#tiffwips

Ma left a voicemail.” Chaff murmurs, still working at Haymitch's thigh. “Wants me to come to dinner.” For a moment, Haymitch doesn't snap out of their blear of pleasure; they're still well conjoined at groin's hilt, and the stuffing of love brims heavy enough. “Your Ma,” He rasps back, eyelashes fluttering shut at the thought. A spool of tape plays behind his eyes, reminding him of how his own went out. Blood splatters his brain in kind. “Mmm. You might as well go with me. Have something to eat. They're not ugly people, H.” Chaff proposes, soft in whisper as he moves in again — that heavy drum of unfinished love pounding again. It's a hard deal to refuse, when it's Chaff. A man who has sweetened him so kindly already, been with him for the past eight years even if they've started loving on each other now. “I believe you. I just don't know if I'd be ready.” Haymitch sighs now, trying to visualize his pleasure as more than just a feeling. He doesn't look down at where they're at — he knows it's the falling anvil to end it if he focuses. Every other kind of body passes him by, but Chaff waits. A presence too full and sturdy in the notion of him, the one thing that begs his aching will to break.

He doesn't understand how the kids sleep as well as they do. Past twelve at night, and they curl up asleep before the thought even makes rounds in his mind — their porch lights off, street gone quiet. Haymitch suspects that the girl's mother might be awake — maybe not. His neighbors have a habit of surpassing him in terms of how well they recover and cope from the Games; scars accepted and coexisting with the scum of their trauma. He falls out of line at the notion. Ripper's been low on stock, and no matter how much he bargains with her about it, liquor making is a long and grueling process. He's the drinker, not the brewer. But since vices have made a stew of him, and anger all the more so, some sort of remedy is stirring within — barely curing the sickness. The honest truth about alcoholism is this; it'll always be a learning process. No matter how far you're into it, and he's got seven years on him now, something will always trip you up. Be it the withdrawal, the jaundice, the headaches, the unsightly purge. You can go your whole life being a good person, and the drink will be ready to fuck you up. Haymitch already think it has. When the kids moved in, he didn't think to tell them about how bad the withdrawal gets. Suppose they just understood that it was there. A part of his ailment, to put it simply. Less of a scare than it could be. He told them he could handle it alone, churn out the shit. But never in his twenty-four years, puke-covered and bloody, did he think it would lead to this. Poor judgements have been made, and consequences reaped in the eye of primal thinking. His idiocy looks him in the face; between bright poached eyes and a gaping, mutt-like mouth.