Chapter 2: Recaps and Chariots

I stir awake the next morning to find my husband's side of the bed cold and empty. Lifting my head, I peer out the open window – Peeta has never liked to sleep with the sill closed – to discover that pink has barely broken over the horizon.

It's a Monday after a tumultuous July 4th Reaping Day. Peeta will be back to work in the Hob, but not this early. Not even the early stalls would be opening up at this hour.

Rising languidly from our bed, drawing my crumpled blue skirts about myself (given the day I had yesterday, I care less than I normally would that we both fell asleep in our Reaping best), I pad downstairs. I find Peeta at our kitchen table, hunched over a mug of tea with only small tendrils of steam wafting off the top and fading fast.

"Hey," I murmur. "What are you doing up? Come back to bed."

Staring down into the brown liquid, Peeta shakes his head. "Nightmare about Prim shook me awake. Couldn't fall back. There's really no point; I have to get to work."

I place my hands on my hips. "Not for the next two hours! It's…." I squint at the mantelpiece clock. "Six in the morning!"

Peeta runs a tired hand over his face. "Katty, please. Just indulge me. I'm emotionally better when I'm busy anyway. I'll just head over, beat the rush and start loading these risen loaves." He nods towards the mounds of dough that he somehow found time to leave out the night before.

Crossing to the countertop, I take in the batches he prepared and frown. "This one's still lumpy. I'll pound it out for you." I immediately start wailing on the thing with my fists, lifting it and dropping it hard on the wooden countertop.

Even before we had our Toasting, Peeta's been taking his baking skills into the Hob. The writing was on the wall for how his family – really, his mother – would respond when we first started seeing each other. Our wedding just made his disownment official. Once he was cut out of his family's inheritance and with no hope of taking over their business, I wasn't about to let my love go down into the mines to provide for us. I flat-out refused to let him even go to the Foreman, until I was in tears of grief remembering my father and how he never came home. I had spent much of my teenage years refusing to marry, and if I was going to go back on my word and take a husband, then he could not go down into the shafts under any circumstances. Dear, sweet Peeta, of course, understood; we were fortunate that he could take what he knew and apply it to the Hob. His breads have become very popular with the Seam clientele, who before only ever ate bread made from tesserae grains. He's managed to compete with his family's bakery, in fact, and could even outstrip them in business if he really wanted to. I have to admire how he is the better man for not succumbing to that temptation, especially when he has every right.

I soon lose myself in my onslaught on this mound of dough. My mind is consumed with images of my baby sister and her pretty-much boyfriend being sent in to die. Last night was not, in fact, some horrible dream.

Hot, angry moisture is leaking out of my eyes, stinging them so I can't see the dough, and I wipe furiously. In that brief pause, I feel my husband come up behind me and inlay his hands over my palms, staying them. I lean back against him, letting out a shaky exhale.

"I know, my love…" His thumbs are dancing patterns along my wrists. "I know…"

For some reason, my blood is quicker to burn with anger than melt in tenderness at his sympathy. Because no, he well and truly doesn't know. Prim is his sister-in-law by marriage, true, but he's never had to experience what it is like to lose a sibling to the arena. Both Rye and Brann sailed through all of their Reapings with nary a scare, as did he.

Peeta must sense the tension in my body, for he very deliberately turns me about in his arms and kisses me deeply. There's a slightly rough, insistent pressing behind his lips, and damn him, I sink into it, my lips petaling open like a flower bursting into full bloom to greet his forceful tongue.

"Hmmm…. Mmmmmm….." I twist away, wrenching my lips free of his to come up for air, this strange annoyance at him refusing to abate even as his kiss makes me lightheaded and dizzy.

"Peeta…" There's half a warning lacing my voice.

My husband merely tilts his head like an adorable puppy, and I huff, folding my arms so that they push my boobs out pronouncedly. "Yes?"

"… I don't want to bake bread anymore."

"Well, then what do you want?" he counters.

My teeth set, and my arousal surges until it bursts me. "What do I want?" And I snap my palm forward to grip his erection in my fist quite roughly. "I want this – inside me." I tug him violently against me, shoving my hips against his, cradling them together. "I want these…" and I force his hands down to feel me up. "… on my ass. And your mouth… your mouth…." Angrily wrenching my bodice loose, I let my pebbling boob hang free. "…. I need your mouth sucking my tits." I lean my face in close and all but growl at him. "I want you to take me back up to that bed and have your way with me. And then, after you're done fucking me, I'm going to ride you until you cum hard enough that you won't be able to even crawl to work!"

Peeta's impossibly blue orbs are as wide as moons, with a black tinge of lust to them. "Yes, ma'am!" And crashing his face into my cleavage, he begins to suckle while I rutt and jerk against his leg like a bitch in heart, half-climbing him. Lifting me up by my buttocks, he carries me up the stairs, two at a time without tripping on a step once.

"Uhhhh….. Uhhhhh….. Ohhhhh….. OHHHHH! Yes, yes – faster… harder…. HARDER, Peeta, fuck me HARDER, Snowdamnit!"

My blue skirts are shoved up past my waist. I'm practically shouting as my husband brutally takes me from behind, the pair of us bouncing on the bed doggy-style as we play the beast with two backs. Bracing his one hand on the wall, Peeta growls and bores down on me, subjecting me to anal and making me like it. Oh, Panem have mercy, how I like it! Tears of pleasure have now begun to slip down my cheeks, while at the other end of my body, my ass cheeks are trapping and hardening his member within my rear. My fingers curl around the metal headboard of our bedframe so hard, my knuckles turn white.

"UGGGHHH!" I throw my head to the sky with a cry, Peeta's nails tangling in my messy braid, digging into my scalp. His pelvis meets my arse thrust for thrust with squelching SLAPS. The mattress creaks in protest beneath us. Turning my head, reaching back almost blindly, I find his neck and pull him down by the scruff of it, my lips ramming against his in a bruising kiss.

"Hmmmm…. Mmmmm…. Fuck, love, I'm close, please, don't you dare stop….!"

Peeta grunts and pounds into me faster. "Who do you belong to?" he snarls.

I gasp, whimper when his lips leave mine, and I fold noodly back towards staring at the mattress as he ravishes me. "Y-you…. Only you… Always you…"

"Are you my Seam slut?!" Another vicious slam and I howl, my skull craning to the ceiling.

"YES!" I wail.

"Then say it!"

Gritting my teeth, I snarl, "I'm your fucking Seam slut!"

Peeta gives a mighty yell and pumps into my ass like a piston. I can feel his balls hitting the toned flesh of my rear, and I know he's close. At last, with a choked grunt, I trap his dick and milk him as he spills inside me.

He's barely sagged against me before I suddenly elbow him back into his pectoral. He oofs, but takes the hit, the force enough to flip us to he is on his back with me pinned to him. Inverting fast as lightning, I straddle his waist and almost flop my sopping wet pussy onto his half-hard member. Resting my hands lightly on his chest, I begin to bounce up and down on him with determined vigor, riding him. Peeta's grip on my bony hips is hard enough to bruise as he thrusts up into me. I roll my hips faster skill.

"Ooooooh….. Uhhhh…. Ahh…. P-Peeta – finish me off now, or I'll scream! I- I mean it, I'll scream, I will! I'll screa-Ahhhhhh…. Ahhhhhhhh… AHHHHHHHHH!"

My husband folds our bodies together and buries his nose in between my cleavage as with a yelp, I orgasm all around him. We collapse to the bed, utterly spent and with a bizarre giddiness making us both seem light and high.

It takes us a time to get out heart rates back down post-coitus, and when Peeta finally shifts beneath me, the sun is fully risen and ascending fast in the sky. I sultrily roll off my husband and let him up, admiring him blatantly as he tugs on his trousers. Then, I rather boldly tug my blue Reaping dress over my head and mash it into a ball. There's a snort.

"Usually, the striptease comes before you leap into bed." From across the room, grinning like a loon at how I stand there in my naked beauty, Peeta huffs out, "Thanks. I needed that."

I smirk softly. "I think we both did." Holding up my wadded garment, I grin tightly. "I need to get this into the wash, along with your spare apron that needs bleaching."

Peeta shrugs on an undershirt. "So, Hazelle, then?" Mrs. Hawthorne, Rory's mother, is the laundress for the Seam, as almost no Seam families can afford an automated washer-dryer. Hell, few Merchants can either, a set like that being manufactured in the Capitol.

I nod. Stepping into him shyly, I take his face in my hands and kiss him softly on the mouth. He surprises me when he dives in to deepen it, and I purr curiously, pleased. "Hmmm…"

"Goodbye, you crazy woman. Stop by later."

I nod eagerly, biting down on my lip. "Have a good day, dearest. I love you!"

"Remember to get credit for Mandatory Viewing! Reaping recaps aren't public but even so!" And my lover dashes out the door.

Staring after him with a small, lovesick smile, I take a quick splashbath and dress in some trousers and my father's hunting jacket. Then, taking the hamper, I lug it downstairs, pausing briefly to load some extra meat from the icebox, meat I had hunted the day before yesterday, into my rucksack. Hefting both across my back, I set off down the road for the Hawthornes' homestead.

The noodly, gooey feeling that took over my body when Peeta and I had sex helps my muscles to not burn in so much agony as I lug my load a decent trek down to our neighbors. The Hawthorne house is eerily quiet when I arrive, swinging the laundry hamper down onto the back porch. I pause for just a moment, hoping that I'll see Gale. I didn't see any one of Rory's family at all at the Reaping, and I want to offer my condolences. But no Gale appears. I briefly debate whether or not to knock on the door and catch a glimpse of Hazelle. Acid churns in my gut, however, and I cowardly refrain, opting instead to leave our laundry hamper on the back porch and taking my rucksack on to the Hob.

The black market warehouse is bustling when I get there. Since we became romantically involved, my husband's bread stand has been one of the busiest stalls, duking it out with the likes of Ripper and her liquor or Rooba, the butcher and her meats. Greasy Sae's stews always deal in heavy traffic, as well. Even then, I can barely see my Peeta's fine head of blonde hair over the tops of the Seamers crowding his stall. Nearly everyone seems to be buying and just as many appear to be stopping in to perhaps offer their sympathies for Prim's tragic odds from the day before. I have to round all the way behind the stand just to get close to him.

"Hey." We touch lips chastely, quickly, and I sling my bag onto the wooden countertop. "Anything interesting happen while I was out?"

"Blew past my quota – probably even keeping pace with what… the Bakery is doing in Town. You know Mom and Dad always had a rush on the stock from the Peacekeeper Corps and the Capitol camera crews once the Reapings closed."

"Hmm," I demur, floating on my tiptoes to graze my lips along his cheek. I have to feel proud of him for how he didn't get bogged down emotionally when talking about his family right then. His relationship with his brothers is fine; they've accepted me and both of them gladly attended our Toasting. It's his parents who he'll never feel the same about.

"Proud of you, dandelion."

He flashes a grin at me and I smile lovingly back. Dandelion is my own personal pet name for him, as it harkens back to something that happened the day after he first tossed bread to me in a driving rain when we were children. Watching a flower push up through the cobblestones of the school play-yard, I was reminded that I could survive. Not only did Peeta prevent my mother and sister and me from starving to death, he inspired me to provide for my family.

"Awwww, well if you two young-in's aren't the most well-suited couple! Hey, SAE! Don't Belley's girl and Peeta look so natural together?"

Greasy Sae nods solemnly at Ripper's shout.

My grin turns weak and I flush bashfully, weaving back behind the stalls to approach Sae and Rooba with my rucksacks. I quickly sell off all the excess meat I had with just a few trades.

"HEY! Reaping recaps are starting everybody! Quiet, quiet, quiet!" The Goat Man, lean and rugged, bellows for attention.

In one corner of the warehouse, suspended by cables, is an old television set with antennae. As the seal of Panem comes on, a film of blue light casts its scanning glow over the crowd assembled, so that it can identify many people at once automatically and distribute credit.

Floating back over to Peeta's side, my husband and I watch carefully as the sleek tribute trains pull into the Capitol station.

The Careers of Districts 1 2, and 4 are all predictably fierce. The pack of six is comprised of 16 and 17-year-olds, except for the girl from 4 who not only stands out because she is the oldest of their crew at 18, but ironically, she's also the smallest, standing unusually short at less than 5 and a half feet.

After that, I feel air and hope with it whoosh into me, for from Districts 3 to 11, none of these districts seem to want to pick anyone who is older than 15. I count no less than seven (seven!) twelve-year-olds, six thirteen-year-olds and a single fourteen-year-old. Both of 11's tributes are twelve years old, in fact.

Finally, my heart catches in my throat when I see my beautiful sister emerge off the tribute train with Rory. They both look so beautiful that I can hear from the talking heads chatter that they're already undressing them both. Watching and wanting them. Aside from the Four girl, my sister and almost-brother-in-law are the oldest kids in the field. The commentators seem a little shocked and bummed at how the culled field has skewed so young. For me, I feel nothing but gratitude. No one younger than 14 has ever won the Games, and the case of a 14-year-old Victor was an outlier that happened a decade and a half ago.

With the only the Careers appearing to be a threat, I am starting to feel that first wellspring of hope that maybe Prim can come home alive.

I curl into Peeta's side and he presses his mouth to my temple.

That evening, I bustle into the foyer when I hear a knock on our front door. And there is Gale at last, holding my laundry hamper on high. His face is stoic but his eyes are sad. "Hey, Catnip."

I don't have to think about it. I launch myself into his arms, hugging him tightly. "Oh, Gale…"

I hear my husband's heavy tread and bite my lip to mask my amusement (I've never been able to take him out into the woods with me; his footfalls would scare off all game within a hundred yards). Turning about in my best friend's embrace, I observe as Gale dips his head cordially.

"Mellark."

"Hawthorne." The two men shake, and I glance between them, a mix of anxious and pleased. While it took some time for Gale to come around to my choice of husband, he eventually accepted my wishes and gave Peeta and me his blessing. Gale gestures to the laundry hamper. "Mom was on a tear today; she got y'all's load done before I could blink."

I wince, heart panging for her. "How is your mother?"

"Stoic," Gale sighs. "Trying to find grace in the travesty. Ran herself ragged on her feet to distract herself, I think." He shrugs. "Of course, no escaping Mandatory Viewing in the Square tonight."

I nod, feeling Peeta's palm brush mine. "We'll find you in the Square. We can stand together."

"Very convenient of you to float that arrangement, Mrs. Mellark."

We all turn to see a pair of Peacekeeper officers slowing to a halt at the end of our dirt road. The one who spoke – a man with jet-black hair whom I don't recognize – has a hard set to his jaw. I know his gingered partner by sight instantly: Darius. He is one of the nicest sort in this backwater, and by reputation is quite a flirt. He even hit on me a few times in the Hob, back when I was still single.

"And Master Hawthorne! How lovely…" Raven-Haired Peacekeeper drolls. "You will all come with us, if you please. Relatives of the tributes are afforded primary VIP seating, you know."

A muscle in Gale's neck bulges, but he doesn't move. "How kind of you to provide an escort, Officer." My hunting partner's voice is measured and tight.

We have no choice but to follow the pair of Officers all the way through the Seam and down to the Square, where we are directed to ascend up a scaffolding and take out seats, high above the crowd. Mother, Hazelle and her two youngest – Vick and Posy – are already here. From this vantage point, we get an unencumbered view of the Jumbotron mounted in front of the Justice Building.

The seal of Panem leaps onto the screen, and then we are transported live to what is called the Avenue of Tributes, a prominent Capitol thoroughfare bisected by the City Circle. To cheers, the chariots begin to roll off with District 1 leading the procession.

With the youthful field, the event is the most ho-hum I've experienced in years, as most of the tributes seem dwarfed by their outlandish costumes.

But then…. shouts and gasps and wild roars go up as the District 12 chariot emerges last of all.

When I see what my sister and Rory have been transformed into, my husband and I clutch at each other tightly. The sort-of a couple is literally on fire.

Neither of them burns up, however, and for this, I have to be grateful, while also deeply impressed at the aesthetic trick. Our district got a promising young stylist in the wake of the Quarter Quell several years back, and so far, he's been tinkering with, moving away from the classic coal-dusted design of yesteryear. What he has done to my Prim and Gale's kid brother, however, is his biggest statement yet.

As I watch in astonishment and growing excitement, my baby sister is beginning to relax, come out of her shell. Before long, she is beaming radiantly and blowing kisses into the audience. The camera pans wildly to zoom in on Capitolites ruthlessly shoving each other out of the way, bodies leaping and hands straining towards the heavens, as if these kisses really can be caught.

"Prim-rose! PRIM-ROSE!"

Rory sports a confident grin and pumps his fist. The audience melts down and start chanting his name too. With his free arm, Rory tugs my sister purposefully into his side, and the crowd goes even more berserk, if that's possible. From somewhere below me, I hear a girl from Town let out a groan.

"Fuck, I totally ship them…"

I frown, wrinkling my nose. "Ship? Explain to me what that's supposed to mean?"

Peeta shrugs. "Your guess is as good as mine, sweetheart. Seriously, what the fuck is a ship?"

My grey irises blink a little. My husband almost never swears, even casually.

The chariots have all now grounded to a halt in the City Circle. The camera focuses in on President Coriolanus Snow – looking incredibly old, enough that I suspect he might finally be ailing – giving his speech. At its conclusion, the tributes are dismissed to their mentors and the Training Center.

As Peeta gallantly leads me by the hand down the scaffolding stairs, my feet don't seem to touch the metal. After all I've seen today, perhaps District 12 can muster the help it needs to give us a Victor.