A/N: For all my fellow IB/AP kids out there who are either anxiously waiting for scores to come out or rejoicing/sobbing over your results… this chapter's for you, kiddos. Stay strong today.
Quick thanks to SFCBruce for convincing me that this chapter wasn't a worthless piece of garbage and actually worth posting. That being said, parts of it get a little annoying—same goes for the next chapter—so here's my apology in advance: things will get better, I promise. Just keep chanting "Everlark endgame" to yourself and I swear to all that is holy, we'll get through it.
008. Share a Dinner by Candlelight
"I know I promised I'd take you back to Panem this weekend, but Finnick said he's coming up to Pittsburg, so I don't think I'll be making the trip down."
Katniss worries her lip between her teeth, her chest tightening, but she refuses to throw in a word of protest. Even if it has been five weeks since their last homecoming.
"That's alright," Katniss replies tightly, lowering her eyes to a chip in the wood of their booth. "I have enough studying to do, anyway."
"Hey—" Annie's voice draws Katniss's attention back to her friend; her green eyes are wide, sympathetic, fostering genuine apology. "I know it's been a while. I'm really sorry, Katniss."
She only nods in recognition, unable to muster much else.
Having a hundred miles of highway in between her and her best friend was insufferable at first, and although she's reached the milestone of not needing a pathetic sob-fest in the bathroom before bedtime, her bones still ache whenever she thinks about him. Which is pretty damn often, considering he's everywhere, even in his absence.
Annie immediately endeavors to shift the conversation away from that topic, prattling on about an incident in one of her labs, but Katniss barely makes an authentic attempt to listen. Her fingers toy with the powdery crust of the half-eaten slice of pizza on her plate as her head bobs in slight nods in artificial attention, but her mind has long since wandered a hundred miles away. How is she supposed to tell Peeta that he'll have to wait another week, most likely more? He'd been planning some sort of outing for the two of them. Whatever it he was organizing was supposed to be a surprise, but now it won't even happen, and she feels her stomach wrench with guilt.
Usually, Annie and Katniss's weekly Wednesday pizza nights end with the two of them heading back to Annie's dorm to watch some shitty romantic comedy on Netflix, but tonight, Katniss feigns nausea and slogs across campus alone. She allows the sharp November air, stagnant and raw, to soak into her like a sponge until she's numb, and when she finally reaches her dormitory, she shrugs out of her ice-lined jeans and swaths herself in an old pair of sweatpants and a Captain America shirt that she borrowed from Peeta years ago. It's since lost its smell of him, but it's still his, and there's something so oddly comforting in that notion.
She crawls up onto her loft, yanking out her cellphone.
The line rings twice before he picks it up. "I thought you'd never call, Everdeen."
The sound of his voice sends warmth spiking to her fingers and toes, her previously ice-cased body suddenly electric with flame.
"It's been two days," she laughs. "And you're allowed to call first, you know."
"And interrupt your incredibly busy, exciting college life? I wouldn't dream of it."
She sighs, her skull digging deeper into her pillow. She wants to tell him she misses him, but she know he already knows.
"Peeta, I, uh… I have to tell you something."
"Go for it," he shoots back, his jovial tenor shimmering over the line.
God, she really doesn't want to let him down. But she doesn't have a choice.
She gulps. "I know I promised you I'd see you this weekend, but Annie can't give me a ride anymore," she admits quietly, her voice sounding so strangled as it funnels through the line. "It looks like I'm stranded up here."
A long silence rings in her ear before he murmurs an emotionless, "Oh."
"Peeta, I—"
"Don't you dare apologize," he interrupts immediately, sensing the looming apology. "It's not your fault, alright? Things just, uh… don't work out sometimes."
She fists her hand into the fabric of his t-shirt, holding it shakily against her lips as she digests the disappointment lingering in his tone. She takes a deep breath. "I wanted to see you," she concedes, her voice small.
She hears him sigh measuredly, and it makes her chest tighten even more. "I know. I did, too. But you'll come down here eventually, right? I mean, at least you're definitely staying here for winter break…"
"That's over a month away," she whines.
"But you're here for three full weeks. Dad even promised to help me clear out a guest room so you won't have to keep sleeping on the couch while you're here."
"I never even slept on that couch," she shoots back wryly.
Even over the line, she can almost hear him smiling. "Well, what was I supposed to tell him? 'Oh, no, you don't need to prepare a guest room for Katniss, because whenever she comes back from UPitt she ends up sleeping in my room anyway?' He already thinks we're secretly, uh, copulating… he doesn't need the extra substantiation."
Katniss cringes at the implication. "Please tell me you're joking."
Peeta's laughter rings in her ear, and it makes her stomach twist in warm knots. She misses his laughter. "Sorry to disappoint. Apparently, Dad asked my brother if he knew anything about our sex life. Wanted to know if we were 'being safe' or whatever."
"That's—that's…" She shudders. "Why would he think that?"
Why would anyone think that? She's been friends with Peeta since the dawn of time, and not once has he even acted remotely sexual around her. Sure, they're unusually touchy and comfortable around the other; she knows hardly anyone can fathom how two friends of the opposite sex could be so close and keep things relatively platonic. But she doesn't expect people to understand.
Still, she thinks it's ridiculous for Peeta's own father to be so deluded.
Peeta chuckles. "Well, I was planning on taking you out to dinner Friday night—"
"As friends!" Katniss hisses back, her cheeks coloring with embarrassment. "Can't friends eat food together without any romantic nuances?"
He only laughs harder, the sound rich and full and contagious as it provokes a smile of her own, the humiliation beginning to quell. "God. I miss you, Katniss," he exhales, his admission so reverent that she willingly forgets he hasn't answered her question. "This weekend will be hell."
She wants to remind him that every other day is hell, too, when she has nothing of him but a few of his t-shirts and a beehive full of swarming memories lodged in the front of her head, but she keeps her lips screwed together.
It's finals week when she meets him. She's sitting in a moderately cozy armchair in the student union, two textbooks splayed out over each knee, a pad of sticky-notes in one hand and a lukewarm coffee in the other.
"You're quite the multi-tasker," a bell-like voice chimes, causing her to flinch.
Her eyes flicker up to see a boy standing before her, his hand wrapped around a Styrofoam cup with a leather-encased tablet tucked in the crook of the other arm.
She frowns. "Excuse me?"
He motions to the crooked textbooks on her lap and her full hands. "Taking finals pretty seriously, I see."
She offers him a tight smile, but doesn't say anything else. He's not the first student to ever awkwardly attempt to make conversation with her, and he surely won't be the last, but she's acquired quite a refined talent for making the assailants feel rather uncomfortable. In the end, they always leave her be, like she wants. She's not here to make friends. On top of Annie and her roommate, an outspoken girl by the name of Johanna, Katniss has a perfectly wonderful friend waiting for her in Panem.
Surprisingly, he doesn't immediately seem deterred by her coolness.
"Mind if I sit here?" His eyes dart to the armchair to her left.
She may be a little hostile in her reservation, but Katniss is rarely aggressive unless provoked, so she concedes, giving the friendly boy a slight nod before returning to her books.
He makes himself comfortable in the seat beside her, powering up his tablet before he annoyingly prods her with even more conversational cues.
"I'm Marvel, by the way."
She doesn't look up from her books. "Katniss."
The weight of his eyes on her feels suffocating, as if it's a thousand pounds, but she still avoids his gaze. "Can I call you Kat?" he prompts sappily.
She grits her teeth. "Katniss is fine."
He doesn't say much else, but when she finds herself in the same armchair the following afternoon, she's surprised to be joined by him a few minutes later.
Finally, her eyes lock with his for more than a split second.
"Are you following me?" she hisses defensively.
He startles her by chuckling. "Not really, no. I just… I enjoyed your company yesterday," he says slowly, his words calculated, but not short in authenticity.
She frowns. "What is there to enjoy about my company? My extremely bubbly personality?"
Her sarcasm doesn't deter him—does anything deter this guy?—and she finds him laughing, his fingers running through his sandy brown hair. "You're funny, Kat."
"It's Katniss."
"Well, Katniss, sorry to be blunt, but… would you like to go grab some coffee with me sometime?"
She's thankful there's nothing in her mouth, because she surely would've choked to death on it. She's absolutely floored by his question, reduced to a speechless mess before him; no one has been so forward with her before.
Truth be told, Katniss likes forward, but even so… this is strange.
"Is someone putting you up to this?" she finds herself rumbling, leaning forward in her seat to survey the room. "Shit, it's Johanna, isn't it? Of course it's—"
"Katniss, I'm not messing with you. I'm serious."
She gapes at him for another moment, dumbfounded into becoming a sudden mute, before she cocks a brow.
"You have an awful taste in women, Marvel."
"Maybe I just know a diamond in the rough when I see one." He smiles at her, and she decides that he's not completely unattractive, even if he isn't a male model or Greek God reincarnate. He's tall and thin with a little bit of muscle wiring up his arms; his face is plain—brunette hair, woodsy-brown eyes—but it doesn't make her want to vomit. And he isn't daunted by her hostility, which is a first. Peeta, Gale, and Finnick are the only guys her age who she hasn't made want to run screaming; Gale shared her fire and therefore wasn't afraid of it, Finnick can tolerate just about anyone, and Peeta… well, he's Peeta. That, in and of itself, is explanation enough.
She sighs, knowing she'll regret this the moment it falls from her lips.
"Yeah, sure. Let's get coffee sometime."
When Annie drops her off at the front door to the bakery, a the handle of her suitcase clutched firmly in her mitten-swathed hand, Katniss stands there for a moment, breathing in the frost-lined breeze of the town. The air is different here, she thinks with a slight smile. The coalmines release a warm, crisp, sylvan-type fragrance that coats the atmosphere around it, furnishing Panem with its signature aroma.
It smells like home.
She can tangibly feel her muscles beginning to uncoil as she treads up the concrete walk, her suitcase rolling behind her. Unlike her muscles, however, her stomach is twisted into clusters—she attributes it to the fact that she hasn't seen Peeta in two months. Even though she's called him no less than twice a week since she left for UPitt, returning to him feels like seeing the sun after being in solitary confinement for months.
The moment she pushes through the glass door of the bakery, a tiny bell jingles above the doorway as the plush scent of rising dough fills her lungs, and she sees him. Her sunshine boy. He's standing crutch-free behind the counter, his back to the door, hands expertly folding up a box of pastries.
"Be with you in a moment," he pipes up, and she wants to melt into a puddle of molten iron on the floor, unable to contain her sly grin. His voice is a million times more musical in person than over the phone—another thing for her to check off on the list of things she missed about him.
She takes a deep breath, parting her lips just as he whirls around, his blue eyes as wide as moons as they register her propped in the doorway.
"I'm home, Peeta," she whispers, her eyes stinging.
There isn't even a moment for her to grasp his movement before he's there, here, his arms gathering her into his chest, a hand cradling the back of her head and holding it to the crook of his neck, the other finding purchase on her waist. His grasp is suffocating and reviving all the same, his touch electric, and she can feel him trembling against her. She imagines she is, too. But all she can feel is him, his warmth, his honey-cinnamon-nutmeg scent lacing around her like ribbons, and there's nothing else in this world but him.
"I missed you so much," he chokes, his cheek flush against her temple. "You have no idea."
"I think I do, actually," she giggles back, her voice shaky as she holds him to her.
He pulls back, his palm cupping her jaw so he can look at her, the blues of his eyes shimmering, his smile so flawless it could move mountains or cure diseases. "I know I just talked to you on the phone last night, but… I don't know. Something about being able to feel you, finally…" He shakes his head. "God. I can't believe it's only been two months. It feels like I haven't even seen you since the Stone Age."
They exchange another round of hugs before they're interrupted by a third—and soon, fourth—party.
"Well look what the cat dragged in," Mr. Mellark laughs as he jogs in from the kitchen to wrap his arms around both her and his youngest son. It only takes a second before Hans joins the heap as well, the three of them creating a giant knot around Katniss, swallowing her in. She realizes that with every tick of the clock, she begins to feel more and more at home; the Mellarks have become almost a surrogate family for her, stepping in where hers had vanished.
She hasn't felt so welcomed in ages.
Katniss sniffles, coughing to ease the tightness in her throat, but her eyes are prickling. "How's the fort holding up?" She manages to ask once they all release their grips on her.
As Peeta helps her out of her thick winter coat, Mr. Mellark goes to grab her suitcase. "Pretty well, now that we're starting to attract the holiday crowd. Hope you don't mind if we put you to work over the break."
"You guys are giving me housing—I think I owe you a few chores."
"Which we'll start on tomorrow," Peeta interjects. "I believe there's a long-overdue dinner I have to drag you to."
He winks. She blushes.
She'd envisaged a passably-upscale Italian restaurant when Peeta told her he was planning something, so she grows wary when he advises her to dress warmly. She complies, sheathing herself in jeans and a grey duffle coat that she thinks is god-awful, but Madge—the closest thing to a fashionista that had ever graced her circle of friends—had convinced her to buy last winter. Besides, since classwork-induced stress and homesickness had shaved a few pounds off Katniss that she couldn't afford to lose, she figures an ill-fitting coat served her best.
Peeta leaves her alone at the bakery with his father and brother for about half an hour, returning after the sun has sunken below the snow dunes. His cheeks are rosy, his eyes watery from the cold, but his smile is so toothy and genuine with his blonde locks curling out and around the seam of his knit cap. He motions to the door and says, "After you, my lady," and with a smile, she follows him outside.
She doesn't protest when Peeta takes her hand in his to guide the way. It isn't the first time they've held hands, but as they dance down the street, taking turns leading and lagging as they tug the other through the matted snow, Katniss can feel her heart thumping under all those layers of clothing, able to feel his heat even through their gloves. Tonight, he acts as if it's the most natural thing in the world. Maybe it should be. Truth be told, she'd like it if it were that way, although she refuses to entertain the notion as to why.
Once he pilots them to the skirt of the Seam, she realizes exactly where he's taking her, but she abides by her silence, ready to feign surprise. She knows that'll make him happy.
She isn't prepared, however, to actually be surprised when she reaches their treehouse, crawling up the ladder before him; she feels her lungs jolting to take in a sharp, frozen breath once she sees what Peeta has done to the place. The floorboards are covered in comforters, vanilla-scented candles lining the walls and an old wicker picnic basket propped up in the corner.
She crawls on her hands and knees to the basket, flicking the lid open to see that Peeta has actually made them dinner.
"Peeta, you…" She pivots to see him braced at the top of the ladder, his feet hanging down below the floorboards, eyes expectant. The smile scripted over his pink lips rings with both triumph and humble anticipation for her reaction. She doesn't know what to say.
She coughs.
"No wonder your dad thinks we're fucking."
The moment the words leave her lips, she winces. Classy, Everdeen.
But Peeta bursts into laughter, deftly swiping the hat from his head as his fingers run through his matted, golden curls. "It's the third thing on my bucket list. Share a dinner by candlelight. I know, compared to the last two things, it's pretty anticlimactic and super cheesy, but it's no secret that I'm a huge hopeless romantic, so it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise." The heat under her cheeks surges to a point where she wonders if her face is burning as bright as the candles. "You like vanilla, right?"
She nods.
He crawls past her to rifle through the wicker basket; soon he retrieves two ceramic mugs and a thermos, setting the mugs on the comforter and filling them with the contents of the vessel. "Hot chocolate," he states, slipping the thermos to the side and handing her one of the drinks. "I think we should make a toast."
She wraps her fingers around the handle of her mug. "To what?"
"Well, first of all, to the fact that I didn't actually start a forest fire with the candles, and secondly…" His smile widens, the ginger lighting of the wicker flames flashing over his dimples. "To you coming home, Katniss."
She swallows hard.
"To nonexistent fires, and to homecomings, and to knocking yet another thing off your bucket list," she cheers, lifting her mug in the air. His meets hers with a decisive clink, and the two of them settle into the comforters as he begins to unpack the basket.
In conjunction with the hot chocolate, Peeta prepared sandwiches for them—chicken breast and melted provolone with avocado and a splash of several other ingredients she can't name all on toasted ciabatta—and the two of them eat by the candlelight. He tucks her into the plush blankets and scoots in next to her.
He's in the middle of one of his glorious rolling monologues when her phone vibrates in her pocket. She nonchalantly pulls it out, her spine chilling as she reads the name that flickers across the screen. Marvel. She hasn't told Peeta about him yet; she rushes to slip her phone back into her pocket before she catches his attention.
She'd done it too quickly, however, too conspicuously, because he pauses in the middle of his sentence, cocking a brow.
"Everything alright?" he prompts slowly, suspiciously.
She bobs her head up and down like a jackrabbit on crack cocaine. "Yeah, uh—yeah, that was just a friend."
Smooth move. She wants to smack herself. If she hadn't already sent up any red flags, she sure as hell has done it now.
Peeta can see right through her like she's made of cut-glass, and so clearly, he can tell she's hiding something from him.
"A friend?" His tone is dubious.
"Yeah. From school."
His lips are parted slightly, face slack as he waits for her to continue, but she doesn't. She can feel her face burning as she realizes just how deep this hole is burrowing. She should've just told him right off the bat and let him continue on with his tirade as if nothing was out of the ordinary, but she'd piqued his curiosity by now.
There was no avoiding it anymore.
She sighs in defeat. "His name's Marvel. I met him earlier this week."
Peeta doesn't seem at all surprised, or even remotely angry, although an unreadable emotion flickers across his gaze. He flips over onto his side, his full attention slotted on her. "So, tell me about this Marvel character," he prompts, his tone completely even.
At first, she's a little shocked at his reaction—she'd expected something with a more negative taste than casual indifference—but she immediately realizes she shouldn't have expected anything else. Peeta simply isn't one to grow angry with her, especially not over something as petty as this, and… well, he reacted exactly as a best friend—a just friends best friend—should.
She doesn't understand why she'd anticipated anything different.
She sighs, rolling on her back. "I really don't know much about him. He just started talking to me one day in the Student Union, completely out of the blue. He seems nice, but it's too soon to make an executive decision."
"Think he's interested in you?" Peeta asks, his eyes wandering to a crinkle in the blanket between them.
She bites the inside of her cheek, hesitant to answer, in part because she's afraid Peeta will think she might replace him, and in part because of something much more irrational she doesn't want to think about.
But she's always told Peeta everything. Everything. He was the boy she'd run to when she and Gale were hitting the rocks, who would help her psychoanalyze every component of her broken relationship. She's never withheld secrets from him, so why should she start now?
She exhales.
"Yeah. He is. Odd enough, he asked me out to coffee."
Peeta gives her a tight nod, something in his face growing dark, contorted, almost pained.
"Think you're interested in him?"
She puffs a giant billow of air through her lips, pushing her hair from her eyes. "God, I don't know. He's really talkative—but so are you, you're just less obnoxious about it—" Her stomach flips when Peeta smiles at this—"and he keeps trying to call me 'Kat,' which annoys the fuck out of me. But he seems like a nice guy, and he's moderately attractive, so… I don't know."
Peeta shifts up on his elbow. "What do you mean, moderately attractive? On a scale from Michael Jackson to David Beckham…"
She laughs. "I don't know, Peeta. He's just… average. He's plain. He's nice."
She doesn't know how many times she's used the word "nice" to describe him, but she's about to reach her daily limit.
Flipping back onto her side, she lets out a chopped sigh. "Let's talk about something else," she redirects, pressing her face against the cotton fabric of the comforter below her. "Here you are, making these delicious sandwiches and almost lighting our treehouse on fire for me, and we're talking about some dude who's probably named after a comic book publisher."
He smiles, dimples and all, but it doesn't fully reach his eyes.
She falls into a routine with Peeta so easily, the only grueling component of their schedule being the obscenely early morning. She helps around the bakery into the early afternoon, taking to tasks she used to do back when she worked there in high school. She mans the register, cleans, distracts Peeta, and eats the leftover or defective pastries, so it's safe to say she never runs short of things to do.
Mr. Mellark lets them off at three o'clock, allowing them to spend their afternoons mingling with their high school friends or penning themselves up in Peeta's room or, whenever weather permits, the treehouse. They occupy these hours with hot chocolate, elaborate conversations, and board games. (She almost always beats him in checkers, but she's grown suspicious that he's letting her win, which makes her want to strangle him because she's actually competitive and wants to win fair and square).
They never run short on things to say.
At first, during their intimate afternoons, she refuses to talk about Marvel. She feels like whatever part of her life he occupies—however miniscule that part is—shouldn't mix with Peeta's, for whatever reason. But the boy's persistent, texting her every day, and soon she can't completely disregard his existence around Peeta, so the two circles begin to slowly bleed into the other, and she finds herself injecting a little talk of Marvel into their conversations now and again.
Peeta attentively listens, his courtesy always in full bloom, but she soon notices that whenever she speaks of Marvel he grows much quieter than usual, his adorable dimpled grins trading for sad smiles. She has no idea why Peeta's acting so strange—he never acted like this when she'd blather on about Gale.
She prays Peeta doesn't think he'd ever take the backseat to Marvel. He has a permanent hold of shotgun, regardless of who comes traipsing into her life.
She nearly tells him this four, maybe five times when they're curled together on his bed, but she never marshals the courage to tell him. That she's his. Forever. Always. That even if this Marvel character—who she barely knows in the first place—turns out to be a fire-fighting, kitten-saving, charity-donating heart surgeon, he'll never be half the man Peeta is, because no one is, not to her. He is her sunshine, burning brilliantly in her sky, always leading her through an otherwise hostile oblivion.
But she never tells him this. She doesn't know how.
Be that as it may, he still holds her with a conviction that suggests he knows, that he feels the same way, so she figures that maybe, words aren't necessary.
Every night, once she presumes Mr. Mellark has fallen asleep, she'll creep from her room and tip-toe over to Peeta's, finding him propped up against the headboard as he waits for her. He always waits for her. She'll dive onto the mattress, tugging him with her as she plunges beneath the sheets; the boy will wrap his muscle-corded arms around her wiry body, and she'll settle against him. They talk themselves straight into slumber, and although she never means to stay the night, she always wakes to the divine feel of his fingers detangling her snarled braid as he whispers her into consciousness.
In a whirlwind of snow flurries, Christmas trees, eggnog, fireworks, and college bowl games she doesn't give two shits about, Katniss's three weeks flicker by in three seconds. She's lying with Peeta on top of his duvet, their heads at the foot of the bed with their feet propped up over the dark mahogany frame of the headboard, when he turns to look at her.
"What's your opinion on the prospect of me kidnapping you to keep you in Panem?"
A tight smirk turns up her lips. "I think it would be both the best and worst thing to happen to me," she offers.
A dagger of heat plunges into her core as she feels his fingers trickle in with hers, their hands joining between them. "Tell me how pathetic I sound."
"You don't sound pathetic, Peeta. Just…" She squints, rifling for the right word. "…lonely."
He sighs. "I never thought it'd be this way, you know? Where I'd have to watch all my friends filter into the big world out there while I'm stuck here. But I can't complain. I chose this for myself."
"It's not your fault," she concedes lightly, her palm pulsing on his. "While the rest of us were going on college visits and filling out applications, you were going through treatment. Through physical therapy."
"I still don't think I belong in school—as long as I'm healthy, I guess I'm the designated recipient of the bakery whenever Dad's done with it—but it still suffocates me sometimes. Being stuck here, alone… without you…"
She tilts her head, her cheek grazing into the plush fabric of the comforter as she presses her forehead to his shoulder.
"But I guess what makes me so pathetic is that, in my own self-pity, I'm tying you down," he continues, his voice low and gravelly. "I'm making you come back again and again when I should let you be with your new friends out at the university—"
Her hand squashes his with the force of a thousand trampling elephants to shut him up. He may be right in his verdict that he's tying her down—she can't deny that half of her mind still lives between these walls, even when she's a hundred miles away—but in no way is he forcing her into a pact she doesn't want as much as him.
"Stop it, Peeta," she commands. "You're my best friend. And all that's left of my home."
"But this shouldn't be your home forever." His voice is strained, and she can tell he doesn't want to say any of this. "There's so much of the world you haven't explored yet, so many people you haven't met, and—do you see how toxic I am to you? I've dragged you into my shit for years now, with the cancer and the recovery and that stupid bucket list, and I can't keep doing it. You need to invest in healthier relationships, with Annie and your roommate, Johanna, and Marvel—"
Electricity torrents through her with a voltage that could annihilate all of Pennsylvania, and she jolts upright, her eyes flashing with anger.
"How dare you," she snarls, each word punctuated with fury.
He sits upright, too, alarm hijacking his features, but his own panic doesn't assuage her rage. "What did I say?"
"Marvel?" she hisses. "I met him less than a month ago and you already think he's more valuable than you?"
"You said you were interested in h—"
She refuses to listen to another word from that beautiful mouth of his, throwing herself off the bed and stomping to the door like a petulant toddler. He's behind her in a second, his fingers reaching out to skim over her arm to draw her back, but she bucks him off and whirls around.
"You're wrong, Peeta." Her voice is so low that probably only whales can hear it, but even so, Peeta's eyes widen in response. "About everything."
When she turns around this time, tearing into the hallway, he doesn't follow her.
The sky is a milky grey in the morning, curling with the aftershocks of a violent storm from sometime in the early hours in the morning, and Katniss can't help but wonder if the gods spun this just to mock her. The atmosphere is much like her: calmed, but still cloudy and sunless.
"You look like you haven't slept in weeks," Annie laughs as Katniss hauls herself into the passenger seat of the sedan. "Has Peeta been keeping you up?"
As Annie winks suggestively, Katniss feels blood burning under her cheeks as viciously as the bile burns in her throat.
"No. I just couldn't sleep last night." Quite possibly because she'd ended up in the guest room, writhing between cold-poisoned sheets. It'd been the first night since her arrival that she hadn't slept with Peeta, and on top of the solitude, she had to contend with a billion swarming thoughts of God knows what.
After the initial veil of anger had faded, Katniss began understanding the full extent of her depravity, of her irrationality. Peeta hadn't deserved her wrath—at least, not a rage so potent. He deserved to be corrected, reminded that not a single person could be worth even a tenth of what he was to her. But he didn't deserve to be abandoned.
Still, his words replay in her head relentlessly, and they still rub her the wrong way even after Panem disappears in the review mirror, but she can't fathom why that is. Sure, she'd been afraid of Peeta thinking she'd replace him with Marvel since the moment she first told him about her new acquaintance… could that be it?
Still, something prickles in the back of her mind, hissing that there's more. That she'd been angry because this signifies Peeta's acceptance of the fact that she may be romantically interested in someone else.
She doesn't know how this could bother her. Shouldn't she be glad the only prominent man in her life is willing to make way for the prospect of someone else?
She rubs her temples as pavement rolls under their tires, too exhausted to try to untangle what she actually wants from Peeta.
(It couldn't be that she wants him to want to be the only man in her life. Of course not. They're just friends.)
As of now, all that matters is that she'd left the bakery this morning with a measly farewell, a sloppy hug, and the sour taste of an unsaid apology lingering in the back of her mouth.
When she returns to campus, the world around her seems so sinister, the clouds made of chalky steel as they wash the city of all its color, turning Pittsburg to greyscale. She notices how black soot beards the old stone of the cathedrals, how the waters are a murky brown, how the hummocks beyond the river spike aggressively into the air.
Pittsburg was beautiful when she left it. She wonders what made it change so much.
Marvel takes her out on their coffee date later that week, introducing her to some mediocre tearoom where he pours so much creamer into his roast that it's arguably not even coffee anymore. They seat themselves at a metal-rimmed table in the center of the lobby as he asks her about her break. She doesn't talk much, but when she does divulge little tidbits of the holiday, she refuses to mention Peeta.
She learns that Marvel is majoring in Business Management and at the university on a baseball scholarship, that he was born and raised in Ohio, that he has two dogs named Simba and Clark. He listens to hardly anything but country, has never read Ernest Hemingway, and loves Pulp Fiction but can't stand anything Harry Potter related.
He doesn't learn much about her, but that's alright. She's not one for baring herself to the world, and certainly not to a boy she mildly likes.
After their coffee date, the first thing she does when she crawls up into her loft is pluck out her cellphone like a feather from a goose, nearly calling Peeta before she remembers he probably doesn't want to talk to her. Her chest heaves and she buries her face in her pillow, craving the opportunity to tell him everything but knowing she fucked up too gravely to earn it.
Besides, Marvel had been the origin of their argument; she hardly thinks this would be a way to make amends.
As the semester kicks up, she consents to a few more coffee dates with Marvel, each outing just as shallow as the last, but she likes it this way. There's only a handful of people who make authenticity seem more attractive than suppression—one of whom is about as emotionally distant from her as the China—and Marvel surely isn't one of them. But he doesn't seem to mind. He's a nice boy with a middle-of-the-bell-curve IQ score who'd rather chat about himself than Katniss, suiting both of them well. He doesn't demand more than she's willing to give.
That is, until February comes rolling in like the night tide; he takes her out for Mexican food and kisses her in the parking lot afterwards. The moment his lips slant against hers, she feels herself shudder as she mentally conceals the acerbic tang of peppers with something more familiar, with the soothing taste of honey and cinnamon and nutmeg. She raises her arms to grasp his shoulders, expecting a much broader breadth than she finds, and when her hands travel to the back of his neck, she's startled when she discovers coarse short hair instead of the soft, curly, golden down she'd been hoping for.
And when she realizes what's happening, what she's doing, she freezes, stumbling away from the kiss.
Marvel's hand juts out to grasp her waist to keep her from falling, a look of confusion smeared over his features. "You okay?"
She nods sharply. "Yeah, I'm fine," she wheezes hastily, still frozen in her crawling skin as she realizes she isn't fine, not at all, because for a moment she'd fooled herself into believing she was kissing her best friend instead of her date.
What the hell is wrong with her?
When she arrives home that night, she's elated to find her dorm room empty so that no one can hear her empty her scream into the padding of her pillow. Her shriek soon turns into sobs, her entire figure convulsing over her mattress as she cries pathetically, the taste of her absent best friend's name lingering in the back of her throat. She takes her phone out to call him and goes so far as to pound out his number out on the keys, but she crumbles before pressing the call button.
She hasn't spoken to him in a month, but now, she needs him more than a seed needs water, more than a fire needs oxygen, more than Tim Burton needs Johnny Depp, more than anything.
She has to hear his voice.
But she doesn't know if he's forgiven her; she's waiting for him to say something, anything, giving her some slim indication that he misses her even half as desperately as she misses him.
But he doesn't call.
She's not quite sure what Marvel is to her, because she refuses to stamp him with something as ceremonial as her boyfriend, but she doesn't have the heart to correct him when he introduces her to his teammates as his girlfriend. If it makes him happy, then so be it. She's not putting out—she still has her virginity safely intact, unenthusiastic with the idea of granting it to the human manifestation of Wonder Bread—so she figures he at least deserves to pick and choose his label for her.
Both Johanna and Annie are less than thrilled with the pairing, clearly vocalizing their opinions that he is to Katniss as margarine is to strawberry jam: nothing is wrong with either of them, but they simply don't align right. Katniss disagrees—although they don't have much in common, they fit well enough. Marvel does all the talking, finds her moodiness more amusing than off-putting, treats her decently and fills her weekends with something to think of besides the boy with the bread back in Panem.
She's hesitant to admit that he's her best distraction from Peeta, but it's blatantly obvious. Johanna accuses her of only keeping him around so long because he provides a perfect diversion from her problems. Although Katniss divulged to neither Annie nor Jo the minutiae of her fallout with Peeta, her two friends are well aware of the present friction, and readily accredit Marvel's growing role in her life to the conflict.
On a Wednesday in early March, Annie finally cracks when Katniss shows up late to their weekly pizza date because of her new beau.
"What do you even see in this guy, anyway?" she sizzles, her voice peppered with exasperation.
Katniss shrugs as she hunches over in the booth. "He's a nice guy."
"That's all you ever say about him, Katniss. That he's 'nice.' I know he's kind to you, but there's so much more to a relationship than that. Does he even know anything about you?"
Her fingers coil around the water glass. "He knows my family lives in Florida. He knows my major, and my favorite color…" She trails off, running out of details to tack on.
Annie rubs her temples, her chestnut bangs falling in her eyes. "He doesn't know about Peeta, does he?"
As always, Katniss is quick to grow defensive. "What am I supposed to tell him? That, once upon a time, I had a best friend who hasn't spoken to me in nearly two months?"
The greens of Annie irises grow fat as her eyes widen in disapproving shock.
"'Once upon a time?' What the hell is wrong with you, Katniss? Peeta's been there for you through thick and thin since you were practically in diapers, and you let one stupid argument be the end-all?"
Katniss lets her head fall, her forehead meeting the table with a loud thud. Her voice is muffled as she groans, "You don't even know what I said to him, Annie."
"I don't think it matters what you said to him at this point. All that matters is you don't have the balls to just call him and apologize and, knowing Peeta, he probably still thinks you're pissed and is giving you space. Both of you are approaching this wrong, but I'm especially disappointed in you, Katniss. You're flinging yourself into this trivial relationship to fill the hole that Peeta left there."
Katniss feels her skin tingling with anger as she lifts her head to glare at her friend. "How dare you accuse me of that, Annie? You have no right to judge me."
Annie lets out a longwinded sigh before pushing her hair from her face, the sharpness in her eyes wilting as empathy blooms in its place. "Katniss, I… I just care about you, alright? And Peeta, too. My entire life, I grew up admiring the way you always had each other's backs, and it's so hard to see two of my best friends at a stale mate."
Something inside Katniss's stomach twists painfully, but she doesn't allow her steeled reserve to allay.
After sorting through her jumbled thoughts, Annie finally reaches across the table, resting her tiny palm against the back of Katniss's curled hand.
"I'm taking you to Panem over spring break with me, alright? I'm going to see Finnick anyway, and I'm not going to allow you to stay on campus or wander off to Cancun with Marvel and his buddies or wherever they're flocking to. I'm assuming the Mellarks will take you in for the week, but if you simply can't work things out with Peeta—which I'm sure you can, and don't you dare contradict me—you can always stay at my place, alright? Just give it a shot."
She wants to protest, but despite her small stature and her typically dignified demeanor, Annie has the drive of a ravening lioness, refusing to let go of battles until she's emerged as the victor.
So in the morning, Katniss ventures over to Marvel's dorm. He answers on the second round of knocks.
"Hey, babe," he greets as he pulls the door back, his hair ruffled from sleep, a clear five o'clock shadow splattered over his cheeks and chin.
She plants her feet in the threshold, crossing her arms over her chest in her mighty power stance.
"I'm going home for spring break," she tells him definitively, her voice even.
He steps up to her so their toes align, his arm snaking around her waist. He smells like morning breath and day-old cologne, neither of which is particularly appealing, but she reminds herself she isn't staying long.
"You should come to South Padre with us," he invites.
But she shakes her head, determined. "Thanks, but I need to go back to Panem."
He frowns. "I thought your family lived in Georgia or wherever."
Florida, she mentally squawks, but decides it isn't worth correcting.
"I'll just stay with the friend I was with over winter break."
He scratches the back of his head but nods, licking his lips before pressing a short, wet kiss to her forehead. Half of her is relieved he doesn't lobby for more details, but the other half is faintly offended that he hasn't even asked her about her nameless friend. Although she's fond of the agreement they have where he does all the talking and she sits there fiddling with her braid and pretending to be fascinated by what he has to say, she has to wonder if Marvel is even interested in her for anything besides her general appearance and tough disposition.
As she heads back to her dorm, she reminds herself that she shouldn't expect more from a Wonder Bread incarnate, and that she chose to be with him because of these traits, the ones that distract her from her brokenness.
Her fingers ache to call Peeta or text him or something as spring break comes rolling into view, to let him know she's visiting, but she never rallies the courage. So as she's curled up in the passenger seat while Annie speeds down the highway, she can feel her stomach woven into knots.
Because she has never been the expert orator, Katniss finds herself fashioning some elaborate speech in her head. Every run through, her calculated phrases change, and so by the time Annie has parked just outside the front door to the bakery, Katniss's mind is nothing but a strewed puddle of alphabet soup.
She decelerates on her journey down the front walk, fingers brutally crushing the handle of her suitcase as she's assaulted by her glut of thoughts. You need to apologize, Katniss. But you also need him to know that he has to talk to you. You need him to tell you how he truly feels. But you hurt him, Katniss, and if anyone has the right to be angry, it's him. You should acquiesce. But—
Her mind is suddenly barren as she stumbles into the lobby, the pair of blue eyes she knows better than a mother knows her child homing in on her. They stand there squared off for years, like two archenemies about to brawl, or like two lovers about to reunite; his face is slack, painted over with an emotion she doesn't know. Astonishment? Anger? Disbelief?
She feels her lips pulling up into a guilty smirk.
"Surprise," she whispers.
Peeta is propped up behind the register, his face blushing a rosy pink as he braces himself against the countertop, blinking a few times in shock.
And then his voice shatters her quiet.
"You haven't talked to me in over two months." His tone is more airy than accusing as he gapes at her from across the lobby.
She feels her cheeks blazing, and she opens her mouth to hurl out her pre-prepared speech, but the lyrics that'd been fluttering through her mind at the speed of hummingbird wings just moments ago are nowhere to be found.
Before she can measure her words, she murmurs, "I miss you, Peeta."
It hardly addresses his previous statement, but it's bona fide in its sincerity, and she can see the way her admission seems to relieve some of the weight on his shoulders.
He takes a deep breath, closing his eyes.
"I miss you, too."
She takes a step inward. "I need to apologize," she blurts out.
His eyelids zap open, but before he can respond, another body saunters out of the kitchen, jolting into paralysis at the sight of her.
"You didn't say Katniss was coming," Hans whispers, expression brightening.
"That's because Katniss didn't say she was coming," Peeta retorts, his eyes dedicatedly remaining locked with hers.
But there isn't any malice in his voice, and even a detail so miniscule still soothes her.
After dropping off her suitcase in the guest room and sitting down with the Mellarks for a "family dinner," she wanders away from the bakery for some fresh air. Really, it's an excuse to tend to the choking vines of her thoughts, because nothing here is as she'd expected, and it makes the acid in her stomach curdle.
Apart from the moment of her arrival, Peeta hasn't looked at her. But he doesn't seem angry, per se; in fact, he hadn't even told his family about their fight, so the Mellarks welcome her in with warm bear hugs and playful jokes.
(Everyone, except for the person from who she wants it most.)
In point of fact, Peeta's indifference and his family's absolution makes her squirm like a marooned worm on a hot stretch of pavement. She doesn't deserve their kindness.
She finds herself in the treehouse just as the sun is beginning to plummet, the sanded floorboards cleared of all evidence of them. The blankets, the books… it's all gone, the only remaining facet being the stars Peeta had painted onto the ceiling. She splays herself out over the planks, her eyes getting lost in the portrait above her.
The last shard of golden light in the darkening sky is bleeding through the walls of the treehouse when her solitude is demolished.
"Care if I join you?"
She startles a little, craning her neck to see Peeta hunched over the top of the ladder. She hadn't heard him coming.
Huh. That's a first.
He climbs up beside her, laying out with a good body-width distance between them. For a moment, she thinks of what she wouldn't give to feel his hand on hers, just once, but then she remembers she doesn't deserve it. She doesn't deserve him.
She never really has.
"You know," he begins softly, resting an arm behind his head, "There must've been over a dozen times when I picked up my phone and actually dialed your number before I reminded myself you were angry with me."
Her entire body glows with latent heat, and she feels her chest tighten.
"I wasn't mad at you, Peeta."
Something resembling a choked cough bursts in the back of his throat. "Then what happened the night before you left?"
"An overreaction," she mutters crossly.
He surprises her by actually releasing a short laugh. "And here I was, thinking you hated me for these past two months."
"I could never hate you." Her voice is thick as molasses; she turns onto her side to look at him, her eyes memorizing him all over again as if it's been years since she last saw him. His curls are a bit longer, less bleached than they are during summertime, his shoulders broad and his jaw chiseled of stone as he clenches and unclenches his teeth.
He turns to meet her stare, the last inkling of sunlight refracting in the blues of his eyes, turning them to pools of stained glass. "Then why didn't you call?"
"You have no idea how much I wanted to, Peeta. Every day."
"And you have no idea how much I wanted to call you."
"You should've."
"You should've."
If it didn't feel like someone had just poured acid over her corneas, and her throat wasn't so thick, she'd crack a smile at the exchange.
His eyes meld into hers, a soft grin touching his lips. "I don't know if you've noticed this, Katniss, but we're not very good at fighting."
"I beg to differ. I think I'm a champion combatant."
"I won't argue with that," he chuckles.
"Exactly." Her eyes rediscover the ceiling. "You never argue, Peeta. You never stand up for yourself."
"That's why we get along so well, Katniss."
And he's right, he's always right, but for one goddamn moment she wants something more of him. She doesn't know why, but it's what she's been craving for months.
A charged silence electrifies the atmosphere between them before she takes in a long drag of air. "You want to know why I flipped shit the night before I left?"
He's silent; she takes it as affirmation.
Her fingers curl into fists at her sides, knuckles tensing as she exhales.
"It's because you don't fight, Peeta. At all." And then her teeth clench. "You didn't fight for me."
The air between them seems to weigh a thousand pounds as they both let that soak through their pores. The truth never made total sense to her until it's hanging out there, all on the line: She wanted Peeta to fight for the pedestal she'd given him, but he was relinquishing it. To Marvel, of all people. Another man.
But Peeta is her everything. And she wants him to want to be her everything.
After an era of quiet, he finally stirs beside her.
"I didn't know that's what you wanted," he murmurs as soft as a dove call, his voice almost pleading, as if he's the one who should be apologizing.
"Peeta, you—you're my best friend. You have been forever, and I don't want that—or anything—to change. Please know that."
"I do, I just… I want you to be happy."
"I am happy," she spits back, sitting upright, her fists rubbing her tired eyes. "No, this long distance friendship hasn't been easy on either of us, but it's worth it, Peeta! Don't you dare tell me these past two months, when we didn't speak at all, were better than before."
He sits upright, too, his eyes drilling into hers. "I'm not going to argue with you, Katniss. I've been to hell and back since you left."
"And so have I. Do you know how many times I sat there, screaming into my pillow, wanting to tell you everything that was going on? But you weren't there, Peeta. I needed you there. I needed you to want to be there. I n—I need you, Peeta."
And there it is, the entire concept that rests in the core of her insecurities: Her fear that her and Peeta's unhealthy relationship is lopsided.
He doesn't say anything back, his jaw popped open, tight in some expression of pain as his eyebrows tweak together. But now that she's begun, now that she's finally cracked the cap on her silence, the words she's been holding back for years suddenly come surging forward in a flood of electricity.
"I haven't been myself this semester, and it's because I have never felt so alone. You remind me of who I am, and w-without that, I... I know that's pathetic, and stupid, but I can't do this on my own. I tried so hard to—to fill up that emptiness, that sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach, but it only got worse and worse, and if you would've called, or if I would've called—" Tears are welling in her eyes, and she doesn't know why she's falling apart so suddenly, but it's too late to stop. "I—do you know what I did, Peeta? The first time Marvel kissed me, I… I fucking imagined that it was you. You. And I didn't sleep at all that night because I needed to talk to you, and figure out what was happening to me, but I couldn't, and, and—"
She can't hold her own ruin at bay anymore, and so she collapses against her knees, curling up into a mess of sobs, so humiliated that her entire body is numb. Rarely does Katniss ever say so much, but in this moment, she needed to. She'd been bottling herself up for two whole months now, unable to address her own depravity, but now…
After a few moments of silence, when she assumes Peeta is slowly registering everything she just vomited out, she hears him inhale.
"And you're still with him?"
Her head lifts slowly, her entire body trembling; she feels anger beginning to smolder in her chest. Had he not heard anything else she'd said?
But when her gaze collides with his, those pools of blue are so still, so calm and steady, that her fury begins to quell. "Y-yes?"
Suddenly, his arms are coiling around her, fingers splaying over her spine. He tugs her forward, his grip gentle even in its raw intention; he pulls her over his legs, and she stumbles a bit before settling her knees on either side of his hips, her head just above his.
"Peeta, w-what… what are you doing?"
Before she can breathe, or even register the silkiness of his touch as his palms skim up her back, shoulders, neck, to cradle her face, his nose is grazing hers, his eyes wide and filled with a million emotions she can't even begin to decode.
His responding whisper is so soft, so melodious that it's whisked away with the breeze wafting around their silhouettes.
"I'm fighting for you, Katniss Everdeen."
And then his lips slant under hers, his hands securing her face to his as he kisses her with a cocktail of both tenderness and determination meshed into near-perfect equilibrium. Her own mouth is slack for a second in shock, but then the velvet taste of sugar and something so uniquely Peeta swells around her tongue, and her eyes flutter closed.