Short series of drabbles I've taken requests for last night on tumblr.
10 - 'Teach me how to play?'
"I've never done that." she frowned.
"Your loss." he snorted, rolling a blade of grass before jamming it between his teeth. He reclined back on his elbows, tilting his head back in the blinding sun of the clear summer sky.
They weren't the only ones who had headed to the meadow to enjoy the weather. There were a lot of children running around and she followed them with her eyes for a while before going back to watching Haymitch. She had never gotten to run around wild when she was a child. She had been expected to sit straight and mind her manners. The only games she was allowed were tea parties and quiet board games. Truth be told, she had been bored out of her mind most days – which accounted for her wild teenage years.
"Teach me how to play." she requested.
He chuckled, in one of his rare good moods. "There's no rules, sweetheart. Just like down, relax and tell me what you see."
She did as she was told, careful to lie down on the blanket they had brought with them so her dress wouldn't be stained and nested her head on his stomach so she could stare at the clouds.
"See the one over there?" he pointed out to a puffy white cloud on their right. "Looks like a horse."
She couldn't see it at first. She had to focus.
And then it appeared like magic and she couldn't help the grin from stretching her lips.
Haymitch had a gift for making her life a little more magical.
20 - "You need to wake up because I can't do this without you."
"You need to wake up." she whispered, brushing a hand against his sunken cheek.
His skin was an unhealthy yellow and she bit on her bottom lip for a second, willing away the tears that were threatening to spill. They shouldn't have trusted Thirteen to handle his withdrawal correctly. It was painfully obvious no one ever had an addiction problem in this place, not with the prohibition act and the drugs being so strictly regulated.
Haymitch had been drinking for more than twenty years, going cold turkey should never have been an option. She knew Peeta had tried to cut him off before the Quell – she also knew Haymitch had never actually quitted during that time – and the fact that he had been slowing down his consumption of liquor for the last few months didn't mean his body was ready to just go without.
Of course, he eventually went into shock. Of course.
She wasn't a doctor and even she could see it was a bad idea. And now he was lost to her and they didn't know if he would wake up or not, if there would be brain damages or not, and she was all alone in that strange District where people glared at her when she passed them by in the corridors and Plutarch could say what he wanted it still felt like being in prison. She was alone and scared and lost and she needed him. She would have followed him to the end of the earth – had followed him to the end of Panem – but she hadn't made that choice for him to die once they got there.
Peeta, Johanna and Annie were still missing. Katniss was in an almost catatonic state from what she had been told and no matter how many requests she submitted she wasn't' allowed to see her. She didn't know what to do. She didn't know how to help.
They were better when they worked together. They were a team in more than a single sense of the term.
"You need to wake up because I can do this without you."
21 - "We're in the middle of a thunderstorm and you wanna stop and feel the rain?"
The distance separating the kids' house from theirs wasn't huge but Haymitch regretted insisting about going home as soon as the front door had closed behind them. Effie shrieked and clung to his hand with both of hers, shocked by the cold rain hammering down and the wind pushing her into his side. It was nothing compared to the occasional bouts of lightning that illuminated the whole place like it was noon and not midnight.
"Come on." he shouted over the roar of the storm. "We're running for it!"
They did just that.
Except halfway there, she let go of him and stopped in her track in the middle of the street.
"What the fuck?" he asked, turning around to see what she was doing.
She had her arms spread wide and she was twirling, laughing.
"You're serious, Princess?" he scoffed "We're in the middle of a thunderstorm and you wanna stop and feel the rain?"
Her grin was delighted and a little mad. "We are alive, Haymitch. We made it. We are alive."
He supposed there was no disputing that point so instead of dragging her back inside, he kissed her. It was stupid and dangerous but they were alive and life was made to enjoy the little things like how beautiful she looked in the soaked to her skin.
22 - "I've seen the way you look at me when you think I don't notice."
"You are disgusting." she hissed, dropping him on the bed with obvious relief. "I don't know why I keep helping you. You are a disgrace. You are…"
"Yeah, I get it. You're pissed 'cause I puked on your shoes." he slurred, rolling on his side, wishing the room would stop spinning.
"Revolting!" she continued her rant. "Infuriating!"
He chuckled, staring at her from his sideway position on the mattress. It was the only times he allowed himself to openly stare, to openly lust after her. When he could blame the liquor for the ideas swarming inside his head.
"That's what float your boat, Princess?" he taunted. "Disgusting, revolting and infuriating?"
She narrowed her eyes at him, her lips pursed so tight they looked thinner than usual. It amused his drunken brain for a few seconds before it started wondering just how soft they would feel under his.
"What are you talking about?" she asked.
"I've seen the way you look at me when you think I don't notice." he mocked. "You want me."
The three words once released were impossible to take back. It was an accusation and a plea all at once.
"You made a scene at the party, threw up on my shoes, tried to grope me twice in the elevator, I had to practically carry you back to your room and you are now on the verge of passing out from too much liquor." she summed up quickly in a petulant tone. "Which part exactly is supposed to make me want you?"
"Never said you didn't have weird kinks." he cackled, finding the whole thing hilarious.
She shook her head and turned on her vomit stained heels. "Goodnight, Haymitch."
Maybe he was the one looking when she wasn't noticing…
36 - "I wish I could hate you."
The hospital room was silent aside for the noises of the machines.
It had been like that since the first time he had visited her, his head bowed in shame for having failed her. He sat on the chair next to the bed and he waited for her to say something which she rarely ever did. It wasn't just to him it was to everyone. She had hardy spoke three sentences since her rescue.
It was such a contrast to the vibrant chatterbox he remembered that it hurt.
Sometimes he brought flowers but they kept dying and it depressed him to see the dried petals slowly gathering on the nightstand. She didn't seem to mind one way or another, not even bothering to lecture him on how ill-mannered it was to show up empty-handed when you visited someone in a hospital… He had thought the bright flowers would cheer her up but she barely glanced at them too busy staring at the wall instead. He desperately wanted to bring the colors back for her. She needed the colors. He needed them too.
"You should just say it." he snapped at some point, unable to take the silence anymore. He could have wept from relief at hearing her rant once more, he thought, that was how far gone he was. He couldn't take Katniss wandering the Presidential Mansion's corridor like a ghost anymore. He couldn't take Peeta looking at him and begging him to help him get better when he was powerless to do anything anymore. He couldn't take Annie's quiet humming to herself, lost to a world only she was privy to anymore. He couldn't take Johanna's unvoiced anger at him anymore. And the silence in Effie's room was killing him. It was too much. Entirely too much. "Say you hate me."
One of them could as well go out and say it.
Katniss had enough people to blame to think about hating him but the others… The others were all thinking it and unwilling to say it when all Haymitch wanted was to hear it. Let them hate him. He hated himself too on a good day.
The blue eyes darted from the wall to him but paused only long enough to study him. Then they went back to their staring and he was dismissed.
He shook his head, grabbed his jacket and stood up. She was only one of the many stops in his new routine. Next was Annie and the guilt that went hand in hand with the sight of her pregnant stomach.
"I wish I could." came the whisper just as his hand grabbed the door handle. "I wish I could hate you."
40 - "Have I entered an alternate universe or did you really just crack a smile for me?"
"You're going to stop sulking anytime soon?" Haymitch mocked, dropping on the couch next to her and handing her a cup of her favorite strawberry tea. He had his own cup in his other hand and she could smell the whiskey from where she sat on the other end of the couch.
She took a sip of the offered tea but remained silent, her eyes riveted to the glossy pages of a magazine she had been pretending to read for the past half hour.
"Fine, suit yourself." he scoffed, rolling his eyes. "I don't care if you stop talking forever, Princess. You talk too much anyway."
She pointedly turned the page without looking at him.
He lasted a minute and twenty seconds.
"I'm not going to say I'm sorry, you know." he snorted. "If that's what you're waiting for, you're going to wait a long time."
She had been giving the silent treatment for a day and a half and she knew it was starting to creep him out. He had clung to his anger at first but now that was gone and the fight seemed petty and idiotic. Yet Effie wished to make a stand.
He put down his mug and wrapped his arms around her, or tried to. She deftly avoided spilling her own tea and behaved as if there wasn't a man hugging her like a giant octopus.
"Come on, sweetheart." he coaxed, dropping a kiss on her shoulder, over her long-sleeved shirt. "Stop sulking." He peppered her neck with kisses that she wasn't unfortunately as immune to as she wished. "Have I entered an alternate universe or did you just really crack a smile for me?" He plucked the mug from her hand and kissed her full on the mouth before she could do anything. "I'll got you talking yet."
She was happy to let him try.
44 - "If you die, I'm gonna kill you."
Death looked like a grey sky clogged with smoke.
That was all Effie could glimpse from Haymitch's arms, all she wanted to glimpse really. After all those months spent underground, she preferred to ignore the rubbles, the dead guards, the other prisoners and the rebels soldiers. The sky was all she wanted. The sky and fresh air rolling on her skin, making her shiver.
Her head rolled on his shoulder.
"Hold on, sweetheart." Haymitch urged her. "There's a medic team just around the corner. Hold on."
She wanted to, she truly did.
But the grey sky was calling to her.
"If you die, I'm gonna kill you." he warned her, holding her closer, running faster…
She wondered if that was his way of saying I love you.
46 - "Hey, have you seen the..? Oh."
Peeta heard voices from the corridor so he stepped in the living-room car without thinking twice about it, accustomed now to living on the train while they were on the Tour. He had grown too accustomed, in fact, and now his stuff was scattered everywhere and he was desperately looking for his sketch book. "Hey, have you see the..? Oh."
He stared at his mentor and his escort locked in an embrace, in the middle of the living-room car, completely frozen on the spot. The two of them bolted apart, their lips separating in a disgusting noise of suction.
For a second, he thought he was going to be sick – not that he cared what they were doing but it was disturbing in the same way walking in on his parents doing this would have been disturbing.
"Sorry." he stammered.
"Not at all! Not at all!" Effie chirped with her usual cheer. "We were simply… rehearsing."
"Rehearsing?" Peeta repeated flatly, glancing at Haymitch.
There was a smirk playing on his lips and he rolled his eyes before giving Peeta a tiny shrug as if to say "what can you do?" and what could they do? Peeta didn't want to upset Effie and Effie clearly would have rather kept whatever she was doing with Haymitch secret so he pretended to buy her absurd tale about an audition she wanted to go to and Haymitch helping her rehearse.
Still. He never barged in any room without making sure no one was busy sucking someone's face off after that.