When I wake up Peeta's already in the kitchen baking. I sit up and wrap the blanket around me. Peeta senses the movement and looks up at me.
"Morning," he smiles. I think he might never stop smiling.
"Morning," I rumble. The house is warm with the fire and the oven both burning. I wrap the blanket around my body and pad into the kitchen. "Breakfast?" I ask, and Peeta chuckles.
"Not quite. I had a recipe idea for the bakery last night," he says, reaching into the cabinet for a mixing bowl. "You want some breakfast though? I can make eggs."
"Sure," I nod, perching on my tiptoes and pressing a kiss just under his jaw. I notice a tiny smudge of yellow paint on his neck. "What's this?" I ask.
"Oh," he blushes bashfully before grabbing a damp cloth and wiping the stain off. "I was painting."
"Are you okay?" I ask, trying not to show my concern. He paints to let out the demons, to define his reality. He smiles, though.
"Yeah. Yellow's a happy color, Katniss," he answers.
"I'm going to go get dressed," I respond.
"Or you could just stay like that forever," he says wistfully, painting a memory of me with a messy braid and the blanket around my body.
I head upstairs, but as I pass his paint studio I linger at the door. His paintings are private. He only shows them to me occasionally, when he's trying to make sense of something. I listen downstairs and hear Peeta whisking something in a bowl. I silently push the door open.
He's a prolific painter. There are canvases upon canvases piled along the walls. Some are horrific – twisted faces and mangled hands. Some are too abstract for me really to know what's really going on, but even the colors and strokes of the brush tell a story. There's a painting of a brilliant light pouring down from above. I think an onlooker might see it as beautiful and serene, but I know he's reliving Johanna's death. My eyes drift to the easel, on what created this morning.
The canvas is still wet. The painting is of me, last night, in front of the fire. The portrait shows my back – long and lean, my skin scarred with flame and hurt. But there's something about the way he's painted it. It's honest, yes, but in a way, he's made my scars look beautiful, like they are some kind of mosaic. Like I'm put together by bits of vibrant glass, made beautiful by the way they fit together.
I finally see me the way he sees me.
Extraordinary.
I stare at the painting for too long and realize he'll wonder where I am. I sneak out of the room and close the door. I find clothes and head back downstairs, thick wool socks on my feet. I sit at a stool on the counter and Peeta sets a mug of black tea in front of me along with a plate of eggs and buttered toast. And that's how our married life starts.
Boring.
I like it.
We don't tell anyone right away, but Delly notices the ring on my hand over dinner and soon the whole family knows. Haymitch slaps Peeta on the back. Effie tries to pout about how she wasn't invited, but she can't keep the happy sparkle out of her eyes. Rye takes to calling me sis. Rory doesn't understand what the big deal is.
The bakery is complete by the time the first snow hits. Our village now is peppered with dozens of sturdy homes and a few essential shops. There are no cold hands, no hungry bellies in the first storm. There are only cozy fires and crowded tables. The air of the bakery is warm and welcoming against my frozen cheeks as I step inside. Peeta slides the lock on the bakery door and turns back to me, exhausted.
"That was a day," he says, leaning back against the door. "I forgot how busy the day before a storm is."
The shop was packed he tells me as I remove my heavy coat and set hang it on the rack. Peeta and Rye could barely keep up with orders as Hazelle managed the crowd. She only left an hour ago, rushing home to be with her little ones before the icy sleet began. We can hear it now, hammering the roof like an unorganized symphony.
"When did Rye leave?" I ask.
"I kicked him out around the same time as Hazelle. He doesn't like being away from Delly now that she's expecting," Peeta answers, returning to the sink. He washes the day's tools and I dry, setting them on the table. I don't know where anything goes. Not yet, anyway.
"What are you doing here, by the way?"
"You weren't going to make it home before the storm started," I answer. I don't say more but he knows. We don't spend the night apart. He would have come to me in the sleet and snow. He would have caught a fever. "I brought dinner," I say, reaching into my bag and setting a glass container of food on the counter.
"Thanks, I'm famished," he says, removing the lid and digging in.
"You don't want to warm it up?" I ask, watching him shovel food in his mouth like he's spent a week in the Arena.
"Nope," he replies through a mouth full of sweet potato. We eat on stools in the bakery kitchen. Upstairs is an apartment but it's unfurnished save a bare mattress and box spring. We live in the village.
"So old man Barton was here earlier," Peeta says after chugging the entire glass of water. Mr. Barton is one of the few remaining townspeople. His only son died in the siege on the Capitol. He's been a widower for years. His brickyard was one of the first structures built as his craft was indispensable for the rest of the reconstruction effort. He's nearly seventy but labored at the kiln every day for months making bricks to hold up houses for generation to come. "He came to see Hazelle. Guess Vick keeps hanging around the shop. He wanted to know if he'd be interested in an apprenticeship."
I nearly drop my fork. That would be life changing for the Hawthornes, learning an invaluable trade. Peeta smiles at me and takes his bowl to the sink. A fierce gust of wind blows outside and the lights flicker. It's comforting, though. I've always like the sound of a storm outside my window.
"That would be amazing," I reply.
"I know," Peeta grins back. "So what else is in that magic bag of yours?"
I slide the bag across the room. I dig out blankets and a set of playing cards. "Any chance there's a toothbrush in there?" he asks. I frown. I've never been domestic, not sure why he thought I might be good at packing. "It's okay," he responds. He gets a small bowl and mixes a concoction of mint leaves, baking soda, and coconut oil.
"You should have shown that as your skill to the Gamemakers," I tease. "The rest of us would all be too gross for close-ups and you'd have shiny white teeth in an Arena. Think of all your sponsors." I run my tongue over my teeth and remember the unpleasantness of days without a toothbrush.
We talk for a while. I spent most of the day canning the late green bean harvest from Delly's garden. She managed to get most of them before the frost. We play cards. We laugh. We sit in comfortable silence, drinking mint tea and taking in the bakery.
"I used to dream about you coming to the bakery," Peeta says, resting his chin on his hands at the wooden counter. "Before the Reaping. That one day I'd look up and you'd be standing at the counter."
"Oh yeah?" I ask.
"I'd try to think of something to say, but even in my fantasy I was completely tongue-tied around you," he laughs.
"You remember that?" I ask, watching his face. Peeta's had some kind of breakthrough in the last few weeks. Since the toasting, really. His doctor told him it's because Peeta finally feels safe. I'm not sure I buy it, but for whatever reason, memories of us have been pushing their way to the surface.
"I remember a lot about you," he says softly.
It's cold upstairs, away from the warmth of the oven. We brush our teeth with Peeta's homemade toothpaste and our fingers, heads bobbing around each other as we spit in the sink and rinse our mouths with water. We find the bare mattress and I pile it high with blankets before we crawl inside. We knot ourselves together. My lips ghost over his neck until my teeth gently take his earlobe. I slide myself on top of him.
"So you'd imagine me coming into the bakery?" I whisper. His eyes open wide and shoot at me. "Tell me about your fantasy," I breathe, tugging at his hair slightly.
"You'd be at the front desk," he breathes, trying to keep his eyes open but unable to focus as my hands dip under his shirt and I trace a finger at the waist of his shorts.
"What would I be doing?" I ask, nipping his neck. He writhes with want underneath me as my fingers torture him, dipping slightly under his waistband and out again.
"You said you wanted to buy something, but it was a lie. You wanted to see me," Peeta says through a soft moan captured in his throat.
"Mmhmm," I purr into his skin and I feel a flash of heat rush over his body. He twitches in his shorts. I take my hand and rub him gently through the fabric and he makes a gargling sound. "Then?"
"Oh god. Then you'd ask for a tour of the bakery and we'd somehow end up in my room," he spits out, his hips rocking underneath me. Finally I hook my thumb in his shorts and pull them over his hips, leaving him bare below me. I wrap my hand around him and he's already soaked.
"And?" I ask playfully.
He's panting now, bucking against my hand.
"And?" I ask again.
"And you let me see you," he spits out, his hands reaching for my tee shirt and pulling it away from my body. "You let me touch you," he breathes, his hand sweeping over my breast and teasing my nipple. Even in Peeta's fantasy, he's an unselfish lover. Focused on me. I gasp a little and try to focus on him. I draw my mouth along his chest, my lips feathering over his stomach as I journey down his body. Peeta watches me in amazement.
"Did I do this?" I ask as I reach him, my hand pumping hard.
"No," he confesses. "I, I…" He tries to form words but I've pushed him past the point where he can.
"Would you have wanted me to?" I ask. He nods feverishly. I watch him unravel in my hand before I slip my mouth over him. He moves his hips so he's sliding himself in and out of my lips. He cries out.
"Shh, they'll hear you," I scold before taking him again. He tries to bury the noise as I lavish him. He's fantasizing about this rendezvous. If I'd really come, if I'd really taken him upstairs. If he'd had to try to hide these sounds under the racket of a busy shop downstairs. I suck and push him to his limits until he becomes entirely undone and begs me to push him over the edge. When he does it's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
He drops onto his back and stares at the ceiling, his chest rising and falling.
We don't sleep that night. Instead we spend hours exploring what it means to be married to each other. Panting breaths. Long talks. Late night snacks. Routine. Love.
The storm rages outside and we sleep through most of the next day, the bakery doors bolted closed against the heavy snow.
Peeta bakes the recipe he was working on the morning after our toasting. He's been secretive about it over the last few weeks as he's tried to perfect the confection. He says it's to be the signature dish at the bakery.
When he presents it to me, he watches my face for a reaction. I take a bite and it melts in my mouth, my tongue covered in cream and sugar and cinnamon.
"I'm calling it a Cheshire Cake."
A/N: Props to stjohn27 for some inspiration in this chapter.