pink line that went down from her hip to her upper-thigh. It was one of the less ugly she got in the rebellion. When he touched it, his fingers were cautious and tentative.
"What happened?" he simply asked.
She took a sip from her glass. Wine and the gentle way he was caressing the scar helped her relax. "I tried to run when the Peacekeepers arrested me." She had never told him that. She wasn't sure even Plutarch knew that. It had been stupid, really, really stupid. When Katniss had shot that arrow, she had understood at once what it meant, especially for her. She didn't know where Haymitch was, Cinna and Portia were gone, she had panicked. The Peacekeepers had showed up before she could get out of the penthouse but she had still tried to escape them. "I fell on the coffee table. The glass broke." She hadn't fallen as much as they had pushed her but he didn't need to know that. "That one is not so bad." That one she could live with. That one was a proof she had tried to fight back.
His hand froze on her thigh. "Effie…"
"It's alright." She forced herself to smile.
He didn't look reassured though, his face darkened. His hand left her thigh to touch her lips softly. "Don't do that." There was a pleading tone in his voice. "You don't need to do that."
She caught his hand and put it back on her leg. "Your turn."
He watched her for a few seconds like he wanted to add something but in the end, he sighed and undid the last buttons of his shirt. "Take your pick." he shrugged, waving at his chest. "There's another one on my shoulder blade."
She had seen glimpses of them along the years but she had never actually seen them. There was a rough scar on his collarbone and tiny little ones on his sternum but the worst of them was on his side. The flesh had been clearly torn apart and sewed on with urgency. Even after all those years, the scar was swollen and blatantly white against his olive skin. She didn't need to ask what had happened. She had seen it. "This is from your Games."
Her fingers hovered above the swollen one, not actually daring to touch, until he guided her hand to his skin. "I don't mind the scars. I could do without the memories that come with them, though."
His free hand twitched. He was itching to take back his bottle of wine, she knew. Perhaps that was what possessed her to do what she did next or perhaps she was just looking for an excuse. She folded her legs under her to have better access and then she leaned in to kiss the scar on his collarbone. He breathed in a hiss and instead of reaching for his bottle he captured a strand of her hair and coiled it around a finger. He wasn't unused to seeing her without her wig, she was wearing it less and less since the rebellion, but he still seemed transfixed by her hair every time. She kissed the tiny scar above his nipple and the small one under his plexus, she kissed the sharp v-like one on his ribs and then, at last, she kissed the one that had nearly been his downfall.
"Effie…"
It was four inches long and she kissed everyone of them. His breathing had quickened and his stomach was rippling under her lips.
"Any other scar I may kiss better?" she teased, pressing her lips against his shoulder.
His pupils were so dilated she had trouble discerning the grey of his eyes. It had been a long time since someone had looked at her with so much lust, desire. It made her feel powerful.
"There's another one on my thigh." he said. She knew a challenge when she heard one. She was already undoing his belt when his hands covered hers. "There's no coming back from that, sweetheart."
"This is called foreplay for a reason, Haymitch." she grinned. "I think not coming back is very much the whole point."
He looked taken aback by her straightforwardness but he adapted quickly, letting go of her hands and toeing off his shoes. By the time he got them off she had gotten rid of his belt and he lifted his hips to help her slip his pants down. The scar he was talking about wasn't hard to find, it was an ugly swollen scar that ran just from the rim of his boxer to the side of his knee. The scar wasn't the only thing that was swollen and it made her smile when she kissed his thigh softly.
"Okay, princess, I'm done playing." He pulled on her arm to make her sit up. She didn't get any other warning before his mouth was on hers but she reacted quickly, locking a hand behind his neck and passing a leg under his so she could straddle his lap. One of them moaned but she wouldn't have been able to tell who. He had a hand on her thigh, her dress somehow pulled around her hips, and the other one spread on the small of her back pressing her against his chest. "There's an unfair amount of nakedness on my part." he mumbled against her lips, rummaging around her back for the zipper. "Take that thing off."
And she froze.
He realized at once that the mood had changed. He tensed too, his hands came to rest on her hips and he licked his lips nervously. "If you want to… Just… Give me a minute…" He closed his eyes and breathed heavily through his nose, probably trying to get himself back under control.
"I'm sorry." she whispered, mortified. "It's… We don't need to stop. Just… I can't…" To her utmost shame her voice cracked. "My scars, they're ugly."
He relaxed slightly but she wasn't sure she liked the way he was looking at her now. It wasn't exactly pity but it wasn't exactly lust anymore either. "Sweetheart, do you think my scars are ugly? Do you care about them?"
She frowned. "No."
"Then why should I care about yours?" he sighed and played with her hair absent-mindedly. "Like I said, they tell your story, they don't define who you are."
She searched his eyes for the smallest hint of a lie but he was honest. He truly didn't care. She kissed him but didn't let him deepen the kiss. She got off his lap and sat next to him on the couch, turning her back to him and pulling her hair back on her shoulder.
He hesitated for a second before unzipping the dress but she let him pull it over her head, feeling anxious despite his reassurances. The latest man who had seen her that much naked since she had been scarred was her doctor and his gaze was always clinical. She didn't want a clinical gaze from Haymitch.
She couldn't help the shiver when he pressed his lips on the long scar that crossed her shoulder blade. He kissed every inches of it just like she had done and then he moved on to the one that started just under the clasp of her bra and ran to the small of her back. And then of course, he reverently kissed the worst one.
On the left side of her waist, right where the skin had been torn and melted away, it was as big as her hand. It had happened when the rebels had taken the detaining facility she had been kept in. The world had suddenly exploded and all she had known was pain. It could have been much worse. Some prisoner had been burned worse than she had. Some had died. The rebels hadn't cared or if they had, they had not showed it. They had lists of people they needed to get out, the other prisoners were rounded about into cells that had been untouched by the explosion, their fate left to later consideration, wounded or not. She had been so sure she was going to get thrown into another cell to bleed out to death, she had tried to crawl away through the wreckage but rebels had found her, of course. She had been hurt, starved and dehydrated. She wouldn't have gotten very far in any case. The man that had found her hadn't been unsympathetic, he had pitied her, she could tell even then, when he had asked her for her name, she had nearly started wailing in despair. She had known she wouldn't be on the list but she had told him anyway. It had been another soldier that had saved her. He had heard her and had told the other rebel she was to receive medical help and shipped back to Thirteen as fast as possible. She's on Abernathy's list, he had said and never had she heard sweeter words. She had wept then. Without shame nor restrain. She had never let herself dream he would save her, why would he? Like her captors had told her again and again, he hadn't been her friend, friends don't leave friends behind. But he hadn't forgotten her after all. He had saved her.
"Are you okay, sweetheart?" he asked, pressing a soft kiss on the back of her neck.
"Yes." She leaned back against him, tilting her head to give him better access. "I have another one here." She guided his hand on her ribs, right under the cup of her bra. "Don't ask, please."
"Alright." He followed the shape of the scar with his fingers like she had done with his. "They're not ugly, you know. Do you know what they tell me?" She shook her head but didn't move to face him yet. She was afraid of what she would find in his eyes. "They tell me you're a damn strong woman who went through hell and came back. There's nothing ugly in that."
She buried her face in his neck, her throat choked up with tears. "Were you serious earlier? When you said I was welcome here?"
His Adam apple bobbled up and down. "Yeah. If you want to. We can drive each other mad and you can babysit for the kids. It gets boring around here when you're not there to annoy me to death, you know." He pressed a kiss to her hair. "Kind of lonely too."
"Maybe we could try." she suggested. "For a while."
His only answer was to kiss her again.
A while happened to last forever.