2.
Peeta traced furrows in his mashed potatoes with his fork, wondering if there was a law somewhere that said school food had to taste disgusting. If Katniss noticed anything was off with the meal, she didn't let on. She was sitting in front of him and she was eating with good appetite, checking her English Lit notes with obvious boredom. She had a test planned for after lunch, or something.
"How's your mom doing?" he asked.
He didn't really want to spend the whole lunch hour sitting in silence. That was why he had sought her out in the first place even though having lunch together was still a relatively new thing. He hadn't really given her a choice in the matter once she had started eating in the cafeteria with everyone else instead of hiding away until classes started again, he had asked if she minded and had sat down and that had been the arrangement for close to a week now.
She didn't seem to mind his company but the thing with Katniss Everdeen was that it was always hard to say what she really thought. Ever since the night he had found out who she really was, he felt he had made progresses at befriending her. He was allowed to drop by her house to watch movies with her and her sister and he had also been allowed to accompany her and Haymitch on patrol twice – not that either of them had been happy about it and not that he had really left them a choice about it when he had showed up at the cemetery in the middle of the night.
"A bit better." Katniss answered after a second too long.
She put away her notes and focused back on her lunch, her grey eyes darting up from time to time to sweep around the cafeteria as if looking for a threat. It was loud in there and Peeta regretted not suggesting they took their lunch elsewhere. He wasn't really in the mood to be surrounded by people. Of course, Katniss had never been like most people – not that she was aware of it.
"I'm still angry about… you know." she volunteered before he could try to probe some more. That was also a good sign that they were becoming real friends, he supposed, the fact that she actually told him things without him having to pull it out of her mouth now. He decided you know meant her mother inviting a vampire inside their trailer, which had resulted in Prim getting kidnapped, so he simply nodded and let her continue. "The doc Haymitch found is okay. He changed her meds. She's been up a little more but…" She shrugged. "The doc says the best thing would be for her to go to a clinic for a while."
"Too expensive?" he hesitated. He knew she was sensitive about money matters, all the more so with him who didn't have much troubles on that front. His father's bakery was a really successful business and he didn't lack for anything.
At least, on the money front.
But he dug his fork in the mash and brought it to his mouth before he could linger on that kind of thoughts. They were better left unexplored. Particularly today when he was trying to forget his ribs hurt.
"There's that." she sighed. "And there's the problem of where we'd go while she's getting fixed."
"Haymitch would take you in…" he pointed out.
She pursed her lips and tilted her head a little as she checked the room again. The fingers of her free hand were drumming impatiently on the edge of the table.
"I don't know." she replied, a little harshly. "He's already paying for groceries and the doctor…"
He frowned and lowered his voice. "He's your Watcher."
"He's my Watcher, not my dad." she snapped. "And I can take care of Prim and myself. I don't need anyone's help."
He lifted both hands defensively but he couldn't help the tinge of jealousy in his voice. "Sure, sorry. Though if someone wanted to take care of me like that, I'd just say thanks and be happy about it."
She frowned – in an angry way more than in a puzzled way – and he was pretty sure they would have ended up fighting if her gaze hadn't suddenly darted to his right. The frown turned into a small scowl and she stood up without a word of explanation. He watched her cross half the room right up until she reached Gale Hawthorne who had just arrived.
The discussion seemed animated but he couldn't hear anything from where he was sitting. Gale seemed to calm down eventually, even though Katniss was still gesturing wildly as she ranted.
"Do you mind if I sit with you?"
He looked up and smiled at Madge who was standing uncertainly next to the table and gestured at her to take a seat. They made small talk for a while. She was easy to talk to, if a little shy, and not for the first time since he had gotten his first glimpse of Katniss all that time ago in kindergarten, he wondered why he couldn't simply like a girl who was less… difficult than Katniss was. There were girls who at least noticed him instead of merely tolerating his presence.
But, of course, he wasn't Gale Hawthorne and Gale Hawthorne was the only boy Katniss had ever willingly given the time of day to.
When Katniss came back, she was still scowling but she also looked more hurt and sad than angry, so it was hard to remain jealous.
"What's wrong with Gale?" Madge asked after they exchanged a hello, saving him the trouble of asking that particular question. It would probably have sounded less innocent coming from him.
"He's being stupid." Katniss scowled. "He went to Heavensbee and told him he thought Haymitch was being inappropriate. Haymitch told me at training two days ago and he really wasn't happyabout it." She shot him a mild glare. "See, it's complicated. We can't just move in like that."
"What kind of training are you doing? I thought you quitted the team?" Madge inquired. "And who's Haymitch?"
"She's been training with Mr Abernathy." Peeta answered quickly before Katniss could invent a lie that wouldn't be believable at all. She wasn't great at lying. "Like a teacher assistant."
"Oh…" the girl said like it made all the sense in the world. "I didn't know you were so good at History. And you said Gale went to the principal about it?"
"He went to the principal and said he was concerned because of all the time I spend with a male teacher who I might not feel comfortable saying no to." she spat. The quotation marks were almost audible.
Peeta couldn't help but laugh, his general bad mood of the day forgotten. "Has he met you?"
Even Madge chuckled. "I can't imagine you being uncomfortable saying no to anyone."
Katniss relaxed a little and her mouth twitched into something that wasn't quite a smile but she didn't look any happier. "I just don't want Haymitch to get in trouble. He said Heavensbee didn't believe Gale but…"
She let her voice trail off.
"Hey." Peeta said softly, reaching out to squeeze her hand. He didn't let the contact linger because he knew she wouldn't like it. "It's going to be fine. He's just being a jerk because you don't spend much time with him anymore."
Katniss rolled her eyes. "That was mentioned too. Seriously, what does he care if we have movie marathons? I told him he could come next time if he wanted and he said it wasn't the point… Then, what's the point?"
He and Madge exchanged a look and it was good to know Madge shared his own opinion about Gale's interest in Katniss not being of the friendly variety.
"You guys have been having movie marathons?" Madge asked, to change the topic.
"Peeta and my sister have movie marathons." Katniss grumbled. "I just show up for the cupcakes."
"We're trying to educate Katniss." he joked. "She hasn't seen anything worth watching. You should come next time." He smiled at Madge who smiled back and suddenly, for no good reason that he could think of, Katniss was scowling again. Maybe it was because he had essentially invited her to the Everdeen's house, he had noticed Katniss had been even more defensive than usual the first few times he had gone to her trailer, as if waiting for him to make a comment. "We could go to my house this time…"
He offered with reluctance and already knowing he would try to take it back through any way possible.
Katniss had reasons she didn't want people over.
He had his own.
"Or you could come to mine, maybe?" Madge suggested. "We have this big screen… Besides, it's mostly me. Dad works late and Mom spends most of her time in her room." She shrugged a little awkwardly. "You could bring your sister. And Gale if he wants to come. I wouldn't mind…"
"That sounds good." Peeta immediately answered. He could almost feel Madge's loneliness, he knew the kind and he didn't want her to feel rejected.
Katniss' grey eyes were traveling from her to him, back and forth. Her voice was a little guarded when she finally nodded. "Yeah. Okay."
"Cool." Madge grinned and it was a lovely grin, he couldn't help but notice.
He found himself smiling back.
He couldn't believe he hadn't noticed before how pretty she was. He usually had eyes only for Katniss though and, of course, Katniss was beautiful but in a different way… They looked good next to each other… Dark and fair. Dangerous and sweet…
The two girls gathering their stuff and standing up put a stop to his daydreaming.
He was confused by the suddenness of the move. "What…"
Katniss was watching him as if he had grown a second head. "Don't you have Art or something?"
"But there's still half an hour left." he objected. He was sure because he had checked his watch when Madge had sat down.
"The bell just rang." she scoffed. "You've been sitting here smiling like an idiot for ages. What were you thinking about?"
He could feel his face turn crimson.
He was pretty certain she didn't want to know what he had been thinking about. He shouldn't have been thinking about the kind of things he had been thinking about. Not when he respected Katniss and Madge so much. Not when he was usually doing his best not to swoop to the levels of most of his friends. The kind of talk he heard in the locker rooms after wrestling practice…
He scrambled up and grabbed his bag, suddenly desperate to get out of there before either girl could notice the embarrassing problem he was having. He hurried out of the room, mumbling excuses over his shoulder and almost knocked Miss Tigris off her feet.
He ran all the way to the closest bathroom and berated himself all the while. This wasn't him. He was growing mad. Maybe it was finally the knowledge that the occult was a real thing catching up to him. Maybe it had pushed him over the edge. Maybe…
Or maybe he was just more of a typical teenager boy than he wanted to admit.
Either way he felt guilty about having thought about Katniss and Madge that way – all the more so because he really wasn't interested in Madge – and he had to run all the way to the Art classroom to make it on time. His ribs were aching something fierce and practice would be torture that afternoon.
He ducked inside the room just as Miss Trinket was about to close the door and he flashed her a sheepish smile. "Sorry."
"Do try to be on time." she chided gently. "Punctuality is everything." She clapped her hands to get the general attention, a bright smile on her lips. "Now, now. Let's continue what we started the other day, shall we? Pick up your canvas and go to work, children!"
Peeta and the others did as they were told, picking up the canvas they had been working on and setting them back on the easels. Peeta had more or less claimed one for himself at the back of the class because it was in a corner. He didn't like people peeking over his shoulder when he drew.
His mother never grew tired of telling him this was a waste of time and she probably was right but drawing had always been his favorite form of escape ever since he had been in age of holding a pencil. One of his earliest memory was decorating cakes with his father. Even today, he was often in charge of the frostings when he helped out at the bakery.
"Now, remember the assignment…" Miss Trinket hummed. "Paint something that scares you. Dominate and sublimate it."
She smiled at him when she walked past, just like she was smiling at everyone else. There was something a little hyper about her, as if her skin was a little too tight for her, as if she was made for much bigger things than teaching Art in a high school with no good Art program. Looking at her, it wasn't difficult to guess why. She looked like she could have been a model or something… She had been there for less than a week and already half the boys in school were in love with her and the other half plain and simply were fantasizing about her.
Peeta liked her well enough. Their last Art teacher – the one who had been found with suspicious puncture marks in his neck – had showed them power point after power point without giving them many opportunities to practice. He hadn't wanted them to dirty the classroom. Miss Trinket didn't mind what they did with paint as long as they cleaned it afterwards – and as Marvel had discovered after having tried to toss some pain at him the other day, she would make them clean it.
She didn't have to work hard to enforce discipline. Unlike some other teachers, she didn't have to shout or get angry. A pout and a disappointed look was all it took.
In some aspects, she reminded him of Haymitch.
He painted a little mechanically. He had done most of the groundwork during the previous class and now it was more of a matter of adjusting the colors and finding the right balance. His mind wasn't really on it though. He was thinking about Gale and what would happen if Katniss told him the truth.
Haymitch had forbidden it, of course. It was against the rules – which made sense because he couldn't even imagine the mass hysteria if people learned vampires were real – and the Watcher already wasn't happy about him being in the known. Peeta had tried to tell him he wasn't some helpless burden they would have to shift around, that he could hold his own and help… The two patrols he had crashed had been the extent of his involvement in the supernatural so far and neither Katniss nor Haymitch had let him try to have a go against a vampire even though he had brought a stake.
They kept saying it was for his own protection but he didn't think they were being fair. He was captain of the wrestling team for a reason. He was strong, he was smart and he knew his limits. He just wanted to help.
But if Katniss told Gale… If Katniss told Gale, he was pretty sure that she wouldn't hesitate so much about bringing him on patrol as back-up. They would just jump around shooting arrows at all the bad guys and he would be left cheering from the sideline up until she forgot he even existed and it would go back to how it had been before with him trying desperately to get her to notice him and her…
Marvel knocked him from behind on his way back from fetching some clean water. His brush glided across the canvas, smearing a long trace of dark paint over the rough sketch.
"Oops, sorry." Marvel chuckled. Peeta glared at him but it only seemed to amuse him more. "What's the matter, lover boy? Not even going to stand up for yourself? That girlfriend of yours really made you a wimp, didn't she?"
"What's your problem?" he retorted.
But he knew what Marvel's problem was. It was the same problem Glimmer had. The same problem all his friends had. Cato and Clove were gone, officially missing but in a town like the Seam missing often meant dead, and he had completely deserted their little group for Katniss.
Had she even noticed his friends were giving him a hard time? He didn't think so.
"Hang out with losers, get treated like a loser." Marvel hissed, stepping right in his space.
Peeta clenched his jaw but he refused to take the bait. It would have been easy to hurt Marvel – well, maybe not easy because he had a footballer body but Peeta knew where to hit to cause pain. Violence should never be an answer – at least when the person in front of you wasn't a vampire, a demon or actively trying to kill you – that was something he had learned the hard way. He didn't want to be that guy. He didn't ever want to be the person who thought with his fists or use them as an outlet for his frustration.
"Go back to your easel, if you please, Marvel. You and I will have a talk after class." Miss Trinket ordered, appearing at this side as if summoned by magic. She inspected his canvas and winced in sympathy. "Perhaps some white paint…"
"It's fine." he told her. "I'll work around it."
Something that scared him.
There was something really cathartic about splashing black paint all over the canvas. Everywhere around him, the other kids were painting monsters, spiders and weird shaped aliens… He found his zone and he started working without even really knowing what he was doing. His ribs were smarting from the bread trail that had slammed into them that morning, still hot from the oven, and the anger was bubbling under the surface.
He didn't even hear the bell ringing.
He barely heard the lecture Miss Trinket gave Marvel once the other students were gone. He kept on painting, half aware he would be late for practice and that would mean getting a lecture of his own. He didn't care much about wrestling, he had gone into it because all his brothers had before him. His thing was painting but his mother thought it was a waste of time when she didn't outright tell him he was a waste of space…
"This is really good… Much better than your original project. Perhaps I should not have scolded Marvel that much…" Miss Trinket commented softly, in a teasing tone. She was right next to him again but this time he had heard the clicking of her heels coming closer so he didn't really startle. "Is it done?"
He surveyed the piece and dropped the brush in the glass of water. He wouldn't be able to do anything more until the paint had dried anyway. But… It looked alright like this.
"I think so." he answered after a moment.
The whole canvas was black and white curves swirled around the surface. They didn't look like much if you didn't focus but if you did they made out crude profiles. He wasn't sure anyone else would be able to see them or even recognize the people on it. It was abstract, more than what he usually did.
"Who is the woman?" Miss Trinket asked thoughtfully – and a little carefully to his ears. "Her face is everywhere."
He had been focusing on Katniss' vague profile but her remark made him take a step back and he realized, his guts clenching, there was indeed one profile that came out a lot more often than others. Maybe because his ribs had been hurting or maybe because his father had pressed a few bills in his hands that morning and told him to buy himself something nice in that same apologetic tone Peeta hated or maybe because he felt so damn weird today…
He had painted his mother's profile. Again and again.
"No one." he lied.
"The assignment was to draw something that scares you…" Miss Trinket pointed out, placing a hand on his shoulder. He jerked away. Her hand hovered in the air for a second and then she simply lowered it down gracefully. He was afraid she would press the point but she simply smiled at him and looked back at the painting again. "You have talent, Peeta. This is really good."
He wasn't sure it was that good. He thought she might have been trying to be kind. Still, she was nice. "Thanks. I should…"
"Oh, yes!" she exclaimed, glancing at the delicate golden watch around her wrist. "We would not want you to be late again."
She sounded more teasing than serious so he smiled back, quickly cleaned up his station and grabbed his bag. He was at the door when he paused. "Your perfume…"
It had bugged him ever since she had come close enough for him to smell it. It was heavy but not too much and a little fruity too and a part of him hadn't been able to stop thinking about it, about the curve of her neck or how tight the cashmere sweater she was wearing was… It was the same part that had made his mind wander during lunch and he wasn't really interested in a repeat.
"Yes?" she encouraged with a small puzzled frown, her head tilted to the side.
What was he doing?
Why was today that weird?
"It smells good." he mumbled, red in the face, and then he left without even acknowledging her thank you.
Forget practice, he needed a cold shower. And maybe some form of exorcism.
Peeta is struuuuggling. What, you didn't think there wouldn't be angst, yeah? So, is there something weird in the air or what? Any theory? Let me know your thoughts!