The atmosphere in the bakery was always different when it was open than in those hushed pre-dawn visits. It was dynamic, bustling with people, bright with lights and warm with the scents of baking.
And in the centre of all of that activity, Peeta, standing behind the counter, serving a customer.
Katniss stood just inside the door, watching him. He was smiling, but she could see that it was the smile he wore like a mask, like a shield over his true emotions. It was an attractive smile, but it wasn't really real.
He glanced up then, caught sight of her watching, and his expression changed. His eyes filled with warmth, his smile a little less bright but a lot more genuine. The young woman he was serving didn't even seem to notice the change.
But Katniss did. She saw him.
Peeta passed off his customer to Delly, standing beside him, and came around the counter. "I didn't mean to disturb you," Katniss said as he leaned in to kiss her cheek.
"I always have time for you, love," he said. "I'm glad you're here." She knew that was the truth. And she was glad to be there too. She'd only left him 14 hours earlier, but it felt like an eternity. "Have you had brekky?"
Katniss shook her head. Peeta wrapped his arm around her waist. "Come back to my office," he said, and there was none of the cocky flirtiness he so often employed. There was just Peeta, smiling softly, looking at her like she was more radiant than the sun.
"You don't have to-" she tried to argue, but he was already guiding her towards the back.
"I want to," he said.
They passed through the big industrial kitchen but didn't linger. Peeta was always careful about health regs, he never let anyone, including Katniss, just hang out in his bakery kitchen. A pair of young men in hair nets and heavy aprons waved as they walked by.
Peeta's office was a small room at the rear of the building, and the air conditioning wasn't fighting the ovens in there. It was blissfully cool. He didn't bother turning on the overhead lights, there was enough illumination from the small window to bathe the room in a gentle glow.
Katniss expected him to invite her to sit while he fetched them both some food, it's what he'd done in the past. Instead, he closed the door behind them, then wrapped his arms around her, burying his face in her hair. She melted into the embrace. "Are you okay?" she whispered.
"I am now," he said. "Thank you, for yesterday. You don't know what it meant to me, having you there."
She was tempted to brush off his gratitude, she'd done nothing but heat up canned soup and listen. Instead, she squeezed him tighter.
When he pulled away, he was looking at her with such affection it made fear, hot and sour, crawl through her gut. There were expectations in that look. Promises. But he merely kissed the tip of her nose, and told her he'd be right back.
In the time it took him to gather tea and cheese buns, Katniss calmed down. He was simply feeling close to her because she'd taken care of him, it was natural, they learned about it in med school. It wasn't anything more than that. It couldn't be anything more than that. They'd agreed.
Though that agreement felt strange now. Wrong.
Katniss shook off that thought too, shoved it down deep into that place where the things she couldn't deal with went. Peeta settled beside her on the low leather couch that dominated one side of his office, and Katniss was happily distracted by the tangy cheese pastries and spicy tea Peeta fed her. By the comfort of just being with him, no expectations.
"Are you working over Christmas?" Peeta asked, and Katniss startled. Christmas. She was working, of course. No one had less seniority at the hospital than the foreign doctor who'd only been there seven weeks. It wasn't her schedule that surprised her. It was the proximity to the big day. Christmas had always been her sister's favourite holiday, yet Katniss had barely given it a thought this year. It didn't feel like the week before Christmas with nothing but sunshine and 40 degree days. And it definitely didn't feel like Christmas without Prim.
"Yeah," Katniss said softly. Even if she hadn't been low man on the totem pole, she'd have volunteered to work the 25th. There was no reason not to. She had no family anyway. "You?"
He shook his head. "I close the bakery the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth. Going out to see my parents. Was hoping you might come along."
Katniss shook her head, and Peeta shrugged good naturedly. It surprised her to realize that if the circumstances were different, she would have been tempted.
"They're in the city, right?" He'd mentioned before that they had left Panem when they retired. Backwards, she'd thought. Didn't people usually want to escape the city for small town life?
Peeta nodded. "Mum and Dad always make a big 'do for the holiday," he said, smiling faintly. "Dad covers the house in lights. Mum puts up the biggest tree. There's heaps of food and pressies for the kids."
"Sounds nice," Katniss said. "Does your mom make a big turkey?" She couldn't imagine turning the oven on in this heat.
Peeta snorted. "Naw, Mum doesn't really cook. We used to have a roast, back when my grandparents were alive. These days, my dad usually does up prawns on the barbie, and my sister-in-law makes a bunch of salads, and then we spend the arvo in the pool."
"What do you bring?" Katniss asked. "Something baked, obviously." Not a bûche de Noël, like Uncle Haymitch had always bought from the French pâtisserie downtown when she and Prim were young. Katniss hasn't thought about those cakes in years. It made her a little wistful.
"I'm in charge of the Pavlova," Peeta smirked. "It's not Chrissie without a Pavlova."
"What else does Christmas involve here?" The hospital and the streets of Panem were decorated with lights and tinsel, like the Seam would be, but the colours were entirely different. The Aussies apparently didn't care much for red and green. Peeta had decorated the bakery in wreaths festooned with white shells and blue starfish. Gorgeous, but nothing like home.
"Mangoes," Peeta said without hesitation. "And pretending we don't care about the Boxing Day Test. Cricket," he explained at her confused expression. "We all pretend we hate it, but then spend the arvo checking the score on our phones."
"So different from back home," Katniss murmured, melancholy infusing every word.
"Homesick?" Peeta asked.
Katniss shrugged. "A little, but not the way you're thinking. I don't miss the place. I miss a different time."
"And your sister."
She swallowed hard. "Yeah," she said. "Christmas was her favourite holiday." Peeta stayed silent, looking at her with soft eyes that encouraged her to keep reminiscing. "She loved everything about it. The music, the decorations, the glitter. Every year it was a big production to find the biggest tree." Katniss laughed softly. "Haymitch always indulged her, no matter how ridiculous. I can't even tell you how many times they dragged home a tree at least a metre too tall for the living room."
Peeta smiled languidly. "And lots of pressies from Father Christmas too, I reckon."
Katniss snorted, but nodded. Haymitch had been generous, there were always plenty of gifts for the girls. But by the time she'd gone to live with him, she was long past believing in Santa Claus, or magic. Or much of anything at all. "You too?" she asked.
"Naw," Peeta said, but he was still smiling. "Usually a big gift for the three of us lads to share, a new video game or surfboard or the like. Then new school kits and other practical things. My parents didn't have a lot of money. There was a new beach towel for each of us, every year though." He laughed. "Likely be one this year too."
"We always got new pyjamas for Christmas," Katniss said. She'd spent last Christmas with Prim in the hospice, even still, they'd exchanged pyjamas. She'd bought Prim a bright purple fleecy onesie. There was a picture of her wearing it on Katniss's phone, sallow skinned but smiling brightly. Prim had given her sexy silk pyjamas, gorgeous and butter soft, patterned with autumn leaves. They were tucked in a drawer in her condo back in Canada. She'd had no need of them then.
It occurred to her that Peeta would have liked the colour.
"What was your favourite gift ever," he asked, and she answered without even thinking.
"A bow and arrows. Child-sized. My dad had them made for me." She'd been seven that year, her father's little shadow. "He taught me to shoot in the woods behind our house." Her father had been a bow hunter, an excellent one at that, bringing in rabbits or the occasional wild turkey for his family. But Katniss had only ever shot at the targets he'd pinned to a tree. Her mother hadn't been happy about it, but all of those hours in the woods with her father had been the best of her life.
Lost in the memory, she didn't realize her mistake until she glanced at Peeta, who was looking at her with undisguised interest. "Your dad?" he murmured.
Katniss froze. She'd gotten too comfortable, and now she'd cracked open the door to her past, to the things she never wanted to discuss. "He, uh. Died," she croaked. "I was pretty young." It wasn't the whole story, but it was as much as she could stomach sharing.
Peeta squeezed her hand. She didn't know if he could feel how hard she was shaking. "Thank you," he said. Then before it could get weird, he continued, "Sure wish you were off over the holiday though. Surfing on Boxing day, there's always at least one bloke wearing a Santa hat and budgie smugglers," he winked. "You have no idea what you're missing."