One-Shot: Meadow Meetings and Mating
Gale has just started his new position down in the mines, so until his day off on Sunday, Katniss has to conduct the hunting beyond the fence alone during the week.
The thought of traipsing out into the Meadow, knowing she will not find him there waiting at their favorite boulder meeting spot, is a little jarring – even if such an occurrence will only be occurring six out of the seven days. Considering the danger her hunting partner is putting himself into, Katniss fervently hopes his absence will not become permanent.
It is already going to be an unusual day without him at her side…. so she is surprised upon wriggling under the fence to see, in the near distance, someone waiting for her at her and Gale's meeting boulder. Her shock is enough to make Katniss pull up short.
From how the figure catches the sunlight, she can tell he is not Gale. This man is of a stockier build, and his hair sparkles like homespun gold. Katniss drifts closer, only to freeze when his eyes suddenly snap to hers like a skittish deer.
She remains frozen in his stare for a moment, as she peers into his eyes…. eyes as blue as a summer sky…
"Peeta? Peeta Mellark?"
The Merchant Baker's youngest son, the one who has sometimes helped her complete her trading transactions on the shopfront's back loading dock when his father is unavailable, gives her a shy, almost sheepish smile. "Hello, Katniss."
Katniss leans back, face guarded. "Hello," she answers cautiously, guardedly. An awkward pause. "Um…. what are you doing all the way out here? And on a Monday?" A Monday during summer, no less.
Peeta scuffs at his boots. "I needed a break. Because… well, I just needed a break."
Katniss can guess on what account a break is called for. She's always imagined that the life of a baker must be a hard one, what with the hours Peeta and his family has to keep. Add in a shrew of a mother, and life must be even worse.
But why come all out here? This Meadow is on the outskirts of her home in the Seam, which is halfway across the district from Town.
"You look lost," she observes, perhaps a bit too bluntly.
He shrugs. "Getting here was the hard part. I kept wandering around until my feet carried me here. I was too scared to even ask for directions!"
This doesn't exactly surprise Katniss. She can imagine most of her neighbors glancing sideways at this boy, wondering what on earth a 'Townie' – as Merchants are sometimes called around these parts – is doing on this side of the tracks.
"Anyway, I found this boulder, and… thought it would make a nice view." Out of the corner of her eye, Katniss notices him holding something under his arm that might be a sketchpad. The handsome Merchant boy blinks suddenly, almost in a show of deference. "Unless – this is… your boulder…"
She weakly smirks at this, his manners amusing her. That he would think she would own whatever land or landform is here, beyond what are technically Twelve's borders, even more so. If anyone can make a claim on this Meadow, these woods, it would be the Capitol. She risks more than enough tracking game on these lands as it is.
How strange. She has almost never been given cause to smile by anyone who wasn't her little sister, Prim.
"My…. my hunting partner and I often meet at this boulder. But he's not here today. Had to work in the mines." She states this unusually quickly, and doesn't know why.
Peeta casts a glance back over his shoulder. "And then you…. go in the woods?"
Katniss frowns in bemusement. "Where else?"
She is struck by how fearful Peeta seems of the trees. How in awe he seems of her for braving them. "But there are… wild animals!"
She snorts, shouldering her game bag. "That's kind of the idea…" she mutters.
"And ghosts!" Peeta supplies, turning as Katniss flounces past him towards the treeline. "You'd best be careful, or Lucy Gray Baird's spirit will catch you!"
Katniss turns back to puzzle him for a moment before rolling her eyes at the thought of their district's first Victor (of only two) in the Hunger Games. "That's just an old ghost story!" Upon first impression – well, beyond the occasional Hi, Bye on the back loading dock – she thinks Peeta is quite gullible.
…. in an oddly adorable kind of way.
Katniss heads for the treeline, figuring if Peeta is that leery of the forest, he won't remain out even in the open of the Meadow for long.
She's shocked upon coming back roughly two hours later to find him still where she left him, seated on the boulder, with that sketchpad open on his lap.
Peeta closes it and then stands, stretching out his legs when he sees her coming near, an eyebrow quirked skeptically.
"Lovely view," he admits.
Katniss gazes past him to the hills in the middle distance. She honestly hasn't stopped to enjoy it for some time. "Yes, it is," she admits. She side-eyes him curiously. "Won't your mother be wondering where you are?" It might be a little hypocritical of her to inquire – where her own mother is concerned, she doesn't care about her eldest daughter's comings and goings.
"Probably." Peeta sounds fatalistic on this point. Katniss feels her heart pang in sympathy for him. She's heard the rumors about how the Baker's wife – some call her 'the Witch' (always behind her back, of course) – beats her own sons. The constriction in her heart twinges all the worst when she thinks about her own mother, who might be neglectful but certainly isn't abusive.
Peeta tousles a smile to her over his shoulder, and the sun getting on high noon makes his skin and the golden bangs falling into his eyes shimmer. Katniss sucks in a breath sharply.
"I guess I'll see you tomorrow."
As he walks away, and then slips the fence, Katniss finds herself shaking her head in bemusement, as she mutters, "I doubt it."
Katniss is almost impressed when she returns to the Meadow the following morning to find Peeta again waiting at her boulder.
She is concerned as she wonders just how long he has been waiting here for her, considering his face looks like it is well on its way to turning red from a sunburn.
That is, until she draws closer and her concern morphs into horror. The side of his face is red, all right – but not from a sunburn. In fact, the redness is shaped like a handprint….
Peeta laughs it off. "It's never good form to be late."
It's also never good form to slap your own child, Katniss thinks, but she daren't speak this aloud. She wishes she had an ointment from her mother's Healing stores – witch hazel, or something. As it is, she refrains from the strangest urge to touch the side of his face.
"I'm sorry," she manages instead, softly.
Peeta shrugs, then proceeds to almost gentlemanly walk her to the edge of the treeline, where he decides he can go no further.
Katniss thinks she'd invite him in to tag along, if only to show him that the ghost of Lucy Gray Baird isn't haunting these woods and that the squirrels she bags for his father are nothing to be frightened of. However, perhaps she'd be just as well not to – listening to his tread, in these tall grasses, she marvels at how a person can be so loud with their tread!
"Um….. good hunting," Peeta quips lamely.
This startles a snort out of her. "Will you be waiting for me when I come back?" She asks it facetiously – if yesterday was any indication, he'll have to be long gone by the time she emerges to avoid a whipping from his mother.
To Katniss's astonishment, Peeta's deep blue eyes fix on her quite seriously. "If that's what you want."
She swallows hard, her throat suddenly dry, but doesn't make clear her wishes one way or the other before turning and marching into the trees.
Today, she finds herself speeding through inspecting the snare lines, making pretty audacious shots before she's lined up her arrow, if only to fell game all the faster so that….
When she bursts back out of the treeline, having gone double time and completed her rounds almost an hour ahead of schedule, she is stunned, if also secretly pleased, to find Peeta sitting sentinel on her boulder.
He walks her to the fence, even gentlemanly lifts the barbed wire so she has a better time of wriggling under it. Katniss wonders if he is staring at her as she commando crawls under the fence, giving him quite a lovely view of her rear, clad in her father's hunting trousers.
Peeta follows her under and then escorts her until they are clearly intending to go separate ways.
Katniss tugs at her braid. "Thanks," she mumbles.
"Sure. Same time tomorrow?"
She finds herself nodding slowly.
So begins a new kind of a routine – rote, like the one she heretofore shared with Gale. Every morning that week, Katniss arrives in the Meadow and meets Peeta there, by the boulder. After a brief chat, he'll walk her to the edge of the treeline. Sometimes, she'll entreat him, even playfully, to brave the woods with her; Peeta always begs off. He seems self-aware enough to sense the disadvantages he would have with his heavy tread, to the point where it becomes an inside joke between them.
The Boy with the Bread is always there waiting for her when she returns, whereupon he will help her under the fence and then escort until they come to the fork in the dusty road: one path leading towards the Hob black market, the other towards where it will eventually give way to the cobblestoned streets of Town.
On these partings, Peeta at first leaves her with a handshake – stilted, and oddly formal. It makes Katniss smirk, as the handshake implies there is less familiarity than there is already starting to be in their…. their…
What is this, with her and Peeta, exactly? A friendship? She's never been very good at those – the only people she can count as friends are Gale (and he's closer to family) and the Mayor's daughter who eats lunch with her at school.
Speaking of Gale, Katniss lightly tells Peeta he doesn't have to wait up for her on Sundays, as that is her hunting partner's one day off from the mines, and he'll be with her. For some reason, Gale and Peeta don't coexist well in her mind, and the thought of them meeting, even by happenstance, makes her bizarrely afraid. She is relieved when Peeta tells her he understands.
Weeks turn into months. Peeta is always there waiting for her in the Meadow with the steadfastness of a golden retriever.
He has the personality of a golden retriever too – attentive. Loyal, even dutiful. The first time he hugs her when they part ways along the dusty road, Katniss stiffens, but her… her friend is so bashful about it, she can't be too miffed.
Before long, the hug goodbye becomes almost as natural as her improved chattiness around him is.
It's a beautiful spring day, mid-week, when Katniss arrives beyond the fence to find Peeta waiting for her, as ever, sketchpad in hand. She approaches lightly, and fast, so silently that her shadow passes over him before he has time to close the pad.
She catches a glimpse of the image: he's drawing a picture of her. So real, that it is almost life-like.
Realizing he's been caught, Peeta flushes. "I don't really have many test subjects. We are in an empty field," he gestures all around them. "Last week, a deer wandered by and I tried to sketch it, but it bolted before I could finish."
A smile quirks at Katniss's lips. "How rude of it."
Wordlessly, she holds out her hand for the sketchpad, and a sheepish Peeta passes it to her. She flips through the pages.
Despite his professed shallow well of inspiration, Katniss discovers he's nonetheless had plenty of drawing to keep him busy. Not all of the drawings are of her, but most of them are: a back view of her walking to the treeline. A close-up of her face – her smile can't be that bright, can it? He must have caught her in a moment of mirth.
She blushes and hands the sketchpad back to an equally red Peeta. She feels that constricting pain in her chest again that only seems to flare up whenever he is near. She wants him to ask her what she thinks of his drawings. She wants to tell him she hates them. No – she wants to tell them they're really good. Amazing, in fact.
None of that comes out. Instead, she tells him, "You have to stop coming around here."
The way his face falls nearly makes her want to weep. "What? Why not?"
She shakes her head, blinking back tears. "I've heard from neighbors how they've seen you here. Waiting for me. Seeing us. Together."
"So what?" Peeta shrugs. "People can think whatever they like. It isn't as though optics matter."
Katniss shakes her head. "It matters, Peeta. Believe me."
"What? Because I'm Townie and you're Seam?" His voice has risen a little bit and Katniss flinches away, even as she can tell intuitively his anger is not directed at her. "Who cares what people say? Who cares if we're friends? I'll sit here and draw and wait for you if I want to! Hell, I'll follow you into the woods! I'd follow to the ends of the earth because I…." He trails off, shaking his head. "You have no idea, Katty, the effect that you have…"
He starts to reach for her suddenly, and she shies away, like a skittish deer. Perhaps fearing she'll run, Peeta tries to block her escape, and the boulder is also in the way….
He suddenly pitches forward, crashing into her so that she falls against the boulder.
His lips actually land on hers, and the scream stuck in Katniss's throat turns into a gasp.
"Mmmmm?!" She squeaks against his mouth, her own lips frozen, immobile. She is staring into Peeta's blue eyes, which have bulged and are now inches from her face.
Braced against the boulder, she can't squirm away or out from under him. She considers pushing him away, but that muscular chest is surely too strong for her, and she doesn't want to cause him more hurt.
All the same, she can't breathe except deeply through her nose. His firm body pinned against hers makes her think of the claustrophobia of those mine shafts, where her father died and where Gale is right now and…
Gale…. Oh, Snow's Roses, what would he think, if he saw this?
Katniss is unarmed. Her bows are in the woods, and her game bag is now spilled open at her feet.
Wait – reaching behind her, she fishes for the small hunting knife she keeps in the back pocket of her trousers, the one Gale had given her as a present, early in their partnership. She clicks the blade open behind her back and, motivated more by fear than anything else, she hefts it high in a downward grip. She sees Peeta's eyes dart with terror to the knife, but his lips don't leave hers.
Over several long moments, Katniss feels Peeta's soft, warm lips slant along hers, until suddenly….
Suddenly…
She feels her mouth part under his. Petal open, like a flower bursting into full bloom.
She watches as Peeta's summer-sky blue eyes droop closed, and the kiss deepens.
A moment later, her eyelids droop shut too, her lashes fluttering.
She moans.
"Mmmm? Mmmmmmhmmmmmm…"
Almost in slow motion, the hand holding the knife loosen its grip, until the weapon falls from Katniss's hand to land in the grass, forgotten at their feet. That same open hand now reaches up to loop around Peeta's neck and grip his shoulder blade under his shirt.
Katniss and Peeta embrace.
She kisses him back.
They quickly become very involved, and when Peeta suddenly, gallantly sweeps her away from the boulder and into a dip, lowering her towards the Meadow grasses, Katniss's pleased hums pitch with an inflection of fear, turning into whimpers.
She's trembling, terrified and thrilled over what might happen next. But nothing further occurs beyond a few minutes of furiously making out, until she and Peeta finally break apart, gulping and gasping for air. They share a chuckle, and then another, chaste kiss.
Meeting turns to mating.
Katniss is shaking with exhilaration when she returns to the Meadow the next day, this time clad in her blue Reaping dress. Peeta crosses to her and welcomes her with a firm peck on the lips good morning.
Stepping out of the kiss, Katniss turns away from him, sinking wordlessly to her knees.
"Katty girl…?"
She doesn't answer him as she deliberately pushes her blue skirts up over her hips, baring the round and curved globes of her ass to him. She hears Peeta choke on his breath.
"I want you to fuck me," she tells him seriously, breathlessly. Last night's dreams of him and her head still spinning from their first kiss drove her to distraction.
"Are you….?"
"Yes." Katniss arches her back, lifting her bum up to him invitingly. "Please, make love to me, Peeta."
She listens to the clang of a belt buckle, and bites her lip, anticipating how it is going to hurt. She's heard tell how most first times often are, especially for the woman.
She tenses as she feels a stiff and bloated thing like up with her entrance.
In one, fluid motion, Peeta mounts her and mates with her.
Katniss rocks her hips into his pelvis, drawing his cock deeper into her anus until his balls are slapping her buttocks, causing Peeta to thrust into her harder and with a plaintive moan. She has often seen animals in the woods mate in this way – perhaps that is where the expression Playing The Beast With Two Backs comes from. Until recently, she has thought such sexual intercourse for beasts only, but since Peeta kissed her, she has been tempted to try it for herself.
"Katniss…. Kat-Katty…."
She grinds and twerks harder into his cock. Her breathing has become labored and shallow, and all she can gasp out are the words, "Harder…. Faster….. Deeper…"
Peeta grunts and speeds up his thrusts, which are starting to weaken. Seizing her braid in his fist, he tugs it on it, yanking her head up, and then he claps his free hand over her mouth to silence the mewls being torn from his lover's lips. Katniss whimpers into his palm anyway.
The tall Meadow grasses conceal their copulating bodies well enough, but the State help them if someone should see! If someone should hear….!
"Ermmmmmm… Hmmmm….. Mmmmmm…. Uhhhhhhh! Ohhhhhh… Ahhhhhhh!"
Katniss feels her body seize as with a sigh, she cums. Her grey eyes roll into the back of her head with pleasure, and she moans again. Liquid and virginal blood stream down the inside of her quavering thighs. Peeta's breath is hot and short in her earlobe as he pounds into her rear end.
"I…. I love you…." he groans.
She doesn't say it back, doesn't know how she would answer it, as she feels Peeta grow rigid and then ejaculate inside her.
They clean up and redress with dignity and he walks her to the treeline.
Here, for the first time, and again later on the dusty road to home, Katniss kisses him goodbye.
Katniss tells herself she can end this affair whenever she wants to. That she can hide it from Gale on his day off from the mines. She tells herself she can stop resisting Peeta's touch, and the urge to sleep with him.
Except she can't.
Sans Sundays, it is now every day that Katniss meets with Peeta in the Meadow in secret and, sometimes without even so much as a Hello in greeting, she kisses him, pulls him on top of her, and they make love. It is summertime again, and the grasses are now well up past her thighs which she now spreads wide for him, as they go for a frantic shag. At the very least, she and her lover and their copulating, jerking bodies are hidden from sight while they have sex.
Katniss and her Townie lover try every position. She straddles and bounces in his lap, riding his cock. Then Peeta will flip them both, toss her one leg over his shoulder and plow her into the earth. They take turns sitting on each other's faces, cumming in each other's mouths. The first time Katniss rears forward and takes Peeta's manliness in past her puckered lips, she had never even seen a man's penis, much less touched one. He had tasted good, firm and strong.
Katniss is careful to use protection. "I don't want us to make a baby. I don't want to have children," she tells him. Peeta understands, acceding to her wishes by rolling the natural condom she has made from animal intestines over his cock before shoving it inside her.
When they've both had their release, cuddled together in the post-coital afterglow, they talk.
Peeta tells her about the Bakery, and how he's due to inherit it. Katniss vows how she will never go in the mines. "And I'm definitely never getting married." When he asks her why, she opens up about her father's death and her mother's depression. Besides, she rationalizes, she can make a living off selling game, so long as there isn't regime change in the Peacekeepers' ranks, and live with Mother and Prim if she has to; the Everdeen Healing business can provide well for the three women.
Sometimes, Katniss and Peeta talk and kiss and fuck so much and for so long, she doesn't make it into the woods. Thankfully, Peeta often can encourage her out of his arms and walk her to the treeline, where she'll kiss him and tell him to wait for her.
Katniss greets Peeta one autumnal Saturday by seizing his groin in her fist. He shoves his thigh in between her splayed ones and with a groan, she grinds against it. Within moments, they are kissing heatedly and halfway to undressed. Katniss lets the bodice of her blue dress fall away and she lets out a gasp when Peeta swallows her boob with his tongue. His teeth pinch down on her nipple, and she pulls him down into the Meadow's grass.
Straddling him, she rides his dick feverishly, her tits swaying in his face as Peeta continues to suckle them.
"Ugggh…. Huhhhh…. Uhhhhh…. Ohhhhh….. Oh, Peeta….. Peet-ahhhhhh….. Ahhhhhhhhh… AHHHHHHHHHHH!"
Katniss orgasms with a triumphant shriek, collapsing prostrate over him as Peeta continues to jerk up into her wet pussy. Finally, he releases with a grunt into her shoulder.
They spoon each other, sweaty and naked and spent.
"Fuck," Peeta rasps.
Katniss nods solemnly. "Fuck." She nuzzles into his face when she feels him kissing her hair.
"I love you…." he murmurs.
She nods against his chest. "I know." A beat, then: "I love you too."
"I wish I could freeze this moment, right now, and live in it forever."
"OK."
Katniss feels Peeta smile against her. "Then you'll allow it?"
She nods. "I'll allow it."
A long pause and then:
"Katty girl?"
"Hmmm?" she snuggles against him. "What?"
"…. Will you marry me?"
Her grey eyes expand, and she sits up against his chest to gaze down at him in wonder and surprise. She's speechless. Astonished, that he would propose to her and ask for her hand in marriage. Especially when he knows well by now her views on the institution.
And yet, in spite of it all, she figures that, if the choice came down to having her or having a child, Peeta would gladly choose her, even if they never have a baby. Which they won't.
Even so, Katniss is amazed with herself when she leans over Peeta and kisses him softly.
"Yes, I will."
They marry in the Meadow. The Meadow where they first kissed and first made love. Following signing a marriage license while standing before the District Justice of the Peace in the Justice Building, Katniss wears her mother's white wedding dress – the family heirloom – to the Toasting ceremony. It is customary for Merchant mothers to pass down their wedding gown down to their daughters; this one was stolen by Katniss's mother when she fled her Merchant upbringing to marry Katniss's father.
Most of the Seam is here to wish the newlyweds well. Mrs. Mellark is not, having disowned her son upon his announcing his choice of bride. By the light of the bonfire, Katniss and Peeta exchange vows, but not rings – those are a luxury only Merchants can afford, and Peeta certainly couldn't buy two on a Baker's wages.
Katniss's grey eyes are solemn with the firelight dancing in them as, tilting her head, she permits her husband to feed her a piece of their Toasting bread and then kiss her gently. There are dandelions in her hair and in her wedding bouquet, and when she tosses the bundle of flowers aside to deepen the kiss, her sister and Maid of Honor catches it, much to her amusement.
Peeta lifts his bride onto the back of a rented cart and bears her to their new home assigned by the Justice Building, where Katniss's mother and Prim have prepared a beautiful reception. The new Mr. and Mrs. Mellark dance at their wedding, Katniss now changed into her blue Reaping dress. But the real coup de grace is when Peeta presents his bride with his wedding present to her: a Toasting cake he baked himself. Eyes shining, Katniss kisses him soundly.
The night ends with Peeta carrying Katniss across the threshold of their new house while their neighbors sing the traditional district wedding song. Peeta doesn't set her down out of his bridal carry until they are in their bed, whereupon they spend their wedding night making love.
The morning after the wedding, Katniss takes her husband's hands and guides him out to their Meadow, then, with purpose, leads him past the treeline and into the woods.
The new Mr. and Mrs. Mellark honeymoon at an old hunting cabin that once belonged to Katniss's father, the structure bordering a lake. Here, Katniss teaches her husband how to swim and they make love in the shallow waters. She even tries to teach him how to hunt, but it isn't long before passion and lust overtake them both and their back in her daddy's hunting cabin, having frantic sex on the cool, dirt floor.
And there, when her husband comes apart in her arms, and he pants out "Stay with me?", Katniss replies, "Always."
How could she say anything else?