log: everlark WHO: Peeta Mellark + Katniss Everdeen WHEN: Sunday, June 28 WHERE: A hallway? Somewhere probably public, I'm sure a few people walked by during this so if you wanted to see Katniss and Peeta make out in a hall, knock yourself out XD WHAT: Peeta's helping Katniss walk after her hunting accident; they have an important heart-to-heart. WARNINGS: N/A
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Katniss was, to no one’s surprise, horrendously awful at being injured and having to sit still.
She had managed to keep most of her sullenness to herself, not taking it out on anyone. It was her own fault, after all. The gunshot had taken a lot out of her, even more than the time she’d previously been shot, mostly because she hadn’t been wearing any protective armor this time (though she really should have been — she’d remember, next time, to wear her mockingjay suit whenever she went hunting with anyone she didn’t really know).
But there were other things draining her energy, too.
It was true, as she’d told Gale, that she didn’t want to leave. That didn’t mean it had been easy adjusting to this place. She’d never liked being underground, hadn’t liked being pulled away from the war, or the fact that she’d assumed her mission had failed. But it had been hard enough keeping herself going at home, and after a while, this place had started to drain her energy away. There was no real need for her to do anything here, but she fell into the routine of hunting easily enough, to survive and to keep the people around her alive. It had become monotonous, in a way that was equally comforting and frustrating, but she kept that to herself. Finnick was alive and with Annie again, and that in itself was worth leaving home — and the nightmare of his throat being ripped apart by mutts, still fresh in her mind — behind her for the moment. A part of her wanted to get back to her family, but she knew that even if she went home, she wouldn’t get to go back to being with her mother and Prim. She’d gone too far to expect to come back from it.
And then everything was upended with Peeta’s disappearance and return. Her perspective of the future had changed irrevocably. It was still something to be dreaded, there was still something wrong, something that no one wanted to tell her about. Something that, frankly, she didn’t really want to know, but she was still angry about it being kept from her. Nothing good had ever come from secrets.
Then there was the future of her relationships: with Peeta and with Gale. She understood the former better than the latter: they were together, and it was surprisingly easy for her to accept that on faith. It put an end to her feeling torn between the two of them, especially now that Gale was here, and she could feel the distance between them. It bothered her for one simple reason: because she didn’t know why. She didn’t know who had made which choices, whether they had been hers or theirs, or both. Even if they had been hers, it now felt as though they’d been made for her, and she resented that.
Her injured leg had prevented from finding distraction in the usual way — going out in the woods and hunting — but now it offered something of a distraction of its own, in the process of healing, teaching her injured muscle how to walk again. It was a difficult and frustrating process, and Peeta was patient and good about helping her, in that almost infuriating way that he had always put up with her, even when she was at her worst.
She wanted to push it, to get better quickly, but it just wasn’t possible. It hurt too much, and wore her out too quickly, and a part of her still just wanted to give up. On walking, on herself, on trying to do anything here at all; she just wanted to go home and live through everything, rather than have to deal with it here. But that was selfish, and impulsive, and it also wasn’t possible, so she kept going. Even though she had not the faintest clue what she was supposed to do with herself now.
When she’d reached as far as she could go for the day, she slowed to a stop. Releasing Peeta’s shoulders, she shuffled her feet over a little bit to lean her back against the wall of the hallway, her legs trembling a little with exertion.
“That’s enough,” she said, when she’d caught her breath. “Or I won’t be able to make it back.”
--
Peeta did his best not to talk about home.
He didn't know what Katniss knew, didn't really know how much she'd been told, and so he didn't say anything about it unless she asked — which, as it turned out, wasn't often. He knew there was a distance between them now that hadn't been there back home, that they'd gotten close, and then closer, and that wasn't the case here. He could respect that. He could keep his distance for her comfort, even if he felt like it ached sometimes not to just lean over and kiss her.
Intimacy came in other ways, through letting her lean on him while she practiced walking again, through staying up late and talking about nothing particularly important.
Peeta held his hands out now, ready to catch her if she fell. "That's good," he said brightly, smiling. "No, that was really good, that's so much better than before."
It probably didn't feel like much for Katniss, but Peeta was quick to praise her. She was working with an injured leg, she was tired, she was in pain. It mattered, even if she didn't go that far. It reminded him of re-learning how to walk on his prosthesis, of learning to adapt. She'd heal and get better, sure, but that didn't mean she didn't need this.
--
Katniss knew that there was at least a grain of truth in what he was saying, that she was improving. She also knew that Peeta was saying it for her benefit, to stop her feeling discouraged, but it grated on her nerves. He was putting such a good front on everything, and she was running out of patience for it.
Only it wasn’t really that she was running out of patience with him, but with herself. Every time he did something good for her, it just reminded her again that she hadn’t yet figured out how to be as good to him, or how to love him back.
She didn’t want to take it out on him. Unfortunately, it appeared that she’d reached the end of her rope, and it was frankly kind of a miracle that she’d held out this long. Her fuses were notoriously short.
“Doesn’t it make you angry?” she asked, a little roughly. She opened her mouth as if she was going to clarify, and then realized that she honestly didn’t know precisely what she was asking about. His prosthetic leg that he’d needed to learn to walk with, or his hijacked mind that he’d had to struggle to regain, or the way that they were completely out of sorts here, maybe beyond being able to piece things back together.
There were a lot of things that she had been — still was — upset about, and she was tired of putting a good face on it. She was tired of him putting a good face on it, too.
--
Peeta's smile faded and he stared at her. "What," he asked. "Does what make me angry?"
Her getting better? Walking? He was so thrown by her tone that he didn't bother to hide his surprise, and he was almost a bit snippy in return, like a person reaching out to smack someone who startled them.
--
“Everything,” Katniss said, exasperated, though not with him. She could hear the edge to his voice, and that kind of answered her question, but she continued anyway. “This whole place. The way nothing makes any sense. The fact that I can’t walk. The fact that I’m not…”
She trailed off. She hadn’t really intended to go there, to touch on the fact that they would be together, should be together from his perspective, but weren’t. Apparently that was bothering her more than she’d even admitted to herself, though, and it had slipped out anyway.
--
Peeta's expression became more guarded. She didn't have to finish her sentence; he knew what she meant, and he didn't know how to answer. Did it upset him? Absolutely. Did it make him angry?
It felt wrong to say that it did.
He sighed, looking down at his shoes. "First of all, I'm not angry that you can't walk. You're healing, you're doing better every day. That doesn't make me the least bit angry." A petty part of him got frustrated with her when she got irritable about it, when she didn't have the patience to put up with her healing. He didn't want to tell her how damn lucky she was.
"And…" He looked back at her and immediately regretted it. "No, nothing makes any sense."
--
“That’s not really what I meant.” Katniss let out a breath. It had come out sounding a lot more selfish than she’d intended, but wasn’t that always her way? She’d meant that her injury was just another thing that had happened to him, that he had to deal with her being like this, especially after everything that had happened to him that was so much worse.
Or maybe she really was just selfish and hated being injured, and it wasn’t about him at all. That sounded about right, too.
“It makes me angry. But I think just because… being angry is easiest.” She definitely wasn’t talking about her leg anymore, although the statement applied just as well to that, too.
--
Peeta moved so he could lean against the wall beside her, standing next to her rather than feeling like he was cornering her. He tucked his hands into his pockets. "I don't know if I have it in me to be angry," he admitted. "About being here, about how nothing makes sense, how I have memories missing and no one can explain why. It's uncomfortable. It's …"
He shook his head, glancing off down the hall. It did make him angry, but he hated feeling like he was screaming and kicking out at nothing.
--
That was even worse.
Anger was easy. Anger meant there was still the option to fight, even if it wasn’t literally, for something that mattered. Katniss didn’t know which was worse, Peeta being driven so out of his mind with fear that he thought she was evil, or the real Peeta, sane Peeta, being so disheartened by this place, by her, that he couldn’t even be angry about it.
“Don’t give up on me,” she said suddenly, surprising herself as much as him. “Please.”
--
Peeta glanced back at her, resting his head against the wall. It was easy for him to say that he was never going to give up on her, to tell her that he'd never do that, but at this point he felt like he'd said it so many times that it was lip service. Sometimes he felt like they talked about each other in such absolute terms: I'd die for you, I can't live if you're not here, I'm not worth anything if I don't have you, I'll never stop needing you, and they'd been doing it for so long that saying it now almost felt meaningless.
That wasn't to say it wasn't true. It felt more true than ever. He felt like he knew her now, better than he ever had before, felt like they'd had time to just be, without the Games and without anything else. He'd had time to see her happy sometimes, to joke with her.
He wasn't ever going to give up on her, but she wasn't going to understand how deeply he meant it. She couldn't.
So instead, he smiled, almost sadly. "You think I would?"
--
Katniss didn’t know how to answer that. Peeta was so steadfast and true, he’d even managed to come back around to loving her after Snow had brainwashed him against her. As Haymitch had said, she could live a hundred years and never deserve him.
It wasn’t really that she thought he would give up on her. It was just that she was about ready to give up on herself.
“No,” she said, but she almost sounded sad, too. Peeta would never give up on her, and she might never be worth it. That was probably her worst fear, at this point — that and whatever it was that even Gale didn’t want to tell her about.
--
Peeta's smile warmed, and he leaned over to give her a little nudge with his elbow. "So? We're okay."
It wasn't a lie. They were okay, sort of. Peeta wasn't. Peeta looked at her and saw a lack of recognition, saw steps backward instead of steps forward, and he didn't know what to do with it. He felt like he knew too much — and he did. When it came to the facts, he had information she didn't know, things he didn't know whether he could share. When it came to their relationship … he definitely knew too much.
He was more distracted than usual when he watched her and he felt guilty.
But he wasn't giving up on her, and that was what she was asking. "How's your leg feeling?"
--
Katniss didn’t feel like she was okay. Not in any sense of the word. Her body wasn’t okay, her mind was distracted and troubled, and her heart ached with longing for something that she didn’t even entirely understand.
She closed her eyes for a moment, let out a breath`, and said simply, “Fine.”
That wasn’t a lie either. Her leg was a little sore, but felt a little stronger and more coordinated than it had the day before. Definitely not worse.
--
Peeta wasn't an idiot. He knew she wasn't fine, but he couldn't read her, couldn't pin down what it was. And he probably should have left well enough alone, and asked her if she wanted to just walk back to her room and part ways for the night, but he couldn't.
"Am I…" Hm. He sighed, letting his head rest back on the wall again. "Katniss, if I'm a problem for you, I can back off." Please, who was he kidding. He knew he couldn't. He'd try to do it, like some kind of martyr, staying away for the sake of the woman he loved.
--
“No!”
The word came out much louder than Katniss intended. “No,” she said again, more quietly. “It’s not you that’s the problem, Peeta. It’s me. I’m not…”
She had started a sentence she didn’t want to finish, but she was suddenly afraid that he would turn it back around on himself again. So, haltingly, she continued. “I’m not enough.”
--
"What…?"
Peeta pulled back from the wall so he could turn to face her. He hadn't meant to corner her before, but he was close now, one hand against the wall. The other went to her hip, but he pulled it back before he actually touched.
"What are you talking about? Yes, you are."
--
The closeness made Katniss feel equal parts better and worse. She wanted, desperately, to be comforted — even more than that she found herself just wanting to kiss him, which she hadn’t done since he’d returned, because she didn’t have the excuse that it helped him keep his sanity, and everything else was so damn complicated. But she trembled a little, because doing that might give him the wrong idea, and then she might end up crushing his hopes again.
She couldn’t do that. Even if he could take it, she wasn’t sure she could.
“I’m not,” she said, and her voice was embarrassingly unsteady. “You probably should give up on me. Gale did.”
--
Peeta pulled back slightly, frowning. "Gale … didn't give up on you, Katniss," he said. "You gave up on him."
--
All Katniss could do was stare at him. “What?”
--
"You two really stopped talking after …" Peeta stopped.
He couldn't tell her. He couldn't. Maybe it was wrong to keep things from her, but he didn't want to hurt her any more than she was hurting right now -- and given his rivalry with Gale, Peeta didn't want it to sound like he was saying this solely to damage Gale's relationship with her. This was serious. It wasn't some petty thing to blame Gale for so he looked like the better person.
"It's …" He didn't want to say it, but he also didn't have anything convenient lined up. "He didn't give up on you, and he didn't abandon you. You walked away. You put the boundaries up. Something happened, and ... " The backs of his fingers were absently fiddling with the hem of her shirt, just because he felt like he needed something to do with his hands. These memories weren't easy to cope with.
"It's something you have to hear from Gale."
--
“Oh.”
Katniss didn’t really know what to make of that. The choice still felt like it had been made for her, but she trusted Peeta when he said it had been her choice. And the truth was, with the way everyone had been acting, she really didn’t want to know what it was that had made her turn her back on Gale. She had killed people. What could he have done that would be bad enough for her to walk away?
Turning his affections for her away was one thing. But their friendship and partnership was something else. All this time she’d felt like Gale had given up on that, because he didn’t want to tell her whatever the secret was, but apparently she’d been wrong.
Of course, that didn’t mean it wasn’t her fault somehow. And it definitely didn’t make her feel any more worth Peeta’s time.
She took a deep breath, and then said, “From the way everyone’s been acting, I don’t think I want to know. But… still.”
--
"If you don't, then you don't have to," Peeta said quietly. "But it's … honestly, it's a conversation you need to have with him, if you're going to have it."
He looked down again, trying to gather his thoughts, trying to focus on what her point actually was. "But it's … Katniss, I can't tell you that you're worth me, or Gale, or anyone else. You're not going to believe it. But to me, it's not about being worthy. Lov—being with someone doesn't have a price, or a standard. It just is."
He shrugged a shoulder. "That's what I think I know, anyway."
--
“Not him,” Katniss said. “Just you.”
That much, at least, seemed fairly certain. Whatever had happened between her and Gale, he had moved on. Apparently so had she, but more importantly, she wasn’t nearly as upset about it as she ought to have been. On the other hand, the idea of Peeta giving up and moving on made her want to cry.
She just didn’t know what that meant. It could have been because she loved him, the way Finnick had said she did, or it could be just because she was selfish, and she wanted him to keep thinking the world of her. Certainly that was the part that had hurt her the most when she’d discovered how he’d been hijacked. The fact that she felt horribly guilty about it didn’t necessarily mean she cared more, either.
But she did know that she wanted that future with him to be real, whether she managed it here or not. She wanted it for his sake even more than for hers.
--
"Well, you are enough," Peeta said quietly. He reached up, lightly brushing a stray strand of hair from her eyes and tucking it behind her ear. "For me, you're enough."
--
It was probably horrible of her. It was definitely selfish. It might possibly be a terrible mistake that she’d regret later, when she inevitably hurt him again, but Katniss couldn’t help herself.
She raised her hands, framed his face between them, and kissed him.
--
Peeta fell into it easily and immediately, leaning in against her. He didn't pull back and question her, didn't ask her whether she was sure she wanted this, whether she'd thought this through, or what she meant by it.
Right now, in this moment, he didn't care.
He cradled her jaw, kissing her like he could express all of the things he couldn't actually say — I love you, I miss you, I wish you knew me the way I know you. Selfishly, he needed this as much as Katniss did.
--
The way he kissed her took Katniss completely by surprise.
She had kissed him a lot of times by now, some of those times being much more genuine than others. There had always been some other reason for it aside from simply wanting to kiss him, so this kiss felt different simply for the fact that she’d done it solely because she wanted to do it. Not to win them sponsors and save their lives, not to save herself from being attacked by him. Just because she wanted to kiss him so badly that despite all of her reservations, she’d gone ahead and done it anyway.
But it was an entirely different kiss on his end, too. Deeper, more emotional, more intimate, in a way that made her heart skip a beat and her knees go weak. Her legs were already unsteady, and she was just thankful that the wall was at her back and Peeta’s body was pressing against hers, or she would have slid to the floor.
And then she felt something else, like a little spark inside her heart, lighting up in response to the passion in his kiss. It was followed almost immediately by a flood of relief, because she knew it was real, even if it was small, even if it was only just beginning. She knew full well that a single spark could be the start of something much bigger.
Her eyes stung behind closed eyelids, but it wasn’t because she was sad. She clung to him, fingers curling into his hair and into his shirt collar, returning the kiss with everything she had.
--
Peeta pulled back to speak — no, he didn't, he just caught a quick breath before kissing her again. He must have sensed that she'd lose her footing, that her legs weren't quite steady, because he lowered his hand and slid his arm around her waist, pulling her in against him.
He didn't know what would happen once this ended, if she'd insist this was a bad idea and then pretend it never happened, or if she'd pull away and decide they needed to take things slow, or whatever she needed. Right now, for once, he felt like this was what he needed. Night after night, he'd spend hours holding her after a nightmare, and they'd end up kissing until dawn. He'd catch her in the middle of the hall on her way to the stairs, or while they were doing dishes in the kitchen.
He wanted to feel wanted, to feel like she needed him — not just as emotional support, but for this.
So if she was being selfish, so was he.
The kiss ended when he was out of breath, but he barely pulled back. He rested his forehead against hers, his strong arm still tight around her.
--
Katniss didn’t protest when he kissed her again. She was practically melting against him, her body already exhausted from the effort of walking here, and now so suddenly full of need and desire mixed with relief and warmth of a different kind that it sapped the last of her strength away.
She was afraid, too, that it would end; that the kiss would stop and the feeling would disappear. Not just because it would mean hurting him, but because she’d never felt anything like it — only the very beginnings, the barest hint of the kind of hunger she could feel for his kisses — and she wanted to lose herself in it. She wanted to be capable of feeling like this all the time, no longer having to wonder or worry about her own capacity for emotion and want.
A strange, soft sound left her lips when he finally ended the kiss, almost a whimper, and she didn’t even have the presence of mind to be embarrassed by it. The only muscles in her body still working properly were her hands, still tightly curled against the back of his neck and head, his hair and shirt caught between her fingers.
“Peeta,” she breathed, just his name, a surprised and amazed sound in her voice. Nothing else. The feeling hadn’t faded away yet, and there were no protests or regrets forthcoming.
--
Peeta kissed her again, this time softer. He lightly brushed his fingertips over the curve of her ear, the hair at the nape of her neck, and he brought her braid over her shoulder to feel the texture of it against his hand.
"You're enough," he echoed again, just to make sure she understood.
--
The kiss was soft, but it stole her breath away again, and the soft touch of his fingertips sent shivers down her spine. Katniss tried to catch her breath, to find words, but it was a losing battle.
“Okay,” she finally managed to say, softly, breathlessly. She wasn’t sure if she entirely believed it — he was still a far, far better person than she would ever be, and had already proved it multiple times over — but she understood that he believed it. For whatever reason, he still loved her, still thought the world of her, and maybe that really was enough. Maybe there really was enough warmth and passion in her to make him happy.
It was still all new to her, and she was still wary of saying the word love, but she’d definitely felt something. It was still there, that tiny spark, and she wanted to cup her hands around it and protect it so that it wouldn’t flicker out. For that, she needed to stop holding Peeta at arm’s length. She couldn’t bear to loosen her grip on him, even just to wrap her arms around him in a different way. “Don’t let go of me.”
--
Part of Peeta was aware that they were in a hall where anyone could walk by, and the other part of him just didn't care. For right now, for this moment, there wasn't anyone else in the world. A hundred people could have gone running by and he didn't think he would have noticed.
"I'm not going anywhere," he said quietly, pressing a kiss to the corner of her mouth. Katniss was holding him so tight it was like she was afraid to let go, and in contrast Peeta's hold on her waist was strong and supportive. He wasn't trying to keep a spark alive; he knew it was there, and he knew it was going to make it.
He knew he loved her, and he knew he loved her in a way that made him look back on the way he'd loved her two years ago and almost laugh. He hadn't known her, then. He'd loved an idea, and if he'd kept on loving that idea, he wouldn't have been here now.
He tipped his head slightly, brushing his lips against her jaw. He didn't think about whether this was a good idea or not, or if he was overstepping boundaries, he just did what felt right in the moment — and in that moment, it was right to kiss her jaw and smile faintly against her skin. "How's your leg, you okay?"
--
Katniss was vaguely aware that people could see them here, which wouldn’t have bothered her much except for the fact that she seemed to be completely unraveling in his arms. Clinging to him, soaking up every touch like it was water and she had been thirsty for days. But even still, she didn’t protest. A part of her felt like he deserved the chance to see her make a total fool of herself because of him, especially after all the times he’d been in a similar position because of her.
“Doesn’t hurt anymore,” she managed to say. She turned her head slightly away from his mouth, but only because it was thoroughly distracting her to have his lips on her skin, to be able to feel his smile. A little roughly, she quipped, “But if you keep doing that, I won’t be able to walk back anyway.”
--
"Sorry," Peeta murmured, though he really wasn't.
They'd have to talk about this, maybe. They'd have to define things, maybe. For now, Peeta's breath was warm against the skin of her throat, he could feel her racing pulse at the spot where he chose to kiss, and for a moment it felt like they weren't really from separate points in time, that Katniss had spent the last several months with him, that she really knew things about the end of the war and where they stood, how they were recovering together. For a moment, those details didn't matter.
"I want to kiss you again," he whispered. He would have just done it, but what he wanted more than to kiss her was to hear her say she wanted to be kissed.
--
Katniss was slowly regaining some of her strength, some of which had been lost simply because of her sheer relief, and because she’d been overwhelmed by suddenly being flooded by what she felt, rather than having to wonder. She straightened up a little bit against the wall, so that she was mostly holding herself upright, though she hadn’t pulled out of his hold.
In some part of her mind, since she appeared to be giving in to him, she wanted to do it with a little bit of dignity. Even if she could blame any falling over on her injury, if she needed to.
She also understood that Peeta needed to know that she was making a conscious choice, not just kissing him impulsively, not doing something she was going to regret and try to take back later. It terrified her that she was making a choice like this, but not enough to back down. She was oblivious to it, but there was a hint of her old fire and smoke in her expression, the effect that had made her the face of the rebellion, that was solely hers and unable to be faked. It flickered in her eyes, and she adjusted her grip at last, threading her hands through his hair. “Then kiss me.”