Chapter 9
I am a mean, mean person. I am so sorry that I left all of you hanging for so long! I've had a lot of shit going on in my personal life, and it just took all of my attention. PM me or message me on tumblr (malibustacywriting) if you want to chat or vent or yell at me for being such a mean fanfic writer. On second thought, no yelling please.
This chapter was meant to be longer (and smuttier) but I thought it was best to just update than to leave you all hanging any longer. Enjoy and more to come!
"What do you mean, snowed in?" I asked. I felt my body break out into a sweat.
Peeta started shaking the snow off his coat as he draped it over a chair. "I mean, it's way too deep out there. It's a white out, you can barely see anything out there. The snow's up to my thighs, you're not walking home in that."
"Peeta, I have to go, I'll pay for the bus or something-"
Peeta cut me off by gripping my shoulders and staring hard into my face. "Katniss, I looked outside. There buses aren't moving. People have abandoned their cars on the street. I could barely get around the house. You have to stay."
"Don't be ridiculous, Peeta, I've walked home in snow before. I have to get back to Prim and my mom – what if my mom isn't home?" I start pulling on my coat to show Peeta how serious I am, but he doesn't take no for an answer.
"Katniss, this is serious. You can't go out there. It's at least over a mile to your house, and you could get hurt. It's not worth it."
"I'll be the judge of that," I tell him as I slip my shoes on. In one swift step I open the basement door and start walking out.
And then I realize that Peeta was right. The entire city was white, and I could barely see the house next door. The wind was howling sharply, and I had to grip on the cement walls to make it up the stairs. But I was determined to prove Peeta wrong anyways. My feet slipped several times, and by the time I made to the top, the wind blew against me so hard that I lost my balance and fell backwards down the stairs.
Peeta was right behind me and caught me; he had followed me even after I had ignored his pleas and stormed out into the blizzard. After seeing things for myself, I let him carry me back inside. I couldn't see a thing and the wind was literally blowing my body around. I would just have to wait it out.
Peeta pulled me back into the apartment and plopped me down, brushing the snow off of his shoulders. His face, however, was not wearing its usual lighthearted smile. "Happy now, Little Miss Stubborn? I wasn't lying to you."
"Sorry, I just don't like being told what to do."
"So I've noticed," he chuckled and he seemed to relax a bit. "Why don't you call Prim and make sure she's ok. I need to go around and see if I can get to Mrs. Alberts, make sure she doesn't need anything." And he disappeared into the white mess outdoors.
I looked around and found Peeta's phone next to the radio. I called our house first, but there was no answer. I started to get nervous that perhaps Prim was out with friends and stuck somewhere where I couldn't find her. I immediately called the Hawthornes next door, and Rory answered. "Don't worry, Prim's over here with us. We were studying when the storm picked up and Mom won't let her leave."
I then spoke to Prim, reminding her to stay where she was until I could get home. She informed me that my mom was already at the hospital, working her shift and most likely working all through the night anyways. Storms always brought a ton of patients to the hospital.
"Where are you, Katniss?" she asked.
"Umm, I'm, umm, with Peeta. At his place." I really didn't want to tell Prim where I was, but I didn't want her to worry. She already thought the world of Peeta, so I figured his presence would calm her worries about me.
"Oh! Well, that's good!" Prim said surprised.
"Ok, so I'll see you when I can."
"Have fun, Katniss!" she said in a sing-song voice.
"Prim-" I started to scold.
"I'm not saying anything, just telling you to have fun for once in your life! And I want to hear all the dirty details later."
"Prim!"
"Good bye Katniss! Say hello to Peeta for me!" The way she emphasized his name made me realize that my little sister may know more about the birds and the bees than I did at her age. I hung up the phone and hid my face in my hands. Now my little sister and the entire Hawthorne family knew where I was, and potentially had ideas about what I was doing with Peeta. Just great.
And just what was I going to do with Peeta, I asked myself.
Peeta returned, stomping his boots once again on the soggy doormat. "Sorry about that, I can't get into her house from here, only through her front door. But she's ok. Her son is there, and is staying until the storm passes, so at least she has some company. Is Prim ok?"
I nodded, very self-conscious and uncomfortable. It was one thing to have lunch with Peeta here, but now I was stuck here indefinitely. How much had changed since that morning, when I was plotting to avoid Peeta for the rest of my life.
Peeta hung up his coat and kicked off his boots, walking over to join me in the kitchen again. He cleared his throat and rubbed the back of his neck, his tell-tale sign of nervousness. "So, what do you want to do now?"
I shrugged and started biting at my cuticles. Why was I nervous all of a sudden? Sitting with Peeta at lunch had felt comfortable, but now?
"Well, what do you normally do here, when you're by yourself?" I asked.
"I don't usually spend time here, to be honest," Peeta admitted. "I'm usually either working or sleeping. Sometimes I paint."
"Paint?"
"Yeah, I, uh, like to paint. Different things. Nothing special."
I stood up and walked over to some of the paintings that hung on the apartment walls. "Are these your paintings?"
"Yes."
Peeta stayed behind me as I walked along the room, looking at each painting. There were small, some on canvas, some on thick sheets of paper simply nailed to the wall. There were pictures of stone bridges with medieval buildings in the background, a dark lush forest thick with pine trees, a gothic church illuminated at night. "Did you see these places, in Europe?"
Peeta sighed. "Yeah, I did. It's what in my dreams most nights."
"They're beautiful," I said, and they were. Peeta was very talented. Each picture perfectly captured a place and time that was far, far away from the cold winters in Chicago. The way he painted these scenes made them seem majestic, almost like pictures in a fairy tale book. "You're dreams seem nice," I joked.
Peeta sighed. "That's because I don't hang up the other ones."
"What other ones?" I asked, still staring closely at a picture of a blue-green river running through the middle of a town.
"I dream about the war, a lot. And then I wake up and I paint what I dream. And most of the time, it isn't pretty like these."
I turned around. Peeta's face was cast down and I could tell that this was really difficult for him. I walked over to him and linked my hand in his, causing him to look up at me surprised. "Show me," I told him. He didn't respond. "Will you show me?"
Peeta didn't say anything, instead leading me into the bedroom. I gulped when I entered, trying to not look at the bed and think about the being with Peeta in this of all rooms. He pulled the cloth covering the floor in the corner of the room, and I realized that it hid a large stack of canvases.
I knelt down and started looking through the paintings, one by one. Peeta should have warned me for what I was about to see. A man with his stomach torn open, blood everywhere eyes pleading for help. A German soldier aiming a gun directly at you, looking almost like a younger version of Peeta, all blond hair and teenage youth. Looking out from a dugout, seeing shadowy figures moving through the forest. A sight from up high in the air, what I assumed Peeta saw from being a paratrooper, only the some of the other parachutes were covered in blood, their passengers heads hung limp.
"Oh, Peeta," I sighed. I had no idea that this is what he saw, every night, even now that the war was over.
He stayed standing behind me. "I've never shown anyone these before, but I thought, well…what do you think?"
"I hate them."
I didn't mean for the words to come out like that, but I did. I hated the pictures. They were all full of horrid images that sweet-natured Peeta shouldn't have to see. "I mean, they're good, you're very talented. But Peeta, the images are just…awful."
I turned my head to look at him. "Does it help?"
He shrugged. "Sort of. Sometimes I have a difficult time determining what's real and what's not real. And painting reminds me that it was real, once, but that it's gone now. As if it gets out of my head if I paint it on canvas. It's the worst things that are the hardest to paint, though."
I stood up and reached for his hand. "What's the worst thing you saw?" I asked Peeta. "Maybe, if you say it out loud, it won't be so real anymore."
Peeta didn't respond, just took a deep breath in. I wanted so badly to help him, to help him move past the war and instead be here, with me, right here and now. I repeated myself. "What's the absolute worst thing?"
Peeta sighed. "The worst thing I remember is sitting there, eating breakfast next to my good friend, who was dead. And I didn't care because I was so used to it."
I was stunned. I had expected him to say something about a man getting blown up or having to kill someone. But what Peeta spoke of was something all together different.
"That's the worst part of war, Katniss. When you start to lose your humanity."
Then, Peeta started talking. A lot. We sat on the floor of his bedroom, our backs both propped against his bed, our fingers intertwined, and I listened while Peeta spoke, looking straight ahead. He told me about joining the army with both of his brothers the day after Pearl Harbor, standing in line with hundreds of other young men. He wanted to serve his country, he told me. He felt like it was his duty. He was 17.
He told me about saying good-bye to his parents, only days after they said good-bye to his two brothers, off to join the Marines in the Pacific. His father looked at his with watery eyes and shook his hand. His mother assumed he won't be coming home.
He told me about training, about drill sergeants and shaved heads. He told me about the ship on the way to England, where he was seasick almost the entire trip. He told me about jumping out of planes, of the fear he had right before each jump, and the feeling of fleeting bliss he had while gliding down to the earth.
He told me about D-Day, of landing in complete darkness behind enemy lines, carrying 100 pounds of equipment, ending up miles away from the designated drop zone and scrambling with other confused men to carry out a mission they didn't completely understand. Fighting Germans, who seemed to be even younger than he was, but whose guns kept blazing towards his face. Of the mud, the sweat, the cold, the fear, the blood, the dying. How it never seemed to end. Of coming to the beach and seeing thousands of dead and injured and not knowing where the blood ended and the sea started. Of having to leave to go into battle for months and months on end after that. And at the end, when it was all over, wondering what he was going to do with himself. The only training he got after high school was how to jump out of planes and how to kill.
I listened and listened, not wanting to interrupt. I got the feeling that Peeta had not said one word to anyone about the war until now. When he was done, and the night sky had taken over the room, I leaned my head on his shoulder. "Thank you," I whispered.
"For what? Listening to me ramble for about three hours?" Peeta laughed.
"For sharing that with me. Thank you."
Peeta kissed the top of my head. "Thank you for listening. No one's ever asked me about the war. It's like they want you to come back and pretend like nothing happened."
"Well, I'm here. And I'll listen. I'm better at listening anyways." I smiled. "Do you have any funny stories? We should end on a good note."
Peeta laughed. "Umm, well, after the war, I signed up to play football. American football. In our spare time there were teams getting set up, and I got myself on the Army football team. I played in high school, did you know that?" I shook my head. Peeta was the one who had noticed me around the neighborhood, not the other way around. "What no one told me was that there were guys from Notre Dame and U of I on those teams. All it took was one quarter before I was black and blue from getting hit by these guys.
"So I told them I would ref. Here, I have a picture. We played in Nuremburg, in the same stadium where Hitler gave all those speeches." He pulled a bent photograph out of his dresser drawer. There was Peeta, his hair wavy in the wind, a whistle in his mouth, running alongside a bunch of oversized men playing football. I could tell that he was really proud of this, that this was one of the few moments in the war that he could look back fondly on.
I smiled up at him. "I could tell why you got knocked around. Those guys were huge!"
Peeta grabbed the photo back. "Hey, I held my own for that one quarter! They just knew how to hit a guy hard enough to make him see stars." He patted my knee, obviously in a better mood. "Come on, I'll make you dinner."
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo
The rest of the night was relaxed and easy, compared to our long talk about the war. Peeta seemed calmer and happier, and I was glad to relief some of his anxiety, if only for a night. We sipped hot chocolate from large mugs and listened to the radio tell us about the wintery mess outside. The whole city had shut down, people had abandoned their cars, and everyone was being told to stay put for the night until the storm ended. And the snow outside just kept falling in huge flakes, trapping us all inside.
Eventually my eyelids started to get droopy and I leaned my head on Peeta's shoulder. I felt him smile and kiss the top of my head.
I must have dozed off, because the next thing I remember is Peeta lightly shaking my shoulders. "Katniss," he said. "It's late, we should get some sleep."
"Mmmm," I moaned, not wanting to move from my comfortable cocoon underneath Peeta's warm arm.
"Come on, you'll get a sore neck if you stay here," he said, sitting both of us. I let him pull me off the small loveseat and guide me towards the bedroom. It was then that I started to wake up and realized what was happening. I was going to have to spend the night. With Peeta. In the same bed. My heart started beating faster and my legs turned to mush.
Peeta started pulling back the covers of the bed. I cleared my throat. "Um, where, I mean, how, um, what do you want to do about-"
Peeta smiled. "Don't worry, I'm a gentleman, as much as I don't want to be. I'm taking the floor."
"No, Peeta, that's not fair," I started to protest. But Peeta was already arranging a pillow and blankets on the floor next to the bed.
"I insist. It's my house and you're my guest, and I want you to be comfortable. Besides, the floor doesn't bother me. Trust me, I've slept in worse places."
Peeta's words didn't make me feel any less guilty about sleeping in his bed while he was stuck on the hard floor. But he wouldn't take no for an answer. Sometimes I wondered if he was more stubborn than I was, just in a much subtler way.
I heard the wooden floors creak as Peeta settled in on the floor next to me, and I felt guilty as I cocooned myself under his warm quilt. I jumped when Peeta leaned up to pull the cord on the lamp sitting on his nightstand. He chuckled quietly and laid back down. I could barely make him out in the darkness, the only sound our breathing and the wind whipping across the streets of Chicago outside.
"Good night, Katniss," he said quietly, barely above a whisper.
"Good-good night, Peeta," I replied and then buried my awkwardness deeper into his pillows. They smelled like him, of cinnamon and flour and a man's musk, and somehow, the sound of his steady breathing on the floor next to me lulled me to sleep.
FYI, what Peeta said about the worst memory of war is exactly what my grandfather (a WWII vet) told me, word for word. As I said before, I based a lot of how Katniss and Peeta met on my grandparents, and I'm using his experiences during the war to inspire Peeta's.
Also, I based this snowstorm on the 1967 snowstorm in Chicago that shut the city down. I'm too young to have experienced that one, but the one in 2011 was a close second.
