prompt : ( because this happens to all woman at some point ) Akward moment for effie,after war maybe hayffie sleeping in bed togerher end effie gets her period somewhere in the middle of the night without knowing and they wake up its kinda messy and effie is mortefied whn he helps her clean up

When You Live Together…

Haymitch was used to Effie's coming and going in the middle of the night. Neither of them was a deep sleeper anymore and nightmares still plagued them too often. If she needed comfort, she would seek it but sometimes she just couldn't sleep and she would get up to go downstairs and watch TV or whatever it was she did at two in the morning.

A constant, though, was that she always tried to be discreet when she couldn't sleep because he was just as much a victim of insomnia as she was and actual rest wasn't easy to find – which was why he was a bit annoyed and surprised to find himself woken up one night by her making a racket in the bathroom.

His first instinct was to check the alarm clock because he was known to oversleep and she liked to be up at the brink of dawn. It wasn't dawn though. Far from it. It was four a.m.

Whatever she was doing in the bathroom, stuff clearly fell over.

"You're okay?" he called, his voice rough from sleep. The door to the bathroom was ajar, the light spilling from the bathroom not quite enough for him to make out all the corners of their room. He switched on the lamp on the bedside table.

"I am fine." she replied hurriedly. "Don't come in!"

He blinked but didn't try to get out of bed. "You're sick?"

He was a bit worried but not quite enough to go check in the bathroom after she had told him not to.

"No." she claimed and then cleared her throat. "Did you remember to buy tampons when you went for the groceries?"

Ah, he thought, almost regretting not faking sleep.

"Didn't take that out of the bags." he winced. It had been embarrassing enough to grab them at the store. It had been on the list though. And she had been living with him for long enough that he knew there would have been hell to pay if he had come back empty handed. "Must still be in the kitchen."

There was a brief moment of silence and then an annoyed "Could you go get the box, please?" that let him know he should have thought about that by himself.

"Why can't you go?" he grumbled. "You're up."

"Yes, and I have blood all over my thighs." she snapped. "Not to mention there are some on the sheets."

He almost fell off the bed in his hurry to get away from the blood stains. There wasn't much but it was enough that he made a face.

"Fine." he said. "I'm going."

The only answer he got was the shower being switched on. With a sigh, he made his way to the kitchen and, since he could still hear the plumbing going on, he put the kettle to boil while he rummaged in the grocery bags they hadn't unloaded. He came back upstairs with two steaming mugs of tea and the box of tampons she wanted, trying not to feel odd about the whole thing.

She was a woman. She had her period.

Sure, he liked it better when he hadn't known about it but they shared a house. There were things that were hard to ignore.

She was still in the bathroom but the door had been closed a little and he passed the box through the slit before starting to undress the bed. She soon joined him, wearing the comfy – and definitely not sexy – pajamas that she always wore when it was that time of the month, and helped him change the sheets, her cheeks flushed red.

"I am sorry." she whispered after clearing her throat, once they were done. "I didn't think it would happen for a few days."

He shrugged and climbed back into bed, snatching the mug of tea from the bedside table, already knowing he wouldn't be able to get back to sleep. "Never mind, sweetheart. It's fine. No harm done. Drink your tea."

She snuggled against his side, careful not to spill her own mug, and, for a while, they drank in silence. When he switched his cup for the book he was reading, she slid lower down the bed, using his stomach as a pillow, and got comfortable.

"Read to me?" she requested.

He did that sometimes. She wasn't really one for novels or books but she liked it when he read aloud, the sound of his voice a safe wall against the oppressing silence of the night.

She drifted back to sleep after ten minutes and he was left watching her, running his fingers through her hair, contemplating how domestic they were. He never would have thought that possible.

And he never would have thought he would enjoy it so much.