She's leading me home.
Her small hand is in mine, pulling and coaxing me to follow her quickly, quickly. She's gentle, but unrelenting. I follow like a man in a daze, reeling. Is this real? I feel the callouses on her fingers rub against mine as she tugs me up the hill and it grounds me. This is real, my mind repeats incredulously. It is dark, but in the light of the moon and stars I can see her dress swish around her legs. I want to kiss the soft skin behind her knees. I want to kiss her everywhere. When we reach the porch, I kiss under her ear, and on her shoulder, and then each corner of her lips.
My house is dark and silent, but on the doorknob is a note that comes away in my hand as I turn it.
"Sae let us in to K's," is all it says. In a small moment of confusion, I wonder how they knew this would happen. How could something seem so inevitable to everyone else, and yet so incredibly impossible to me? Katniss pulls the note out of my hands, and she lets it fly into the night, drawn away by the wind. Her eyes are wild.
I kiss her on the mouth.
We fall through the door and it closes behind us as we stumble to the floor and separate. For a moment, I feel a swell of uncertainty. What is supposed to happen now? We are alone. We are completely alone. I reach out and take her hand, then gently kiss the tip of every finger. My hands are shaking. My body is shaking and I cannot stop it.
She smiles slowly, gazing at me from under her eyelashes, and I am completely undone. I lean forward and kiss her hungrily, filled with the passion that has been slowly simmering for almost fourteen years. Since before I even understood it. I feel her hands run through my hair, as she kisses me back with equal fervor, pushing into me until I am leaning on my elbows.
Real. Real. Real.
Her nimble fingers unbutton the first three buttons on my shirt, and then she begins to kiss my collarbone, my neck. My head falls backwards. I can hear myself whispering her name into the darkness. She slides her hands across the expanse of my chest, leaving trails of fire in their wake. I am utterly consumed by her.
Is this how things happen after months, years, a lifetime of waiting? Are terrible moments meant to collide into each other and in their devastation emerge a beautiful reality?
How is this real?
I sit up and gently but firmly hold her at an arm's length.
"Katniss…" I begin to ask.
She looks up at me through heavy-lidded eyes that flicker and burn. I remember seeing them like this, as waves of salt water gently rocked against the shore. "I need you," she says, as she did then, but with a fragile longing in her voice that I have never heard before.
Somehow it tells me all I need to know.
In fits and starts, we make our way across the living room then up the stairs. She smells sweetly of trees and sweat and sunshine. I am intoxicated with the smell of her. On the middle stair, she pushes me firmly against the wall, and her deft fingers unbutton the rest of my shirt. She slides it off my shoulders, calloused hands scraping deliciously across my skin and I start to shake all over again. She ever so gently scratches her fingernails down my back, and I hear myself whimper.
It takes several minutes to get to the top of the stairs and down the hall. I am so distracted by the feel of her lips against mine that simple things like walking are barely even possible. Her fingers play with the hairs on the back of my neck, as I back her towards the bedroom door, and somehow I trip over the rug and we tumble onto the floor once more. She lands on her back, and I fall on my knees before her. The position is so like what happened when I lost myself, that I am shocked into stillness.
Katniss senses my terror, and she reaches up to me. "Shhhh, Peeta. This is real. You're gentle, so gentle. You're never going to hurt me." She plies me with kisses, on my hands, the insides of wrists and elbows, my neck, my ears. "I missed you so much," she whispers softly once more. She's been saying this over and over, like a mantra.
We stumble to our feet, and open the door of my bedroom. I step backwards through the entrance and pull her in after me, then catch her as she lightly falls into my arms.
"How are we even here?" I whisper into her hair.
"We were always going to end up here," she answers in a barely audible voice, as she runs her fingers up and down my chest.
I let out a small laugh that sounds like crying, but she silences me with another kiss that lasts for a blissful eternity. I feel her fingers fumbling with my belt buckle, and then my trousers have fallen into a pile on the floor. She gently leads me to sit on the bed, and kneels at my feet. With the softest of touches, she removes my prosthetic, placing tiny kisses all along the scarred skin where flesh and metal meet. My lungs have forgotten how to take in air.
Setting the prosthetic aside, she stands and looks down at me with the most serene, even gaze I have ever seen. Then, she grasps the hem of her dress and lifts it over her head. I hear the fabric fall to the ground with the softest of thumps.
"I hope you don't mind," she looks into my eyes and smiles gently. "I wanted us to match."
The scar-crossed lovers from District Twelve.
She kisses me again, and we fall backwards onto the bed, where she gently removes the last barriers between our skin. Is this happening? This is really happening. I need…
"I don't… I don't have anything for…" I try to say with my last remaining ounce of self-control.
"They gave me a shot," she murmurs, kissing my throat, "lasts for five years."
"Are you sure you want–"
"Yes," she interrupts with complete certainty.
Everything after this moment defies description.
There are no words for what we've done.
Katniss lies beside me, her dark waves wild against the pure white of the pillow. Many hours have passed, very few of them spent in slumber. I hold her hand to my lips, and her thumb softly grazes them over and over. Our bodies are so tangled together, I can't tell us apart. The light in the room is beginning to change as the fingers of dawn reach in through the open windows. Soon, we need to rise to begin the work that feeds our friends and neighbors.
Not yet, though.
After the breath and the heat and the fire and the life there is a wholeness in my mind and soul that I have not felt in so long. Maybe ever. I am not completely certain what this is, but I have an idea that is so desperately wonderful I can barely believe it. But I need to know.
It's a whisper.
"You love me. Real or not real?"
There is a softness in her eyes, and a light there that I've only ever seen in my wildest dreams.
"Real," she tells me.
I pull her to me in ecstasy once more.
..
Six months later, there arrives a cold, rainy day on the very cusp of winter and spring when I stay home from the bakery. Today I am only making a single loaf of bread. I fill it with nuts and dried fruit and hopes and dreams. As it bakes, I go to Haymitch's house and crouch next to him on the floor.
"I need your knife."
With bleary eyes, he asks, "What the hell for, boy?"
"I need to slice some bread. I'm making toast."
He hands it over without a word.