Prompt : Okay so I was reading chapter 71 of have a drink, sweetheart and I really think the line "Effie was loud, she always was, and he could still hear her moans through the closed door" needs a whole fic of its own (; maybe one of those multiple scene one shots if you know what I mean? Do with this what you will but I just thought this line needs to be addressed (;
Two warnings : there is no smut but there is steam and mention of smut, and… I think it's cracky. Well… You judge ;)
5 times Haymitch hears Effie moan and 1 time she makes him moan instead
1.
Effie Trinket was a loud person, Haymitch had understood it the second he had first met her, so it didn't come as a shock to find that it applied to every last area of her life.
Truth be told, he was more shocked that she had brought back her boy toy to the penthouse for the night. He was sure that it was all kind of improper to do so – and there was another thing about Trinket he had learned quickly : she was very strict on the proper way to do things. He wondered if that slip in manners had to do with their tributes' death.
Another loud moan managed to travel from the other side of the corridor through the closed door of his bedroom. Haymitch wondered what that guy was doing to her to make her whimper and shout so fucking loud, he was going crazy trying not to think about it. His bottle of whiskey was empty and he didn't want to risk walking out of his room in case he stumbled on her and her lover, so he placed a pillow over his head and tried to pretend he couldn't hear.
After five more minutes of increasingly explicit noises, he gave up and slipped his hand down his pants.
2.
Haymitch knew what was coming when she brought the silver fork with the little piece of chocolate cake to her mouth. The second the pastry touched her tongue, she closed her eyes and let out a tiny moan of appreciation.
It shot directly to his groin.
Neither the tributes nor the stylists noticed anything – idiots the bunch of them anyway – but Effie felt his staring and frowned slightly, bringing another piece of cake to her mouth and letting out a small purr before dabbing at her lips with the napkin.
"Is there something wrong?" she asked him, obviously puzzled.
He almost told her he was thinking of other ways to make her purr like that, it would certainly get a reaction out of her, but he was afraid of his own line of thoughts. She was an escort, she was a Capitol, and, above all, she was a massive pain in his ass.
"You've got chocolate everywhere on your face." he retorted.
He watched her struggle to wipe chocolate that wasn't there in the first place and fought to find it funny. It would have been funnier if she had stopped licking her lips. His pants were getting too tight and it was uncomfortable.
3.
The moan of pain made him roll his eyes but he shifted her weight, just to make sure he wouldn't drop her.
"That was stupid, sweetheart." he grumbled, adjusting his grip.
Carrying his escort back to the penthouse bridal style – even if it was simply from a few floors down – wasn't his idea of a good evening.
"She challenged me." Effie protested, her words slurred together. "You heard her, she challenged me."
"Yeah, and taking up Jo on a drinking game is an awesome idea." he snorted. "You're lucky I'm not drunk tonight."
"You were laughing at me." she grumbled, wrapping her arms more tightly around his neck. "You didn't think I could do it. I don't like it when you're dismissive of me."
Johanna had drunk her under the table but, obviously, her vodka soaked brain had forgotten all about that.
"I don't feel good." she moaned.
He instinctively tightened his grip on her, strangely uncomfortable with the note of pain in her voice. He didn't know why he should care. He didn't care, he told himself firmly, but still it didn't settle right with him. He didn't like hearing pained moans coming from her.
"You're going to have a hell of a headache tomorrow." he taunted.
He made sure to leave a glass of water and some painkillers on her bedside table after he had dropped her on her bed.
He convinced himself he was just paying her back for all the time she had done the same for him and nothing else. And if he took off her shoes and made sure she was comfortably tucked in, it was simply not to hear her complain about his lack of manners in the morning.
4.
The kiss took them both by surprise but he truly didn't know why because he felt like it had been years in coming.
Peeta and Katniss had won. They had won.
For the first time in he didn't know how many years he wouldn't be going back to Twelve with two coffins.
When she turned to him, an euphoric grin on her lips, coiling his hand behind her neck and pulling her to him was instinctive. His mouth crashed on hers in a battle of teeth and tongue that held nothing sweet or hesitant. They kissed as if they had done it a thousand times before. They kissed as if they had been created for that exact purpose.
Still, when his teeth grazed her bottom lip as he was drawing back, she let out a tiny disappointed moan.
It made her blush, he could see it even with her heavy make-up.
He only smirked.
He could get used to getting that kind of noises out of her.
5.
Making Effie moan as loud as possible had become his mission in life. He tried to persuade himself on a daily basis that she was nothing more than a distraction, a well needed outlet to blow off some of the stress that hellish Victory Tour was putting them all through, but the truth was, he enjoyed it a lot more than he thought he should have.
She did all kind of noises during sex. It was easy to guess when she was pleased – he truly didn't know how the whole train was still oblivious to what they were doing at night. His favorites noises, though, were the low moans that almost sounded like purring.
The very same kind he was eliciting out of her right then by firmly massaging her back. He wouldn't have dreamt of giving her a massage – he didn't even know how to give a massage – if she hadn't begged for two hours straight and hadn't threatened to go on a sex strike if he didn't take care of the pain in her back. Standing on high heels all day, fussing over the kids and never finding a second to sit down had finally done her in, it seemed.
He had no idea what he was doing. He was simply rubbing her back, kneading her flesh, trying to apply pressure on tensed knots in her shoulders. Clearly, judging by the noises, he was doing something right.
"Haymitch." she moaned in pleasure.
It was lucky for her he still had some restrain in him because that sound made him want to immediately get rid of his pants and go down to business.
Instead, he snickered.
"What is so funny?" she mumbled, almost sleepily.
"You moan more than a whore and they're paid to do it." he said.
The muscles he had worked so hard on relaxing instantly tensed at that comment.
"First of all, this is insulting beyond measure." she retorted tersely. "Second of all… Do I even want to know why and how you would be familiar with the kind of sounds prostitutes make?" She tried to evade his touch but he was straddling her and he was too heavy for her to do much more than wriggling. That only increased his arousal. "Let me go." she demanded, glaring at him over her shoulder.
"But I like the view." he snorted, patting her ass. The glaring only intensified and he rolled his eyes. "Come on… So you moan a lot, what's wrong with that? I like it. You're a loud woman, I made my peace with that a long time ago, Princess." He lifted his weight enough that she had room to turn on her back but not enough space to run away – she could have if she had truly wanted to but he figured she had no wish to escape. His eyes roamed on her body hungrily, she was wearing nothing but a pair of panties and he would never get used to how gorgeous she was. Of course, she folded her arms over her chest in a stern fashion, hiding most of her breasts from view. "Cheater." he accused.
She didn't take his teasing bait.
"You moan too." she pointed out in a huff, clearly annoyed.
"No, I don't." he denied.
"Yes, you do." she insisted with a frown.
"No, I don't." he smirked. "Think back."
He could almost see the cogs and wheels turning in her brain as she tried to remember an instance in which he had indeed moaned. He knew she wouldn't find one. He grunted, he panted, he occasionally mumbled her name incoherently but he never moaned. Moaning wasn't his style.
A flash of insecurity passed on her face when she finally realized he was telling the truth but it was quickly hidden beneath what he had come to dub as her escort's mask.
"Is that your way of saying you don't truly enjoy having sex with me?" she asked plainly.
"Sweetheart, if I didn't like it I wouldn't come for a repeat." he mocked. "Don't be stupid, it doesn't suit you." His fingers danced on her ribs and he watched with satisfaction the goosebumps his fingertips left in their wake. "I just don't moan." he shrugged. "You do enough of that for both of us anyway."
He only had to lean in and capture her nipple in his mouth to prove his point. She tried to swallow it back but the moan passed her lips without her permission. It seemed to annoy her.
From that point on, she made it her mission to try and coax a moan out of him.
He was happy to let her try, he liked the game.
But she would never succeed
He just wasn't the moaning kind.
6.
It had been a year and a half since the last time he and Effie had fallen in bed together.
It had been a year and a half since the last time he had been with a woman.
The war had come and went, leaving him to deal alone with an aftermath he didn't quite know how to tackle. Twelve, Katniss and Peeta… It was a lot to handle.
It only got worse when Effie showed up on his doorstep with a suitcase and a huge amount of problems ranging from financial difficulties to flashbacks that left her screaming herself hoarse. She moved in his guest bedroom. He tried to keep everyone together, alive and as sane as people like them could ever hope to be.
It took months before they reached a status quo everyone was happy with: Katniss hunted, Peeta baked, Effie fussed over them and Haymitch drank when he wasn't taking care of his geese – or maybe he was taking care of his geese when he wasn't drinking, who knew? Life wasn't easy but it never had been. It was good though, better. He thought they were all healing.
He wasn't surprised when Effie appeared on his bedroom threshold one night, she often sought him after a nightmare or a flashback or when the prospect of facing the long dark night alone was simply too much to bear.
He was surprised when she shed her dressing gown only to reveal tantalizing naked skin underneath. He shouldn't have been, he supposed, they had been working their way up to that slowly : more and more frequent kissing, lingering touches, hugs and cuddles that sometimes lasted hours…
He didn't try to stop her when she climbed in bed with him and he didn't ask if she was sure when she started kissing him. She wouldn't have been there, doing that, if she hadn't been sure. Effie was a lot of things but she wasn't the kind for unplanned rash decisions. And it had been a year and a half since the last time he had had sex – his hand was a poor substitute for her – so he eagerly helped her remove his clothes and he kissed every new scar on her body reverently.
When her hand closed around him, he moaned.
She had spent weeks trying to prompt that reaction out of him during Victory Tour – and she had been very imaginative – so it came as a shock to both of them that a simple touch could finally do the trick.
Her grin was shaky but triumphant.
And just for that sight, he didn't mind losing their little game so much.