prompt Hey! I love your stories, i've ready every single on of them (Hayffie ones) and you ruined any other hayffie story that isn't yours for me. Could you do one where Haymitch and Effie are in the middle of an argument and Petta has a flashback and fells he needs to protect Effie from Haymitch, pretty please? Kisses from Brazil !

prompt Hello! I'ver read almost all of yours Hayffie stories, and they are amazing, really , you've ruined all of others writers. I was wondering if you could do and if you are still accepting prompts a storie where Peeta has a flashback or something like it , and he feels he has to protect Effie from Haymitch. Looking forward to read your next storie , april showers and The Dragon & The Mockingjay are my favorites, and I simply love your Elindra! Kisses from Rio, Brazil..

A Bad Day

Effie barely noticed the children were in their kitchen when she stormed in, her arms loaded with grocery bags and Haymitch hot on her heels.

"I don't fucking care!" he roared behind her, carrying twice the amount of bags she was.

"Well, good, because I do not either!" she snapped, dropping the bags on the kitchen table, avoiding the area Peeta was using to knead whatever dough he was making.

She tossed an irritated glance at the mess of flour and yeast, wondering why the boy hadn't kept his baking to his house where her kitchen wouldn't have had to suffer. It was both unfair and ungrateful, she knew, because Peeta would clean once he was done and chances were whatever he was baking was for that night's dinner. But between the mess on the table and the feathers Katniss had put everywhere on the counter when Effie had told her times and times again to take care of the games outside, Effie's uneasiness rose up a notch. She hated it when the house wasn't spotless, particularly when she was already upset.

"Perfect." Haymitch sneered, adding his bags to the stock on the table, sparing a glance for the children but not acknowledging their presence in any way. "Then you can stop your fucking bitching, yeah? 'Cause let me tell you your voice is unbearable. Why do you like to hear yourself talk so much? How do you not get headaches from that shrill?"

"You are a boor!" she shouted back in answer. He rummaged around a few of the bags until he found an apple and brought it to his mouth. She narrowed her eyes at him. "Do not dare eat this close to dinner. You will have no appetite and you will spoil the dinner the children have worked hard to make."

It was probably a testament to how often that kind of scenes happened that neither Katniss nor Peeta had really reacted to their loud entrance. Katniss kept on getting the bird ready and Peeta focused on his dough.

"So you're in charge of what I eat now?" Haymitch growled. "You're a pain in my ass. You're a fucking pain in my ass!"

She started unloading the groceries, putting them away in their respective cupboard. After a moment, Haymitch dropped the apple and started helping her. They worked quickly and effortlessly despite the glares they exchanged.

"We agreed you would try to keep it to three glasses a day. Didn't we agree?" she challenged.

"What's it to you?" he snapped.

"What is it to me if you live a long life or die early from cirrhosis?" she scoffed.

"If I die, I get peace and you inherit the house, which means you can finally paint the bedroom pink. Seems like the best arrangement from where I'm standing." he snickered. "Ouch." There had been nothing nice to the punch Katniss had just hit his arm with. "What's wrong with you now?"

"Don't talk about dying." the girl grumbled, sparing him a glare. "And Effie's right. You did say you'd cut down."

"Ah!" Effie triumphed, handing him the tin cans so he could put them in the right cupboard.

"Effie's right. Effie's right." Haymitch repeated in a whiny voice that didn't resemble Katniss' at all. Effie had told him many times he had no gift for imitation but he persisted. "So I'm not allowed to buy booze by myself cause I can't be trusted and she gets to hold my hand and scold me like a kid in a candy store?"

Katniss stared at him, then at Effie. In the end, she rolled her eyes and turned back to the dead bird.

"What Katniss is too polite to say is that you do behave like a petulant child when left in the vicinity of liquor without supervision." she hissed.

Haymitch slapped the cupboard door shut with a sudden violent move, his fist banging the lacquered wood. The door bounced back open but the noise had been loud enough to make all of them startled. He was already turning to her, fury gleaming in his eyes and an accusative finger pointed at her chest.

"Yeah? I can't be trusted? You want to talk about the cigarettes you've been smoking behind my back?" he growled.

"I don't know what you are talking about." she lied, her heart hammering hard in her chest. He was coming toward her, towering over her, and she took a few steps back until her thighs hit the table. She knew he wouldn't hurt her. Of course, she knew. But the banging of the door had been too loud and the kitchen was a mess and she was upset. It was enough to trigger bad thoughts.

"Oh, come on!" he scowled. "You said you'd quit. At least, I don't pretend I ain't an addict."

He was coming too close and she lifted shaky hands in front of her. "Haymitch…"

But he was too angry to notice her discomfort. He was in her space now, poking her chest with his finger, and she shrank back. "You strut around with your holy-than-thou attitude like you've never popped sleeping pills like candies back in the days, like you're not still sneaking out to have a smoke behind the shed now and then, like…"

The table was upturned and she fell back with a shriek. She landed hard on her side and her thigh and arm smarted. She didn't understand what had happened until she looked up and she found Haymitch on the ground too, pressing a hand against his split lip, and Peeta standing between the two of them.

Katniss was a little to the side, alarmed but alert. Her fingers closed on the hilt of the knife she had been using on the game.

"Peeta." the girl called softly. "Peeta, come back."

But Peeta ignored her.

"You don't touch her!" the boy shouted. Effie could only watch, shocked, as Peeta kicked him hard in the stomach with his good leg. "You don't fucking touch her, you asshole! I'll kill you all! I'll kill you all!" Then, Peeta was really on him and Effie let out a low whine, not only because the words were familiar but because speckles of blood were flying everywhere. The boy was straddling Haymitch, pummeling him with his fists. "She doesn't know anything! She doesn't know anything! You leave her alone! You leave her alone!"

"Peeta!" Katniss screamed.

She tried to approach but when the boy looked up at her, there was no spark of recognition in his eyes, just terror and hatred.

He tried to lunge at Katniss but Haymitch grabbed his leg – the prosthetic one – and pulled hard. The boy landed flat on his stomach but that didn't stop him for long. It had never stopped him, not even when the Peacekeepers had lashed out with whips. You learned a certain kind of desperation in those cells. You had nothing to lose so it was all or nothing. He kicked at Haymitch with his good foot and he would probably have attacked him again if Effie hadn't tossed herself in the small space between them.

"It's me. It's me." she said quickly, on her knees, her hands raised defensively. She could feel Haymitch's pained pants against her nape, the way his hand coiled around her ankle in support or concern she wasn't sure… "Peeta. Peeta, darling, I am fine. It's over. It's over."

The boy stared at her for a long endless minute. Her heart was beating so hard it felt like it would break free from her ribcage.

"Effie." he acknowledged at last.

"Yes." she whispered. "Yes." She reached out slowly, carefully, until her hand came in contact with his shoulder. "I am alright, you see? I am fine."

"I'm not if anyone cares." Haymitch muttered behind her.

It was a mistake. Peeta's blue eyes darted to him and Effie couldn't help but shriek when he snatched her, tugging her into his arms. He crawled back toward the counter, dragging her with him. Haymitch immediately tried to grab her back but failed. His face was a mess; his bottom lip and his nose were bleeding, his eye looked like would swell shut, there was a scrape over his other eyebrow… Effie rolled with it, embraced the boy and made soothing noises, aware Katniss had traded the knife for a rolling pin and probably wouldn't hesitate to knock him out with it.

"I'm sorry they hurt you. I'm sorry they hurt you." Peeta repeated again and again. "I don't know… I don't know."

"Shh… They are gone now, darling." she murmured. "We are safe."

"That man was going to hurt you." he argued, sounding confused. "I… I have a headache."

"He was not." she sighed, running her fingers in his hair. "It's alright, just try to relax and breathe. We are fine and safe."

It took long minutes before the tension left the boy's frame and he finally relaxed against her. When he rested his head against her shoulder, Katniss let out a breath of relief and finally dared cross the room to go to Haymitch's side. She snatched a dish cloth from the counter and pressed it against his still bleeding nose despite his grunts of pain.

"We're in Twelve." Peeta hesitated. "Real or not real?"

"Real." Effie answered.

"It wasn't a Peacekeeper." he continued.

She licked her lips. "Real."

"Haymitch was going to hurt you." he added.

"Not real." she countered firmly. "Not real."

"Peeta?" Katniss asked in a soft voice. "Is it alright if I come over now?"

The boy took several deep breaths and then nodded letting go of Effie. She traded her place with Katniss quickly, crawling on all four to where Haymitch was still sitting on the floor, clearly a bit stunned. She touched his face, probed and poke until he captured her hand in his and brought it away from his injuries. There was a lot of blood and she couldn't bear the sight, she couldn't…

"It's okay, sweetheart." Haymitch said, his words a little weird because of his nose and the dish towel he was pressing against it. "I'm good." He cupped her cheek with his good hand. "You're alright?"

She was scraped and bruised from her fall but she didn't look like someone had just tried to bash her head in so she nodded, her eyes filling with tears. "I'm sorry. This is all my fault. If we hadn't argued…"

"Nah. My fault." Haymitch shushed her, stroking her cheekbone with his thumb. "Shouldn't have gotten in your face like that."

She glanced at the children who were hugging tight on the kitchen floor then she took in the general mess of broken dishes, flour, yeast, dough, blood, scattered groceries and upturned furniture and she pursed her lips tight together to suppress the tinge of panic. Everything was fine now. Nobody was seriously hurt. She could deal with a small mess for a little while. This wasn't her cell. Everything would be fine.

"Let's go to the bathroom." she half-suggested and half-pleaded. Away from this mess she was already itching to clean before it could really trigger a panic attack. "We need to take care of you."

Haymitch let her help him back on his feet but didn't immediately let her tug him to the bathroom.

"Katniss?" he asked, low enough not to startle anyone. "You're good?"

The girl nodded and tightened her hold on Peeta who was still mostly unresponsive. Haymitch watched them for a few more seconds and then nodded back.

He humored Effie when she told him to sit on the closed lid of the toilets so she could clean his face. The nosebleed stopped by itself but his nose still looked red and swollen. She didn't think it was broken but it had come close. The rest didn't look pretty. By the time she was done sticking Band-Aids where she could, his left eye had swollen shut.

Her lips were wobbling and her hands were shaking too much. She didn't protest when he tugged until she was sitting on his lap, even though she wasn't sure how sanitary it was to cuddle on closed toilets. He held her while she shook through the beginning of a panic attack, running a hand up and down her back. It wasn't as effective a way to ground her as the little kisses he usually pressed against her neck or his nuzzling of her hair but his face was in no shape to take up that sort of activities.

"I'm so sorry." she breathed out. "You got hurt. I am so sorry…"

"Ain't your fault." he sighed. "Ain't the boy's fault either." He playfully tugged on a curly strand of hair, let it bounce back in place. "How about we try not to fight in front of the kids for a while, yeah? 'Cause let me tell you your boy has a mean right hook."

She chuckled despite it all and buried her face in his neck. "I am sorry I was being so annoying at the Hob. I just wanted…" She stopped and shrugged. "I am sorry."

"I was being an ass too." he admitted. "I just really wanted a glass. Makes me…"

He didn't finish but she didn't need him to. "I know. I am also sorry about the cigarettes. I did say I would quit. But I only smoke when I am really upset, you know. It is not an everyday thing. It does count a little as quitting."

He snorted and then groaned in pain.

"Alright." He let out another sigh. "You feel good enough to go back? We've got to face the music at some point."

She licked her lips, pressed her face harder against his neck. "The kitchen is a mess."

His hand traveled up, coiled around her nape. He was well aware of why she was so obsessive with her cleaning nowadays.

"We're gonna fix it in no time." he promised, sounding confident enough. "Don't think the table's broken so that's a win. We just need the vacuum and a mop for the rest. It's all gonna be fine."

Peeta was on his feet when they walked back to the kitchen and the children had already started cleaning up.

"Haymitch…" the boy cringed as soon as he saw him.

"It's alright." Haymitch immediately cut him off. "Not your fault, kid."

It took a long time for Peeta to relax and accept Haymitch really wasn't angry with him though. Effie was exhausted by the time the kitchen was back to right and Haymitch looked like he wanted to collapse too. She fetched him a painkiller pill and stared him down until he swallowed it. She knew his face must have hurt.

They shared bowls of tin soup that really wasn't good and the children soon excused themselves to go home, just as tired as they were.

Later, Effie curled up against Haymitch's side on the couch, staring at a show on TV without really watching. Today hadn't been a good day.

It hadn't been the first bad day and it wouldn't be the last but…

It was hard on bad days to remember the good ones made them worth it.