Prompt: if you could in any way make this work I would absolutely love to read a pretty woman style AU. Have a lovely time on your holiday also!

Ok I'm not really sure I like this but it has been sitting here for too long so have a pretty woman style au with a twist =) (which means talk of prostitution btw)

Pretty Boy

"Do you have to go so soon?" she whispered as he sat on the edge of the bed, the sheets pooling on his lap, and put his watch back on.

There was something mechanical in doing that: watch, dispatch the condom, clothes, hurried exit… There was a way of doing those things. Or at least, he had a way of doing those things.

"I stay, the bill rises up." Haymitch told her even though she knew the drill by now.

Effie nodded, pulling the sheets up to cover her breasts and the rest of a body he now knew by heart. Her hand sneaked out anyway and coiled around his upper arm. "And… if I don't mind? Would you sleep here?"

That was a line they had never crossed but, then again, there were a lot of lines he was crossing with her he had never crossed with any other customers. Why Effie Trinket, a relatively successful actress and former top model, regularly needed the service of an escort boy, he didn't quite understand. He could guess at it. He had gone with her to enough events and parties to figure out how utterly lonely she was despite the people always crowding her.

Haymitch didn't usually sleep with his customers although it was a service Capitol Escorts was providing if you had the money. Snow may own his soul and his ass but that didn't mean Haymitch let both be bought so easily. He made a point of being vulgar, unbearable and as unattractive as possible with most customers.

He had done the same with Effie at first because she infuriated him. He hadn't understood why she was using the services of Capitol Escorts, he had hated her high-pitched voice and her cheerfulness, he had hated the way she treated him like an actual date and not the prostitute he was, he had hated the fact that she was always polite and he had hated the smooth mask of sheer dumbness on her face she kept on at all times and particularly in public. He didn't get why she always asked for him either when they always spent the whole night arguing and when someone like Finnick would have suited her more.

She had never asked for the whole package until a couple of months earlier – and when she had requested it she had asked him and not his supervisor. It had been like she had been asking permission to buy more than a handsome man to parade her around at parties. She wasn't in a habit of doing this, he thought, it had probably been her first time with a hooker – high class and expensive as Snow had made him – and if he had said no, she would probably have never brought it up again. But that was when he had finally realized the truth: Effie Trinket, superstar extraordinary, was lonely and sad. Fame didn't warm your bed at night and glory kept everyone genuine at bay. Men wanted her because of who she was, she was a prey to hunt down, a trophy to boost around and not… anything else.

At least with him there was no confusing what was real and what was not.

The first time he had gotten her off, she had ridden her climax almost shamefully and she had insisted on returning the favor as if the thing between them was based on reciprocity and not a simple matter of business.

He had stupidly found it endearing.

"That's going to be costly." he frowned.

"I don't mind." she repeated.

He wondered what it was like not to mind spending thousands of dollars in one setting, to be so desperate for human comfort that you were willing to pay for it.

"I don't know, sweetheart…" he hesitated. He had never slept with a client before. Sex was one thing. One thing he hated and that made his skin crawl but Snow owned him and there was no escaping that. Sleeping with someone, holding them all night… It was flirting a little too much with a line that seemed to blur more and more every time she booked him. Sometimes he kissed her neck or he petted her hair and it had less to do with his job and more to do with the way she made him feel. He never felt like an object with her, he never felt like a whore… She was good at making him feel like a man and that had become a luxury at some point in his line of work.

"Please." She was almost begging now.

It hadn't been a good night. He hadn't been privy to what had happened behind closed doors between her and her mother at the party he had escorted her to – he was paid to stand there and look pretty not to talk to guests although the booze made up for it – but he could guess it had been ugly. She had sported tears in her eyes when she had walked out of that room and Effie never cried.

"If you don't want to stay… Can you tell me you love me?" she insisted.

He froze.

There were more unusual requests. Hell, she was pretty tame when it came down to what she liked and what she wanted but…

"I can't." he answered.

"I will give you a bonus." she pleaded. "I just… I want to hear the words."

If she had been anyone else, he would have felt insulted by the bonus comment. There were people who thought money could buy anything. She wasn't exactly like that. She never lorded the money over him. As odd as it was, she respected him.

"I can't." he repeated.

"I see." she breathed out, turning her head away. "Perhaps you should leave now."

"It's not a money thing." he countered. "I just can't."

"Yes… I understand." She forced herself to smile but it did little to hide the pain on her face. "To be honest, I would have felt better if it had been a money matter."

He tossed his watch back on the nightstand and lied back down next to her. She didn't look at him, she kept her eyes riveted to the ugly still life painting on the wall that was only there because it was fashionable and not because she liked it. Like everything else in her life, he thought.

"I can't tell you." he repeated, gently grabbing her chin and forcing her head to turn his way.

He propped himself on his elbow and watched her for a moment, studying the unshed tears she was stubbornly blinking away. He didn't know what her mother had said but he instinctively knew it had been vicious. He leaned in slowly and she immediately drew her head back.

"You don't kiss." she reminded him, something that almost sounded like fear in her voice.

Kissing was off the table, it was the first thing he always established. Kissing was intimate and this wasn't supposed to be intimate.

"I don't kiss customers." he replied.

"Haymitch…" she whispered and he swallowed any other protest by pressing his lips against hers. It wasn't sweet and he guessed she had never quite been kissed like that before. Her hands gripped his shoulders as he tortured her mouth, he rolled on her, nudging her legs apart with his knee. "Haymitch…" she repeated, clearly confused.

"I'm going to send them a text, okay?" he muttered. "I'll tell them I'm done for tonight."

"But you are staying." she ventured, tentative. "You are staying with me."

"Yeah." he confirmed, pressing his mouth against hers again. "I'll stay, yeah. Just not… Not as your fuck toy."

"You never were my fuck toy." she hissed. "It was never like that for me. I don't… I don't do this kind of things. You were just… You were the only person to be honest with me in a long time, to act like a real friend. I wanted something real."

"You don't get that by paying, sweetheart." he snorted. "Now, it's real, okay?"

He made his point by kissing her again.

She smiled against his lips. "Okay."