Prompt: This is a very hesitant prompt, because I can only hope you haven't written anything similar to this: Effie and Haymitch are like the best of friends (like, I don't know, Chandler and Monica?) and know each other's secrets and all but there's this weird tension in the air for a while and they just go for it one day (maybe they're drunk or whatever) and maybe things get awkward or they just jump straight to being a couple bc they were already halfway there (your choice) Love your writing!

Quick word to say I won't be updating Soulmates this week! But I will update Katniss the vampire slayer on Sunday!

The One Where They're Friends

Effie hesitated in front of her apartment door, sighed and turned around to walk to the opposite door at the end of the corridor, knowing that, given the time, everyone would probably already be there. She pushed the door marked with an askew golden 12 without bothering to knock. None of them ever knocked when they walked in Haymitch's place anymore. When he wanted privacy, he simply turned the lock.

As she had suspected, the living-room was full of people. Johanna and Peeta were busy playing video games on the big TV Effie had insisted Haymitch should buy, Finnick and Annie were fussing over their baby when they weren't cheering Peeta or Jo up, Katniss was in the open kitchen checking on dinner and Haymitch was sitting at the round table nursing a glass and watching the girl while she added pepper and salt to whatever was cooking on the stove.

Haymitch's face brightened up when he spotted her – or at least Effie thought it did but she didn't read anything into it. They were the oldest in their group of friends by far and she wasn't sure how they had ended up playing second parents to a bunch of young people who lived in the same building they did – it certainly hadn't started well since at the beginning it was an open neighbor war between her and Haymitch – but it was nice to with someone closer in age sometimes. The children didn't mean it but they made them feel old on some days.

And today, with the video games and the baby and the constant chatter, it was clearly one of those days for Haymitch.

"So? How did it go?" he asked before she even had time to say hello.

Strange how the few seconds amongst her makeshift family had made her forget about why she had been so blue in the first place. She forced a cheerful smile on her lips and schooled her features into something neutral when she shook her head. "Not this time. They gave it to Viola."

She was a stand-in anchor at the local news channel. She had been for years, well before she had even met Haymitch and the children. The actual anchor had retired and the position had been open, by all rights it should have been Effie's and she had fought for it because she was tired of working backstage on stupid reports when she couldn't be in front of the camera. That was what she born for: to be in front of a camera.

It had been her turn to shine and the whole thing really was unfair.

"That bitch?" Haymitch half-frowned and half-sneered. She had dragged him to a few office parties because she needed an escort, he wasn't a fan of Viola any more than she was.

"Oh, Effie, I'm so sorry…" Annie immediately offered, handing her son to her husband so she could come and hug her.

"You deserved it…" Peeta added, kneeling on the couch to better watch her over its back. Jo didn't have that much consideration. She hadn't even paused her game but that was alright. Effie and Johanna tolerated each other, they belonged to the same close-knit group but they weren't friends by any stretch of the imagination.

"Are you still hungry?" Katniss asked hesitantly. "Because we made a special dinner… We thought…"

They had thought she would get the promotion and they could have a celebratory dinner. And that was very sweet of them.

"Of course, I am hungry!" she laughed, crossing the room to check on the small baby in Finnick's arms. Finnick, who had yet to open his mouth, looked up at her with tired sleepy eyes that told her he wasn't following much of the conversation because little Finn wasn't sleeping through the night and it had been months since he had last had proper rest. "I will get it next time, it is fine! I am not even the slightest bit upset. Now, how are you, my darling angel?"

She carefully cradled the baby in her arms and talked to him in a silly voice for long enough that everyone went back to their previous activity. Once she was certain nobody would pay her any attention, she handed the baby to Annie – because Finnick had dropped asleep on Haymitch's tattered armchair – and slipped away to the bathroom and through the window at the back.

The fire escape stairs were narrow and uncomfortable but they had been treating it as a balcony of sort for years. Often she wondered why they always gathered at Haymitch's when her place was bigger and more comfortable – and, as it happened, so was Finnick and Annie's – but it was how it was. The status quo held.

She fumbled with the battered cigarette packet in her pocket and the silver lighter Finnick had given her for her birthday but soon enough she had one lit up and she could enjoy the dubious relief of her daily nicotine dose in the overly polluted air of the city.

Sometimes, the others joked about moving away, to a small town in the country, and while Effie always swore they would have to knock her out and drag her there unconscious because she was too much of a city girl, she wondered how it would be to go outside and breathe in air that didn't smell like fumes, garbage and hot pavement.

"Thought you were quitting?" Haymitch snorted, climbing out the window to join her.

The fire escaped groaned and creaked like it always did under their combined weight. Perhaps if they fell to their death, Viola Summercket would come and do an exclusive. Wouldn't that be grand?

She shifted until her side was pressed to the metal railing but even then it was a tight fit. She was squeezed against Haymitch and it wasn't comfortable until he leaned back and slipped an arm behind her, turning his body just enough that she was half leaning against his chest. It was an intimate position but she didn't protest.

"I will quit when you quit drinking." she promised like she always did.

He snorted again, fished the flask she had gifted him with at Christmas a couple of years earlier out of his pocket and took a swing before offering it to her. She sniffed it dubiously before cautiously swallowing some of what turned out to be vodka. Not as bad as she had feared. It could have been whiskey.

"You're ever gonna stop leaving AA leaflets everywhere in my place?" he asked casually. As if it hadn't sent him in rages more than once to have to deal with that.

"Unlikely." she hummed. "Unlike you, I worry about your health."

And just to prove her point she relocated the flask to the other side of her – a few steps up where neither of them would knock it off by accident; he often grumbled about her ridiculous gifts but she knew the flask was important for him. He could have grabbed it back, of course, but she knew he wouldn't. Not right then. He wasn't drunk and he wasn't feeling the shakes, he didn't need the alcohol at the moment.

For the same reason, she didn't protest when he plucked the cigarette from her fingers, crushed it against the wall and flicked the bud off in the alley somewhere below.

"No booze, no cigarette." he retorted.

She rolled her eyes but leaned a little more against him. It was cold and she was seeking his warmth, that was what she told herself. And when the arm he had propped behind her closed around her shoulders and he bumped his nose against the side of her ear it was simply to keep her warm.

"What happened?" he asked after a couple of minutes.

His voice was a familiar rumble in her ear and she found herself sighing, unwilling to put a show for him like she had for the children. Besides, it would have been ridiculous to pretend. She hadn't hidden from him just how badly she wanted the promotion or how unhappy she was starting to feel with her current job. He had even gone to the trouble of waking up early to bring her a blueberry muffin that morning as a good luck gesture. He never did that sort of things. He never used to, at least.

"She slept with the producer. I should have gotten there first." she said bitterly.

The arm tightened around her shoulders. "You ain't that kind."

"You would be surprised." she whispered. She had been young and desperate once. Now she was just desperate and she would never get such an opportunity again and it was probably time she did start thinking about what she wanted to do because…

"No. Wouldn't be." he denied, bumping his nose against her temple once, as if in rebuke. "I'm sorry, sweetheart. I know you wanted that job bad."

"Yes, well… It is just my life, isn't it?" she laughed and was startled to feel her eyes filling with tears. "Thirty-five and no steady relationship, no prospects, no children and no real job to speak of… My mother was right. I am a failure."

"Your mother's a bitch." he snapped, well acquainted with Elindra Trinket by now. Every time her mother descended on her little apartment and decided to tell Effie everything that was wrong with her life – once every six months give or take – he was the one who usually ended up comforting her – or pouring her glass after glass while she comforted herself. "And you ain't a failure. You're…"

He stopped and she turned her head to look at him. "I am what?"

Their faces were too close and her heart started racing so she looked away again, resting her head on his shoulder instead. Safer. Safer for all involved.

There had always been a tension between them. Always. If it had been just the two of them… She thought they would have acted on it a long time ago. But the children had showed up and they had somehow become a group and too much time had passed for it to become anything more than a close friendship – a friendship mostly made of shouting matches and arguments but a close friendship nonetheless.

It had been growing slightly out of hands lately. They had been toying with the limits. Pushing each other against walls when they had drunk to much at parties, brushing lips together in something that was never a real kiss, gravitating toward each other, cuddling on the couch when they all watched a movie with the feeble excuse that there wasn't enough room for everyone if they didn't sit very close…

It wasn't getting out of hands yet but Effie was wary.

She didn't want to lose what little good she had in her life and those people had somehow become her everything. Haymitch was a difficult man and she wasn't sure a relationship would work. If they tried this and it ended up badly, it would upset the balance.

Besides, in all the time she had known him, she had never seen Haymitch with a girlfriend. There had been the occasional woman sneaking out of his apartment in the middle of the night or at dawn though and when she had probed the subject he had made it very clear he wasn't into dating. One-night-stands were what worked for him.

"You're a pain in the ass." he muttered.

"Why, thank you." she huffed. She wasn't too vexed, the way he said it was a compliment.

"A beautiful one." he continued. "And feisty. Too bossy. Irritating."

"Are you listing my qualities to cheer me up or are you just trying to make me feel worse?" she chided.

"I like it." he retorted, his fingers toying with the fanciful bun on her head. Soon enough, he had plucked out the pins and her hair tumbled loose. Before she could rebuke him for that too, his fingers were slowly combing the blond strands. "Sweetheart…"

He sounded a little awkward and she knew what he wanted. He wanted her to confront the elephant that had been dancing in every room they were in together for a while because he was too allergic to feelings to do it himself but there was a point when denial wasn't working anymore, even for him, and she thought they were reaching it very fast.

"It is a terrible idea and you know it." she sighed, not feeling the need to clarify the switch in subject. He would follow. He always followed. Sometimes, it felt like they were of one mind. "We will have some awesome nights of sex and then we will start arguing and it will disturb everything."

"Awesome?" he repeated after a beat and there was smug amusement in there.

"Please. With me it is always awesome." she scoffed before he could get ideas.

"Yeah?" he asked, bowing his head a little, his lips against her nose. She should have ducked more but she found herself looking up instead and their mouths brushed together. It was electric.

"Haymitch…" she begged. For him to stop or to finally kiss her, she wasn't sure.

"We already argue all the time." he pointed out.

"But it would be different." she insisted in a whisper.

"Why?" He licked his lips, his fingers clenched a little at her waist. "Already feels like we're fucking married. You nag at me, we've got a living-room full of kids who come crying every time they're in troubles, you drag me to parties and dinners every time you need a date… Seems to me we've already been dating for years, sweetheart."

That was actually a compelling argument and it made her pause. "But…"

He kissed her.

And she didn't even try to protest because…

She had always known it would be good.

She had never known it would be that good.

And it got out of hands awfully quickly. The fire escape was too narrow and once the making-out turned a little too aggressive, it started creaking in earnest. Something was digging into the small of her back but she didn't really care because Haymitch's mouth was doing things to her neck and her fingers had found the budge in his pants…

"Hey, dinner's ready, are you… Oh." Finnick's voice stopped abruptly and they both jerked apart – as apart as they could given the little space.

Effie was red in the face and it didn't get better when she spotted Finnick's familiar wolfish grin.

"We can explain." she said quickly. "It is not at all what it looks like."

Haymitch lifted his eyebrows and stared at her, apparently very impatient to know what it was if it wasn't what it looked like. Her inspiration didn't kick in and she was left opening and closing her mouth for an excuse that wasn't coming.

Finally, Finnick's grin stretched wider. "Hey, Katniss! You owe me ten bucks!"

And with that he sauntered away leaving Effie to bury her burning face in her hands. She wasn't entirely unaware of the bets running around amongst their friends.

Haymitch rolled his eyes but he seemed more amused than annoyed. He stood up and offered her a hand that she took. She hadn't planned on him pinning her to the wall as soon as he had her upright and she squeaked in surprise.

Something soft and uncertain flashed on his face. "You want this to stay on the fire escape, sweetheart?"

He would keep it there if that was what she wanted, she knew.

She kissed him again in answer, figuring they might as well give the children a few minutes to exchange money.

Perhaps it wasn't such an awful day, after all.