"Peeta, please Peeta wake up." Katniss's worried voice startles me awake. I have to share a bed with Finnick, which doesn't bother me. She's standing at my bedside in panties and a thin white tank top without a bra on underneath. I squint at her through the darkness and I see tears are sliding down her cheeks. "Peeta," she whimpers, tugging my hand.
"What is it, what's wrong?" I ask, alarmed. She starts to cry harder, trying to stay quiet.
"Come here. Please Peeta, I need you." She pulls me up and out of my bed. I'm only in sweats. She leads me down the hall and into another room, her room. She shuts the door and then hugs me.
I can't help but notice that the fact that she has no bra on underneath her tank top. I hug her back, confused. The blankets are on the floor. She lazily remakes the bed and pushes me down on it. She lays down next to me. She's calmed down slightly but her cheeks are tear stained and she's sweating.
"You know you have no pants on right?" I whisper.
"Do you want to me put pants and a bra on?" She mumbles. "Be honest, Peeta. I wish you didn't have on your pants, if that helps you tell the truth. I smile a little.
"You don't have to get dressed Katniss, now what's wrong?"
KATNISS'S POV
I have nightmares every single night. I watch him die in the fires from 9/11. Either I wake screaming or I'm soaked in sweat and I'm crying. Last night I woke sweating, which was why I moved to his bed. Tonight was the same. I need to feel him.
PEETA'S POV
She puts her hand on my chest and stares intensely at me.
"Do you love me as more than a friend or sister, Peeta?" She whispers weakling. I stare at her for a long time.
I always have. I never understood as I kid why I always wanted to be around her, but now I do. I'm in love with this girl. I always was.
I can see pain in her eyes as she stares at me.
"Yes." I whisper.
"You do?" She whispers.
"Yes." I repeat.
"I love you too, Peeta." She stands up and walks over to the door, locking it before coming back to bed. She lays down directly on top of me and tangles her fingers in my hair. I out my hands on the small of her back, my pinkies on the waistband of her panties. "Did I ever tell you how much I love your eyes?" She whispers, staring at me with suck an intensity that it's overwhelming.
"No." I whisper.
"Well...they're quite beautiful." She whispers. "Like...sapphire mixed with...with green. With sea green."
"Really?" I raise my eyebrows and she smiles and nods.
"Yes." Her fingers trace my lips. Her touch leaves a burn that feels incredible. Her eyes go from ashy gray to a really bad storm.
"Can I kiss you?" She whispers. I nod dumbly. She slides farther up my chest and hesitantly presses her lips to mine.
My first kiss is even more than I imagined it would be. Her lips are soft and smooth and warm. Her breath tastes like mints and a fire spreads throughout my body and I'm suddenly very aware that there is two thin pieces of clothing covering both of us from behind completely naked.
She must remember this too, because she slowly pulls away.
"Every night since we were separated," she begins "I have this nightmare where you die. Either I wake screaming your name, or I'm in a cold sweat and I'm crying. Last night was the cold, which is why I went in your room. Tonight was the cold sweat, too. It always makes me panic. That's why I come to you." She whispers. "And I do love you. I think I always did." She whispers. I like this Katniss. The vulnerable one, who admits all her feelings late at night. She's still on top of me. She ends up drifting off on my chest.
I wake up to movement on my chest and then a light weight disappears. I peek open an eye and see her pulling on pajama pants and, with her back turned, pulling off her tank top and putting a bra on before putting her tank top back on. Everyone is awake downstairs.
"I know your watching me get dressed like some stalker," she says before turning around to face me. I shrug and get up, stretching. "Do you remember last night?" She whispers. Yes. We kissed last night. She stares at me, waiting for me answer.
"Yes."
"Do you regret it?" She whispers.
"Do you?" I ask.
"I'm serious." She says.
"So am I." I reply. She takes a deep breath and shakes her head.
"No."
"Me either."
"So...what happens now?" She whispers.
"What do you want to have happen now?" I ask. She just shrugs.
"Time will tell." She replies before brushing past me on her way downstairs.
We've just finished dinner when I hear a loud knock on the door. Katniss gets up and gets the door, and to my utter surprise, my parents and brothers walk into the house, Graham's new girlfriend on his arm. Or Graham's new whore.
My parents start obsessing over Katniss and then everyone starts obsessing over everyone. Katniss eventually sits down and drops her legs on mine.
Everyone begins to talk about random stuff. Katniss and I are occasionally questioned, but thats it, really.
We start a movie called Friends with Benefits. None of us know what it's about, exactly.
And then they start having sex. Katniss slowly removes her legs from my lap.
Mrs. Everdeen quickly shuts off the TV, her eyes flicking to the children from my family.
Nobody knows how to explain this, but Katniss, who has told me taught kindergarten before, instantly comes up with an excuse.
"When two people love each other very much, they touch one another." She explains, poking my cheek. "And they lick each other." She licks my hand. "And sometimes they wrestle." She admits.
"Why?" My little cousin who is only six asks. Her name is Megan. She's Aunt Lauren's oldest. Then there's Alexis and Katherine. They're only four. That's the only kids here that don't know what was actually going on. "Why Katniss?" Megan demands. Katniss sits up all the way.
"Because it's fun." She says.
"You and Peeta love each other. Why don't you wrestle and lick each other?" Megan asks. Katniss just shrugs and sits back, her legs dropping back to my legs.
"Because I'm tired." She replies.
"Me too." Katherine admits. The three girls lay down in the floor. Aunt Lauren mouths a "thank you" to Katniss and she just shrugs in reply.
We change the movie to The Sandlot.
After a half hour of this, Alexis stands up and climbs onto Katniss's lap, laying down and falling asleep. Katniss falls asleep soon afterwards.
...2...
My family is not planning on leaving any time soon. I know this because the weeks flies by and they're still these when I walk into my apartment without Katniss or anyone but Finn. We both pass out on the beds.
I'm woken late at night to the sound of my bedroom door softly shutting.
"Can I spend the night?" Katniss whispers.
"How did you get in?" I mumble.
"I picked the lock." She admits. I can tell she had a nightmare. She has to work in the morning. It's Sunday, May 12th. "So can I?" She asks. I nod and scoot over. She climbs in my bed and curls into my side. I pull her close and sigh. She smells incredible. I decide to rely on her alarm because her class starts at nine thirty and she gets there at eight thirty. She teaches Math. Pre-Algebra, to be exact.
I found out though that her lunch break is forty five minutes long and mine is an hour and a half. Mine starts at twelve and ends at one thirty and hers starts at twelve fifteen and ends at one. She has second lunch and I know people will be in there for the study group. I've got a ton of information out of her. No study groups today though because she has to teach first. She's finishing up equations.
I drift off soon enough.
...9...
"You get Peeta, I'm gonna find Mama and Dad!" Graham shouts. He disappears in the crowd as Rye picks me up and runs. I see her dark hair, Prim's blond hair and Johanna's short dark hair. I see the man come out of nowhere and grab her. I start screaming as she gets beaten. I hear her cries of pain.
Her eyes start to close and I desperately beg her, shouting for her to get up. "Please Katniss!" I shout, crying. She doesn't move. Rye sets me down and everyone except for her disappears. I stumble over to her and check for a pulse, for any signs of life.
I find none. She is dead.
...8...
I sit bolt upright, drenched in sweat and gasping.
"Peeta?" Her voice is laced with tiredness. I look at her and see she's perfectly fine. I see the rise and fall of her chest and lay back down. "Peeta, are you okay?" She whispers, throwing her leg over me and sitting on my stomach. I run my hands over my sweat soaked face.
"I'm fine, now." I answer. It's not a lie, because when I saw she was awake, my heart rate calmed and I was fine. She puts her hands on my shoulders and pulls me so I'm sitting up. Her body slides down so she's on my thighs and then she pulls my head against her shoulder and runs her fingers through my hair.
"You had a nightmare, didn't you?" She mumbles.
"Yes," I whisper. She releases me and pushes me so I'm laying down. Then she lies next to me and burrows herself in my chest.
I had trouble falling asleep after that. It took me nearly an hour, and she didn't move the whole time.
Her alarm begins to blare, waking both of us. She shuts it off and burrows back into my chest. "I don't want to go to work. I want to stay here with you until I die." She whispers.
"You can come over after work. I get home by three." I whisper.
"School doesn't let out until four fifteen and then I have papers to grade." She moans.
"Bring them here." I whisper.
"Or...or you can come to my work at three and we can say your my assistant. And then you can help me grade papers." She whispers. I can tell that she really wants me to.
"Eh...we'll see what happens, Katniss, okay?" I whisper. She sighs and nods, standing up and stretching.
...9...
I only said we'll see what happens because I want her to think I'm not coming. But it's three fifteen and I'm at home changing into jeans but keeping on my white button up shirt. I drive to her school and walk inside.
"How may I help you?" The secretary asks. I see the name on her name take is "Halie"
"Yes hi, I'm here to see K-I mean...Ms. Everdeen." I say. She narrows her eyes.
"What's your name?" She demands.
"Peeta Mellark." I reply.
"Is she your girlfriend?" She demands to know.
"No."
"Fiancé?" She asks.
"No."
"Wife?"
"No...I'm not in a relationship with her..." I trail off.
"Well..." She puts a visitors sticker on my shirt. "She's in room 268, upstairs." She says.
"Thank you," I'm halfway out of the office when she stops me. "And just letting you know...I'm single." I hid my shock as I give a small nod and walk off. I manage to find the stairs and walk down the hall, passing a few students. "Do you need help?" Someone asks me. "I'm Caitlin." She smiles.
"Yeah, where is Ms. Everdeen?" I ask. At the mention of Katniss, her eyes light up.
"That's my favorite teacher!" She exclaims. "Here, I'll show you." She leads me in the opposite direction that I was going. "Is she your girlfriend?" Caitlin asks.
"No, she's my best friend." I say.
"Oh, well that's her room right there. Can you tell her Caitlin Morro said hi?" She asks.
"Of course." I say. The girl walks off. I peek in the room and see Katniss in the front.
I don't know what to do...I knock on the door and she doesn't notice me at first because she's in mid sentence.
"-And make sure to study for your test on Thursday." She looks at me and I see her eyes widen slightly from shock. Her students are peering curiously at us. "Peeta," she whispers, smiling a little. "I didn't think you were going to come." I shrug. She steps out of my way and allows me into the room.
"Is that your boyfriend?" A girl blurts. "Ms. Everdeen, is that your boyfriend?" Everyone starts to blabber about her having a boyfriend, and I laugh a little. Katniss puts her hand on my arm and leads me to her desk. She drops a stack on papers in front of me as hands me a pen and a sheet with the correct answers.
"Grade it, please." She says. She goes back to the front of the class.
"Okay, alright! No, Peeta is not my boyfriend, he is not my fiancé, he's not my husband. He is my best friend, that's it." She says. Everyone goes silent and then a guy raises his hand. "Yes Alex?" She asks.
"Are you friends with benefits?" He demands. I start choking on nothing and then start laughing, dropping my head on her desk. Katniss's face is bright red from shock and embarrassment when I manage to compose myself.
"Uh..." She's panicking. I stand up, because I need a pen and move to the front of the classroom.
"No, Katniss and I are friends. Just friends, no more, no less." I say as I pass Katniss to another table she has at the front. I take her pen and pass her.
She goes back to her lesson, which I know is on equations. I half grade papers, half watch her teach. She occasionally will look at me and I see her hiding a smile. "Okay, now go to page six on your workbooks and do numbers 11-24 for the rest of the period." Katniss writes down page six on to he numbers they do on the white board and then walks over to me, pulling another chair with her and dropping down on it. She sees I've only done one book and sighs.
"You were watching me the whole time, weren't you?" She whispers under her breath.
"Maybe I was, maybe I wasn't." I whisper. She rolls her eyes and starts to grade papers. I join her eventually. After two pages, she memorizes the answers and starts grading. This is a test.
Her hand freezes and she stares at a test booklet. I look down at her to see she has a zero in red ink on the page for a kid named Olive Pother. She looks up at a girl with brown hair who looks frustrated. She looks like she's about to cry. Katniss rises.
"Olive?" She asks. The girl is crying when she looks up. "Come here," Katniss waves her forward. The girl rises and walks over to Katniss. Katniss walks over to her desk and gets her pencil and her workbook and then she pulls a chair up next to her and sits her down and helps her.
I keep grading papers, and soon enough, I've got it memorized too. I finish then and put the final grades, set the pen down and sit back. I begin to look through her drawers and grab a piece of printer paper and start to draw 9/11. I always do this because it's how I deal with it. This was twelve or so years ago, but it helps me let out my emotions. I draw the fire, I draw Graham running off while everyone runs forward. I draw Rye carrying me away.
I feel a hand on my arm and look up to see Katniss. The room is empty and her eyes are twinkling with tears.
"I'm sorry," I whisper, crumbling the paper in a ball and tossing it in the garbage. "Where is everyone?" I ask.
"They're coming. The period just ended. They should be here in a minute." She rubs her eyes, which are slightly red. I stand up and hug her.
"I didn't mean to make you cry." I whisper.
"It's okay. Don't apologize, you didn't make me cry."
I stay with her until seven. We go out to dinner and join hands, just walking around the city.
She treats me as if I'm her boyfriend. She sleeps in my bed, she makes me clean, she kisses my cheek, she tells me she loves me, she holds my hand. She treats me like her husband or something. She hugs me too. I love every minute of it and I never want it to stop.
"What if we were?" She blurts. It's dark out and we're walking through the city.
"If we were what?" I ask.
She shakes her head. "Never mind, just pretend I didn't say anything." She whispers. We're heading towards her apartment. "It was stupid anyways." She mumbles. I stop walking and turn to face her. She avoids my eye contact and she looks frustrated.
KATNISS'S POV
I want him to ask me to be his girlfriend so bad. Johanna and Annie won't let me ask him myself.
I'm frustrated because I want to be able to kiss him whenever I want to and for us to have a title.