I don't own the Hunger Games. Sadly.
Chapter Ten
"Peeta, you don't know what you're talking about," Katniss said, cautiously taking a step back from the boy.
"Why didn't you tell me it felt like this to be a fledlging?" Peeta asked, confidently walking into her house. He flashed her a smile, the same smile she had given to many mortals to whom she was about to give to Madge and Finnick for dinner: a smile of comfort and calming. "I feel like I can do anything and it feels wonderful!"
Katniss couldn't help feeling hynotised by how he looked and how he carried himself as a fledgling. The clothes he wore hugged him in all the right ways and her eyes trailed over every inch of him without her even realizing it. He just looked so . . . hot. Of course, Peeta had been always 'hot' in one way or another (she couldn't help but notice how his 'Mellark's bakery' shirt had clung tightly to his muscles when she went to the bakery with Prim) but this was a different sort of hot. This was ruggad hot. Bad boy hot. Almost . . .
Sexy.
Yes. That was the word. Sexy.
"Peeta, please, you don't know what your saying right now," Katniss insisted, trying to keep her eyes locked on his eyes and not anywhere else. "You're not yourself."
"I know, I'm a much better version of myself!" Peeta replied. "I feel invincible!"
Katniss remembered feeling like that when she was first turned. But she had Madge and Finnick to train her on how to behave and quell feelings like that. Peeta didn't have anyone. All she had to do though was somehow manage to keep him from getting her to turn him until his humanity finally took over again.
Peeta spun around in a 360 circle on his heel, examining her living room as if seeing it in a whole new light. He stopped when his back is to her and bent over to pick a pillow off the floor. Katniss' mouth went dry as her eyes were drawn to the way the skinny jeans tightened around his backside delectabely. The dull ache she had only ever recognized from her dreams formed between her thighs as a truck load of dirty thoughts ran through her head all at once. She had never felt like this before. Attraction to another person had been an alien thought for so many years that now there was a primal instinct inside her that wanted to explore it.
As if reading her thoughts and feeling her eyes boring into him, Peeta looked over his shoulder at her with a smug smirk on his face. He quirked an eyebrow at her in amusement and her face melted into a scowl.
"You don't have to make this so difficult," he said, taking a stroll around the room. He paused every now and then to examine a trinket on a shelf or a photo on the wall. "It would solve all our problems. You'd get to drink me and become a full vampire and I'd get to be a fledgling. Easy as."
"Not easy as," Katniss replied. "You don't understand all this Peeta, vampire blood inside you or not, you're still a mortal. If I became a vampire, who'd be your sire? If you had of been the one turned by Madge, I'd have been your sire. But I'm not. Because Madge turned me. And I don't have mortal blood in me anymore."
Peeta approached her, only stopping when he was inches away from her. Katniss looked him in the eye defiantly, refusing to let her gaze flick away. She would not be intimidated by a mortal poisoned by vampire blood.
"Why did you drink the blood?" Katniss asked him.
Peeta chuckled, somehow amused by the question. "I almost didn't," he replied. "I had the vial in my pocket and all, ready to return to you and give it back. But then I heard her."
"Heard who?"
"Delly. She spoke in my mind and convinced me to do it. To drink her blood and feel the night, the wind, the sun, the earth, everything all at once because she knew how wonderful it was and wanted me to feel it too. Unlike some people," Peeta explained.
Katniss clenched her jaw and tried not to fall under the spell that was the raw beauty of a fresh fledgling. For a year after Madge turned her, she'd had hundreds of different vampires and fledglings trying to have their way with her. She was only thirteen then. That was how powerful her looks were back then. It dulled down after a couple of years but until then you should really keep your mentor by your side to protect you. And that's what Katniss did. Finnick and Madge never left her behind.
And now they were in trouble.
"Give yourself a couple of hours," Katniss insisted. "If you still want me to turn you when you're yourself again well . . . we'll talk about it."
Peeta looked into her eyes and she almost got lost. Drowning in the sparkling bright blue of his irises. Was this how easy for others to get distracted around her? How odd. "You're lying," Peeta said, snapping her out of her trance. "I know you are. You know that when I'm back to my idiot self I'll not want to be turned. I'll offer my blood to you to save my life, sure, but I'd rather die than become one of you. I can read it now, in my thoughts. I want to die for you Katniss Everdeen and I have no idea why."
"I'm not going to kill you," Katniss replied firmly.
"For some reason I love you," Fledgling Peeta continued. "Ever since I first saw you I've watched you grow up. Right up until you were thirteen years old and disappeared for a while. I lived in the hope that you'd return and you did eventually. Why would I feel like that over . . . you?"
"I don't know, why don't you ask yourself that?" Katniss answered. She tried to ignore the fact that he basically just admitted that he'd loved her ever since he first saw her. This imposter of Peeta was invading the privacy of the Peeta that she had began to love herself. The sweet, kind, caring baker's boy who was all too willing to let her kill him if it meant her survival.
"I know the real reason why you won't turn me," Peeta said. He leant over so his mouth was mere inches away from her ear. Katniss steeled herself and held her breath. "It's because you like to be the one in control. To be the alpha, the one whose dominant. If you turned me"-he trailed his finger up and down her arm, the sensation it caused making her shiver-"then I'd be an equal match to you."
"That is not the reason, believe me," Katniss replied. Peeta wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her flush against him.
"Prove it then," he replied.
Katniss wasn't sure whether it was the cockiness in his tone that made her want to prove him wrong, or the ever growing libido that was already boiling over that made her do what she did but he had seemed to have been waiting for it.
So when she smashed her mouth roughly against his and buried her hands into his hair, fisting the silken locks in her hands, Peeta recoperated immediately, wrapping his arms fully around her and lifting her off her feet slightly, massaging her lips open with his tongue. Katniss groaned as her own tongue melded with his and they furiously made out in the middle of her living room, both fighting to win the match of upper hand.
It's second nature for fledglings and vampires to want to be the one in charge. The one who has the final say in everything and anything. So it's always kind of rough when they attempt to be intimate or have sex with each other because it's a constant battle over who's the dominant one.
Lost in a euphoria, Katniss wrapped her legs around Peeta's waist and pulled his bottom lip between her teeth. Each moan he made sent a fresh jolt down to her core. Her back suddenly came in contact with the wall so she no longer needed to hang onto Peeta to keep herself up right. His hand trailed down her thigh and she gasped as he palmed that spot between her legs that had began to ache so much over her jeans. It felt so good.
"Oh my god," Katniss groaned, tugging on Peeta's hair and burying her face into his neck, nipping under his jaw with her teeth. She slipped his jacket off his shoulders and tossed it away before slipping her hands under his t-shirt. It was then she paused and finally snapped out of her lustful state.
His skin was cold.
She had remembered how he had felt when she sat ontop of him in his bedroom on Thursday night. Heat radiated from his skin and made her feel warm inside when she had rested her hands on his chest as she bit his neck. When she left the hickey behind.
This reminded her of what he had done with Delly's blood and that he wasn't himself right now. This was not Peeta. This was an imposter of him.
Shutting her eyes, Katniss tried to think of something to help her focus on a way to stop all this before it got out hand. She turned her head to the side, pressing her face against the wall, and spied a lamp. This was going to be her only option wasn't it?
To make sure feldgling Peeta did not suspect anything, Katniss curled her hand into his shirt and pulled him into her for another kiss. While he greedily accepted the kiss, she reached out blindly for the lamp. She momentarily lost her train of thought when he bit her bottom lip, so desperately wanting to continue and finish what they'd started. But her mind chastised her and she fought against every fibre of her being, reaching the lamp and finally clasping it.
With one swift swing, she whacked Peeta across the temple with the lamp. The impact knocked him over but wouldn't have knocked him unconcious if it hadn't of been for the fact that he'd hit his head of the corner of her coffee table as he fell.
Katniss stood over his prone body for a moment before falling apart. "Oh my god, what have I done?!" she cried, falling to her knees and checking him for life signs. His pulse was normal and beating softly under his skin. She used the last of her strength to pull his head into her lap. "I'm so sorry Peeta," she murmered, resting her forehead against his. "I just had to do it. I couldn't let you make me turn you. You don't want this life, I swear you don't."
She wiped some hair off his forehead and gently kissed the gash that her coffee table gave him. How long she sat on the floor with him she didn't know, but when she finally got her strength back she heaved his body up and over her shoulder and carried him like a sack of flour over to the sofa.
Once laid down nice and comfy, Katniss covered Peeta with a blanket, hoping that when he woke up he would no longer be under the spell of Delly's blood
~XxX~
The first sign that he was turning back to normal came at 2:00am. Katniss sat on the coffee table for hours, simply watching the boy rest. Everything about him fascinated her. How every crease, every laughter line, every blemish and imperfection were somehow perfect to her and Katniss couldn't help thinking about how untaintedly beautiful he was. Maybe she was just being oversentimental. She didn't really know.
At some point as he had slept, Peeta had turned his back on Katniss on the sofa, but at 2:00am he turned back around and there, on both his cheeks, was a tint of pink. Katniss lurched off the coffee table and pressed a hand to his face.
Heat.
She could feel heat.
His skin was warm again.
"Thank god," she muttered, pressing her forehead onto the sofa chusion beside Peeta's arm.
The warmth that radiated from him seemed to envelop her and soothed her own cool, marble skin. Wanting to feel more of it, Katniss climbed onto the sofa and lay beside Peeta. She studied him carefully, waiting for him to wake up. He didn't though and Katniss found herself pressing into him, wanting to feel all of him. His warmth, his heat, everything and anything that made up him.
Katniss suddenly remembered that if she hadn't of been turned into a fledgling, this boy would have been the boy she'd have married. So everything he said about loving her made sense. Because to marry there has to be love, right?
"Oh Peeta," she murmered sadly. "I've truely fucked up your life haven't I?"
The blond didn't respond and Katniss sighed. But, instead of saying anything, he wrapped his arms around her in his sleep and held her close. Somehow, she felt immediately comforted and melted into the embrace, closing her eyes and drifting out of conciousness herself.
~xXx~
The next morning she reluctantly slipped out of Peeta's arms and went into the kitchen to make some coffee. A groan slipped in from the living and she smiled to herself, opening the cupboard and taking out an extra mug.
When Katniss returned to the living room with two cups of coffee, Peeta looked up at her through squinted eyes. Propped up on his elbows, Katniss could immediately tell that he was back to himself again. His hair no longer gleamed and was a scruffed up mess ontop of his head. The blue of his eyes didn't glow anymore-but they still seemed to sparkle in the morning light-and he was no longer porcelin pale. She knew he could beat the spell.
"Coffee?" she asked.
"Please," he replied. Katniss smiled and handed Peeta her best spotty mug that she only used for special visitors. She sat down on the coffee table and took a sip of her own drink.
"So, how much can you remember?" she asked.
Peeta frowned as he drank some of his coffee. "Not a lot . . . just accidently drinking Delly's blood . . ." He paused. "What did I do while I was . . . you know . . . out?"
"Uh . . . not much. You came here, began talking a load of crap before passing out," Katniss lied. "You were a blood light weight." Peeta laughed at this.
"Sounds like me," he said. He gave himself the once over and frowned. "What the hell am I wearing?!"
"Don't ask me," Katniss shrugged. "Ask the fledgling in you."
"I didn't make an idiot of myself did I?"
Katniss looked back on last night. No, he certainly did not make an idiot of himself. In fact, she could still feel what it felt like to have his hand pressed against her crotch and . . . she kind of craved more of that touch. She shook her head. "No, you're good," she said.
Peeta winced and touched his forehead. "God, my head hurts."
"Yeah, you had a meeting with the edge of the coffee table when you passed out," Katniss explained. "Should heal up fine though." Peeta smiled and Katniss felt herself blush. She didn't even know she could blush anymore.
Prim suddenly entered the house, her overnight bag on her back. "Hey Katniss! Hi Peeta!" she cheered as she skipped through the living room and passed Peeta and Katniss on the way by. She paused at the entrance to the kitchen before backing up so she was back at the sofa. A sly grin crept up onto her face as she took in the current situation. "Peeta, what are you doing here?" she asked.
Katniss scowled. She could already predict what her sister thought had happened last night. "Peeta locked himself out last night and needed somewhere to stay," she explained. "Isn't that right Peeta?"
"Uh . . . yeah," Peeta replied, running a nervous hand through his hair. Primrose smirked and crossed her arms.
"Uh-huh," she said. "Sure."
"It's true!" Katniss protested. "Look!" She pulled the blanket fully off of Peeta and gestured to his clothes. "He doesn't even have pyjamas!"
Prim frowned. "Jeez Peet, have you ever heard of buying clothes to grow into them?" she asked, waving a hand at his tight fitting fledgling attire. Peeta blushed and Katniss gaped.
"Prim! Don't be so rude!" she snapped.
"Ooops, sorry," Prim grinned. "Just looks kinda dodgy ya know?"
"Prim, leave now," Katniss ordered. Prim's grin widened and she held her hands up in a surrender gesture.
"Okay, okay, I'm going. You kids have fun." Her little sister winked before skipping up the stairs to her bedroom.
"Sorry about her," Katniss said to Peeta.
"It's okay," he replied.
"She's just a kid. She can be so silly sometimes."
"I know, it's fine, honestly."
Katniss smiled thankfully and Peeta returned the gesture.
"But," he said, "We still have a lot to discuss."
"About what?"
"About what we're going to do tomorrow if you don't find an AB negative." Peeta's face turned serious as he said the last sentence so quietly Katniss could barely catch it. "About how you're going to drink my blood."
A/N: Hope you liked it! :D