A/N: I'm working on a couple of different fics at the moment, and I took a quick break from those to write this little drabble purely for fun- hence the "shits and giggles" title. It was inspired by the "parenting post" on tumblr, and the characters do not belong to me. That is all. Enjoy!
Katniss crept into the dark house, gently putting her bow in its place by the back door. Usually when she returned home from a day of hunting, her husband and child, smiling and exhausted from a day of fun together, greeted her at the door. Today, however, the house was completely silent, the only light coming from above the kitchen sink. She peered around the corner to find Peeta splayed out on the couch in the living room, the small bundle that was their baby daughter curled up on his chest. Both were fast asleep.
The sight sent warm tingles rushing through Katniss's body, and grabbing the camera from the kitchen counter, she tiptoed into the room.
She held up the camera, but the room was too dark to take a proper photo. Not wanting to use the flash feature, she reached silently for the lamp above Peeta's head. Both were heavy sleepers- hopefully she could take the picture before the light woke them.
But when the light flooded the room, Katniss saw something that made her heart stop, nearly dropping the camera in panic.
"Peeta!" she shrieked. He jerked awake, his deep blue eyes flying open, arms instinctively tightening their grip on the child.
But Katniss didn't pay attention to him. She was too focused on the baby, and the strange, dark marks above her still-closed eyes, for the child had not awoken at Katniss's scream.
"Katniss, what-" Peeta mumbled, disoriented. But she cut him off.
"What is that on her face?" Katniss demanded, trying to get a better look at her daughter, who was mostly tucked into the blanket on her daddy's chest. Peeta's sleep- flushed face pulled into a sheepish grin.
"Oh, shit. Um, sorry Katniss, I meant to wash that off before you got home." He turned the child so that Katniss could see her face in its entirety.
She saw to her great relief that there was no blood, no stitches, no horrible injury upon the infant's face as Katniss had first thought. Oh no.
Peeta had drawn eyebrows on their daughter.
Thick, black, furry, caterpillar eyebrows, drawn in such a way that they gave even the sleeping child a bemused expression. Through her annoyance, Katniss couldn't help but admire Peeta's handiwork- it couldn't have been easy drawing so precisely on a squirming child.
"What the-" Katniss said, imploring her husband for an explanation. Peeta ran a hand through his tousled hair.
"Well… you know, it's a long day with the just the two of us, and I… got bored, I guess. Don't worry, though- it's just magic marker. It'll come right off."
"And if it doesn't?" Katniss said, raising her own eyebrows at Peeta. "Or what if she has some kind of reaction to it?"
"It will come off, and she won't have a reaction," Peeta said confidently.
"How can you be so sure?"
"Because I did a mustache yesterday."
Katniss stared dumbfounded at her husband. Peeta gestured to the camera still clutched in her hand. "See for yourself," he said.
Turning her narrowed eyes away from Peeta, Katniss began to flip through the pictures on the camera. He had taken over a hundred photos that day- apparently, he had taken it upon himself to document every second of himself, their daughter, and her new eyebrows together. There was even a picture of "Uncle Haymitch" laughing uncontrollably as he held the baby with her perplexed expression.
By the time Katniss got to the previous day's mustache collection, she was laughing so hard that tears were streaming from her eyes. Peeta was laughing just as heartily, and at some point in all the commotion, the baby had woken.
Her startlingly blue eyes peered out from underneath the heavy black marker, gazing in wonderment at her parents, but when those eyes welled with tears and she scrunched her little face together so that the comically large brows met in the middle, Katniss was almost sent into a fresh wave of giggles. She restrained herself, however, taking the child from Peeta's chest to sooth her.
Peeta sat up from the couch. "Well, how about I start on dinner, and you can give this one a bath?"
"Actually," Katniss said, handing the baby back to Peeta. "How about I go start dinner, and you can change this one's poopy diaper? It is your day, after all." Peeta grinned reluctantly and retreated into the nursery to deal with the dirty diaper.
Katniss watched the pair of them leave the room, thinking that if Peeta was going to draw on their daughter when she wasn't around, then he would be in for a big surprise the next time he came home from a day at the bakery...
Let me know what you thought! I'm on tumlr: ofpearlsandshoelaces . tumblr . com