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The first time she had Haymitch in her bathroom was quite early on in their relationship. It was incredibly inappropriate, but she had to learn very soon after his Games that propriety was not something Haymitch payed attention to.
She’d found him passed out at home the morning of his Victory Tour, a knife in his hand while sleeping. It had been a horrifying sight - one she would’ve never expected. She had heard about the terrible accidents that had killed his family and his girlfriend, so she had assumed he would be distraught and sad. She hadn’t expected him to be so utterly lost and his new home to be so utterly disgusting.
She wasn’t even officially his escort, but she still tried to keep him away from any alcohol as soon as it had become clear that he liked to start drinking as early as breakfast. Which wouldn’t do when he was expected to give his speeches in the districts at noon.
She had told him it was a matter of respect to honor the noble sacrifice the tributes of the other districts had made for Panem. He had snapped at her, but something must have stuck, because from then on, he only started drinking in the afternoon on the days they spent in the districts.
That was until they arrived in Four. He knew what was coming, which tributes they were honoring. She had written it down for him and she always whispered their names to him before he went on stage. She wasn’t sure what happened in Four, but he froze halfway through the speech. She could see his hands shaking and the next moment she had taken a glass of water - never mind that he already had one on the low table beside him - and hurried toward him. She’d put a hand on his shoulder and he had looked at her like he was back in the arena.
As she’s put the water onto the table, she’d whispered to him, “Positive attitude, remember.”
He’d swallowed, but he was broken out of his stupor and she gave him an encouraging smile.
She’d lost track of him on the train in the afternoon. He hadn’t shown up for dinner and Plutarch had told her to let him be. She’d been preoccupied with Prosie and Vitus, anyway, who were shocked and overwhelmed by everything they saw in the districts. It was not that she wasn’t taken aback by the poverty and hostility she saw, by how much Plutarch had to spin the angle for television. But she had always suspected that it could not be easy for the districts and she knew enough people in television business to know that huge shows never ran without interference.
Much later, when she had sent Prosie and Vitus to bed and Plutarch was working on his video material and she was taking off her make-up, Haymitch had stumbled into her compartment. She could tell from the fact he’d swayed on his feet and the way his eyes couldn’t focus that he was incredibly drunk.
“’s not my room,” he’d slurred when he noticed her presence. He’d slumped against the dresser anyway, knocking over a vase that had been placed upon it.
She had put down her washcloth. “No, it is mine.”
“Huh,” he made, his head lolling forward. “‘m gonna be sick.”
“Oh - no, no, no!” She’d hurried over, taken him by the arms and maneuvered him to her bathroom. They had made it there just in time before he started vomiting.
That was how he’d ended up on her bathroom floor.
Apparently he hadn’t eaten very much either, because soon he was merely retching and heaving, his hands trembling against the cold tiles. It broke her heart how terribly pained he looked.
She knelt down next to him and gently rubbed his back, when he leaned his forehead against the toilet. “It’s okay,” she murmured. “It’s going to be okay, Haymitch.”
He only made a strangled sound.
When she was sure that he wasn’t going to throw up any more, at least for the moment, she pulled on his arm to get him away from the toilet. He complied, his body moving like an oversized doll. He leaned his back against the bathtub, staring at the ceiling.
The last time she had to clean up vomit it had been her own after her first party at university. It had been unpleasant and embarrassing until she had seen the state of the house when she’d snuck out at dawn. People had done a lot worse than throwing up in a sink and they certainly hadn’t cleaned up after themselves. Surely her classmate’s parents couldn’t have been happy when they’d returned from their vacation.
She wiped down the toilet with some papertowels and pulled the flush. Haymitch was still sitting on the bathroom floor, looking as if he was contemplating his whole life. She got him a bottle of water and wet her washcloth to wipe down his face. He grumbled and clumsily reached for her arm, but she was faster.
“Drink,” she ordered, unscrewing the bottle for him and pushing it in his hands.
“You said no drinks. Gotta decide…” he slurred, but he took a few swigs anyway.
“I said no alcohol,” she corrected. “Which you obviously didn’t listen to.”
“You’re not my Ma, don’t gotta listen to you,” he muttered. “My Ma’s dead.”
She halted, sighing. Then she sat down next to him on the bathroom floor, leaning against the bathtub.
“I know,” she whispered. “I’m terribly sorry for your loss, Haymitch.”
She really was. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to lose Prosie and her parents the same night. The thought alone was horrifying and she understood that he had a difficult time dealing with it. She only feared that drowning it in alcohol wasn’t going to help the way he hoped.
“Not your fault,” he slurred. “I was stupid.”
“You’re not stupid! I think you are very smart.”
He shook his head, which meant he was rolling the back of it against the tub from one side to the other very slowly, as if he had to focus on the motion. “Lenore Dove was smart. She was so clever, could never keep up with her.” His tone was becoming more of whine now and she wondered whether alcohol even did what he wanted it to when he was an emotional drunk, apparently.
“Lenore Dove, she was your girlfriend?”
“Mh-mh.”
“What a nice name. Like the bird.”
“No, like the colour,” he said. He had his eyes closed now. “She loved her colours.”
She felt like expressing her condolences again, because what else could she tell him? It was terrible that he had lost so much in such a short time. She didn’t have to, though, since he started talking again. Telling her about how Lenore Dove would play music and sing and dance, how she loved poems and books and how smart and beautiful she had been. At some point his head came to rest on her shoulder while he described in great details how she had traded and sown colourful fabrics into her dress.
It was sweet, really. She didn’t think she’d ever been so in love with someone that she’d memorised their clothes or favorite song for them. It was heartbreaking, too, knowing that he was now stuck with the memories of it all, when he was obviously so very desperate to share them.
“D’you have a boyfriend… or something?”
She had fallen into a zone of listening to his ramblings and the sudden question abruptly pulled her out of it. Had she been at another university party and hadn’t he just spent half an hour talking about the girl he loved, she’d have feared he was trying to see if she was available, which would’ve been even more inappropriate than his presence in her bathroom. It took her a moment to figure out that he was merely drunk and speaking anything that came to his mind.
“No,” she said, then she thought better of it. “I mean, yes… I think.”
He lifted his head from her shoulder and stared at her in disbelief. “How can you not know that?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s not that serious. I don’t even know if I like her that much, you know? And now I’ve got this job… You know Plutarch says he suspects Drusilla won’t return at all and they might offer me the position permanently.”
She could see very clearly on his face that he did not know at all.
“How can you be with someone you don’t like?”
She couldn’t help but laugh a little at how utterly incredulous he sounded. “You’re sweet,” she replied because she didn’t know how to explain it to him and he probably wouldn’t remember in the morning, anyway.
He shook his head again. “Think you should be with someone you like.”
“I’ll try and keep that in mind. Now, come. You need to go to bed.”
He grumbled when she pulled him to his feet by his arms, but he didn’t object.
***
She was counting the blue tiles that lined the shower, so that she wouldn’t start counting seconds. She felt the hard wall against her back, uncomfortable and secure at the same time, but at least the rug they were sitting on was soft and fluffy and pleasant beneath her fingers that had dug into it.
“What do you do if you’re…?” Haymitch asked carefully from beside her. She sighed, stopped counting the tiles and took the bottle of wine from his hand to take a swig from it.
“I’d have an abortion, of course.” She drank a little more of his wine for good measure.
There was no way that she was having a baby now. She was only twenty-five and she had just broken up with Elagabalus and she didn’t know the first thing about children under twelve. She didn’t even know if she wanted to have children at all, but certainly not now and certainly not with that ludicrous man. She shouldn’t have let Prosie convince her to go out with him in the first place. After all, even Haymitch seemed to care more about her than Elagabalus ever did, proven by the fact that it was him sitting with her on the bathroom floor waiting for the silly test to give its verdict.
Haymitch remained silent. He probably didn’t know what to say. She didn’t blame him. He was only twenty and this wasn’t even his problem and she was very certain that he had never been confronted with such a situation before. He was only here because he was a truly decent man.
From the day she’d noticed she was late, more than a week already, she had been more concerned than she wanted to be. Inconveniently it had been the first day of training and while she had tried to reason that it surely was because of her stressful job and lack of a proper meal schedule, she couldn’t help the thought it could be something else slipping in.
It had made her tense and impolite at times, which she severely regretted and Haymitch had noticed rather quickly. They had gone a few days of him asking what was up and her assuring him she was just fine, when she had finally snapped at him after a first long day of the Games during which their girl tribute had died in the bloodbath.
“I think I might be pregnant! Will you please stop asking now!”
She had only realized what she’d yelled at him when his eyes had widened in surprise. That clearly was not what he had expected. And she hadn’t meant to tell him. It was incredibly unprofessional and inappropriate and embarrassing and she just wanted the ground to swallow her.
She had cleared her throat and levelled her voice. “I’m sorry. That is none of your concern, of course. Just - please don’t tell anyone.”
He’d shake his head while he was still staring at her. “I won’t,” he’d promised.
He hadn’t, not as far as she knew at least. But a few days later, he had knocked on her door. When she’d opened he had handed her a small neutral bag and inside she found a pregnancy test. “I don’t know a lot about this stuff, so I asked an Avox and she brought me this…” he rubbed his neck, then met her eyes. “I just think you should know. Even if the Games are on and you don’t have time to worry about it - at least you should know. Might be all worked up about nothing.”
But what if she didn’t want to know? What if she wanted to live a little longer with the privilege of convincing herself that she most definitely could not be pregnant. She hesitated, turning the bag and its contents over and over in her hands. Perhaps he had noticed, since next he offered, “I could… help you?” He awkwardly pushed a hand through his hair. “I really got no idea how this works.”
That had almost made her laugh if she hadn’t been so close to crying from the deluge of thoughts that were washing over her. “Perhaps you could sit with me while I wait for the result? That would be… very kind.”
He’d nodded. “Sure.”
And so he did and so, they ended up on her bathroom floor again. It was even more inappropriate this time. It most definitely wasn’t part of any professional relationship. Most of her friends wouldn’t have made the effort, if she was perfectly honest, even though they had a lot more to experience with such things than poor Haymitch. For a moment she wondered if he really was her closest friend and if she had shocked him into silence by saying she’d terminate a pregnancy, if it turned out real.
“Isn’t it dangerous?” he asked.
She was startled out of her thoughts by his question and what came out of her mouth was not very eloquent. “What?”
“Abortion,” he clarified, taking back the bottle for another swig. “I think women die from it in Twelve.”
She turned her head to look at him. He was being serious, she could see it in his set jaw and the tension around his eyes. She had never heard of anyone dying from an abortion. She had heard of women who died in childbirth, though.
“How? It’s a minor medical procedure.”
“I don’t know. I think I heard people - in town talk about it.” She got a feeling that in town meant something else, but she had no capacity to worry about it.
“That sounds so awful!” Was it something that could happen, that she’d simply never heard of? She smacked his arm. “Why are you telling me such a thing?!”
She picked up the bottle as he held up his hands in defense.
“I don’t know! I guess, I just want you to not die?”
She rolled her eyes, even though it was sweet that he was genuinely concerned about her. It was just such a ridiculous thought. And she didn’t even know whether she was pregnant at all. “I am not going to die.”
“No, you’re not. ‘Cause your not pregnant.” He held up the test that had laid between them. The next moment his brows furrowed. “I think… you said blue was negative, right?”
She grabbed the test from his hand and stared at it. He was right, she wasn’t pregnant! Her heart flared with relief and the next moment she threw her arms around his neck, laughing.
Haymitch patted her back. “Congratulations,” he said, a smirk on his face as she pulled back.
She grinned back at him. It was a terribly odd situation, quite the opposite of professional, but she appreciated it very much that he had sat with her and that she could share her relief with him.
“Thank you very much for doing this with me.”
He only shrugged, taking back his bottle and mock-toasting her.
***
She found Haymitch in her bathtub. He was not having a bath, even though it wouldn’t have hurt. There was no water in the tub. Instead Haymitch, his arms bandaged, a bottle of amber liquor in hand, lay in it staring at the wall that was changing it’s canvas by the minute.
“What are you doing?”
Haymitch didn’t look up. “What’s it look like, princess? Drinking,” he said and as if to demonstrate, he raised the bottle to his lips.
“I can see that. Why are you drinking in my bathroom?”
“Didn’t want the cameras.”
She wasn’t convinced there were no cameras in her bathroom, a fact she usually pushed at the far back of her mind. But it was the place most likely to not have too many, he was correct about that. That didn’t make his behavior less concerning. He was prone to mood swings and sometimes outrageous ideas, but she had never before found him drinking alone in her bathtub. Just like she had never before found him in a puddle of blood like she’d done yesterday.
Only thinking about it made her heartrate quicken uncomfortably, accompanied by an unpleasant pain in her chest. She had always hated seeing him in pain, just as she hated seeing anyone in pain. But he’d seemed to detoriate more and more in recent years. With each year he drank more, talked less, gave up on their tributes earlier. She knew, deep down he was still the kind, gentle boy she’d first met, the clever man that had become her friend and later her lover. But there was a sharper edge about him, a darkness that followed him, swallowed him sometimes and that year, she was scared it was taking over completely.
He huffed when he noticed the concerned look on her face. “Don’t give me that look,” he scoffed.
“What else am I supposed to do?” she asked. She wished he would talk to her. Tell her how she could make him feel better, tell her what he needed to not be a danger to himself.
He only shrugged, as if it was none of his concern. “Go away.”
“You are in my bathroom!” Exasperation washed over her, but it could not push away her concern. “I’m worried about you, Haymitch,” she told him earnestly.
He rolled his eyes and pulled down the sleeves of his shirt over the bandages. “I told you it was a stupid accident.”
She raised an eyebrow. He had told her. She just wasn’t sure she believed it.
“Look, if I’d wanted to kill myself, I would’ve done it twenty years ago. And I would’ve been smarter than this,” he said, taking another swig from his bottle. As if it was nothing. As if they weren’t talking about his life. It would’ve made her angry, hadn’t she been so scared by the detachment in his voice.
Infuriatingly, her eyes were burning with tears as she reached for his hand. “Tell me what’s going on, please.”
Something twisted on his face before he drowned it in more alcohol. His fingers threaded through hers, though, and he sighed. “Nothing,” he said. “It’s just - twenty years…”
“It has been a long time,” she agreed.
“Yeah. Too many dead children.”
“We will have a victor someday. I’m sure of it,” she tried to sound optimistic, even though it was hard to believe seeing how weak and starved and scared Twelve’s children usually were. After twenty years she had to admit she had difficulties believing it could ever be different, too.
“Don’t know ‘bout that. Doesn’t make the others less dead, either.”
She was always worried about Haymitch, from his drinking to dangerous drunken rants to the nightmares and his complete lack of self-care. But she had never been seriously worried that he was giving up on… well, everything. Not that he seemed to have very many things in his life, but he was a Victor and somewhere in the past twenty years had he become her best friend, even if she would never admit that to anyone. Just like she would never admit that the thought of losing him made it so hard to breathe, that her chest hurt and she had to swallow against the tears that were welling up in her eyes again.
She shook her head to clear it and pulled off her heels, before slipping in with him. It wasn’t easy given the narrowness of her skirt and their limbs taking up most of the tub, but he moved his legs to make space for her and she leaned her back against the opposite end of the contraption to look at him.
“What’re you doing?” he asked.
She took the bottle from him and took a swig. The liquor burned unpleasantly in her throat, but it helped with the not-admitting.
“If you’re going to be drinking in my bathtub, you are not doing it alone.”
***
She knew that they would never be so lucky as to have two Victors again. Either Katniss or Peeta wouldn’t make it back home and she didn’t know how she was ever going to live with that fact, knowing she had drawn their names from the bowl.
Her mind was going in circles, over and over and over that moment. She hated herself for the second that she had considered saying Peeta’s name when she had read Haymitch’s on that terrible slip of paper. She hadn’t, because she loved the boy and she could never do that to him and she and Haymitch, they had spent twenty-five years trying to save their children. He would’ve volunteered, she knew that now, she should’ve predicted it, but up on the reaping stage she had been so concerned with keeping up an appropriate appearance that she hadn’t been able to think about it.
Now that they had both gotten a twelve in training, she couldn’t help the feeling that something was not right. That perhaps Twelve was being targeted more than other districts in this horrible Quarter Quell. She could see why it was happening and it was grossly unfair - none of what was happening in the districts was the children’s fault, after all. They had just wanted to survive.
She hastily wiped the tears from her face when the door swung open. Haymitch let it fall shut behind him, then took her wrist. “Let’s have a shower,” he said. Somehow he managed to make it sound casual and like an order at the same time.
He had pulled her into the bathroom before she could even think about it.
“Excuse me?”
He pulled his shirt over his head without unbuttoning it properly and started on his belt. When he noticed that she wasn’t moving, he sighed. He pulled her against him and started taking off her wig.
“It’s just a shower, princess,” he murmured. He tipped her chin up so that she met his gaze. There was something intense in it that she had seldomly seen. She knew hunger on his face and this was not it, yet it seemed equally urgent.
She turned her back to him. “Zipper, please.”
He readily opened her dress and finished undressing himself. Then he turned on the shower to a setting that was a little too harsh for her taste, but at least he added the lavender diffusion that she loved when she joined him.
She must have looked ridiculous with her make up all smudged in the water, but Haymitch didn’t seem to mind. He cupped her cheeks and kissed her.
“You trust me?” he muttered.
It was a silly question. As if she didn’t trust him more than any other person in the world. She put her hands over his. “Of course. What is going on?”
He kissed her neck and up her cheek, effectively pulling her closer against him. “Things are going to change,” he whispered near in her ear. She almost didn’t hear it over the shower.
“What?” She pulled back to look at him properly. He met her eyes, pushed her hair back from her forehead and some make up from her cheeks.
“You need to be smart now, Effie.”
She had no idea what he was talking about.
Except that she did. While she felt him running his fingers through her hair, nudging her closer, pressing kisses to her cheek and neck and shoulder, it dawned on her that no microphones, if they were present, could be picking up on their low conversation over the stream of water. If there was surveillance in her bathroom this would seem intimate, not conspiratorial.
She thought back on the times that Plutarch had given her cryptic messages to pass on to Haymitch under the guise of a shared love for poetry. She thought about slips of paper she had passed between Victors, about the Quarter Quell, about the children and the berries. She thought about how Plutarch had accidentally shown her unaired footage from Haymitch’s Games, about forcefields and explosives and chocolate, about Mags’ stroke and Annie’s madness, about Cinna and the girl on fire, about the shooting in Eleven on the Victory Tour.
“Haymitch…” she whispered, her fingers digging into his shoulders. He met her eyes again. “What do I do?”
He wrapped his arms around her waist and leaned his forehead against hers. “When the time comes, trust me. Even if it seems crazy. Can you do that, princess?”
It was her job to make plans. To be in control. She already hated train delays and unreliable stylists. She wasn’t good at waiting around, seeing what would happen. She was good at playing along, but she did not like it.
She nodded slowly. “Yes,” she promised. After all, she had always known who he was.
***
She was vomiting. She felt a cold surface against her cheek. Someone was holding her. Brushing her hair back.
What was happening? Her body was screaming with hurt. Her throat was sore, her stomach contracted. She threw up again and someone turned her. Her cheek left the cold surface.
She was limb. Her body didn’t obey. But it hurt. Everything hurt.
Her head came to rest on someone’s shoulder like a child. She knew this scent.
Haymitch, she tried to say his name, but her mouth didn’t work. She only mumbled. Why didn’t - ? Oh. The pills. The pain. The memories. Hands wrapped around her neck, squeezing, squeezing, squeezing until she thought she was going to suffocate while someone was inside her and -
She clawed at the nearest thing she could find, winding away from Haymitch’s shoulder until she was retching again. The medication made it stop, but not that night. The doctors had said two maximum at a time. How many had it been? How many fit into her hand?
“It’s okay,” Haymitch muttered, his arms wrapped tightly around her again. Safe. “It’ll be okay.”
Was he crying? There were tears on her cheeks and her forehead. Why were they both crying…?
***
“The car’s here in fifteen minutes,” Haymitch told her from his place on the edge of the bathtub where he was lounging. She turned and saw him smirking at her.
She didn’t usually take so long to get ready that he chose to sit in the bathroom to chat with her, anymore, but today was different. It was the first time in five years that there would be cameras around her again. The first time that people outside of Twelve would see her. She couldn’t shake the flutter of nerves that made her hand shake while she was applying blush to her cheeks.
Haymitch had told her he’d had a talk with Plutarch and would threaten violence to anyone with a camera that was bothering them or the children at Plutarch’s five year anniversary celebration of the end of the war. He was the sweetest man she knew, but she wouldn’t put it past him to punch a journalist, so she had told him it was fine. Now, looking into the mirror, seeing the scars on her cleavage, shoulders and arms that were exposed by the dress she’d found so lovely with it’s iridescent colors and sheer inlays, she wasn’t so sure anymore.
She brushed the white lines on her chest through the fabric. Perhaps this had been a terrible idea. She’d chosen the dress because she was sick of feeling like her body didn’t belong to her. She was sick of that cell and the men in it still controlling what she ate, where she went, what she wore. She was just starting to feel like herself again. A new version, certainly, but herself nonetheless. And if she was going to be scrutinised by the public again, she’d wanted it to be in something she found pretty. She hadn’t thought it through…
Haymitch’s arms wrapped around her and he took her hand that had started pulling at the dress, gently holding it in place inside his trembling one. “You look perfect,” he assured her, meeting her eyes in the mirror.
“I don’t know…” she leaned her head against his and closed her eyes for a brief moment.
“I do,” said Haymitch. “You love that dress.”
“Perhaps not on me.”
“You should. I love that dress on you.”
She huffed. “You have to say that.”
“I don’t have to do anything, princess. You look beautiful. But if it gets too much, I’ll give you my jacket. I will take it off at some point anyway.”
She looked at the midnight blue coat she had made him wear that worked handsomely with his gray eyes and the champagne colored suspenders but would go terribly with her dress. She had worn more terrible compositions of his clothing, though, at a time when she couldn’t bear her own garments.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
He pressed a kiss to her temple. “Anytime, princess.”