A/N: Did I mention that these scenes will not be in chronological order? Well, they won't. Just lil old me, playing around with the space-time continuum.

About this installment: I. can't. help. myself. This is pure candy-writing, done only to please myself, and if you're offended by smut you should skip straight to chapter 3. Smut-lovers: enjoy.

Step 2: Nocking the Arrow

Nock the arrow by placing the nock of the arrow onto the bowstring...make sure that the Index Fletch on the arrow is facing towards you and the nock is pushed firmly onto the bowstring. Graeme Jeffrey, Copyright Centenary Archers Club Inc. 1999-2008

It has been 3 weeks and 4 days since we've spoken.

I am absolutely not counting; I only happen to remember because this is the hottest stretch of summer that anyone from 12 can recall. Ever. And this hot weather, this sticky hot mess of too-hot-for-September air that you practically have to swim through, started on the very day The Fight happened.

And okay. I've deteriorated beyond what you might call healthy. I leave the house to hunt and I come home and cook for myself and Sae and her granddaughter and sometimes Haymitch, if he's awake and sober and not at Peeta's instead. (He says Peeta's a better cook, so he's more often there. Jerk.) If no one is there then I cook for myself. I leave the dishes and they make quite a pile next to the sink, now. Then I shower, and try to sleep, and page through the book we had started working on, before.

I don't answer my phone.

I know Dr. A tries to call sometimes. And my mom. I know because when I don't answer they call Haymitch, and he tells me, and when I don't answer him he starts yelling, and when I still don't answer he storms out, muttering.

And okay, yes, maybe I shouldn't punish everyone else for something that's my fault. My weakness. But that never stopped me before.

"You're afraid," he said, that day the heat wave started.

We'd been spending the day together, as had become our custom, slowly, over the course of the six months or so we'd been back. We'd do our own thing in the mornings; I'd be in the woods and he'd be in his kitchen. And then we'd meet up for lunch, sharing some of his bread and some of my meat, and some greens or berries or whatever else. In the afternoons, when it was too hot to go out, we'd work on the book. And then, dinner, sometimes with Sae or Haymitch or both, sometimes without.

And then, bed.

Bed had become really nice.

We had slipped back into our old habits without really discussing it. It started with us talking late into the night, playing half-silly, half-serious games of Real or Not Real. Sometimes we already knew the answers, sometimes we genuinely wondered. We'd end up burrowed into the couch cushions, fast asleep, together. It happened a few nights in a row, and then...I kind of just started tugging him up the stairs after me, and we'd talk in bed until we fell asleep there, instead.

But.

There was never a morning when I didn't wake up long before him, when I didn't wake up in a complete panic to find myself so close to him. In the muddled, dim confusion of pre-dawn, I'd lie there and go over and over every sneer and hurtful word we'd exchanged during that year, and my throat would start to close up again. There was never a morning when these thoughts didn't take over, when I didn't ease out of the bed and into the bathroom to dress, and out the door before he'd stirred. Not really breathing again until I was well away, into the woods, up a tree.

It beat hiding in closets.

We never talked about the nights, during the day. We didn't talk about how we'd started touching each other, in the dark, the faintest little touches. A brush of the arm, a playful push that lingered a bit too long. He brushed my hair out of my eyes once, when there was a bright enough moon to see by, his fingertips tucking the stray lock behind my ear and then tracing the ear's shape, fingers lingering there in a way that could have been accidental, had it not set my body shivering and stopped my breath. He saw me stiffen, and he pulled away and didn't touch me again that night. I couldn't see his face.

And still, we didn't talk about it.

So when he told me I was afraid..."Of you?" I said, raising one eyebrow at him from across the garden. "I don't think so."

The vegetable garden was Dr. A's idea. It straddled Peeta's yard and mine, a safe activity for us to share. Supposedly. It was stocked with Capitol seeds which grew mammoth-sized tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and peas and needed minimal tending. This was a rare morning together in the garden, because the day was going to get too hot to work like this by afternoon. The air was heavy and moist, the shade trees only giving partial relief. We were weeding, working on our knees and weilding three-pronged garden tools that could be quite deadly, in the right circumstances.

It was hot.

I caught his eye across the tomato bed, that morning, and he quickly looked down, but not before I became aware of what he had been looking at. Me. A nod to the weather, I was wearing just enough to cover the worst of my scars and the grafted skin: a loose-fitting blouse over a tank top, and shorts that were pretty darn short.

The pink puckers on the backs of my legs are nothing compared to the absolute mess that is my back and upper arms: a horror of burns and new and old skin, mottled and peeling. I don't exactly do sleeveless anything any more. But the top was pretty low cut and the shorts were, um...I hadn't thought twice about it when I dressed that morning. I couldn't think of anything else, now.

I straightened up, dropping my tool and wrapping my arms around myself, biting my lip.

He just smiled, but he corners of his mouth tightened and he looked away, gripping the garden tool in one hand. He studied the trees, looking everywhere but at me in the most obvious way possible. Finally I made a kind of huffing noise, blowing the loose strands of hair away from my forehead, and turned to go back in the house. And maybe not come out again.

"Okay, okay," he said behind me, and I glanced over my shoulder. He caught my eye and grinned, this time for real. "You got me. I like looking at you, okay?" He looked down, scratching at the sweat pooled up where his real leg ended and his artificial one began. "I think you're beautiful."

Damn him. Trust him to just say something like that, to say it and just leave it hanging in the heavy, sodden air between us. "Yeah, right," I mumbled, fingering one of the uglier scars on the back of my left thigh, where the flames had licked and seared the day my sister died.

He frowned. "What, the scars?" He threw the three-pronged tool down into the dirt, hitched his fingers up under his shirt and, before I could say anything to stop him, pulled it up over his head and threw it down in the dirt, too. "Yeah, I've got them too."

And then it was me who didn't know where to look. A lifetime ago, I'd felt like I had known his body pretty well. We'd been forced to kiss, and kiss, and kiss some more for the cameras, and there was almost nothing real and genuine about it, but it does breed a certain familiarity. There had been the nights on the train, where nothing technically happened. But still, being in bed with someone for that many nights in a row makes you more than familiar with their body.

And then there was the Training Center. And after that, The Beach. Incidents I'd pretty much banished from my memory. Too much happened, I let too much happen when I thought I was going to die, especially when the cameras weren't on us. And then I didn't die, and I couldn't think about all of what he'd been to me in those last days, because...there was no him any more. For a very long time.

But I had to look at him now, because he was very much back, and very much real. I hadn't seen him like this in a long, long time, and, damn my eyes, I was curious. So I looked.

His scars didn't seem as bad as mine, and they predominated on the right side of his body. You could see where the flames had raked up his torso; the pink wrinkled skin began under the waistband of his shorts and continued up his side, scorching his shoulder and upper arm. You could tell he'd gotten it the worst on his right shoulder; that and on his upper thigh had been where he'd gotten his skin grafts. His neck and one side of his face were also scarred, and his eyebrow on that side would never fully grow back.

I noticed this, but I also noticed how he'd gained back some of the muscle he'd lost, last summer. How those shorts, borrowed from a neighbor in the Seam, didn't really fit any more. How he was sweating. How blue his eyes still were, how long those blasted lashes.

I tore my eyes away, turned toward the house. "I'm going to make some lunch, want some?" I leaned down to pick up the basket full of giant Capitol vegetables we'd gathered, and I knew, absolutely knew, that he was watching me as I straightened up and walked back to the house with the basket balanced on my hip. I knew, but I didn't turn around.

I heard his clumsy step behind me as I set the basket down on the counter. I took a deep breath and turned around and he was there, right there, so close...all at once he was stepping closer and closer and oh my god we were kissing.

It was so unexpected that I couldn't react, couldn't do anything but throw my hands up in surprise. His hands were cupping my face and I found my own hands betraying me, snaking around him and pulling him closer, my fingertips settling into the groove of his spine like they belonged there. Our bodies were touching along their entire lengths. He was so warm. All of this, after a year of Nothing.

I opened my mouth and touched his lower lip with my tongue, and for a moment it was almost like I wanted this. Almost like I had missed it, like I needed it. Needed him.

And then I gained control of my hands again, snatched them back and flattened them against his bare chest and pushed as hard as I could. Pushed him away.

To his credit, he kept his balance, only stumbled backward, his face registering shock.

And this is what we said to one another:

"Stop it," I spat. "Just stop."

More shock. Disbelief. "What..." He shook his head, blinking rapidly. "What the hell just happened?"

I worried for a moment that he was going over the edge, that my aggression had pushed him over into another episode. But then the anger won out. "You tell me. You seem to think we're..."

"Go on. I seem to think we're what?"

I couldn't finish the thought, because I had absolutely no idea what I was trying to say.

Peeta had no such problem. "Enlighten me. What are we doing, exactly?"

"We're..."

"I'll get you started. We sleep together every night. We spend every day together. What are we doing?"

"I..."

"What, Katniss?" He seemed to deflate. "Just...just tell me what you want, and I'll do it."

"I want you to go." The moment the words left my lips, I wanted to take them back.

"Really." He looked so tired, and I didn't blame him. He turned to the door. "Okay." His hand was on the doorknob. My back was still pressed up against the counter, my pulse pounding in my ears. He paused, and said, "You should know that I love you."

"Then stop it," I told him. "You don't want to do that."

He didn't move to leave, but didn't turn around and face me, either. So I went on. "I...I'm never going to be more than what I am now. I'm never going to want to get married or have children or any of that normal stuff. It can't ever be like that, for me."

Silence.

"You should..." I let out a long sigh. "Stop trying to make this into something normal. And good. We can never have that." A long pause. He stood there with his hand on the doorknob, head hanging down, shoulders slumped. Finally I told him, "You should go."

And he did.

So it's been three weeks and four days of unrelenting humid awfulness. The heat gets worse day by day; our garden is a brown, withered mess. There are weeds, but I'm not going to be the one to pull them.

I'm too busy trying to keep the nightmares away.

For some reason, I always go back to the first arena, in my nightmares. It's like my mind can't get past that first set of horrors, can't set to rights that initial shock that sent my life off kilter. I always go back to Rue and the spear, and Glimmer's bloated body, and Cato and the mutts and the chewing, ripping...

Prim comes to me, too. You can't go, she tells me, pulling at me with her sharp little talons. I wake up screaming.

The days are unbearable. The sun is hot and the air is heavy, there's not a breath of wind. The trees hang limp; even the animals are sluggish, easy prey. Like they don't mind being killed. I've stopped eating them.

I've taken up running.

I leave every morning at dawn. I dress and slip across the lawn while it's still kind of dark; sometimes there's a light on at his house and sometimes not. I run and I run until I reach the lake, and then I run past the lake and my father's little house. At the beginning of the heat wave it was still late August, raspberry season, and I could fool myself into thinking I was going to gather berries. But the heat withered them, too.

I run until I can't, and then I climb until I can't. And then I cry, up in a treetop where I can't hide from the blazing sun. My burns and grafts and even my remaining real skin turns reddish, then peels, then fades to brown.

In the late afternoon I creep back through the woods. I don't run back, I stagger. I stop frequently to shoot, to gather, making up for the wasted day. By the time I reach my house it's twilight and the heat has backed off somewhat, but there's still no fresh coolness in the air as there should be this time of year, in the evening. There's no relief.

I eat, because I have to, and there'll be more bother if I don't. I wash, because I have to. I fall asleep with the Book cradled in my arms.

I wake up screaming.

Today a bear chased me.

That hasn't happened in years. I'm usually wary enough to avoid them. But it's getting late in the season, food is scarce for them with the drought, and I was wandering home later than usual, picking through the darkening woods, being quiet but not really careful. Thinking. And I startled her. She was as thin as bears come, sweating underneath her thick fur, cranky and gaunt, as I was. We froze.

I blinked first, and she charged, which they end up doing about half the time. The only thing to do is run, and I did, back the way I had come. It was like one of my nightmares come to life: trying to swim through the humid air, to force it in and out of my lungs, looking frantically around for a good climbing tree; all the while the hungry, mad beast is gaining on me, breathing like a bellows.

I flung myself at a scrub pine, scratching my arms and the insides of my thighs, sap tangling my hair. I clutched and climbed, and the bear caught the heel of my shoe, and I kicked at her, letting her have the shoe and climbing higher, higher. Sometimes a black bear will follow you into a tree, and I was prepared for that, but this one was satisfied with my shoe. I felt a searing, stinging pain in my bare foot, and glanced down to see that the bear's tooth had opened a gash along the sole of my foot; long, but not deep.

I stayed up, frozen against the tree trunk, until long after the bear had wandered away, until long after the sun went down. I wasn't really in a good perch, so I had to use all my muscle power to hold myself up. When I could finally get my limbs to move again, I eased down the tree trunk and practically fell to the ground, arms and legs burning, foot stinging each time I set it down.

When I reached my yard, his light was still on. Like he was waiting for me.

I had no food with me. The heat pressed down. I clambered into the shower and let the hot spray fall on me for an hour or more, blood from the gash in my foot and the scratches on my arms and legs washing down the drain. When I walked out into the hallway, there was air moving through the open window, and I smelled rain.

I fell into bed, naked, exhausted, broken, waiting for the storm.

Tonight, the bear visits me again. She is a mutt-bear, twice the size of a wild animal. Her eyes are bright blue, like Prim's. She bellows at me with a voice like thunder, trying to tell me something, and she slashes at me with her claws, my legs, my gut, my throat. Every place there is a spurting artery, my heart's blood. When I am almost bled out, weak and whimpering, the thunder of her voice booms at me again, and I can finally understand what she's trying to tell me.

Wake up, she says.

I jerk awake to real thunder booming outside the open window, but I still don't know where I am and I'm tangled in the sweaty sheets and I feel like I'm still weak and bleeding, so I kick and flail until I realize there's someone in the bed with me.

I freeze. He's not lying down, he's sitting on the side of the bed. He's saying something. "It's okay, it's okay." His hands are clutching at my hands, are smoothing my hair. "It's okay. Wake up. You're home. It's just a dream." He looks me in the eye; I'm still panting, in panic mode, trying to run. "Not real," he says. It's the only thing that will cut through to me, right now. "Not real, sweet."

I've never had anyone call me that, I think. I don't question his presence here, in my house, in my bed. It's as natural as breathing. I don't question his right to be here. He belongs here.

My eyes are fighting their way shut again, but my hands are still awake. They're clinging to him like he's life. Outside, the thunder crackles and the rain begins to fall.

It's still falling, in a soft steady patter, when I wake up again. It's late. He's in bed next to me now, propped up on one elbow, waiting for me. The sheet is pulled up to my armpits; I don't know whether he knows I don't have anything on. I don't know what he has on, come to think of it, and I'll be damned if I'm going to look.

"Hi," I say, rolling onto my back and smoothing the sheet with my palms.

"Hey," he says.

"Thanks for...before."

He smiles. "Of course."

I pause, and he gives me the time I need. And then: "Why...why are you..."

He shrugs, laying back on the pillow and settling his arms up above his head. "I was worried about you. You were really late getting back." He turns his head, catches my eye. "You were missing a shoe, and limping. And later..." He frowns, and his eyes search my face. "I heard you. Dreaming. So, I came over."

"Oh." I look down at my hands, face warm. There is a low rumble of thunder outside the window, and a delicious wind rustling the curtains, drifting through the room. "Yeah, the dreams have been...intense, lately."

"Mine too."

I say nothing for a minute. And then: "So you just happened to see me coming back? Or, you were waiting for me?"

He's silent for so long that I think he may not have heard me, so I turn to him, and he's looking at me so intently, with such sadness and tenderness and concern that I want to cry again. "I'm always waiting for you."

My stomach plummets, sub-basement. I look down at my hands, clasping each other on top of the sheet, and I think of the blue-eyed bear from my dream, and the Fight, and the garden and his scarred, burned and broken body. My breath comes harder and harder, until I'm almost hyperventilating. And that's when the tears come.

They come in a flood. They crowd out of my eyes and down my cheeks like the rain outside my window. I clutch my own hands. And he is there, he is turning to me and holding me like he always does, cradling my own knotted hands in his until they open again. His fingers wipe at my face, gathering the tears as they fall.

"I'm..." I choke on the words, try again. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Peeta."

"Shhhh. No."

"I'm sorry!"

"No." He kisses my cheek, just under my eye, and I think about how he's tasting my tears and how intimate, how raw that is. "It was my fault too. I pushed too hard. I know better than anyone that you can't..." He sighs. "That you just can't heal that easily."

I try to speak again, but it comes out as a sob, and he's kissing my face again, murmuring for me to sssssh. Holding me so gently. The sheet slips, and he's holding me against him still, so warm and solid.

I've missed him.

I lift my face up and meet his eyes, heavy-lidded. He blinks slowly. Kisses my face again, where the tears have fallen, but more slowly this time, deliberately. Weaves his fingers into my hair and trails kisses along my jaw, my chin. I close my eyes.

He lets one hand fall, fingertips trailing down my back, and I feel him pull back a little bit when he realizes I have nothing on under the sheet.

Then his breath comes out all in a rush against my throat. I close my eyes and clutch at his shoulder as he buries his lips in my throat, exactly where the bear in my dream brought the blood. His quick and deep and desperate kisses burn into my skin; a warmth blooms in my belly. His fingertips dig into my back, pulling me closer to him as his mouth roams lower.

When his lips brush my collarbone and his hand brushes the side of my breast, I let out an embarrassing squeak. His eyes fly open and he kind of shakes himself, as though he's been sleeping. He pulls away, frowning; I try to catch at his hands but he's having none of it.

"Sorry," he's saying. "I'm sorry. I...know you don't want...this. I just..."

I'm shaking my head, but his eyes are closed. I open my mouth but I can't speak. It's choking me.

"I'll go," he says, in a whisper. "If you..."

"No," I croak out. I don't even think it sounds like a word, but it stops him and he frowns at me. He's pulled away, carefully not touching me, clearly in pain. "Peeta, I...I do."

"You do...what?" He leans in, I think just to hear me better, and touches my bare shoulder with his fingertips.

I swallow, my throat dry. "I do want this," I whisper. As soon as I say it, I realize it's true. I want this. Him. More than anything. Not just his hands or his mouth, but all of him. Right now.

He blinks rapidly; his chin trembles, he wets his lips and, for one second, I'm afraid he's going to refuse, retreat, like I've done from him so many times.

Then in the next instant, there is a gentle flicker of lightening and a long, rolling rumble of thunder, and his lips are crushing mine, his mouth devouring me. He is like the tide. These are not quick, desperate, hopeless kisses, but full-on, strong and deep and burning into my skin. Shamelessly, I let out a faint moan and let my hands skate over his shoulders, back, hips...

He pulls away, smooths the hair off of my face. We are both breathing like we've just run a mile. A sly smile steals across his face. "You should know-" He pauses, leans in to kiss me, soft and sweet. "...that I love you."

I want to slap him. For making me feel all of this when I don't know what to do with it, what to say, for making me weak. Instead, I move in and catch the curve of his jaw with my lips. Then with my teeth. Hungry...I'm hungry. For this.

His hand curls around the curve of my breast, the thumb brushing my nipple.

Oh. Oh, it is on.

I rake my fingers through his hair. There is nowhere...oh. There is nowhere his hands do not go.

No part of me that he will not find with his lips. I could scream.

Parts of my body that I never considered, never spared much thought for, are now centrally important. I am thinking of nothing else, there is nothing else in the world. This is beyond what's happened before, what I felt in the training center and on the beach was only a shadow of this.

I am paralyzed with the pleasure of it; I can't even respond to him. He's...giving to me. Again.

My eyes fly open. Again, he's doing this. Giving me everything, all of himself. Working only for me. Loving me, asking nothing in return.

It's terrifying.

"Peeta," I say.

"Mmmmm?" His mouth is strategically placed.

I shudder, gasp. "Peeta?"

He moves with quick, light kisses until he can cover my lips with his again. "Yes?" he murmurs, moving again to my throat.

But I pull away. "I want..."

His eyebrows lift and he half-grins, nodding at me. Waiting.

But I don't really know how to say what I want, except: I want to give this back to you. All of it, what you're giving to me and more. I want you to feel what it is that I can't say.

"Um..." is all I can manage.

He runs his fingers through my hair, from scalp to ends, and his hand trails down my side, over the curve of my hip, and lingers on my thigh. "Tell me what you want," he whispers.

Eyes wide, loving. Full of trust I don't deserve. Here is a man who will give me anything, anything I ask. If I asked for his heart, he would serve it up for me himself and watch me devour it whole.

It scares me, so I do the only thing I can think of: I conquer it. I grip his shoulder and push him away, back onto the pillow. I roll with him so that I'm lying half on top of him, my right leg hooked over his. I can't quite meet his eyes, but I can feel him watching me as I smooth his hair back, then lean down and kiss the burn scar where his eyebrow used to be.

I trail kisses down his cheek and throat, and down and down as he did with me, but my lips are barely grazing his skin. My fingertips follow everywhere my mouth goes, tickling with the lightest touch I can manage. My heart is pounding in my ears and I'm dying to really kiss him again, but at the same time I'm enjoying this teasing exploration, and the sounds it's eliciting from him. I must come close to kissing every part of him, as he did with me. Scars or skin, whole or damaged. I want it all.

Finally my lips graze, and then close into a kiss, on a part of him I've only ever felt with my hand, in the dark and terror of what we both thought was the last night of our free lives.

He shoots upright in the bed; I draw back to find him sitting up, staring at me with a violent intensity. In a moment of horror I wonder if I've done something wrong, or set him off into a flashback. But no, he doesn't look angry. He reaches for me with trembling hands.

"Please," he whispers.

I launch myself at him, straddling his legs and kissing his mouth hard, hard. Yes.

He wraps one arm around me and holds me to him; I can feel him trembling. He props himself up with his other arm and slides us back until his back is against the headboard. I grip the top of it with my hands and lean into him, sucking on his bottom lip and then his chin. He wraps his arms fully around me, pulling me closer, closer, down and forward and-

Oh.

The pain is so immediate, so sharp and deep and raw, that my eyes fly open and I let out a strangled gasp. Peeta's eyes are squeezed shut. Everything has stopped.

I frown; it's not the worst thing I've ever felt, by far. But it was shocking. I wasn't ready for it. One second we were kissing and the next...he was there. Right there. And now-

There is a rumble of thunder, more distant now. A gentler pattering of rain. The storm is moving off.

He tilts his head up and kisses me. Very simply and gently, chastely even (which is ridiculous, if you consider where we are at the moment), like we're starting over, like he's asking me Is this okay?

I don't know yet. He's holding himself very still, so I dig my knees into the bed and shift myself slightly to one side, to get my legs settled more comfortably. Every movement causes pain, like raking my fingernails over an open would: raw and sharp.

He deepens the kiss, licking at me with his tongue, pulling me closer with his warm hands. I shift my legs again, and this time...this time beyond the pain, I can feel him. All of him.

Oh.

He kisses me with all the love he has, and I let myself feel it, let myself take it from him. His bread, his pearl, his life. What he wants to give me. All of him. I let it wash over me in a shudder; he feels it and moans against my lips.

And then...we move.

I surprise myself by becoming rather insatiable.

Pillow talk is nice, but after twenty minutes of our own, new, sweet-and-then-dirty version of Real or Not Real, I have to tell him, "Shhhh. No more." Have to climb on top of him, crush him with kisses. Take what's mine.

It's close to dawn when he wakes me again.

He rolls over and immediately has my whole body pinned, the length of his body against the length of mine. I can only respond with a faint "Oof," before he grabs my wrists, pins my arms above my head and proceeds to maul me.

That's the only way I can describe it. He is crushing the breath out of me, and I'm about to say something when I realize that his eyes are closed not from bliss, but because he's still sleeping.

I frown; I've heard of sleepwalking, but sleep-

Oh wow. He is inside me, and the suddenness of it jolts through my body. There is no pain, not after our two (three?) earlier encounters, but a part of me realizes that he wouldn't be doing this in precisely this way, were he awake. I try to wiggle out from under him, a nervous laugh bubbling out of me, but his hands are still clamped around my wrists and he's resting all his weight on me...

And I can't believe it, but it feels kind of good.

I should wake him, he'll probably never forgive me for not waking him. But a part of me, okay, a large part, is really enjoying the way he's just...taking. For once. Just enjoying. My body is enjoying too. I'm on my back and I feel so exposed, so out of control. Dangerous. He's so close and the friction it's creating, the wonderful, warm pressure of him...I close my eyes and throw my head back.

And that's when he chooses to wake up.

"What...oh god..." He props himself up on his elbows and stares at me. "Katniss?" He looks up and sees that he's pinning my wrists, and immediately lets go. "Oh my god, I'm..." He starts to move off of me.

I grab his earlobe between my teeth, and pull him back down. He hisses in surprise.

"Don't stop," I breathe into his ear.

He grabs my wrists again.

"Don't ever stop."

After, he wraps me in his arms, and I lay my head on his chest, over his heart, the way I used to.

"When the morning comes, you're not going to run away again." It's not a question.

"No." I trace patterns over his abdomen with my finger, smile at the gooseflesh I'm creating. "No running."

"I'll still be here," he says.

"I know."

"Will we still be here?"

I know what he's asking, and for once I know exactly how to answer. I prop my head up on my hand and smile, a wider and fuller and more honest smile than I've been able to manage in a long time. In the overwhelming goodness of him, in the power and pureness of what we shared, I forgot the horror for a time. Maybe, with time and practice, I can learn to forget more.

"We absolutely will."