The first time it happened was a complete accident.
The school day had begun like so many others.
As Peeta washed down his dry toast with milk he'd watched his father pull muffins the color of autumn out of the oven. For just a moment he allowed himself to be wistful over what one must taste like imagining the cinnamon and butter melting in his mouth.
The seasonal specialties never made it to the stale bin and he'd always wondered about the food that smelled of his favorite time of year.
He immediately felt guilty because though he wasn't eating pastries right out of the oven he certainly wasn't hurting for food. He wasn't starving or near death.
Not like she had been.
He walked by that apple tree every day.
Sometimes he'd still see her there and it made his stomach ache.
Just last month the branches had been filled to bursting with dusky red fruit. Fruit that had been baked into pies and folded into danish and pressed into cider that Peeta couldn't wait to taste warm once the snow came.
Just two years ago he thought it would become the marked grave of the silver eyed girl who'd stolen his heart.
As he'd passed it this morning with its skinny branches and a few apples lingering stubbornly on its limbs Peeta couldn't help but smile. Because since that afternoon it reminded him of her and how she was still alive and stubborn as well. How he even though he could still see her collarbone above her threadbare sweaters her hair has started to shine again. He loved how it hung down her back now in one braid instead of two.
Smiling Peeta let the gate slam behind him and stepped onto the road. He knew in some small way he had helped her survive. He'd protected her, and he liked that.
Trudging the long way to school he pulled the brisk fall air into his lungs. It was cold and burned inside the pink tip of his nose and still tasted like the spice and pumpkin from the bakery air.
The schoolyard was filled with footfalls and loud greetings that made the cold morning cloud in front of small faces. Peeta looked past those like his, pale and freckled and fair in the early slants of sunlight. Instead he searched for her… for Katniss, and was disappointed that by taking the long way he must have missed her.
He swore to take the short cut from now on.
Peeta was good in school. Not exceptional because he had a tendency to drift off in his own mind from time to time. An entire world seemed alive inside his head and he often felt the pull to disappear there. He never wondered why that was but he knew.
Deep down he knew.
He'd inherited his father's warm smile and blue eyes or so he was always told.
Sadly smiles often hide the darkest sins and secrets.
In a home that smelled of sugar his life was often anything but sweet. So these worlds, the ones only he could see were safe and he took to drawing them to make them real.
His favorite class was history. It had nothing to do with the droning dialogue about the dark days or the delicate system of the Districts. No it had everything to do with the fact that Katniss Everdeen sat one row over and one seat in front of him.
She sat near the window more often than not staring outside. That was pretty convenient since it gave him ample time to stare at her.
He liked how she seemed framed by the tree beyond the glass. Its leaves burned in his favorite color making her hair seem like coal.
It was here. This class and this moment that it happened. That something in the day inevitably changed and altered what would happen in the night.
The teacher's voice was a buzz hazy and distant in his head as Peeta sketched lazily across the paper on his desk. If someone glanced at the movement of his fingers they would see lines and shadows maybe but it was still indistinguishable to a stranger's eyes.
But he could see it. A slender neck. A freckle behind an ear where wisps of hair had just the slightest curl. A long fall of heavy hair so dark it looked midnight black against the autumn horizon. It was like a wave coming apart from the crown of her head over her shoulder.
Biting his lip he glanced up once more to get the angle there just right when his pencil stopped. Katniss moved slightly in her seat and tugged the hem of her sweater down. It was at least three sizes too big and worn so the neck was stretched out. When she moved the collar fell to the side just enough that her shoulder was bare.
Peeta swallowed and the moisture in his mouth felt thick as he his heart began to pound. Her skin was bronze and there, there on her shoulder was a thin cream colored strap. With a start he realized what it was as his speeding heart fell into his belly only to race like the thunderous feet of a thousand horses.
It was a bra. Katniss was wearing a bra.
He swallowed again and felt blood climb his neck and fill his cheeks as he looked around the class. For what he wasn't sure and felt ridiculous because no one else had a clue what was happening to him.
Shit. He was looking at part of Katniss Everdeen's bra. That covered actual breasts. Oh god her breasts. With a small sound leaving his mouth he felt a rush of blood between his legs that made him sit up quickly and hunch over his lap so suddenly his pencil fell and rolled across the floor.
Like it happened in slow motion he watched it hit her worn boot. Then a slender hand with dirt crusted nails and delicate fingers picked it up and she turned to him. With nothing more than a lift of an eyebrow she held it out.
Peeta looked stupidly from her hand to her face and back again before leaning forward himself. It was inches only but the moment felt like minutes.
Because those gray eyes were locked on his the entire time and when his fingers brushed hers he had to suck in a mouth full of air. He wasn't entirely sure when he stopped breathing. Blood climbed his neck and filled in his cheeks, without a doubt he was as red as a strawberry in high summer.
When he just nodded in thanks he couldn't help the wide shy smile that made his lips lift and his cheeks round. He looked down trying to get control of his heart and the ever stubborn problem that only seemed to grow in his pants. But when he glanced up again he saw a small twitch of her lips as well and he decided that if he was reaped at that very moment he would have died happy.
Her eyes. Her neck. That almost smile followed him home. It protected him from his mother's voice and kept him up as he drew late into the night beside his lamp. It haunted him when he tried to fall asleep.
His face was buried in his pillow, each deep breath drawing in cotton and the dry soap used for the wash. The window let in just enough of a breeze to blow the hair at the back of his neck giving him goosebumps.
It made him think of the small hairs he had sketched that afternoon and the color of Katniss's skin beneath it. He imagined running his fingers there where her neck met her shoulder and what it would feel like. He just knew it would be the smoothest thing he had ever touched. He pictured his skin pale moving further until his fingertips hit that slender strap of material so bright against her dark skin.
Peeta thought of lifting it and feeling the skin underneath and when he wondered what she would do if he pressed his lips there he groaned into his pillow as he became instantly rock hard in his pants.
This wasn't the newest problem but it had up until very recently been only a morning issue. One that would go away after he left the warmth of the shower before heading down to breakfast.
Bunching his pillow tighter beneath his head he took a deep breath and when his eyes closed tight all he saw was gray. Big gray eyes and lashes the color of soot across her cheeks and her lips chapped and pink smiling at him softly.
He rolled onto his back.
He imagined her smile becoming a blush as he eased that strap off her shoulder to gather in her elbow.
His heart began to race and he shifted on his sheets uncomfortably.
With his hand still on her bare shoulder he saw himself moving until he pressed his lips to hers and imagined her sighing into his mouth.
This made him rolls his hips suddenly and when his hardness hit the seam of his pants he gasped loud into the quiet room because it felt so good.
Lifting his head he looked at his brother's across the room sound asleep.
Turning off the lamp and covering himself completely with the blanket he closed his eyes again and slowly started rolling his hips up and down.
Katniss's hair in his hands.
Saying his name in between desperate kisses.
His fingers on her waist, up her back, oh shit beneath her shirt.
With a grown Peeta's hands tightened into fists at his sides and he bit his lips to not make a sounds as he continued to thrust dryly against the rough linen growing harder and more desperate each time.
Breathing became difficult and hot and sticky beneath the blanket and when finally he imagined what her small breasts must look like he came.
Pleasure like he didn't know existed shot down his spine and curled his toes and minutes later when he was no longer dizzy and could once again remember to draw air into his lungs he realized that his pants were wet and uncomfortably stuck to his skin.
After he cleaned up he wasn't sure whether to feel relieved or guilty but he slept harder than he ever had in his life.
Right as he drifted off he couldn't help but think of Katniss. A girl her hardly knew but swore he loved; whom he couldn't help feel like would always be important. He fell asleep with a smile on his face.
The first time it happened it was an accident.
Every time after that was not.
For the next three years Peeta Mellark watched Katniss Everdeen. Wanted her in the naïve ways he could imagine and dreamed of the day he would approach her.
Her body changed. His too.
His shoulders stretched as did the subtle flare of her hips. When she would leave the bakery and her game bag bounced against her side he found himself so captivated he would have to lean against the doorframe.
Her breasts rounded into a promise of something that could fill his hands.
This only led to him thrusting into his palms early in the morning beneath the showers spray or under the sheets at night.
He tried to stop, flushing in shame and guilt when she'd walk into class most mornings.
But his body was a traitor to Katniss and Peeta was a traitor to his body. It was a vicious desperate cycle year after year as he failed to summon the courage to approach her.
It was always going to be tomorrow.
He never realized that tomorrow was coming.
When it finally did, it rolled in across a train track and through the air from a microphone. It crashed with a handshake, a handhold, and on a chariot burning with fire.
Tomorrow gasped across a crowd following a confession and settled calmly on a rooftop sitting closer to those gray eyes than he had ever been hoping she would live and that nothing would change him before he didn't.
Panicked it ran into a forest, and spun lies like a web, and waited to die by a stream.
Then tomorrow became a goodbye and with the reckless of the dying every unsaid word and unspoken wish was shared in a shadow damp and dark between just the two of them.
Honest secrets and breathless kisses became entertainment for all of the world to see.
Peeta found out what it was like to hold her, the braid that he drew as a silk curtain he longed to know was crushed in his hands, and in the delirium of fever and infection he realized the irony of thinking he'd die happy if he had been reaped at thirteen.
Because he didn't want to die at all. He just wanted her to live more.
She did.
But so did he and the relief of it nearly sent him to his knees.
Moments later the capitol took his leg below them.
Losing his leg was hard, but when that train rolled home to triumphant cheers Peeta realized there are things that hurt worse than losing a limb.
All for the games.
A haunting fact that followed him everywhere he managed to limp in District twelve. Everywhere he managed to limp alone because from the moment the train pulled away Peeta only saw Katniss from a distance.
With the victory tour only a few weeks away Peeta felt the shadow of deceit and loss haunting him more than ever. He made his way up the walk only glancing at her window once before climbing his front porch.
The door made an eerie creak as he eased it open and stomped the snow from his feet. His smiled and it was sharp and cold when he realized that the toes of his one foot were so numb he almost couldn't tell which was false beneath the double knotted laces of his boots.
Coal glowed in the fireplace but after brewing a cup of tea he took to the stairs choosing the darkness of his bedroom instead. Sometimes darkness was where he felt the safest.
The idea was a joke of course. Haymitch hadn't felt safe in decades. The games stole that away from them all.
Easing onto the bed he unstrapped his leg and let it drop to the floor rubbing the sleeve that covered his knee and rode up his thigh.
Looking at the twist of metal and plastic he couldn't help but think that maybe feeling safe was just one of the many things those capitol thieves could never return.
He managed though.
Left alone with only the echo of his heavy footfalls in his victor's mansion he managed the days.
He painted the pain from his chest and the nightmares from his head. He baked for the hob and kept Haymitch from dying in his own vomit.
But it was the nights…the nights that were terrifying. He attempted to sleep but it always became a twisted shadow of terror and anguish and he would wake shaking and forgetting where he was and missing what had been.
Sometimes he would even try to stand and run not realizing until he had crashed to the ground that he was even missing part of himself.
Nightmares were awful.
The memories were worse.
They brought her.
She would become all he could think of and all he could see and smell when he would close his eyes. He'd feel his arms around her or the hairs from her head brushing his cheek. Her voice rang in his ears saying words she didn't mean.
As he settled Peeta shook her from his head, rolled onto his stomach and clenched his jaw shut and his eyes tight.
It didn't help. Those gray eyes had been his resident ghost since he was a child. She would probably always haunt him.
It made him angry. Shutting off the lamp he watched shadows chase themselves across the floor and drew a deep breath into his lungs.
No matter what he thought of the coming tour still lingered ahead of him like a taunting promise. A fucked up parade of his every god damn insecurity and god it made him angry.
It made him think of her.
Of how he wanted to push her up against the side of her house when she's take the long way home to avoid him. How he wanted to get in her face until she had to lock eyes with him and her cheeks would flush pink.
He wanted to shake her and yell at her and ask her why, and he wanted to shove his thigh between her legs and bite up her neck until she couldn't breathe and had to grind against his pants.
He wanted her to whimper and writhe and he wanted to shove off the wall and pull his leg away before she could come. Then turn and just fucking walk away the same way she did.
With a press of his head into his pillow he shook his head because he also just wanted to hold her and he shouldn't want anything at all. It wasn't his.
The thought of Gale made his stomach sick and letting a breath hiss through his teeth he concentrated on counting in the thin hope that sleep would find him.
It didn't and the tighter he closed his eyes the more he saw her, felt her...the more he simply wanted.
Nothing helped because still he could smell her hair, feel the heat of her breath against his neck, and taste her soft lips on his tongue.
With a muffled groan he fisted the sheets beside him so tight his knuckles turned white.
He could feel the blood pulse hard between his legs and he panted into his mattress as his cock pulsed and twitched making his palm itch to ease down his stomach and into his pants.
No.
He refused to do this anymore. She didn't fucking want him. He wasn't going to touch himself anymore. Not thinking of her.
No.
Holding his breath he counted as sweat beaded at the base of spine, the night air making it feel ice cold against his bare skin.
In his head the numbers changed to noises and he heard her sigh and would swear he could feel it against his feverish lips. It made a needy noise leave his chest as his hips ground down into the mattress.
Oh fuck.
Shit.
He did it again.
And again.
His breathing became panting and it grew urgent and sticky between his lips and the bed.
He thrust again. Harder with his lips dragging along the sheets as moans long and low left his throat.
Memories, fantasies, just more and more of her began to play behind his eyelids and it just made him roll his hips faster.
He grew harder, his pulse insistent and throbbing as his thrusts became desperate and eventually he had to bite into his pillow to keep his groans from growing into shouts.
It was almost like pushing against her, into her and the cotton of his pants drug over his skin just right as he fucked the bed imagining himself fucking her.
Those eyes. Her mouth. God the heat of her mouth.
Pulling his thigh up on one side he used his elbows and palms to push deeper.
It felt good. So good. It pissed him off.
Grasping the loose sheet in his fingers white and tense he pushed back and drug forward and ground down at such a frantic pace sweat began to drip down from his hair and grunts and curses to fall from his lips.
The friction began to burn and a different heat made his jaw clench and his fingers flex as it began to build.
His back arched and his hips rolled down as his whole bed began to rock into the wall.
He wanted to hate her. He wanted her out. He couldn't get her fucking out.
Driving himself up and down against the mattress he finally came dripping sweat with a strangled cry on his tongue. His back shone wet with his muscles twitching as the high finally dissipated.
Catching his breath took minutes where he heaved and panted staring at the white cotton of his pillow. It fractured into colors in front of his eyes as digging his fingernails into his palms he buried his face into it and screamed. He screamed to get it all out, to get her out.
He screamed until his voice was gone and still she was there.
Hours later he was still awake on his bed. This time the shadows grew arms across the ceiling. Each time they came close to overlapping one would shift and melt away.
He understood the feeling as he hoped for sleep to come and for his dreams to be empty.
Still she would be there too. Katniss. A girl he thought he knew. One he was certain he loved and wished wasn't always going to be important. He didn't sleep. There was no smile on his face. Just tears as his screams turned to the sobs.