Work Text:
They’ve been doing so well that Haymitch doesn’t notice for a long time.
It’s not easy at first. Having her in the house, sharing the space, learning to be more than just colleagues that sometimes have sex… It’s not easy to watch the dark bags under her eyes, the way she trembles when she thinks nobody is watching, the haunted look on her face when something startles her…
That part lasts months.
Months of him trying to coax her back to her former self. Months of him forgetting to drown himself in a bottle because there is something more important to do. Months of nightmares and panic attacks and tentative kisses that evolve into cautious cuddles that evolve into the two of them permanently sharing a bed. Months of rediscovery on either part.
But after those months, they find a routine and settle with it.
And Haymitch loves it.
He loves having breakfast with her in the mornings. He loves the distracted morning pecks to say hello, he likes the banter over coffee mugs, he likes the fact that she doesn’t get dressed before going down and that he can admire her figure in silky nightgowns and shorts in all the glory of sunlight.
He loves the way she always kisses him before leaving the house, even when it’s distracted, even when it’s dropped on his cheek rather than on his mouth, even when the children rolled their eyes behind them.
He loves having someone to cook for. He hasn’t bothered in a long time, not when he was still by himself but he learns to like it again, just like when he was still a child. It’s simple meals but since she can’t boil water to save her life, it’s necessary. He likes the way she beams when he tries a new dish and it’s actually good and she grins at him as if he has just done something amazing.
He loves watching her sketch. She can sketch at any hour of the day. She used to hide it but, after a while, she doesn’t bother anymore and he finds notepads and stray pieces of paper with half-thought dresses and suits and ball gowns everywhere. He doesn’t care much about fashion but he loves how passionate she can get about it. He loves the slight crease of her brow when she’s so focused on getting the lines of a dress right that she completely forgets he’s in the room.
He loves that she makes the house a home. He told her early on, when it became obvious the temporary stay would be of a permanent nature, that she is free to change what she wants. He isn’t sure what he expected but he didn’t expect for the house to feel so homey when she’s done – or mostly done because she always finds something else to do. They repaint the walls and he grumbles but secretly loves the new colors. They replace a few of the oldest pieces of furniture. They hang curtains and buy better lamps and a new soft plushy rug for the living-room… He loves the fact that the house his theirs now: his abandoned book on the armrest of the couch and her latest knitting project in a basket near the armchair.
He loves that she knits. It isn’t something he’s ever associated with her before the first time he saw her pick needles up. It’s something he always associated with the few old ladies in the Seam who could afford wool and enough time to work on sweaters and blankets. Effie doesn’t make knitting look old, she makes it look natural and she grins when he teases her about it, sometimes nudges his thigh with her foot before burying it under his leg to keep it warm.
He loves the bickering. It’s more banter and teasing than real attacks nowadays, exchanges of wits, words matches where points are counted but where no winner is ever called… The children don’t get it and often sigh and roll their eyes and wonder why they live together if they can’t go five minutes without arguing… Neither he nor Effie ever tell them that the arguing is what keeps the flame alive.
He loves the sex. The passionate aggressive trysts up against the walls are mostly a thing of the past, first because they’re not that young anymore and then because it took her a long time after the war to accept his touch. It’s not always all vanilla either, sweet and slow never was their style. But it’s less rough than it used to be and it’s somehow more meaningful and Haymitch always feels the connection right down to his bones.
He loves the fights he hates to have. He loves them because if the fights – the real ones, the ones that leave him gulping down a whole bottle and her slamming the bedroom door in tears – don’t happen anymore, he fears he will forget who they are, who they were. It’s too easy to lose themselves into this new life, into peace, but he doesn’t want to forget the Games either, he owes it to the dead. He loves that they still remember even when it would be so much easier to forget, as twisted as it is.
He loves how domestic they are even if he complains about it all the time. They have habits that are theirs and no one else’s. He knows her logic, knows the way her mind works, knows the strawberry jam will be kept in the kitchen cupboard for easy access even if the other jam jars are in the pantry… He knows her night routine, knows her morning routine, knows that she hides the few white strands of hair with hair dye even if she has never told him, knows her favorite perfume, knows her favorite song, knows her favorite position to fall asleep in, knows her as intimately as it is possible to know someone…
He loves her laugh. For a long time, during those first few months of tears and nightmares and fears, he hasn’t heard it at all. She faked a few chuckles not to worry the kids sometimes but she never really laughed, not like he loves. Now she does, freely and without restraint. He loves when she can’t control herself, when she tosses her head back and guffaws until her eyes are shining with happy tears. He loves how pink her cheeks get. He loves the sound. He loves how happy she looks.
He loves her body. Of course. Always. Even when she hates it, even when she rages at it, even when she covers the mirrors because she doesn’t want to look at herself anymore. He loves her hair, her breasts, her neck, her legs, her hands, her feet, the hidden treasures and the scars too. He loves the scars because one of them has to. Because she hates them and because, deep down, he hates them too. He hates that she has been hurt, he loves that she survived. He loves the scars because they’re a part of her now and there is nothing about her he cannot love.
He loves so many things about their new life together, he feels stupid when the realization finally comes that he simply loves her.
Of course, he loves her.
He’s known that a long time. When Plutarch Heavensbee told him they had been unable to find her and bring her to Thirteen. Longer than that even, maybe. But Haymitch, unlike her, has always been good at lying to himself, at denying things to himself.
Still, they’ve been living together for years when it finally comes to him. In the middle of the kitchen. He stands there, barefoot and bare-chested, clad only in sweatpants that are far too old, waiting for the coffee machine to be done and he watches her spread butter on a toast with the same method and precision she puts to everything. And it comes to him.
He waits for the terror to make his guts churn, waits for the inevitable fear that she will be torn from him, waits for the certainty that their life together will soon be reduced to ashes… He waits but the terror never comes, the fear never takes hold and the certainty is nothing else that a vague dread at the back of his mind.
They’ve been at peace long enough that maybe old wounds have started to heal.
“I love you.” he says and he surprises even himself because it’s one thing to realize it and it’s another to actually utter those words. He banned them from his vocabulary a long time ago, sneered and taunted her the only time she ever ventured to try and offer them before, always turns his head the other way when they catch him by surprise at the corner of a street or in the middle of a crowd. Other people aren’t as shy of telling each other how they feel.
The words slip from his lips though and they don’t burn, they don’t hurt, they don’t conjure an army of Peacekeepers that would put a bullet in her brain… They’re just words. A gift. An intent. A promise.
Maybe he should have waited and said it better because it has been a long time in coming. Maybe someone else would have made her a fancy dinner, bought her flowers and a ring, and put on a slow song. Maybe someone else wouldn’t have blurted it out in the middle of the kitchen while they’re having breakfast.
Effie looks up at him with a startled look on her face. Then the alarm fades and she smiles, places her toast down, stands up, brushes a kiss against his lips and then reaches past him to turn off the coffee machine that is overflowing. She grabs a cloth from under the sink, wipes the coffee that has spread on the counter, places his untouched mug with the dirty dishes and fixes him a new cup that she sticks in his hand with another kiss on his mouth.
“We should go to the market…” she hums once she’s sitting again. “We are low on groceries.”
Her voice is even, a little distracted but not hard like when she pretends not to be angry about something, not sharp like when she’s really furious or shaking like when she’s upset and she doesn’t want him to know. She’s… normal.
As if he hasn’t just dropped a bomb in the middle of their kitchen.
He waits a little, to see if she will offer the words back, if it’s just an oversight that she will correct in the middle of the grocery list she is quickly putting together, if I love you fits between tea and chocolate powder like it fits between an overflowing coffee machine and a buttered toast. Apparently, it doesn’t and Haymitch eventually sits down and adds his own requests to the list as if it was any other week.
He tries to forget it.
He can’t.
He’s always been a stubborn person. And his stubborn self cannot let it go. It’s not an ego thing but before he knows those words would have made her hysterical with joy and she barely smiled. He also finds he wants to hear the words back. It has been three decades since the last time someone whispered that to him.
“I love you.” he murmurs in her hair two days later as they are cuddling on the couch, slowly falling asleep to the low sound of the TV.
She turns around, buries her face in his neck and presses a kiss against his pulse point.
He waits but nothing comes.
“I love you.” he tries again, three days after that, when he sneaks under the shower with her. She’s very good at distracting him afterwards and he can’t swear to half of the things that have been said but he’s pretty sure she hasn’t offered the words back.
“I love you.” he declares firmly, stubbornly, with a touch of frustration, a week later, right in front of the kids. Both Katniss and Peeta freeze and stare at him with eyes wide as saucers. He thought that maybe if there were witnesses, she would have to… at least acknowledge the words but he rethinks the plan quickly because she simply smiles and kisses him and then leaves the house as she has always intended to do and he’s left with stunned kids and a bad case of burning cheeks.
When she comes back, he’s drunk. She purses her lips at him and takes care of him and, somehow, when he wakes up from that binge the next morning, he feels even worse.
Shame isn’t something he handles well. Rejection is perhaps even worse.
He avoids her. It’s not that difficult because the house is big and he has errands to run. He takes care of strengthening the geese pen most of the day and gruffly refuses to sit down when she says it’s dinner time. She goes to the kids’ alone and he ends up making himself a sandwich that he doesn’t dare wash down with too much alcohol.
He goes to bed before she can come home and hates himself for feeling so much like a sulking scorned wife.
Still, he pretends to sleep when she walks into the bedroom. He’s a little more sleepy by the time she slips into bed but the way she curls up behind him, her chest to his back, wakes him up immediately.
“Do not be angry with me.” she pleads.
Her hand travels down his stomach, feels for the waistband of his pants… It would be easy to let her sneak her fingers in there, to let her erase the hurt with sex… But that’s the old them not the new them and he catches her wrist before she can even start making him forget that’s not how they deal with things anymore.
“Ain’t angry.” he grumbles.
And he realizes he’s not. Not really. He’s confused and a little hurt. Worried too. Worried that maybe… Maybe she came here out of a lack of choices and she doesn’t love their life as much as he does. Maybe he’s blind and he sees what he wants to see. Maybe they’re not as happy as he thought they were.
“I cannot say it back.” she confesses.
It feels like a stab wound. Like she has just dug a knife in his chest, buried it to the hilt.
His throat closes and he’s vaguely nauseous. The fear is there now. The fear that he will lose everything for good. He doesn’t think he can go back to days without her. He doesn’t think he will survive.
“Okay.” he says quietly. He feels her relax behind him but the tension doesn’t leave his body. He grips her wrist tight still, knows his fingers will probably leave bruises… “Are you leaving?”
He asks because he has to. He can’t live in dread of finding the house empty one day. He needs to know, to prepare himself to the pain, to…
“Leaving?” she repeats, sounding confused. He knows her so well he knows she’s frowning just to the particular tone in her voice.
“That’s usually what happens when someone doesn’t love their… whatever anymore, sweetheart.” he mocks with more bitterness than he showed in a while. “They end up leaving.”
“Haymitch, no…” she gasps. “It isn’t that I… I… You know how I feel about you!”
“Thought I did, yeah.” he snorts. “But clearly I got it wrong ‘cause…”
“Haymitch.” She doesn’t raise her voice, doesn’t snap, but he falls silent anyway. There’s a crack in her voice. “You never used to say those words.”
“You know why.” he immediately retorts, defensive like always when the topic of his family and his girlfriend comes up. I love you is the last thing he said to them, the last thing they said to him. He never thought he would be able to say it again, hear it again without hearing them.
“Yes, I do.” she offers softly. “And I do not need them to know what you feel for me. You know what I feel for you. Can’t it be enough?”
He frowns and tries to turn around, to face her because the whole reasoning is weird, but she tightens her arm around his chest and tenses, so he stops trying. It’s not a conversation she wants to have face to face and that’s even weirder.
“You’ve never got any problem saying those words before.” he reminds her and then he winces. “If it’s because of the last time…”
He made fun of her. He was cruel, he knows that.
But the Games… Anyone loving him during that time would have ended up dead and… He’s not sure if he loved her or not already when she offered her heart on a plate for him to crush. He just knows a part of him was terrified sick and another desperately wanted to protect her. And protecting her involved destroying any idea she could have entertained of them being more than lovers.
“It’s not.” She sighs and he feels her breath roll between his shoulders. For a long time she remains silent and he thinks maybe that’s the end of this particular discussion. Then she speaks again and he’s sorry he even brought it up. “They twisted them against me. When…” She doesn’t need to say when, he knows. The war. “They knew I was in love with you. They made fun of me for it. They made me say it. They…” She presses her forehead between his shoulder blades. “I cannot say it anymore. It wouldn’t feel… It would feel less. Maybe in time…”
“Okay.” he says and, this time, he means it. He brushes his fingers up and down her forearm. “You could have just explained that the first time I said it. If it’s a trigger…”
He’s gotten very good at avoiding her triggers.
“It isn’t.” she denies. “I do not mind hearing it. I love hearing it. But it isn’t very fair for you, I will admit.”
She doesn’t fight him when he tries to turn around. They settle face to face, with her legs trapped between his like often. He brushes her blond hair back, trailing his knuckles down her jaw.
“You love me, sweetheart?” he asks point blank. When she frowns, he brushes his thumb against her lips. “Don’t say the words. Just say yes or no.”
“Yes.” she whispers without hesitation. “Of course, I do. Do you think I would put up with you if I didn’t?”
It is a joke mostly and he snorts.
“I love you.” He shrugs. “I don’t mind being the only one saying it until you can say it back.”
“Even if it takes a long time?” She sounds to vulnerable for his liking and he presses a kiss on her lips.
“Hey, it took me thirty years…” he chuckles, letting her tug him into another, deeper kiss. “Bet you can’t beat that.”