InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Rubetown next right, ON FIRE"

Katniss Everdeen is busy reblogging squirrel pics (tindernest) wrote in wariscoming,
@ 2012-08-18 19:16:00

Entry tags:

katniss everdeen, peeta mellark

Who: Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark
Where: Katniss and Prim's apartment
When: Evening of the 18th, before the spell wears off
Why: Katniss has no inhibitions, hilarity/crazytimes ensue
Warnings: Um, she...has no inhibitions. So stuff might happen. We shall see.
Status: In progress

Katniss had been staring at Peeta’s network post since he’d replied, …you okay…? drifting inside her head like wisps of fog, slowly obscuring the good mood she’d been coasting on while she chattered away on the network. Am I okay? she thought, her hands tightening on the corner of the desk while a whimper worked it’s way up her throat. Normally she would have suppressed the nerves, forced her hands to be steady, held very still and waited it out like her anxiety was a circling predator. Now, however, it was like she couldn’t push the feeling away, didn’t even want to, and that was odd, wasn’t it? That wasn’t like her and that was bad. Her hands released their grip on the desk only to start shaking and she was about to tell Peeta she was worried on the network when she heard the knock on her door.

That’s Peeta, she thought, and the thought made her happy, and so she sprang up from her chair and hurried to the door, throwing it open and beaming at the bewildered boy standing on the other side. “Hi!” she said (though “chirped” was more like it) and reached out to tug him inside. “Come on, get in here, I still have to change, I can’t run in jeans,” she continued, mostly narrating her thoughts as they passed through her mind. “You can just wait-“ she’d started to say ‘on the couch’ but when she turned back to address the remark towards him she looked at him properly and that thing happened again, the same thing that had happened during the quell, and then again and again in increasing frequency the longer they stayed in Lawrence, the longer Prim was safe and happy and the war didn’t feel like it was just theirs, all on her shoulders because she’d gotten him into it. It had happened the most the weeks of the carnival when they’d all stayed holed up in the complex, the three of them pretty much camping out in Katniss and Prim’s living room and the two older teenagers trying to make the whole thing an adventure for Prim rather than a siege. They’d watched movies, not just Disney, and learned card games off the internet. Katniss taught the others to tie knots that Prim turned into bracelets and Peeta baked increasingly elaborate and inventive cookies with increasingly scarcer ingredients. It had felt like a home, and sometimes she’d looked over at Peeta and seen his fingers working on a knot or kneading bread, seen him smile at her or reach over to help Prim with something, and she’d felt it again and she’d been happy for a brief, sharp moment, and then suddenly sickly-scared.

This time, however, the fear didn’t come because she didn’t think about it. She simply crossed the room and threw her arms around Peeta and then, laughing because she wanted to be closer and didn’t really know how stumbled so that both of them went backwards into the wall. “I’m glad you’re here!” she informed him with a grin that smoothed her face out and made her look younger.

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peetanotpita
2012-08-19 02:52 am UTC (link)

It wasn't, by any means, that Peeta didn't appreciate seeing Katniss in such a good mood, but when she'd said she'd been so angry that she'd shoved someone at the grocery store before that, he found himself more concerned than relieved. Katniss wasn't really the type to have that sort of a severe mood swing, at least not publicly. She didn't respond before he'd finished changing, so Peeta assumed she was just waiting for him and so he shut his laptop and headed over to Katniss's apartment next door.

When she opened the door to him, her uncharacteristically energetic greeting took Peeta by surprise. Katniss was quick to usher him inside and Peeta was just as quick to enter, shutting the door behind himself. His eyebrows arched with curiosity when Katniss's statement cut itself off, although he took a step toward the couch reflexively, because that was where he always waited when he needed to do so. Only, before he could get there, Katniss had wrapped him in a hug with such force that, as Peeta went to return the hug, he stumbled backward, his back hitting the wall with a heavy thud.

He couldn't help laughing a little along with her when she started up, telling him she was glad he was there. It wasn't like her, but Peeta enjoyed the enthusiasm. Grinning back at her, Peeta laughed again. "Wow, all right, I'm glad I'm here, too," he replied. "What's gotten into you? I haven't seen you this happy in..." his voice trailed off and he paused for a moment.

Actually, when Peeta tried to think of the last time he'd seen her this happy, he couldn't really remember. Maybe he never had, actually. He'd seen her laugh, but not often. He'd seen her happy, but not like this. Mostly, Peeta was surprised by her excitement to be in his presence when she never seemed to show any real emotion toward him. To be fair, there had been the time at Cindy's house, but she'd clammed up and taken it back almost immediately thereafter and Peeta had tried to strike it from his mind because it had hurt so much. "...I can't even remember," he finally finished.

His smile softened, though, as he looked back at her, enjoying the closeness. "You're really beautiful when you smile, you know," he thought aloud. "You should do it more often," he pointed out. He pushed a piece of hair behind her ear and searched her face when she didn't back off of him. It wasn't that he disliked the attention, by any stretch...it was just...new.

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tindernest
2012-08-19 04:10 pm UTC (link)

Katniss frowned when Peeta asked what had gotten into her, the familiar line furrowing down between her eyes. “I don’t know,” she answered honestly, her teeth worrying at her lower lip and the index finger of her right hand tracing nervous circles against his shoulder, where it had been resting. “I get mad and I shove people. I’m happy to see you so I hug you. I’m worried now because I don’t know why, so I’m biting my lip. I don’t usually bite my lip. It always seemed stupid to make yourself bleed when you were probably going to get hurt some other way but-“

During the course of that monologue she’d turned her head slightly, intending to shake it, but she stopped when she realized she’d turned it so that her nose was almost against his shoulder. That made her remember sleeping like that, curled against him with her face pressed into the fabric of his shirt, and how she’d felt almost safe. She wanted to feel like that now, so she pressed her face forward and buried herself against the rise of his shoulder and sighed contentedly, her muscles going slack and watery with relaxation. Then he was calling her beautiful and it was actually nice to hear, to know that he thought that when she wasn’t trussed up by some capitol products, even the ones wielded by Cinna. It felt good, now that she was letting herself admit it, to know that someone thought she was beautiful when she was just herself, neither the silly girl on the capitol TV programs nor the seam girl who reeked of desperation so sharp it had hardened into pride, made her just inaccessible enough to be fascinating but wasn’t who she was either. “I’ve heard not scowling improves my looks,” she said dryly, calling back to their first games, but there were large chunks of those games that she didn’t want to think about now or ever, and so it was a relief when he pushed a strand of hair behind her ears and she looked up at him again and beamed.

“We’re going jogging!” she exclaimed, louder than she’d meant to and then broke into giggles again when she realized she’d just shouted pretty much in his ear and once she started she couldn’t stop, because she didn’t want to stop, and so she just hung off him, laughing until her stomach hurt.

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peetanotpita
2012-08-19 07:14 pm UTC (link)

Peeta's own brow knit back at her when Katniss explained what was going on. She was acting impulsively and didn't understand why. Peeta opened his mouth to ask if she had been drinking, because she was reminding him, ever so slightly, of Haymitch...but she didn't smell of liquor and Peeta remembered that she didn't like it; that wouldn't be it, so he didn't actually ask, letting his mouth close again without words. He wouldn't have been able to speak, anyway, once he realized what Katniss was doing, next.

Her body language had changed against him; Peeta felt as though they were back in the train on their victory tour all of those nights when he'd held her close in bed to help her try to sleep. She was pressing her face against him; her body and Peeta touched a hand against the small of her back. Her energy was waxing and waning so quickly that Peeta could barely keep up. And jokes...Katniss nearly never made them, so the one she made that threw him back into the time of the 74th Games, took him off guard all over again. "It does," he replied with a small smile, pushing away the associated memory and focusing on the fact that shew as making a joke at all.

Peeta's eyes widened right along with his surprised smile when Katniss shouted in his ear that they were going jogging, as though reminding him in case he'd forgotten. "Wow," he laughed, moving his arms around her to hold her up as she went a little slack, hanging off of him as she laughed more than he had ever seen her do. "All right, shouldn't you...change? We can't go jogging when you're in your jeans," he reminded her.

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tindernest
2012-08-19 11:07 pm UTC (link)

“No jogging in jeans!” Katniss repeated, then had to take another break for a fresh spurt of laughter at the thought of her trying to make it more than a block in the summer heat with the heavy denim clinging to her legs. “Or this shirt!” she added as she looked down at the white cotton t-shirt she had thrown on over her jeans that morning, “White stains easily with sweat and then I’d have to buy a new one and that,” she looked sternly at Peeta as if he were about to argue with her or, worse yet, suggest that she should run in such a stain-able garment, “would be a waste of money. That would be bad,” she informed him. Then, with no warning other than that she had stepped back and released her hold on him, she peeled her shirt off and tossed it onto the couch before unbuttoning her jeans and hopping out of them somewhat awkwardly, still not used to the way denim clung, the heaviness of it when compared to her cloth pants from back home.

“These are heavy, I don’t really like jeans when I’m taking them off or putting them on,” she said as she pulled her right leg free and tossed the pants over to join her shirt so that she was standing in the middle of the living room in only her underwear, the cheapest bra and bottom set she’d been able to find at Walmart, plain white and practical cotton. “They’re nicer when they’re on me though,” she added, pausing and looking thoughtful as she was distracted from her progress towards changing by the various merits of denim jeans as opposed to fabrics more commonly found in District 12. “They have a little more protection, you know? Tougher fabric. They restrict my range of motion though.” She stretched one leg up and forward as if to touch her knee to her face, saying, “You definitely couldn’t do this in jea—“ before overbalancing and falling onto the floor in a heap of tangled limbs.

“Oops, I probably should have thought about that before I did it,” Katniss mused, waving a hand vaguely in the air for Peeta to help her up.

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peetanotpita
2012-08-19 11:45 pm UTC (link)

Peeta just watched Katniss in a mixture of amusement and horror. He had no idea how to process her behavior, so he stood staring with wide eyes and watched it unfold, uncomfortably. But then she pulled away from him and started taking off her clothes. For a moment, Peeta looked around as if checking for Prim. ...actually, he sort of was checking for Prim. If she walked in just then, whether or not Katniss was the one doing it, he looked guilty by association and he'd worked really hard trying to make sure Prim liked him and trusted him, in case Katniss ever changed her mind about not being in love with him.

"Katniss, you should really—" he started to protest as she slid out of her jeans, babbling a mile a minute about the denim and how sturdy it was. Peeta lifted a hand to his forehead and ducked his head slightly in discomfort. He shouldn't be watching, he knew that he shouldn't and if something Seal-related had made Katniss act the way she was acting, she'd be mortified to know that he'd witnessed it. And still, Peeta was a seventeen-year-old boy, in love with a girl who suddenly felt the need to strip herself of her clothes in front of him and...he couldn't not look.

Most of what Katniss said went completely unnoticed by Peeta as his eyes moved over her skin as furtively as he could manage through his slightly splayed fingers. This was bad. This was really bad. He closed his eyes and shook his head as if to chastise himself as she chattered on. But then her sentence stopped abruptly and Peeta looked up just in time to hear and see her fall with a thud to the floor.

Swallowing thickly as she held a hand up for him to aid her to her feet, Peeta approached and held out his hand to her, turning his head respectfully and knitting his brow as he shifted uncomfortably, tugging at the front of his running shorts. "You should change in your own room..." he told her, closing his hand around hers and pulling her to her feet. "What if Prim sees...?" he added in a low voice, just in case Prim was in another room in the apartment still.

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tindernest
2012-08-20 01:22 am UTC (link)

Katniss looked up at Peeta from the floor and frowned, brow furrowed in innocently quizzical confusion. He had his hand outstretched to help her, as she’d known he would, but he was turned away from her and looking pained and uncomfortable. Is he hurt? she wondered, and for a moment she felt badly about making him help her up, and then he was telling her to change in her room and she realized, oh, it’s because I’m naked. She was still confused though, Peeta had seen her almost-naked before, on the beach during the Quell, and that time he’d kissed her. In fact, the whole thing had given her the impression that he was rather a fan of her being naked, so this was a confusing turn of events. She scrambled to her feet and reached out to tug Peeta’s other hand away from his eyes, capturing both of his hands between hers and pulling herself towards him so that when she stood on her toes their eyes were level and she was close enough to study him carefully. “Are you all right?” she asked, looking him over quizzically, “because I did not take off my clothes so that you could stare at me while I was almost naked, I took them off to change, but now that it’s happening I’m kind of confused that you don’t seem to want to see me almost-naked. I would have thought that would be the kind of thing you would like. Me with less clothes. I-“ she looked down and her eyes encountered the motivation behind him tugging on his shorts a few moments ago, “I thought that meant you liked me? Or what was happening?” she asked, cocking her head at him and giving him an earnestly confused look.

Then his words about Prim sank in and she squinted at Peeta, “Why would Prim care if I was in my underwear?” she asked, letting go of his hands and settling back onto the flats of her feet. “I don’t think it’s anything she hasn’t seen before, I mean we shared a room growing up and I’m pretty sure an entire country was watching the Quarter Quell when I was about this level of naked, which included my sister. So I don’t think she’s exactly going to be alarmed to see me in my underwear.” She pulled at a strap of her bra on the word ‘underwear’ and seemed to realize something, “This is the wrong bra for jogging,” she said, hands moving to the back, then she stopped and shot a look at Peeta, “do you still want to go jogging? You don’t look so good.”

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peetanotpita
2012-08-20 01:37 am UTC (link)

"I'm fine," Peeta sputtered quickly, giving her a tight smile that didn't match the uncomfortable look in his eyes. His jaw flapped slightly as he meant to respond to her, but again didn't have much of a chance as she rambled on, calling him out on having really rather enjoyed the last time she'd been at this level of undress. He'd forgotten about the cameras then and it was a little stupid being worried about Prim seeing them, even though that was the only thing he could think of just then. Well...beside the fact that he knew this wasn't Katniss, not really, and she'd be upset if she came back to herself in the midst of this encounter.

And then Katniss looked down and pointed out what he'd been trying to hide. Peeta's face turned red and he felt his ears growing hot as he cleared his throat. "It does," he breathed, not really sure how else to respond as he cast his eyes down with shame.

Katniss let go of him then and settled back onto flat-foot and Peeta tugged at his shorts again reflexively, looking back at her. "It's different," he pointed out. "We're setting an example now, you said so yourself, remember? You even said I couldn't sleep over for a while because—" Peeta's eyes widened when Katniss moved her hands to her back.

"No!" he yelped, his hands making their way to hers and pulling them back to her front, holding them there tightly in his own. "Don't...don't do that," he said, swallowing thickly and feeling his face grow hot again. "I don't know. No, not really," he admitted when she asked if he wanted to go jogging still. He thought maybe it was better to keep Katniss inside right now, anyway, actually. "Let's not," he suggested in a wobbly voice, clearing his throat again before adding, "maybe you should stay inside today..."

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tindernest
2012-08-22 03:32 am UTC (link)

Katniss burst into giggles again at Peeta’s horrified face, letting him grab and hold her hands without much of a struggle since this new (and apparently horrifying) development was equally as entertaining as a run. “Your face,” she managed between spurts of laughter that would restart whenever she would collect herself enough to focus on Peeta’s face again and the abject terror mixed with confusion that still contorted it into the expression she found so amusing. Her laughter had pitched her forward slightly and when she raised her head, collecting herself for good at last, her face was closer to Peeta’s than she had been prepared for and she hitched her breath in a soft, surprised noise. Suddenly the situation was less giggle-inducing than, well, interesting and she found herself glancing down curiously.

“You still like me,” she informed Peeta, as if he might be unaware, then cocked her head slightly, “That happens sometimes when we sleep in the same bed doesn’t it? I always feel guilty when I wake up and it’s happened, or I think it’s happened. I don’t right now though.” Her tone was more disinterested narration than anything else, and by the time she’d finished her sentence her mind, unfettered by holding back or sorting through how she should be feeling or what she should be saying was already on to other things.

Other things, evidently, meant eyelashes. Peeta still had her hands in his and so when Katniss took a step forward suddenly their hands and arms formed a barrier between them that she had to peer over. “I like your eyelashes!” she told him enthusiastically, beaming at him as if congratulating him on managing to grow superior protective hair around his eyes, and then leaned forward and stood on her toes again. Staring at his eyelashes meant staring at his eyes and his hands were warm and gentle around her wrists and he looked completely ridiculous and for some reason that and the proximity made her want-

Before she could even really complete the thought, her body reacted and she was leaning towards him and kissing him, only pulling away a moment later to suggest brightly, “If we can’t go outside, let’s do this instead.”

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peetanotpita
2012-08-23 02:08 am UTC (link)

Peeta's brow knit heavily and his face seemed to burn even hotter, if that was even possible. He held his breath when Katniss pitched forward and was only inches from his face, staring back at her. This Katniss was all wrong, but she had the same voice, the same laugh...she looked the same and she smelled the same. It was difficult to want to be this close to her at the same time as wanting to be very far away from her. She was going to be so angry when she came to, he knew she would and—

"I always like you," he pointed out quickly before it dawned on him what she meant. "Not—" he paused and squeezed his eyes shut. "— not like...can you stop, you know, looking...?" he asked, stammering his way uncomfortably through the request, making a conscious effort to keep his eyes on her face so as not to paint himself a hypocrite. She went on and Peeta frowned. "That happens every morning," he said in a low, shamed voice. "It's nothing to do with you." Sometimes, it was, he had to admit, but most of the time it wasn't. "It just happens. It's not my fault; it happens to everybody. Every guy," he said quickly, correcting himself and shifting his weight awkwardly, keeping a fast hold on her wrists to keep her at bay.

It wasn't easy keeping up with her like this. One moment she was poking fun at him, then she was complimenting his eyelashes, and then out of nowhere, she was kissing him. At first, Peeta reacted reflexively, letting his hands fall away from her wrists and moving one of them to the side of her face, returning the kiss. Kissing Katniss had been as natural as breathing once; they'd had to. Well...she'd had to; he'd wanted to. But since they'd been here, the last time she'd kissed him, she'd clammed up and gotten upset afterward. When that memory hit him, Peeta moved to pull away, but she'd beat him to the punch. "No," he breathed and pushed her away carefully. "No, we can't. You're not yourself...I should go..." he mumbled, looking away.

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