So sorry for the delay! I was busy with stuff in RL.

After this, there are only two chapters left. And there will be fluff. You're welcome.

I don't own THG nor My Head is an Animal.

Now, on to reading!

Katniss' POV

There are still many bad days in which I can't get up from bed, or Peeta has such a bad episode that he almost destroys the chair he grabs to keep himself anchored. Days that follow nights of terror.

But then not all days are bad. This is not.

The night hasn't been kind with us. We both had awaken in tears, our skin covered in sweat and our throats rough for too much screaming. But we had each other's arms to coax us out of the nightmares of torture and dead sisters.

We are lucky to have the book that I keep by my bed. We pour our lives between its pages with words and sketches, and now it's full of our stories that we drew up from a little dream of mine, a little nightmare of his.

In the morning, cocooned in Peeta's warmth, I open my eyes to find him looking at me with something that I haven't seen in his eyes for a long time, a longing mixed with awe and tenderness. I can't help the little, shy smile that blooms on my lips, and I feel something in my heart stir when he smiles back at me.

Usually I go hunt when Peeta bakes, but this morning I decide to stay home and watch him work. I do that a lot when he paints, and I can see the same concentration that drives him in his studio take him over as he pours flour and measures ingredients. I don't miss the forest today. The woods have always been the place I could be myself, free and without a care, at peace. Now this house feels like the forest, and Peeta is perfect in the middle of it.

He looks up at me and smiles when our eyes meet. I stopped looking away when he catches me staring. We've both done our fair share of staring in these months.

"Wanna help?" he asks.

I'm hesitant to accept. I've never been much helpful in the kitchen department. But his smile is so endearing that the "Sure." slips out of my mouth on its own.

And, apparently, it shouldn't have. I'm a total disaster. I can't measure the ingredients, nor mix them, nor knead the dough properly – I'm putting too much force in it, according to Peeta. "Okay, I give up." I say shaking my hands to get rid of everything that got stuck on them.

Peeta chuckles, a bowl filled with a perfectly soft dough put aside to rest. "Practice makes perfect."

Look at him, with his smug, handsome smile. Is there anything he isn't good at?

While he is busy wiping the counter and disposing of the useless stone I baked, I grab a handful of flour from the packet next to me. "Peeta?"

He hums questioningly, and when he turns towards me I throw the flour at him. The white powder sticks to his face and hair, and he coughs, his eyes screwed shut.

My laugh comes deep from my belly. I haven't laughed like this in a very long time, and after my father's death those few times were always thanks to Peeta.

"You're gonna pay for it." he says, his voice mockingly menacing, with an undertone of amusement.

"Only if you catch me."

I sprint away before Peeta can wraps his arms around me, and I run through the rooms of my not so long ago cold, empty house with his hands chasing me. We giggle and roar like little children, like the teenagers that our lives never let us be. It's a carefree sound, happy and warm. That's how I've been feeling like since Peeta and I found each other again. To be us to take this plunge, to forgive and forget every bad thing we did, to learn from them, it's short of a miracle. For a long time I thought that we were too broken to even function, let alone trust the other in the way we do now, so similar and so different from before.

The carpet in the living room slipping under my bare foot slows me down, and Peeta catches me, his arms going around my middle, and he swings me around before we both fall, giggling like children.

I don't really think about it when my arms wrap around his neck, bringing his body closer to mine on the carpet. I can feel his laughter reverberate through his body, mirroring mine. It feels so good and real.

Peeta perches on an elbow to get his weight off of me, and his face is so close to mine that I can count every freckle on his lovely nose, every lash that adorns his eyes as blue as the morning sky. Our laughter quiets down, but we still smile, now with a bit of shyness and just a hint of awe, our mingled breaths between us.

I don't know who is the first to move, but slowly our lips merge together in a tentative kiss, soft as the wings of butterflies. Then again and again, little, loving kisses that soon morph in a heated clash of tongues, teeth, souls, hands intertwining with hair or skimming over sides and broad backs.

I haven't felt anything like this since the beach, since the kiss that made me realize how much I craved Peeta. Not only his presence, but the way he made me feel, protected and whole and loved. Does Peeta love me again? Did he find that feeling that President Snow had robbed him of, to finally come back to me?

I break the kiss and he gives a little moan of protest. His hot breath fans over my face and his eyes are hooded with longing and love. Love. He loves me, this man that I love so much. Because yes, I love him. There's no way to deny it. It's thoughts like these that keep me on my feet when all I want is to crawl back in my dark pit of self-loathing.

This time, after so much time spent in anger and fear, after all the pain we went through to put our pieces back together, in the living room of a house still haunted by the ghosts of a past that now seems just a little bit more bearable, there's no one to stop Peeta and I.

I'd love to hear what you think about it! I'm on Tumblr (littleevilisa) :D