Prompt: Hayffie one-shot based on the song "Poison and Wine" (Civil Wars).

Poison & Wine

You only know what I want you to
I know everything you don't want me to

She watches from the shadows as Haymitch sneaks around with Cinna and some other victors. When she asks about it he tells her not to worry her pretty head so she stops asking questions. She smiles.

He thinks she doesn't know or that she doesn't care.

He thinks she's the same person she was thirteen years ago when she started this job, a little more aware perhaps but not enough to understand the stakes.

She knows the stakes.

It's easier if he thinks she's oblivious, less complicated.

She doesn't want him worrying about her.

He doesn't need the unnecessary distraction.

Oh your mouth is poison, your mouth is wine
You think your dreams are the same as mine

Haymitch is fascinated by her lips.

They are painted gold and they seem to reflect the light. They should look cold and uninviting but he is desperate to devour them. He is a moth and she is the flame. Someday he will crash and burn but for now he still knows how to fly.

She babbles, naked in her sheets, oblivious to everything that isn't her or her small life. She tells him about maybe redecorating her apartment, what color does he think she should paint the walls? She wants to nest, with him.

She wants love.

He wants freedom.

Oh I don't love you but I always will

The Peacekeepers aren't nice when they arrest her, their grip is unforgiving, a promise of awful things to come. She is terrified and she wants to scream. She juts her chin in the air and looks at them with as much disdain as she can muster.

They ask questions she doesn't have the answers to.

They taunt and mock and taunt some more. They call her names, bad names that would horrify her mother.

"Do you love him?" one of them laughs.

"No."

Her answer is firm, no trace of hesitation. She doesn't love him. But somehow she always will.

Oh I don't love you but I always will

The news that she has been arrested come in the middle of a shit storm. Chaff is dead, Peeta and Johanna are lost, Annie captured, Katniss broken in a million pieces, Twelve bombed to the ground… It is insignificant compared to the relentless bad news that keep coming but it is the one piece that makes him stop dead in his tracks.

"You said she would be safe." he accuses Plutarch.

The Gamemaker only shrugs in answer.

When Finnick asks him if he loves her later, he doesn't know what to answer.

He thinks no and yes all at once.

I wish you'd hold me when I turn my back
The less I give the more I get back

She's angry for a long time after her rescue but he refuses to be pushed away, refuses to give her the space she requires. He would rather she yells and hurls things at him than stay away. He needs her, he claims. He's selfish that way.

It's ironic, she thinks, that when she's ready to stop trying, he's the one who starts clinging to her.

He's tender and attentive and there's a spark of something in his eyes she doesn't want to call love.

She pretends it's guilt.

She knows better.

She's cruel with him.

He pretends he doesn't care.

Oh your hands can heal, your hands can bruise
I don't have a choice but I'd still choose you

When she shows up on his threshold in Twelve, he lets her in. She's still angry and they fall into a routine of screams, fights and angry rounds of sex that leave them exhausted on every levels.

It's toxic but he lives from the afterwards moments when she tenderly licks the bite marks her teeth have left.

They're stuck with each other, too destroyed to seek anything stable elsewhere. He doesn't mind. She's the only one he wants, the only one he can bear.

Her mouth is painted a blood red nowadays.

It tastes like wine.

And he's an alcoholic.