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Haymitch woke up mid-snore, which made him snort and grunt. He took a deep breath and rubbed his face, taking stock of his aching head and his churning stomach. He had drunk too much again, hence the impromptu nap. He turned his head and glanced at the upturned alarm clock on his nightstand, not entirely surprised to see the afternoon had passed him by while he was unconscious.
A waste.
Not that he had much to do in the first place.
He wasn’t sure he would have even gotten out of bed if his bladder hadn’t urged him to. He did so with a groan, stumbling his way to the bathroom. He was taking care of business when he realized that it wasn’t so much that his head was throbbing that his upstairs neighbor had turned up the music too loud again. Gritting his teeth, he made it to the sink and put his head directly under the tap. The cold water was harsh but it woke him up a little more.
He needed coffee, he decided, and then maybe he would go upstairs and pick a fight over Effie’s unbearable incapability of listening to Christmas music at a decent volume.
He was almost to his kitchen when he finally registered the strange smell. His first reflex was to lift his arm to sniff at his armpit – there was no point going upstairs to pick a fight if he smelled bad because she would send him straight back down – but while his shirt could probably do with changing, he didn’t think it was coming from him. The smell wasn’t entirely bad but it wasn’t good either. It smelled like food but not the kind that made your mouth water.
It took him all the way to his kitchen counter to identify it. Cheese. He fumbled with the buttons of his new coffee-maker – it was too fancy for him but his old one had died and Effie had gotten tired of his complaining and ordered him a new one online – looking around for whatever was stinking up his whole kitchen. He couldn’t see anything suspicious. Besides, the only thing he could think about that could have smelled like that were the cheese buns Peeta had dropped by the other day but the leftovers were safely in the fridge and it didn’t seemed like the same kind of cheese. The smell was really potent, almost… sour.
Once he had won his battle with the coffee-maker, he searched the room more thoroughly, clutching his hard-fought for cup of coffee. Nothing in the fridge smelled or looked suspicious, not even the leftovers Chinese Effie had brought the other night. There was nothing in the kitchen that could smell like that.
He continued his exploration in the living-room, going as far as to check underneath the small Christmas tree Effie had forced him to get – and to decorate – because it would be just her kind of stupid idea to leave milk or food for ‘Santa’ just to get a certain aesthetic. The woman was obsessed with keeping her instagram alive with perfect pictures.
But there was nothing and the smell seemed to be getting worse. It was slowly but surely invading his whole apartment.
On a whim, he opened the front door and wrinkled his nose when he realized the hallway was stinking too. Grumbling under his breath, he closed the door behind him and headed for the stairs, bypassing the elevator and not bothering to put on shoes before he went. It took him less than a minute to find himself in front of Effie’s door and, surely enough, the smell was even worse over there. As was the terrible Christmas music.
Trying not to gag, he slammed his fist against the door twice, hoping to be heard over the music . He would have just walked in – she did it often enough at his place – but unlike him she tended to lock her door at all times and the spare key she had entrusted him with was somewhere in one of his kitchen’s drawers.
The music was abruptly cut off and, a few seconds later, the door opened and he wrinkled his nose harder because if he had thought it was bad in the hallway…
He didn’t bother with niceties. “What the fuck are you doing? You’re stinking up the whole building.”
Her lips were painted crimson and it was the only thing he could focus on for an embarrassingly long time because she was also pursing them. Surely enough when he finally dragged his gaze up, her eyes were narrowed and her head tilted. She was irritated. And she looked… a mess.
A cute mess, granted, but a mess.
She was wearing the blinding pink yoga pants she tended to wear at home and a loose grey sweater that used to be his before she had liberated it from his dresser. Her strawberry blond hair was tied up in a half-falling bun and there were streaks of flour all over her face.
He forgot all about the nauseating smell and his own bad mood because she looked… She looked good enough to eat.
“You are drunk.” she accused.
“And you tried to cook.” he retorted. His drinking was a serious point of contention between them and he didn’t want to get into it again. They fought often but when it came to serious topics it could get ugly fast. They had been at each other’s throats ever since she had moved in right on top of his apartment. She was noisy with her high heels and her music and her loud giggling in the corridors… They had fought right up until they had fucked and now they were sort of friends. The sort of friends who lived in the same building, spent most of their free time together and had sex with each other on a regular basis. Neighbors with benefits was the term, she had informed him. It was perfect for him because he didn’t want a girlfriend or a serious relationship but he did really enjoy having sex with her. “I thought we agreed you were never trying that ever again.”
He had lost count of the number of time she had triggered the fire alarm when trying to cook. She was a walking disaster in a kitchen.
She sighed. “I was craving Christmas cookies.”
“Peeta’s got those at the bakery, you know.” he pointed out.
“I wanted to do them myself.” she argued, folding her arms in front of her chest. It made the oversized sweater slip down her shoulder. No bra strap, Haymitch couldn’t help but notice.
“Why is it smelling like cheese if you were doing Christmas cookies?” he insisted.
“I don’t know!” she snapped, stepping aside. “I cannot figure it out!” He didn’t move and she pursed her lips harder. “Are you staying over there or are you coming in?”
“I’m trying to decide if I can hold my breath long enough to survive…” he deadpanned.
She glared at him and made as if to slam the door in his face so he made his move, blocking it with his foot and slipping in, not even trying to hide his chuckles as he easily overpowered her. In a matter of seconds, her front door was closed with them on the right side of it, she was pinned to the wall and his mouth was on hers.
She gave a token resistance for a second and then responded to his kiss wholeheartedly. He would have been happy to make out a little while longer because he hadn’t seen her since the previous evening but the smell truly was horrible. Reluctantly, he let her go to investigate her kitchen where the smell was strong enough that he tasted some bile at the back of his throat.
It wasn’t that it smelled rotten or something, it was just… a lot.
The window was open wide, there was already a plate of perfect looking Christmas cookies shaped like stars, trees and Santas on a plate and another tray cooking in the oven… He inspected the cookies, gave them a tentative sniff…
“What the fuck did you use in those?” he asked.
“Nothing I wasn’t supposed to!” she insisted, nodding at the children cook book he had bought her as a joke for her birthday. He had never meant for her to actually use it. He had just meant to tease her. “Flour, sugar, some spices, butter and eggs… I certainly did not put any cheese in it!”
“Sure smells like you did.” he grumbled, opening her cupboards to check over the pots in which she kept the flour and the sugar. “Your eggs were fresh?”
“You tell me. You are the one who bought them. Last week, remember? You wanted to try that new recipe…” she hummed.
“Yeah, yeah…” He waved his hand. “They were good then.” He didn’t want to linger on the fact he had found himself doing her grocery shopping once or twice. He cooked for her sometimes, so what? If he didn’t she would never eat a homecooked meal at all. She would live on take-out and ready-made can of soups. “What about the butter?” It clicked suddenly. That was what it had to be: the butter. “How old was it?” A long silence answered him and he turned around to face her. “Sweetheart?”
She wrinkled her nose. “I’m not sure. I don’t remember when I bought it. It did smell a bit… odd but… But it is not cheese.”
“And how do you think they make cheese?” he mocked, opening her fridge and finding what was left of her butter. He had to unfold the wrapper to find the expiration date and then he did a double take. “Effie, this butter expired six months ago.” He shouldn’t have been as delighted as he was, truly, but she was always lecturing him about cleaning his place and checking the rotten food in his fridge and… “Honestly, don’t you ever clean up in here?”
She flushed crimson, from the root of her hair to the skin that disappeared under the grey sweater. “I never use butter… I think I bought it because you mentioned you needed it to cook that one time… I didn’t check.”
He snorted and automatically took the tray out of the oven when it beeped. The cookies looked good. It was certainly the best thing she had ever managed in a kitchen. Too bad it smelled like cheese puffs.
“Well… At least you didn’t burn them.” he offered, dropping the tray on the counter and waving his hand to get rid of the awful smell. The open window was only doing so much good. “Should break out your girly bath candles.”
“They are not girly, they are scented.” she grumbled but she went to fetch them anyway. There was something particularly nauseating to chemical lavender mixing with cheese.
It didn’t help that the handle remained in her hand when she opened the drawer to put the match box away. She glared at the broken drawer as if it had personally insulted her. Her eyes also looked a little too shiny. She hated failing at stuff, he knew, and that was an epic miss.
“I can fix it.” he promised before she could start ranting about how the landlord never did anything he was supposed to. “I’ll go buy another one tomorrow.”
She took a deep breath and let it out, wincing a little because the kitchen was still smelling too strongly of cheese. She gestured at the plate of cookies. “Do you think they are edible? Is it just that they will taste like cheese or will they make us sick? Should we toss them away?”
He hated the thought of wasting food like that.
The butter was old, true, but did butter really get bad or…
He didn’t hate the thought of wasting food to the point of trying to eat one of those though.
“We need a guinea pig.” he decided.
“I am not giving someone food poisoning!” she countered, horrified. “Haymitch, really!”
“Not even Snow?” he insisted, warming up to his scheme. Snow was the worst neighbor in the building. He lived on the top floor, behaved like he owned the whole place and lodged official complains about everyone all the time, the two of them included.
She pursed her lips. “He’s ancient… We could accidentally kill him.”
“Would that be so bad?” he joked. “His place is the best in the building. Sure, it’s expensive… We could split the rent.”
He didn’t let himself think too long on the fact he was joking about the two of them moving together.
She sighed. “Haymitch.”
“Fine.” He rolled his eyes and dumped the plate in the trash along with the newest bash. Then he blew out the candles and headed out, leaving the window open. “Come on, we’re going back to mine. Hopefully, it stinks less down there.”
She wasn’t hard to convince. She sauntered after him, only pausing long enough to grab her phone on the way. God forbid she left her phone behind and missed an opportunity to take a picture for instagram…
“What do you want to do tonight?” she asked, sliding his hand in his. “Netflix? They have new Christmas movies!”
Nothing sounded as tedious to him as being forced to watch stupid Christmas rom-coms but then he thought about what it meant to watch TV with her: she would snuggle up against him and he would be allowed to play with her hair to his heart content… He might even be allowed to cope a feel if she was feeling generous… Besides, romantic movies put her in a sexy mood usually. Although to be fair, everything put her in a sexy mood, that was part of what he liked so much about her.
“There are Chinese leftovers for dinner.” he suggested. “And I can bake some cookies for you.”
She beamed up at him, grinning like he had promised her the mood. “Would you, really?” Before he could let out a long-suffering sigh and pretend it was a huge chore, she pulled him into a long kiss that ended with a saucy look. “Feed me a treat and I will let you feed me one…”
He couldn’t resist her purring voice. He ushered her into his apartment with a whack on her butt that made her giggle.
He was smirking, having completely forgotten about his earlier bad mood. She had that effect on him. He was happy as he watched her settle herself on a stool at his kitchen counter, waiting for him to start cooking for her. She started telling him about her terrible day at work.
It was all very domestic, that wasn’t escaping his notice, and he might have panicked if she wasn’t always so ready to reassure him they weren’t a couple. Just neighbors. Friends. With benefits.
So what if the benefits weren’t just the sex?
What if he enjoyed this almost more than he did the fucking?
He dropped a kiss on the top of her hair as he walked around her to grab something from the cupboard and told himself to stop obsessing over it.
What they had worked.
That was the principal, wasn’t it?