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Haymitch stared at Katniss and gave her a fatalistic uncaring shrug, not moving one digit to help her.
“At least you’re gonna die doing what you love: walking into danger.” he declared.
There was a long silence around the table as they all studied the dice that commanded Katniss’ demise with a certain sense of finality. Hadn’t they know it would end like this from the very first game? Katniss was always rash and always too quick to rush into tricky situations.
Then again, Haymitch wasn’t sure how he had even ended up roped into playing a D&D game not once but weekly over the last few months.
Chance meeting, he figured.
He had been struggling with his sobriety and had been hanging out at a little bakery in town in the vague hope being around people would help him not cave to the thirst… It was Prim who had noticed him first and who had introduced herself – and the reluctant bigger wary girl who hadn’t been thrilled her twelve year-old sister was taking up friendship with a stranger. Prim being Prim, she had dragged him back to their table where they had been playing a weird role-play game with some other kids and, surprisingly, a couple of adults. He had only watched that first time but he had made so many sarcastic comments that by the end of it, not only had he completely forgotten he had been desperate for a drink but he had walked out with a custom designed character sheet.
People came and went from game to game, depending on schedules and the like, but over the months, the core party – or what he liked to think as the core party – had cemented, so it was usually the five of them nowadays with the occasional attendance of Cinna.
Was it entirely ridiculous for a grown man to be playing role-playing games with a twelve year-old, two sixteen year-olds and one very annoyingly cheerful bakery owner? Yeah, probably. But he wouldn’t have exchanged those Sunday afternoons at the bakery for anything.
“This is so bad I think you have to take everyone with you.” Prim giggled, wickedly delighted behind her little cardboard. Their Dungeon Master was the sweetest girl but put her in charge of a game and she became a cruel monster.
Peeta frowned, looking at his character sheet with regret. “If we all die, doesn’t that mean we have to start from scratch with new characters?”
Peeta was crazy talented and had drawn various pictures for each and every of their characters. He liked to immortalize some of their most epic quests too. Effie had started framing the drawings and hanging them behind the counter of the bakery – it made a lot of people curious but it was their thing and Effie, as weird as she was, never back downed from it.
“No fucking way.” Haymitch scoffed, looking at his own character sheet and its detailed illustration. Peeta had gone all out on his and, stupid as it was, he had grown attached to his stupid alter-ego. He played as a rogue, a thief who was cunning and very apt with knives.
“Language, Haymitch, there are children present.” Effie snapped. He had long stopped protesting Peeta dragging her from behind her counter to play with them but, still, he glared at her, resisting the very childish urge to stick his tongue out. “Oh, Prim, darling, there must be something we can do…”
“Critical failure.” Prim reminded her, sadly shaking her head. Well… She might look sad but there was a mad twinkle in her eyes and Haymitch couldn’t help but think she was enjoying this a little too much. “I told you that wizard king was too strong for your party… Now… The wizard lifts his arm, his majestic red robes floating down to the dusty ground, and a stream of fire rains down toward…”
“I rush to Katniss and push her out of the way to save her.” Effie decided quickly. “Can I try that?”
“That’s not how critical failure works…” Peeta objected.
“You push her out of the way and what?” Haymitch scoffed. “You burn alive? You’re just a bard, what…”
“I am counting on you to save me, of course!” she snapped right back. “Any time now.”
“Save you?” he repeated, incredulous. “From an inferno? No way. I’m not getting toasted ‘cause the girl’s a paladin who can’t think before she acts and ‘cause you’re so eager to kill yourself with her.”
Effie pursed her lips and glared at him harder. “You would let your wife die a terrible death along with your adoptive daughter without even trying anything?”
“But, guys…” Peeta argued, albeit in a smaller voice. “That’s not how it works any…”
“Wife?” he repeated, half-snorting, half-scoffing again. “What did you put in those brownies?”
A little after Effie had stepped out from behind her counter and joined their games, the children had decided, because of all their incessant bickering, that their characters were together. The joke had stuck and, somehow, without his consent and to his numerous vocal protestations, it had become part of their characters’ back-story that they were involved in something that wasn’t exactly defined – mostly, it translated into Effie’s character being jealous every time he talked to a female NPC and in his own character punching a lot of people when she decided trying to seduce NPC into giving information was a good idea.
“Didn’t we tell you? We decided we were married now.” she hummed, inspecting her manicure. How she could own a bakery and have so sharp fake nails, he wasn’t sure, but, then again, she didn’t do the baking herself. She had employees for that, Peeta was one of them.
“We? Who’s that we?” he mocked. “Cause you’d think I’d have my say in this, sweetheart…”
“The children were adamant after what happened with that troll.” she answered. None of the kids would meet his eyes. “Peeta drew a wonderful fanart. Really, Haymitch, it has been hanging on the wall for three weeks. Do you never pay attention?”
He suspected Prim created those situation on purpose for her own enjoyment. The troll had tried to marry her character for himself and he had been forced to intervene. There had been a lot of flying knives and the children had been delighted with the whole side-quest drama.
Still…
“We ain’t married.” he insisted.
“The drawing on the wall seems to contradict that, darling.” she retorted. “You know the rules. Once it is framed, it is canon.”
He had never actually agreed to that rule. “That’s not…”
“So.” she cut him off with one of those smiles that had an edge to them. “Prim, darling, I try to push Katniss out of the way while Haymitch does… whatever he is going to do to save us.”
Peeta was right and it really did not work like that, not with Katniss’ critical failure, but all the kids expectantly turned to look at him. Even Katniss looked hopeful that he would get them out of the mess she had dragged them all into.
“You’re a fucking bard.” he reminded her. “You ain’t fireproof.”
“I’ll try to put a magic shield around the girls.” Peeta offered, skimming through his leaflet. “I can do that now, right? I leveled up last week.”
Haymitch rolled his eyes. “Fine. Then I guess I’m gonna do the stupid thing and toss my knives at the wizard. The bad one, not Peeta.”
Prim hesitated a second and then shrugged away the rules, amusement dancing in her eyes. “I’m going to need rolls, people. Effie, first. Then, Peeta. Then, you, Haymitch.”
Effie’s roll went okay enough. Prim validated her rescue attempt. Peeta did only average so Prim decided both Effie’s and Katniss’ characters would end up with severe burns – Katniss’ more severe than Effie because of the critical failure. It might or might not result in loss of limbs, their game master was of yet undecided.
Then, it was Haymitch’s turn and the moment he rolled the dice he recognized the feeling of doom in the pit of his stomach. And, surely enough, he got a critical failure too.
Everybody groaned.
Prim clapped her hands in delight. “All of Haymitch’s knives miss the wizard but one. It surprises him so much that he loses control of his spell and he hits the ceiling… The whole room caves in. You all die.”
“Prim.” Katniss half-begged, half-chuckled. “Come on…”
“Two critical failures in one game.” Prim shook her head. “This party had a good run… Time for new characters!”
Peeta groaned. “But I just leveled up!”
“And we just got married!” Effie lamented.
“We so didn’t.” Haymitch grumbled. But he was annoyed too. He had grown used to his character and it was good to forget his own sad pathetic life to live his imagined one once a week. And he didn’t mind the fictional bard girlfriend as much as he claimed he did. “Come on, sweetheart… We can’t end this way…”
Prim shook her head. “Sorry. Cinna’s coming next week. We’ll see if he can save a few of you.”
And with that ominous statement, she closed her Dungeon Master’s little hideout. They all started cleaning up after that, still discussing the game, Peeta was already planning to draw their heroic deaths later that night, Haymitch lingered behind when the kids filled out the door with joyful promises to see each other the next week-end and to keep in touch until then – and they would keep in touch because Peeta crashed at Effie’s three nights out of seven to escape his mom’s temper and the girls usually ended up eating dinner at his place almost every day and that was when they didn’t sleep in his guest room so… His excuse was feeble since he was gathering the plates they had used for their snacks and nobody had ever accused him of being neat.
Effie saw through it in a heartbeat but she still walked the kids out with little more than an amused grin and locked the door behind them. She grabbed the brownies leftovers and disappeared in the kitchen. He followed carrying the dirty plates, if only because there was no huge display window in the kitchen through which people could see them.
He discarded the empty plates on the closest flat surface he found and immediately wrapped his arms around her waist, tugging her into his chest. She laughed even as she struggled to carefully put the brownies leftovers down.
His mouth attacked the side of her neck but let go when she turned around in his arms to kiss her lips instead. He wasn’t nice or patient but she gave back in kind, not protesting when he backed her into the counter, not even when he lifted her up to sit up on it. His mouth trailed down her jaw, down her throat, his chin nudged her expensive sweater down as his lips quested for her breasts… She tangled her fingers in his hair, arched her back a little…
“We really should stop doing this here…” she whispered, a touch breathless. “It is unhygienic.”
It was. And it wasn’t exactly comfortable either. But it had become part of his Sunday routine. He wasn’t even sure when it had started, a little after she had joined the game probably. They played with the kids and, once the kids, were gone, they played with each other in the kitchen. Different kind of game.
“There’s always the office…” he pointed out. Her desk in the tiny room wasn’t even more comfortable but it, at least, wasn’t used to prepare food – he knew she cleaned everything after he was gone but still.
“There is always my house.” she pointed out.
He took his head out of her cleavage, stepping between her open legs, pressing her closer by pushing on her lower back… “Ain’t ready to marry you, sweetheart.”
Her lips twitched into that grin that mean she thought he was being an idiot. “I am fairly confident there are quite a few steps between having sex in a bed and marriage, Haymitch.”
“You married my character without telling him.” he pointed out. “What do I know what you’re planning for me…”
“Oh, your character was most definitely aware as my character made sure he enjoyed his honeymoon.” she retorted. “As for what I am planning for you… I was hoping to recreate that honeymoon… Lots of wicked tricks of the tongue involved…”
She purred the last part right into his ear and he groaned.
“You’re evil.” he complained.
She laughed. “Perhaps my next character could be evil. You can be evil with me.”
“My next character’s gonna be a monk.” he denied. “This way the kids are gonna stop their stupid… What do they call it? Shipping?”
She shook her head, blue eyes twinkling in amusement. “You do realize if you choose a monk as a class, I will take that as a challenge and I will have to seduce you. Never mind the quests, that will be my only objective.”
He lifted his eyebrows in challenge. “You think you can make me give in to you?”
“I know I can make you give in to me.” she dismissed. “But in a bed, Haymitch.”
Would it be so terrible to go back to her place? Or to take her to his? They had been at each other’s house a few times already. For dinner when the kids conspired to get everyone together or for the occasional game when they couldn’t go to the bakery…
But they had never invited each other for sex and they had never… It felt like passing a milestone somehow, like progress. And he wasn’t sure he was ready for that. It was all easy and manageable when it happened only on Sundays, in a designated place, where it was just… another sort of escape… Outside of that…
She planted an hesitant kiss on his throat, on his pulse point, watching him with a touch of wariness. “Please? I promise I won’t marry you without asking first or try to rope you into something you do not want. It doesn’t need to be more than this is but…”
She let her sentence trail off but her meaning was clear: it was starting to feel a little like a dirty secret.
It was the please that did it, really, though.
“Fine.” he granted.
Something softened in his chest when she rewarded him with one of those beaming smiles.
“We’re not telling the kids yet.” he warned.
He hadn’t meant to say yet. She didn’t comment on it but he knew she hadn’t missed it. She never missed anything, certainly not a slip like that.
“Of course.” she agreed immediately, hopping off the counter and grabbing his hand to tug him toward the backdoor.
He followed, only mildly hesitant.
He just hoped this wouldn’t be another critical failure…