I arrived at the bakery just as a group of teenage girls skittered out, giggling madly. One was even blushing. As I passed by them to grab the door before it swung shut, I heard her proclaim with a sigh, "he touched my hand as he handed me the bag." Her friends' tittering followed me inside until the door mercifully closed behind me.
Had I been blind, all this time? I had never paid much attention to boys, and then my faked romance had ruled my life for a couple years following that. I had been blind to the way that girls reacted to Peeta, only to be forced with it every day lately thanks to his constant public appearance at the shop.
He looked up as I entered and told me to hang on for just a moment, he was almost done closing out the back. A few patrons lingered at the tables, but everyone was finished eating. As I glanced around the bakery, I couldn't help but notice that almost everyone present was of the young female variety. I mused again how structured I'd been in my early and mid-teens, and even now. I never would have wasted my time gushing over a guy while sitting in a store. One, we hadn't been able to afford anything in the stores. Two, I hadn't had precious time to waste.
"Okay, folks," he said as he reentered the bakery. I watched his trademark move of untying his apron we wore while he worked and pulling it off over his head. "Sorry to kick you out, but the lovely Mrs. Everdeen is here to whisk me away." The girls made small noises of protest, but rose from their seats all the same. "If I haven't opened up shop by morning it means she's killed me, and you should start up a search of the woods."
"He's kidding," I added loudly as their eyes grew wide with horror at the thought. "Although if he keeps this up, I wouldn't put it past me."
They lingered as long as possible, as if afraid to hand him over to my cruel, evil hands. I wanted to laugh, to tell them I would take good care of him in a very insinuating way, but I didn't say a word. In all honesty, it wasn't worth my trouble, and I refused to show even a hint of jealousy when I wasn't even sure that was what I was feeling.
"Ready?" I asked, a bit impatient to get out of town and away from the hordes of people. People continued to trickle back into Twelve to rebuild their lives as Panem settled down over the months. Every day, the town grew more and more crowded. While I knew it was a good thing, that these were the people I'd grown up with and spent my entire life with, a part of me resented them for abandoning our district in the first place. Where had they been while we toiled to bury the bodies and rebuild the square? How had they squandered the time away?
"Katniss." His hand rested on the small of my back. I jolted from the touch, unaware he'd come up beside me. "Are you with me?" the question was softly spoken and unsure. I wanted to ask, 'Where else would I be?', but we both knew there were a thousand places that pulled me away inside my mind.
"I'm here," I told him, forcing the belief into my words. "Come on." I started toward the door, to show him I was serious. "We've got a bit of a walk ahead of us." I paused just outside, my eyes doing a constant scan of the town square as he locked up. I'd tried to break the habit of always checking my surroundings. The doc said I needed to be more trusting, to feel safer in my surroundings so that I could learn to let go of a little bit of control. Half the stuff he said made little to no sense to me, but still I tried to follow his advice. After all, I couldn't ignore how much he'd done for Peeta. It would be a welcomed reprieve if he could manage the same for more. And to his credit, he hadn't given up on me yet, which was more than I could say for most of the people I'd met.
The walk past the meadow and through the woods was a good reminder of why I'd cut my hair. Even thrown back into a messy tail, the ends of it touched my slick neck and irritated me to no end. I spent the walk to the lake constantly swiping the back of my neck. I caught the amused look on Peeta's face when he thought I wasn't looking, but he was smart enough to keep his mouth shut.
When we reached the lake, he let out an impressed, "Wow."
I nodded in agreement, moving to a large rock to set down my bag. After I pulled a few towels from it, I eased my feet out of my boots and motioned for Peeta to do the same to his shoes. "We're going in?" he asked with a hint of unease.
"Today," I told him as I pulled my shirt up over my head to reveal the bathing suit I'd brought back from the Capitol with me when I'd returned home, "I am going to teach you how to swim." Reaching back into the bag, I tossed him the bathing suit I'd brought for him. It had been a lot more difficult to acquire since I hadn't had the foresight to grab it while in the Capitol. It had taken a few phone calls and a few days of waiting for the train, but it had finally arrived and steeled my resolve to share this special place with him. "You can change behind a tree," I said, motioning to the edge of the clearing.
"Come on, Katniss, it's nothing you haven't seen before." Despite the long walk in the beating rays of the sun, he was in a remarkably good mood. I had hoped we'd gotten over the teasing of my innocence, but I guessed not. He held back further retorts as he ambled to the edge and disappeared, reappearing a minute later.
As I slid off my shorts, he returned to my side. It was then that I caught sight of his bare chest for the first time in months. I'd seen his muscles through the material of his shirt, and I'd caught obscured views of his bare back while he changed in the evenings, but he always slept with an undershirt on. Even in the water arena, he'd worn a full piece suit.
Seeing him standing there, his proximity so close to mine, did a funny thing to my heart. It flipped in my chest and started to pound a bit more frantically as I tried to stop myself from staring. I knew that Peeta had muscles, of course I did, but I had apparently forgotten exactly how well they suited him.
I cleared my throat, scratching the back of my neck. Edging towards the lake's shore, I tried to glance anywhere and everywhere but directly at him. "Do you want to try by yourself at first, or do you want me to guide you in?"
"I've been in water before," he reminded me, moving easily past me and wading in.
"But it didn't go so well," I pointed out. Finnick had dove in after him and had struggled to bring him back to the surface. I pushed the memory quickly from my head. I didn't want to think about Finnick. Not there, in the lake that had always held a special meaning to me. I was willing to share it with Peeta, but not with my inner demons. They weren't welcome there.
As expected, Peeta was a quick study. He started with floating on his back, then began arching his arms gracefully behind him in a backstroke. I noticed, however, that while he quickly picked up on paddling with his hands, he refused to kick with his legs. When I finally asked him about it, he looked embarrassed.
"I only have the one," he said, standing waist deep in the water.
It took a moment for me to get the meaning behind his words. When they sank in, I felt incredibly foolish. I was so used to Peeta's prosthetic leg that I hadn't even thought about it. Though it wasn't flesh and bone, he was so adapted to it that it seemed like just another part of his body. I never stopped to think that perhaps it might make it more difficult for him to swim.
"I'm sorry," I apologized. I couldn't stop my eyes as they darted down, but the murky green water hid everything below its depths. That left me focused on his abs, which only served to distract me when I needed to stay focused. "I didn't even stop to think... I didn't consider..."
"No, I'm sorry," Peeta countered as he tousled his wet hair with his fingers. Rivulets of water dripped down his face and neck as a result, and I watched them trail down his body until they hit the surface of the lake. "It doesn't affect my swimming at all. It's just embarrassing. A glaring reminder of how imperfect I am now."
I laughed. It was horrible, and the complete opposite of what I ought to have done, but I couldn't help it. Peeta thinking he was anything but perfect was absurd. He was the one always telling me I had no idea the effect I had on people, and yet there he stood thinking a prosthetic leg somehow took away from the rest of him. "Peeta," I insisted, "you couldn't be anything less than completely charming no matter how hard you tried." His look of self-defeat enabled me to stay the words without embarrassment of my own. It was simply fact, after all.
"Your perfection is complete, I swear." I couldn't help but stare as his abs again as I said it. "You can't honestly tell me that you haven't noticed the twittering girls that come into your bakery in hordes just to gaze longing at you."
He scoffed in reply. "Are you serious?" I laughed, unable to hide the smirk of disbelief on my face. "You wouldn't believe the way they look at you and talk about you when they think I'm not listening or looking. I swear, half of them are hoping I trip and bash my brains on a rock in the woods and the other half are plotting ways to discreetly kill me.
"You survived two Games, and you survived the war. You professed your love in front of the entire nation, and you spent both Games just trying to protect me and keep me alive. You are the guy that every girl out there wants, Peeta. To think anything less of yourself is ridiculous."
"Right, because everyone wants to go to sleep next to someone who might end up choking them to death during a night terror episode."
"They don't know those things about you," I reminded him. "And even if they did, it wouldn't matter." I couldn't bring myself to point out that I was a prime example. I invited him into my bed every evening fully aware that possibility still existed. But that small doubt, that little fear, was worth everything else that he brought me.
"They would think I was a monster. The Capitol's mutt. That's what you called me. And you were right. They took my leg in the Games and they stripped away my humanity in the War."
It hurt, having my own words used against me in his defense. I had said those words out of hurt, lashing out at him in my own frustration. And maybe I had meant them at the time, but it hadn't been true. "You might never get your leg back," I admitted, "but you haven't lost your humanity, Peeta. Even during the worst of it, you fought to know the truth. You wanted to do right. And it was only ever me you lashed out at. Your humanity was intact, and it still is."
I hated that we came full circle, time and time again. He couldn't get past his hijacking and I couldn't get past Prim. What followed next was only logical, even if it was foolish.
My hand rested against his chest, sliding on his slick skin until it rested over his heart. As I felt it beat beneath my touch, I held onto one of his shoulders to press gently into his heart with my other hand. "This is the truest heart in all of Panem," I told him. "It is loving and giving and kind. It never judges and it always aids those who need it. Even if your darkest times, you look out for others over yourself. Anyone would be foolish not to want it. To want you."
I gasped in surprise as his hands caught my waist and pulled me into him. The water splashed around us from the movement, and I had to hold onto his shoulder to keep myself upright as the water tried to pull me in the opposite direction. His lips were damp and tasted like the lake; slightly salty and with the barest hint of vegetation. It was an odd taste for the boy who so often tasted of flour and sugar and vanilla.
My foot slid against the muddy lake floor as I drew in closer. I caught him around the neck to balance myself, and his arms caught my leg and my back, angling me slightly back into the water as he leaned into me. Water dripped from his hair down my hands as I held the nape of his neck, threading my fingers through his hair.
It was the first time he'd touched the charred, mangled skin of my legs. I was meticulous about wearing long pants, even in the peak of summer. If he thought his prosthetic leg was embarrassing, I had him matched with my skin. But he didn't seem to notice. His hands did not pause or falter as they held me, and he didn't pull away in disgust.
As he kissed me, I kissed him back. And it was him I was kissing this time. There was no doubt in my mind. Gale was nowhere in my thoughts as he had been the last time in the bakery. And I wasn't facing the uncertainty of an uncomfortable meeting, as I had been on the train. In that lake, my lake, it was only the two of us, and everything outside the lake no longer existed in that moment.
It was exhilarating. I pulled him closer, my leg tucked between his arm and his chest, the other pressed against his hip. His bare chest pressed against the slippery, thin material of my suit. Even in the water, it felt as if nothing stood between us at all. It was different than all the other kisses we'd shared. The water around us charged it, and the flex of his muscles shot sparks through me.
My tongue dove into his mouth as somewhere, in the far corners of my mind, I reminded myself of how foolish it was to do this. We still weren't any closer to declaring what we were to one another, and we seemed to be finding ourselves in these types of situations more frequently than ever. There was something about him, like a magnetic pull, that drew me to him, but I still hadn't sorted out the root of those feelings. It laid the ground work to breaking him apart should my feelings be anything other than pure in intention. I didn't want to do that to him. I couldn't stand the thought of hurting him. And yet, as his tongue slid against mine and I moaned softly into his mouth, I couldn't bring myself to pull away either.
Was this love? This feeling I got, every time he kissed me, every time he touched me? Or was it simply lust, a fleeting feeling I could have for anyone? Even in my anger, I had felt something when Gale had kissed me. But I didn't want to think about Gale. Not in that moment, not in that place, and not with Peeta. I didn't want to think about anything at all. I wanted to lose myself in him, and revel in the fact that it no longer tore him apart to kiss me. At least, most of the time. It was a challenge, almost, to see how far we could take it without him pulling away.
Then the world tilted slightly, and I choked and gaged as I tried to breathe in through my nose as it filled with water. I was submerged, completely, and I hadn't reacted quickly enough. I'd been so wrapped up in him that at first, I hadn't even noticed. But I could feel his weight still pressing against me, and my feelings of elation quickly morphed into fear. Was he trying to drown me? Had the switch inside him so quickly flicked that he'd pushed me under without a thought?
Panic spread through me, but even in that moment I felt myself being pulled back up. As soon as my head broke the surface, I turned it to the side and began to cough. My whole body convulsed as I tried to expel the water from my lungs, finally succeeding as I threw up not only the water but a little bit of my lunch as well.
Simultaneously, I pushed myself away from Peeta. Once I'd finally caught my breath, I looked over to find him in a similar state. I hadn't realized I'd pulled him under with me. So it hadn't been intentional, then. As my heart tried to calm from its flurry, I took comfort in that realization. But the fact that my brain had automatically assumed it showed me that it wasn't just a challenge for Peeta, every time we kissed. I was challenging myself as well, hoping I wasn't putting myself in danger.
"Slipped," he coughed out, still trying to work the water out of his system. "Lost my footing. Sorry."
I only nodded, not sure what else to say. The moment, whatever it had been, whatever it had meant, was ruined. The fire inside me extinguished with that splash of water.
As we both caught our breaths and basked in the ability to breathe freely, neither one of us spoke a word about what had just happened. We never did. It was an unspoken fact that sometimes we toed that line between friendship and something more. I talked to the doctor about it, oddly enough, but couldn't bring myself to mention it to Peeta himself.
It stayed repressed as Peeta resumed attempting to swim. Neither one of us even hinted at what had just happened, but we managed to enjoy the remainder of the day regardless.
I knew that day would could, eventually. We would have to define what it was that existed between us. But until then, I enjoyed the coolness of the water, a welcome contrast to the heat of the sun and the heat of my skin at the reminder of his touch.
