Disclaimer: I don't own "Hunger Games".


The Bed


Katniss, Greasy Sae told me when I arrived from the Capital, hadn't been to bed in the months since she arrived home. She only dozed sitting at the table in front of the fire. That first evening home in District 12, I put clean sheets on her bed.

That night, I followed her up the stairs. I turned my back while she changed into a night shirt. Then I tucked her into her freshly made bed in her newly cleaned room. I held her hand until she slept then I went back to my own house and fell into a nightmare ridden sleep.

For months, we would follow the same pattern. I would tuck her in every night and hold her hand until she was asleep. I'd often stay longer and only began to stumble back to my own house when I was nearly asleep myself.

On May 8th, my Katniss's birthday, I arrived a good hour before I usually would have for breakfast with a little cake I had made and iced the day before. I served it to her in bed just around sunrise. That night, she didn't get into bed after she changed like she usually did. "Stay with me?" She asked. I stripped off my shirt and pants. We slept shoulder to shoulder with our fingers entwined.

Our nightmares grew less intense, but not less frequent. I woke to her screams, she to my cries. The seasons passed.

On the anniversary of our reaping, I woke to a most unfamiliar weight on my chest. In her sleep, Katniss had laid her head over my heart. Her arm lay across my chest and one leg was thrown across my hips. I wrapped my arms around Katniss. She sighed in her sleep and her lips revealed the slightest hint of a smile.

Time passed.

I woke on my birthday to find Katniss, who always slept in, smiling and awake next to me. She silently pressed a kiss to my lips. It was only when she broke away to step into the shower that I realized that my lips had been starving for hers for well over two years.

Soon, our days both ended and began with a kiss. We slept clutching one another. The nightmares only occasionally woke us.

One night I turned to strip down to my boxers, as I usually did. I expected that when I turned around, Katniss would be folding down the blankets on her side wearing her nightshirt and panties as she usually was. Instead, she wore only her panties and a shy smile. An arm covered her chest. She sat on the bed and extended her free hand to me. I took it and sat down. "Katniss, we don't have to," I told her. "Just because you-" I was silenced with a kiss. "I know," she said, "I want to." She kissed me again. Her arm dropped from her body and circled to my back as she sat on my lap and her bare chest pressed into mine. She smiled against my lips. I lost myself in her kisses and made love to my beautiful Katniss by the light of the moon filtering through the window.

That next morning, I woke with a start. Upon finding no danger, my muddled mind discovered that I was in quite the predicament. Katniss's naked body was warm against mine, but we never had managed to make it under the covers the night before and my back was cold. I ran my hand up and down her side, where I knew she was ticklish, until she woke. She swatted my hand away and smiled up at me. I kissed her. "I didn't have any nightmares last night."

"Me neither," I realized.