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Haymitch stirred a little after dawn, not quite bothered by the light spilling through the half-closed blinds but dragged out of sleep by the loud giggles of the five year-old playing outside, goaded by Johanna’s voice coming through the open window.
Finn was always up at the crack of dawn and he wasn’t sure Jo slept at all.
Maybe they should have closed the window but the nights in Four in summer were stifling, a suffocating heat that made sheets and night clothes impractical and oppressing. Mornings weren’t much better but, at least, it wasn’t hot enough yet that he was sweating without even moving a finger…
He rolled to his side and spooned the naked woman in his bed, annoyed to have to crawl a little to find her. The bed wasn’t that big. The houses in Four’s Victors’ Village looked remarkably like the ones in Twelve, save for the fact they were built directly on a private stretch of beach… Furniture, it seemed, were standard to all Victors’ Village everywhere… The bed was almost identical to the one they had at home… And yet it was so hot Effie somehow always ended up at the edge of the mattress…
As it was, she groaned when he plastered himself to her back. Not quite awake. Not quite asleep.
He let her enjoy that lull on the threshold, pushing a leg between hers but keeping his hands from wandering to places.
He thought he might even try to go back to sleep himself…
For a while, he believed he might even manage it.
It was warm but not too much, she smelt like sun lotion, the coconuts mask she had massaged in her hair the previous night and Effie… Her hand found his and entwined their fingers… Jo must have taken Finn down to the beach because their voices grew faint… Maybe she would let the boy drag her to town proper for some pastries for breakfast…
A door closed somewhere down the hall, soft footsteps wandering past their own room. Annie, if he had to guess. And, a second, later, he was proven right when Finn shouted a greeting to his mother from afar… He was promptly sushed and reminded they had guests.
Haymitch’s bladder started making itself known.
The kid was talking a mile an hour under their window and he was suddenly glad they had been given the guest-room upstairs. The kids were making-do with the sofa bed in the study on the ground floor and there was no way they would sleep through all that ruckus…
Jo wasn’t bothering to keep her voice low. Neither was Finn. Annie did her best to reign them in as she set the table outside on the deck for breakfast but…
When he heard Katniss’s voice joining the rest he gave up on going back to sleep. He carefully got out of bed without waking Effie more than she already was and slipped out of the room to the bathroom on the landing. Where it was blissfully silent.
When he came back to their bedroom, Peeta’s voice was joyfully greeting Finn and Effie had rolled on her back in the bed, both arms pressed over her eyes as if to fight the semi-lightness in the room.
“I hope you put some pants on.” she mumbled without even looking.
She knew him too well.
“They’re all outside.” he grumbled, crawling back on the bed, snuggling into her side just because he could.
She dropped her arms off her face to look at him, her lips twitching as always when she was fighting off a grin. “This is not our home. You cannot walk around naked, Haymitch.”
“Watch me.” he challenged with a smirk of his own, leaning down a little.
He waited for a second or two, holding her gaze, until she rolled her eyes, gave up on fighting her smile and stretched her neck to plant a peck on his lips like she did every morning. “Hello.”
“Hi.” He grabbed her leg and pulled, rolling on top of her, finding his favorite place between her thighs. He did prop himself on his elbows not to crush her.
Her smile turned into a wicked grin when she felt him hardening against her. “Well, hello…”
“Believe you already said that, sweetheart.” He snorted even as he bowed his head to kiss her throat, her collarbone, to follow down his favorite path to her breasts…
She hummed in pleasure when his tongue flicked her nipple but her hand landed at the back of his neck… “They are all up.”
“They ain’t the only one.” he reminded her, rolling his hips once so she would feel him. He was only half-hard still, aroused by the sight of her naked body languidly lying in a bed, not quite far gone enough that stopping would really be a torture but…
“We should join them.” she insisted but she didn’t try to stop him when he gave up on her nipple to lick the underside of her breast, his other hand reaching up to knead the neglected one.
“It’s barely seven.” He planted an open kiss between her breasts. “Too early to get up. We’re on holidays.”
His mouth traveled down to her navel in a trail of soft kisses…
Her hand cradled his face, her nails scrapping against the thick stubble on his jaw…
“The window is open.” she said as if it was the swaying argument.
The window was open but the blinds were half-closed so nobody would see anything untoward.
“Guess that means you’ve got to be very quiet, then.” He lifted his eyebrows in a challenge. “Unless you don’t think you can…”
She took a long moment to think it over, eyes staring into his…
It was a real gamble. She wasn’t exactly good at keeping quiet, never had been, and the crux of the matter was all their kids were outside that window, trying to be quiet enough not to wake them up but being far too loud to allow anyone to sleep in all the same. If they were too loud it would be embarrassing. Well, Haymitch refused to be embarrassed on principle but Effie would be.
So it was all about what she wanted more… Drag herself downstairs far too early where she would be expected to act like the responsible adult because fuck knew Jo wouldn’t and the kids were too fond of the five year-old to refuse him anything and Annie was happy to let them have some time with her son… Or delay the expectations a little longer, lie there and let Haymitch make her feel really good.
She let go of his face and tossed her head back on her pillow with a sigh. “I knew we should have booked a hotel…”
“Yeah?” He resumed his slow kissing exploration of her stomach.
“Privacy, Haymitch. Air conditioning. Room service.” she enumerated. “No one who needs us at all hours of days to fix their problems…”
For such independent people, Katniss and Peeta did tend to be a bit intrusive sometimes. They didn’t seem to realize Haymitch and Effie would like to enjoy some alone time on their holidays too…
“Fine.” He chuckled against her pubic bone. “Next year, we’ll go to a hotel.”
“We say that every year…” she lamented.
But then his mouth found the warmth between her thighs and she sucked in a big breath.
“Quiet, sweetheart.” he reminded her, opening her lips with two fingers to lick her properly, the way she liked.
She didn’t answer.
Her bent legs fell flat on either side of her on the bed, giving him complete access…
Her breathing was ragged, her fingers were clawing at the sheet beneath them… He let his tongue toy with her clit before sucking it in his mouth… When his teeth scraped against it, she let out a soft keening noise…
It wasn’t that loud but there was a definite lull in the conversations beneath their window and she bit down on her bottom lip.
Haymitch drew his head back, trying really hard not to laugh. “Guess it’s a good thing you still can’t control yourself after all this time…”
Although sex had never been their problem.
If their relationship ever soured, it wouldn’t be because of sex.
Not that it would.
They had made it that far, the way he saw it, they would hold on to the finish line.
“You think this is very funny but just wait your turn.” she threatened, grabbing his abandoned pillow. “Go back to work.” She jutted her hips up, the order clear, and then pressed the cushion against her face.
“Don’t kill yourself.” he mocked, going back to his licking. The angle wasn’t working for him so he hooked one of her legs over his shoulder…
The pillow, at least, did a good job at muffling her whimpers.
It didn’t quite completely muffle the soft cry when he slipped two fingers into her and slowly started pumping her, sucking on her clit… Again, the sounds of voices died beneath the window and Haymitch decided that, as much as he loved making her last and torturing her, it was in their best interest to be quick before one of the kids came to investigate the weird noises – because they would, out of some concern one of them was hurt or something equally stupid.
She was close.
He could feel it at the erratic rocking of her hips, at the way she gripped the pillow so tight her knuckles were white, at the sounds she made…
“Try not to shout, princess.” he murmured, dropping a kiss on her inner thigh, before putting his mouth back on her clit. He finished her by curling his fingers inside her, hitting that sweet spot, just as he carefully nibble at her.
To her credit, she didn’t quite shout.
Probably because she had stuffed some of the pillow in her mouth and, thus, it came out a muffled ragged cry that, with some luck, didn’t carry that far. He vaguely heard Annie suggesting going to the bakery for pastries and Finn’s enthusiastic answer. The others didn’t make similar excuses though so he didn’t think it was them chasing them off…
He slowly crawled his way up her body, completely aroused now, dropping random kisses until he could grab the pillow and toss it away, a little concerned she would manage to suffocate herself. She looked dazed, like always after a good orgasm. Her eyes clouded and distant, her mouth stretched into a small happy smile…
He loved the sight.
Her leg had slipped a little down his arm and he hooked it back over his shoulder, knowing she was flexible enough to take it. He wrapped his hand around himself, gave it a couple of tugs, coating himself in her wetness… By the time he guided himself to her, she had come down from her high and she was ready for him. She wrapped her other leg around his waist, slid down the bed a little to ease the angle…
He slowly pushed himself inside her, inch by inch, making it a delicious torture of friction and of not enough… Until he was buried in her to the hilt and she clenched around him and that was enough and…
“Fuck.” he groaned.
She was perfect.
So perfect for him.
She giggled. “Shh…”
Neither his groaning nor her giggles had been particularly discreet and he thought the kids were talking louder now… Or maybe it was the ringing in his ears.
He didn’t really care one way or another.
In the position she was in, she couldn’t do much more than take whatever he wanted to give. He kept it slow because he sensed she wasn’t feeling like fast and hard that morning. Slow and lazy suited him and it suited Four and its suffocating weather…
He drew his hips back slowly only to slam them back down, prompting her to arch her back… His free hand ghosted on her side, found her breast… He kept her leg in place over his shoulder with his other hand, finger digging hard in her flesh… Her own hands weren’t idle… One of them was on the small of his back, urging him down, accidentally clawing at the skin… He could feel the other one between their body where she was rubbing herself… Every time he drew back, her knuckles brushed against his length in a delicious caress…
They shushed each other a few times at first and then completely forgot because pleasure built and it was absolute and… She muffed her second orgasm in the crook of his neck, biting down with a raw cry that rolled at the back of her throat… He tried to swallow back his grunt when he finally spent but he wasn’t sure he was very successful…
They lied there for a while afterwards, getting their breath back… He rolled off her upper body eventually so he wasn’t crushing her, not bothering to swing his legs off or entirely slip out of her…
Outside, the conversation was loud. Purposefully loud.
He couldn’t begin to care.
Not when his body was sated and he felt so…
“Love you.” he mumbled.
He didn’t say it often.
He still found it difficult.
It had taken years for the words to finally pass his lips and they still tasted new and terrifying and…
“Me too.” She chuckled, turning to her side so she could snuggle closer to him. “All the more so after you give me earth-shattering orgasms.”
He chuckled too, kissing the bare skin he could reach. Her shoulder, her cheek…
Maybe she had a point about booking a hotel next time. If they had been at a hotel, they would have been free to spend the whole day in bed – and with air conditioning it might not even have been too terrible.
Her fingers were tracing random patterns on his chest.
“Shower?” she offered.
He sighed. “Yeah.”
She kissed him. She intended for it to be a chaste peck but he chased after her lips, deepening it until she moaned in his mouth… She drew back, lips pursed in disapproval. “Shower.”
It wasn’t a suggestion this time so he regretfully let her go, lying there while she rummaged into their suitcases, catching the clean clothes she tossed at him…
“Gorgeous.” he commented because there were few sights he found more beautiful than her sauntering around a room naked.
She preened, pleased, a happy grin on her lips.
He hadn’t meant for the compliment to be a bait for anything but it earned him some more fooling around in the shower and, for that, he was glad.
All in all, he was happy when they strolled down the stairs and out on the deck, not quite holding hands but their fingers brushing against each other with every step. He was smirking, she was smiling…
And nobody at the breakfast table would meet their eyes. Jo was sneering at them in a taunting way, Katniss was blushing hard, Peeta kept talking about how good the jar of local honey was…
Yeah… Maybe they hadn’t been that quiet.
Effie didn’t even bat an eyelash. She sat down, poured herself some coffee and joined the conversation as if nothing at all was out of the ordinary. Haymitch sat down next to her, letting her fix him a plate because he knew she was using the excuse to fend off the embarrassment…
Eventually, the kids stopped obsessing about what they thought they had heard and moved on. When he was sure they were all too engrossed in their own conversation, he placed his hand on her thigh under the table, letting his little finger slip a little under her skirt…
A minute later, her hand closed on his. Not to dislodge it but just because…
Well…
It felt good.