Prompt: Effie talking with Katniss about how Peeta and Haymitch are trying to woo them.

Courting is for Youth

Katniss had just poured the District-made tea into two cups when someone knocked on the backdoor. Effie blew on the hot beverage to cool it down while the younger woman went to answer the door. It was the boy who was sometimes helping Peeta at the bakery and Katniss put a small cake box on the kitchen table with a quiet smile.

"He makes me one every day." Katniss explained, opening the box to reveal a pink frosted cake with a lovely flower painted on the top of it.

"That's so sweet." Effie took in the numerous vases full of flowers around the kitchen. "He's very good at courting, isn't he?"

Katniss' blush made her smile but she hid it by sipping her tea. She didn't want to embarrass the girl.

"We don't really call that courting around here, Effie." she shrugged. "It's just… a nice gesture."

"Sending flowers and sweets is called courting. Always have been, always will be." Effie disagreed good-naturedly. "I wouldn't be surprised if he asked you to marry him." She winced. "Well, you know. For real, this time."

Katniss sat back down and took hold of her tea with a smile that soon became a smirk. "What about you?"

"What about me?" She played it innocent but she wasn't fooling anyone, least of all her. Her numerous trips to Twelve were starting to make people talk, all the more so given that she was always staying at Haymitch's.

"Are you about to tie the knot or not?" Katniss outwardly asked. "Peeta and I have a bet going on, see."

"This kind of questions isn't very polite, Katniss." she chided her gently, before putting her cup down. "What are the terms of this bet precisely?"

"Peeta bet Haymitch will ask you to stay and that you won't accept until he proposes." the girl said. "And I bet you will get tired of him being an oblivious idiot and asked him yourself."

Effie couldn't help her chuckles at that picture. It seemed more like them for some reason. She couldn't see Haymitch proposing to her. Ever. If a wedding was to occur, it would be at her request and hers alone. She suppressed a tinge of yearning, she had dreamt of a beautiful wedding once but she had accepted long ago that it wouldn't happen, she was mostly at peace with that fact.

"Not good at courting, is he?" Katniss snorted, picking up on her amusement.

"Haymitch's idea of courting is…" Abysmal was what she was going to say but she stopped at the very last second. "Unconventional." He never bought her flowers or jewelry or anything her friends in the Capitol liked to brag about, but he did try to slow down on alcohol when she was there and he did pay her extremely twisted compliments because he didn't want to sound soppy… He also always made sure to buy her favorite brand of soap when she stayed in Twelve and to clean a little before she got there.

"No kidding." Katniss laughed. "What's the most romantic thing he has ever done for you?"

Where were those questions coming from? Why so curious?

"Haymitch wouldn't know romance if it knocked him over the head." A small smile grazed her lips. "I don't need grand gestures, though. I know he loves me." She flushed a bit because she couldn't remember ever uttering that aloud. She never discussed her relationship with Haymitch, she had no one to talk about him with.

"How?" Katniss tilted her head, her teacup forgotten in her hands. There was something else underneath all those questions, Effie suspected. Was Katniss still unsure of her feelings for Peeta?

"How…" she mused. "Well…" The obvious came to mind : the way he always defended her against any victor that dared give her a hard time even back when the Games were still on because he knew how awful she felt about herself and her job as an escort, the way he fought to find her during the rebellion – she wrestled that tiny bit of information from Plutarch – and then to keep her alive afterwards, the way he never pressured her to come live in Twelve even though it was quite clear he would never move to the Capitol and for good reasons, the way he kept the nightmares at bay during the night and never made her feel bad for waking him up just because she was scared of the dark… "It's in the small things really." The way he always paused and told her she was beautiful when she wasn't wearing any make-up and wig, the way he stared at her sometimes when he thought she wasn't looking, the way his breath would catch every time they had to say goodbye for a while… "I just… know."

Katniss looked thoughtful for a few seconds. "And how do you know you love him?"

"Oh." That one was easy. "I carry him with me everywhere I go." She laughed at her own stupidity. She wasn't twenty anymore to act like an infatuated teenager. "It sounds a bit silly when you put it like that. I miss him when he's not with me. I think about him all the time to some degree. I never feel more at peace than when he's holding me in his arms." She smiled softly. "I just know I love him. Don't you?"

Katniss' smile was hesitant but eyed the cake with a softness Effie had never actually witnessed in the girl. She had changed over the years. "I know I need him. I know…" she hesitated. "I know he's the most important person in my life."

"Well, then, here you go." Effie grinned. "And you should go tell him right now. A lady should be courted but she also should go after what she wants."

Katniss wavered for a few minutes and then, with a parting word for Effie, she got up and left. Effie made her way back to Haymitch's slowly, with a smile on her lips. She found him slumped on his couch, with a bottle in his hand, but it didn't undermine her good mood.

"You, half-passed out on a couch with a bottle of whiskey…" she mused "It brings back a few memories."

He looked at her guiltily and put the bottle on the ground. "I'm not drunk." he grumbled, defensively. "You were supposed to be at Katniss' all afternoon."

Was a reason or an excuse for him to get drunk? She had long ago accepted that liquor would always be Haymitch's mistress. She got rid of her coat on the chair and went to sit in his lap – which was kind of ridiculous because, once again, she wasn't twenty anymore, but they were alone so it was alright. "I had the most interesting conversation with Katniss." she said, as his arms wrapped around her waist. "Did you know the children are wondering if you're ever going to do a honest woman out of me?"

Haymitch tensed up abruptly: his wandering hands stilled on her body, his eyes stayed stuck somewhere around her chest area and his smirk disappeared slowly. "It's none of their damn business what we do or not."

She rolled her eyes and pressed a kiss to his cheek. "Don't worry, Haymitch, I am not about to force you to marry me." She kissed her way down his jaw to his neck.

"Oh." He relaxed slightly before frowning. He placed his hand on her thigh but his mind was elsewhere. "Do you want to get married?"

"Are you proposing?" she joked, undoing the first button of his shirt to get better access to that particular point between his neck and his shoulder that always drove him mad when she nibbled on it.

"No." It was definitive and she couldn't help but be a little hurt by the harshness of his tone even though she perfectly knew why he didn't want anything to do with marriage. Marriage, or rather prospect of, had led the only other woman who had counted for him romantically to her grave. His hand ran up and down her thigh slowly but she knew him and his body well enough by now to know he wasn't actually thinking about what he was doing. She bit his neck more forcefully to get his attention. "Sweetheart, you're not a bloody vampire." he complained, pushing her away a little.

"I'm trying to seduce you and you're not paying attention." Effie huffed. "It's offending."

"I'm already seduced." Haymitch's smirk was back in place and he squeezed her leg playfully. "I'm also very aware you didn't answer my question. Do you want to get married?"

"What is the point of asking that if you're not proposing?" she retorted, shifting her right leg so she could straddle his lap. His hands shot to her waist.

"I don't… know." he hesitated. "I don't need a ring or a toasting or whatever to know what I feel for you or that I belong to you." He shrugged. "But if you want it… I mean… I don't care much." She was torn between tears and laughter but, in the end, the giggles won. He let his head fall on the back of the couch. "Awesome. Now, you're laughing at me."

She shook her head and kissed him full on the lips. Unconventional wasn't cutting his courting skills, there wasn't a word in all the languages in the world to describe it. "You just managed to say the most romantic and the most awful thing you ever said to me in one single sentence." She kissed him again. "Congratulation, that was the worst proposal in the history of proposals."

"It wasn't a proposal." he grumbled. "I'm just saying I don't mind either way."

She smiled tenderly at him. "Don't ever change." She didn't need cakes or flowers or even jewels. She needed him and his spontaneous unusual declarations of love.