From a Tumblr prompt (meeting at a masquerade ball au - Everlark). This fic *very slightly* references the movie 'Deadpool', it's not necessary to have seen the movie to understand the fic, nor will the fic spoil any plot points of the movie... but there are a couple of movie gags in here that you'll miss if you haven't experienced the movie :)
She clattered into the ballroom on heels higher than she usually wore. The three drinks she'd had at home before the cab arrived to bring her to this little slice of hell contributed to a tread much noisier than typical for her. Stopping just inside the grand entryway she scowled at the sight before her.
Katniss Everdeen hated parties.
She honestly thought she would be allowed to skip this one; after all, it had only been 3 weeks since her entire life had come crashing down. Surely she was entitled to at least a month of Netflix and ice cream in her stained sweats?
Madge, her friend since high school, didn't agree. "You promised, Everdeen," she whined into the phone, and Katniss was powerless to resist.
The annual Undersee costume ball for children's charities was a big deal in Panem. Madge's father had started the tradition years ago, and Madge took over hosting when she got married last year.
So there Katniss was, in what barely passed for a costume, cobbled together at the last minute. Fishnet stockings, heels and a ridiculously short leather skirt borrowed from Jo's closet, a shimmery black sleeveless blouse, and a pair of cat ears leftover from Hallowe'en. A fabric scrap for a tail and a black mask and voila, she was a cat. Or possibly a feline hooker.
The ballroom of an opulent downtown hotel was packed with people; the cacophony of chatter and laughter and music threatening to send her running before she'd even truly made an appearance. But she'd dragged herself here, so she was at least going to track down Madge before she bolted for the quiet emptiness of Jo's apartment.
It proved more difficult than she thought, and after a few minutes of aimless wandering her feet were already sore. The bar in the corner beckoned.
Only one stool was occupied, its inhabitant's broad back facing her. She slid onto the stool next to him, trying not to drool at the way the red and black spandex of his costume clung to his broad shoulders.
Darius, another of Madge's friends, was tending bar, his sheriff costume and bandana doing little to obscure his identity. She couldn't see his smile, but she knew it was there as his eyes crinkled in recognition. "A gin and tonic, Kat… woman?" he asked, and she chuckled.
"Please," she said. "And a blowjob for Deadpool here." The occupant of the other stool turned his red-hooded head to her briefly, then went back to peeling the label from a bottle of beer.
Darius hooted, "You're the first one to recognize that costume, all of the other girls have been calling him 'Spidey'." She visibly shuddered, but said nothing, focussing her attention on the G&T he set in front of her, downing most of it before he returned with the whipped cream-mounded shot glass.
Setting it in front of her, Darius gestured to the silent member of their little threesome. "Seems like you're going to have to enjoy this blowjob instead of 'Pool there, seeing as how his costume has no mouth hole." She glanced over, and sure enough the mask was mouthless, with white mesh obscuring his eyes as well. Very authentic, but she wondered how he was drinking the beer that sat mostly empty in front of him.
"Seems like it," she murmured. In her younger years she might have climbed up on the bar to take the shot without using her hands, but since this was Madge's charity ball she wasn't about to cause a scene. Instead she sipped the sweet mixture of Bailey's, Kahlua and Amaretto slowly, using her tongue to swipe the whipped cream remnants from the rim. A little choked noise came from her left, and she realized that Deadpool was watching her. He looked away quickly, returning to his apparently fascinating beer label, and her cheeks flamed. She sat in stony silence until Darius dropped off another drink for each of them.
"So what's your story?" Katniss asked, elbowing the costumed man beside her. He flinched, she could see the muscles of his bicep ripple beneath the skin tight fabric. His head turned towards her again, but with obvious reluctance. "Rough childhood?" He dropped his head again, shaking it slightly, not in response but in dismissal. But she wasn't deterred; she'd seen the movie, she knew how this was supposed to go down.
"Me too," she said, as if he'd answered affirmatively. "My parents died when I was little, and I was raised by an uncle and aunt. I lived in a cupboard under their stairs." He had stiffened at her words, but his shoulders relaxed as she finished. "No wait," she murmured, knocking back most of her drink. "That's Harry Potter. Right, so I watched my parents get murdered and was raised by a butler in stately Wayne manor."
That elicited a muffled chuckle from the man beside her, though he continued to look down. But it spurred Katniss on. "It's true. And then my home planet was blown up by a Sith lord while I watched. Then I got pinned by a boulder and had to cut off my own arm to escape!" She was slurring a bit, but the hooded stranger was at least looking in her direction, however silent he remained. She could see the way the spandex caressing his strong jaw stretched, as if he was smiling, just slightly. Her own smirk faltered as she stared at the white mesh where she knew his eyes were. "I lost my arm, my home, my family…" she trailed off as her joking came too close to the truth.
"I lost the man I loved more than life," she whispered, and the stranger didn't look away. "I had the most wonderful life, I had everything, and I threw it all away." A single tear snaked from under her mask, pooling in the corner of her mouth, grey-tinged from her mascara.
"Fuck, stop Katniss," the man beside her groaned, his voice muffled by fabric but still recognizable. He pulled off the hood, revealing sweat-soaked curls plastered to his head, and anguished blue eyes, red-rimmed and smudged with violet. Eyes that had haunted her every waking moment. Eyes that had filled her dreams and nightmares. Eyes that looked even more tortured now than they had when she'd run out of their apartment three weeks ago.
"I'm sorry, Peeta" she whimpered, and it was clear she was apologizing for more than the story. He sighed, running his hand through his matted curls, making them stand on end in a way that made her stomach clench. How she missed running her fingers through those curls!
He stood suddenly and her heart sank. Of course he was going to walk away, he should walk away, after how she treated him. Instead, he pulled her off the stool, marching her through the ballroom and out the double doors, down the hotel corridor and into another, quieter room.
When they were face to face he dropped her hand and reached to slide her mask up, resting it against her cat ears, exposing her damp eyes to his troubled gaze. The silence stretched between them, pregnant with things unsaid. He broke first.
"Why?" It was less a question than an admission of defeat.
She fidgeted, looking everywhere but at the man before her. "Madge made me come," she started, but he cut her off.
"That's not what I'm asking, Katniss," he said, frustration painting his words. "And you know it."
She nodded. "I'm sorry," she repeated, and his face fell further.
"Just tell me why, Katniss. Please." His voice cracked and finally, finally she met his eyes.
"I didn't mean to hurt you," she admitted in a voice too small to be her own.
"You ran away!" He started to pace, pulling at his curls again. She was powerless to look away. "You left me, you haven't answered my calls in three weeks! Three weeks! If it wasn't for Jo I wouldn't even know if you were alive or not!"
"I'm sorry, okay! I'm sorry."
He stopped and turned to look at her, the energy that had fueled his frenzied pacing dissipating all at once, water through a sieve.
"Just tell me why," he begged. "I thought… I thought we wanted the same things." Her heart clenched hard.
"We did," she affirmed, choking back a little sob. "I panicked."
"I asked you to marry me," his voice was high and tight, incredulous, "and you ran away. You didn't even say no, or not yet, or, fuck, anything. You just bolted! Three weeks, Katniss, I've been waiting for three weeks to ask you…" He trailed off, and a shudder ran through him, his head falling forward. The small room was filled with his gasping breaths as he struggled to calm himself.
Tears rolled down her face as she watched him, the man she'd loved since she was just a girl. The man who was so patient with her fears and intimacy issues. The man she'd always envisioned forever with. The man she'd broken. She could live a hundred lifetimes and never deserve him.
"I wanted to ask you how to fix us." It was such a quiet admission, more a breath than a whisper, but her head shot up when she heard him.
"You… you want to fix us?" A flutter in her chest. Hope, maybe. Was it possible?
"Is there still an 'us', Katniss?"
"I want there to be." Her grey eyes met his blue, both wild, anguished, but both with a newfound optimism so lacking in the previous weeks. Weeks of emptiness, of aching loneliness.
She didn't know who moved first, maybe it was simple magnetism that pulled them together, lips meeting in a clash of teeth and tears. And underneath all that was the steadiness he brought to everything, the calm, the knowledge that things would be good again, in spite of everything. And only he could give her that.
She poured her heart into their kiss, murmuring apologies each time they broke apart for air. His own apologies joined hers; when he begged her forgiveness for pushing too fast she nearly broke again. "No, no," she whimpered, pressing the words against his lips. "You've never rushed me. Peeta. You've never, ever pushed. You were so perfect. When you asked me, it was perfect, it was exactly right. And… and I can't believe I ruined it."
"I don't care about that, Katniss. I just want you. Any way I can have you." He was so earnest. Always so earnest. One of so many things she loved about him.
"I want to go home," she said plaintively. He nodded sadly, clearly not understanding, and she nearly lost her nerve. "I want to go home with you. To our home. Please, Peeta?" It was barely a whisper but his face lit up like the sun.
"Yes, please, please come home, Katniss. Oh God," he laughed, a wet, almost pained sound, and then he was kissing her again, a thorough claiming, unrestrained, agonizing in its relief.
"I wanted to come back, even before I made it to the elevators," she whimpered as he clutched her tightly to his chest, huge hand cradling her head. "I picked up the phone a hundred times. I… I'm sorry, Peeta."
"No more," he murmured, pressing wet kisses in her dishevelled hair, cat ears and mask lost somewhere along the way. "It's in the past. We're going to be okay now. I love you." He grasped her more tightly, as if to prevent her from ever running again.
She couldn't go back to the party, not smudged and bedraggled as she was, and Peeta didn't seem to have any desire to return either. He was still clutching her tightly as they waited for the valet to bring around the car. She looked up at him, after everything she'd put him through he was still here. "Peeta?" Her voice was so timid. "If… if you still want…" His brows furrowed. She bit her lip hard and tried again. "I want to, if you still do."
A slow smile spread across his face, but he wasn't letting her off the hook that easily. "If I want what, Katniss?" His voice had lost the shattered timbre, and was husky, almost playful. Nearly normal again.
"Marry me?"
He laughed, loud, boisterous, echoing off the cement pillars of the hotel entry as he swung her around in a circle. Then he was sliding a ring, the ring, onto her finger, hardly getting it past the first knuckle before he was covering her giggling face with kisses.
It was only after they were in the car, driving back home - home, for the first time in three weeks, that she realized: his super suit was completely pocketless.
"Peeta? Where were you hiding that ring?"