Peeta walked home from the bakery just after eight with a paper bag and a smile. There'd been no fire calls that night, and after his sister-in-law had picked up all of the kids, he'd slept long and deeply, assisted by a little fantasy wrist action.
Doctor Everdeen was his neighbour. The unattainable doc was suddenly a little more attainable.
He'd flirted her up the night before, and while she'd played it cool, he had seen the interest in her deep silver eyes. Seen the way her nipples had stiffened under that indecent scrap of singlet when he'd hinted about what he wanted to do with her.
He'd barely scratched the surface of his fantasies before she'd gone back to her own place. But he'd seen her peeking through the back door later in the evening, after the kids had left. Watching him as he sat on his deck under the garden lights with a coldie. Watching him watch her back.
Peeta took the steps to Katniss's verandah two at a time. Her house was nearly identical to his own on the outside, though the painted trim was a little more worn and the garden beds a little overgrown. She'd only been in Panem a couple of weeks, and the house had been vacant for months before that, the owner a city-dweller who rarely came out to check on the place.
He could hear music, faintly, through the door, and stopped with his hand poised to knock just to listen. A song he wasn't familiar with, sung a capella in a woman's voice. It was gorgeous, ethereal, unlike anything Peeta had ever heard. He was transfixed.
Finally, he shook off his stupor and rapped sharply on the wood. The music cut off so quickly it gave him pause. Had Katniss been singing?
The lady herself opened the door and blinked up at him with those big grey eyes.
Damn, she was bloody beautiful.
She was wearing tiny little shorts that showed off about a mile of bronzed skin, tightly toned calves and lean thighs that he could envision wrapped around his head. Reluctantly, he dragged his eyes higher. Her perfect boobs were obscured by an oversized sloppy-joe, grey with a beaver and the word—
Oh bloody hell. Peeta nearly choked on his own tongue. He wasn't easily embarrassed, but he blushed to the tips of his ears. Katniss, who had been scowling at his leering perusal of her legs, looked concerned. "Are you okay?" she asked, tugging him through the door, looking closely at his flushed face, holding his bandaged arm.
"Crikey, Katniss," Peeta choked out, laughing. "I didn't know Canadians were so vulgar. You're near as bad as we are."
"What?" She was scowling at him again, the concern gone and irritation flooding her features. It just made him laugh harder.
"Your shirt," he gasped between chuckles. "That word, it doesn't mean the same thing here." Peeta was aware that Americans, and Canadians too, it appeared, used the word root far differently. Panem attracted a decent number of tourists after all, and when they asked him which sporting team he 'rooted' for, it invariably made him laugh. He was aware, too, that for the most part they simply didn't know what it meant here.
Clearly Katniss didn't. She was staring down at her jumper in confusion.
"It means fucking, in the carnal sense," he said, noting the way she flinched at the cuss word.
Katniss glanced between the shirt and Peeta's face several times. "Really?" she said finally.
"Fair dinkum," Peeta nodded. "You're likely to get propositioned wearing that."
She whipped the sloppy-joe off, chucking it onto a chair, beside a basket of partly folded laundry. A Gold Coast guidebook lay on the coffee table. Peeta laughed inwardly. That would definitely not be a day trip. "Ugh," she groaned. "Why is this entire damned country out to get me?"
Under the jumper, she was wearing the same thin singlet as yesterday, and it was having the same effect on Peeta. He couldn't help but stare. He was a boob man, and those were a perfect pair, dusky nipples just faintly visible through the cotton.
"Why are you here anyway," she asked, still pouting. "Did you just drop by to critique my fashion choices?"
Peeta wanted to laugh again, but she was standing before him, black hair a staticky tangle around her face and an expression of such abject frustration that he didn't have it in him to tease her anymore.
"Brought you brekky," he said instead, holding up the bag and carry tray of cups.
Her expression softened a little, but she still looked puzzled, and maybe wary. She was going to be a tough one to crack. He looked forward to the challenge.
"Bein' neighbourly," he smiled, then brushed past her and headed to the kitchen.
The inside of her place was laid out the same as his, but that's where the similarity ended. He'd spent four years painstakingly renovating his own place, every fixture and finish carefully chosen. Hers was builder's beige, cold and utterly soulless. She desperately needed some colour, some art on the walls, new curtains.
He shook off that idea. She was temporary. She didn't need any of that.
There was no breakfast bar in her kitchen, not like he'd installed in his own, and the benchtop was nothing more than a narrow strip of laminate. But there was an ancient looking wooden table just big enough for two. He found plates above the sink and laid out sausage rolls. An hour long convo with Annie this morning while he did the baking proved fruitful. He'd learned that the way to Katniss's heart was most definitely through her stomach, and that she favoured savoury over sweet, tea over coffee and the outdoors above all else.
She was standing at the kitchen entrance, arms crossed over her chest, but she couldn't quell the interest in her eyes. Peeta could work with that. But it was the Bondi chai in her takeaway cup that dropped her defences.
He pulled the lid off and waved it teasingly in front of her face. The scents of tea and cinnamon filled her small kitchen. "Oh my God," she gasped, grabbing the cup and cradling it almost reverently. "How did you know?"
"I have my ways," he grinned.
"I haven't had chai since the airport in Vancouver," she breathed, and her rapturous expression as she sipped the now lukewarm tea had parts of his anatomy wondering what else he could do to elicit that face.
He cleared his throat, turned back to the little table. "You know, even if you don't want to come by the bakery, there are other coffee shops in town." There were no American chain coffee shops, thankfully, but there was a little tea house popular with the tourists, and a café with a patio where old people liked to while away afternoons.
"I do want to come to your bakery," she said, distracted, "I have since that first day." She seemed to catch herself, her unfiltered words, and glanced up at him, more frustration painting her pretty features. Then with a shrug, she continued. "Apart from the hospital, I haven't been anywhere. My days and nights are still all mixed up, I'm tired, and I haven't the first clue where anything is and I'm kind of freaked out about driving in this crazy wrong-side place. I haven't even bought groceries, I've been eating at the hospital and ordering pizza delivery." She sighed, long and loud. "Ugh," she said softly. "I don't even know why I'm telling you all this."
That was something Annie hadn't mentioned. She hadn't said anything about Katniss struggling to adjust. Yet standing in her kitchen, he could see her exhaustion. Jumping into a 48 hour, high stress work week just days after arriving—alone—in a foreign country was insanity.
The doc was definitely his kind of lady.
Peeta sensed that she was more than crazy though. She was fiercely independent, probably not used to relying on anyone else. He knew Annie would drop everything in a heartbeat if Katniss had hinted that she needed something. Which meant Katniss was keeping her concerns to herself. Not sharing her needs even with her closest friend in the country.
Yet she was telling him. Reluctantly, based on the dusky flush that painted her cheeks. But it was something.
"Here's what we're going to do," Peeta said, guiding Katniss by an elbow to sit at her own table. She scowled, but she sat, and she didn't interrupt. "I'm going to feed you, then we're going to spend the day together to help get your internal clock set to days again."
Katniss stared at him. "Why?"
"Because being out active and awake during the day will help—"
"No," she interjected. "Why would you help me? I'm a stranger."
"I'd like to change that," he drawled, "you being a stranger. I'd like to get to know you real well."
Her quicksilver eyes regarded him warily, his flirty tone clearly not scoring him any points. "Does that line ever actually work?"
It worked a lot, actually. But she was sharp. Peeta had a choice to make. Keep joking around, like he always did. Or give her the truth.
He chose the truth.
"You intrigue me, Doc," he said, dropping the smirk and smarm. She more than intrigued him. She made his heart race and his gut clench. She excited him. "I'd like to know you better." He'd like to know every inch of her, but he bit back the flirt. She was studying his face, her expression giving nothing away.
"Katniss," she said softly. Peeta cocked his head. "Friends use each other's names, not their titles." He smiled in understanding.
"All right, Katniss," he said. Both Finn and Annie had referred to her as Kat, but both times she'd introduced herself to him, she'd used her full, beautiful name. And it fit her in a way that 'Kat' just didn't. "Friends… for now." Then he winked, and she laughed, just a small, shy little laugh, but it felt like a gift.
"Besides," she said, "everytime someone calls me 'Doc' here I feel like I'm trapped in a Bugs Bunny cartoon."
"What's up, Doc?" Peeta teased in an absolutely terrible imitation of the cartoon rabbit, and Katniss gifted him with another of those husky laughs.
He was smitten.
"Grab a different jumper," he said when they finished their sausage rolls and tea, "and I'll take you to the beach."
"Will there be surfers?" she asked, wide-eyed. Peeta laughed.
"Ah, no, not much in the way of waves around these parts until late December earliest. March'll be beaut, you'll see. Do you surf?"
Katniss snorted. "That'd be no. It's a twelve hour drive to the ocean from my condo." Peeta thought that sounded awful. He'd always lived within cooee of the beach, even in uni.
"Well then you're in for a treat, love," he grinned. So was he, he hoped.
It took her less than ten minutes to get ready, no makeup, no fuss. Sadly, she swapped out that indecent little singlet for a polo, blue with a children's charity logo on the breast, and the short shorts for white crop pants. Bare-faced and with her lush, black hair plaited again, she was so naturally pretty it took his breath away.
He took her through town first, on a slow drive by the CBD, pointing out the bottle-o, the café and the pub tucked inside the old hotel. On a whim, he parked at the fire station. It was tiny, one bay and a side drive for the light tanker. But she was keen to see inside, and he enjoyed playing tour guide.
"You never did tell me why you took up firefighting when you already have a business of your own," Katniss said as they walked through the dayroom.
He waved at one of the full-time staffers, who was pecking away at a computer. "The firies predate the bakery, actually. I was a cadet firefighter in year ten and was volunteering when I was home from uni on holidays."
"You like the adventure," Katniss guessed. They all thought that, Peeta knew it, and there was some truth to it. He liked the rush, the adrenaline. But it was more than that. Katniss stopped, turning to look at him closely. "No," she said softly. "You like helping people."
It was too much, the way she saw through him, saw past his carefully cultivated persona. She was different from the other people in his life. It was disconcerting. "Well it's not for the pay," he deflected with an easy grin.
She regarded him solemnly for a moment, but then allowed the deflection. "I can't believe you don't get paid anything at all when you're putting your life on the line like that," she said.
"That's the point of volunteering, love," he teased.
She scowled. "At home we have rural volunteer firefighters. But they at least get an honorarium, and a tax break."
Peeta laughed as he guided her to the door. "It's just the way it's always been here," he said. With how much busier the dry season was getting and how much worse the fires were, there was plenty of grumbling that volunteer firies should be compensated. But he didn't pay a lot of attention to it.
"Kat," a voice called as they exited the station into the bright midday sun, and Katniss turned. Gale Hawthorne was approaching, dressed in running gear, one of those ridiculous Patagonia singlets and an equally expensive pair of shorts. Bloody figjam. Peeta edged closer to Katniss, setting a possessive hand on her hip. Hawthorne noticed, and frowned. "Mellark," he said with a nod.
"Hey Gale," Katniss said. Peeta thought her smile seemed stiff, but maybe that was just wishful thinking.
"What are you doing this arvo?" Hawthorne asked, subtly shifting to give Peeta his shoulder.
"Peeta is taking me to the beach," Katniss said. "A little sightseeing."
Hawthorne grunted. "Out to the tacky tourist spots?" Peeta bristled, but Katniss just laughed, a breezy thing that sounded nothing like how she'd laughed for Peeta.
"Well, I am a tourist, Gale," she said lightly, "and there's usually a reason those places are popular."
Peeta was getting twitchy with the small talk and annoyed by the disapproving looks Hawthorne kept shooting him. His hand flexed on Katniss's hip, and she glanced at him in confusion. "Should head out," he said, unwilling to get into a pissing contest with Hawthorne but feeling an unfamiliar jealousy.
He'd never been territorial over a woman before. It was unsettling. Everything about how Dr. Katniss Everdeen made him feel was unsettling, though mostly in a good way. A new and exciting way.
"Right," Katniss said, and the glance she shot Peeta was far too knowing. "Good to see you, Gale." Hawthorne nodded, and continued on his way.
Once Gale was out of earshot, Katniss turned to Peeta. "You can stow the possessive bit now, Hotshot," she said, but with no anger. Peeta simply grinned. But he didn't remove his hand, nor did she complain about it.