a/n: Thanks once again to Court81981 and MalTease for helping me think through this story's ending, and for being such wonderful sounding boards throughout. Given how the story ends, I may post a short epilogue in the next week or so if there's sufficient reader interest.
Thank you all again for reading, reviewing, and indulging me in this plot bunny that just wouldn't leave until it was written. ;)
I'd also like to thank the tumblr Anon who requested an Everlark Road Trip drabble two months ago. You probably weren't wanting a 14,000 word fic, Anon. But I hope you enjoyed this little story all the same.
Lastly – come find me on tumblr if you'd like, where I'm jeeno2 as well.
At seven minutes to midnight, Peeta pulls Katniss' truck into a gas station about forty miles west of Denver.
As he slides his debit card into the machine, he glances over his shoulder at the mini-mart. Someone's at the register, fortunately, even at this hour. Peeta breathes a sigh of relief.
Peeta hopes the guy will let him use the phone in there. True to her word, Peeta's mother cut the service to his iPhone two days ago, and he needs to get in touch with Wheaton tonight.
Peeta won't change his plans no matter what his brother says, of course. But he feels weird about driving straight through the night without at least letting Wheaton know what's happening.
After the tank is full, Peeta replaces the pump and jogs across the parking lot to the store. He wanders the aisles a few minutes, getting some energy drinks and snacks for the road.
Peeta approaches the counter and pays for them, along with a candy bar and a few packs of wintermint gum.
But the guy at the register says he can't help him. It's against company policy to let customers use the store phone, he says. The guy – he can't be much older than Peeta – frowns a little when he tells him. Peeta thinks he might honestly feel bad about having to say no.
"I think there's a payphone at the BP two miles down the road, though," he adds. "Or… like, there used to be one, anyway."
Peeta thanks him and tries to smile.
But he can't waste time chasing down a payphone that might not exist anymore. He needs to get back to California as quickly as possible, and that's more important than calling Wheaton tonight.
Peeta gathers his purchases and leaves the store. The mini-mart was overly air-conditioned, and the warm night air feels good on his skin. He walks back to Katniss' truck as quickly as he can.
Once inside, Peeta turns the key in the ignition, takes a deep breath, and pops the top of his first energy drink of the night.
The clock on the dash reads 3:47 a.m. when Peeta finally gives up and pulls off at a rest stop just east of Grand Junction.
The sign says it's the last rest stop for over a hundred miles, and so he figures he probably should.
Peeta doesn't want to stop, of course. He doesn't want to stop, or to sleep, until he reaches Oakland.
But the energy drinks only do so much for him, and his eyes have been threatening to close on their own for the past half hour. Despite how badly he wants to just fucking be in California already, he knows if he falls asleep while driving he'll wreck Katniss' truck… and probably kill himself in the process.
He slowly pulls the truck up alongside two semis and puts it in park. Promising himself he'll just take a short nap, Peeta crawls over the truck's console and into the passenger seat. He leans it back as far as it will go, and places a wadded up sweatshirt under his head to serve as a pillow. He folds his arms across his chest and closes his eyes.
When he does he sees Katniss, as she'd looked when she left him to walk through airport security earlier this evening. In his mind's eye she's wearing a Santa Cruz sweatshirt and faded blue jeans, just as she had earlier. She carries her oversized duffel bag in her right hand and her backpack in her left.
Right before she goes through the metal detector she turns back to look at him. The corners of her mouth turn up a little when they make eye contact – is she smiling at him? grimacing? She's too far away for him to really tell – and she holds up her hand to him in a small wave.
As Peeta drifts off to sleep next to lonely truckers and their trucks, he wonders if he'll ever hold that hand in his again.
Peeta wakes up in the midmorning sunshine to the sound of someone pounding on the truck's passenger side window.
He blinks a few times and blearily turns his head towards the noise.
"Jesus Christ!" Wheaton shouts, making Peeta jump a little in his seat, when he sees who's parked in front of his building. "Peeta?"
Somewhere near the Utah border, Peeta stumbled upon the exact caffeine cocktail he'd been looking for ever since saying goodbye to Katniss. A shot of Red Bull, followed immediately by a swig of black gas station coffee, repeated over and over again until his hands started to shake, gave him just the buzz he'd needed to power through the rest of the drive.
Thanks to that discovery he's managed to stay awake for 20 of the past 22 hours, and arrived at Wheaton's place in much less time than he'd originally expected.
Peeta waves sheepishly at the older brother he hasn't spoken to in over a year. He adjusts his seat so that he's sitting up again and opens the door.
Wheaton's wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase, obviously heading to work. His eyes are wide as he stares, wordlessly, at his brother.
After a long moment, Peeta breaks the silence.
"Can I crash here for a while?" he blurts out.
The door to the guest room in Wheaton's Lake Merritt condo is closed. Peeta is lying down on the comfortable guest bed and has the blankets up pulled over his head.
But he can still hear the shouting.
"No, Mom," Wheaton yells from the kitchen. Into the phone, Peeta assumes; their mother hasn't been welcome here in years. "I can't fucking believe you didn't tell me. He's seventeen years old, goddamnit!" Peeta hears a loud crash – perhaps the sound of something being thrown against a wall, and breaking – and then a long pause.
Peeta closes his eyes and burrows deeper under the covers.
"No," Wheaton shouts again. "No! Peeta could have been kidnapped, killed…"
Realizing it's pointless to try and sleep, Peeta gets out of bed and opens the door. He slowly and quietly walks down the hall to the small study, where he knows his sister-in-law, Bristel, is probably working.
He raps quietly on the door frame, and she looks up. When she sees him, her previous look of concentration is immediately replaced with one of concern.
"Peeta," she says, her voice full of empathy. She rushes over to him and gathers him into her arms.
He barely knows Bristel – Wheaton essentially shut all of them out when he shut out their parents – but her arms are comforting, and he lets her hold him.
"Why didn't you call us for help?" she asks him quietly.
Peeta doesn't know how to answer that.
He knows the reasons why, of course. He has no real relationship with Wheaton. Wheaton left for UCLA when he was eighteen and Peeta was seven. And he never really came home again.
But even if he had been close with Wheaton, when Katniss first suggested they run off together, the thought of seeing the country with her in her truck had captivated him. And it had pushed every rational solution to his problem right out of his head.
He can't tell Bristel any of this, of course.
"I... don't know," he lies. "But… but thank you for letting me stay."
It takes Peeta almost a week to work up the nerve to go to Katniss' mother's house.
He can't afford to get his phone turned back on yet, but he's tried calling her on Wheaton's phone every night since he's been back.
It goes straight to voicemail every time.
Peeta doesn't leave messages. He doesn't think leaving a message would be the right thing to do, given how they left things between them when they parted a little over a week ago.
On his first Saturday morning back in California, Peeta wakes up early. And he suddenly decides that even though he still hasn't spoken with Katniss, he just can't put this off any longer.
He has no idea if Katniss will be at home this morning, of course. He doesn't know where the hell she is right now.
But waiting any longer to see her is just stupid.
His mind made up, he dresses quickly, pulls on his A's cap with the straight bill, and drives off towards El Cerrito.
As he heads north along Telegraph Avenue, his stomach in knots, he comes up with a plan.
If she gets angry when he shows up unannounced, and tells him to leave before he can say anything, he'll tell her he only came because he needed to return her truck. He'll tell her that he'll leave her alone forever if that's what she wants. But… he can't very well keep her truck, now can he.
And he'll walk out her mother's front door, head over to El Cerrito's BART stop, and take the train to Lake Merritt. And that will be the end of it.
That's what he's going to do, he tells himself, as he gets closer to UCBerkeley and the road becomes clogged with pedestrians.
Katniss is in front of her house, crouched on the ground, tending to her mother's garden when Peeta arrives.
Her hair is pulled back and braided. The collar of her short-sleeved white t-shirt is smudged with dirt.
He parks the truck in front of her house and turns off the ignition. His stomach fills with butterflies and he grips the steering wheel of the truck with sweaty palms.
Suddenly, he realizes he has no idea what to say to her if she doesn't throw him out of her house. Should he say, thanks for giving him the chance to see the country? Thanks for kissing him? For fucking him? Thanks for letting him… have whatever it was they had, even if it was only for a few days?
He closes his eyes, buries his face in his hands, and tries to regulate his breathing.
When he looks up again a moment later, she's standing right outside the driver's side door.
Her face is drawn. There are dark circles under her eyes so pronounced it looks like she hasn't slept in days. It occurs to him that maybe she hasn't.
Still holding her gaze, Peeta opens the door wide enough for him to get out of the truck.
His hands are still clammy, and they're starting to shake.
Here goes nothing.
"Katniss—" he begins.
She cuts him off by launching herself at him and wrapping her arms around him as tightly as she can. He wraps his own arms around her in response. He can't do anything else.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she tells him through her tears, as she kisses his cheeks, his nose, his forehead. Explains that through the shock of the news, and the grief and the loss, she just wasn't herself. Didn't know what she was saying. Or doing.
She pulls away from him a little and says, on a whisper, "I don't think I'm any good at this, Peeta. But… but I want to try, I think."
He pulls her back to him and buries his face in her neck.
And he decides that, even if he doesn't know exactly what to say, for now, this is enough.