One-Shot: Through Heaven's Eyes
Peeta Mellark stares at all of his belongings, piled onto a wooden cart. The cart is one of only two that his family owns, and unfortunately, he was given the old one – the one with the loose wheel. Hefting the two runners in his hands, he begins the long, slow walk to the Seam, the coalfields on the outskirts of District 12 where the poorer folks live.
He is grateful he is so strong. Nevertheless, the journey will be slow and excruciating, as he glances down at what he is also dragging behind him: a weakened leg.
The fire in the Bakery had ignited with little to no warning one morning in mid-summer. He hadn't been able to flee in time, and a fallen rafter beam had pinned him, crushing his leg. He likely would have died of burns or smoke asphyxiation if his brother, Rye, hadn't bravely charged back in to pull him out.
Peeta knew his life had been spared by the barest of margins. Even so, his life as he had known it was still over.
Once the mining doctor – who normally was called on to treat injuries sustained during mine collapses out near the Seam – had declared he would never walk again on his one leg with the same strength, his parents had eventually all but disowned him. His mother had, anyway, declaring him unfit for work. What good was a Baker with only one reliably functional leg? The family business, which had heretofore been understood would be bequeathed to him would now instead go to his middle brother Rye. Leven, the eldest, had married into another prominent Merchant family and was being groomed to take over the undertaker's business.
Now Peeta is being cast off, to go to the Seam where the poorer folks dwell, to find work and fend for himself. He isn't sure what a young man whose only talents are baking and wrestling will do to find work – he imagines neither skill is in great demand, where he's going. Usually for Seamers, the only option for employment is to mine for ore down in the depths of the Earth, breaking your back and risking your life day after day. Peeta glances down at his bum leg again. He doubts the Foreman would hire a near-cripple to crawl through the tunnels.
Even while being still so remarkably strong, dragging the cart by hand while going on foot is long and arduous. He had made sure to leave home at first light, and already by the time the landscape begins to give way to clapboard houses and shantytowns, it is nearing mid-day. The heat makes matters worse, sweltering and beating down on him. Still, the handsome young man from Town presses on.
At one point, he passes what looks like a bustling warehouse, vendors hawking their goods and coin changing hands. With his fair features, many give Peeta and his cart strange looks. Looks of mistrust. Hardly any 'Townies', as the Merchant class is sometimes called, pass through this way, and certainly not this far.
Peeta tries not to let his gaze linger on any one person, but he does keep his gaze peeled on the warehouse out of his periphery. Perhaps, if he finds an empty homestead to claim that has a working oven, second-hand, he could still bake and sell his goods to the people? He wouldn't even be competing for the same market base that his parents and brother are, which assuages any guilt he might feel at turning to what he knows: baking.
Deeper into the coalfields he goes. He passes by what looks like imposing mounds of trash, from which he can hear strange moaning. The few Seamers he has encountered in the district school have whispered about something called 'The Slag Heap' being a popular teenage hangout, and he wonders if this is the place.
Peeta starts to pass by sites for several mines – there is Abernathy Mine, named for District 12's one living Victor of the Hunger Games, who lives in his mansion high on a hill clear at the other end of the district. Peeta gapes when he sees little pockets of flame popping up with a WHOOSHING sound along lines of earth in the ground near these mine shafts – the coal seams from which The Seam supposedly gets its name. For the briefest of moments, he flashes back to seeing flames rushing at him when he was trapped inside the Bakery. He shudders away the painful memory and struggles on.
All the while, he keeps his eyes peeled for any homestead or shack that might be abandoned or unoccupied. District housing policy is dictated from the Justice Building, the seat of district government, but the statutes itself are ad hoc and somewhat disorganized: the law states that dwelling units be assigned to a household only in the event of a new marriage or in the event of a vacancy upon the death of a previous occupant. There isn't any guideline for someone who's been disowned in all but name, and estranged from his family. Peeta supposes he will have to find a place to "squat" before he can make the long walk back into Town, and apply to the Justice Building for the deed to a new housing unit.
He must be nearing the edge of the Seam itself, getting close to the district fence, beyond which he's only heard tales of a beautiful meadow and an imposing forest.
Just then, Peeta arrives at a small crossroads. A fork in the dirt road, with paths that converge in at least five different directions. The intersection is marked by a water well, featuring not even a hand-crank, only a pulley rope attached to a bucket.
There is a commotion happening at this well: four small children, tussling with a pair of officers wearing the Peacekeeper whites. Three of the children are olive-skinned, with dark features, made darker still from being covered in dirt and coal dust. The fourth young child is notable because, with her fair complexion and gold-spun hair, she could be mistaken for a Merchant.
"No!" this fair, Aryan girl is yelling fiercely, adding to the chorus of voices from her companions who are actually grappling with the officers.
"It's not fair!"
"Let our goat drink!" A small lady goat wobbles just a few paces off, a cowbell tied with ribbon around its neck and bleating nervously.
Peeta glances about, and spots two horses grazing nearby, mounted with saddles and stirrups. Peacekeepers mounted on horseback are in itself an unusual sight; usually, these officers of the Capitol ride around in automobile vehicles. Indeed, they are the only people in the district with access to such transportation. Peeta recalls his father telling him a story about his father, who once had a delivery truck he drove to make his bread distributions, until the vehicle was impounded by the Capitol government. The white truck is marooned in the back alley of his family's Bakery, a shell of what it once was, its wheels gone and instead mounted on cinderblocks.
The combatants haven't seen him yet. Peeta sets down the runners of his cart. For once, he makes a concerted effort to not let his bum leg drag and remains as surefooted as he can.
The shouting doesn't halt, no one notices him, until he whistles.
"HEY! You two!"
Half a dozen heads snap to gape at him.
"Aren't these your horses?"
The Peacekeepers gasp in the moment before Peeta calls out a 'Hut, Hut!' and slaps the beasts on their rears, sending them cantering in the direction of far-away Town. The horrified officers have no choice but to abandon the tussle and chase back down their mounts.
The four little children, meanwhile, slowly turn to take in the stranger with something close to awe. Exhausted, Peeta leans against the cobblestone of the water well….
… only for the stone masonry to give way against his shoulder. His equilibrium stripped away, he tumbles down the well with a shocked cry.
The four small children glance at each other, then lunge for the rope, straining and grunting with all their might to haul their mysterious benefactor back up. As none of the quartet exceeds five feet in height nor more than 80 pounds soaking wet, attempting to fish out a man of such stocky build is a challenge.
Before long, a strikingly beautiful young woman with olive skin, chestnut hair and flinty grey eyes, wearing a blue dress, saunters up to take in the rescue mission, amused.
"And what are you kids doing?"
"We're trying to get the funny Townie man out of the well!" the youngest child, a girl of no more than 4, named Posy, chirps.
"Trying to get the funny Townie man out of the well," Katniss Everdeen deadpans, amused. "Well, that's one I've never heard before."
A plaintive cry suddenly echoes from down below, and Katniss lets out a startled gasp as she realizes that, Snow's Roses, there is someone down there! "Oh, my…. Don't – don't worry down there! We'll get you out – hold on!"
Grunting, the beautiful huntress joins the effort, and her strength tips the balance towards hauling a sopping wet, half-naked man out of the depths and up to the well's lip.
For a moment, Seam woman and Merchant man freeze, staring at each other, grey eyes on blue. An astonished, not-quite-a-smile dawns on the lovely young woman's face.
"You…." she breathes, recognizing him.
Peeta sucks in a breath, in the second before Katniss sharply lets the rope go, and he plunges with a shout back down into the well.
The little ones look dismayed, but Katniss simply lets out a satisfied hum and saunters off, her hips swaying. The three younger Hawthorne siblings glance to Primrose, the beautiful huntress's sister, for an explanation.
"That's why Mama says she'll never get married," is all the golden-haired girl can say.
Peeta somehow manages to claw and climb his way out of the well, with a little bit of help from the four children. The golden-haired one, named Primrose, smiles at him in an almost sheepish way, as though she is apologizing on behalf of the beautiful young woman whom he has sometimes seen at the district school, once in a blue moon.
He is taken to the home of the three smallest ones, siblings named Rory, Posy and Vick Hawthorne. The matriarch, Hazelle, a laundress by trade, draws him a bath and scrubs every inch of him clean with lye soap. She is a widow, Peeta learns, of a coal miner, and she has an eldest son, named Gale; as the man of the house, he is off in the woods beyond the fence hunting.
Hazelle has barely tossed a large cloak over Peeta's naked form when suddenly, there is a commotion coming from the humble parlor, and a weathered and wizened old lady pushes her way past the giggling and chittering children, shouting, "Let me through! Let me through! I want to see him!" Peeta freezes when he sees the beautiful girl in the blue dress, the one who left him to drown, just off the old lady's shoulder, her thin, bow lips in the middle of uplifting from a hard frown into a bewitching smirk of amusement.
"Ahhhhh!" The old lady crows, enveloping Peeta in a hug that holds enough strength to astonishingly lift him off his feet. "You are most welcome!" More giggling, particularly from the young girls, Primrose and Posy. Even the beautiful girl – the one they call Katniss – has lifted a hand to her mouth to hide what might be a smile. "You should not be a stranger in this land. You have been sent as a blessing! And tonight, at the Harvest Festival feast, you shall be my honored guest!"
The old woman leaves Peeta stunned in her wake. Katniss sidles up to him with a chuckle, the tone amused and slightly embarrassed. "My grandmother, Sae: more or less the unofficial leader of the Seam."
That night, Peeta – now given fresh clothes – is led insistently by Primrose and the Hawthornes to the warehouse he had passed on his crossing into the Seam. On this cold winter's night, there are trashcan fires burning, around which people huddle on mats and throw pillows to share a meal. Peeta joins his new friends around one; further around the ring of this small circle, he spots Katniss, the firelight making her olive skin glow. Transfixed, Peeta absently reaches for a roll, only for Prim to smack his hand away.
"Psst! Not yet!"
"Oh – sorry…."
He has clearly wandered into an important, solemn gathering. The Merchants in Town have heard of the Harvest Festival, though they don't observe it. It is supposed to coincide with the end of the Victory Tour, taking place in the Capitol to celebrate the champion of last summer's arena. Back home, the moment is usually observed with a quiet evening at home, the curtains drawn and the lights dimmed, much as they are the night following the Reaping.
"My children!" Sae holds court. "Let us give thanks for this bountiful food…"
Peeta glances down at the roll he had just touched. There are only a smattering in this basket, a small sprig of grapes, meat from a small bird that might be a pheasant roasting over a spit…. and absolutely nothing else. Other trashcan fires seem to have similarly sparse rations. If this 'feast' is 'bountiful', he can't see how.
"… and let us also give thanks…." Sae's shadow is passing over him. "For the presence of this brave young man…. whom we honor here tonight!"
Scattered applause. Peeta feels himself blush red with shame.
"Please, ma'am," he whispers. "I wish you wouldn't….. I've done…. nothing in my life worth honoring." His eyes briefly meet those of Katniss, who has heard him and is now peering at him curiously, with something resembling shock.
Sae simply looks bemused. "First, you…. rescued Katniss from starvation…" (At this, Peeta glances up sharply. Sae knows about… about the bread? A blush creeps up his neck as he wonders if Katniss told her) "…. Then you…. defend my youngest granddaughter and the Hawthornes from Peacekeeper brigands. You think that is nothing?" She shakes her head in bewilderment. "It seems, young Peeta Mellark, you… do not know what is worthy of honor!"
Sae begins to teach him about self-worth, and how he can find it here, in this community, if only he is brave enough to seek it.
He ponders this as he watches the Seam people begin to dance a line reel, to the tune of a feverish fiddle wielded by a rugged man named Dalton. At one point, Posy clutches and tugs at Peeta's tunic imploringly.
"Dance with me!"
He chuckles and shrugs helplessly. "I don't know how."
From that day on, Peeta is given a small shack to let on the edge of Greasy Sae's property, out back of the main homestead, which she shares with her daughter-in-law and granddaughters. The Everdeen girls' father, Sae's son, perished in a mine collapse some five years prior.
Katniss is often the one to bring him his meals, or to invite him up to the main house for supper. She is reserved, taciturn and slightly aloof. It is clear she is wary of him, this handsome stranger. Peeta wonders why, if she clearly remembers his kindness from when they were children, she would leave him to nearly drown down the well, but he is too intimidated – indeed, to in awe of her – to ask. Eventually, however, the pair manages to hold a civil, albeit stilted conversation.
Peeta begins to ingratiate himself into Seam life. He assists in a barn raising, at which his strength is duly noted and praised by Dex Stalag, the Miner Foreman. It is encouragement enough that, while seeking a job, Peeta applies for a position on the digging crew at Abernathy Mine, the largest shafts in the district. He has no choice but to disclose his lame leg on the application form, and he watches Dex's face closely as he reviews Peeta's paperwork. The Foreman then passes the papers to Thom Borden, head of the digging crew.
"You're strong, lad – ain't no doubt about it. But I'd worry about you making it to the lifts on that bum leg, during a collapse. We could hire you on disability, but your pay would be cut." Thom lifts his eyes to Peeta almost apologetically. "That's the law on high from the Justice Building, I'm sorry to say. Ain't enough for barely one person, and certainly not enough to support a wife and household."
Peeta shrugs. "I don't mind. At this point, I'll try anything. And anyway, I'm unmarried…"
"Handsome fella like you? You won't be for long. Plenty of our women would line up to Toast the bread with you, just to say they've tasted Townie." Thom smirks at this, and so does Dex. They both gently urge Peeta to go home for the night and sleep on it and, if he still wants in on the digging crew, they'll sign his employment papers.
Peeta arrives home to his shack that night to find Katniss pacing outside of it like an angry tigress in a cage. She immediately launches herself at him in a rage when he comes into view.
"Primmy told me she heard tell from Gale who heard it from Bristel that you signed up for a mining shift. Is that true?" she demands. She sounds oddly stricken.
Peeta shrugs. "Well…. yeah. Dex Stalag and Thom Borden said they'd take me on disability if I really wanted to; told me to take the night and think about it…."
"No," Katniss cuts across him sharply, grey eyes blazing fiercely.
"Katty girl…." he entreats, using the pet name he has only heard her little sister use.
"NO!" Katniss cries plaintively, her voice shaking nearby mockingjays from their nests. "I won't let you! You…. can't go down there! You'll never come back!"
Peeta deflates, even as he deadpans, "Your confidence in me is overwhelming." He falters when he notices that Katniss, her head bowed and shoulders shaking, is starting to weep quietly.
"He…. he never came back…." she whimpers. "He died down there, scared and alone – and my mother, she…." Her voice drifts off.
Peeta ducks his head to search her eyes. "Your father?" She nods, a shuddering sob escaping her lips.
"Katniss, I have to repay your grandmother's kindness somehow. Putting a miner's wages towards paying rent seems like a good place to start…"
"Mum-Mum Sae won't hear of that," Katniss insists, shaking her head fiercely. "You don't need to worry about that. There's no more owed between us." But she strangely seems to be trying to convince herself more than anything.
"Well, if I'm going to survive out here and make an honest living, what else is there to do? Sell cheese buns in the Hob?"
Her grey eyes brighten with hope at this. "You could try. You'd make a killing!"
Peeta shakes his head. "The only thing I really know how to do is bake – and I can't very well do that without an oven!" he gestures back to his shack, which is really a converted outhouse and would almost certainly be too thin to house an oven of the size he's used to working on anyway.
Katniss worries her bottom lip adorably. Her jaw sets in determination. "There's much more learning to be done in these parts than just how to dig for ore." She lifts her grey eyes to his almost shyly. "If… if you truly mean to earn your keep and help provide for… for us…." He could swear in the moonlight that she blushes. "Meet me out here at dawn."
It's more out of curiosity than anything else that Peeta takes her up on her offer. When he meets her outside his shack, he feels electricity shoot up his skin as she takes his hand.
"Come with me," she murmurs low. Then she guides him with purpose all the way to, and then under, the district fence. They cross through the Meadow and Peeta tries not to fixate on how her hips and exquisitely curved bum sway as she walks.
When Katniss continues to make for the tree line of the woods, Peeta takes a deep breath to steel himself and follow her.
He's never been in the forest before. Back home, most Merchant kids are taught to fear whatever lurks inside here. At one point, Katniss abruptly halts and spins about to glare at him prissily.
"I know you struggle with your leg, but could you please try and keep it down? Man alive, I've never heard someone as loud as you! You're going to scare away all the game!" Peeta feels his cheeks turn pink.
At what he judges to be a predetermined meeting spot, Peeta and Katniss meet up with a towering boy with dark hair and a hard set to his jaw and eyes. Peeta has only encountered the eldest Hawthorne son, Gale, once or twice before. Frankly, the man scares him.
Peeta is befuddled when Gale hands him a bow and a quiver of arrows without a word. "Follow us," he grunts gruffly.
Peeta meekly obeys. As they go along, he can hear Gale and Katniss whispering heatedly to each other in what sounds like an argument. An argument about him:
"Ain't no Townie can be taught how to hunt! He won't be able to handle it! …."
"He can so, Gale!..." Peeta is struck by how fiercely Katniss is defending him. He finds himself deeply touched to think that she would have such faith in him.
The trio finally emerges into a breathtaking clearing, capped by a pristine, glistening lake. On the shoreline is a small dwelling built from stone.
"My daddy owned this land and that cabin. His granddaddy built it, before the Dark Days," Katniss tells Peeta quietly.
Peeta takes it all in in wonder. "I didn't think a place like this could exist after the Dark Days…" he breathes.
"Most don't," Gale grunts, stringing his bow. "Now come on, Baker's man – ready to learn how to really earn your supper?"
To prove himself to this guy (and maybe also to impress Katniss), Peeta decides he'll learn whatever he has to. Do whatever it takes.
After a few attempts at stringing the bow notch, one during which he drops his quiver completely, he has to concede that a bit of humility on his part should have been anticipated. It isn't as though he could become proficient at a bow and arrow within moments. Katniss helps him get into his stance, streamline his body.
"Bring your elbow up…." she says softly. "Now…. bowstring tight into your shoulder to support it." He tries not to shiver as he feels her soft hands grip his bicep; he swears he hears her breath hitch as she sucks in a gasp, almost admiringly.
"Maintain your aim….. Exhale….. and…. Release."
Peeta fires at the tree he's been using as target practice, and actually manages to hit the trunk. When Katniss actually beams at him, Peeta feels as though he could fly. Gale just huffs, eyeing them both, but especially Peeta, mistrustfully.
Peeta is almost smug at how Gale can't say a damn word when, by the end of the day, he, Peeta, manages to fell a small hare. Katniss's grin is radiant and filled with pride at her pupil.
"Better…." she murmurs.
Prim's pet goat, Lady, goes into labor one blistering hot day in mid-summer. The little girl is too hysterical with worry to come out to the backyard pen herself, so Katniss and Peeta attend to the birth.
Once Peeta delivers the kid, Katniss lets out a coo and wraps the gore-stained baby goat in swaddling clothes, cradling it like a baby. Lifting her eyes, she shares a smile with Peeta, who suddenly feels that his throat is very dry, observing her.
"Primmy will be so pleased…" Katniss gushes. "And we'll need the milk….."
"Would you ever have kids?"
He blurts it out so abruptly that he clearly takes her off guard and Katniss peers at him, bemused. "What?"
Face on fire, he stutters out, "Not – a kid like a goat kid, but a…. kid kid. A…. human kid. A baby." He feels very foolish.
Katniss frowns as she seems to ponder the question, her brow furrowed in a way that is quite beautiful. "Nope," she shakes her head after only a beat, rising up out of her crouch with the baby goat in her arms, her blue dress swishing past her knees as she flounces away.
"Wait, so…. you're saying you wouldn't Toast the bread with any fella? You wouldn't want to have a family?"
Katniss turns back, her single braid tossing over her shoulder, to ponder him sadly. "Babies are something to love only to then become something to lose, Peeta. Ain't no man gonna marry me and make me bear his children."
Peeta feels his heart sink a little at this. "You've been like a good mama to Prim, almost, haven't you?" He clues in just then to the drawl in his voice, a drawl that has developed almost without his realizing it or being consciously aware of it.
He watches the heat crawl up her neck. "That wasn't by choice…." She points out, her voice small. "Mama had the Sadness, so I had to help bring Prim up. Raise her right. Mum-Mum Sae was getting on in years, and I couldn't let that burden fall onto her." She sets the newborn kid down in the grass and for a time, she and Peeta watch it stumble about on unsteady legs, finding its feet. New life, acclimating to the world.
Peeta watches Katniss intently. "You did a fine job with her," he murmurs low.
Katniss just scoffs at this, though he can tell she's pleased by his praise. "Don't mean I'd be a good mama to my own young'ins. Not if I knew all I'd be doing is raising them like hogs for the slaughter at the Reaping."
Peeta nods slowly, daring to rest a hand on her shoulder. "I understand," he murmurs. And he does. He may have different opinions on marriage and raising a family, but he only wants what's best for her.
Katniss turns back and smiles at him weakly. For a moment, they are frozen like that, gazing into each other's eyes.
The spell is broken when Katniss tousles her head, rising up out of her crouch and she holds out her hands to him. "Come on. I wanna show you something."
She guides him round the back of the house, over to his little shack. There is now a squat, compact structure sitting in the grass right next to the wooden hovel. Peeta pulls up short, blue eyes expanding with disbelief.
"Is that….?"
"A brick oven," Katniss states proudly. "I…. made it for you." She blushes crimson. "So you can bake."
Peeta turns to stare at her in amusement. "This is just so I can bring you cheese buns anytime you want." Her answering guilty scowl makes him laugh, causing it to quirk into a smile. Really, he's deeply touched.
"Maybe." Katniss laughs. "Come on, Mama will be waiting on supper…"
Her voice suddenly dies in her throat when, once she's nearly past him, Peeta suddenly cradles her face in his hands, tilts her head back and kisses her deeply on the lips.
They break apart after a moment; Katniss looks thunderstruck.
"I had to do that. To say thank you," Peeta whispers, almost huskily. Releasing her, he starts for the main house when he hears her call:
"Wait!" Her voice is choked, strangled with emotion. When he turns, she is reaching up to pull him close and kiss him in return. When Katniss draws away, he sees that she's trembling.
"You're welcome."
She starts to dash past him when he catches her arm, turns her about by the elbow.
"Katty girl?"
"Yes?" she blinks.
Peeta steps into her, shy. "Can…. Can I kiss you again?"
Katniss arches an eyebrow prissily, though from her grin, she's clearly amused. "May I kiss you again, please?" She falters when Peeta steps ever closer, her grey orbs growing lidded and heavy.
"Katniss…" he croons. "May I kiss you again, please?"
She answers him shakily, breathlessly: "Yes, you may – Mmmmm…."
His lips seal over hers in a fervent kiss.
Katniss gasps in astonishment. Her mouth petals open under his, like a flower bursting into full bloom.
She kisses him back.
Fireworks.
The romantic affair between the beautiful Seam huntress and the handsome Merchant ex-pat quickly escalates in its passion.
Katniss now often sneaks out to Peeta's backyard shack to heatedly kiss and make out in its shadow where her mama, grandmother and sister can't see. Though she's sure any one of them, especially Prim, might watch from the windows, suspicious that something is going on.
Kisses soon give way to touches that burn the skin. Peeta is certain he has never felt such heat near his body since the day he nearly lost his life in the Bakery fire. He is elated the first time he touches her below her waist, dares to grope lower, caressing Katniss's round buttocks through her blue dress, only for her to boldly hike her leg to wrap around his waist, and push her hips tantalizingly up to cradle his.
She continues to take him into the woods to go hunting – sometimes with Gale, but recently more times without him. These days, every time Peeta makes a target, Katniss will reward him with a kiss. Her lips pressed to his makes his head spin.
She teaches him to swim in the small lake by her father's hunting cabin. Peeta is amused at how, the first time he takes off his shirt to enter the water, Katniss appears to swallow her tongue. He thinks she is never more beautiful than when she's flustered.
Katniss makes him turn his back as she undresses and enters the chilled waters naked in all her beauty. She shows him how to float on his back. They go skinny-dipping.
Treading water in each other's arms, they share a kiss that steals the breath from their lungs. Katniss and Peeta barely make it to the shallows and the shoreline before they are making out furiously, rolling about the sand in each other's clasped embrace while the wake from the lake waters crash softly over their naked bodies.
When they break apart, Katniss's bare breasts are heaving for every gulp of air and she is red down to her chest. Wordlessly, she takes Peeta's hand in hers and guides him with solemn purpose into her father's hunting cabin.
She closes and latches the door behind them.
She guides his hand not entwined in hers to cup the swell of her breast.
Katniss and Peeta kiss languorously, until she lies on her back, pulling her lover down on top of her.
She spreads her legs for him.
For the first time, they make love.
From then on, Katniss and Peeta have sex whenever they have a moment alone.
Even in the heat of passion and undressing each other, even in her lust for him, as she's tugging his shirt up over his head, Katniss is practical enough to make Peeta roll a condom over his cock before he shoves it inside her.
One night after supper, Peeta hoists her up the side of his outhouse shack and takes her against the wall, the skirts of her blue dress bunched up over her hips, and with the bodice wrenched down to expose her breasts and nipples to the cool fall air.
Katniss moans at Peeta's every thrust, and panting, she begs him to fuck her "harder…. Harder…. Faster…. Faster…."
That same fall, Thom Borden and Leevey Matthews hold a Toasting, and the entire Seam celebrates with a reception in the Hob. Dalton strikes up a reel on his fiddle.
Playfully, Katniss entraps Peeta with a scarf around his neck, tugging him onto the floor.
"Dance with me!"
Peeta tries to beg off, but it's too late; he must learn to join the dance, and dance he does.
Watching Katniss laughing gaily and dancing in the light of the bonfire, he is overcome with desire. He sneaks her off back to the Everdeen homestead, where he proceeds to pin her to his meager bed and devour her. Deflower her. Katniss groans of pleasure are like sweet music in his ear.
"Hmmmm…. Mmmmm… Huhhhh….. Uhhhhhhh….. Ugggh….. Please, Peeta…. Peeta…."
Just before she cums, and he ejaculates deep inside her fluttering wet heat, Peeta pants out into the soft, sweaty curve of her neck that her loves her.
Once she is brought to orgasm, she says it back. That she loves him too.
Abruptly, the door to the outhouse bangs open and they are caught red-handed mating in heat by Primrose, who begins to squeal in matchmaking glee as a mortified Katniss squawks indignantly and attempts to cover her nakedness.
Later that night, the couple is subjected to stern scrutiny from Sae and Mrs. Everdeen. The matriarch of the household then suddenly gives her toothy smile and says to Peeta:
"Very well, my children: when shall we make the Toasting? Or are you not yet promised to her, boy?"
"Mum-Mum!" Katniss cries out, speechless and rouge from embarrassment.
"Oh, come now, child, don't think the whole damn Seam hasn't wondered when our Katty was going to find herself a husband. Frankly, my dear, you have fine taste." Sae's eyes twinkle mischievously.
"I've heard some on the digging crew wondering when Peeta was going to propose!" Prim is practically dancing. "They like the match."
Katniss and Peeta look at each other. "Hold on: no one has announced a Toasting. No one is getting married," Katniss declares, covetous of her independence, glaring at them all. She takes exception with Peeta.
Sae permits her eldest granddaughter to escort Peeta out to his shack and say goodnight. When she kisses him, Katniss suddenly, impulsively hisses against his lips:
"If we get married, you can't ever tell me what to do!"
Peeta draws back to study her grey eyes, sparkling in the moonlight. She is staring down at where her hands rest on his firm chest.
"And I won't have children. Not as long as there are still Hunger Games. I can hunt for us. You can bake and provide for us in the Hob. We could live with Mother and Mum-Mum and Prim until the Justice Building assigns us a dwelling."
She raises her eyes shyly to his, searching them. She's delivered the terms for this potential union. Katniss drapes her arms around his neck, her fingers playing with the blonde hair at his nape.
"Go ahead, then," she prompts, breathless. "Ask me."
"You mean…?" He can hardly dare to believe it.
Katniss just rolls her eyes and smiles. "Ask me to marry you. Propose." Leaning in, she lightly brushes her lips across his.
Peeta swallows. "Katniss Magenta Everdeen, will you marry me?"
She smiles at him, pretending to think about it. "Yes," she whispers.
They kiss chastely. "I love you."
"I know," she beams. "I love you too." Taking a deep breath, she smiles weakly, exhilarated and terrified all at once. "We have a Toasting to plan."
Peeta moves into the Everdeen homestead until the wedding. Katniss quietly suggests that they be discreet; they do nothing but hold hands and chastely kiss, especially when Primrose is in the house.
The night before they are to wed, Peeta retires to his old quarters in the backyard shack. He hardly sleeps, though he is too busy to sleep anyway….
The following morning is a breathtaking, cloudless day in early spring. The spring that both Katniss and Peeta are 18 – Katniss is just 18, in fact, and thus old enough by district law to wed without needing her mother's consent. Her mother, grandmother and sister escort Katniss to where she and Peeta are to marry in the Meadow. She is adorned in her mother's white wedding dress, and Peeta is pleased for his bride. The white dress is actually a Merchant custom, seen as a right of passage and a family heirloom passed down from mother to daughter. Mrs. Everdeen had absconded with the treasured garment when she had eloped with Katniss and Prim's father, against all tradition. Her own marriage had resulted in her disownment.
There are dandelions woven into Katniss's hair, and dandelions in her wedding bouquet; she looks resplendent and breathless with anticipation as she and Peeta give their vows. When she reaches the end of her promises to him, Katniss concludes by declaring for all to hear, "I love my husband."
Peeta toasts a bit of bread he baked himself in the brick oven his wife-to-be built. The hearty bread turns crisp when it is held over the flames of the crackling bonfire. In the firelight, Katniss's grey eyes are solemn as, tilting her head, she lets her fiancé feed her a piece before then permitting her…. her husband to softly kiss her.
Husband and wife embrace and deepen the wedding kiss, tongues meeting eagerly to dance and also lick away errant crumbs. Somewhere in the crowd, Gale offers his blessing by way of a loud, country whoop, to which the new Mrs. Mellark with responds by flashing a very obscene gesture.
A lively reception is held in the Hob, with Dalton playing his fiddle. Hiking up her bridal skirts, a deliriously happy Katniss kicks up her heels and she and Peeta dance the reel at their wedding, the newlyweds smiling into each other's eyes.
But the real coup de grace is when Peeta presents his wedding gift to his young wife. When Katniss lays eyes on it, she draws a hand to her mouth to hold in a gasp, her eyes filling with tears.
"OHHHHH! Snow's Roses…. It's a vision! But… but how did you…? You didn't! You shouldn't have!" She turns to her husband, her eyes sparkling with emotional delight.
Peeta steals his arms around her, his breath tickling her earlobe as he watches his wife admire their wedding cake, which appears almost too good to eat. "Do you like it, sweetheart?" Beaming, Katniss reaches up around his neck to pull his mouth down to hers and kiss him soundly, hungrily.
"Oh….. darling, I love it! I love you!"
When the party is over, Peeta lifts his bride onto the back of the cart he first used to pull all his belongings to the Seam and they set off for a vacant homestead just down the road from Katniss's family. Soon, they will make the journey across the district to sign their marriage license before the District Justice of the Peace, so they can be wed in the eyes of the district law, and also secure the deed for their new home.
In the meantime, Peeta and Katniss spend their wedding night making love.
Later, they honeymoon at her father's hunting cabin, spending many more hours having sex and intimately learning each other's bodies.
Peeta decides he journeyed into the Seam and instead found heaven on earth.
Peeta clutches the letter in his fist, re-reading the contents line by line. He hadn't expected the missive in their postage box and it has landed with the force of a bomb.
He isn't sure how his wife will react; Katty should be due back from her hunt any moment. However she takes it, Peeta vows he will not lie to her.
He cocks his ear at the sound of her boots on their porch, then the lifting of the latch. His wife of just over a year, his Katniss, shrugs off her father's hunting jacket and hangs it on the hook.
Peeta glances down at the letter quickly.
"Hey." Ducking her head, Katniss tenderly presses her lips to his in a kiss in greeting. He kisses her back, if not with as much fervor as he normally would. She notices. Peeta feels her caress his face, lifting it out of the paper, encouraging him to look at her. Her grey eyes are searching his.
"What is it?" she croons.
Peeta passes the letter from his brother to her. He studies her expression as she reads it judiciously, watching as her frown creases more and more, her brow furrowing.
"Please tell me you're not entertaining this," she finally draws forth in a deadly whisper. Katniss is quivering with barely suppressed rage.
Peeta exhales slowly. "I don't feel like I have much of a choice. I never felt like Rye had the head for the business, and now that Mom is…. dead, they'll need someone to manage the account books…."
"So have your dad do it," Katniss quips coolly, arching one eyebrow. "Or, your other brother, what was his name? – Leven!"
Peeta winces. "Leven wants nothing to do with the Bakery, and hasn't for years. He has his own family and business now. And I doubt Dad will be able to balance the budget…"
"Well, then there's no better time to learn!" Katniss sniffs, her voice deadly calm but belying a clear anger, as she starts to move towards their bedroom. Between her hunting and trading game, and Peeta's new stall selling baked goods in the Hob, the Mellarks know more than most about how to maintain frugality in their financials. They're poor as church mice, husband and wife, yet their so happy in their marriage, they don't realize how monetarily miserable they should be.
"Katty girl…."
"Don't 'Katty girl' me!" his wife snaps, rounding on him, eyes blazing. "You don't owe them anything, Peeta! Not after they threw you away like you were nothing!"
"Sweetheart, no matter whether they disowned me or not, they're still my family…."
"You have a family!" Katniss cuts him off, screaming. Her lower lip wobbles in a pout, and her eyes well up. "Here. With me. With…. with us…" And she caresses a hand along the curve of her swollen, pregnant belly. The baby had not been planned; they'd agreed when they married not to have children, acceding to Katniss's wishes. When his wife had first come to him, with terror as old as life itself in her eyes, and breathlessly told him she was carrying his baby, her husband had been thrilled. He had still held her as she cried, bemoaning how she would be a horrible mother. The past few months have been spent nesting and listening to Primrose's advice, as the Healer in the family. In discussing what to call their daughter, Peeta and Katniss had debated given her a customary Seam name, a Covey name, traditionally drawn from the fauna of the meadows and the colors of the rainbow. Katniss had balked, and given Peeta the space to choose a name with roots in his Town heritage. Their baby girl, due in the winter, is to be named Emma Finch, partially for the birds that sing outside their bedroom window, which Peeta likes to keep open.
"They're my family too," Peeta sighs gently. Katniss glowers at him, arms folded across her ballooning chest, her breasts already swelling with a mother's milk. He can tell his wife is not angry at him, per se – more like she's angry at his sense of duty, which perhaps mirrors her own more than Katniss would like to admit. Katniss has confided in her husband that, though she loves Prim more than life, she sometimes resented having to play mother to her baby sister after her father died and Mama Everdeen emotionally withdrew.
Katniss studies her Peeta's face, softly cradling his cheek. "You don't have to do this…" she reminds him, murmuring.
Peeta kisses her palm, then her lips, very gently. "The real bad blood was between me and my mom; that's over and done with. Maybe there's a chance at reconciliation…"
"Then what?" Katniss breathes. "You… take over the Bakery and we…. move halfway across the district to Town?" She cups her swollen belly. "I know we've said how we want our child to know both parts of herself. I'm half-Merchant myself; she'll really be only one-quarter Seam." She smiles up at her husband wetly. "And I know she's….. a happy surprise, a blessing, and I may never have intended to become a mother, but if I ever did, I would want to raise her here. In the Seam."
Peeta bends and kisses Katniss tenderly. She holds it with a sigh. "I want that too."
She gapes at him. "Well, then why on Earth are you….?"
"If there's a chance to set things right, make my peace with at least Dad and Rye, then I want to take it. I have to try….." He kisses her again, deeper this time, drawing out a moan from his wife's lips.
"You're too good a man, Peeta Mellark."
"Hmm," he demurs. He takes Katniss's hand and squeezes it. "This wouldn't last forever. Probably just long enough to make sure Rye can level the ship. If I sit back and do nothing and let the chips fall where they may, the Justice Building could seize all their assets. The Bakery would be in the black. Dad and him could lose the business."
His wife is quiet for a long moment. Finally, she melts into his arms, resting her head against his chest. Peeta rests his chin on her head, nuzzling his nose into her hair.
"I'm coming with you!" Katniss vows in a whisper.
Several weeks later, one morning at dawn, Peeta lifts his expecting wife onto their small cart, laden with about half of their belongings. The other half will remain here, in their home in the Seam, where they intend to move back before long. Even so, Primrose, the Hawthornes and much of the Seam gather to tearfully wave goodbye and wish Katniss and Peeta well.
Peeta pulls the cart by its runners, now making in reverse the journey he made across the district when he entered the Seam more than two years ago. Between that time and now, he has only made the trek to Town one other time, when he and his new bride traveled to the Justice Building to have their marriage license and housing assignment approved.
They arrive in Town and at the Bakery's back loading dock well after nightfall. Katniss lets her husband gentlemanly help her down from the cart, gently waving off his concern for her and for their unborn baby. Peeta can tell she is taking everything in, studying where the man she loves grew up.
They approach the Bakery from the back loading dock. At Peeta's knock, his father and middle brother greet him and Katniss cordially.
The Baker seems transfixed by Katniss as his daughter-in-law waddles into the Bakery's back kitchen, one hand on her pregnant belly.
"Why didn't you write to us that you were married, son?" Mr. Mellark seems genuinely thrilled for his youngest son.
"Because you know Mother would never have approved." It had been the reason he had held back from even tendering an invitation to their nuptials.
"And when is my grandchild due?"
Katniss flushes, eyeing her father-in-law warily while also trying not to be rude. She might have her own feelings on the matter as it concerns the family she married into, but for her Peeta's sake, she won't air those. "Closer to Yuletide, the Harvest Festival at the latest."
"So sometime in December or January." The man seems pleased. The Baker's eyes are brimming with unshed tears and when he quickly stoops to kiss Katniss on the cheek, she jerks in surprise. "I've always wanted a daughter. His mother certainly did; she was convinced both Peeta and Rye would be girls."
Peeta makes a noise that's part indignation, part scorn, and Katniss can't help but giggle. She strokes her distended stomach. "It's a girl," she whispers quietly to the Baker.
"Miriam would have been delighted," Mr. Mellark expresses.
"You sure about that?" Rye snorts. "If she knew her grandchild would have someone Seam for a mother, she'd have gone to her grave even earlier!"
"Rye…." Peeta growls warningly. "My child's heritage is not what is at stake here. What is at stake is the family business. That's the only reason I'm here. If you and Dad and I want to clear the air, we'll have that discussion in our own time, but for now, let's go to work."
She plays in the Meadow – the little girl with gold-spun hair and grey eyes. Katniss swears her daughter most resembles her Aunt Prim, and her husband is inclined to agree.
Emma Finch Mellark was ultimately born in her Seam roots, mere days after her parents moved back into their house. Peeta had managed to save the family business and, after some training, leave it in Rye and his father's newly confident hands. Also repaired were the family's relationships, Peeta reconciling with his brothers and father. If there is any blame still outstanding, it now rests in the shallow grave holding the remains of Miriam Mellark, that witch who cast out her own son because he had been made a cripple by a fire.
Soon after the baby arrived, Peeta had built his family an extension on their house, even finally embarking on a lifelong dream to take up painting. Their daughter's nursery is awash in colors and images painted by a baker's steady hand.
With a pleasured sigh, Katniss leans back in her husband's arms, where he is spooning her and she straddles his lap, as they watch their little girl frolic and play.
"I might have to work up the nerve to thank her one day," Peeta grumbles about his mother. "She set me on that path, and I found you. I fell in love…." He and Katniss marvel at the little creature they made. "We brought a child into the world…"
"You owe your mother no thanks," his wife insists, catching his eyes and holding them. Craning her neck, she softly kisses him. "You and me, our marriage…. our baby… this would have happened anyway."
Peeta grins at her. "You really believe that?"
She smiles back. "I always have."
They touch lips again, lightly, turning back to watch Emma Finch try and catch butterflies.
"Promise me she won't be Reaped?"
Peeta can't make that vow to his wife, not really. He does it anyway, making it with the same conviction as he did the day they married, when they promised to take and have each other for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health…
"I promise. We'll be OK. We have each other."
Katniss kisses him again, her eyes wet with tears, and she settles her head down into her husband's lap so he can play with her hair. After a time, when his fingers still in the strands, she stirs.
"What?"
"It's just…. I wish I could freeze this moment, right now, and live in it forever."
It's terribly romantic, much like the man she married, but Katniss nonetheless acquiesces. "OK."
She can feel his smirk. "Then you'll allow it?"
She nods. "I'll allow it."