InsaneJournal

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.