Prompt: Hiii! Todays prompt was amazing! I love your ocs so much! Could you please write one where hayffie babysit everlark kids for the first time and aymitch is literally playing with them (after much grumbling obv XD ) and everything to keep em distracted and effies just like awww that's my man x merci

Babysitting

"So, that one goes there?" Haymitch prompted, pointing to the empty slot on the right side of the puzzle. "What do you think, squirrel?"

Effie remained mostly out of sight, leaning against the doorframe, the sleeping baby in her arms and watched Willow and Haymitch try to put together the giant puzzle Johanna had sent from Four for her birthday. Rye fussed a little and she shifted her grip but, fortunately, the baby boy remained asleep. She didn't have much experience with infants aside from when she had babysat Willow at that age and she wasn't very fond of the exercise. She loved helping the children naturally and she loved their babies like her own but she had concluded long ago she had never really been made to take care of babies whose main activities were leaking suspicious fluids on her clothes.

Still, she loved toddlers though.

And she loved watching Haymitch taking care of them. He was wary of babies too, always scared he would end up accidentally hurting them – or tainting them only by touching them, which was all kind of wrong and idiotic but that was Haymitch for you – and so his involvement had been mostly limited to fetching things and making faces at the babies. At least until Willow had started running around. After that there had been no holding him back from spending time with her.

Willow just loved her grandfather.

"I don't know." the five years old sighed as if it was the biggest problem of her young life – and it probably was.

They had been working on that puzzle for days. It had been occupying a good portion of her living-room's floor and, despite Haymitch's promises that he would glue it together once it was done, she wished they would hurry up and finish it so she could get her tidy home back. Although to be fair, tidy seemed to have gone out the window the moment Willow had colonized their home as an annex to hers. Her toys always ended up everywhere.

"Won't know until we try." Haymitch shrugged.

It turned out the piece didn't fit and, tried as they might, it wasn't working. Willow stubbornly insisted until Haymitch declared she was even more single-minded than her mother, softening that small criticism with a few tickles to the girl's belly.

Willow's laughter echoed in the house, making Haymitch laugh too.

It was such a sweet sound…

Effie smiled when she retreated to the kitchen, wary that the noises would wake Rye.

He would be the first to deny it but Haymitch was so good with children

She wished he would see that sometimes.