a/n: Thanks once again to the lovely Court81981 and MalTease for pre-reading this chapter for me. And thank you again to everyone who has reviewed this story and added it to their follows/favorites. You are all the best.
They fell asleep so late last night that Peeta doesn't wake until close to ten the next morning.
When he turns his head he sees Katniss, also awake, next to him in the big comfortable bed. All she's wearing is her little sleep shirt. She stretches and it rises all the way up her thighs.
She must have kicked off the blankets in the night, Peeta muses. He can't tear his eyes away from her legs, bare all the way up to where they disappear at the edge of her underwear.
He decides, right then, how he wants to spend the day. And he wastes no time telling Katniss his plan.
To his dismay, though, she immediately rejects his suggestion that they spend the whole day making out.
"Don't be silly, Peeta," she says sternly, pushing him away. But she's fighting a smile.
"Silly?" he asks, in mock offense. "I think it's a brilliant idea." And he does. He's gone the past seventeen years without kissing Katniss Everdeen. Now that he knows with absolute certainty that he wants to kiss her – that he should have started kissing her years ago, really – he sees no point in wasting time doing anything else.
So he tries again, rolling over and pressing a kiss to her lips. She playfully swats at his bare shoulder.
"I thought you wanted to see the Rockies," she reminds him. But her words trail off and her eyes flutter closed as he traces the outer shell of her ear with his tongue.
Peeta still cannot believe this is happening.
"Fuck the Rockies," he murmurs before biting down gently on her earlobe.
At that, Katniss pushes him away again and says she wants him to make breakfast. They need to get going soon, she tells him – so they can make camp before sundown.
"We can't afford hotels every night, Peeta," she says. She's right, of course; much as Peeta doesn't want to admit it. "They'll charge us for another night if we stay here past one."
Peeta sits up and sighs.
"Fine," he says, resigned. "I'll go to the store and get stuff for pancakes."
She smiles at him and pads off to the bathroom.
As Peeta drives to the base commissary much faster than he knows he probably should, he wonders, his heart racing, if she'll at least let him kiss the maple syrup off her lips after they're done eating.
And to his delight, she does.
But it doesn't last long.
Peeta notices, immediately, when it happens. He's driving south along the interstate, about to cross over into Colorado. And suddenly, everything changes.
She takes her hand from his. She tucks her legs up to her chin on the passenger seat. She wraps her arms around her knees.
It looks like she's trying to disappear into herself.
"What's wrong?" Peeta asks, alarmed. Even though he suspects she won't want to talk about it. He's the talkative one; not her. But she's scaring him now, and the question tumbles out of him before he can stop it.
It doesn't matter, though. Katniss doesn't respond. She turns her head in the opposite direction and looks out the window of the truck as they begin their ascent into the mountains.
Katniss speaks, at last, when they pull the truck up to their campsite.
"I'm scared."
Peeta startles at the sound of her voice.
It's the first thing she's said aloud in six hours.
"Scared of what?" he asks. He tries to keep the note of pleading out of his voice. But he's spent the better part of the day racking his brain for a possible explanation for her sudden change in behavior, and his words are laced with desperation.
"Of turning into her," she says simply, with no clarification, as though her meaning is obvious.
"Of turning into who?" Peeta asks, because it isn't.
Katniss doesn't answer him right away. Peeta comes to a complete stop at Campsite #14 and they both get out of the truck. Katniss walks about five feet and sits down heavily on a rock.
She puts her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands.
"I'm scared of turning into my mom, Peeta" she says, finally, so quietly that at first Peeta isn't certain she's said anything at all.
"Your mom," he repeats, slowly, still struggling to understand.
"She… loved my dad too much," Katniss mumbles. She won't look him in the eye. She studies her nails. Her face is flushed.
Peeta's heart stops beating and his eyes go wide as saucers.
Katniss walks back to the truck and takes their sleeping bags out of the cab. She turns around to face him.
"It nearly killed her when he left us," she clarifies. "I can't let that happen to me. Not ever."
Katniss drops the sleeping bags on the ground. She turns back to the truck and rifles around in the cab for their tent.
She begins setting up camp.
Peeta doesn't offer to help her.
She doesn't ask him to.
Katniss sleeps in the tent with him that night. But she leaves as much space between their bodies as the cramped canvas will allow.
"I will never, ever hurt you," Peeta vows quietly into her hair as she sleeps, the smell of campfire clinging to her like a lover's embrace.
Katniss rolls over. She sighs.
She doesn't wake up.
But her breath ghosts over his face as she lies dreaming, and Peeta can't sleep.
He crawls out of the tent. He looks up at the billions of constellations in the cloudless sky.
Suddenly reminded of an old movie he saw with his brothers a very long time ago, Peeta laughs a little under his breath, and murmurs, "Oh, my god. It's full of stars."
He wonders, wistfully, what advice his brothers would have for him right now if they were here.
Katniss is already gone when Peeta wakes up the next morning.
Panicked, and imagining the worst, he bolts from the tent.
But the truck is still parked where they left it yesterday. When he sees it, he lets out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.
She can't have gone far, Peeta tells himself.
Peeta doesn't want to just sit around and wait for her to come back. There's nothing to do here, really, all by himself.
And he has always wanted to see the Rockies.
He decides to go for a hike. He thinks it might clear his head.
As he walks, he notes animal tracks all along the earthen trail. But he doesn't see any of the animals that must have left them behind.
Peeta wonders where they are. He wonders if he's making too much noise as he walks.
He wonders if maybe he's frightened the animals away, the way he obviously frightened Katniss away, even though he never meant to and all he'd ever wanted, before she kissed him, was to be her friend.
Peeta picks up a rock and throws it, as hard as he can, against the trunk of a small tree.
A small flock of birds, startled, takes flight from its branches. They quork madly at Peeta as they fly away.
He finds another rock and throws it impotently after them. But he misses by a mile.
Peeta finds his way back to camp after about two hours in the woods, his head no clearer than it had been when he left.
Katniss is there when he gets back. Waiting for him.
But she isn't alone. When Peeta sees three new people with her, his stomach sinks.
They quickly introduce themselves. Jo, Annie, and Finnick, they tell him. Katniss met them this morning at the lake while he was hiking.
"I was fishing, but I was out of bait," Katniss explains. "These guys were fishing too. They gave me some worms."
The boy named Finnick winks at Peeta. He flashes Peeta a toothy grin. Finnick's tall, and tanned, and his bronze hair looks deliberately mussed, the way Peeta knows a lot of girls like.
Peeta decides right away that he doesn't like Finnick. Not at all. That he might even hate Finnick.
But Katniss invited them to stay for lunch, and so there's nothing Peeta can do about his hatred of Finnick right now.
He isn't about to be an asshole to these people.
Peeta walks off to the truck and offers, in a voice he hopes sounds amiable, to make sandwiches for everyone.
Over lunch they tell Peeta that they're college students from Iowa about to start their third year. They're driving back to campus after a summer spent on a South Dakota Native American reservation.
"We taught summer reading classes," Annie explains.
Jo adds that they're taking a meandering route back. They're spending another two weeks here, in the Rockies, before the fall semester starts.
"It was such a wonderful experience, Peeta," Annie says, as she explains the work she did on the Reservation. She puts her hand on Finnick's arm.
Finnick turns to look at Annie.
The look in his eyes immediately tells Peeta that his initial judgment of Finnick's character had been dead wrong.
Peeta glances at Katniss.
She's sitting at the opposite end of the table. She's watching Finnick look at Annie too.
Annie leans over and kisses Finnick. Right on the lips. In front of everyone. Finnick's grin when she pulls away threatens to split his face in two.
"Oy!" Johanna shouts, shoving a handful of chips in her mouth and rolling her eyes. "Get a room already, would you? Jesus Fucking Christ!"
But Finnick only laughs. He takes Annie's hand in his. Gives it a theatrical, loud, smacking kiss. It makes Annie giggle.
Out of the corner of his eye Peeta can see that Katniss is still watching them.
They spend the entire day with their new friends.
After a day of easy chatter Peeta definitely feels comfortable calling them his friends.
They roast marshmallows after dinner. As they sit around the campfire, twirling their sticks, Finnick regales Katniss and Peeta with elaborate tales of his college misadventures.
But Jo keeps rolling her eyes the longer he goes on, and Annie tries to hide her smiles in the palm of her hand. Peeta deduces from this that at least half of what Finnick is telling them is a complete fabrication.
At around ten – after the marshmallows and the beers their friends brought over are all gone – Annie, Finnick, and Jo make to leave for their own campsite.
Katniss wishes them a good night. She smiles at them. A genuine smile that reaches her eyes. She says they'll see them in the morning.
And then suddenly, he and Katniss are alone for the first time all day.
Peeta's stomach is awash in butterflies.
"Um… I'm tired," he blurts out, not knowing what else to say.
Katniss nods. A little shyly. "I'm tired too," she says. She looks Peeta in the eye for the first time since Cheyenne.
The look he sees there makes his heart skip a beat.
Without another word, Katniss turns on her heels and climbs into the tent.
Peeta quickly changes into his sleep clothes out in the open. He climbs into the tent after her.
She's lying on her side, facing him, her eyes open.
Wearing nothing at all.
"Katniss!" he says, shocked, his voice strangled in his throat.
He uses all the strength he has to keep his eyes trained on her face.
His whole body shaking, he slowly lies down next to her.
"I don't know if I can ever be like that with you, Peeta," she says.
"Like – like what?" Peeta asks, his voice cracking a little. But he thinks he might already know what she's trying to say.
"The way Finnick and Annie are with each other," she clarifies. "They don't doubt their love at all. You can just tell. The way she looks at him. The way he holds her." She shakes her head.
"Katniss, it's—"
"My dad leaving really fucked me up, Peeta," she interrupts.
"I don't need you to be like Annie," he tells her honestly. Katniss' face is very close to his. Her everything is very close to his. He feels dizzy and a little drunk. "I don't even know what it is I want. It's all really confusing to me too."
She touches his face. He swallows audibly.
"I never expected any of this to happen," he adds. "All I know is… when we were kissing the other night… I just wanted that to never end."
He wonders, suddenly, if he's allowed to look at her body. If maybe she wants him to.
But he forces himself to keep looking into her beautiful gray eyes all the same.
"You've been hurt so much, Peeta." She lifts her hand and brushes his hair off his forehead. The movement brings the pert, dusky tips of her breasts into his peripheral vision.
His resolve crumbles.
His eyes dart downwards of their own accord.
He cannot look away.
"Oh my god, Katniss…" he breathes. He wants to touch them. He wants to touch her.
"I mean… your mom, Peeta. I just don't want to cause you any more pain."
"Then kiss me," he breathes, pleading. "Please."
She smiles at him. She reaches over and, to his surprise, deftly unbuttons his sleep shirt. He doesn't move to stop her. He couldn't even if he wanted to.
She climbs on top of him, her eyes unreadable. She leans forward so that their bare torsos are touching.
Katniss' nipples are hard little pebbles against his chest. Peeta whimpers before he can stop himself. He winds his arms around her.
"All right," she whispers against his lips, nodding. Smiling.
And she kisses him.
