One-Shot: When You Like a Person Enough
Belle Everdeen passes away suddenly in late summer, following the conclusion of the Quarter Quell.
This fills her eldest daughter, Katniss, with terror.
She is only 17, and is now left alone with her 13-year-old baby sister, Prim, to care for and raise.
In the dead of night, the two sisters bury their mother in a shallow, unmarked grave out back of the Everdeen homestead. If they're lucky, they might be able to keep their mother's passing a secret from everyone for, at most, a few weeks.
Except, they need more than a few weeks. They need more like eight months – and Katniss doubts the Peacekeepers will hold off on a welfare call before then.
The district law as it pertains to guardianship, is clear: in the event of the death of a parent, there has to be a next of kin who is of age (that is, 18) available to sign a writ of guardianship for any minor children involved. Otherwise, it's to the Community Home with any unclaimed children.
Katniss refuses to allow that to happen to her, and especially not Prim. Orphans are molested in the Community Home, or so the rumors persist. Even worse, when you're a Community Home brat, your chances of getting Reaped for the Hunger Games spike. The district government sees the policy as casting off unclaimed children whom no one will miss.
Katniss knows she would rather die before getting Reaped. She would rather die before getting molested by some handsy Peacekeeper or a teenage boy in the Home. She never wants to get pregnant and have kids, especially not now.
Katniss doesn't turn 18 until May 8th – a little less than eight months away. By the time the autumn leaves begin to fall, the Peacekeepers will know she and Prim are parentless and squatting in their deceased mother's house.
As things stand now, she has five choices:
1. Submit to being taken to the Community Home, to be raped or Reaped or Snow knows what else (out of the question).
2. Lie about her age and risk her life working down in the mines to provide for herself and her sister, while hoping the Foreman doesn't ask too many questions as to why (possible, except there are slim chances of her surviving long enough to…)
3. Legally turn 18 after ducking the Peacekeepers for eight months, whereupon she'll be a legal adult and old enough to sign a writ of guardianship for her sister.
4. Move in with relatives (out of the question – her mother's family disowned Mama when she ran off and eloped with Daddy)
5. Get married (absolutely out of the question!)
There is one probable option, slightly related to Choice Number 4: she could ask Hazelle to take her and Prim in, just until she, Katniss, can turn 18. Except that would leave Hazelle with five mouths to feed, even if Katniss offered to take over all the hunting that Gale used to do… before her best friend and hunting partner was Reaped for the 74th Hunger Games, placing third. Plus, bunking with the Hawthornes might alert the Peacekeepers and they'd start asking questions.
Katniss starts to think about how long she and Prim could stretch it out on their own, how long they could stall for time. The thought process isn't really that much different from pondering how far a few mouthfuls of game, how far a few coins, can go.
If they're really lucky, they could make it to Yuletide and the Harvest Festival before the Peacekeepers catch on to them. And that's only if they are really, really lucky.
In the meantime, she and Prim continue to go to school, because Mama raised cultured district ladies and would have wanted her daughters to complete their education. The sisters act like nothing is wrong. Katniss continues to trade in her spare time. She finds the most sympathetic buyer is the Baker, out back of his loading dock. More recently, he has taken to letting his youngest son, the one with eyes as blue as a summer sky, take over the transactions. They don't speak, she and Peeta, maintaining a tradition of silent acknowledgement from school, ever since that day in the rain…
Katniss shakes her head, even as she feels her stomach do an odd somersault.
When she can afford to, Katniss drops off Prim at school and plays hooky from class, to get some more hunting and bagging in. One day, after selling off at the Hob and still left with a bit of extra, she decides to try her luck at the Pavilion across Town – the Merchants' idea of a black market.
It's really more of an open-air market, but that doesn't bother Katniss. Perhaps someone will be of the mind to take Prim's old baby clothes off her hands. She had tried to sell off the hand-me-downs years ago, just after Daddy died and when her family was starving.
That was what she had been carrying that day in the rain when –
Katniss has her wares stacked up past her chin, so she can't see exactly see where she is going. Suddenly, she collides with something smooth and firm, sending her packages nearly flying.
"Oh, Snow's Roses, I'm so sorry! Here… Let me help you with that…"
Katniss glances up and nearly freezes. A pink tinge floods onto her cheeks. Peeta, the Baker's youngest son, is stooping to help gather the baby clothes and the last of her game. It dawns on her that what she ran headlong into was a wall of his solid muscle.
"Oh, no – it… it was my fault, really…" She stammers out, smiling weakly, and she bends to help him. She finds a book – too thin to be any of their school texts, lying inches away from a puddle of mud left over from last night's rain, and she shyly hands it to him. "Here… here's your…" She happens to get a good look at the title, and actually recognizes it: it's part of a series, the first of which her father passed down to her. It's one of the few books her family actually owns, other than Mama's healing texts. "Oh, I love this author!"
Peeta lifts his head, tousling golden bangs out of his summer-sky-blue eyes and Katniss bizarrely wonders what it would be like to run her fingers through those strands. "Yeah, isn't she great?"
For some reason, Katniss finds it within herself to smirk. "Great enough to skip class for, I imagine. Better read than those chapters in Hunger Games History, anyway…" She shudders thinking of their toughest, most boring subject in school – and she actually does well in the class, the times when she's there! She sheepishly hands the tome back to him.
Peeta is blushing an adorable shade of red. "I'm not playing hooky by choice. My mother needed me to stay home and help work the ovens. Business comes before schooling, she always says. I'll be lucky to graduate with passable grades!..." He turns his book over in his hands. "You say you've read this author?"
Katniss blushes. Her one hand is combing through her single, chestnut braid with lightning speed – a nervous tic she's never been able to break. With the other, she's getting the fabric of her blue Reaping dress hopelessly creased. "Just the first one," she mumbles. "Daddy and – we… could never afford to buy the rest."
Peeta's face falls a little in sympathy; she almost wants to scowl at him for it, but refrains. She doesn't need his pity! "Oh. Um… this is the second one. I almost don't want to finish it. Who knows how long it will be before the last book in the trilogy comes out?"
Katniss's lips quirk into a smile. She glances down. "Right. Until then, it's textbooks and Capitol propaganda for us!" She stops short, glancing about. She shouldn't have said that out loud. Someone might hear.
Peeta, however, chuckles in understanding. "It is nice to escape to those enchanted worlds, isn't it?"
"Yeah. The district library has an appallingly small fiction section. It's quite sad, really. I'm thinking of starting a letter-writing campaign to the Mayor."
Peeta gazes at her, mystified. "Katniss Everdeen, who are you?"
She's stunned that he even knows her name, and also confused as to whether or not he asked such a thing rhetorically. "Unfortunately, not someone who can defeat dragons and slay evil witches." At the moment, the only witch she can think of right now is his mother, and she wouldn't dare try and cross her.
"No. You're just someone looking to help others find worlds to escape to."
"We all need help with something," Katniss shrugs, grunting a little as she attempts to gather her wares up in her arms.
"True." Peeta appears thoughtful. "Like, say, escaping from being forced to marry as a condition of running the family business."
"What?" Katniss glances back at him, bemused. "Don't join that business! Why would you want to run that business?" Even so, she feels her heart drop into her stomach on his behalf. She has heard of the practice some Merchants follow, of betrothing their children off to one another, mostly as a way to forge business alliances. The practice is seen as arcane and anathema to people like her in the Seam – one of the few freedoms left in Panem is to choose whom to marry or not marry at all. Now, it seems like even that has been taken away from Peeta.
"Actually, the business is very important to me. And I want to run it. But to run it, I have to, by my eighteenth birthday, pick a wife from a roomful of women who I don't know… and who don't really know me… and that person is supposed to help me run the business, and… I just don't think that's a decision you can make in six months…" His breathing is short and winded, and Katniss fears he's having a panic attack.
"Oh, no! That does not sound good at all! Here…" She tries to remember the technique that Prim taught her for this kind of ailment. "Bend over, put your head between your knees, and… That's it…." Eyes scanning frantically, she dashes over to the bookseller's cart and swipes a paper bag from amidst the tomes. "Here, breathe into this!" Peeta does so, and his gulps of air begin to calm. Katniss finds herself unconsciously rubbing his back.
"Well, I have to say, it seems like a very poor business plan, being forced to choose someone to marry in six months…"
"Thank you! That's exactly what I said!" Peeta's face emerges from the bag. "Even my own mother says you have to at least dance with a person once before you know if you like them…. I'd like to know if I like a person before I marry them!"
Katniss peers at him curiously. She bites her lip. "How…. how will you know?"
"What?"
"… When you like a person enough to marry them?"
He considers the question seriously. Finally, he shrugs. "My mother just says you are certain." He frowns, clearly thinking that answer too vague. "And… I suppose it would feel like…"
"Like what?" Katniss leans forward, oddly on tenterhooks, on baited breath.
Peeta bites his lip when he thinks. She finds it strangely captivating. He starts to flip through the pages of his text. "Well, you know how in the first book, when the heroes sneak into the palace…."
"… at the evil queen's ball!" Katniss finishes, grey eyes shining.
"Yeah! And when they waltzed together, the author describes this sort of…."
"…. Swooping feeling?"
They both freeze, Peeta gazing at Katniss intently. "Yeah. I…. imagine it would feel like that."
Katniss swallows, her throat suddenly dry. "Yeah….." She shakes herself out of whatever spell she is under. "Well, it sounds to me like you have a very complicated home life."
"Monumentally complicated," Peeta chuffs bitterly. "But what about you? What are…. you escaping from?"
Katniss tenses, averting her eyes sadly. "Let's just say you're not the only one with a complicated home life." A beat, and then she opens up: "The worst part is that feeling that… there's nothing I can do about it. That I'm just…."
"Stuck."
They both say it at the same time, freezing to peer at each other curiously, sensing inherently the kinship of another person.
The spell is broken again, this time by the clock in the Justice Building chiming. "Oh, no!" Katniss blanches. "The school…. Prim! It's late! I have to go!"
"Wait!" Peeta catches her hand. "I can walk you to the school, if you'd like! Or even walk you home!"
She peers at him, almost amused. "I'm sorry, I really have to…"
"Let me…. buy you a copy of the new book at least!"
Katniss tilts her head to study him. "Why would you…?"
"As a thank you for your kindness!"
For a moment, she almost takes him up on the offer, but then hears the clock chime again. "No, no, I'm sorry, I can't risk being late! They might find out…"
"Who would find out what?"
"Goodbye!" And Katniss turns and flees.
She sees Peeta every day after that.
Sometimes, it's after school or between classes, when, where once there might be only a glance shared, now there is a brief word or two of encouragement exchanged.
More oftentimes, Katniss talks with him out back on the loading dock of the Bakery, in the rear alley, while she's trading squirrel for bread. Peeta makes a show of praising her aim, declaring how she gets the squirrels right in the eye, every time. His praise makes her stomach all gooey, and her cheeks warm with color, in spite of herself and her views on courtship.
But that isn't what this is. This is just…. friendship.
Isn't it? After all, she needs a friend.
Katniss's favorite times with the Boy with the Bread, however, are in the Meadow.
Occasionally, after she's come back from a hunt, she and Peeta will meet there in secret, or at least it feels that way. He can never stay for long, for fear his mother will wonder where he is. But in these stolen moments, Peeta draws for her, and sometimes simply draws her. She sings for him, and they listen to the mockingjays echo the tune back.
One golden afternoon, Katniss is resting her head in his lap, letting Peeta play with the chestnut strands of her hair. His large yet gentle fingers suddenly still, and he speaks:
"You know, I'd give anything to freeze this moment, right now, and live in it forever."
"OK," she murmurs, snuggling against him.
Katniss can feel him smiling down at her. "Then you'll allow it?"
She nods solemnly. "I'll allow it."
One evening, she is late completing her hunting rounds, enough that she actually had to leave Prim home alone and risk the woods in the evening, getting on sunset.
On her way back, dark storm clouds have gathered, and Katniss crosses the Meadow in a driving rain. By the time the muddy dirt roads have given way to the Merchant Quarter's cobblestoned streets, it is a full-on downpour.
The back lamplight is on at the Bakery's rear loading dock. It's late, far too late, she's never been this tardy making a trade but Prim needs to eat and she has to try. Peeta's told her how he sometimes has to knead the new dough batches, ready for rising overnight. Perhaps he's still up, working…
Thank the State! Peeta answers the door, and she half-smiles, half-cringes apologetically, holding the squirrel carcass aloft. Peeta just nods and ducks back inside.
A few minutes later, he emerges with a fat loaf of bread, making the exchange and passing it into her arms.
…. It's still warm from the ovens.
At that moment, Katniss flashes back to a night in the rain just like this one. To bread that was warm, even burnt, and tossed to her. An act of kindness that, with her friendship, she has only begun to repay, and certainly not yet in full.
She wonders if she ever will.
She tosses the loaf of bread aside, so that it lands in the mud.
She yanks Peeta forward and into the rain until her lips are suddenly, fiercely on his.
She kisses him.
Fireworks.
His mouth is warm and wet against hers, and she doesn't know the first thing about kissing, so her mouth slides and slants awkwardly along his. Katniss shivers, and it isn't from the chill of the rain, when she senses Peeta's burly and strong arms steal about her, as he kisses her back. His calloused, rough, massive hands – hands which are somehow holding her so gently, dip lower until they are caressing her toned and accentuated bum through the skirts of her blue dress.
Her lips part willingly under his, granting him entrance…
… and then she gasps around his tongue when she feels his palm grip her thigh, raising it up to his waist. She submits to him in one, fluid motion, curling her leg around his torso at the back of the knee.
Katniss and Peeta break apart with a sensuous POP! They are both soaked from the rain, and the only illumination of their kiss is the loading dock light and spider-web flashes of lightning across the nighttime sky.
Katniss can feel her breasts heaving under her bodice, as she pants for air. She trembles at how dark and dilated Peeta's blue eyes have become. In them, there is a question:
Do we dare?
Wordlessly, she untwines her leg from his waist. Peeta takes her hand and, just as silently, guides her with purpose towards the back loading dock door.
He brings her inside the bakery….
The storm is still raging outside, covering up the sounds coming from inside the Bakery.
By the light of candles, Katniss and Peeta kiss languorously, feverishly. She pulls his mouth down hungrily to hers; with a sigh, the beautiful huntress leans, sags back into where her…. her lover is spooning her from behind.
There is a rustling sound as Katniss helps Peeta shrug off her father's hunting jacket from her shoulders; the garment pools with a rustle on the floor at their feet.
Undressing her from her bodice so that the top half of her blue Reaping dress falls away, Peeta amorously cups the swell of Katniss's bare breast. Katniss hums in pleasure as his fingers knead the bud of her nipple to painful, aching tenderness. With his other hand, he has shoved her skirts up over her hips, so that he can palm the wet heat of her sex.
Peeta now has her bent forward over the countertop, so that she bares her ass to him. Katniss feels her breathing become labored, coming in rough gasps and pants in anticipation, as she hears the clang of a belt buckle. She spreads her legs for him, into a wide stance.
Peeta mounts her, then takes her fiercely and swiftly. Katniss arches her back and lets out a cry.
This is how they make love, playing the Beast with Two Backs. Peeta thrusts in between the round globes of Katniss's ass cheeks, his balls deliciously slapping against her buttocks. Katniss has often watched the animals in the woods mate in this fashion. At one time, she would have thought the coupling carnal and vile. Since Peeta has come into her life, however, she has fantasized about it, wanted to try it for herself. She finds that she likes it a lot, Peeta fucking her. His breath is shallow, hot and heavy against her earlobe, and she breathlessly commands him to take her "harder... faster... faster..."
She cants her bum into Peeta's cock, drawing him deeper into her anus, grinding against him. In response, he humps her faster. Katniss moans like a whore, her nipples pressing into the varnished wood of the countertop and, oh…. oh, God, surely his parents or his brothers will hear…..! The noises torn from her throat are like none she has ever heard uttered, and they rise shamelessly in both volume and pitch, the faster they fuck.
"Huhhhhhh… Uhhhhhhhhhh….. Ugggghhhhh… Ohhhhhhh… Ahhhhhhh… AHHHHHHHH!... AHHHHHHHHH!"
When she feels herself close to orgasm, Peeta suddenly claps a free hand over her mouth, stifling her plaintive cries. He rubs against her buttocks faster, though his thrusts are weakening into short bursts. Katniss continues to groan and whimper into his palm.
"Mmmmm… Hmmmmmmmm…. MMMMMMM! – MMMMMMHMMMMMMM!"
Her fingers dig into the flour on the countertop, getting the white substance under her nails.
Her eyelids flutter shut, her grey orbs rolling up into the back of her head.
Her toes curl.
She cums.
Once Peeta has driven her to completion, he chases her over the edge before he finally ejaculates deep inside her.
Katniss sags noodily against the tabletop, sated and spent.
Turning about in Peeta's arms, she kisses him deeply. The passion of his kiss in return makes her swoon and before she knows it, he is lifting her onto the countertop and rolling her onto her back.
He climbs on top of her. Gulping, she opens her thighs to him.
Peeta accepts the feast.
They have sex again.
Katniss leaves his arms well before first light, her blue dress close to torn and nearly ruined and partially hanging off of her. She almost forgets to take her father's hunting jacket with her, and doubles back for it, not wanting to leave any evidence that she has been with him.
The morning after they are intimate, Peeta steals away and they meet in the Meadow. Without so much as a hello, Katniss pulls him on top of her and they go for a shag in the grasses, the tall flowers concealing their copulating bodies.
Once he's finished with her, Peeta pants from in between her glistening breasts, "I'll never be able to let this go."
"You'll have to," Katniss croons sadly, combing her fingers through his golden hair. "You'll need to be married in less than four months."
He glances up at her, smile smoldering. "Actually…. I have someone in mind."
Katniss's grey eyes pop, and they are not having this conversation, they're not…. It would not do for him to discuss, much less propose marriage; asking for her hand would surely ruin him. Still, heart pounding, she makes her best attempt at playing coy.
"Well…. what would you say to her?"
"Who?"
"The girl who would share your life? What would you say, to make her day?"
"…. Do you want to be my wife?" Peeta lilts it up into what he must think is a trick question.
Katniss giggles. "That's it?"
Surging forward, Peeta captures her lips with his, and she purrs, melting into the kiss. "Please, Katty girl…. will you marry me?"
She gapes at him, speechless. "Your mother….!"
"…. will just have to live with it. I've read some of the law books – you can go to the Justice Building and stand before the Justice of the Peace if you're under 18. You just need a parent's written consent. My dad would do it for us." He caresses her cheek, and Katniss leans into it with a sigh, even though this is crazy, it's madness, they're….
"I'll take care of you, and Prim. I love you… Marriage would keep you on step ahead of the law, and come May, you can sign for guardianship." It's true; she's vented to him about this more than once, and he's kept her secret. Any day now, though, the Peacekeepers will learn her mother is dead, and has been for months; she and Prim cannot keep up the ruse for much longer….
Gazing into the eyes of his handsome, selfless, kind boy, who would have her in marriage, and even be willing to do so to protect her sister who she loves more than life…
Drawing him close, Katniss kisses Peeta soundly, hungrily.
When they break apart, she murmurs out:
"Yes, Peeta, I will marry you."
"I FORBID IT!" the Witch shrieks, looking absolutely stupefied and quite in disbelief. Apoplectic might even be a better word.
Katniss glances to her fiancé, subtly lifting one eyebrow, as if to silently say, I told you so. Her husband-to-be (she gets such a rush thinking that) is balanced on the balls of his feet, like he's bracing himself to… possibly rush in and shield her with his own body? Katniss hopes it won't come to that, but with all she's heard, especially from him, about this hellion of a woman, all bets are off.
"The decision is made, Mother," Peeta states calmly, reaching for Katniss's hand. Lacing his fingers through hers, he squeezes them.
"So… so that's it, then?" the Witch splutters. "You'd throw away the business for this… this…."
Peeta pulls Katniss tight into his side and actually raises himself up to his full height, in a clear attempt to intimidate. Though she wishes he didn't have to do so, Katniss is nonetheless proud of Peeta, for standing up to his mother. They've talked enough to know that opposing her is a big step for him. "Yes. I would. And it appears that I am, if it means I get to be with the woman I love."
The Witch is gawping at him, mouth agape. Peeta simply stares her down. He had decided against mentioning Prim and the in-limbo guardianship. "I don't want to give her something she can use against you," he had explained to Katniss, one day after a pretty intense make-out session in the Meadow, during which he had also presented her with a golden engagement band. "This has to be about protecting Prim." Overcome, Katniss had kissed him soundly at that.
The Witch's face has collapsed into a cold line. "Don't bother coming back," she growls at Peeta. "Enjoy taking care of yourself and your little whore. I always knew you'd knock up some slut one day."
Peeta makes a sudden, furious lunge towards his mother and Katniss has to embrace him, wrap her arms completely around him, to hold him back. "She's not pregnant, Mother, and she is no slut!"
"And you're a disgrace!" The Witch screams at him. "Just like your little Seam wife's mother!"
Peeta smirks. "If that's the model on which you judge me, Mother, than I can think of no finer example to aspire to." Katniss beams at him wetly, and then, in full view of Mrs. Mellark, and just because she can, the striking Seam huntress reaches up to kiss him hungrily on the mouth.
The Witch makes some kind of squeaking noise, then rounds on her own husband. "Well? Are you going to let this stand? He still has a few months yet before he's of age; maybe we can talk him out of it."
But Mr. Mellark just smiles, then hands Peeta a signed form, consenting that his youngest son and his bride be wed even before either has turned 18. The Baker even stoops and kisses Katniss's cheek. She blushes. "Blessings on you both, my children. Let me know when the Toasting is?" From his deliberate phrasing, he seems to make it clear that he will be attending alone.
"Thanks, Dad," Peeta grins, shaking his hand.
Then the couple goes home, arm-in-arm, to the Everdeen homestead, to tell Prim the news. Hovering in the parlor, Katniss watches, her heart in her eyes, as Peeta asks Prim for her sister's hand in marriage.
"Your sister and I want to have a Toasting, Prim. May I have Katniss's hand?"
In answer, Prim leaps up and squeals, throwing her arms around Peeta's middle. "I always wanted a big brother!" A beat, and then, "Wait: will you live here?"
"Absolutely!"
Prim squeals again and pelts for the front door. "I gotta tell Rory! Wait till he hears!"
Katniss floats out from where she has been hovering, smiling at Peeta adoringly. "I love you," she murmurs.
Peeta grins bashfully. "She deserved a say."
At this, Katniss laughs. "And you didn't think she would approve of us? My sister's been trying to marry me off for years!"
Peeta and Katniss decide to make their wedding day the morning after Katniss's birthday. That would be May 9th. By now, since his home life has almost completely fallen apart following his mother's disownment, Peeta spends the night before they are to be wed bunking with friends.
Primrose attends to her big sister, helping Katniss dress in the white bridal gown that once belonged to their mother – the one family heirloom. Apparently, Mother had absconded with it when she ran off to marry their father. In Merchant culture, a woman's wedding dress is meant to be a right of passage, passed down from mother to daughter.
Prim is giddy as she holds up the bridal train, and her sister begins the long walk down through the Seam and through the cobblestoned streets of Town, head held high, to get married in the Justice Building. The formal part of the ceremony, in which she and Peeta will stand before the District Justice of the Peace to be lawfully wed in the eyes of the district law, shall be conducted here.
Peeta and Katniss affix their names to the marriage license, and then Prim follows with her signature as a witness. Hazelle Hawthorne gives Katniss away.
Then, Katniss quickly signs a writ of guardianship for her sister. After some discussion, she and Peeta had agreed that Katniss would have sole custody.
"We'll still raise her together," Peeta had promised. "But if you ever wanted me to be assigned as guardian, that has to be your choice." Katniss has kissed him deeply at his understanding.
Finally, Katniss and Peeta seal their marriage with a kiss, and Prim nearly tackles them both. The newlyweds leave the Justice Building, eyes only for each other, and Peeta lifts his young bride and new sister-in-law onto the back of a cart, which he pulls to their home in the Seam. He and Katniss had managed to arrange a continuation in the Everdeen sisters'current living arrangements, rather than be assigned a new dwelling as is usually customary.
That evening, Katniss and Peeta marry in the Meadow. They conduct their Toasting over a bonfire, set amidst the very grasses where they first began to fall in love. Peeta feeds Katniss a piece of bread – raisins and nuts, her favorite. Grey eyes solemn and sparkling in the firelight, Katniss tilts her head and permits her husband to kiss her. The wedding kiss deepens quickly, and with a sigh, Katniss casually tosses away her bridal bouquet. She laughs musically when Prim is the one to catch it, the little girl not noticing the hopeful look Rory Hawthorne is sending her way. Someday, Prim will wear the garment that is their mother's wedding dress….
Mr. Cartwright strikes up a reel on his fiddle, and Peeta and Katniss dance at their wedding. But the true coup de grace is when Peeta presents his bride with a wedding cake he baked himself. Katniss can't believe he would do this for her, isn't sure how and where he would have had access to an oven to bake it, now that he's been disowned, nor does she care. Happily, she loops her arms around his neck to kiss him soundly.
Prim, Posy and Mrs. Hawthorne sing the traditional District 12 wedding song, while Peeta sweeps Katniss off her feet and carries her bridal-style into their house. Prim follows her sister and brother-in-law inside – after some debate and even an offer from Hazelle to take her for an evening so the newlyweds could be alone, Katniss had decided she wanted her sister to stay with her and Peeta. The first night of the rest of their lives together, the three of them, as a family.
There is a blissful quiet over the dinner table that night, until at last, Prim glances at her sister curiously.
"Are you and Peeta going to have a baby?"
Seeing as it's coming from Prim, Katniss is amused by the question, and she pretends to rub her hand over her flat abdomen. "Well, Little Duck, after much deliberation…. no niece or nephew for you, I'm sorry."
Peeta puts his arm around his wife. "Let your sister and I discuss that, Prim. But even if it never happens, we have you. At the moment, that's enough for now." It is a response that is carefully neutral. Katniss decides to let it go. She knows Peeta would want a baby with her someday. She doesn't – not as long as there are still Hunger Games. Raising Prim will hopefully be enough for these first several years.
Katniss tucks Prim into bed, and sings her to sleep. She drifts into Peeta.
"Let's go to bed, husband."
Peeta smirks. "Lead the way, wife."
The spouses climb into bed together, Peeta careful to keep the windows open – a quirk of his. It isn't long before he is on top of Katniss and rutting against her, and her nightdress is shoved up over her hips and the bodice wrenched loose, exposing her breasts and nipples to the cool spring air.
Katniss draws her husband close, even as she lets out a choked, "P-Prim…"
"…. is asleep," Peeta presses a kiss just below her earlobe. "Please, Katty girl…. I want you…."
Katniss arches her back into him and moans; seizing his glutes in her fists, she humps into his erection as he begins to thrust into her. "I want you too…. but Peeta?"
"Hmmm? Yes, dearest?" He is mouthing open kisses along her jawline and down to her collarbone.
"I don't want to have children."
Peeta simply kisses her and accedes to her wishes. He tells her they will be OK. They have Prim…. and, best of all, they have each other.