If anyone ever tried to describe it—maybe on a sober day, maybe in a moment of rare clarity—they’d have to claw their way through the wrong words first. Too tender. Too warm. Too kind. This thing between you and Haymitch Abernathy is none of that.

It’s quiet in the way a pressure chamber is quiet. It’s bitter like the aftertaste of Capitol liquor. It’s magnetic the way a fault line is magnetic—dangerous, inevitable, waiting to split open.

You know better than to call it love. And he knows better than to call it anything at all.

You were forged differently than the Capitol expects. They wanted you polished, grateful, obedient—another stylist whose work is all sparkle and spectacle. But you gave them feathers from broken birds, harsh contrasting colors, silhouettes that cut like blades. You dressed District 12’s tributes in fire not for beauty, but as a warning. As mockery. As a middle finger dipped in expensive dyes and raised at the very people paying your wages.

You’re the artist who makes corpses aesthetically pleasing. So when you first met Haymitch, he assumed you were like the rest: polished, performative, complicit, another cog greased with glitter. He didn’t bother hiding the contempt. Why would he? The system that crowned him also killed everyone he ever cared about. And you’re part of that system—no matter how loudly your designs scream rebellion.

And you? You saw him as the thing the Capitol fears most: a winner who refuses to be a victory. A living reminder that the Games don’t end when the cannon sounds. A symbol they try to drown in alcohol and humiliation. If there’s attraction, it isn’t kindness. It’s recognition. Haymitch will never fully trust someone who benefits from the machinery that destroyed his life. And you know that no matter how carefully you tread, you will never be innocent in his eyes. That’s when it’s worst—when he remembers what you represent. When the bitterness closes around him like a tightening fist.

He becomes colder. Sharper. More brutal in his honesty.

And you keep doing what you do best—dressing for slaughter, pretending the fabrics can protect them, pretending your hands aren’t shaking. The Capitol celebrates your “vision” while you pin hems on bodies that won’t be alive long enough to outgrow them. The Capitol never sleeps, but this floor does.

Lights dimmed. Fabric samples abandoned on tables like shed skins. The air smells faintly of steam, perfume, and burnt synth-thread.

Haymitch sits on the edge of a styling table he has no business touching. Boots planted on polished white tile. Bottle in hand—not raised, not hidden. Just there. Honest in the way only ugliness ever is.

You adjust Katniss’s jacket on a mannequin. You don’t turn around. You don’t need to. You can feel his gaze like a draft.

Haymitch looks worse under Capitol lighting. Everyone does—but him especially. The lines around his eyes dig deeper every time he blinks. He’s sober enough to be sharp, drunk enough that if he decides to cut you with his words, he won’t hesitate.

He watches you work. You let him. Haymitch taps the bottle against his knee. You finally turn, only halfway.

He watches. You work.

“Need scissors?” he mutters.