Whenever you find the time, could you write a one-shot after the rebellion where they both suddenly realize that they are in a relationship? I mean that they see they are in one without ever having talked about it? Thank you, thank you.

Epiphany

"Mr Abernathy !"

Haymitch put his liquor bottle in his bag very quickly, cursing at his lack of luck. He had hoped his trip to the new Hobb would be uneventful but there was no making an easy exit with the old Mrs Flavenshaf. She handed him a tightly wrapped package expectantly.

"Miss Trinket had been waiting on those." the old woman said. "I had hoped to see her this morning…"

"She has a cold." he explained begrudgingly, dropping the package in the bag with the rest of the groceries.

"Oh, the poor dear!" Mrs Flavenshaf exclaimed before launching herself in a long – very long – series of recipes and advices to prevent it becoming direr.

It took almost fifteen minutes for him to get rid of the old bore but she wasn't the only one acting surprised to see him do the groceries. He couldn't quite blame them. Effie had moved into his house unexpectedly in early winter and had spent two months jumping at loud noises, terrified of her own shadow and very much lurking in the house, barely agreeing to cross the street to visit the kids – until he had reached the end of his tether and snapped at her to get a grip. Effie Trinket had never been a quitter, all she had needed was a push. She had worked on her fears and, by springs, she had made herself at home in the District. He hadn't thought it would have been possible for her to make a life here but she was nothing but persuasive and she was very much a people person. It had taken some time but people had warmed up to her – the fact she had been branded a traitor by the Capitol during the rebellion and that she was currently living with him, if only as roommates, helped.

They had fallen into a pattern : Saturday, for instance, was grocery day and people expected to see Effie doing the shopping, not him. At some point, he got tired of the shop owners asking about her and simply glared at everyone, bored and annoyed by the chore. His annoyance briefly gave way to embarrassment in town when he reached the last items on the list she had given him and he found himself having to buy feminine products – he thought about skipping that but it was underlined three times so he figured he would get murdered in his sleep if he didn't bring some back.

Sufficed to say, he wasn't in the best mood when he finally reached the house after almost three hours of shopping – three hours, he had always thought she dawdled every Saturday but shopping was, in fact, longer than he had thought it would be – not to mention his arms were full of bags and he felt very much like a donkey. He dropped everything on the kitchen table, ready to shout bloody murder at her for putting so many things on the list when she appeared on the threshold. She was wrapped in a blanket, still in her pajamas, her blond hair in a complete disarray of wild curls framing her face, no make-up, and she was dragging her feet as if moving was too much for her to bear. His anger slowly disappeared.

"Sit down before you fall." he grumbled, pulling one of the kitchen chair for her. She didn't even complain at his rudeness, flopping on the chair with a pathetic sniff that quickly turned into a sneeze. She was a complete drama queen, of course, it was just a cold, it wasn't like she was dying of influenza, but Effie Trinket couldn't have something so banal as a cold without making a fuss.

"May I have some tea?" she requested softly, her voice rough from too much coughing.

He rolled his eyes yet put the kettle to boil, making a quick job of putting the grocery away – and ignoring her pointed comments that he was doing a mess of it because she had organized the kitchen, thank you very much – and hiding the alcohol in the pantry before she could see them.

Then he placed her tea in front of her – strawberry leaves and mint, her favorite – and started cooking dinner because it was late and it was Saturday which meant the kids would show up at some point and expect Effie and Haymitch to feed them – he didn't know how that had come to be a regular thing, before Effie had arrived, meals were taken at the kids' place but now Haymitch was forced to cook regularly because she couldn't boil water to save her life and she was still skinny from her imprisonment so it fell on him to feed her, not to mention that she had started a fire twice when she had tried to cook eggs and he would rather not have to fear being burned alive. The kids seemed to think he wasn't so bad at it even though he couldn't be bothered to do anything complicated and invited themselves over more often than not.

The thought came to him while he was putting vegetables in the pan. His mind was wandering and he kept thinking back about how everyone had asked him after her health, about the feminine products on the grocery shopping lists, about how he knew she would actually need the tampons in give or take a few days – because they were sharing a house and it didn't matter they only slept together once in a while now, he noticed things – about how he had used her favorite tea without her having to say which one she wanted, about the tissues he kept passing her without her needing to ask, about the fact she was comfortable enough around him that she wasn't bothering to try and look pretty – although he knew she would dash upstairs to change soon enough because she would never let the kids see her like that…

Hundreds of little things came back to mind : how they could stay in the same room without talking for hours at a time, comfortable with each other's silence… How they sometimes shared a bed without nothing happening… How they had an appointed day for groceries… How they bickered over the same subject every day without any respite only to start again the next day… How he always was able to read her mood better than anyone else… How she always knew when to snatch the bottle of liquor out of his hand before he became nasty… How he let her replace the alcohol by lazy kisses… How he was still wearing that horrid golden bangle…

Suddenly, it was very, very clear.

He turned around and stared at her and she looked at him with a curious tilt of her head over the rim of her cup.

"We're married." he blurted out, waiting for the panic his epiphany would certainly trigger. It didn't come.

She studied him for a second and then started sipping her tea again. "If that's a proposal, you will have to do better."

"You don't look surprised." he frowned.

"Should I be?" she replied, burrowing deeper in her blanket.

It was a ridiculous question but, he mused, his epiphany was just equally ridiculous. They had known each other for about fourteen years now, they had been enemies, colleagues, lovers, friends and sometimes all of that at once. They had been living together for about a year, not truly a couple but not truly just friends either… Clearly, he had missed a step at some point and they had ventured beyond the casual affair thing to plunge directly into marital life.

"Although…" she said, muffling a cough with her hand. "Refrain from telling everyone we are married. You do not get to say that if I don't have a ring on my finger."

"Like hell." he scoffed, dropping the subject entirely.

And if, a few days later, she found a ring waiting for her on her dresser, well… It was a complete coincidence.