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I always tell myself it would have been fine if Lenore Dove had moved on with someone else, had it been me that died all those years ago. I know in my heart she would feel the same–– but I still hate myself every time I cheat on her.
She’s absolutely nothing like Lenore Dove. Her extravagant looks, her Capitol sensibilities, her carefully preened body. When I would lay with Lenore Dove, I would find my fingers tumbling through the lush curly forest of her body hair. Effie Trinket is as smooth as a doll in a merchant's window. In a way, it’s this stark difference that keeps my guilt about stepping out on Lenore Dove from consuming me. This is nothing like what I have with my girl. Absolutely nothing.
It can't even begin to compare, so how could it ever matter?
I was only seventeen when we started our affair. After everything I'd been through, I was naturally drawn to her during the Games. I was already going pretty heavy on the liquor by my seventeenth birthday, and her presence forced me to confront the fact that I was otherwise utterly alone. At the end of the day, she was the only one who was there for me by the time I turned seventeen. It was my own fault, too. How depressing is that?
“Please?” I had slurred–– wasted, and too pathetic to ignore. I was twirling a lock of her tall, garish updo, one that bounced along her newly enhanced cheekbone. I hated the way it looked, but I couldn’t hate her. “It’s my birthday.”
In her defense, she did hesitate.
“You're drunk, Haymitch. You're young. You don't know what you want.”
“Yeah I do,” I had muttered, “but I can't just kill myself, so humor me, will you?”
“I beg your pardon? Don't you know my reputation’s already on thin ice?!”
“Yeah, so why should you care?” I had reached out with shaky hands to caress the sides of her hips. She was warm, even when she acted cold. “I get it, I wouldn't want me either. S’why I'm begging, you know?”
“Ugh…” Effie had rolled her eyes, which then settled on my sad, grey ones. Like in the Games, I could use my rugged Seam look to my advantage. Here was the Capitol’s beloved rascal, falling at her feet. I was drunk, as always, but she was a little drunk too.
She hadn’t stopped me from brushing my fingers against her hips, from fingering the waistband of her layered tulle skirt. She’d just inhaled, trying to keep from shaking. “You're so tightly wound, Haymitch, it's a miracle you don't unravel, drinking as much as you do.”
“Whatever… I just can't keep thinking about them dying,” I’d said. Had I meant that year's tributes, or everyone I had lost the year prior? All of them, I think. “It’s hard enough back home, but here? It feels impossible. Come on. Just let me touch you. Lemme forget.”
Effie had let out a sharp breath as my hands wandered up her hips, then her waist, then the sides of her bra. “Oh, I shouldn't be doing this… but fine. Just not in public. And don't expect this to be a regular thing.”
Every year, we come back for more.
She later admitted that her own sex life hadn't been going remarkably well–– that for some reason, nobody in the Capitol ever seemed to notice her in that way. When I asked, she could think of a hundred reasons why. She doesn't wear enough makeup. Her clothes don't stand out enough. Her clothes stand out too much. She waited too long to get filler injections. I don’t understand any of it, and I don’t really care. It all just seems so pointless. Besides, I can actually think of a lot of reasons to like Effie–– believe it or not.
On the other hand, I’m not sure why she tolerates me after all this time. Sure, she seems to enjoy it when we sleep together, but I still can't understand what appeal a drunken slob like me has to her. I had figured I'd have driven her off by now, like I drove off all the others. Maybe she’s just the same as me. She might try to justify the whole thing, but it’s still a dark time of year, even for her. I know her well enough by now to see her mask crack whenever the reality of the tributes’ demise truly dawns on her. Each year, it becomes clearer and clearer that I had been a fluke. An exception to the rule, and the rule is simple:
District 12 tributes will die.
Over the years, I grew drunker and more difficult to handle. Effie grew increasingly frustrated with me, and ached more and more for something better than this. Still, we are fond of each other. We are stuck with each other. Another year, another Reaping.
Another Haymitch trying to forget that it's his birthday.
This year's tributes are a particularly sad looking pair. The boy, eighteen and sullen––clearly Seam––whose mining career had ended as quickly as it began. He had suffered an accident earlier that year that left his hands permanently marred, so he doesn’t seem to stand a chance. The girl, a merchant’s daughter, only twelve, with her hair tied in plaits. An outlier. Always unfortunate.
I don’t need to say anything, the night of the reaping, for Effie to know what I think of them.
“Too close for comfort, is it?” Effie prods tenderly.
I stare at her, liquor in hand, and say nothing.
“The children, I mean. That boy… well goodness, Haymitch, if you hadn't gotten so old, I would have sworn he was you… Isn't it a blessing, Haymitch? To be getting old? You're thirty-five today! Isn't that amazing?”
I stare at her. I say nothing.
“And the girl…” Effie continues. “She must remind you of poor Maysilee Donner…”
I scoff. That gets a rise out of me. “Are you kidding? She's nothing like Maysilee.”
Effie seems to ponder that. “I mean, sure, she certainly lacks the attitude, but the looks are there. That blonde hair of hers.”
“No, no, you've got it all wrong. Maysilee would never be caught dead wearing braids.” I insist, gulping down some of my booze. “It's Louella she reminds me of.”
“Oh…”
Effie had never met the real Louella, only the Capitol’s false idol, sent to her doom. It’s a topic that even she doesn't know how to brighten up.
“Still, you're not wrong…” I admit. “I kind of hate them. It’s like looking in a mirror.”
I hate looking at my reflection. It’s a shame, really. I used to think I was pretty handsome. Maybe not anything to write home about, but I liked the way I looked. Despite aging, I didn’t look all that different, but the liquor was starting to take its toll on my physique. Even before that, I had stopped looking at myself once I could no longer find the glimmer in my own dark eyes.
Effie nods in that strange sympathetic way that always feels alien to me. I can never understand how she can still support the games despite everything she knows about them. Despite everything she knows about me. And she does know me, whether she likes it or not. I’m sure it puts a damper on her idealism about the Capitol–– the way she understands me.
Suddenly, I hang my head in my hand and let out a defeated moan–– almost dropping my liquor glass, but hanging on. “I can’t fucking take it anymore, Ef. It’s been almost twenty years of this shit! When does it end? When does it fucking end?”
Effie bites her lip, probably holding back from calling out my foul language. “It can’t end, Haymitch. It’s the price we pay for the rebellion.”
“We?” I scoff, shaking my head and rolling my eyes. I still can’t believe her gung-ho attitude towards the Games— even now.
“Some of us more than others,” says Effie, “but yes. We are in this together.”
No. We're not.
I want to say it, but I can't bring myself to. I think back to the way she ran to check on me the moment I was due to be sent into the arena. The way she looked out for me afterwards, with respect, even when they dangled me from a cage like an animal. Even after all these years, and all of my behavior, she allies with me at every turn. It just doesn't seem accurate to summarize it like that.
“You and I are not the same.” That's what I settle on. Again, that sympathetic nod from Effie.
“You're right, there. But that's why I like you, despite yourself, Haymitch… and I wish it could be any other way.”
“Hm…” I shrug, turning my attention back to my drink. “Cheers to that, Trinket.”
Effie raises her wine glass and clinks it against mine. I down the remaining white liquor and set the glass down, looking at Effie pointedly.
“Well, whaddya say, Ef? Wanna help me forget?”
“Now, now, Haymitch,” Effie smirks, “That's an enticing preposition. What makes you deserve that? After all, the point is to remember.”
I don't love the way she brings her propaganda into the bedroom, but it has become painfully clear that I respond with arousal to degradation and domination. Neither of us care to unpack any of it. We never feel like we have to unpack it, when fear and submission are written on the tin.
“Mmm…” I slide like a snake off my chair, crawling over to where Effie sits and planting a kiss on her hand. “I don't deserve it, ma’am. I just want you.”
“Wow,” she says, turning my head over to cradle it in her palm. “So convincing.”
She strokes my hair and I feel my stubble catch against her satin glove.
“What will you do for me, then? What shall you give me in return?”
“Mmmm… anything.”
“Anything whaaaat?” Effie sings, holding my head against the side of her thigh.
“Anything, mistress,” I say. It’s a familiar play. I know my lines.
“Much better, darling.” She opens her thighs and draws her knee-length skirt up to her waist, revealing pastel pink lace panties. As I have a dozen times before, I let her guide my face between them, where she presses it against her crotch and lets me breathe in the scent of her for a few moments.
It is in that moment that I really start to shut my brain off. With the liquor swirling in my head, and a guiding hand to tell me what to do, that’s when oblivion really finds me during the Games. It’s a fickle mistress, that oblivion–– and Effie Trinket knows it.
“You’ve always been such a good boy, Haymitch,” coos Effie, once again stroking my hair. I offer nothing but a soft hum, but I’m pleased to hear her say it. I don’t consider myself good, and I figure I stopped being a boy around the same time I lost my boyish good looks… but I appreciate it when she lies to me.
I feel the warmth of her touch and let it consume me. She pulls me gently by the hair so that I have to look at her and clicks her tongue incredulously. “Oh, Haymitch, you are in desperate need of a haircut. Whatever will I do with you?”
I shrug, clinging to her knees and pushing them further apart, silently begging for permission to taste her. But that’s not enough. It’s never enough. She has to humiliate me. She pushes my head away and closes her thighs. I groan in annoyance and she gives me a light smack on the cheek. There’s a strange tenderness in the way she hurts me, or rather, the way she doesn’t. She knows she doesn’t have to in order to control me, and it’s clear to me she doesn’t really want to.
Me? I could care less either way.
“Oh no, dear,” says Effie. “You know better than to do anything without asking permission, yes?”
“Yes, mistress.” I say. “I’m sorry, mistress.”
“Mm. Apology accepted. Now, what was it you wanted to say to me..?”
I take a deep, shaky, breath. When I’m drunk, that’s the only time I can talk to her like this. But even when I’m drunk, it’s hard to ask for what I want. “I want to taste you, mistress.”
“Do you, now?” Effie’s sing-song voice would drive me crazy, if I weren’t driven crazier by the taste of her. I nod. She grins, and there’s a touch of lipstick on her teeth. It’s kinda cute. For a moment, I think about kissing her, but I dismiss the thought immediately. That would be a step too far. That would hurt Lenore Dove.
An arrow pierces my heart.
Lenore Dove!
In a flash, everything seems so hopeless. It doesn’t matter. Doing this with Effie doesn’t make me forget her. It doesn’t make me forget anything. Here in Effie’s control, I feel like I lose track of who I am… but I’d do anything not to lose her. I just can’t bear to lose anyone else.
I must have spaced out for a while, because Effie beckons me back into the moment with another half-baked slap. “Well, do you?”
“Yes, I do,” I stammer, but I’m not convincing. I don’t even remember what she said.
Effie gives me another played-up scowl. She’s better at this game than I am. Maybe that’s why she’s winning. She says, “I’m sorry, what’s that?”
I simply blink, clueless. I’ve entirely lost track of what it is she wants me to say. Just another thing I can’t do right, I guess.
With a sigh, she throws me a rope. “That’s ‘yes mistress’, to you…”
“Oh!” I cling to her knees again, gazing at her as though I was genuinely sorry. “Of course, mistress. I’m sorry, mistress I just… got distracted.”
“Here, darling,” Effie says, holding out her glass of wine towards my lips. “This should help you.”
Gladly, I take the wine she offers me, and with a few deep gulps, I feel my mind reset again. I feel myself retreat from my thoughts and return to the moment. This time, the gratitude in my eyes is genuine. I couldn’t fake it if I tried.
“Thank you, Effie.”
She doesn’t bother to correct me.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” She opens her thighs and gestures downward.
I don’t hesitate. I tear her lacy panties down and dive for her cunt like a rabid animal, but she stops me again. I groan.
“Slowly, darling… take your time with it.”
I nod, starting to slowly caress her bare vulva with my tongue, planting kisses all around as I do so. The strange feeling of her waxed box never gets any less weird to me, but I love the way it twitches and quivers under my touch all the same.
“Ahh, that's a good boy, Haymitch~!”
Her praise fuels me and I focus my attention on her inner lips, tonguing and sucking on her perfectly shaped labia. Sometimes I wonder if she got any surgery down there, but whether she did or not, her pussy is perfect.
When I can’t take it any longer, I tease her clit and she starts to moan. I grab her by the hips to get her right where I want her, and she responds by grinding into my mouth and breathing heavily. Yeah, I think I waited long enough.
I don’t think she’d put up with me if I didn’t have a trick or two up my sleeve, so I get her going real fast. In no time, she’s gasping and quivering against my lips. I don’t stop–– I won’t stop until she cums for me.
“Oh, Haymitch,” she moans through gritted teeth, and I can feel her calves flex along my back as she curls her toes. I know she’s getting close when that happens, so I double down, sucking hard on her clit and listening as her gasps and moans get louder and louder before cutting out completely with a squeak. I slow down as her body shudders with orgasm, and as soon as she’s pulled it together I pull away just enough to give her a somewhat flustered look.
Even after all this time, she knows what it means: did I do a good job?
“That was amazing, darling,” she purrs, ruffling my hair, the edges of which have become greasy with sweat and her cum. She doesn’t seem to notice or care, which is proof enough that she’s satisfied. I hum contentedly and lean my head against her thigh again as she says my favorite words: “You deserve a reward.”
I jump to attention when I hear it, or at least, a part of me does. It’s miraculous just how much she can get me going despite all the liquor I drink, but even if I couldn’t get it up, I’m sure they have all kinds of stuff for that in the Capitol.
“Thank you, mistress…” I barely remember to say as she stands up and snaps her fingers, beckoning me to follow her. I do, on my knees, knowing that’s what she wants, and she leads me to the chair I’d been sitting on and orders me to do so again.
When I’m seated, she drops her tulle skirt to the floor and sizes me up from head to toe.
“Beg for it,” she says.
“Please fuck me, mistress,” I plead. I’m serious, too.
“Mmm, I don’t know… I’m not convinced.”
“Please,” I say with real, deepening desperation. “Please fuck me.”
I can’t take it any longer. If she keeps me begging, I’m going to lose it.
She doesn’t.
“Take off your pants.”
I do so, and she’s straddling me faster than I could say “please, mistress.” Slick from the orgasm I gave her, she slides onto my hard cock with ease and moans deeply as I fill her. Fuck, it’s immediately too good for me to handle. It takes every bit of my self-control not to cum right then and there. I must have exhaled sharply, because she’s giggling as she starts slowly gyrating her hips on top of me.
“Does that feel good?” She purrs, grabbing at my hair again.
“Yes, mistress,” I gasp, hands gripping the seat of the chair on either side.
Her legs squeeze against me as tight as a cobra. Her moans are like music. She rides me for as long as I can take it, and she can tell before I can that I’m about to explode. She whispers in my ear, “Cum for me, Haymitch.”
I do, and she giggles again as I empty my load inside her. Like it’s funny to her. There’s always this awkward surge of terror when she lets me breed her, but I figure she’s gotta be on some fancy form of contraception. If not, I surely would have knocked her up already. Unless I’m the one that’s broken.
She’s smiling at me. Expectant.
“Thank you,” I manage, and I mean it, but I don’t smile. She nods and hops off my lap, plucking her skirt and panties off the floor and putting them back on as though nothing had even happened. She takes a moment to straighten her wig and checks her makeup with a small mirror. Where did that even come from?
“You’re welcome, Haymitch. I know it means a lot to you. It means a lot to me too.”
I want to deny it, but I can’t, so I simply scoff. “Whatever you say, Ef.”
“We’ll talk tomorrow, okay?” She pours herself a heavy glass of wine to bring to bed with her. I do the same, and we finish the bottle.
There’s a part of me that wants her to stay. To lie next to her. To hold her. To cry. But that, like kissing her, would be crossing the line.
Stay. I want to tell her.
“I don’t want to think about tomorrow,” is what I say instead.
“I know, Haymitch. But soon enough, it’ll be over. And then everything can go back to normal, okay?”
I nod. But somehow, that feels worse.