Prompt : cute moments like chasing each other in the house

Foolish People

Summer in Twelve wasn't as warm as Effie would have liked but after the freezing winter months, it still felt heavenly to be able to walk outside in sleeveless dresses. She tilted her head up, letting the sun hit her face, happy to bask in the calm moment.

Peace was sweet and they had made a comfortable life out of it but calm moments were still a little hard to come by. The children tended to treat Haymitch's – their now – house as an extension of theirs and there was always something to do. The last part was probably mostly her fault. She insisted Haymitch helped Peeta rebuild the bakery – she didn't have to press much for that in truth – and she always found something to do in the house in her endless quest to make it more theirs than his. It had very much been a bachelor nest.

"Working on your tan, Princess?" Haymitch teased from the other end of the yard.

He was hosing the inside of the pen, cleaning up the feces that had been accumulating there for months as well as the soft feathers that had fallen off the evil birds. The geese were wandering around and Effie was careful when she left the back porch to make her way over to him. She still hated those birds and she was certain they felt the same way about her. The gander, particularly, always tried to nip at her calves – maybe because she had chased it out of the kitchen with a broom once.

What had her life come down to?, she sometimes wondered.

But then her eyes usually found Haymitch's and she stopped wondering.

She watched him work for a couple of minutes.

"You missed a spot." she helpfully pointed out.

"You wanna do it yourself?" he grumbled, directing the hose in the direction she had gestured at.

The annoyance in his voice was mild but real. She was a bit rigid when it came to cleanliness, she was ready to admit it. She refused to live in a pigsty and she liked everything to be in the exact spot it ought to be.

"If you do something, you should always do it right." she hummed distractedly, inspecting the rest of his work. "Right there. It is not really clean, is it?"

She pointed out at the far end corner but Haymitch didn't direct the hose there this time, he turned to her, eyebrows lifted in clear annoyance.

"You know, they're my fucking birds. I know how to take care of them." he scowled.

"Obviously not or you would take better care of their pen." she replied. "You need to make sure everything is clean."

She turned her attention away from him for a second, to make sure the gander wasn't lurking too close. The fat goose was less than a foot away from her but that one she didn't mind too much. She would have gone as far as claim it was her favorite if that hadn't implied she actually liked any of them. Still, she would never let Katniss turn it into dinner like the girl often insisted they should. The goose was the only mild well-behaved one. It never honked too loud and it never tried to eat her alive but sometimes it followed her around like most of the geese did with Haymitch. Something about goslings and imprinting…

When she looked back at Haymitch, he was just standing there, watching her with a blank face, water trickling down the hose he was holding directed to the ground. She could read the intent behind his stare very clearly all the same and she took a hasty step back.

"Don't you dare." she hissed.

Which really wasn't the right approach with Haymitch at all…

She shrieked and tried to run away just as he lifted the hose. She escaped in time in the midst of irritated honking and flapping wings but Haymitch was persistent and he was hot on her heels. Water hit her straight between her shoulders blades and she gasped at how cold it was.

"Are you done?" she snapped over her shoulder, still trying to get out of range of the hose. How long was it anyway? She almost ran back in the kitchen, but she didn't trust him not to follow her in there and make a mess.

"Not even close!" he chuckled and water hit her again. "I'm making sure everything's clean."

"Oh!" she huffed. She was soaked now anyway so she turned around and marched straight on him. He hastily stepped back, still splashing water on her as if it would stop her. There was a small struggle for the hose once she reached him. "I think I need to make sure you bathetoday!" she exclaimed, finally managing to turn the hose's nose around and spraying water all over him.

They were both drenched by the time Haymitch finally stole the hose back and tossed it aside, letting it wriggle and convulse on the grass to the geese's clear distress. The gaggle moved to the front yard and she wasn't sorry about that. Not that she really paid attention, not when Haymitch's mouth crashed on hers, pushing her toward the side of the house.

There was something deeply erotic to both of them being soaked and rubbing against each other and they got lost in the moment. Kissing hard, touching harder and very much about to do something foolish like having sex in their backyard in the middle of the day…

"What the hell?" Katniss' voice exclaimed.

Instead of jumping away like he would have done a year earlier, Haymitch groaned and stopped kissing her to drop his forehead on her shoulder, leaving to Effie the uncomfortable task of meeting the girl's grey eyes.

"Did you need something, dear?" she asked politely, as if it was completely normal for the two of them to be drenched and humping each other outside. Not that much humping was happening at the moment though. She had quickly placed her leg back down as soon as she had heard the girl.

"We're busy." Haymitch snapped, a lot less politely. "If it ain't an emergency… Get loose."

"I heard screaming and the geese were going wild." Katniss huffed. "I thought there might be a problem. Next time I won't bother."

"You do that." Haymitch snorted, his left hand running up Effie's side.

She batted it away before he could do something idiotic like squeeze her breast with the girl standing right there.

"Everything is fine." Effie promised. "We just had an incident with the garden hose."

"That's what you call it?" the girl scowled with obvious disgust, turning the tap so the hose would stop its mad wriggling on the grass before whirling around and storming away. "I don't even want to know!"

"Which is probably for the best." she muttered.

Haymitch didn't wait until the girl was out of sight to push his hips against hers again, his arousal so obvious and welcomed Effie actually gasped.

"We are too old to behave so foolishly." she giggled, tangling her fingers in his hair, guiding his head to her neck.

"Hate to break it to you, sweetheart, but we're very foolish people, you and me." he snorted against her skin, right before nibbling on the right spot under her jaw. "Well… you more than me."

She tried to whack him for that but he grabbed her wrist and pinned it against the wall and she couldn't stop giggling anyway…

Foolish indeed.