Day Six: Hazel "Reconciliation"
Peeta remembers what it was like before, during, and after he finally had Katniss.
So Easy To Forget
It was always so easy to feel forgotten about. Like I just blended in with the background. Until I realized that she had actually been paying attention to me and my whole world changed. She did remember what I had done for her, throwing her that bread. She did remember how strong I was in wrestling. She remembered my favorite color and how I tied my shoes and how I liked to sleep with the windows open.
But was I the same person that she remembered these things about? Not really. In some ways, yes. But they had taken something away from me and she was trying hard to get it back for me. And probably for her too. She wanted the calm and cool Peeta, not this messed up one who has horrible flashbacks of how they turned me against the woman I love.
When we get angry at each other, I have to walk away so I don't accidentally hurt her. It's when she kisses me that everything seems right in this world. Like everything that had happened had happened just to bring us to that moment. It's as if I was supposed to be brutalized in order to finally get her to admit what she had been feeling for a long time.
I think the whole of Panem knew she loved me before she knew it herself. But that's fine, in the end I got exactly what I wanted: her. She once told me about the dandelion that she had seen after I had given her the burnt bread, how it made her remember all that she was capable of. How I was somehow her version of hope in so much despair. After she had told me that, it was our first time making love. She was, and still is, so beautiful when she's blushing from head to toe with the heat of our kisses, the fire that burns within her flowing freely and given gladly.
I'll never forget most of what happened to me, as much as I would like to. I bury it somewhere deep within that I have no immediate access to and I'm fine with that. But what I do remember is that first time we were together. That first, perfect time:
We were sitting on the couch, working on the book we had started as a form of therapy to remember the things that couldn't hurt us anymore. She had me actually draw a picture of how I had seen her the day I saw her in the rain, skinnier than I had ever seen her, wasting away from the lack of food that her mother was failing to provide for her and her sister. So I did, I drew her like I remembered her, dark braid thin and stuck to her jacket in the pouring rain, the way the pigs looked at the side of our bakery, how sad and almost dead she seemed to me. The way the bread landed so near her and I remember I was afraid she was too frail to get up and grab it. But she did and she went home with them and when I saw her at school the next day, she said nothing, but I could tell she wanted to. I told her that and she told me about being her dandelion in the spring. I laughed at first until she hit my arm and then kissed me to shut me up, I think.
She pushed the book off my lap, took the pencil from my hand and threw it on the floor and climbed onto me, a hunger in her eyes that had only been there a few times before. She looked directly into my eyes, always better with her actions than her words, we both knew this. And before I understood what was actually happening, she was tearing off her clothes and mine, her lips crashing onto mine whenever another piece of clothing came off. It's as if she can't get enough of the taste of me or something, the way her tongue runs along the bottom of mine, or slips into my mouth, sucking on mine. But I'm the same way when it comes to touching her, since she's allowing it, letting my hands roam wherever they want to.
Her breath hitches when I cup her breasts, my thumbs and forefingers tweaking her nipples until they are hardened and when I take one into my mouth, her head falls back, her hair, loose from the rush of taking off our clothing, cascading down her back and onto my legs. My erection is pumping stiffly against her stomach, aching to get inside of her but somehow my brain knows she isn't ready for that, yet. I need to play with her some more, get her so wet and ready for me that I'll slip right into her without any problems.
I don't have to ask, I just move her so that she is beneath me, her legs spread wide for me, her face flushed from all the kissing and groping and need. She needs me in a way she has never shown before, or at least not in this capacity. I don't say anything as I guide myself into her, slick with her want for me. She's so tight that I stop for a moment; let her body get accustomed to me invading it. But when she wraps her arms around my neck and brings me down to her, I know she's more than ready and I pump into her slowly at first, enjoying the feel of her beneath me, enjoying the feel of her hands on my shoulders, then my back, then settling on my butt as she gripes onto me, pushing me further into her. I want to watch her, how her eyes go from a light airy silver to a stormy steel and that's all because of me. When I kiss her, so close to my own release but waiting so desperately to wait for her to have hers, she tightens around me, as if this is what she needed to get off and we both come together, seeing nothing and everything at the same time.
It was a magical moment, our first time together. It was something that I will never forget and am so glad to have been so wrong about her never noticing me. So when I asked her "Real or not real?" and her answer was "Real," my life had never been more complete.
