13.
Haymitch woke up to lazy kissing. His asleep self must have reacted instinctively because when he became aware of his surroundings, Effie was half on top of him, her mouth slowly torturing him. He wrapped his arms around her, his hands clenching the soft material of her tank top.
"Clothes." he mumbled against her lips, his voice rough from sleep. "I don't like clothes. Why are you wearing clothes?"
"Because I'm clean." she chuckled, between kisses. "Which is more than I can say about you or my bed."
He finally opened his eyes, noticing her wet hair pinned high on her head and the lack of dried blood and dirt on her body. She had taken a shower. "You could have waited for me." he smirked, pulling her closer to him but she resisted.
"Don't take this the wrong way but you stink." She wrinkled her nose.
He let go of her, stretching his aching limbs while she sat next to him on top of the covers. "And yet you were the one kissing me, sweetheart." He let his eyes trail down the dark red top to her hips hugging jeans and the texan heeled boots. He didn't know how she always managed to look so good in the middle of an apocalypse when most of the other girls had stopped caring a long time ago.
"I tried shaking you but it didn't work." she grinned. "You are like Sleeping Beauty, you need to be kissed awake."
He thought about taking offense and then shrugged. As long as it involved her and kissing, he couldn't complain. "Does that make you my princess in shining armor?" he snorted.
"Perhaps." Her smiled dimmed slightly and she ran a hand on his arm. "I am not doing a very good job at protecting you, I'm afraid."
He looked down with a frown to see her fingers barely touching the myriad of bruises on his arm, there were a few on his chest too and, just like that, the disaster of the day before came back to hit him full force. The raid into town, the run-in with mutts and zombies, her hysterical weeping once he had managed to get back to the girls, her confessions… He controlled the urge to recoil from her touch. The world ended and I love you. See? It's straightforward enough in my opinion. Maybe it was for her, but for him, it was damn complicated. Love was a can of worms he would rather keep far, far away from him.
"Good thing you were with Johanna." he told her when her hand stilled on the biggest bruise. "It was hell getting out of there." And it would have been worse if he had had to drag her ass out of there as well. It was unlikely they'd have survived.
"I should have been with you all the same." she whispered, lowering her eyes. "We are a team, aren't we?"
She sounded so uncertain he wondered if there was a double meaning to her words. If there was he pretended not to understand it. "Yeah. Yeah, we are."
She forced a smile on her lips and he watched as she shook off the sadness and worry that had threatened to take hold of her again. "Alright." Her voice became so cheerful it almost hurt his ears. "Now kindly remove yourself from my bed so I can change it. I don't fancy sleeping in zombies remains, blood and sweat tainted sheets again."
"It's the apocalypse, sweetheart." he reminded her but still rolled out of her bed to grab the clothes he had thrown haphazardly away the night before.
"As I've told you many times, an apocalypse is no reason to let yourself go." She started undressing the bed before he even had his boxers on. He rolled his eyes but didn't argue the point, preferring to steal another kiss before heading to the bathroom and the shower awaiting him there. She had left clean clothes for him on the side of the sink. It was all very domestic and it made his stomach churn in unpleasant ways.
He took a long shower, he knew at least one of the others would probably complain about it but he didn't particularly care, too focused on piecing together Effie's odd behavior. She had seemed back to her old self that morning so it was possible that her strange conduct of late had been due to her feelings for him. Perhaps she had been afraid of telling him or of him not reciprocating and that had brought her to try and put some distances… And yet… He sensed that there was something else underneath it all. Something she wasn't telling him. Something she was hiding.
She wasn't in her room when he finally came out of the bathroom so he went down and tried the kitchen. There were only Gale and Peeta in there but their conversation ceased as soon as they saw him and both boys looked at him with tangible awkwardness before making their excuses and fleeing the room. Strange. Very, very strange. He got himself some coffee and took the mug outside, intending to spike it with some of the booze left in his car. He wasn't even halfway to the truck before Katniss called out to him.
"About yesterday…" she said, as soon as she was close enough.
"I told you not to worry about that, sweetheart." he sighed. "I told you to go. There was nothing you could do."
Katniss didn't look particularly assuaged by that, her face crumpled in guilt. "But you have to understand…" she insisted. "If I had known about the baby…"
"The baby?" he interrupted, almost losing his grip on the mug. He eyed her more closely but couldn't see any sign of a baby bump or something like that and yet… Oh, a baby would be a disaster. A baby would mean a useless mouth to feed, a screaming alarm that would alert every zombie and mutt in the vicinity and more generally a helpless thing they would probably ultimately fail to protect. A baby, in short, was all they didn't need. He couldn't believe Katniss had been so stupid. And she looked relatively unmoved too. If it had been him he would have been screaming in despair. "Which boy do I kill?" he growled. He had warned both Gale and Peeta to keep it in their pants as far as Katniss was concerned or to, at least, be smart about it. He had even shoved condoms at them when Effie wasn't looking and all that for naught?
"Oh, it wasn't them." She winced and Haymitch almost had a small heart attack. If it wasn't Peeta or Gale and since it obviously wasn't him, that only left… Finnick. That sly, little… "It was Jo."
His mind came to an abrupt stop. "Jo." he repeated. "I'm pretty sure Johanna can't have done this. She doesn't have the right plumbing." Or maybe she had and she had been really sneaky about it but in that case, Haymitch really needed to go and lie down because the whole world would go upside down.
"Jo told me and I told Prim." Katniss explained. "Prim told Gale who told Peeta. I'm just guessing but I think Annie knew from the start and that means Finnick must too. I just wanted to tell you that Prim and I will be there for the baby. We're family as far as I'm concerned."
He nodded and then shook his head. "You're not making any sense at all, sweetheart. Are you pregnant or not?"
Although pregnant women often were irrational, weren't they? So maybe that was her being irrational.
Katniss' eyes widened and then darted around as if she was looking for a way to escape. Haymitch couldn't blame her, he was desperate to get to his car and have some of the whiskey he almost died to bring back.
"I'm sorry… Everybody knows, I thought… I…" Katniss stammered. "Haymitch, I…"
He frowned. "Out with it, girl." He had a very bad feeling all of a sudden.
Katniss was saved by Johanna stomping out of the barn, obviously in one of her mood. She stopped next to them and sneered at Haymitch. "So, congratulations are in order." she spat with so much irony, Haymitch could almost taste it. "Should we call you Daddy now?"
"Jo." Katniss cut in, shaking her head frantically. "He doesn't know."
"What do I don't know?" he snapped. Lack of alcohol and that stupid feeling of foreboding was making his hands quiver, the coffee splotched one way and then another.
Johanna froze and then started laughing. It wasn't a pretty laugh, it was mean and a bit out of control. Katniss only made a face.
"I think you should talk to Effie." Katniss suggested, gently easing the mug from his unsteady grip.
"What about Effie?" he barked. Oh, but it wasn't that hard to figure it out… He was quite clever after all. Katniss' slip-up about the baby, Johanna asking if she should call him Daddy, the fact that Effie was so obviously hiding something from him and her weird behavior in the past week…
"You knocked her up." Johanna was blunt as she always was. "Almost got us killed for her fucking pregnancy test yesterday."
"Jo!" Katniss snapped, glaring at her friend.
"You're lying." he accused at once, choosing to visit the pretty land of denial. It was better than giving in to the urgent need to sit down on the damp ground, in the middle of the yard. "You are lying."
Johanna shrugged. "Easy to prove. She has a small green bag, the tests are in there." And just like that she walked away, leaving him alone with Katniss and a crushing sense of dread.
"Haymitch, are you alright?" the girl asked with caution. She placed the mug down and put a hand on his arm but he shook it off and stalked towards the house. He didn't pause when Annie asked him what was wrong, he went straight for Effie's bedroom. The bed was made but she wasn't there. The green bag Johanna had mentioned was propped against the wall, near the wardrobe. He could remember how she hadn't wanted to be parted from it the night before.
He grabbed it, turned it over and spilled all its contents on the bed. Several things tumbled down : a few bottles of nail polish, some creams and lotions, feminine products he pretended not to see, a few boxes of condoms and four boxes of pregnancy tests.
His legs gave under him with the sudden realization that it was true. He sat heavily on the bed and pressed his hands against his face in a futile attempt at controlling the panic that crept from his stomach to every fiber of his being. She was pregnant. She was going to have a baby. She was going to have his baby. She was pregnant and that could mean only one thing : the baby would die and so would she. Who even had babies in the middle of a zombies apocalypse? Who? No one, that was whom. Because it was stupid and Haymitch was everything but that.
He badly needed a drink but he was too stunned to move. He didn't know how long he stayed there, if it was minutes or hours but at some point, he sensed her presence on the doorstep and let his hands fall away from his face. She looked equally mad and unsure. It was a long shot from that morning kissing and grinning and he desperately, desperately wanted to go back in time and enjoy ignorance a little longer.
"I talked to Katniss." she sighed. "I am not pregnant. I never even thought I could be pregnant. We've been too careful."
Her words didn't even calm him a little. "Then what's this?" he snapped, waving at the tests. "Were you trying to get pregnant?"
She took a step back as if he had physically slapped her. She looked hurt. In Haymitch's book, she didn't get to look hurt when he was the one having a panic attack because she was hiding pregnancy tests in her bedroom. If someone got to be hurt and upset, it was him.
"Of course not." she huffed. "Those weren't for me."
"Yeah? Who were they for then?" he snorted. "They're in your room, in your bag and you were the one who risked her life to get them. That was why you wanted to go on that raid, wasn't it? You wanted a pregnancy test. Why?" He didn't like the picture it was conjuring up. He didn't want to think she was planning on getting pregnant to keep him with her but he didn't know what else to think. The day before, she had broken up with him only to tell him later that she loved him. If she really didn't have had a pregnancy scare then why on earth would she go and get herself in danger for a test she had no use for?
"I can't tell you that." She winced but then a flicker of irritation flashed on her face, she stood straighter. "And I shouldn't have to. I just told you I wasn't pregnant, that should be enough for you if you trust me."
"I don't trust you." he retorted. "I don't trust people who hid things."
She turned her head away. "I didn't hide anything you needed to know. It doesn't concern you."
"The hell it doesn't concern me!" he shouted loud enough that everybody in the house could probably hear him, slamming his hand on the bed in anger. "I'm the one you sleep with. If you're afraid of being pregnant, it concerns me. If you're trying to get pregnant because you think that way I would end up loving you back, it concerns me. If you…"
"Enough." she snapped and he fell silent because he had never meant for her to start crying but there were tears in her eyes and her voice cracked. "Listen to yourself. How can you even…" She breathed out slowly and shook her head. "Get out of my room, please."
"I want you to take one of those test." he heard himself say. He wasn't thinking that clearly but it was a good decision, he figured. He needed to know, one way or another. He needed to see.
"I am not pregnant." she hissed, folding her arms over her chest protectively. "I am not…"
"I don't care what you say, sweetheart." he sneered, handing her one of the box. "I will believe it when I see it."
She searched his eyes and then grabbed the box and stormed out in obvious anger. He followed her to the bathroom and stayed in front of the door while she did what she needed to do. He saw Prim peeking out of her own bedroom but a glare was enough to send the girl back to her own business. Less than two minutes later, Effie opened the door and put the empty box and a stick in his hands.
"I'm sure you can figure out how it works on your own." she told him coldly. "Don't presume to talk to me again. You are not welcome in my room either. Stay away from me."
He didn't even watch her leave, he quickly read the instruction on the box and went to sit on the edge of the bathtub. Haymitch was used to waiting, yet the next five minutes were probably the longest of his life. He added another minute of waiting just to be safe before he looked at the test. Negative. Relief surged through his veins and chased the panic away, leaving his mind a bit clearer.
Relief, in the end, was short lived.
He put the test and the box in the trash and shot out of the bathroom. She wasn't in the bedroom, he went down to the kitchen but Peeta was baking alone and did a very bad job at pretending he hadn't heard the fight, Annie was reading in the living-room and only glanced at him in obvious disapprobation as he passed by… Johanna was chopping wood, she hadn't seen Effie but she told him Gale and Katniss had gone hunting. Finnick was nowhere to be found…
He felt like an ass.
Those weren't for me, she had said. Then they were for someone else and it wasn't hard to guess for whom. Given their previous discussion, Katniss was obviously out, Prim was too young – because he could probably accept Katniss doing the kind of things necessary to get pregnant but Prim was still a baby and he would kill the boy who tried to approach her that way – and Johanna had never been with anyone since he had joined the group or at least he didn't think she had so she wasn't the logical answer. The logical answer had been very friendly with Effie as of late.
And he had accused Effie of trying to trap him when she was just trying to help a friend. Granted, she shouldn't have kept something like that from him or the rest of the group but…
He exhausted himself looking all over the farm for her, already imagining the worst and barely stopping long enough to take a swing of whiskey; he came back to the house in the late afternoon for torches and reinforcement only to find her sitting at the dining table with everybody else.
"Where were you?" he asked at the same time Katniss did.
They had started eating. Without him.
Effie ignored him superbly, presiding over dinner like she always did, the perfect hostess. "Prim, be a dear and go get the apple pie Peeta baked for dessert."
The kid jumped from the table at once and escaped to the kitchen, probably happy for the excuse to leave behind the odd tension that had crept in the room. Nobody was looking directly at him, they were all staring at their plates.
"I looked everywhere for you." Haymitch grumbled, ill-at-ease. "We need to talk. Come outside with me."
Effie's blue eyes finally settled on him but they were so cold, he couldn't help a wince.
"You will have to excuse me, I will pass." she said very plainly albeit with a fake polite smile. He hated the way she was addressing him like she was on stage, like she did with everybody else. She rarely acted like a stuck-up idiot with him.
"Oh, come on!" Johanna sighed. "Can I have one day without some sort of soap opera from you two? She's knocked up. It's done. Let's move on."
Effie's glare would have stopped an army. "I am not pregnant, Johanna. Kindly keep away from matters that don't concern you."
"She's not." Haymitch confirmed although if he interpreted her annoyed glance correctly, he should have remained silent.
Johanna rolled her eyes. "Then why are we still talking about that? Go make-up and leave us alone."
"Can't you ever shut up?" Katniss hissed.
"Language." Effie chided.
"And there she goes, thinking she's our mom again." Johanna sighed.
"I said shut up." Katniss insisted, half raising from her chair. Peeta grabbed her wrist while Gale put a restrictive hand on Johanna's arm. Both boys let go quickly enough faced with glares that could have stopped a zombie in its track. Finnick and Annie were very silent, Haymitch couldn't help but notice.
"And I said language." Effie snapped with an irritated cluck of her tongue. "Katniss, sit back down, you don't cause a scene at a dinner table. It's rude."
Katniss didn't seem particularly inclined to obey so Haymitch walked closer to Effie and pushed on the girl's shoulder on his way.
"We need to talk." he said again, lower, once he was close enough. "Come on."
"You don't order me around." Effie hissed with a glare of her own.
He couldn't help his irritated sigh. "You're insufferable, sweetheart."
"That's my line." she told him coldly but one look around was enough for her to realize everybody was listening to their conversation. He outstretched a hand as a peace offering of sort but she ignored it completely, stood up and led the way to the front porch. He followed her, what other choice did he have? There was a determination to her steps, an odd sort of assurance. She walked like a queen. She closed the front door behind him and folded her arms over her chest. "I'm listening but your speech better starts with a heartfelt apology."
"I don't do apologies." He made a face and leaned against the wall.
"Learn to." she spat flatly.
He rubbed a hand over his face, longing for a drink. "Look, sweetheart… I'm sorry, okay?"
"No, it's not particularly 'okay' as you say, but it's a start." she huffed, turning her head away from him. "I'm not the kind of girl who pretends to be pregnant or tries to get pregnant to keep a boyfriend. I wasn't before the world ended and I am certainly not now."
"I know." he offered quietly.
"And, for the record, I don't need that sort of disgusting tricks either." she scowled. "Men used to fight to date me. I could replace you in a second if I wanted to. You are nothing special after all, you're just the drunk guy who almost run me over with his sorry excuse of a truck."
It was a lie, of course, but he granted her the rant because he had been unfair to her. He took a step closer and was pained to see her flinch when he placed a hand on her arm. "And you're just the clown who crashes in my car."
"Am I?" She chuckled but it sounded sad and bitter.
"No." he breathed out slowly. "You're much more than that."
Still, she didn't look his way and it was too dark for him to see her face properly. He could feel her shaking slightly but he didn't know if it was the cold or…
"You hurt me." It was barely a whisper.
"I'm sorry." He was surprised by how quickly and how sincerely the words came out. He truly wasn't one for apologies. "The idea of you being… I lost it, sweetheart. I don't want kids. Didn't want them before, sure as hell don't want them now. They always die. Always."
He let go of her arm and started towards the car, cursing himself for even going there. The images were coming back. All those kids he hadn't managed to save when he was working for Snow, all those kids he had more or less helped killing… They usually weren't much older than Katniss, Peeta or Gale. He hadn't been much older either when he had first gotten the job. Their faces were seared on his eyelids, he could see them each time he closed his eyes, and that was his cross to bear. He got behind the wheel and grabbed the bottle he had left on the bench seat. He wasn't particularly surprised when she joined him in the truck. She remained silent while he gulped down whiskey like it was the remedy to his worst memories.
"I hated my life before the apocalypse." Effie confessed at some point and he couldn't help but lower his bottle to stare at her in surprise. She was always talking about how great it had all been, how beautiful the dresses were, how fashion was such a fantastic dream… She was always filling the silence with endless stories about how good it felt to be a show business star, the famous people she had met, the actors, the hot singers… During a particularly long and painful drive, she had told Prim all about photoshoots and modeling… "I was famous but just not that famous, you know? It's an everyday fight to simply exist, to not be forgotten… You're expected to love it, to appear grateful, to be happy for the cameras… And it was good, don't get me wrong. I love money. I love luxuries. I'm very good at smiling. But despite all that… My life was… absolutely meaningless."
He passed her the bottle. She made a face because whiskey wasn't her poison of choice but, still, she took a swing.
"And?" he snorted. "Did you find meaning in the middle of this shit, Princess?"
"I think so, yes." She hesitated before swallowing some more whiskey. "What have you found?"
He studied her profile. He was barely able to glimpse her feature in the darkness but he was sure her face was guarded. He almost wanted to say something very cheesy but very true : that he had found her which was a bit scary and also strangely good in all the right ways. He knew the words would never come out, though, so he didn't even try. He grabbed the whiskey back and shrugged. "Taylor Swift."
Her high pitch giggles filled the car. He smirked. He liked making her laugh for some reason. He liked making her happy.
It didn't last long though, her pensive mood kicked back quickly enough.
"The way you acted today… Does it have anything to do with what I told you yesterday?" she asked softly.
He contemplated lying but in the end he knew it would be easier to just tell the truth. "It didn't help but I can… deal with that. The idea of having a baby…" he shuddered. "Never ask that of me and we will be good. And don't hide that kind of things from me again if you don't want me to freak out, sweetheart. Even for… a friend." He glanced at her, hoping his meaning would get across but she wasn't looking at him. She was staring into nothing. "Effie?"
She startled and turned her head away, curling up on herself. "You said you didn't trust me."
He cupped her cheek forcing her to face him. "I trust you. I trust you enough to keep you near even if you…" Even then, he was unable to say it.
"Even if I love you." she finished for him quietly.
"Yeah, that." he lowered his eyes and cleared his throat. "I'm not good at that stuff. I don't want any of that stuff."
She frowned and gripped his wrist a bit more forcefully than necessary. "I don't understand. If you don't want it then just say it. Either we are all about sex or we are a couple but you need to make a decision, Haymitch, you can't keep me close and then say you don't want me. I am fine with either but I need to know."
He closed his eyes and let his head fall on the edge of the seatback, frustrated with himself and with her for not getting it. "I don't want to want you." It was pathetic. So, so very pathetic.
"Is that a Taylor Swift song?" she joked. He opened his eyes to see a teasing smile on her lips.
"Probably." he snorted.
She snatched the bottle from his hand and took a swing before settling against him like they did hundreds of time before on cold nights spent in the truck. Her head neatly tucked under his chin. He was happy to drink and let her fall asleep against him, he hoped the fight was over. He didn't have much experience with that kind of things.
"We all have a past." she whispered after some time. "Yours is darker than others, I grant you that, but you can't let it control you, Haymitch. It's over. That world is dead, we're never going back. You did bad things once, things you're not proud of, things that still haunts you… I understand that but…" She heaved out a sigh. "It's different now. You are not alone. You have me. You have Katniss and Peeta, Prim and Finnick, Johanna and Gale too. And you know Annie loves everybody. It doesn't matter if you want it or not, you have a family. Stop living in the past."
"I'm not sure I can do that." he confessed, taking another swing.
She grabbed the bottle, put the cap on and flung it on the back seat unceremoniously before snuggling up against him again. "I will help you."
She didn't do anything but cuddle with him however and he chuckled, wrapping his arms around her anyway. "Isn't that the part where you offer me pity sex, sweetheart?"
"We're sharing a moment." she argued, whacking his arm playfully. She stayed silent for a few seconds and then snickered. "Besides, after the stunt you pulled today, you won't get sex again without much groveling on your part."
Thanks to everyone for your comments! I really appreciate them =)