"Everdeen! You're going to be late!"
Katniss reluctantly pulled her head from the report she was reading to check the clock of her computer, seeing that indeed, she was about to be late if she didn't hurry.
"Yeah, I'm going…" she sighed, closing her computer before gathering her pen and notebook.
"I don't know why you're complaining, really! Your teacher is hot, and he's French!" Annie, her friend and coworker, whispered as Katniss moved away from the desk they shared.
"Annie! You're married!"
"And? Just because I'm married doesn't mean I can't see what's around, you know? Maybe you want to change to Herr Schultz? Because I'd happily take French instead of German…"
In order to stay at the top of their competences, their company, Heavensbee Intl, provided its employees with mandatory languages courses. Annie, as the main assistant for the German branch, had to take them with Herr Schultz, a sixty-something little man with a belly and a strong taste for beer.
Katniss, on the other hand, after years working with Mrs. Dupont, who left for retirement a few months ago, was now a student of Mr. Mellark, a much younger Frenchman, that every woman on the floor wanted to have very private lessons with. Everyone but Katniss, apparently.
She took her time checking to see if she had the right set of pens, enough space in her notebook to write out those stupid rules that French grammar seemed to be so full of, before walking as slowly as she could towards the stairs leading to the floor where the training sessions were held.
It wasn't that she didn't want to learn French. No, she knew she needed the classes so she wouldn't sound like the clichéd foreigner when she went to France, unable to utter a correct sentence. And she liked learning things, usually.
But she'd never had such a distracting teacher.
Wavy blonde hair, blue eyes like the morning sky, not so tall as to be be intimidating, sturdy build - and, yes, she had seen the muscles of his arms when the sleeves of his button-up shirts were rolled, thank you very much.
It didn't help her concentrate on the damned tenses she had to try to remember (honestly the guy who invented the imparfait du subjonctif clearly did it to annoy people) when he was leaning closer to check her mistakes and she could smell his cologne - she wasn't sure it was a fragrance that was actually sold somewhere - all male and enticing, and well…
Katniss sighed as she arrived on the floor, walking along the corridors until she reached the door, knocking softly before entering and realizing quickly her studying partner wasn't already there.
"Bonjour Katniss." The low voice of Mr. Mellark - Peeta, as he asked to be called over and over - made her look directly at him. "Nous serons seuls ce matin. Beetee a du s'absenter pour une réunion avec les douanes."
"Oh, okay." she answered. So, Beetee had a meeting with customs ? That wasn't a good enough reason to leave her alone with Peeta, right?
"So maybe we –" Katniss started again, in the hopes of shifting the lesson to another time this week, or even, never?
"En français?" Peeta chimed in.
He was irritating. Insisting they speak French every time they had a chance. Katniss thought about the time with sweet Mrs. Dupont, who made her work on easy grammar things. She didn't want to acknowledge that she had made more progress with Peeta these last months than in several years with Constance.
"Oui…. " She gathered her mind and French grammar, thinking about her sentence. "Peut-être que nous devons reporter cet entraînement?"
"Devrions would be better. And it's not a training, but rather a lesson - leçon in French with your mouth closed rather than opened on the e sound. Try again, please?"
She rolled her eyes, trying her best to close her mouth for that bloody damn sound.
"And no, I don't think we should cancel today's lesson. Please sit."
He was infuriating. Because of course he was as fluent in English as he was in French, when she had to struggle to even think of the structure of a sentence. And today, she was alone, meaning his corrections wouldn't be split in two this time.
She sat at her usual place across the table, as far away from him as possible, because there was no way she was going to let him see her bad writing - along with the small comments she would make about the French language. Which she was pretty sure he would hate.
"So, last time we were struggling with the conjunctions, right? Mais ce serait mieux que Beetee soit là pour qu'il ne soit pas à la traîne ensuite, right?" Yeah, Beetee should be there today instead of gallivanting to whatever meeting he pretended to be having because wouldn't it be a shame he be lagging behind, right?
"Oh, right?" Peeta raised his eyebrows at her words and Katniss corrected, reluctantly. "D'accord. Nous faisons quoi?" Yeah, now, what would they do?
"Definitely work on conjunctions next time," Peeta said, scrambling for something in his own notebook. He leaned over the table while he wrote, allowing Katniss to answer the women's question as to whether he had chest hair or not.
He stood up, walking to the desk where his satchel was, and took a book out of it, looking through it as he returned to the table.
"Here." He opened it and looked at Katniss. "Vous écoutez, et me dîtes ce que vous en pensez, d'accord?"
The French were so haughty. Couldn't they use "You" instead of "Tu" and "Vous"? But, no, why not make something ten times more complex instead of simplifying it?
"Because it's a beautiful multi-layered language, with a history that goes back to Latin and Greek, with influence from all over Europe." Peeta said simply, still perusing through his book until he found the page he was looking for.
Katniss blushed as soon as she realized she had actually spoken aloud the words that should have remained thoughts. She was about to answer when she heard Peeta talking, reading something out of the book.
"Une orange sur la table
Ta robe sur le tapis
Et toi dans mon lit
Doux présent du présent
Fraîcheur de la nuit
Chaleur de ma vie.*"
"What?" She had understood most of the words, but not the meaning of the whole sentence. Or was it several? "What was that?"
"It's called poetry. French poetry. Instead of fighting grammar, I'm trying to make you discover how beautiful French can be. Will you try to read it?" he asked.
"In French?" Katniss asked, wondering why he would do that to her.
"Well, unless you wish to translate it into German, yes, in French."
"Do I have a choice?"
"We always have a choice." Peeta said, extending the book to her, opened, showing two poems, one on each page. "C'est celui qui s'appelle Alicante." Peeta said, tapping the page with "Alicante" written across the top.
She gave it a quick look, realizing there was only one punctuation mark - the period at the end. How was she supposed to read this aloud? Was each verse a sentence? or each sentence a verse?
"I…. Where do I stop? There's no punctuation? Where do I break the reading? And what does it mean?"
"Just read it in your head, several times. The words aren't difficult. You know them. Maybe the magic will appear and you'll get to it. To the true meaning of the poem."
She kept her eyes down on the page he had shown her, so he wouldn't see her scowl and eyeroll. Poetry. Great. She had other things to do rather than puzzle over these six lines.
But she had no choice. Peeta would have to report on her progress, and she guessed a "no" from her would be a bad move.
So she read the poem in her head, translating it into English. An orange on the table. Your dress on the carpet. And you in my bed. Sweet present of the present. Cool of night. Warmth of my life.
It didn't make any sense. Each verse was like the beginning of a sentence, missing what was between this moment and the next start, as if whoever had written this (a guy named Prévert apparently - she checked the back cover - but hell, it could be Pervert for all she knew) could not be bothered to finish his sentences?
Katniss sighed, fighting to understand the meaning behind the words. There had to be something, right? She read it again, trying to figure out what the hell the orange was doing in the story, because, obviously they had finished in bed.
"Really? Can't he just say 'we fucked in bed?' instead of using all these words that mean nothing?" she hissed, looking from the page to his face.
"En français, Katniss, s'il vous plaît."
She sighed heavily, trying to convey all her disdain for the words she was trying to understand. She was a scientist, number and equation oriented, for whom a square was not a circle, and the Earth was definitely not blue as an orange.
"Pourquoi - no! This is bullshit, I don't need poetry for my work!"
"We all need poetry. Maybe the world would be better with more poetry. Now listen, I'm going to read it again. Close your eyes."
She looked at Peeta, eyes wide open. In what way could closing her eyes help her understand this damn poem? Why was she even trying to understand the poem, really?
"Close your eyes, Katniss." Peeta asked again, softly.
And he waited, still looking at her, until finally, she complied with a sigh and an eyeroll.
She closed her eyes.
But the words she heard weren't the ones she was expecting.
"Imagine you're on a beach, coming back from a walk. The sun is setting. The wind is blowing softly. The sand is warm under your feet, and you walk towards a little house on the beach…"
Katniss could hear the words, but she couldn't, for the sake of her soul, picture herself like one of those models in a shampoo ad, swaying her hips to a sensual music.
She burst out laughing.
"Seriously? Could you be more cliché?" she said, looking at Peeta on the other side of the table.
"What do you mean?" he answered. "Beach, sunset, it's a beautiful place to be."
"Well, maybe, but I'm sorry, it's not my place." She shrugged. "I'm more of a woods girl, really."
"Really? Well then, close your eyes and picture your forest. Can you describe it to me?" Peeta looked at her, his clear eyes looking straight into hers.
"It's more like… woods, really."
"In French, please?" At his words, Katniss was sure she sighed again. He was persistent.
"Okay. C'est un bois, vraiment. C'était derrière chez moi… Souvent, j'allais avec mon papa le matin du dimanche…" Suddenly, as she remembered, it all came back to her. The early mornings with her father, gathering berries, hunting the small animals, or simply watching the sun setting in the sky when she was a little girl. "I remember walking through the woods, listening to the birds, learning their songs and the place they nested, finding wild strawberries or blueberries too." Eyes closed, she started depicting the place, never once realising she had switched to English.
"Then," Peeta's voice used a pause in her description, to chime in. "Just imagine that today after work, you're going to go to the woods."
"But I can't."
"No can't. Imagine. Just for today, just for this hour, imagine. Can you do that for me, Katniss?" he asked, his voice laced with a plea, barely above a whisper.
She nodded. With a little effort, she could see the forest. The large oaks, the thin birches reaching for the sky, the soft singing of the mockingjays, the sound of the leaves under her feet….
"Now, you take a path, a familiar one, between the ferns and the blueberry bushes, can you see it? At the end there is a cabin, lost there, and known to no one."
Suddenly, in the peace of her mind, Katniss could see it. An old cabin, a bit like the one her dad had built near the lake, their lake, where the family took shelter during the picnics they sometimes organized there.
She could hear a voice somewhere around her, whispering words she didn't want to understand, as she pushed the door of the cabin. It was different from the last time she had seen it. Bigger. Neater. Clearer. In the back of the living room, hidden behind loose curtains blowing in the wind coming from the opened windows, she could see a bed. Large, with white linen on it, inviting, tempting.
She made the final steps into the cabin, looking at the kitchen lining the wall on the left, at the old wooden table in front of her, her attention still coming to the bed, over there, just out of reach.
She started walking, her feet grazing the cold tiles. How she became barefoot, she didn't know, didn't care. As she approached the curtain separating the living room and the bedroom, she felt a puff of wind on her neck, caressing, the air whispering through the light fabric of her dress, an old song of love.
But the cold of the wind was soon replaced by something warmer, something moving, as warm hands moved up and down her arm, in a soothing movement. Up and down her arm, the fingers following an intricate pattern as the warmth came back to her neck, followed by the wetness of a pair of lips, familiar, yet unknown at the same time.
Up and down her arms, the fingers continued their dance, a bit higher each time, until they reached her shoulders. Katniss shivered when a hand came under the strap of her dress, not trying to get rid of it, but rather continuing its sensuous motion.
She wasn't able to prevent a moan as she felt herself surrender to the hands of this stranger who knew her so well. Eyes closed, she let her head fall backwards, onto the solid chest that laid there, almost as if it were waiting for her.
The hands moved to the top of her shoulders, and Katniss felt the thumbs start to dig into the muscles of her shoulders, in a slow massage, as if the owner of the hands had all the time in the world.
From somewhere, a voice whispered, "Une orange sur la table…" but she couldn't care less about the orange on the table, lost as she was in the thumbs on her shoulders, lips on her neck, wind in her dress.
She felt the hands go down, following the line of her spine, lingering on each vertebrae with a whisper of a touch until they reached the hem of the dress she was wearing, and the wind stopped playing with it.
Time froze suddenly as she stepped away from the hands that were on her, needing more contact, more presence. As she turned to face her stranger, she saw a glimpse of orange on the table nearby, but what captured her attention was the man who had been behind her, someone she thought she didn't know but now recognized.
Curly blonde hair resting on his head as if the wind had played with them in an endless song of love, blue eyes so clear the sky outside was jealous, freckles lining his cheeks, and a smile, a smile so gentle and kind, Katniss was sure she could melt just looking at it.
Peeta's arms - because of course it was Peeta - were at his side, hands fisted, showing the cords of his forearms, shivering when she started to touch them, letting her hand move higher onto his shoulders, to trace the line of his chest, broad and firm, warm to the touch, until she felt his hands on her cheeks, his thumbs tracing the planes under her eyes.
He didn't speak, but his eyes spoke for him. She didn't answer, but her movements replied for her. She leaned closer, higher, until her lips grazed his and her soul lost herself in his. They kissed for an eternity or two, she couldn't tell. Time didn't matter. They kissed until their mouths had no secrets from each other, until they could map every crevice. They kissed until it was unbearable not to do it more, until they needed more, much more.
Her hands started to unbutton his shirt. His ran up her arms until they reached the straps of her dress, the thin bands of fabric holding everything on her body. They locked eyes, each of them asking for permission that was granted before they finished undressing the other. His shirt fell somewhere, abandoned, letting Katniss discover the details of his chest, the crest of his pecs, the waves of his abs with trembling fingers. She could feel him shiver under her hand, sometimes taking a sharp breath when she hit some sensitive spot. She let her hands wander, here and there, as if they had all the time in the world, because there, they did.
She heard another intake of breath when her hands lingered on his belt, followed by a sense of coldness when she felt the fabric of her dress falling slowly down her body, revealing her naked breasts, exposing her flat stomach and her graceful hips, until it pooled on the floor, and she stepped out of it, her legs circling Peeta's waist as he lifted her, walking her slowly towards the bed.
She let him lay her down gently on the quilt, stepping back to look at her with hungry eyes, bathing her skin in the fever of his look, almost reverence. He joined her on the bed, placing himself close to her, so he could still look into her eyes, while his hands started playing their sonata on her skin. A touch here, a caress there to discover her body, to learn her ways, her moans and sighs.
Until his lips came into play, nipping, kissing, and licking, savoring and devouring, touching and tasting, and she began to sing.
He was relentless, as if he was a thirsty man whose only source of water was her skin, quenching himself on her sweat and juices, on the sweet noises she was making, on the touch of her hands, mapping his own skin.
She almost screamed when he found that her nipples were sensitive to the touch of his lips, so much that she couldn't help but move her head from left to right as he went on, taking his time to make her come undone.
Over and over.
Until she felt his hand come under the soft fabric of her panties, taking its time to part her and slowly, oh so slowly, starting to dance there. Caressing and discovering, touching and mapping, until she lost her sense of reality, until she reached the stars, high above in the sky.
But the need was still there, she realized when she came back, a need deeper than she could tell, that only he could fill. She quickly got rid of his belt, freeing him from his now too-tight jeans, until he was next to her, clad only in his boxers.
But it was still too much clothing for Katniss. She wanted Peeta naked, now. She wanted to feel his skin on hers, his warmth in her, his words from his lips whispering to her, in the cool of the night, in the warmth of the bed.
Katniss helped him get out of his underwear, before putting her lips on his, drinking from him now that he was satiated. Her hands starting their own discovery of his body until she felt him pulse in her hand, but it wasn't enough.
She laid down on the soft white quilt, urging him to come over, come closer, come into her, and finally, finally - time stopped.
They were joined together.
Linked together intimately, the feeling so good neither could tell where one started and the other ended. It didn't matter, they were one when they started moving to a rhythm known only to them.
She followed his movement, her hips in sync with Peeta's pelvis, and she felt it, the burning sensation starting in her toes, climbing up her spine, warming her body, creating a ball of lava inside her belly that was about to explode. She could tell Peeta was close too, the way his breathing hitched, raspy and raw, until a primal sound started out of his chest, and she felt herself letting go, the ball exploding, stars falling around her, and completion overcame her.
She woke up to the music of the wind in the curtains, an arm around her, cradling her belly in a gentle embrace.
There was an orange on the table. Her dress was abandoned on the rug. Katniss was lying in his bed. She could feel the cold of the night surrounding them through the windows, the warmth of his body breathing next to her. Sweet present of the present.
"Katniss?"
A voice coming from somewhere invaded her head, invaded her body, bringing her back to the here and now - the classroom, with Peeta sitting in front of her.
His cheeks were red, and Katniss realized she was feeling hot too - as if … as if …
Her hands reached her cheeks, and she felt them warm under her palm.
Peeta couldn't seem to meet her eyes.
It took her a few minutes to realize she had never been to the cabin, that she had never left the confines of the Heavensbee Tower. She just had a sex dream about her teacher. In front of him, nonetheless.
Peeta finally cleared his throat, bringing Katniss's attention back to him.
"Well, I think you understood the poem." He said, a small smile lifting the corner of his mouth.
She was hopelessly speechless. What could she possibly say to save the situation? Her instincts were screaming to run away, but something deeper and stronger was urging her to stay and listen to him.
He cleared his throat, again as if he was trying to find the words that were lost there.
Maybe they were.
"I was wondering… well, if you want…" The usually well spoken Mr. Mellark was seemingly at a loss for what to say, as she was.
"We could say "tu" to each other, instead of "vous", maybe?" he tried, the look of disbelief on his face clearly showing this wasn't what he wanted to ask.
'Tu' or the familiar way of addressing someone, instead of the very formal 'vous'. The request took her by surprise as Peeta had always been insistent on building a barrier between him and his students.
She wouldn't be able to explain for a long time what prompted her to ask the phrase that would change both their lives.
"Maybe after you buy me a drink or two?"
*Alicante, a poem by Jacques Prévert, extract from Paroles.
Translation (by yours truly)
An orange on the table
Your dress on the carpet
And you in my bed
Sweet present of the present
Cool of night
Warmth of my life.
My huge and deepest thanks to Xerxia and Ct522 for being amazing friends and having enough patience to beta my writing :)
This poem is an all time favorite of mine ;)
I'm thegirlfromoverthepond on tumblr :)
If you liked, please leave a little review :) you'll make my day!