#fame thing

Alecto

Effie was annoyed long before she reached the restaurant. She didn’t want to do this. Not only didn’t she want to do this but the restaurant she hadn’t wanted to argue on was really out of her way, well away from the center of the city she preferred and, from outside, honestly looked like a hole in the wall. It was mostly offices around there, very… middle-class.

That was why, she reminded herself, she had sworn to herself years ago that she would stop agreeing to those stupid blind dates her mother set her up on. Because it never worked, it was always painfully boring when it wasn’t plain awkward and she hated every minute of it.

And yet every time she found herself agreeing to them if only to make the look of disappointment vanish from her face.

Effie felt uncomfortable as she watched Haymitch toss their clothes in the open suitcase on the bed with a mix of relief, anger and relish. She didn’t have it in her to protest the way he was treating her dresses and delicate lingerie because…

Because all she could do was sit on the expensive Capitol hotel’s bed and feel… guilty.

She was very familiar with the notion. She wasn’t sure when she had started feeling guilty, really… Some times after her first year as an escort, probably. And she had never truly stopped. Even now, ten years after the war, she still felt guilty about her part in it all and, given the circumstances…

“Can you get me my glasses?” Haymitch asked, still with that weird mix of gleeful triumph and fury.

She glanced at the reading glasses abandoned on the bedside table with the book he was currently reading but she didn’t reach for them. Her hand wouldn’t move.

Paper Rings

It was late morning by the time she heard activity through the kitchen’s open window and, by her own account, she had been lying on the back porch’s swing seat for at least two hours.

That was how Haymitch found her, on her back on the swing seat, her bare feet tucked under a throw pillow, a cigarette – her third that morning, the evidence of her smoking plain to see in the ashtray on the floor next to her – wedged between two fingers, the mug of tea that she had hoped would be soothing forgotten somewhere near the pile of brand new gossip rags and glossy classier magazines she had bought on her very early excursion to town.

Truly, when she had woken up a little after dawn, she should have just rolled over and woke him up so they could enjoy a lie-in together. Instead, she had slipped out of bed, following that burst of energy that hit her most mornings – bursts of energy she had missed in the immediate aftermath of the war when it had been all apathy and exhaustion – and she had gone downstairs to fix herself some breakfast. That was when she had realized they were almost out of everything and had jotted down a grocery list while drinking a cup of coffee, thinking she might as well take care of that before Haymitch woke up so he could cook her breakfast when he did.

Mention It All

Haymitch hated the losing Districts interviews.

It was a filler program when nothing much was happening inside the arena and they generally had little to do with the Games themselves – unless no victor or escort had juicy gossip to dissect, then it was all about analyzing tributes’ actions but, in this city, there was always juicy gossip. The interviews were live and Caesar was always in fine form and Haymitch had lost track of the conversation because they had been talking in circles for what felt like hours.

Well, Caesar and Effie had been talking in circles for hours. It was too fucking early in the morning, Haymitch hadn’t expected to be dragged out of bed so early. He was still drunk from the night before and from the healthy amount of moonshine he had slipped in his orange juice while his escort was puzzling over what he should wear. Their appearance was a last minute decision apparently, and the sobering pills she had forced him to swallow hadn’t kicked in yet. His head felt like it would burst but given that it was currently filled with cotton, he wasn’t sure how that could hurt.

Mostly, he had been sitting on the settee next to Effie since the interview had started, staring into the audience, progressively slouching until a well-placed accidental nudge of her pointy elbow reminded him to sit straighter. They had done the slouching-nudging routine at least ten times by then.

Prompt: Could you write something please where effie and lyssa are (on a rare occasion) getting along well for some reason and being vaguely sistery during the games?? Maybe they’re back at the penthouse one night and haymitch walks in on them hanging out or something? I love her as an OC a lot! I’d love to see more of her :)

Prompt: Omg, speaking of prompts, I don’t know if you want to take it but I was just remembering how Effie is always the one writing the speeches and how often her ability for writing seems to be used in your fics and I just imagined a Effie Trinket writing romance novels for the capitol (under a pen name maybe?) and Haymitch finding out and realizing that all her lead male characters have names that starts with an H OR characteristics he recognizes as his (and also, the *COCONUTS* scenes are theirs too), so, ya, I don’t know if you did one like this yet, but if you didn’t and you want to do it, go ahead, I would love to read that!

Prompt: This is one of my favorites. I like the ones where he's a little mean to her. And has to apologize. Can you do one where she over hears the victors talking about capitals being easy or s***. Mentioning Effie in particular. Haymitch doesn't defend maybe evens comments. Knowing it's not so. She leaves not wanting to face them. But he follows and has to say sorry.