One-Shot - Hunger Games Cave Kiss
The cave felt cool and damp as Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark peered inside. Given Peeta's injuries, it would have to do as a place to hide and recover for now.
Katniss gently eased Peeta agains the cave wall, lying him as flat as she could. "Nobody's gonna find you in here."
"They already found me," Peeta groaned, sounding something between terrified and grim. Katniss glanced back at the gash in Peeta's pant leg. Even after doing what she could to heal it down by the riverbank where she had found him, the wound still looked pretty ghastly. "We'll just get you some medicine."
"Katniss, I don't get many parachutes," Peeta explained realistically.
"We'll figure something out," Katniss doubled down on her assurance.
"Like what?" Peeta croaked.
Katniss shook her head. Peeta was nobody's fool. Pretending that everything was going to be fine was not going to work as a strategy for long unless their precarious situation drastically changed. But... No! She wouldn't let herself give up. And she wouldn't let him give up. She could not bear to lose him now...
Wait... had she really just thought that?
"Something," she responded to Peeta, and it almost betrayed the desperation suddenly flaring up in her heart. Remembering the act that she had to keep up, she bent down and pecked his cheek. Peeta stared at her, almost amazed that Katniss could show that kind of affection. He knew how socially awkward, even cold, she could be.
Suddenly, the stillness of the evening was pricked by a floating tune. It almost sounded like a whistle. Yet it didn't sound like any mockingjay or bird Katniss knew. Curious, she exited the cave to find a parachute stuck in the underbrush besides a babbling brook. Lowering her bow she had brought for protection, Katniss retrieved the sponsor gift. It was cylindrical, perhaps a pot of some kind. Opening the clasp, the first thing she found was a small strip of paper, like the kind one might pull out of a fortune cookie. A simple message in bold type was printed there: YOU CALL THAT A KISS? ~ H
Katniss could almost hear her drunken mentor, Haymitch Abernathy, say these words aloud, right down to his very inflection. He was taunting her, mocking her. Yet, in his own bratty way, he was also challenging her. Challenging her to break out of her comfort zone and give Panem a show. Katniss glanced back towards the cave, looking almost resigned, even annoyed. She knew what she had to do, but she still couldn't believe she had to do it.
Returning to Peeta, Katniss opened the pot. "Medicine?" Peeta guessed hopefully.
"No. Soup." Katniss's voice sounded dry, flat, tired. All the same, she put forward her best nursing effort; when Peeta reached for the pot, she told him gently, "No, I'll do it."
Katniss raised the accompanying spoon to Peeta's lips; she heard him audibly wince as he craned to meet her halfway. But, sip, by sip, he gulped the sustenance down.
"That's nice," he breathed.
Katniss shrugged. "You fed me once," she mumbled.
She shouldn't have said that, for Peeta suddenly began to talk the most earnestly she had heard from him, despite his weakened state. "I think about that all the time. How I tossed you that bread."
Katniss stared at him in mid-delivery of soup before shaking her head. "Peeta..." she whispered. Inside, she was dying. Don't, she begged.
"I should have gone to you. I should have just gone out - in the rain! -"
"Ssssshhhhhh..." Katniss's voice became soothing, almost unusually tender. She ran a hand over Peeta's forehead. "You feel hot..." She knew it! She knew he wouldn't be saying such things if he wasn't delirious! She brushed that back of her palm against his cheek.
For his part, Peeta did nothing to refute the fact that he was burning up. "Yeah..." Still, this didn't stop him from just right on rambling:
"I remember the first time I saw you. Your hair was in two braids instead of one..."
Katniss glanced down than back to him, her mouth open in shock. She almost looked pained. His words were eating away at her inside, stirring with the... guilt, the... anguish she felt. How could he know all this? How could he love someone like her? She was poor, and not particularly pretty, at least in her view. Also, she was well aware of how gruff and off-putting she could socially be around others. Very few people earned her trust, and fewer still kept it. Her sister was probably the only person Katniss truly loved. Her mother... it was hard to, after how ill she had become. Gale... Katniss didn't want to ponder that too much.
"I remember... when you sang in music assembly..."
"Sssh..." Katniss tried to hush him soothingly.
"... the teacher said, 'Who knows the valley song?' and your hand shot straight up!" Peeta almost laughed with glee at the memory, the joy in his voice palpable. "After that... I watched you going home every day."
Katniss stared, the look in her eyes a mixture of tender pity and pain.
"Every day," Peeta emphasized.
Silence. Katniss glanced away, the anguish and disbelief still not leaving her face. Oh God... he was in love with her! Peeta loved her! How? How?! Somehow, even if he was deliriously ranting, Katniss knew Peeta spoke the truth.
"Well, say something." Peeta got out.
Katniss turned back to him. She shook her head, her gaze now ashamed, embarrassed, regretful and deeply sad. "I'm not good at saying something..." she whispered. Indeed, she had never been good with words, loving or otherwise. And even if she was remotely eloquent, what could she say? Admit her love for this young man in return, even though she knew it was a lie? Break his heart? She might be cold, but she wasn't cruel.
"Then come here." Peeta begged. Katniss didn't move. "Please."
Knowing Haymitch and the whole nation had their eyes on her, Katniss finally relented. Gently hanging up her bow and the pot, she nestled down into Peeta's arms, resting her head on his chest.
"Even if I don't make it..."
"Sssh!" Katniss held her palm against his chest to silence him, her whispering harsher than before.
The hours passed. As the night wore on, and the sky began to grey, Claudius Templesmith's voice suddenly reverberated throughout the arena. Katniss rose off of where she had been snuggled against Peeta.
"Attention, tributes, attention: commencing at sunrise, there will be a Feast tomorrow at the Cornucopia."
Katniss and Peeta looked at each other - Peeta confused, Katniss's gaze hard and determined backlit against the entrance to the cave.
"Each of you needs something - desperately. And we plan to be... generous hosts," Templesmith finished.
"Your medicine," Katniss worked out immediately. She reached for her bow.
"You're not going alone," Peeta preemptively ordered.
"Yeah? You need it, and you can't walk," Katniss shot back flatly, almost with some sass. It was somewhat amusing, how he thought he could stop her. Honestly, a few hours in a cave together and they were already bickering like a married couple!
But what Katniss didn't realize was that Peeta could be just as stubborn as her. "Katniss, you're not going to risk your life for me; I'm not gonna let you!" he almost growled as he grabbed for her arrows quiver at the same time she did.
"You would do it for me!... Wouldn't you?" Katniss's stern gaze softened to one that was almost tentative.
Peeta didn't answer the question. Instead, he asked, "Why are you doing this?"
This was it. This was the moment. If she didn't do something to break the tension now, they were both doomed. All the same, Katniss mentally glared at Peeta. For putting her through this. She had never kissed a man in her entire life! In fact, she had been perfectly content in her vow to never wed or have children. But now... Oh, God, she thought. Help me.
Deliberately, Katniss swooped down and kissed Peeta right on the mouth, her hand resting gently on his neck. Peeta relaxed into the kiss almost immediately. Their lips engaged in an almost easy give-and-take. Natural, as if they had been doing this all their lives. At last, Katniss released Peeta's bottom lip, which she had captured between her own, tenderly. Peeta stared at her with amazement, but also renewed vigor - if not yet in body, then in mind.
"Now there's no way I'm letting you go," he hissed intensely.
Katniss shook her head. She hated when he said such romantic things. "Peeta..."
"Please. Stay." And his begging was so sweet, it broke Katniss's heart. She wanted to punch herself. Did she really have to make him beg?
"OK," she soothed gently, finally. "I'll stay." And she curled back into his side, adjusting herself to get comfortable even as Peeta winced in pain from his injuries.
Things did not improve over the course of that early morning. Peeta's condition worsened, eventually culminating in him shivering from the cold. Katniss watched him, a mixture of powerlessness and anger stewing inside of her. She couldn't just let him die! Even after her promise not to go! And something else spurred her on. Was it... love?
Giving Peeta one last look, Katniss gathered her things and left for the Feast...
She barely made it out of there. Of the six tributes remaining, only one had fallen in combat. And it had nearly been her. But Katniss had the medicine Peeta so desperately needed. Now she re-entered their little cave. She woke him.
"Peeta! I got it! I got the medicine!"
Peeta stared, noticing the horrible gash across her forehead, dried blood still hanging there. "What happened to you?" And he reached up to caress her face, reach for the wound to inspect it.
"I'm fine," Katniss waved him off.
"No... you're not. What happened?" Peeta demanded in a concerned, loving way.
"The girl from 2. She threw a knife. I'm OK," Katniss twisted away as he laid down her gear.
"You shouldn't have gone. You said you weren't gonna go" Peeta almost groaned.
"You got worse," Katniss replied flatly, without even looking up from her gear. She now produced the precious medicine - a kind of paste - and began to apply it to the wound on Peeta's thigh. It must have burned or otherwise stung, for Peeta let out a gritted growl of pain.
"You need some of that too," he managed to say.
"I'm OK," Katniss refuted softly.
The medicine began to do its work almost instantaneously. Peeta sighed. "Ohh... that feels better..." He paused. "OK: now you."
"I'm OK..."
"No, come on - you need it to. Go on."
Katniss actually found it sweet, how Peeta was more concerned for her pain than his own. She decided to indulge him, just this once.
"All right." She turned her head to face him, revealing the bloody gash. Dipping a finger in the paste, Peeta almost reverently applied it to Katniss's forehead. The stroke of his finger was feather-like, gentle. Gazing into his eyes, the ghost of a smile - just for a moment - graced Katniss's lips. She suddenly felt warm, touched. No one had ever displayed such tenderness to her before. And the way Peeta's caress... she nearly moaned, it felt so good. He was so kind, attentive, and this made her recall a moment they had shared in the Training Center:
I used to do the cakes down in the bakery...
Peeta was painting away her wounds, her pain, leaving his masterpiece on her body for all to see.
And as the couple gazed into each other's eyes, Katniss gave a small smile. This time, she kept it there.
A new day dawned in the arena. Back in their little cave, Katniss and Peeta cuddled closer now, their hands now joined and rested across Peeta's stomach. Peeta had one arm around Katniss, her head on his shoulder, almost burrowed into the crook of his neck.
Already awake, Katniss stirred. She turned her head up to meet Peeta's; her hand, brushing lightly across his chest, awoke him and he craned to gaze down at her.
"Hi," Katniss breathed, smiling in greeting.
Peeta didn't answer, his attention now focused at a spot above her face. His eyes widened. "Whoa!... You're so much better!" Indeed, the gash on Katniss's forehead was now gone. Katniss now sprang up, checking on Peeta's thigh wound.
"Oh my God, Peeta!" Where a bloody mess had once been now trailed only a thin scar.
Peeta nearly cackled in glee. "I can hardly feel anything!"
"We could go home," Katniss realized, half to herself. She looked up to meet Peeta's eyes. "We could. We're the only team left."
Remembering the rule change, Peeta grinned like a little boy. "We could go home..." he whimpered happily. And the couple shared a smiling laugh before embracing.