Haymitch stared pensively from the front steps of his own expansive porch to Katniss and Peeta's empty house. They had decided to go down to District 4 where they could visit Annie and her little one; Haymitch couldn't be bothered to travel farther than the entrance of District 6 nowadays.
Since getting sober after the rebellion, Haymitch had taken to home projects for fixing up. It wasn't much, but it kept his trembling hands and broken mind busy during those bad spells that still haunted him. After District 13's prohibition, he had already been through the worst of the withdrawals by the time the earth seemed to settle and he decided to see it through. He bit on the piece of hay he was chewing, eyeing the hole in one of the kids' stairs he'd no doubt be fixing up while they were away.
Life in the aftermath of the rebellion was peaceful, albeit a little lonely, but he'd never been one to dwell on that kind of stuff. The kids kept him busy with their occasional fighting or needing him at the bakery or because they broke something in their home or making him help garden. Plus, since rebuilding twelve, and under Paylor's fair rule, the district got a couple of interesting little shops. A bookshop, a little cafe, antique shop (antiques from the Capitol, though, because no one here wanted to give their stuff away), few good places to dine at. Of course, it wasn't a lot, and it luckily didn't impose on their land, but it was comforting knowing he could have some different places to get out.
The kids had noticed his isolation and finally suggested he ask Hazelle out. Their hopeful looks were shot down when he grumbled "last thing I need is a woman to drive me back to the bottle". When they suggested he get a pet, he had eyed them skeptically, thought on it a while. By the time he had his answer— which was hell no— they had bought him a fat little black lab pup.
Peeta had handmade the thing a plaid collar with the inscription "Bear" on it and had brought all of the essentials with them. For whatever reason, the chunky little thing had gravitated toward Haymitch, wagging his little tail excitedly as Haymitch scratch behind his ears.
"Bear, huh?" He had asked the puppy when alone with him. The little thing looked up at him with blissfully thoughtless eyes, his head cocked.
On that first day, Haymitch took the puppy outside and threw a ball, only for the puppy to get not even halfway and become distracted by a leaf. A damn leaf, pup wasn't much bigger than it, either.
Now, sitting on the porch, Haymitch called the pup out to come sit with him. He laughed as the puppy chased his tail, then tried unsuccessfully to teethe on Haymitch's coat.
"You sure are trouble, boy. You know that?"
The puppy looked up at him, his big eyes glittering.
"Don't act innocent." He said, leaning over and giving him a couple of kisses. He still had that puppy smell to him, clean and new to this world.
The puppy sat on his lap and fell asleep.
"Well, damn, I was supposed to go get to work." He said, feigning annoyance.
The puppy cooed in his sleep and Haymitch picked him up, gentle as can be, and placed him in his oversized dog bed back inside. Course, by that point, the pup had come to the conclusion that Haymitch stood up because he wanted to play. Thoughts of a nap were off as he went back to biting on just about everything, excitedly discovering new nooks and crannies at every turn. Life sure must be fascinating when you're brand new and everyone you know spoils you rotten.
By the time the puppy had finally gone to bed, Haymitch came to the decision he'd work on the kids' stairs tomorrow. They wouldn't be back for a while, anyways. He fell into one of his non-fiction books and was soon on the verge of sleep. These vulnerable moments when his mind cleared out of the present were really the only times he thought of his old life. Unless, of course, it was in the form of a heinous nightmare.
He allowed himself to think back to the games. That moment as he looked at his family and girl after being selected by some rainbow-colored woman named Acacius. Thought back to all those tributes, all the death and destruction that followed. He still never passed by the part of the Seam where his old house once stood, ramshackle and small as can be.
He remembered his girl that day. Her brown eyes made honey-colored by the sun. The way she watched him with tears in her eyes, her shaky hands covering his.
"Stay alive, Haymitch." She had whispered in that thick twelve accent of hers. The accents in twelve weren't so watered down back then. If you were from here and your clothes didn't give you away, your accent sure could. Nowadays, everyone is starting to sound the same.
Well, almost everybody.
He'd let his mind linger to the mentorship training. Being forced against his will, depressed and unresponsive for days. Putting in minimal effort after year five because he realized by that point it would be the same shit. Meet some petrified kids who had been plucked from their shotgun homes, dress them up and make them hopeful, watch them die in some of the worst ways possible. Go back to shoving the guilt deep down into the depths of your conscience until next May or, in his case, drink it away until everything was numb. Relive this hell over and over and over.
By his fifteenth year, a new escort would be brought in because Acacius had died off, simple as that. Haymitch was given, in his opinion, the arduous task of showing the new one around and getting to know her. He'd loathed the idea of a new escort, not wanting to share close quarters with someone new. As a result, he drank himself into oblivion the day she was to arrive.
At a quarter to 6, a shrill voice with a bizarre, old school Capitolian accent called, "Hello?"
He was passed out at the table, surrounded by about eight different types of liquor in a variety of decanters and expensive old-fashioned glasses.
"Excuse me?" She asked, shaking him.
"Excuse me? Mr. Abernathy?" She asked again, her voice possibly the most irritating thing he had ever had the displeasure of hearing.
When he looked up, he thought someone had spiked one of the decanters with a hallucinogen. A young woman, barely pushing her mid-twenties, looked down at him with the most freakish, clown outfit he had ever laid eyes on. He gave her an up and down, she was clad in a tight little get up made of purple feathers, purple high heels on her feet, and a huge feather in her updo.
"Haven't seen you since you were paintin' faces at a kids party." He said, wiping his eyes.
"I'm sorry?" She asked, wearing a pinched expression. Haymitch looked up, the girl would be real fuckable if she didn't look like she just crawled out of a zoo.
"I am Euphemia Trinket, but you can call me Effie, if you'd prefer. Although, most call me Euphemia. You must be Haymitch Abernathy. I must say, you are an incredibly courageous and inspiring victor to all of us in the Capitol. I am so very excited to be joining together in thi-"
"You got cue cards?" He asked, cutting her off. This girl was far too plucky and far too eager. That enthusiasm would be squashed sooner or later because it was one thing watching kids die as entertainment from the comfort of your parents' mansion, another to be the vessel that sent them to their deaths.
"However do you mean?"
"I mean… you reading off of something? Sounds scripted."
"You're quite rude." She rebuked, a tiny line forming between her eyebrows.
"Don't I know it. You mind passing me the gin? Weren't you supposed to be here in an hour 'n a half or something?" He asked, slurring.
"Well, I like to be early. I didn't see any harm in it."
"I see a lot of harm in it. Now I'm gonna go take a nap, sweetheart. Only wake me if the train is catching fire. And even then, make sure it's an inch or two from my chamber before knocking."
Effie looked at him as he downed the last drop of his gin, dumbfounded. Poor little rich girl, he thought as he stumbled to his bed.
As that year rolled on, him and his escort hadn't become much fonder of one another. They fought like hell most days, Effie once going so far as throwing his bottles at the wall in fury. All of them. He had to order more and wait in a cold sweat until morning to get them. He'd never hit a woman, not even blacked out, but that day he seriously considered it.
The first thing Haymitch had learned about his escort was she wasn't as ladylike as she let on in front of others. Certainly wasn't afraid to piss him off. When they weren't yelling, they certainly weren't communicating game strategies or working towards a common goal. They sat in silence, sometimes eyeing each other with so much hate it could spark a flame. Their tributes died from exposure that first year.
The next year, she came stomping in like a wild herd of elephants dressed like a ball of frills and pastels. He groaned as she sat across from him, that honeysuckle perfume she wore hitting his nose and throwing him back to the wild woods around Victor's Village. Would be pleasant if he didn't know it was worn on the pulse points of the most irritating girl in Panem.
"For you." She said, handing him a white cube.
He looked at the box, back at her, then picked up the box and shook it, putting it to his ear.
"What on earth are you doing?"
"Making sure you didn't put a couple of angry tracker jackers in here. Wouldn't put it past you, sweetheart." He jeered, finally opening the box and unwrapping the paper. Inside was a whiskey glass with mesmerizing, nearly translucent trees swirling around.
"I want us to have a good year, Haymitch." She whispered solemnly.
The two didn't have a good year tributes-wise, the kids didn't heed his warning about the cornucopia. They almost never did.
However, him and his escort were amicable enough that he was able to learn more about little Euphemia Trinket. She was born in February, sometime near Valentine's Day, to two parents who were rich enough to spoil their girl rotten. Effie had a god awful sweet tooth. Drank coffee instead of tea, despite it being customary to drink tea in the Capitol. She took naps nearly as much as him, and could be found passed out just about anywhere in her ridiculous clothes. She loved babies of any kind. Her favorite color was pink, big shocker there. She went to bed reading god awful horror books, actual shocker there. Talked his ear off when it was just them two, and it was just them two a lot, which made him start missing their stand off days when she wasn't talking at all.
As the years grew on, the two struck up a funny kind of friendship. They were finally able to sit together, could talk about the tributes when Haymitch wasn't passed out or too drunk to speak straight. Effie often took on his tasks and did them herself, not expecting a thing. Sometimes he'd wake up with a blanket around him and his area cleaned up, pain pills and water in front of him, and he knew by that lingering honeysuckle it could've been only one person. She could hold a pretty stimulating conversation and her actual voice wasn't even halfway as shrill as he initially thought. She was irritating, so irritating it was unbelievable, they still had their tiffs, but she wasn't a bad person.
Not even a little.
Haymitch opened his eyes and his fat little pup sat in front of him, whining.
"What are you doin', little man?"
Haymitch rubbed his face and opened his door so the puppy could go use the restroom. He shook his head when Bear found a blade of grass that seemed to be the most fascinating thing in all of Panem.
"Go potty, boy. Come on now." He begged, leaning against his door frame, half asleep. Despite Peeta putting flowers, lights, and plants up to their knees in the village, it sure could get a little eery after dark. You knew it was pretty bad when a grown man thought so.
Once inside, Bear whined until Haymitch brought him up into his own bed and was able to curl into a warm ball next to his pa. Haymitch watched the rise and fall of the pup's little body.
Naturally, he went back to Effie. It wasn't unusual for his mind to ruminate all the way to that strange woman. By the time Katniss and Peeta showed up and changed the games, the two had become what he would consider good friends. When he wasn't drunk, that is, which was often.
Haymitch had found he actually enjoyed her company. During the rest of the year leading up to the games, he missed that perfume and her awful clothes and stupid dramatics and the way she was able to give him something exponentially worse than a migraine by never shutting up. When in a group, she wasn't a complete chatter box, so he just assumed the woman saved it for him. He used to call her sometimes, then automatically regretted it when she kept him on the phone for two hours and only let him get in a few words if he was lucky.
Despite her pesky quirks, what caught his attention was her softness for others. The woman cared a lot. She loved hard, too hard. Her keen perception, her empathy, her self awareness that he had assumed she wholly lacked were all there tenfold. He had known and had relations with enough Capitolians to know that Effie was not like them, despite her wanting to think otherwise.
In all the years he had known her, she was nothing but a good friend to him. Defended him, spoke poorly of him only to his face, proudly walked with him down Capitol streets, made him feel safe for just being. He could cry thinking of that bizarre girl, that bizarre companionship they had struck up behind closed doors.
Then, of course, there was District 13 that had really sealed the closeness between them. Talking late into the night, trying to keep one another sane. When he was having withdrawal symptoms, he went to her empty room and she was ready for him with a cool rag and stories of her lavish childhood in spring.
He'd grasp her delicate little wrists, "I can't do it, Effie."
"You can. You can do it, Haymitch. We will be out of here shortly enough." She whispered in that reassuring voice of hers, kneeling down in front of him. She tried to hide it, but he could see that worry in her eyes.
One night, he had pulled her up on that small bunker bed, held her to him, took off her head wrap because he had seen her thick head of golden hair many times before and no one was in his room to make her feel embarrassed.
He breathed in the flowery scent of her hair, his sorry body trembling with anxiety, crown of his head wet with sweat, his stomach turning. Effie let him hold her all night. Neither of them got much sleep with him waking up every hour to vomit or scream from nightmares. He couldn't repay her for those nights, nothing would ever be enough.
"Talk to me, girl." He'd beg, anything to keep his mind off of the pain. He breathed slowly, clutching her soft stomach, his nose nestled into her hair.
"About what?" She whispered, barely audible.
"Effie, you can always come up with something any other day. Please, honey." He croaked.
"Hm. When I first met you, I nearly quit. I thought you were the biggest asshole around and I cried in my room by myself every night because I didn't realize it was going to be that bad."
He laughed at her shocking use of profanity, "I've got that effect on people… but I never thought I made you cry."
"All the time. Hardened me up for sure. I had never met someone quite as openly cruel as you."
"You had a pretty fiery tongue too, though. Put me in my place more times than I could count." He stammered, a weak smirk on his face.
"Someone needed to."
"And a hand made of steel. You remember when you punched me?" He asked, making her laugh. A chime of heaven to his ears.
"Yes, well, when you refer to someone as a stupid heifer, most would not appreciate it."
"I've been hit a few times, but that one damn near broke my nose. Have to commend you on that one. Didn't think you had it in you. You remember that time you threw me in that damn freezing cold shower before the games? Thought it was a peacekeeper with that brute force you had until you opened your mouth and called me every single curse word in the book. Woke up everyone in Panem with that one, Eff." He mumbled with a weak laugh, looking straight ahead at the empty bed across from them, lost in thought, lost in his own body.
"You deserved it. They needed sponsors."
Those times were some of the last they had together before Panem changed completely.
"I know." He whispered. He turned her to face him, eye to eye. He felt vulnerable under her prodding gaze, the way she was never afraid to meet his eyes. She had some of the prettiest, biggest, upturned almond-shaped eyes he had ever seen. Clearer than the waters in four, looking right through him. She didn't have an ounce of makeup on. Her eyebrows and lashes were dark, nearly black, her lips were full and rosy pink, her natural skin was lightly tinted with a healthy tan. Such a contrast to the person she was during the games.
"Why would you ever hide all of this, girl?" He asked softly, pushing her hair behind her ear. Analyzing every pretty feature of her natural face, a face that would undoubtedly make any man in twelve fall on their dirty, coal-riddled knees.
"I've been dressing the same since before I could walk. It would be strange to change now."
"Would love to see a fat little baby Effie in a giant purple wig and leopard dress."
She smiled, "I would never wear leopard."
His finger trailed over her eyebrows, down the bridge of her small, ball of a nose, the space between her lower lip and chin.
"Glad you're here, girl. Don't deserve it." He whispered weakly as the back of his finger caressed her pink cheek.
"You certainly do not, but I don't have anything better to do in this dreadful cave among these mole people."
He smiled, something akin to lovingly, she was ridiculous, "You're dramatic."
After a moment of basking in her beauty, he suddenly pulled her in and kissed her full lips softly, his mind able to let go of the pain of withdrawal for that one brief moment. She drew back, hit his shoulder, her eyes flashing with anger and confusion.
"What in Panem?!" She asked furiously, her lips downcast.
"Sorry." He said softly, heat rising to his face. She blinked, stunned, the same hand that hit him now grazing his arm. She went back in and kissed him again, a peck, another peck, a full kiss.
She had some of the sweetest lips he'd ever tasted. They didn't go far at all that night, just embracing each other's lips. He was used to being aggressive in the bedroom, kissing one second and picking women up and ruining them until neither could take it the next. But with her, he went slow and so very soft, afraid he might break her as his rough, calloused hands grazed her impossibly soft skin.
Eventually, she turned around and they fell back asleep. They never talked about it, but it kept happening in secret. It gave them a reprieve from the fear, the worry, the boredom, the uncertainty. When they heard rumors Katniss and Peeta died, they stayed up all night talking. Her in the opposite bunk, clad in his cardigan, watching him with those watery eyes. Her head cradled in her hands, her cheeks flushed. Seeing Effie cry was awful, and any of the very few who had seen it themselves could attest to it. Made situations so much worse for some reason; one of the saddest sights, this maniacally chipper woman crying.
However, when they found out the kids were alive, the excitement and relief had them beaming in his bunker, sharing one cup of coffee between the both of them. She would never drink after him before, and he didn't blame her, but this was a special occasion.
He eventually kissed her that night, too overcome with warmth and happiness to not act on it. One thing led to another and they made love for the first time.
He was so gentle with her, much more than she wanted him to be, his heart racing with so much fear that he was transported back to that meadow, a virgin touching a girl for the first time. He was mindful of her needs, afraid he'd make one slip up and the woman would never want to see him again. And she was the only woman he wanted to see again sexually, truth be told. The sex was seriously hot. The fact that it was sex with a woman he'd had complex romantic feelings toward for years made it absolutely perfect.
And, of course she was amazing, better than any drunken thought he'd had of her back in the train cars.
That night was the last they had seen of each other's bodies before the Capitol bombings.