1.
Her back arched, lifting like a sinuous wave from the mattress beneath her, a drawn out moan slipping from between her lips. The sun had set hours before, thin slivers of moonlight filtering through a break in the thick drapes that managed to hold out most of the winter chill.
The window in their bedroom never closed.
The chill that did manage to creep in danced over her skin, and for that, Katniss was grateful. Because right now, her skin was on fire, beads of sweat breaking out on her temples and snaking a line down between the valley of her breasts. Even after all these years, the feeling of Peeta over her, around her, inside her, made her feel like she was burning up from the inside out.
"Peeta," she groaned, as his mouth roamed over her breasts, tracing across the soft olive flesh until he drew one of the darkened peaks into his mouth. Her hands tangled in his blond waves, tugged slightly in the way she'd grown to know he loved. "I need you."
He lifted his head, his blue eyes blazing into hers, his own insatiable need echoed there. His mouth crushed to hers as he raised himself over her, her arms dropping to the mattress so her fingers could interlock with his on either side of her head. Eyes fluttered closed as he slid inside her, as he snapped his hips against hers, fast and hard, the way they'd both wanted it tonight.
He'd come home from work, his shirt dotted with flour and his hair dusted with snow, and had presented her with a single fruit-filled danish from the bakery, accompanying it with a kiss that had quickly turned heated. Later, they'd stared at each other voraciously over the dinner table, the tension thick and palpable until they'd finally finished their meal, then had left the kitchen a disordered mess while they tore at clothes and stumbled up stairs.
It didn't take long, both of them wound as tight as tops. She was close; she could feel it in the way her eyes were starting to blur, in the way her stomach clenched, in the way her heart was racing out of control. And with the way Peeta's breathing was rapid, and laboured, and the way his thrusts were becoming faster and more erratic, she knew he wasn't far behind.
As usual, he gave her one hell of an orgasm.
They fell over the edge together, and with a sleepy, satisfied smile, Peeta lowered his head and pressed his lips to hers, his words coming out in a soft murmur.
"Merry Christmas, Katniss."
2.
She'd been too satiated afterwards to even remember the words he'd uttered, her body loose and limber from sex, but the next day as he sat across from her in the kitchen, a smile on his face and two cheese buns sitting on the plate in front of her, he echoed them.
Stuffing one of the cheese buns between her lips, Katniss eyed him warily. "What are you even talking about?" She muttered around a mouth full of bread.
Peeta shrugged. "I'm just wishing you a Merry Christmas."
"Yeah I get that," she huffed. "What does it mean? I've never heard of it before."
He traced a finger around the edge of the plate absently. "I found it in a book Effie left here on her last visit. It's a holiday that used to be celebrated during the winter season, way before the Dark Days even. I just like the idea that people would spend time together as a family, and give each other little gifts, and eat lots of food, and...it just sounded special, that's all. And I know it was happened near the new year, and that's coming up, so I just thought I'd, I dunno…" He trailed off, and Katniss could see the pink on his cheeks. She reached over, covered his hand with hers, and waited until he looked up at her before she spoke.
"Thank you, Peeta. I like the idea a lot." Then her eyes twinkled. "Now lots of food, you say?"
"Lots of food," he agreed with a nod. "Turkey and ham, and vegetables, and gravy and cake and-"
"Sold," she said firmly, and shoved the second bun in her mouth.
He laughed, and wiped a crumb from her lip.
3.
She stared down at the counter in front of her in disbelief.
When Peeta had called her at home, and asked her to come to the bakery in the middle of the following afternoon, the last thing she'd expected to see had been three squirrels, all perfectly shot straight through the eye. Almost as though she'd shot them - but she hadn't.
"Where did these come from?" Her eyes wide with curiosity, she looked over at Peeta, where he was leaning against the door that led to the bakery storefront.
He smiled, bending his leg at the knee and pressing the ball of his foot against the frame. "Well, I know you've been teaching Thom how to hunt, and he mentioned to me he'd snagged a bag full of squirrels. I thought it might be nice if we have dinner tonight, cook up a feast. Have a few people over."
"Like the 'lots of food' we talked about over breakfast yesterday?" Katniss asked wryly.
He reached up, rubbed the back of his neck in the nervous habit that endeared him to Katniss every time. "Well, we've still got those turkey leftovers in the cold box and...yeah, pretty much."
Katniss laughed, then looked back down at the squirrels again. "It sounds perfect. And it gives me an opportunity to congratulate Thom. He's gotten good."
Peeta cocked his eyebrow. "Well, he learnt from the master."
Katniss smiled. "He certainly did."
4.
"I like the woods as much as anyone, Peeta, but really? It's almost sundown, and we've got a pile of leftovers from last night that I want to eat right now. Why are you dragging me out here?"
Squeezing her hand slightly, Peeta glanced over his shoulder back at her. "Because I've got something to show you."
"I've seen trees before, funnily enough."
"I'm not showing you trees, Katniss, I promise."
"Then what-" He turned to her, cutting her off mid-sentence by pressing his lips to hers. They were warm, and soft, and encouraging, and as she slowly leant into him, grasping his jacket in her fingers, she almost forgot they were in the woods.
But not quite.
"You can't divert my attention that easily, Peeta Mellark," Katniss scolded, letting go and shoving her hands deep into the pockets of the heavy winter coat Effie had sent from the Capitol last winter. "Even if you look as adorable as hell in that beanie."
Peeta grinned, lifted a hand to the dark green wool cap that had arrived in last weeks mail from District 4. "What can I say? Your mom is pretty good with her knitting these days."
"And it only took 5 years of horrendous sweaters for her to get there," Katniss snorted, rolling her eyes.
"I like that snowflake one."
"It only reaches my midriff."
"I know." This time he winked, and reached for her hand again. "Come on, we're almost there."
"Almost where? I don't even know how you found whatever this is - you never come this far into the woods."
As branches cracked under his feet - the very reason he never ventured far, nor accompanied her on her hunts - he lifted a finger to his lips, before pointing upwards into the branches of a pine tree. "It's not that far. And let's just say something caught my eye one day, so I followed it."
"Followed what?" She asked impatiently. "Come on Peeta, I'm cold."
"Just look up."
Lifting her gaze, she looked up through brown branches dusted in a light coating of snow, the evergreen pine needles breaking through in sharp relief. It wasn't until she squinted that she could see the outline of brown twigs, curved almost like a bowl, and the four small blue and black toned heads bobbing just over the rim.
"Peeta," she murmured, and took an involuntary step forward. "Oh, they're mockingjays."
"I saw them last week," he said quietly. "I've never seen them this close to town before, and never in a nest like this." She glanced back at him, and his brow was furrowed. "Do you think they're cold?"
"Mockingjays have endured a lot more than snow; I think they'll be fine," Katniss told him, before shifting her gaze back to the birds. "Should we sing?"
"You should sing," Peeta smiled. "Not me."
So she did. Not the four notes from long ago, nor a song from her childhood. But one that held bittersweet memories of a wedding in another District, when two people smiled at each other as they danced to their first song.
The woods echoed with the tune well into the night.
5.
By the time Katniss awoke the next morning, Peeta had already been gone for hours - the by-product of being married to a baker, a man who spent more hours awake before sunrise than even she ever had, back when hours of hunting had already happened before she'd left for school.
She rolled over, her body tired and achy and weary, just wanting nothing more than to sleep the morning away, and felt the piece of paper crumple under her cheek.
Lifting her head and reaching for the thick, cream coloured stationery that had been placed on her pillow, she focused her sleep weary eyes on the words scrawled across it.
I looked at my ring this morning as I dressed, and it brought a smile to my face as I remembered when you gave it to me. Tonight, I'll make dessert if you make dinner. ;)
And remember - Merry Christmas!
Katniss traced her thumb over the back of her own simple gold band, the matching one to his that she'd worn since the day after they'd knelt in front of the fire and exchanged bread Peeta had baked himself.
Dinner, she could do.
6.
Katniss kicked her boots off, hung her worn leather jacket over the hook on the back of the mudroom door. At this time of year, there wasn't much to hunt - the ground packed and covered in snow, the chilly wind sending the animals to their burrows or caves or wherever they made their home.
Not that they needed the food, of course. But sometimes it was nice to return to something familiar, something that made her feel close to her father. So she'd go out with her bow, with the intention of hunting, and would only end up whiling away the afternoon by staring out across the frozen lake, her bow unused in her hand.
"Come here, you little shits!"
Ahh. And there was the other one, the man who'd been like a father to her for as long as she could remember.
Katniss moved down the hall and into the kitchen, peering through the wide window before snorting to herself at the sight in the yard across from hers.
Haymitch, arms flailing wildly as he tried - and failed - to gather the half a dozen geese currently running rampant through his front yard. The door to the large wooden "goose house" he and Peeta had built one summer afternoon years ago hung open at a crooked angle, as if they'd broken out in a haste.
The laugh fell from her lips before she could stop it.
"What's going on?" Peeta's voice murmured into her ear as his arm slid around her waist. He pulled her in close, his chin dropping onto her shoulder.
"Haymitch is playing with his geese. Or, more accurately, they're playing with him."
Peeta shifted so that he could see the same angle she could, then laughed, his eyes lighting up in excitement. "Look at them, running amok."
"Looks like that indestructible house you built for them isn't so indestructible after all," she said.
"The door was Haymitch's responsibility," Peeta said steadfastly, and Katniss shook her head wryly.
"Of course it was. Do you want to go and help him? He might be calling those geese sons of bitches right now, but you know he'll be gutted if they freeze in this weather."
Peeta squeezed her quickly before pulling away. "He will," he agreed as he headed towards the kitchen door. His voice grew quieter as he moved outside. "And this ended up being better than I could have planned."
Her brow furrowed. "What?"
"Nothing!"
Katniss watched in amusement as two grown men were run around in circles by 6 geese.
7.
She hadn't expected the nightmare to hit. It had been so long since she'd had one, the safe haven of Peeta's arms managing to keep them from her more often than not.
But some days, when she'd fall asleep on the sofa in the middle of the afternoon and Peeta wasn't there, they would come, and suck her down into a place where mutts clawed at her legs, and Glimmer turned to slime in front of her, and Prim disappeared in plume of smoke. Where Finnick's green eyes stared at her from an empty abyss and blood rained from the sky.
Katniss felt Peeta's arms slip under her, then felt the movement as he carried her upstairs into their bathroom. He quietly stripped her of her clothes while tears streamed down her cheeks and her body shook, then slid with her into the steaming water, his arms encircling her and pulling her close as their bodies submerged. He did nothing but hold her as she sobbed, his hands gently brushing down her arms as her cries turned to whimpers, then to hiccups, then finally to a faint hitch of the chest.
She liked the feeling of the water against her skin, the way it would ebb and flow and remind her of her childhood, the times she would take a moment to swim in the lake. And with Peeta with her, it kept her tethered to the here, to the now.
It wasn't until later, when he'd tucked her in bed and told her he would get her a cup of hot chocolate, that she realised the bath had been surrounded by candles just waiting to be lit.
Peeta had had other plans tonight, but he'd put them aside, for her. The way they always did when one of them would get drawn back into a past they didn't want to remember.
Because they took care of each other.
8.
Katniss was used to the honking of geese at all hours of the day and night - after all this time, the sounds had just become a part of the outside, like the wind and the rain, and the crunching of leaves and snow under her boots.
But the constant bleating coming from the front porch was new. And unexpected.
Forgoing a jacket, and stepping out into the cold, she came face to face with Peeta, his face flushed and streaked with dirt, and his blond hair matted in sweat.
He also held a very angry looking goat in his arms.
"Peeta, what the hell?" Katniss exclaimed, as he lowered to his good knee and placed the goat on the porch floor. It immediately dropped to its haunches, then looked up at them both expectantly, its bleating now soft and intermittent.
"I bought a goat," he said simply, straightening up.
"You bought a goat," Katniss echoed incredulously.
He nodded, began to unwrap the orange scarf that was wrapped around his neck. "Yeah. Old man Grable had a couple that he wanted to sell, and I thought it might be nice to have one, thought I'd buy her for you as a Christmas present. You know, we could milk her, make some cheese…" he trailed off. "I know that Lady was Prim's, but I thought maybe we could have one too."
At the mention of her sisters name, Katniss' heart hitched. The feeling wasn't sharp and bitter like it used to be, but a gentle pang of sorrow, one more of regret, of the loss of what could have been.
"If you don't want to, I understand," he said quietly, when she hadn't replied. "Maybe I should have asked you first. I can take her back..."
Katniss shook her head. "No, no, it's okay. It's good. I like it."
"You sure?"
She stepped forward, drawing him into a hug. Every time she thought he'd done everything he possibly could without surprising her, he did something more. And she realised this was something that felt right. Lady would always be Prim's, but she had her own memories attached to that silly goat. And they brought a smile to her face.
She leant back, then glanced down at the goat. "Alright, Mr Mellark. What will we call her?"
9.
The fire flickered low in the grate, sending shafts of light across the otherwise darkened room. The music was low - the same music they'd played the other night when Thom and Delly and Sae and Haymitch had come for dinner - a medley of fiddles and soft drums and strings.
She didn't often dance; it wasn't something she felt comfortable doing, though Peeta always tried his best to make her feel at ease when they did so. But he'd asked her tonight after they'd finished their meal, a smile on his face and a light in his eye, and she hadn't been able to say no.
So Katniss enjoyed the feeling of his arms around her, the warmth from the fire blocking out the dropping temperature outside, and the music filling her with a sense of serenity. She enjoyed these moments - these times when it was clear, so clear, that things had become good again. That even though they still had those bad afternoons, and the nights when the dark felt too dark, and the days when Peeta would fight through flashes and images that were shiny or dull, they could still have moments like this.
10.
Sometimes, she marvelled at how far Peeta had come over the years. How the flashbacks that had almost destroyed him at one stage had slowly ebbed away until they only happened at times that were few and far between. How he'd recaptured his love of art, as he drew things outside of the Games, outside of the Arena, outside of the Capitol. The drawing he'd presented to her earlier that afternoon had brought memories that took her back to the start. Back to when he first came into her life, when he gave her the gift that would set her on the very path that led her here.
The bunch of dandelions weren't in a vase - instead they were casually splayed across a table, ten round, white, fluffy heads standing out against the cherry wood, their stalks long and green and vibrant. The drawing itself was small, no bigger than a book, and she knew exactly where it belonged.
Katniss headed for the library - the room that had once done nothing but remind her of Snow - and rifled through the drawers of the desk until she found the frame she wanted. Johanna had sent it years before, the light wood stained and glossy, etched with the faintest of lines around the edge. They'd set it aside at the time, and now Katniss knew why.
She placed the drawing in the frame and rested it on the desk beside the picture of her father.
Turning away from the desk, she began to leave before the bright red corner of a book tucked behind a sofa cushion caught her eye. Curious, she reached for it, pulling the small volume out and studying the cover. It was the book Effie had left behind, the book Peeta had told her about when he'd mentioned this Christmas 'thing' he kept referring to.
She flipped it open, riffling through the pages until she found the passages that referenced what he was talking about. And then she read something that made her stop, and pause, and reread it again, more carefully, more intently.
The more she read, the more she slowly began to put two and two together. Some of them took her longer to figure out than others, but soon enough, she realised what he'd been doing - and how he'd been doing it.
Yes, Peeta Mellark surprised her every time.
And maybe it was time she surprised him.
11.
The next morning, when Katniss found her sheath resting by the back door, replenished with eleven new perfect and smooth wooden arrows, and a note that said they were a gift from him (with the help of the carpenter, of course, because at least he could carve worth a damn), she knew she'd have to beat Peeta at his own game. Because without her even realising it, he'd set out to spoil her this week.
And he had, probably more than he ever realised.
She knew she'd have to do it early, before he had the chance to. Even if he had an idea planned for tomorrow, for the final day of his own version of the Twelve Days of Christmas thing he'd obviously had going on, she knew this would trump it. Hands down. She'd been waiting for the opportunity, and this was it.
She slung the sheath over her shoulder, grabbed her bow, and walked out into the cold air.
12.
The sun was barely peeking over the horizon as she slid a hand over his back, her fingertips tracing the scars that were so much a part of him that she barely even noticed them any more. After all these years, they were just Peeta. And they meant as much to her as every other part of him.
"Peeta," she whispered nervously. "Wake up."
"It's my day off," he moaned, digging his face deeper into the pillow. "I just wanna sleep a bit longer."
"But I have something you'll want to see."
His voice remained muffled by the pillow. "Is that a proposition?"
Katniss rolled her eyes. "Not quite. You can go back to sleep after, if you still feel like it."
His back shifted as a sleepy chuckle worked its way through his body. "Okay, okay, I'll-" he lifted his head from the pillow, stopping short immediately as he saw what Katniss held out in front of her, out towards him.
A smile slowly curved her lips as the stunned shock crossed his face, as the realisation hit.
"When we're 12 weeks along, you can tell people."