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Tweak says, "Weiss Kreuz is flowershop love"

Katniss Everdeen is busy reblogging squirrel pics (tindernest) wrote in wariscoming,
@ 2012-09-29 17:21:00

Entry tags:

katniss everdeen, peeta mellark

Who: Katniss and Peeta
What: Katniss jumps out of a tree and attacks Peeta with feelings. I'm not even kidding.
Where: Tree. Driveway.
When: Evening, when Peeta gets home from a shift.
Warnings: TBD

This is stupid, Katniss thought for approximately the eight-millionth time since she’d climbed up into the tree, one of the many bordering the driveway that wound up the wooded road towards Cindy’s house, I’m stupid. I should get down and go inside and make Cindy let me help her with something. I should get some laundry ready and bug Prim about her homework. She can see the evening unfolding before her even as the day fades, darkness coming earlier now that it’s fall, and the world around her tree darkens into early evening. She can see herself scrambling down from the branches she’s nestled in, throwing her laundry and Prim’s into the machine that does in moments and for free what Hazelle did for years until her hands were cracked and hard to provide for her family. She can see herself pulling a chair up for dinner, Peeta’s bread and whatever Cindy’s wandered in to add and maybe even a side dish from Prim, can see herself eating a stretch of those dinners that goes on for years, if the war will let them. In none of these visions does Peeta hold her hand or kiss her or deviate in any way from the alliance, the friendship, that they have managed to salvage from fights to the death and deception and the kind of sheer terror that would make an animal gnaw its own leg off to escape a trap. That’s worth something, isn’t it? That could be enough for me.

There was something smooth against her lips, slipping over the calluses on her fingers as she rubbed it back and forth. The pearl. She squeezed her eyes shut briefly, but didn’t move it away from her lips, as she remembered Peeta handing it to her in the arena, the small flash of a smile that had, just for a moment, made him look as young as he really was. He looked like that most often, she’d discovered, when he was able to give someone something they needed. It had taken her a long time to notice that because she’d been so busy refusing anything he’d wanted to give her, hadn’t been something she’d noticed at all until they’d begun living together in Lawrence without Snow haunting their every step. Now she could see that he’d meant it when he told her she didn’t owe him for the bread, for anything, because she’d seen him jumping to offer River any sort of kindness he could since her brother had been taken, seen him with Prim, helping her with her homework or letting her help him bake, even when she fumbled the proportions and ruined a batch of bread. She’d seen that he didn’t do it out of pity or condescension. It didn’t mean that she didn’t still owe him, didn’t still hiss a warning at Prim when she forgot to thank him for help or for a baking lesson, but she’d accepted that generosity as part of him and had come to feel a kind of protectiveness towards it, as if Peeta had thrown open all the doors to his house and gone to sleep without worrying about who might stroll inside. There were few enough people like him in the world, and she had no problem with the idea of spending the foreseeable future making sure he could stay just as he was, no matter the cost. Anything more though…

She tucked the pearl back into the pocket of her jeans and swung herself down a branch, not out of the cover of the thickest of the foliage but a bit lower to the ground, within a safe range to jump down. Her father wanted her to be happy. Cindy had told her that it could be worth it, if the other person was willing to work for it. Peeta was, of course, had obviously been willing to work for it even when there was no chance at all, but he wasn’t the question, she was, and she didn’t know if she was capable of that. If she even wanted to be. Then there was Gale, back home and waiting and wanting her with all the draw of her past. She remembered holding his hand as he’d lain on the table, whip marks on his back, and just knowing that they had belonged to each other. Except that she wasn’t quite sure that the girl who had belonged to Gale even existed any more, if she hadn’t died in the bloodbath at the Cornucopia during that first Games and let another girl run away into the woods with her body. A girl who didn’t belong to anyone, not even Prim, not as much as she’d used to back when Prim had needed her so much, needed her for everything. Now she was almost grown, more than her sister in some ways, and moving, unafraid, towards a future in which she wouldn’t need her at all, no matter how much she’d want her around, and then… Katniss grimaced and rested her forehead against the bark of the tree’s trunk, biting her lip hard. No matter how many times she thought this through she could never make it come out even, was as fumbling and confused as she had been with math problems back at school, nothing ever managing to carry through all the steps of the equation without coming out a jumbled mess of decimals nowhere near the smooth precision of the practice problems on the board. Maybe I’m just never going to know.

Except she knew what she’d felt during the Quell, when they’d kissed on the beach, like her body was electricity and humming for more so fast she couldn’t even be scared. She knew that she didn’t want to lose him, and that she cared for him enough to die for him. When she’d pictured her future here she’d pictured him in it, however possible. Didn’t all of those things together mean that she loved him the way he wanted her to?

Maybe, she thought, remembering Prim’s prodding that Katniss and Peeta try to ‘date,’ it means I’ll never know until I actually try.

Which was, of course, the most terrifying idea of all. She could discover she didn’t love Peeta after all and hurt him. She could fall in love with him and he could get to know her better and discover that he didn’t want her after all, that she wasn’t the girl he’d fallen in love with, the idealized, older version of a girl who could stand up and sing, unselfconscious as a bird. Because she wasn’t that girl, hadn’t been for years, and if that was who Peeta really wanted…

The sound of tires moving over gravel cut off her train of thought and she clenched her hands hard around the branch she perched on as Peeta got out of one of the cars he’d borrowed from Cindy and started towards the house, limping a little after being on his feet all day at work. Her eyes were on his arms, the shape of them under his long-sleeved tshirt in the way she’d found herself looking at him lately, since they’d stopped kissing and she’d had time to miss it, and at the same time she wanted to hug him because he looked tired and the tangle of lust and protective concern just confused her more, swirled up in her stomach into irritation with him and herself and everything and before she knew it she’d dropped from the tree in a practiced, silent motion.

“You know you keep saying it, but I have no idea why you think you love me,” she snapped suddenly, her voice almost echoing in the quiet of the evening.

…which was when she processed the fact that she had just dropped out of a tree and blurted out the middle of a conversation she had been having in her own mind at Peeta with no warning, and glared fiercely to cover up her embarrassment. Well, this is already going well.

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peetanotpita
2012-09-29 11:19 pm UTC (link)

These days, working at Stark was starting to make Peeta feel like a traitor. Oliver and Chloe were gone, but every day when he walked through the doors at work, he felt that pull and tug in his heart. They hadn't ever minded him working there when they were here and he didn't know why he felt the way he did — and he certainly wasn't ungrateful; he would never leave if they let him stay — but it was what it was. Hopefully, he thought, the longer Oliver and Chloe were away, the less he would feel as such, because it made a long day feel longer; a tiring shift more exhausting. So, by the time Peeta clocked out for the day and climbed into the borrowed vehicle he was calling his own in spite of the fact that it wasn't, Peeta slumped over the steering wheel and closed his eyes, letting out a huff.

He allowed himself the luxury of staying there like that in the parking lot for a few long minutes before he finally lifted his head again and straightened, pulling on his seat belt and turning Cindy's keys in the ignition. He'd gotten the hang of driving really quickly, even if it still made him nervous with all the other cars on the road constantly feeling like they were coming at him; like he was running a gauntlet every time he got behind the wheel. The drive back to Cindy's wasn't long, but it wasn't short, either. Her home — their home, he reminded himself; they shared with her now. He didn't have a home of his own. At this rate, he might never — was tucked away in the woods and it was so perfect for Katniss, even if it felt too secluded for his personal taste. It was growing on him, all the same, so that was something.

Parking the car in the driveway, Peeta took the keys out of the ignition and sighed again, wondering whether Katniss would have come back in or if she was still hiding in the woods, dealing with the second loss of her father. He couldn't fault her that, after all; he understood why she was doing what she was doing. That didn't make it easier to swallow when he thought about the fact that, for the first time since the 74th Games, she didn't need him to comfort her, but he still understood. Peeta climbed out of the car, shut the door, and stuffed the keys into the pocket of his pants, running a calloused hand through his hair and over his tired face as he made his way up toward the door to the house.

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peetanotpita
2012-09-29 11:20 pm UTC (link)

You know you keep saying it, but I have no idea why you think you love me.

Peeta whirled around, gasping and poising himself in the fighting stance that Cindy had taught him in their training — it was slightly different and felt more effective and comfortable to him than the one Haymitch had trained him — reflexively. Only, when it registered that the person before him, the person to whom the voice belonged, was Katniss, Peeta relaxed out of it again as quickly as he'd gone into it. "Dammit, Katniss!" he hissed, chest heaving as he willed his heart race to regulate again now that he knew it wasn't a threat coming up behind him. "What?" he asked, having not quite processed the actual words she'd spoken. Except, that he had, too, somehow and he stopped her before she could answer. "Because..." he stumbled, still calming from the startle she'd caused him. "Because you're incredible and independent, and beautiful and you don't realize that you're any of those things," he blurted out and immediately looked down at his feet, threading his fingers into his hair again. That wasn't...exactly how the words had formed in his head before they'd come out of his mouth.

He waited a moment, to gather his thoughts, stalling slightly as he did so. "I...Jesus, Katniss, you can't just..." he stammered, looking back up at her sheepishly. "Because you're...you. I'd do anything for you; I would die for you. ...and because I know you would do the same for me. And...because somewhere along the way...that crush I talked about what seems like forever ago started to mean something. In the caves. On the beach. In the crypt. At Watchtower. Here." He wasn't sure, really, what she wanted him to say. What did she expect him to say, he wondered? Had she sneaked up like that on purpose to force out a genuine response in a moment of surprise because she didn't trust him to give her one otherwise? His eyes were downcast again as he thought out loud, "does it really matter...?" You don't love me back, so I don't really see how it could...

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tindernest
2012-09-30 12:28 am UTC (link)

Katniss took a quick step back when Peeta went into a fighting stance, not because she thought that he would ever intentionally hurt her, but because she knew that after everything they’d been through, that it was not a wise move to sneak up on either of them and hope to come out of the encounter unscathed. A moment later, however, Peeta had gotten himself under control, or at least the urge to fight, and was twining his fingers through his hair in what looked like desperate frustration as he tried to simultaneously recover from a fright and answer her question. Of course he’s actually trying to answer, Katniss thought, not just yelling at me for startling him or taking a minute to actually freak out properly before he tries. I asked him and so he’s trying because he’s Peeta.

“It matters to me,” she said roughly, almost angrily, and turned her glare towards the ground, fixing it on a rock like she was hoping to blast it to bits with the force of her angry confusion. “You say it, for the cameras, but the only time you ever said why you talked about that stupid song in assembly when I was five. I don’t sing any more except if Prim has a nightmare. So that would have been a stupid reason to love me.” Her arms came up and wrapped around her torso in a warming gesture as she suddenly realized she was cold, that she had been up in that tree since mid afternoon when the sun had taken the edge off a late-September chill. It was nothing compared to some physical discomforts she’d faced, but she was still cold, and asking Peeta these kinds of questions, hearing him talk this way, made her feel vulnerable. She wished now that she’d worn a jacket, something solid and heavy, big boots like the kind Cinna would have made for her to wear into battle, anything but jeans and a tanktop that showed the dip of her collarbone and the rise of her shoulders, still bony even after proper nutrition for such a long stretch in Lawrence. It would have been nice not to feel small right now, to be outwardly brave even if she was seriously considering scrambling back up the tree. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.

Her arms dropped back down to her sides and she took a step forward, the energy buzzing and thrumming nervously in what felt like an electrical current through her limbs demanding that she do something to alleviate the anxious tension of the situation. For a moment she considered simply closing the distance between them and kissing him, pulling back long enough to say, ”That’s why I care” and then letting him draw his own conclusions. Peeta was good at understanding her intentions even when she couldn’t quite articulate them, not as good as Gale, but in a way that was better, because she needed drawing out sometimes, but he would understand this, wouldn’t he?

Then she remembered the night on Cindy’s couch, the afternoon that she’d been under a spell and her inhibitions had been lowered, and she huffed out a frustrated sight. He wouldn’t understand, he’d assume something had happened and he would push her away. I actually have to talk to him, she thought, and took another step forward anyway, heart beating so hard she wondered if he could see palpitations in the skin of her chest and throat where her pulse was thrumming.

“Haymitch once told me I could live a thousand lifetimes and still never deserve you,” she muttered, mostly to herself, but loud enough for Peeta to hear. “And I’ll be awful. I’ll be tense and maybe I can’t ever love anyone the way you want me to, and I never want kids, and you should have kids someday, here, where it’s safer for them.” She cut herself off and thinned her lips, jerking her eyes up quickly to his face before looking back down at the driveway, then back again for a moment, as if she were too nervous to take in his reaction to a stream of babble he probably didn’t even understand all in one look.

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peetanotpita
2012-09-30 12:57 am UTC (link)

Peeta was taken aback by Katniss's insistance that it mattered to her why he felt the way he felt. He hadn't expected such a rough response and the words felt like a slap in the face. "...there's no cameras here, Katniss," he breathed quietly, exasperated and confused. He watched her wrap her arms around herself and wished that he'd been wearing a jacket of some kind that he could give her; she looked cold. Though, he supposed if he tried she'd refuse it anyway, the way she did nearly everything else he ever offered her these days. That, as much as it hurt his feelings, he understood entirely. Katniss was like him in the sense that she didn't like having debts. She was more extreme in the sense that she felt that every favor was a debt.

She was quiet for a long time and Peeta didn't know whether he was meant to be filling the silence or waiting for her to do so. Katniss took a step forward, though, so Peeta waited. He thought that perhaps that was a prelude to words and whatever had taken her into whatever this mood was left him in the dark. He let his eyes drift back down, far away and off to the left, unable to look at her when she was feeling so clearly uncomfortable in her own skin. It wasn't the Katniss he knew and whenever she looked like that he always felt like it was his fault in some way. Peeta didn't want to be the reason she felt that way.

But then when Katniss started to speak again, Peeta looked back at her, uncertainty in his eyes. The mention of Haymitch's opinion took him by surprise and he wondered if Haymitch felt that way because she'd so readily pretended to care about him when she hadn't under Haymitch's direction. His eyes moved away again as he shook away the memory of the pain that had come with finding out that none of the feelings, none of the words, none of their moments in the caves had meant anything to her the way they had to him. Why was she telling him all of these things? Katniss had made it clear on multiple occassions that she wanted nothing more than friendship from him; they were a team. Nothing less, nothing more. As much as he hadn't liked it, Peeta had accepted what she was willing to give to him and it had become a comfortable place, in spite of his wishes.

Peeta looked back at her just in time to catch her eye when she looked back at him. For a moment he said nothing, processing the words, flipping them around in his mind and trying to find out where they had come from; whether this was a trick of the Seal again. "I don't understand," he finally admitted, knitting his brow slightly. "Why are you telling me all of this...?"

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tindernest
2012-09-30 02:11 am UTC (link)

Katniss frowned at him, eyebrows drawing down sharply, and huffed out a frustrated sigh. Can’t you just once not need me to use so many words? Can’t you just know? She thought, turning to the side and pacing back and forth for a few steps in each direction, looking like something caged. A bird called, far away, the shriek of a hunting bird rather than a songbird, and she looked towards the call for a long moment before managing to tilt her head down again and look at Peeta who was watching her with utter confusion, and a bit of resignation as well, as if he were used to her acting strangely but couldn’t believe it was for anything good. What if he loves me, but he knows all those things about me are true, and so he doesn’t want me? She shuddered again, the night was getting properly cold now that it was darkening even more, and took another step forward.

“Because it’s true,” she said, and her voice wasn’t angry now, it was wavering, cracks and fissures running all through the famous composure that she’d held up with pride and determination and sometimes anger and, when all that failed, pure unadulterated fear, until now. “I’m awful for you. I drop tracker jacker nests on you and make you think I love you when I only wanted to go home and I don’t know how to do any of this, and you-“ she choked off, realizing her hands had balled into fists, and shook them out quickly, a fierce, frustrated motion. Then she looked down, not glaring at the gravel this time, simply unable to look at his face while she talked. “In the crypt, after, I thought you were gone. Like…” she realized that Peeta would probably have no idea what she was talking about, that she’d never really shared this detail of her childhood with him though he might have gathered it from town gossip, “After my father died my mother just…went away. She’d lie in bed and look at the wall, and for a day or two, I just thought she was sad. Except she never came back. The money from the mines ran out and we ran out of food and I kept telling her she had to get up, we’d all die if she didn’t get up, but she never did. That’s why I was rooting through your trash that night, when you tossed me the bread. When you came out of the crypt and you wouldn’t talk to anyone I panicked, I thought you were going away too, and I didn’t know how to stop you and I tried…” she thinned her lips slightly, remembering the kiss on Cindy’s couch, how he’d pulled away from her afterwards, “…things I probably shouldn’t have,” she finished. Then a smile curled up her lips slightly, and she went on, “But you came back anyway. You went to Dr. Moore and you did what you had to and you came back. So I wasn’t afraid any more, of that happening, of something going wrong and you leaving, but I still knew I wasn’t…” she shrugged, gesturing vaguely to indicate all the things she’d already said about herself, about why they were wrong together.

“I just don’t know. Whether it would be a good idea, or if I’d ever fall in love or if any of it would work, and I already hurt you and I don’t want to again, and I really would be awful at all of it but I,” she bit her lip hard, only relaxing her jaw when she realized she was about to draw blood, and she finally forced herself to look up at him. “I want this anyway. Us. I want to try.”

Her muscles had tensed up until she was practically rigid, adrenaline making it harder than ever not to shake, but she made herself stay still through it and keep her eyes on Peeta, waiting for him to either close the distance between them, or back away.

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peetanotpita
2012-09-30 02:37 am UTC (link)

The more Katniss talked, the less like his friend she sounded and Peeta's brow creased with concern. Katniss was the strong one. This wasn't like her and everything she was saying made him worry that this was another trick of the Seal for sure. He'd heard about Mrs. Everdeen. Whispers in the bakery to his mother who had been more than happy to whisper nasty things back. It hadn't made sense to Peeta at the time, being as young as he was and having only been privy to bits and pieces in passing, but when Katniss laid it out the way she just did, it came together and he felt that much worse for having checked out and folded into himself after the crypt.

"I didn't mean to do that to you," he admitted. The fact that she was smiling slightly even after making a vague mention of the night on Cindy's couch when Prim had only just gotten to Lawrence was somewhat heartening though. He gave Katniss a sympathetic look when she made the gesture he took to mean all of the things she'd already mentioned; all of the put downs she'd given herself and all of the justifications she had for not wanting to be with him. But then she kept talking and Peeta was taken aback by her all over again.

A small part of him was suspicious. Not of Katniss, exactly, but of what was making her come out with all of this; to tell him that she wanted to try being more than friends. The greater portion of him was to happy to let it take too much hold and a slow smile crept over his lips. For a moment, he just looked back at her and silently wondered if she was sure, because he couldn't take the heartbreak of her calling them off again in a day or two after thinking it through more thoroughly. But she didn't move, she kept staring back at him and her eyes didn't flicker down with uncertainty and so the smile grew and Peeta moved forward, taking her face in his hands and guiding her close enough to kiss, because, for the first time...Peeta thought that maybe she wanted him to. He pulled away and looked back at her for a moment.

"Okay," he agreed, because words, ironically, were failing him when they'd come so much more easily than normal for her, and he pulled her close, hugging her tightly and rubbing his hands up and down the exposed upper part of her back for warmth while he was at it.

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tindernest
2012-09-30 03:51 pm UTC (link)

For a moment Peeta just watched her and Katniss felt her heart sink at the uncertainty in his expression. She wasn’t sure if he was uncertain as to whether or not he wanted this, wanted her, or whether they had simply had so many false starts that he didn’t trust her to mean this, but it was enough to make her afraid that it was too late, that he was about to step backwards. The muscles in her legs twitched slightly from being held tense for so long and she was ready to run, to take off into the woods and scramble back up into a tree and forget she’d ever done anything so stupid. Then he smiled, and before she could even really feel the first stirrings of hope he was stepping forward and cupping her face gently with his hands as he kissed her.

Katniss had come a long way from the girl who had reacted so woodenly to being touched in the cave during their first games. From necessity, she’d grown used to being kissed, especially by Peeta. None of the kisses on their victory tour had been real, not for her and not really for him, but they had never exactly been unpleasant either, and they had developed into a sort of language for her that was easier to understand than words. Kisses for the cameras had been gentle, chaste, even when they had to play up their affection and he’d tangled his hands into her hair or pushed her gently against a wall in one of their staged ‘caught sneaking off’ moments. There had been no desire, no pressure for more, only a feeling of being held steady, of being protected, his hand cradling the back of her head, his body shielding as much of hers as possible from the cameras. She’d tried to return that, to let him know that they were in this together as much as they could be, but those kisses had never made her want more. Kissing on the beach during the Quell had been the opposite, desperation and need and one-last-time so that she still didn’t know what would have happened next if Finnick hadn’t interrupted them.

This kiss was different. It was gentle, like their staged kisses, and it had need, like their kisses on the beach, but it was neither chaste nor desperate, it was just…she struggled to find the words even in her own mind but couldn’t and settled for just enjoying it instead. Maybe that’s what it is, she thought, as she caught his bottom lip experimentally between her teeth for a moment, the first kiss I can actually just enjoy.

When he pulled back her eyes were wide and she could feel her heart hammering under her ribcage but she smiled at him, a little nervous, a little shy even after everything, but happy. She knew she was happy right now, whatever was going to happen next. He agreed in one word and pulled her forwards again, into a hug this time, and she smiled against the crook of his neck when he rubbed the place on her back where goosebumps had been cropping up. She was actually warm now and as nice as the kiss had been this was a little more reassuring, made her feel safe after the limb she’d just gone out on. She was letting her eyes close and her muscles finally relax when something occurred to her and she pulled back a little, not out of the circle of his arms but enough to look at him, and raised her eyebrows.

“Okay?” she echoed, “Peeta, you’ve had a crush on me since you were five, you’ve made speeches on television about me, and when, you know, it’s happening all you’ve got is ‘okay’?” She wrinkled her nose at him in mock-disappointment, but she was still smiling too widely to be taken seriously.

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peetanotpita
2012-09-30 04:30 pm UTC (link)

When Katniss pulled back from their embrace, the very last thing Peeta expected from her was to be teased, but when she pointed it out, all Peeta could do was let out a huff of a laugh, feeling his face and ears growing warm with embarrassment. He had always been the better of the two with words; he always knew what to say. Katniss struggled and Peeta excelled, that was who they were. Only today, it seemed the other way around. But, even as she pretended to pout, her smile illustrated that she was mostly amused rather than offended by his failure to deliver the right words for the first time in a long while.

"You jumped out of a tree, snuck up on me, and took me off guard after a long day at work," he pointed out to her, a small smile tugging at his lips as he looked back at her. He dipped his head just slightly and captured her mouth with his own again, taking her bottom lip between his and not quite yet daring to prod with the tip of his tongue in case she still wasn't sure. Doing it on camera to prove to Snow that she was in love with him when she wasn't was one thing; doing it in private because she was ready and wanted to was a different thing entirely, Peeta thought. He broke the kiss but didn't pull away, his lips still touching hers as they moved while he whispered. "I'm not perfect either, you know," he joked back.

Katniss's skin was cold under his fingers as he moved his hands to slide down her arms and that pulled him back into focus. He kept his arms around her, but he took a step back. "You're freezing," he observed, knitting his brow. "...how long have you been out here in that?" he asked, nodding at her tanktop, inappropriate only in the fact that it was a poor match for the weather.

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tindernest
2012-10-01 05:02 am UTC (link)

Katniss laughed quietly at Peeta’s response, started to mutter, “Excuses, excuses,” in her best Effie imitation, but then Peeta was kissing her again and she was too distracted to remember to finish the joke. She ran her hands up along his arms as he took her bottom lip between his, resting them on his shoulders, drawing their bodies closer together, slowly but steadily. See, she thought as she returned the kiss, I can do this. This part anyway. I’m doing this. I won’t be awful at all of it. She’d gotten caught up enough in the moment that she was starting to feel something beyond the hopeful sort of warmth, when Peeta stopped kissing her and started speaking against her mouth. For a moment she had trouble processing the words, wanted to whine at him not to stop when she felt like she was just starting. Still, once she’d processed his words she huffed out a little laugh and replied, face staying close too, “I know Peeta, I heard you singing while you were baking the other day.”

He pulled back a bit and frowned at her, more solicitous than romantic now, and in a way she was relieved. It was one thing to get caught up in a moment in the shadow of a tree in Cindy’s driveway, or on the beach during the Quell, but eventually the moment ended. Then she was left confused and still grappling with the fact that everything in her was telling her this wasn’t a good idea, with the fact that she had never really kissed anyone and meant it before aside from one or two times when her life was in imminent danger. If she’d gotten herself, them, in too deep while she was caught up in a moment, she didn’t know what she’d do next. So she allowed Peeta to shift the subject and scowled at him a little for simultaneously noticing her tanktop and taking his body heat away.

“All day,” she answered him blithely, burrowing against him so that she was sheltered from as much of the wind as possible, shamelessly using him as a portable furnace. “It was fine in the morning, and I had a lot to think about, so I just ended up stay in the tree. Besides,” she added carelessly, “when you think about it in perspective, I’m pretty sure I can tough out being a bit cold.”

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peetanotpita
2012-10-04 03:47 am UTC (link)

Smirking slightly, Peeta nuzzled his nose against hers. "Cut it out, you'll hurt my feelings," he joked. "Not everyone can make the songbirds stop and listen like you can," he pointed out quietly. This felt comfortable for Peeta. It felt like before he'd known that she was faking everything for the cameras; for the sponsors. There weren't any cameras or sponsors and there wasn't a President Snow watching them like a hawk for proof of their love. While Peeta had never had any trouble with it, knowing now that Katniss was in control and she'd chosen to give this a try made him feel so much better about it. Peeta hadn't actually ever remembered feeling as happy before in his life as he felt just now.

Her answer to his question knit his brow for him and he held her close to keep her warm. "Katniss..." he said reproachfully, tucking her head under his chin. "Yeah, that's true, but you shouldn't," he pointed out. "Let's go inside, it's too cold."

Peeta was admittedly loathe to move, but his overprotective nature in reference to Katniss — his girlfriend...that...was exciting and terrifying all at once to think about — was kicking into gear when he could feel the gooseflesh that had risen on her bare skin as he rubbed her arms. The fatigue from a long day at work seemed to wash away at the realization that he didn't have to worry about some other guy swooping in and sweeping her off her feet the way he'd worried about Oliver when he'd first shown up in Lawrence. Though, admittedly, he missed Oliver and he'd have taken losing Katniss to the other man more readily than the thought of never seeing him again. Oliver had been a good friend.

Forcing himself to shift his focus, he moved to have Katniss at his side, arms still around her albeit a bit more awkwardly at the angle, so that he could start toward the house. Peeta leaned his head to kiss the top of hers. "You wanna talk about it? Whatever had you up there all day...?" he prodded.

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