I disclaim any ownership of The Hunger Games Characters. ILY Suzanne Collins.
"When Peeta holds out his arms, I walk straight into them. It's the first time since t hey announced the Quarter Quell that he's offered me any sort of affection. He's been more like a very demanding trainer, always pushing, always insisting Haymitch and I run faster, eat more, know our enemy better. Lover? Forget about that. He abandoned any pretense of even being my friend. I wrap my arms tightly around his neck before he can order me to do push-ups or something. Instead he pulls me in close and buries his face in my hair. Warmth radiates from the spot where his lips just touch my neck, slowly spreading through the rest of me. It feels so good, so impossibly good, that I know I will not be the first to let go. And why should I? I have said good-bye to Gale. I'll never see him again, that's for certain. Nothing I do now can hurt him. He won't see it or he'll think I am acting for the cameras. That, at least, is one weight off my shoulders." - Suzanne Collins, Catching Fire
The Train
After we watch Haymitch's Quarter Quell, I curl up next to Peeta and Haymitch decides he needs to find a bed and a bathroom. "Not necessarily in that order," he says, and wanders off toward his compartment. Or someone's. I don't want to know. And I don't want to be alone, so I take Peeta's hand until he's in bed with me and I'm securely enveloped in his embrace. We finally manage to get some rest.
I wake just before dawn because he is whimpering my name in his sleep. His strong arms tighten around my ribs. He moans softly, his hips and belly pressing into my back. He hooks his good leg over my thighs and pulls me hard to him. My breath catches in my throat as I feel hardness against the small of my back. I've had basic biology and seen animals mating in the woods often enough to know what it is that is suddenly wedged firmly between us. He must be tired. He was so careful and aware on the Victory Tour to spare me the discomfort of any evidence of his undying love (or whatever this is) for me.
I've touched myself, but I've never seen a naked human male who wasn't injured or on television. I've never felt a penis before either, especially not one that was aroused. And particularly not one aroused because of me. He bucks his hips slightly and grinds up and into my lower back; my skin smolders with the contact even though it is through our underclothes. I'm completely unprepared for the sensation he ignites inside of me. It's so much different than what I feel when I'm by myself. I wonder if he is ill, he feels so hot against me. But the sensation is so fiercely pleasant that I decide to wait another minute to check his head. He burrows his face into the back of my hair, his lips finding my neck again, triggering a shiver that runs down and out the tips of my breasts, down to my toes, detonating at the apex of my thighs.
He whispers my name again and my eyes snap open, a thought suddenly occurring to me. Is he awake? I twist around in his arms slowly until I can see his face. He gives a small noise of protest. His forehead wrinkles in that way that it does, three crooked horizontal lines right in the middle.
But his eyes are moving under his closed eyelids. He is still asleep, definitely dreaming. I check his head for a fever and it feels normal, but he leans into my touch like he's starving for it. I let my hand linger on his face, smoothing out the frown lines, tracing along his cheekbones, along his jaw, lightly across his lips. He moans and presses his erection into the side of my thigh, pulling me closer with his arms. I feel a warm slickness slip from my body. Carefully I tuck my hand into my underwear. I slide a finger between and inside and a tongue of flame leaps up through me. Before I can choke it back, a sound escapes my throat that is not unlike a strangled cry. It's enough to stir Peeta. I freeze and yank out my hand. I must look like a startled deer and I hope desperately that he hasn't seen me, looking like prey. I'm mortified. I force myself to breathe and wipe the emotions from my face and my hand on the back of my underwear. His blond eyelashes flutter and it's his turn to look startled as he becomes aware of how our bodies are pressed together and the state of his. He searches my face, which is blooming with a serious and contagious blush, because his face changes from sleepy pale to beet red nearly instantaneously. He pulls away so fast that the loss of his heat is like a vacuum. I feel the ghost of his body, its every outline etched into my skin.
He's embarrassed, I'm embarrassed, but my unexpected longing is so desperate and so strong that I reach out to him when normally I would not, my hands tentative at the sides of his waist, tugging him back toward me. Not enough to pull him fully against me, but enough to let him know that his body is welcome to be back against mine. We deserve some peace, and even some pleasure. Don't we?
He pulls my head and shoulders to him, but he bends his knees so that our hips remain separated. He kisses my forehead softly then pulls away again, still struggling between the me in his dream world and the reality of my presence.
"Sorry." he whispers. My face is still burning.
"No, don't be." I whisper back. "You can't help it." That's true, right? I look at him. "Can you?" I try to say it dismissively, but I'm curious. I've never been in any situation like this before. His eyes meet mine briefly then flit away.
"No." he laughs quietly and pulls me back to him and whispers into my hair. "No, I can't."
We leave it like that for a few minutes, the heat dissipating, the flutter of our hearts settling. It's sad and sweet, this moment. It almost makes me want to tell him how I've let go of everything and everyone back home. That once we get to the arena, I will do anything to keep him alive. But I can't. It would only strengthen his resolve to keep me alive. I am resigned, but I refuse to let this moment go. I can't, and I won't.
The Capitol
After our roof picnic we see no one and we crawl into bed quietly. Despite his comforting presence, my nightmares come back with a vengeance. After a particularly harrowing series that had me thrashing like a shark out of water, Peeta is exhausted and sweaty and finally back to sleep. He'd refused to let go of me until he was sure my heart rate had slowed. He had one hand on my chest, one hand on my wrist monitoring my pulse until he was satisfied that I was calm and my breathing was back to normal. Then he rolled away onto his back, out from under the tangle of blankets and fell asleep almost immediately, his one hand still holding my wrist. He never completely lets go of me. A painful mixture of sweetness and resentment rises in my throat. I lay there watching him for awhile in the soft light from the window. The sheen of moisture on his skin, the way some of his hair is plastered to his face. I want to shut down my survival brain and remember everything I can about him, right now. I pull my wrist free from his hand to absentmindedly explore the muscles in his arms, the arms that are helping me hang on to whatever sanity I have left. My eyes trace his body, his face, his neck, the almost invisible hair on his bare chest, the contours of his rising and falling abdomen. His bellybutton sits at the center of the wide plane above his hips. I slip the flat of my hand down his chest, across the plane. I curl my fingers into the coarse blond down that runs from his bellybutton and disappears under the waistband of his shorts. He shifts slightly, stretching his knees apart. The inseam of his loose shorts gaps open and reveals the soft pink tip of his penis. I feel a sudden ache in my groin in response.
"Katniss… what?" he whispers. I'm frozen, my hand still on his belly, just inches from his exposed body part. An agonizing length of time passes. I think he's gone back to sleep, but I can't move. I can't open my eyes. My fingers are growing clammy, and I'm afraid any second he's going to wake up again and catch me. When he says my name like a question and it catches in his throat, I release a breath I didn't realize I'd been holding. I know he's awake. I squeeze my eyes shut tighter and pretend to be asleep. I will swear to it, if he asks. Then-perhaps emboldened by his sleepiness and the desperateness of our situation-he ups the ante. He places his hand on top of mine, the one that is frozen mid-play in the hair below his bellybutton, and slowly pushes it down. Under the waistband of his underwear and up the top of his expanding shaft, over the head and back down the bottom as he shifts his underwear down to his legs with his other hand. He closes my fingers around it, cupping my hand gently. Slowly, ever so slowly he starts to move my hand up and down along his length, squeezing and tugging, gasping and shuddering. He grows harder with every movement. I make my eyes open. The sight of my hand in his on him triggers another wet hot wave between my legs and an audible gasp. I clamp my thighs together and will my eyes to his face. His eyes are closed and his expression so intense I am slightly concerned that he is in pain. I scoot in closer to him, resting my chin on his shoulder. He finally looks at me, his eyes unclouded pools of want and need. I don't know what mine are saying to his, but it must be good because he turns to me, abandoning my hand on him to take my neck to pull my mouth to his. I kiss him back. He responds with a surge under my fingers. I don't want to let go. I stroke him as closely as possible to the way he showed me, and the kiss intensifies with his hunger. His tongue flicks in and out of my mouth, exploring my teeth, my lips, stroking my tongue. Winded and wild eyed, he comes up for air. We're nose to nose, his blue eyes locked on mine.
"Are you sure you want to do this?" he asks. I'm not sure I trust myself to speak so I smile at him and tighten my grip on his member in answer. There are a thousand different feelings at war inside of me, but at the moment my loneliness and my fondness for this boy are winning hands down.
"I need to hear you say it," he whispers. "Please."
"Yes, Peeta. Yes. I want to."
He smiles at me, warm and husky and mischievous. "Come here, then." he says. He is so strong, it takes just one quick scoop of his strong hands on my waist to plant me firmly on top of him. My legs open instinctively, my silk nightgown and underwear the only thing between me and his erection, which is now pinned against his belly between my legs. It's like a bolt of lightning between us. Hot and electric. I shiver as he runs his hands over my hips, down the backs of my thighs to settle behind my knees.
"You're beautiful." he says, grinning. I'm not good at taking compliments.
"Shhhh." I say.
"No, you are." he frowns. "You never believe me."
"I believe that you believe." I shrug, squeezing my thighs into his hips. I feel him surge again and buck beneath me. His eyes shut hard and he sighs. "That's only part of it." he says to the ceiling. He's about to tell me what else it is, but I can't take it. I lean down to his face and press my lips to his. His body trembles beneath me, and I feel goosebumps prickling my skin. I sit up and slowly slip my nightgown over my head, exposing my torso, giving him access. He bites his lip hard and moves his hands up my back and around the bottom of my ribcage. He gently cups a breast in each hand, feeling their weight, his thumbs roaming. He spends quite a while just staring at me and smiling, and I squirm a little under the intense scrutiny. He shifts me down to sit on his thighs, then sits up and wraps his arms around me. The sensation of his skin on mine threatens to push me off an edge I didn't know I was skating.
We are lost in a new world of touch. We could have spent a second or a thousand years in that one moment, I don't know. Time stops. We kiss, we touch, we hold on. We stoke a fire. Time descends on us again with urgency. Peeta is clearly unwilling to go any further without my explicit consent and I don't feel like talking. My underwear are in the way. I'm not sure how to remove them without feeling awkward so I push the part between my legs over and expose myself to him, pulling his shaft to me so that the base rests on my lips, the head cradled between our bellies. I take his hand and guide his fingers between my legs. I lift my hips up and back a little bit to give him more room to work.
"Katniss…" he says, "can I ask you something?" I brace myself. "You're so smooth, down here," he says as he strokes the outside of me. "Why do you have no hair? I mean, except on your head?"
The question catches me off guard. "My prep team." I laugh. "I don't know why you got to keep yours and I didn't. It's really not fair." I run my palm over the groomed but still there hair on the lowest part of his belly and he shudders. "Do you hate it?"
"Yes." he says. "I hate it." I can't see my face but he bursts into laughter. "I can't hate anything about you," he says. As if you prove it he brushes his lips across mine and turns his full attention to exploring the area in question.
We explore one another, with our hands and our mouths, watching to see what makes the other gasp, or sigh, or wince. There is some wincing. We're not the most experienced pair. He finds the sensitive spot that I discovered on my own a few years ago with his thumb. When he pushes his fingers inside of me as well I feel my muscles contract; I ride out the waves of what might be the climax of this for me. I've never felt anything like it. "Am I hurting you?" he looks worried.
I shake my head. "No, nonono. I think it's supposed to feel like this." I'm trying to pretend I know what is going on, when I have no idea and my brain feels like it has been disconnected from my body. I'm surprised I can form words at all. I push my hips onto his fingers, wanting to feel him in me, wanting to be as close as we can. His erection is so hard between us. I'm a little nervous, it's bigger than his fingers.
He must have noticed my expression because he says reassuringly, "We have all night. I don't want to sleep." His voice is firm. Soft. Solid. Hot as the summer sun. I nod. I understand that this boy loves me. And I'm still and always confused. It's irritating to think about, so I don't. I give in to the wishes of my body.
I have to work really hard to repress a burst of nervous laughter as I attempt to remove my underwear without falling over. "Help." I squeak as I get stuck. I want to punch him, he looks so happy about assisting. He rips the fabric on either side of my hips and throws the fabric across the room. I reposition myself on his lap, regain what's left of my composure. It doesn't take too long, he's looking at me so intensely now.
"Problem solved." He smirks. The tone of his voice is unlike anything I've ever heard come out of his mouth. Or anyone's. It's a throaty growl, like a lion's purr.
"I want you." I say, a little sheepish as I stroke him. His eyes are flashing so fast that I can't tell all of what he's thinking. Two things burn through it all. Desire. Love. Warmth swells in my chest. I would smile, but I'm so afraid he's going to do something that will make me uncomfortable, like profess it. He doesn't though, at least not yet, and not with words. He's waiting for me, but I can tell he's close to impatience.
I bury my face in the crook of his neck, my hands find anchor in his hair. He tips my face to his with his fingers under my chin and kisses me long and deep. I lift my hips and push them forward onto him. Slowly, over I don't even know how long, with lots of breathing and sweating and repositioning and reassuring, he finally enters me completely. He sighs and I melt. We rock slowly back and forth, his hands on my ass, his lips on my neck. I arch my spine and throw my head back, trying not to cry out. He holds me tighter, his breath ragged and hot. He kisses me again and I feel the explosion of sensation again. The universe collapses in until it's just us, we are all that exist. His hips buck involuntarily, I feel him bottom out inside of me. I swear I can feel his temperature increase, feel him expand until he groans and releases a rush of warmth. His body twitches as he pushes into me a few more times. His face contorts, and then he relaxes. He holds me as close as we can possibly get, our hearts beating out loud, mingled and sticky, not wanting to let go.
After awhile the sticky becomes uncomfortable and we lay down, my head on his chest, exhausted. I can only imagine how he feels, he was already exhausted when we started.
"Lets sleep." I say. One of us will be dead soon, I think. If I have anything to do with it, it will be me. It should be me.
I think I feel a silent sob wrack his chest, but I can't bring myself to look at his face. "Shhhh," I say, smoothing the skin over his heart with my hand. His arms tighten around me and then loosen as he falls asleep, but he never lets go.