they don't write songs about the ones that come easy, peeta/katniss, PG-13, mockingjay spoilers, 548 words. for the girl on fire ficathon.
Sometimes they don't speak for days. They skirt by each other, their eyes catching, then falling, their hands accidentally brushing, their bodies angling away. It is not easy, it is not calm, it is not certain.
The stories they write about Katniss and Peeta believe in a grandeur of simplicity, of love conquering all, of happily ever afters. (Don't they know there are no happily ever afters in District 12?) The real story is not that way. They gloss over the hard truths, the rocky paths, the fighting, the misunderstandings, the ieverything/i, to pick and choose what they want to believe. In many cases, the post-Rebellion stage is more like the pre-Rebellion years, despite protestations otherwise.
Peeta is distant. It is self imposed, it is forced, it is the product. He doesn't know what to do with his hands when he isn't busy, so they fold over and over again, wringing every possible word out without speaking. He does better some days, but the spectre of an episode (an episode, they call it) looms large and deafening over him - over his happiness, over his stability, over Katniss, over both of them. He can't escape it, no matter how hard he tries, but some days it is better. On the days it isn't, he shuts himself in his own house, door bolted, curtains shut, chairs overturned and himself, himself clutching his hair, willing the pain and the distortions to go away. The worst ones only subside when he is away from Katniss.
Katniss carries around the weight of the Mockingjay, of the Games, of the districts, of the Rebellion, of Peeta, of Gale, of Boggs and Finnick and iPrim/i and no matter what people choose to believe, it never goes away. Never completely, and never in time. The best she can do is push it out of her mind for a few hours, before something else comes up and takes over. Her mind may be volatile to navigate, but her heart is unrecognizable. Every day she wakes up, she wonders if this is it.
It is a harsh reality.
The story is familiar: Katniss drives herself crazy with her guilt and worry about Peeta. Katniss both loves Peeta too much and too little. Peeta drives himself crazy over the falsehoods. Peeta is never the same.
But when the days turn into nights, and the heat turns into cold, and loneliness turns into comfort, it is them all over again, it is Katniss and Peeta, the two Victors of the 74th Hunger Games, the girl on fire and the boy with the bread, the starcrossed lovers of District 12, Katniss and Peeta, and they never hesitate to be with each other. (When you've lost almost everything, you cling to what you haven't.)
The days are tense, but the nights fall away.