prompt : Can you do one where Effie takes Haymitch shopping. When she keeps asking for his opinion, he gets fed up and choses a 'nice-looking' dress for her.

New Kind of Torture

"Can we go back now?" Haymitch begged without any shame.

It was hell. Pure blinding hell.

He was surrounded by garish colors, overzealous sales assistants, and too many Capitol women who all seemed to be of a mind to talk higher than the next. He had a headache the size of District Seven and he couldn't feel his hands because of all the bags hanging from his numb fingers.

"I need a dress, Haymitch." Effie sighed, pulling on his arm a little to make him walk quicker. How she could still be so eager on her feet with those high heels of hers when he was so tired from all the shopping she had forced him to go through that afternoon was a complete mystery.

"You have hundreds of them at home!" And at least ten in their suitcases back at the hotel. He had known that coming to the Capitol for the tenth anniversary of the rebellion was a mistake but he hadn't managed to sneak out of that one and neither had Katniss and Peeta. Effie, of course had been overjoyed about the prospect of leaving Twelve if only for a week.

"They're out of fashion. Would you have me looking ridiculous at the ball tonight?" she snapped, snatching a blue dress and a red one from a display rack and handing them to the poor sales assistant who was following them all around the shop, desperate to please the celebrities they still were.

"You have plenty of experience in looking ridiculous, don't you, sweetheart? It would be just like old times." he snorted. She pinched her mouth in a hard line and tilted her head to the side, pausing long enough in her frenzy to glare at him in that particular way that told him he would sleep on the couch that night if he didn't cut out the crap. "Okay, okay…" He almost lifted his hands in surrender before he remembered the bags. "Sorry. Pick your dress." He was too old to sleep on the couch, his back didn't take kindly to that kind of treatment. She went back to looking at dresses, nodding in agreement at whatever the shop girl was babbling about. "I'm just saying I could have stayed with the kids." he grumbled after two minutes of silence.

"No, you couldn't have." She shot him an irritated glance. "They have to do interviews and I don't trust you not to get drunk with so much alcohol freely handed all around."

He rolled his eyes but granted her the point. His partial sobriety was a careful juggling between enough alcohol when absolutely needed and forceful refusals when it wasn't. Effie was the best at knowing when to yield and when to stand her ground, Peeta would just say no all the time and Katniss would generally give Haymitch what he wanted after some pleadings because she couldn't bear to see him suffer. It had become quite easy to handle it in Twelve, Effie even paid people there so they wouldn't sell him any liquor, but in the Capitol? It was another story entirely. Since the train's arrival, waiters had fought to offer them drinks or food.

He had known, of course, that Effie would make good use of their stay in the city to go shopping – she usually went there twice or thrice a year just to do that – but he hadn't counted on being dragged with her. It hadn't been so bad in the beginning, their first stop had been a lingerie shop and he had been more than happy to watch her try on several pieces all the while knowing they would take everything anyway because there weren't such delicate – or sexy – items in their part of the country. He had been in such a good mood when they had exited that shop, he had even offered to carry the bags. Of course, he had lost his good dispositions somewhere between the third shoes shop and the fourth evening wear shop. She had promised to be quick almost two hours earlier but she had lied.

"What do you think?" she asked him, holding a pink dress in front of her.

He barely glanced at it. "No."

"Why?" she frowned. "It's elegant."

"Too pink, too many flowers." he grunted. "It's ugly, sweetheart."

The sales assistant gasped in outrage and Effie was quick to smile at her. "I will take those ones." she nodded to the dresses the girl was carrying. "Would you mind starting to ring them while I search for a ball gown, dear?"

Haymitch watched the assistant hurry to the counter as fast as she could with her towering high heels. "What's her deal?"

"You just can't insult haute-couture dresses in front of everyone, Haymitch." She placed her hands on her hips and studied him sternly. "Say this kind of things in front of the wrong people in the Capitol and you could get hurt."

"I will take my chances." he grumbled. "Can you get a move on, sweetheart?"

She glared at him to let him know he was being insufferable but went back to her careful choosing. She took out a golden one that almost blinded him.

"What about this one?" she mused. "It would go nicely with my new shoes… I would need a new purse, of course, but…"

"No." he snatched it from her hand and placed it back on the rack.

"What is wrong with this one, I wonder?" she gritted her teeth. "There isn't any flower in sight!"

"Too flashy." And too trashy. She wasn't an escort anymore and he didn't see any reason for her to start wearing that kind of dresses again. Plus, she didn't appear to be forty-four but he looked older than his fifty-one years of age and he didn't want to look like those old Capitol people who were desperate to parade around with a pretty young woman on their arm.

He rejected a blue dress, a yellow one and a particularly ugly green with orange dots one. No need to say when she presented him with that one, he was on the verge of throwing a tantrum worth of a five years old just to get back to the hotel. He couldn't bear a second longer of that kind of slow painful torture.

"I give up!" Effie complained, waving her hand in surrender. "The only thing you can say is no. Choose something, then."

It was a challenge he was too happy to accept. He walked to another rack, intending to snatch the first dress he could find that wouldn't look like it came straight out from some child's scribbles when he stumbled upon a red one. It was shorter than he would have liked and showed more skin than he was comfortable with but red had always been her color and it had been some time since he had seen her wearing it.

"Always the red with you." she chuckled fondly next to him, taking hold of the dress to study it more closely. "It's a bit… young for me. I don't have the body I used to, Haymitch." There was regret in her voice.

"You're beautiful." He brushed his hand against hers. "As you bloody well know."

"Only because you're so set on repeating it." She was smiling but it faltered a bit when she looked down at the dress again. She bit her lower lip with a contemplative look. "The scars will show."

"Who cares?" he shrugged. "You would look good in that one."

"Do you really think so?" She brushed a hand against the shiny fabric. "It is pretty. Who knew you had such an eye… But would it do for an event as formal as tonight's is?"

"Sweetheart, at this point I don't care if you go the party wearing a trash bag." he whined. "Take the dress, don't take it… But please can we go back?"

She must have had some mercy left in her because she shook her head in amusement. "Yes. Yes, we can go back. I will take the red one." He didn't push her toward the cashier but he might have nudged her just a bit to make the whole process faster. "Cheer up, Haymitch." she whispered as they exited the shop with some more bags. "There is some time left before the party… I could always try on a few of those lingerie pieces for you…"

He was quick to hail a cab.