prompt: Effie finds out that haymitch has a hidden talent ( something sooo random like playing an instrument or knowing stuff about make up or being good at a sport or motorcycles or something )
The Handyman
Effie had been staying in Twelve for about two weeks when she heard the hammer for the first time.
She climbed out of her bed in Haymitch's guest room, wrapping the blanket around her shoulders and grumbling under her breath about freezing Districts, and walked to the window. Try as she might, she couldn't see where it was coming from. There wasn't much rebuilding going on in the Victors Village, people even tended to leave as soon as their old house was fixed in town or in the Seam, and the sound couldn't be coming from town where there was always a chaos of men shouting orders or warnings, hammering or sawing noises and perilous scaffoldings growing everywhere.
She shuffled down the corridor, peering into Haymitch's bedroom because it was still early – and even more so for him who hardly ever got up before late morning. It was empty. She stepped inside all the same, to snatch warm woolen socks from the top of the dresser as well as a pair of sweatpants that were far too big for her. She tied the knot at her waist as tight as it would go, trying to remember during which Games she had bought those pants for him and drawing a blank. She didn't think he had ever bothered buying clothes for himself, not since she had been there to provide a generous amount of them when the Games had been in season, and some of his belongings were showing signs of wear.
She could look into that, she decided. It would be something nice to surprise him with. Her budget was tight but she could afford a couple of pants and shirts. She could always buy wool and knit the socks and sweaters herself, it would save money and give her something to do. Yes, she could do that. It would make her feel a little less like she was imposing and abusing Haymitch's hospitality.
She folded the blanket she had been carrying and swapped it for the heavy blue dressing gown that had been abandoned on a bare dressing table, knowing he wouldn't mind. She kept an ear pricked for any noise in the bathroom as she ran her hand on the slightly dusty wood of the table.
It was a shame to see such a lovely piece of furniture go unused. Her perfumes, creams and make-up would have been right at home there.
But that was on her, wasn't it? If she wanted to move into his room… Well, she wasn't sure he would welcome her moving in his room but he would certainly not mind her slipping in his bed for something more than clinging to him after a nightmare. She tightened the dressing gown around her frail frame, giving a last sad look to the dressing table. She wasn't ready for more. Not yet.
The hammering was still going on full swing. In his room, she could also hear the faint honking of displeased geese.
She hated the birds.
They were noisy, filthy and every time he let them loose she was afraid one of them would bite her. He, on the other hand and without too much surprise on her part, doted on those awful monsters as if they were adorable kittens. She wouldn't have minded kittens. For that matters, she wouldn't even have terribly minded puppies. But geese?
She approached the window and peered in the backyard, her eyebrows shooting up when she spotted Haymitch kneeling inside the pen, apparently busy putting wood planks together to build… Was that a geese house?
From the moment she had showed up, his small gaggle had been kept in that pen. There had been a makeshift shelter in it as well as water and food but it had all seemed a bit… Well. To be honest, the whole thing had been very ugly, clearly standing together by a pure struck of luck. The makeshift shelter was completely gone now and in its place…
If she had slept through the building process and had woken up to find it already erected, she would have concluded Peeta had done it and thought no more about it. It was actually impressive.
Haymitch was completely focused on his work. Aside from the hammer he sometimes placed down to check everything was holding as it should, he had a measuring tape, a saw, things she didn't know the names of… All his tools were spread on the ground next to a metal box. He didn't have a tool belt like most men in town liked to carry around the waist when they were working but he didn't seem to mind.
Effie watched him for a very long time. It was… soothing to watch him work. His moves were confident, there was no room for hesitation, and if he sometimes paused to think – rubbing his jaw or his forehead – his indecision never lasted long and his actions only became more purposeful.
After half an hour of what could only be called stalking, she remembered herself and hurried downstairs to the kitchen to fix them something to eat.
The kitchen was in a state that had her pursing her lips. If she had liked order before, it was almost compulsive for her to keep her environment neat nowadays. She needed everything to be clean, she needed everything to smell fresh – nothing like rot and decay, nothing like her cell – and she had more or less taken over the house on that front. The children always joked that they could have eaten on the floor in there and instead of taking offense, she took that as a compliment.
Clearly, Haymitch had been up for hours.
There were crumbs on the table, eggs gathered and abandoned in a basket on the counter, an uncorked bottle of moonshine next to the sink, the pantry wasn't closed properly, the bread box had been left open and an unwashed mug tainted with coffee at the bottom had been left in the sink.
She sighed, annoyed that he had never – and likely never would – learned to pick up after himself. She started with what bothered her most and that was the crumbs. Closing the pantry and the bread box, putting the cork back on the bottle and putting it away took only a minute. She left the mug to soak for now and finally turned to the eggs, not quite sure what to do with them. Did he intend to sell them like he sometimes did or were they for them to eat? He often forgot to pick them up which ended with more goslings following him around, mistaking him for their mother – which, admittedly, was a little hilarious.
In the end, she put them in the fridge and turned on the coffee machine. She leaned against the sink while she waited, the view from there far much better than the one from his bedroom. She was close enough to see the way he ran his hand on a plank before adding it to its project. He stroke that wood like he used to stroke her skin and it might have been stupid but at that very moment she was jealous of that plank because she knew how warm and calloused his palm was, she knew how it felt to be touched, cajoled and loved by those hands.
Her lips were dry and she was so fascinated by the idea that he actually seemed to like manual labor that she completely forgot about her coffee. She yelped when it brimmed over and spent the next five minutes cleaning coffee from the otherwise gleaming counter with a pout.
She was thirty-six and she had spent ten years having sex with him. One would think she would not get distracted like a ridiculous schoolgirl with a crush anymore.
But one would apparently be wrong because the next time she glanced through the window, he had taken off his shirt.
He knew she was watching, that was the only possible explanation for him being so stupid as to take off his shirt when he was obviously sweaty and it was so cold. She almost knocked on the window, called whatever game he wanted to play off because she didn't want him to be sick, but then he stood up and stretched, his strong arms raised high toward the grey sky hanging overhead and…
She took a sip of scalding coffee that did nothing for her parched mouth.
He wasn't the most well in-shape man of his age she had seen. There was a small pouch of fat around his stomach and his chest wasn't as firm as it used to be. Nothing about his body was as firm as it used to be but damn it if his shoulders weren't still as broad as she remembered them. He was naturally strong, that was his gift. And she didn't mind the lack of abs that much. He was not fat by any reach. He was…
Attractive.
Handsome.
Hot.
Not playing fair becausehe knew she couldn't resist him when he was all sweatyand naked. Not that he was entirely naked but with the pale autumn sun falling on his broad chest it wasn't very difficult to imagine the rest. The strong thighs. The ass she loved to leave bite marks on just so he would remember her longer. Even his weird shaped toes…
He picked up his tools and tossed them back in that box with deliberate slowness, making a show of it. The geese house actually looked really good now. It looked less like a shelter for strays and more like an actual pen. With a coat of paint, it could even be pretty.
She had a mug of steaming coffee waiting for him on the table and she was pretending to smear butter on a toast, sitting at the kitchen table, when he came back in. She glanced up, her eyes gliding over the familiar swollen scar on his side, and up a tantalizing amount of tanned skin until she met his amused eyes.
"You shouldn't be walking without a shirt in that weather, Haymitch." she deadpanned.
He placed the tool box on the counter – leaving dirt everywhere and making her inwardly cringe – and went to wash his hands as if nothing was amiss. She tried not to notice the tracks his boots were leaving behind him. She tried. They were barely noticeable and she knew she was making a huge deal over nothing.
"You seemed to like the view so much, sweetheart… Couldn't disappoint." he teased, turning around to lean against the counter while he used the dishcloth to dry his hands. "Stealing my stuff again?"
"It is cold." she retorted petulantly.
"Yeah." he sighed. "I've been putting that off for months. With winter coming… The geese needed a proper shelter."
She hadn't asked but she hummed what could have passed as an agreement. "I did not know you were such a handyman."
"You're the one who thinks she knows everything about me." he snorted, sitting down in front of her to wrap his hands around his mug of coffee.
She couldn't help but stared at them.
She had been reminded of what those hands could do and now she was wondering if it would be as hard as she made it out to be to just… let herself go. Her body wasn't what it used to be. It had aches and pains in different places still, she wasn't beautiful any longer and she had scars to rival his own. She knew he wouldn't see it that way, that all those flaws were in her own gaze and that she would most likely not find them in his. And she found she wanted him to look at her like something desirable… But the idea of being naked in front of him, of exposing the marks of everything that had happened to her, of baring all those defects to his eyes…
No, it was too much.
Soon, maybe, but not now.
Still… There was nothing wrong with flirting, was there? Flirting was nice. Flirting was something they had always been very good at.
"You should get one of those tool belts." she suggested. "And maybe some tighter pants. Oh, and one of those white tank tops that don't leave anything to the imagination once you start sweating."
He smirked, mirth dancing in his eyes. "Enjoying your little fantasy?"
She laughed, propping her chin on her hand to better study him. "Why, yes actually. Do you know the window in my room creaks?"
"I'll take a look at it." he humored her. "Anything else I can help you with, ma'am?"
"Well, it depends…" she chuckled. "How skilled are you?"
He wriggled his eyebrows, leaning back in his chair. "Very skilled with my hands."
"Perhaps I should have you build me something then." she teased. "I would not mind a few more shelves in my wardrobe."
He shrugged. "Can do shelves."
"Can you do trunks?" she asked. "They are always useful."
"Seems like a lot of work." he pointed out, still smirking. "How are you going to repay me, Princess?"
"I would rather think about it as a reward." she grinned. "And it is for me to know and you to find out."
"Ominous." he mocked.
"Maybe I will cook for once." she suggested.
"Please, don't." he winced. "I can fix some stuff around the house but I cannot fix us a whole new house if you burn this one down."
She pouted. "It was once and it was a very small fire."
"No fire and no cooking for you." he insisted, shaking his head. "I do the cooking, you do the cleaning. Works like that."
"It does, doesn't it?" she smiled, softening a little.
If you had asked her months earlier, she would have claimed the two of them living together would have been a disaster. It had taken some adjustment, of course, you didn't go from being single for most of your adult life to living with someone in perfect harmony overnight. But they had found some balance after a few days of dancing around each other and now… Well, it was actually pretty good. They argued sometimes – although not a lot because he was wary of her panic attacks and was careful around her and she, on the other hand, wasn't really up to the kind of fights they used to share – but it hadn't been as difficult as she had feared to find some sort of domesticity.
"Yeah." he smiled back, relaxed like she hadn't seen him in a long time – if ever. Haymitch was thriving in that new Panem. He was finally finding some peace, putting ghosts to rest. It was slow process, healing always was or so she had been told, but he was getting there nonetheless. "So you need to find another reward, sweetheart, 'cause you're so not cooking. Got a few ideas if you need help figuring that out." He let the innuendo hang in the air for a moment and she blushed a little, not entirely against the idea, already thinking of ways she could… repay him the way he wanted – and she wanted too – while not getting entirely naked for him. He ended the joke before she could cement the idea though, probably wary of trapping her in something she didn't want. "Got some shirts that could do with mending… I can sew a little but I hate it so…"
"You can sew?" she asked, now completely taken aback.
"Story for another time." He rolled his eyes, his face closing off in a way that told her it had to do with his past. More likely than not either with his mother or his girlfriend. "You don't have to but…"
"I will mend them." she promised, happy to be able to contribute given that he was the one paying the bills and buying their food. "Just leave them out for me."
"Thanks." he mumbled and stood up to disappear in the pantry, probably to search for those sugary cereals he liked to pretend he was buying for Katniss – the girl was lucky if she got a bowl when she came over for breakfast because he tended to eat them all.
"Aren't you full of surprises today…" she whispered.
She must have talked louder than she had intended because she distinctly heard his snort.
It was funny how well they knew each other when it came down to the important things but how there were still some little everyday things left to discover… She liked that.