Prompt : Here's a prompt for you. Effie and Haymitch are both sleepless at the same time, bump into each other, looking for a distraction and end up in the living room of the penthouse talking about silly things? Not the escort and the mentor but two people who simply can't sleep and secretly like each other somehow? Thank you very much.

Sharing Tales

Haymitch didn't remember that there were so many steps to the rooftop stairs or he might have reconsidered. He was careful not to bump his bottle against the wall, it wouldn't do for it to smash. He would have to go back down to fetch another one and he really wanted some fresh air. At night, the penthouse sometimes made him feel claustrophobic.

He wasn't expecting the roof to be already occupied.

Trinket glanced up when he pushed the door open but didn't startle. She was still wearing the same dress she had been all day and he tried not to notice just how well it suited her. Fashion was historical that year and the dress emulated roman togas. It was a dark shade of lavender and it floated down to the floor, it was locked at her neck by a heavily embroidered silver collar but otherwise left her sides and most of her back bare. He didn't know how she managed to stay decent, he had been waiting all day for her to accidentally flash the Capitol – either the jeweled silver belt kept it in place or it was glued to her breasts. It was a fucking distraction in any case and she was entirely too tempting in this dress. Even the silver make-up on her face and the purple, almost black, wig towering on her head could not deter him from staring.

"Thought you had quitted." he observed, nodding at the cigarette in her hand. She was standing near the edge of the roof, her lighter and the cigarettes pack placed on the wall that barely reached her waist.

She flicked the ashes and brought it to her lips, blowing out a cloud of smoke before answering in a subdued voice that didn't suit her. "There are circumstances."

The circumstances being that they had lost again and their tributes were dead. Again.

"Yeah." he answered flatly, wandering closer to where she was standing. The view on the Capitol was without compare. They could see the City Circle and the Presidential Mansion as well as the main part of the city. The Capitol never slept. There were people down there partying, laughing… Tiny as ants yet not as clever as the bugs.

"I would offer you one but I don't think you should go anywhere near a flame." she deadpanned.

"Touché." he granted with a tired chuckle, lifting the bottle in a parody of a toast. "Got my own poison anyway, sweetheart."

She wrinkled her nose in distaste but didn't comment. He leaned against the wall and watched the stupid ants below. For a while they didn't speak. From time to time he swallowed a mouthful of whiskey and she took her time finishing her cigarette. Eventually, she tossed the bud on the floor, gathered her drapery dress in her hand and crushed it under a silver heel.

"They were nice." she said, stomping her foot on the bud again with more violence than the situation justified.

"They're always nice." he scoffed. "Nice doesn't win the Games."

"Clearly." she huffed with a pointed look in his direction.

"Why, aren't you just sassy tonight, sweetheart." he snorted. She shot him a brief glare but that didn't last long. She tapped the pack until another cigarette fell, wedged it between her lips and brought the lighter to it. She breathed the nicotine in with a relief he could only compare to the first drop of liquor when it was a particularly bad day. "You're going to smoke the whole thing?" he asked. "You're going to make yourself sick."

"It will be none of your business, though, will it?" she snapped.

She was in a mood.

"Bitchy." he mumbled under his breath.

"I heard." she huffed.

He rolled his eyes and took a swing of his bottle.

He longed for silence but the Capitol was never silent. Car engines, honking, the sound of laughter, music… It might all have been white noise to her but to him it was aggressive. He longed for the calm silent nights in Twelve where he could step out on his porch, look up and watch the stars. There were no stars there, only spotlights dancing in the night and lights reflected on the dark sky.

"They're better off this way." he declared after a while.

She wasn't as involved in her own thoughts as he had believed because she immediately shot him a incredulous stare. "They are dead. How is that better?"

"Better dead than half dead." he shrugged. "Better dead than this limbo." He brought the bottle to his mouth, tossed his head back, closed his eyes and swallowed as much as he could. She forced the bottle away from him and he breathed in with a gasp, his lungs desperate for oxygen and his stomach churning at the mistreatment. He locked eyes with her, licked his lips and shrugged. "Winning the Games is the easy part, sweetheart. It's what comes next that's hard."

"What comes next?" she asked, flicking ashes away from him.

"Accepting there's no winning." he offered. "Accepting the second they declare you a victor, you're stuck in the Games forever. They're the lucky ones, Trinket, they're free."

He waited for the exclamations that he was drunk or crazy or both, that winning the Games was a honor he didn't deserve, a chance he had missed… It didn't come. She just brought the cigarette to her lips again. There was a sliver lipstick stain on it.

"What did you want to do when you were a child?" she asked, turning back to the city lying at their feet.

It was so unexpected he forgot to be angry. "What's it to you?"

"I am tired of talking about the Games. Humor me." she requested. "It's common enough a question. We've been working together for four years and when I truly think about it, I know next to nothing about you."

"So you want to be friends now?" he scoffed. "You know the main part, don't you?"

Everyone in the Games business knew about his family and his girlfriend. The tale was whispered from ear to ear, a warning for the new additions. She knew because she had heard and because he was sometimes chatty when he was drunk. They had never discussed their death when he was sober or mostly sober and he wasn't about to let her start today.

"I wanted to be an architect." she hummed, completely disregarding that last question.

His eyebrows shot up in surprise. "Architect."

"Yes." she laughed. "Preposterous, isn't it? It's funny how children think sometimes."

There was a crack under the casual dismissive mockery of her younger self.

"Why didn't you?" he asked, curious.

"You have to be clever to be an architect, Haymitch." she answered, clicking her tongue as if he should have known better.

"But you're clever." he countered, refusing to be fooled by her aloofness. "You can play dumb all you like, I don't buy the act."

Her blue eyes darted from the City Circle to him and she slowly blew out a puff of smoke, studying him.

"Father didn't think I would succeed and thus he said I shouldn't try." she admitted. "I can't fault him, I don't think I would have been great at it. Good maybe, great no."

"And you don't do anything if you can't be the best, right?" he taunted. "You must love being Twelve's escort." It was so ironical he chuckled.

"Be fair, I may not be the most popular escort and my District might the worst but I am the best you ever had." she countered. "There is consolation in that at least."

"You're arrogant, that's what you are." he scoffed. Then he amended with a shrug. "I can work with you, can't work with everyone. Must sting though. Being the losing District."

He expected the usual give me time, Haymitch, I will be promoted next year, you will see but it didn't come. Perhaps because she had finally understood it would never come, precisely because she was the best Twelve ever had and she could keep him under control. Not everyone could manage that. As far as the Gamemakers were concerned, Effie Trinket was most useful in Twelve.

"There is no point doing something you won't excel at, it might be the only thing my parents truly agree on." she explained. "Fortunately, I am very used to being a disappointment."

There was a real wound underneath the fake detachment but Haymitch didn't want to go poking. She was human under the make-up, he had grasped that already but he didn't like thinking about it. It made it less easy to despise her.

"How did you end up an escort?" he asked.

"Mother wanted me to find a rich respectable husband." she offered. "She wanted my sister to start a modeling career. Lyssa is a beauty, you know."

He hadn't known she had a sister and he swallowed some liquor, not taking his eyes away from her. "More than you?"

He blamed the booze for that question.

A pleased smile floated on her lips. "No comparison. She truly is beautiful." She waved that away. "When I was seventeen she had her first fashion show and I was interested in becoming a stylist at that time so I went with her. By the end of the night she had fallen in love with the man who is now her husband and the stylist she was working for asked if I was interested in modeling. Mother thought it was stupid of me to accept because I didn't have what it takes to be a star. She predicted I would always be popular but not the most popular. Always a disappointment, in short." She laughed but it was a broken laugh. "It is a funny story because I seemed to prove her wrong for a while. The Capitol was mad for me. Then Viola came on the scene and I wasn't the only one in the spotlight anymore. We fought it off for a couple of years until she was approached to be an escort. I was mad with jealousy when that happened, I wanted the spot for myself…" She automatically flicked the ashes from the forgotten cigarette in her hand. "I was starting to be old for a model but I was still popular. Head Gamemaker Torello approached me the next year and I accepted."

That was quite a story.

"You mother sounds like a bitch." he told her.

"She is difficult." Effie sighed. "But she wants the best for me. It took me a long time to understand that. She is not a bad person just…"

"Shallow and bitchy?" he suggested. "I'm guessing you didn't take after your dad."

"You would like my father, I think." she replied. "He is quite the reader."

"I'm a drunk, sweetheart. Drunks don't read." he commented.

She tossed him an annoyed look. "You play at being less than you are just like I play at being dumb. I am not blind. I notice things. You go through two books a week and you always bring back a case of them to Twelve every year."

He moved as if to bring the bottle to his lips and then aborted the gesture at the last second. "Spying on me, are you?"

She sighed. "No. I am simply…" She sighed again. "Never mind." Suddenly it was like someone had pressed on a switch. She looked at him with bright eyes and a cheerful face, her voice laced with this bubbly tone he couldn't quite bear. "I should go back inside."

She crushed the cigarette against the wall and gathered the pack and the lighter.

"There aren't many choices in Twelve." he said before she could leave. She paused, tilting her head in a polite inquiry. "For jobs." he clarified. "If you're born in the Seam, it's the mine for you."

"Oh." she answered, the fake cheerfulness leaving her. "Were you going to be a miner then?"

It was so long ago. So long ago…

"I guess…" he shrugged.

"It wasn't what you wanted to do though, was it?" she insisted, stepping closer as if it would induce his confidences. "What was it?"

"It's stupid." he warned.

"It can't be much worse than me being an architect." she teased.

"Okay…" he surrendered, rolling his eyes. "My brother loved animals. He wanted geese. That would never have been a good enough business to feed us all and I would have had to find the birds in the first place but… Yeah, I guess I would have liked raising geese. Maybe a farm or something."

"Geese." she repeated. "I never saw a real one. Well… I saw roasted geese but never…"

"There's a zoo in this place, isn't it?" he scorned.

"There are only mutations there." she frowned. "One part is dedicated to the ones used in the Games and the other is all about extinct exotic animals like tigers and lions… Have you never been?"

He shook his head. "Never wanted to go. I hate mutts."

"I am not overly fond of the zoo." she answered, placing her pack and lighter back on the wall. "And there are no geese there, I am one hundred percents certain. Are they loud? They must be loud."

"They're loud and they stink." he shrugged. "They're animals."

"All animals don't stink." she argued, wrinkling her nose as if she could smell it. "Dogs and cats have a perfectly pleasant smell."

"'Cause you fucking bring them to their own hairdresser." he mocked.

"Mind your language. Groomer is the proper word and what is wrong with that?" she frowned. "There is nothing wrong in making sure your pet is pretty."

"There's nothing wrong in making sure your tributes are pretty either, right?" he sneered. "'Cause we're all dogs to you anyway."

She pursed her lips but lowered her eyes, unable to dispute the truth of that statement.

"Were you close to your brother?" she asked instead.

"We're not going there." he snapped, taking an angry swing of his bottle. "Whine about yours all you want but my family is out of bounds."

"Everything is out of bounds with you." she hissed. "I am trying to share, Haymitch. I am trying to show you we can be friends. What will it take for you to stop rejecting my attempts? Aren't you at least a little curious about me?"

"I'm curious about what's under your dress." he retorted before he could think twice. He had meant it to sound as a gibe but it came out too honest.

To be fair, that dress was making him crazy. She had no bra underneath, that much was clear, the sides of the dress showed her skin down to her hipbones and he could guess at the soft swell of her breasts. And yet, even swaying in the soft breeze, it remained in place. She was gorgeous. He couldn't help noticing that. She might just have been the most gorgeous woman he had ever met. And if that sister of hers was more beautiful, then she must have been a goddess.

"Is that what it would take for you to stop treating me as your enemy?" she challenged. "Sex?"

His eyes darted to her lips and back up. It was enough to notice patches of pink peeking out from under the smudged silver lipstick and it was also enough of a tale that she snorted.

"You're Capitol. We would still be enemies, sweetheart." he said, almost regretfully. "Sex or not."

She shook her head, picked up her stuff one last time and shot him an equally regretful gaze.

"Perhaps you should remember who the real enemy is, Haymitch."

She left the roof and he tried to pretend he wasn't listening to the clicking on her heels becoming fainter.