One-Shot: None of It Matters
Katniss Everdeen doesn't believe in the superstitions that govern District 12 culture.
Well, she doesn't believe in some of them. For instance, she has never bought into the voodoo that sharing a kiss with someone on Reaping morning can spare you (and your partner) from being Reaped for the Hunger Games. It just seems like an excuse for district boys to get fresh with district girls, and she's never been about that. Not kissing, nor anything leading from it, up to and including marriage.
Although, she will concede that the traditions surrounding the Toasting – Twelve's marriage ritual – are beautiful.
So it is with great confusion (and perhaps a tad of humility) that the Reaping Kiss she shares on the morning of the Reaping for the 74th Hunger Games probably saves her life.
Katniss and Gale are up early that morning, bagging some last minute game. The Reaping doesn't start until ten, so they have time to make a small squirrel trade to the Baker on his back loading dock before moving on to the Hob.
As the Baker inspects the squirrels, Katniss notices the man's youngest son – her age, a classmate in school – watching the exchange, watching her, with interest. Flummoxed, she frowns and even sneers a bit at him.
Gale doesn't notice the exchange, and might have even attempted to defend a Seam lady's honor if he did. He no doubt would have approved of Katniss's cold brush off. As hunters, the team only deals with a select few Merchants, barely a handful. The Baker made the cut for he is an honest and fair man by reputation. Delly Cartwright, daughter of the shoe cobbler, is another – though Katniss is convinced Gale includes her in their customer base because she and Delly are school friends.
They are – sort of. At any rate, Katniss has taken to eating with Madge Undersee, the Mayor's daughter, and Delly just glommed on. The beautiful Seam huntress sometimes wonders if the bubbly redhead was grown in a Capitol lab – no one can be so happy in this district, where you can starve to death in safety. Katniss is aware that, for her business, Gale tolerates Delly, though he doesn't like her.
He doesn't much like Madge Undersee either, and they sell her strawberries at the service door of the Justice Building where she lives with her father. If there is one type of person Gale hates more than 'Townies,' as he calls the Merchants, then it is anyone 'Capitol' or who has been raised 'Capitol.' While Madge Undersee may be native Twelve-born, by virtue of her father's position, she lives a lifestyle that no one else here can imagine.
Katniss prowls behind Gale as they head into the Hob, still trying to dislodge the jumble of cartwheels that her body embarked on when seeing the Baker's boy. It's busy today – there's even a contingent of Peacekeepers, in on the take of the goods. One of them turns, spots Katniss, and traps her in his stare.
Katniss stares back.
It's really not that hard – despite her aversion to anything resembling romance, she is still a young woman, with carnal needs. She's not above deeming a man attractive. And whatever else can be said about Private Darius Freeman, it is that he is attractive. Thick waves of red locks tumble down nearly to his shoulders, the shade of the strands even brighter than those of Delly Cartwright – likely the only other ginger in this district.
Darius can't be much older than past Reaping age himself – 19, at the most 20. He has a chiseled face, and a strong jaw. Cerulean eyes deep as pools. He's been stationed here as a cadet in Twelve but a few years, yet is already a known entity.
Much like nearly everyone else in this district, the handsome Peacekeeper officer has a reputation, and it's that of a shameless flirt. He is neither subtle nor particularly apologetic about it, but Katniss supposes that on an officer's diet and lodgings in the Barracks, the men in white have needs they must fulfill when and where they can.
"Why aren't you in your Reaping best? Show a little district spirit on today of all days, Miss Everdeen, hmm?" Darius's eyes twinkle and he playfully tugs at her braid. Flicks a palm along the hem of her father's hunting jacket. Katniss twists away, smirking.
"Careful now, Katniss! Some boys might think you're giving encouragement for a Reaping Kiss! Or have you stolen one yet?"
She blushes, largely without meaning to. "I don't believe in that stuff. Superstitious crap."
Darius feigns shock. "Why, madame, do you mean to say you've never had a Reaping Kiss, and at your age?"
Gale moves conspicuously between them. "Leave off, Darius. She ain't never had one, never will until she's aged out!"
Darius appraises Gale with intrigue. Katniss only flushes harder. The Peacekeeper wouldn't be the first to wonder about her hunting partner and her. A boy and a girl slipping the fence and into the woods for hours a day – hunting can't be all they're doing hidden in those trees (it is), and well…. people talk.
Most people are idiots, and can mind their own damn business. Who Katniss might kiss (or just as sooner not) is her affair alone.
Gale makes the rounds to the stalls and the shopkeepers on their payroll, while Katniss stands off a piece with Darius. They talk quietly, mostly about nothing here and there. She notices the cadet make a sweeping gaze of her developing chest. Katniss blooms scarlet, in spite of herself.
"Come on, Catnip! Reaping starts at 2. You'll need to wear something pretty."
Still chatting with Darius, Katniss waves him off. "You go ahead and let your Mama wash behind those big ears. I'll catch up!"
Gale frowns, glancing between his best friend and the Peacekeeper before ambling on, though clearly reluctantly.
Darius smirks. "Thought you mighta kissed Hawthorne goodbye at any rate."
"It's not like that," Katniss retorts. And it isn't. Half the Seam thinks something more is there with Gale and her; their mothers have apparently even talked of a Toasting. Not arranged, mind – those unions occur among the Merchants and are thus far less common. But there still is an assumption that one day….
Katniss shakes her head. She wishes people wouldn't make preconceived judgments about her. She is a woman of her own mind and heart.
Darius steps into her, smiling winningly. "You ever been kissed, Everdeen? Or kissed someone yourself just because you feel like it?"
Katniss bristles, flustered. "Nope. I'm an open book. People seem to know what I want before I know it myself."
"While probably true, it's also a shame," Darius leans in close to murmur along her ear: "Might be nice to tell people what you want without them having to guess."
Katniss doesn't have to guess about what this soldier wants, his intentions: he wants her. Despite her lack of interest in courtship, marriage or a family, the thought is nevertheless quite flattering. Between all three Everdeen women, Prim is the most likely to be noticed for her natural beauty, and to a lesser extent their mother. Katniss more resembles her father.
Darius walks her out of the warehouse, and they both split to take opposite paths down the dusty road: he towards the Barracks near the center of Town, she to the outskirts where the Seam rests.
Katniss bites the inside of her cheek. She still thinks the Reaping Kiss is a lot of nonsense, but she's never been kissed before, for any reason.
Simply for curiosity's sake, even if just to confirm her negative views on the subject, kissing might be something valuable to experience, even just once.
Katniss abruptly turns back and throws herself at Darius. She is surprised to see him lunging for her, his brain clearly on a similar wavelength.
In hindsight, it is difficult to determine who makes the first move. Katniss supposes it doesn't matter.
Her and Darius's lips meet, crash together fiercely, in a wild and clumsy kiss.
He's better at kissing than she is, more experienced, and Peacekeeper and huntress duck into the shadows along the side of the warehouse and make out for close to five minutes. When they finally break apart, Katniss's breasts are heaving under her top, her face rouge, her chestnut hair mussy enough that it's in danger of coming out of its braid.
It is her very first kiss. It's also a Reaping Kiss, she thinks. She decides that it counts. Maybe, if she's picked later in the Sqaure, she can at least laugh, vindicated and with proof that the Reaping Kiss doesn't work.
Katniss returns home and allows her mother and sister to wash, dress and generally fuss over her. Clad in a blue Reaping dress, she accompanies her family down to the Square. This will be her fifth Reaping this year, and Prim's first, so she is terrified for her sister's sake.
As it turns out, Katniss should have been terrified for others.
Gasps and murmurings go up when Effie Trinket calls the name of the Mayor's own daughter for female tribute. No one volunteers, for no one in Twelve would ever willingly volunteer for a death sentence. A tribute from the coalfields has only ever come back alive twice, after all.
To see a Merchant go in, and the richest of them all, practically a Capitolite…. somewhere, standing for his final Reaping, Gale Hawthorne is smirking.
Any smirk is surely gone in the next second, however, when Effie calls for the boys:
"Gale Hawthorne!"
His mother and three little siblings are weeping. Katniss has to fight for composure herself when she hugs him goodbye in the Justice Building. She even thinks that if he wanted to find out what it would be like to kiss her, as Darius now has, she would let him.
But Gale simply tells her goodbye and to not let his family starve.
Gale Hawthorne becomes the Victor of the 74th Hunger Games, and only the third Victor in District 12 history.
He comes home to live in the Victors' Village a changed man.
Katniss, Prim and Mrs. Everdeen help the Hawthornes move into the mansion that Gale has earned through literal blood and sweat. No more will they starve. Katniss feels slightly envious, though her morals and views on the Games should prevent this. Gale offers to set aside some of his earnings for her and her family, though as a gesture, it is perfunctory. He should – and does – know Katniss will refuse out of pride.
With his new status as a Victor, Gale is more hamstrung. The hunts together beyond the fence pretty much cease. It would not do for a Victor to so flagrantly break the law by going outside Twelve's borders. Katniss takes over the trades from that point forward.
The following winter is brutal. Several mineshafts cave in from the snow. Power in Town and the Justice Building goes out more than once. Only the Hawthornes and the drunk Haymitch ride out the season relatively unscathed, in their palaces with back-up Capitol generators. Katniss can tell suddenly having so much makes Gale uncomfortable.
The new wealth clearly doesn't also help him reconcile with the fate of Madge Undersee, his district partner in the arena. Reconcile the girl he thought he knew from the girl she proved to be.
It had been interesting for Katniss to watch two people she counted as friends (really, the only friends she has) learn about each other out of necessity. Madge softened some of Gale's heart, if not completely his prejudices. There were even moments when Katniss wondered if they were falling in love with each other.
It doesn't matter now. Madge is dead.
She isn't the last.
The Baker takes a shocking turn in his health and passes. So does Mrs. Everdeen, despite Prim's best Healing efforts to save their mother. Katniss watches her mother wither away with something akin to bitter resignation. Mother has been dead for some time, following the death of her husband – her body just needed time to catch up.
What really fills Katniss with terror is what will become of her and her sister now that their last surviving parent is gone. Katniss won't be seventeen for another few months, and a writ of guardianship cannot be petitioned until one is at least eighteen – close to a year and a half away.
Likely, the girls will be sent to the Community Home, a fate worse than death. Odds of being Reaped go up astronomically if you are an orphan – the government rationalizes it as deploying tributes who no one will miss.
Gale tells Katniss he will try to petition the Justice Building and see if the girls can't move into Victors' Village with his family, if only just until Katniss can claim guardianship of Prim. Mayor Undersee would do him that favor, he thinks.
She could be reading too much into it, of course, but Katniss suspects there is more to Gale's offer than he is saying. There are only three ways to avoid the Home: come of age and come of age quickly, move in with relatives or get married. Even with most everyone in the Seam related to some degree or another, Katniss and the Hawthornes are technically not family. And, she doesn't see herself getting married anytime soon.
It is actually Darius who solves the problem.
He helps the Everdeen sisters bury their mother in an unmarked plot behind their homestead, in the dead of night. Then the kindly cadet undertakes a big risk by slightly falsifying Katniss's identification records, aging her by a year.
Winter keeps Twelve in its grip far longer than normal, well into the spring, but on May 8th, Katniss is able (albeit under muddied circumstances) to sign for guardianship of Prim. Darius's bet is that Old Cray, the Head, won't look hard enough at her age, and the girls can ride out the next year until Katniss truly does turn 18. They won't even have to leave their home.
Katniss can't think of a way to thank Darius except to kiss him. It's only their second, and the first initiated by her. She even says Yes when he asks to take her out on a date. They go for drinks in the Hob, and when Darius lets her off on her front porch, they share a steamy kiss goodnight.
The Quarter Quell is announced about this same time, as warmth finally blooms through Twelve. With a Quell being a special edition of the Games, a twist is announced: the Reaping age has shifted to all district-born aged 19 or older. Katniss and Prim sail through this Reaping with their safety assured.
The next year passes. Gale and Haymitch go to the Capitol to mentor for the Quell, but come back with two adults in coffins.
Katniss and Darius continue to court, though at her request, they keep it a secret. Prim knows anyway, and is clearly thrilled for her sister.
The following winter, Cray is suddenly relieved of his post without warning. His replacement is grizzled and far crueler. He takes his job too seriously in a way Cray never did.
Katniss learns this the hard way when the new Head Peacekeeper, Thread, catches her trading squirrel on the back loading dock to Peeta, the Baker's youngest son, who has taken over the sales since his father's death the previous winter.
Thread orders a battalion of men – Katniss does not see her boyfriend, Darius, among them – to take her to the whipping post in the Square and flog her.
Desperately, Peeta invents up a lie whole cloth that he was the one giving the squirrels to Katniss. To her shock and dismay, Thread buys the story, and his men seize Peeta to whip him instead.
Katniss can only watch in helpless bewilderment as Darius, of all people, is forced to take a cat-o-nine-tails to the boy's strong back.
When the flogging has concluded, a team of miners carries Peeta aloft to the Seam in the hopes that Prim has absorbed enough of her mother's teachings to heal him. Gale and Haymitch rush down from the Victors' Village to lend a hand.
Watching people fill their kitchen and hover over where Peeta lies prone on their kitchen table, Katniss is dissolved into hysterics – and she doesn't even fully understand why.
Maybe it's her bafflement that a Merchant would lie for her and willingly be whipped in her place. That a man would show a kindness to her and expect nothing back. True, Darius has done kind things for her without expecting to be owed anything in return, but….
The fact that it is this Merchant man who has shown such a kindness to her….
It is not the first time that Peeta Mellark has shown her a kindness that is difficult to repay.
Katniss decides she can at least start paying back what she is owed by sitting vigil at Peeta's sickbed every day.
Slowly, she nurses him back to health.
When he regains consciousness, they finally have their first, real conversation that doesn't involve trades or squirrels.
After a week, they have told each other their favorite colors.
After two weeks, they are friends.
Winter melts away into another spring and then summer.
Peeta gradually recovers from his injuries enough to return to work at the Bakery.
Katniss is devastated when Darius tells her one day in the Meadow that he is to be transferred away from Twelve. Thread's arrival has prompted a top-to-bottom restructuring, and he is just among the last battalion to be replaced by more hardened cadets fresh from the Academies.
"Where will you be stationed?" Katniss asks him, searching his eyes, her face stricken. Darius explains he won't know until he is given his deployment papers in the Capitol, signed by the Commandant.
The day her boyfriend is to ship out, Katniss sees him off at the train station. As the whistle blows, and steam mist swirls around them on the platform, Darius and Katniss share a long kiss goodbye.
It is unlikely they will ever see each other again. Travel in Panem is heavily regulated. District natives can't roam beyond their homelands, unless they are a Victor or are granted a special passport to conduct government business, approved by the President.
Katniss graduates from school. She stands for, and makes it through, her very last Reaping that summer.
Following turning 18 and surviving the last Reaping, it is quite common for young people in Twelve to get engaged to their sweethearts. Throughout the latter half of summer and well into the fall, there are always many Toastings among the district youth.
This year, Katniss is taken aback that among those who are to be wed is Peeta Mellark.
He has announced his engagement to Delly Cartwright, whom Katniss considers a close school friend. Blindsided as she is by the news, Katniss suspects the match may have been arranged. Merchants will sometimes betroth their children as a way to forge business alliances.
Or even as a way to just ensure an heir.
Katniss is torn when Delly invites her to the Toasting, even asks her to serve as a bridesmaid, though strangely, the wedding party will be left up to the approval of Peeta's mother. The Baker's widow has a reputation that was as well earned as that of her late husband, though far less glowing – many in the Seam, Katniss included, refer to her as 'the Witch' behind her back. Katniss is not surprised, and even relieved, when Delly later has to come back and sheepishly renege on her gesture, though the shoemaker's daughter makes clear she is not happy about being overruled by her soon-to-be mother-in-law.
As the wedding draws nearer, Katniss inexplicably feels acidic pain churn in her gut. Perhaps it's just as well that she was blocked from being Delly's bridesmaid, for to have to stand there and watch him be….. She'd just as soon not go, and likely would be better off in not going.
But then, during one of their back loading dock trades that Katniss has come to enjoy as a staple of her day in recent months, Peeta asks her personally if she will come.
"It…. would really mean a lot to me if you were there, Katty girl."
She's never minded him picking up on the nickname that's only ever been used by Prim. Plus, no amount of trade, and possibly not even nursing him back to health, can ever fully make up for what Katniss feels she still owes him. For saving her life.
Despite the bizarre anguish it causes her, despite her not fully discerning why she feels heartbroken as she stands in the Bakery's sitting room and watches the Boy with the Bread marry, Katniss wills herself to be there for her friend on his special day. His wedding day.
For Peeta Mellark is, has become, her friend.
….. Isn't he?
A year passes, then two. Katniss is now a young woman of twenty. She still hunts beyond the fence, having resolved, much as she has to never fall in love or marry, to never enter the mines. Between her kills and Prim's healing poultices, the sisters provide well enough for each other not to need a miner's wages.
She still sees Peeta every day, trading on the back loading dock of the Bakery which he and his wife, Delly, have taken over. As district law stipulates that inheritances pass down to the male heir, if any, Delly's brother will be learning the trade of the shoe store.
Gale is by now turning into a hardened mentor at 22. Katniss visits him up Victors' Hill when she can. Prim has taken to paying a call on Gale's brother, Rory, often, and this acts as a perfect excuse for the eldest Everdeen sister. Watching their siblings, Katniss and Gale joke that they may become related by marriage after all before long.
Even now, some four years on, it is obvious Madge's death continues to weigh on Gale, haunt him. Every summer, he leaves for the Capitol to mentor with Haymitch, leaving his mother to mind the little ones who are not so little anymore. Surreptitiously observing him one day over at Madge's grave, in the cemetery plot near the back of the Village, Katniss wonders if her old hunting partner did fall for the Mayor's daughter, at least to some extent. How that might or might not have changed Gale is difficult to say – he's rarely seen out in public anymore.
Katniss continues her trades in the Hob, the Seam and in Town. Through making her rounds, and a little scuttlebutt from Prim, the Merchant class is currently in a bit of a stir, the fall following the 78th Hunger Games.
Rumor has it that the Baker (really, the new Baker, Peeta) and his wife have separated.
Katniss feels her stomach do a strange flip-flop when she first hears the news from her sister, and then has it confirmed by Greasy Sae. Word on the street is that Peeta and Delly have failed to get pregnant, failed to produce an heir and have decided to go their separate ways. There is even talk that Peeta and Delly have only ever viewed each other more as friends; after all, it was all but confirmed that their engagement and marriage was an arranged one.
Divorce as an institution isn't recognized in Panem, and certainly not under any district law. In fact, according to Justice Building statutes, it might be illegal.
But just about everybody in Twelve knows someone who is separated. It's almost as common as knowing someone who went into the Games.
In their early morning exchange of goods and small talk, Katniss decides not to bring up the topic of her friend's failed marriage. If Peeta wants to open up to her, he will, but her Seam instincts prevent her from wanting to pry.
Peeta doesn't discuss the end of him and Delly, except to say she has already moved out of the Bakery, and back in with her folks. Apparently, Mr. and Mrs. Cartwright are just as disappointed as his own mother is; Peeta doubts the living arrangement is tenable even temporarily and certainly not long-term.
Feeling bad for him, bad for them both, Katniss gets an idea: Hazelle is starting to get too old to perform the upkeep of Gale's mansion in the Village, and the younger ones only assist in this chore when they are made to. Katniss offers to arrange for Delly a housekeeper situation at Gale's mansion and even promises to make sure Gale pays the cobbler's daughter handsomely.
Peeta seems grateful, if also a little baffled. "Why are you doing this?" he marvels aloud.
Katniss looks at him. Really looks at him. She can't provide the real answer, lest she wanted to die of shame or worse, look like a hussy.
So instead, she states, because it is partially still true: "I still owe you. For the whipping. And…." she adds before she can lose her nerve. "For the bread."
She is stunned and a little touched when Peeta seems to understand exactly what she is talking about, in regards to the latter. "What, from when we were kids?"
She nods dumbly, her lips pursed in a thin, solemn line. "I still owe you…" she murmurs quietly. Her hands have resorted to combing through her chestnut braid, untangling it and then re-braiding it with lightning speed. It's a horrible nervous habit she hasn't been able to break.
"No, you don't," Peeta smiles at her and her stomach inverts.
"Yes, I do," she counters. An awkward pause, and then inspiration suddenly strikes her: "Meet me out in the Meadow at sundown tonight."
Bemused, Peeta nods slowly. Katniss turns on her tail and flees, as she wonders:
What has she just done?
The sun is setting over the hills beyond the coalmines when Peeta meets Katniss just beyond the district fence that evening. Softly, she takes his hand in hers.
"Come with me," she murmurs low. With purpose, she guides him by the hand across the Meadow and into the trees.
Katniss shows him the lake where she and her sister first learned to swim. She shows Peeta the hunting cabin her father built himself.
Peeta seems amazed. "I never knew a place like this existed. Not after the Dark Days," he mumbles.
Katniss turns to face him, a cool autumnal breeze tickling the hem of her blue Reaping dress, over top of which she wears her father's hunting jacket.
"Why did you bring me out here?" Peeta wants to know.
She appraises him judiciously. "Because I owed you," she announces finally.
Peeta chuckles. "I think the balance sheet between us has long since been paid in full, don't you?"
Katniss shakes her head. "Not yet." A long silence and then she works up the nerve to ask him something that has been plaguing her for the better part of three years:
"Why did you lie to Thread for me? Why did you let yourself get whipped? Why did you save me?"
The smoldering look with which Peeta fixes her could freeze stone. "You know why," he whispers, almost huskily.
Katniss's grey orbs expand, and her mouth falls agape. Yes, she does know why – she has for a while.
And when Peeta suddenly takes a deliberate step into her, she doesn't shy away like the skittish deer she has felled. She is trembling, though, even as she solemnly raises her eyes to his.
She tilts her head back the slightest bit, almost in challenge.
The rational side of Katniss should be shouting to the treetops that this is wrong – that, for all intents and purposes, the man before her is technically still married. To embark on an….. affair would be madness!
Peeta's face softens as he bends towards her, and Katniss is struck by his eyes, bluer than Darius's had been. Eyes as blue as a summer sky….
Peeta dips his head. Closes the gap.
Their lips meet.
He kisses her –
…. and, with a shuddering gasp, Katniss wastes no time in kissing him back.
The sound she makes steals the breath from her lungs and also parts her mouth willingly under his, so that she can greet his tongue, which now twines and plays with hers. Looping her arms sultrily around his neck, her fingers weaving into those blond curls she has always secretly wondered about, Katniss closes her eyes and deepens the kiss. She can feel Peeta's strong, calloused, truly massive hands encircle her slim waist, sweep up her back, and she ponders how a man built so roughly can embrace her so gently.
Gale would be furious, if he saw how passionately, languorously, she is kissing this man. A Townie man and a Seam woman caught with their lips fused together like this would still cause quite a stir, as it did in her parents' day when they were first married.
But as she and Peeta continue to kiss, staggering backwards into the privacy of her father's hunting cabin, Katniss realizes she doesn't care. Just as she had grown to not care when she was kissing, romantically involved with, Darius.
Capitol, Victor, Townie, Seam – none of it matters.
Katniss and Peeta spend much of that evening making out, kissing each other, secluded where no one can see them learning each other's lips. Letting their hands touch where each likes to be touched.
At one point, she drops to her knees.
When Peeta exposes himself to her, Katniss draws both hands to her mouth to hold in a gasp.
She's never seen, never mind touched, a man's penis before. She and Darius fooled around a little bit, but nothing beyond heavy petting when they were clothed. They might have gone further eventually if he hadn't been transferred. Peeta's stalk is thick and throbbing.
"You've always been the thought that's given me these," he murmurs hoarsely.
She lifts her eyes, half-lidded, to peer up at him. "I'm, uh…. a bit…. flattered…" she blushes, smiles weakly. A thought occurs to her: was he thinking of me when trying to… to…. with Delly….?
"Put your lips on me and suck!" Peeta moans.
Katniss's lips fall in an 'O' of astonishment. "I…. I don't know how to please you…"
"You'll learn," Peeta promises. "Now kiss it!"
Slowly, Katniss rears forward and takes him deep into her mouth, deep into her throat.
His foreskin tastes rough and firm between her puckered lips. Katniss hums curiously as she experimentally lolls out her tongue to lick the upper reaches of his shaft. She performs oral sex on him quietly, methodically, even as she doesn't know the first thing about giving head, about how to pleasure a man like this. The girls in school would whisper some things, but it always seemed vile to her.
He tastes good. She slowly curls a fist around his base and begins to stroke her fingers along the stalk. Katniss breathes in deeply through her nose. She opens her mouth a little wider to stroke her lips along his length, thrumming up to the tip. Eventually, she boldly draws him in deeper until she has tucked both of his balls beneath her bottom lip.
Peeta is moaning and swaying above her. He pants out a warning in the moment he is about to cum. Katniss only has a vague idea from Family Planning classes in school what is about to happen, and when he finally ejaculates with a grunt into her mouth, she gargles, yet gamely gulps down all he offers her.
She wordlessly tucks him back into his pants and rises. A dirty, wicked part of her almost waits expectantly for Peeta to offer a return of the favor. To shove her blue skirts up over her hips and put his mouth on her sex until she cums on his face. She becomes wet at the very thought, the evening breeze tickling the dampness now forming between her thighs, underneath her blue dress. But he doesn't offer to pleasure her in the way she pleasured him, and she doesn't ask him to.
They resume making out instead.
By the time the moon is high and Peeta is walking her home across the Meadow, Katniss's braid has come undone, the chestnut strands mussy. Her lips are red and kiss-swollen.
Letting her off at her porch, Peeta drifts into Katniss and caresses her cheek, making her shiver, and it isn't due to the cold.
She doesn't feel the cold. Not with him near and gazing at her like that.
"Katniss?"
"Y-Yes…..?"
"…. Can I kiss you again?"
She smirks, even rolls her eyes a little, the English student in her unable to help correcting his grammar. "May I kiss you, please?"
She only allows a moment before she answers, "Yes, you may."
They kiss again, tenderly and tentative, but like before in the woods, something feels charged, different. This is the kiss that makes Katniss want another.
She knows they shouldn't be doing this, not with Prim still at home. Besides, it's far too forward and happening so fast, but she is too overheated and full of lust and…. adoration to care.
Fatefully, she wordlessly takes him by the hand and lets him into the house.
She takes him to, lets him into, her bed.
They make love.
Now, in the early pre-dawn hours, alone on the Bakery's back loading dock, Katniss and Peeta share kisses good morning along with squirrels and bread.
Peeta declares the trade fair. A dazed Katniss, head spinning from his lips on hers, agrees.
Upon her recommendation, Gale hires Delly out to mind his mansion in the Victors' Village. She is grateful, and badly in need of the coin now that she has no path to her parents' inheritance. Gale pays her handsomely, and Delly advances, first as his housekeeper, then as his nanny for the younger siblings and finally as his wife. The Merchant shoemaker's daughter and the hardheaded Victor from the Seam hold a quiet Toasting in the mansion's expansive living room and marble hearth.
Months later, Peeta bashfully approaches his lover. He presents Katniss with a pearl he found along the shoreline of the lake, where they have by now spent many an afternoon swimming and making love in the low shoals.
"Katty….. will you marry me?" he asks her.
Despite her terror at being wed only to lose a husband the way her mother lost hers, despite once fearing love for how it could hurt…. Katniss says Yes.
When her fiancé goes to Prim and asks her for her sister's hand in marriage, Katniss just about swoons… and Prim's squeals of delight just about wake the whole Seam.
Katniss and Peeta go to the Justice Building and stand before the District Justice of the Peace to sign their marriage license and become man and wife in the eyes of the district law, with Prim acting as witness. Then the newlyweds hold a solemn Toasting with family and friends out in the Meadow.
Over a small fire, Peeta chars the bread the way a master Baker would. He gently feeds his bride a piece. Raisins and nuts. It tastes like home.
By the fire's glow, the smoke from the flames accentuating the grey in her solemn eyes, Katniss tilts her head back and softly permits her…. her husband to kiss her. When he does, licking the breadcrumbs from her parted lips, Katniss lets out a sigh of happiness. Her Peeta tastes like home.
Gale lets out a celebratory country whoop. Delly smacks him.
There are dandelions woven into Katniss's braid, and she is the picture of a blushing bride as Prim and Hazelle lead off the wedding song. The wedding reception for the Mellarks moves on to the lake and the hunting cabin, where Peeta presents his bride, his wife, with his Toasting present to her:
A cake he baked himself.
Katniss is beside herself with joy. "OHHHH! Snow's Roses, it's a vision! But how did you…? You didn't! You shouldn't have!" Her eyes sparkle with pleased delight.
Peeta's arms encircle her waist. "Do you like it, sweetheart?" In answer, she can do nothing short of reaching up to kiss him soundly. Right on the mouth. The liplock prompts wolf whistles.
"Oh… darling, I love it! I love you!"
Mr. Cartwright picks up a reel on his fiddle and Katniss and Peeta lead off the dance at their wedding. The party finally ends when Peeta gentlemanly lifts his bride, still clad in her mother's wedding dress, on the back of a rented cart and pulls her, along with all her possessions, to the Bakery.
To start their new life together. Technically still a minor, Prim will live with her sister and brother-in-law for the next year or two until she comes of age.
That night, by the light of the full moon, a summer breeze coming from where Peeta likes to sleep with the windows open, cooling the sweat off coupling, naked bodies, he asks her:
"You love me?"
Katniss answers, without hesitation:
"Always."