I Love You Despite Myself

I can't leave you...

Now they had to go to the party, to do their jobs; to get Peeta and Katniss as many sponsors as they could, so they might have some hope of getting out alive...

Haymitch stood in front of the mirror, adjusting his tie. Everything felt too tight, it restrained him and he hated that. Plus he looked stupid in all the fancy clothing that was given to him by the Capitol, there were too many layers and fancy frills, mutton dressed as lamb was an appropriate phrase in this case. He frowned at his reflection before concluding that there was nothing that could make this evening enjoyable....Except maybe that.

Effie walked in the room, fully dressed and ready to leave, she took one look at Haymitch and immediately walked over to him. As he mumbled something about why he hated going to parties, she untucked and then re-tucked, correctly this time, his shirt and took off his tie, picking a different, far more complimentary, one out of his closet and then knotted it neatly around his neck. She looked stunning, she had chosen to wear blue tonight, one of his favourite colours, with a light green wig atop her head. It was a fairly nice wig this time, not too big, and it looked radiant, shining against her peacock blue, layered dress that stopped at the knees. And there was a turquoise pendant hanging loosely around her thin neck, it made his fingers itch just to look at it. As she finished folding his collar down, he grabbed her fingers and kissed each one softly.

"Haymitch, stop it! You'll get glitter on your lips, and somehow I don't think that's a look that you want to be going for tonight." Effie let out a small laugh, his lips felt good, but she couldn't let him touch her face, it was covered in luminescent make-up, which looked very intense and if smudged, could take a long time to correct. But her lips were naked tonight, so she kissed him lightly on the nose, relishing in his reaction; she could turn him from a hard, rough man who didn't care about anything, to a blushing, stumbling-with-his-words man, with eyes for no one but her.

"Ugh, I really hate going to these stupid parties! Why can't we just stay here tonight?" Haymitch grumbled, he was on the verge of whining, but he thought that might make him look pathetic.

"Come on, we have to go and help the children! Katniss and Peeta are going to need all the help they can get! So let's go!" Effie put on a bright smile, took Haymitch's hand and pulled him out of the bedroom, into the living room.

"Okay sweetheart, calm down." He grinned knowingly at her. "We have to do our jobs, I know, and it feels like we have a duty to those kids now, if we don't help them, what use are we?"

They left separately, despite acknowledging their love for each other, they knew that if anyone else found out about it, they would probably never see each other again. The Capitol, especially Snow, weren't fans of people from the Districts marrying their beloved Capitol-raised children. Effie left first, it was a lot more plausible that she would be early to an event than Haymitch, who rarely turned up on time and if he did, it was against his own will. After she had exited the suite, Haymitch felt quite lonely, he hated the fact that his love for someone couldn't be shown in public, it was the first time in years that he had cared about anyone and he wanted nothing more than to tell other people of his new-found happiness. After about 10 minutes of just milling around, looking for something to do, he decided it would be okay to leave; so he grabbed his new coat, blue to match Effie, something that everyone else would think was a coincidence but he had secretly bought it to please her, and closed the door quietly and walked down to where a train was waiting for him.