It doesn't happen every night. The reasons for this are manifold. The most salient to me, I guess, is that there's no magic cure after you've lost so much trust in humankind in general. I saw what happened to my mother when my father died, and I'm afraid of getting that attached to another human being. It must have been wonderful while it lasted, but then, just like that, one minute he was there and the next he was gone, blown to bits for no good reason at all. I've already almost lost Peeta many times, and I remember the agony over not knowing, not even knowing, but just fearing that I might never see him smile at me again, that he might just be a cold shell now. I can't imagine what it would be like to know. And a almost a year out from the end of the war, I'm more attached than ever. I'm scared. I know that I've always been able to count on exactly one person…myself…and that now, I can't even do that all the time, when I become paralyzed with thoughts of the past.

Peeta is offering to take that burden away from me and shoulder it with his own: offering to be counted upon, to carry me for a little while so I don't have to go it alone. It goes against everything in me to let someone do that, though. I'm so afraid to lose again, I don't know how many more losses I could bear. But even if I stayed away from Peeta, halted this intimacy, pretended to change my mind, I can't stop what I feel. It's easier and safer to be on my own, but now I don't want to be. You already have decided that before, I think to myself: wasn't that the very situation during the first Games? I was a sitting duck on the ground, hauling around a boy who had me by 70 pounds or so with an injured leg. The best, safest, easiest plan then would have been to get the hell into a tree and begin to pick off the remainders. But I stayed. Here I stay.

There are other reasons, too. I feel innately that the steps we're taking now are big, not only because they're so foreign but because they're so intimate. I want to actually draw it out, make it last, all this newness. A sweet ache shimmers in me sometimes now, and I like to savor it, make it last. It's almost as good wanting it as it is having it. I'm trying to not expect anything in particular and just to let things unfold naturally over time. Peeta tends to restrain himself out of concern for me, preferring, I think, to let me set the pace. The night after the first time, after the shower—that is something that we do more, now, however—we made a good meal of greens, Peeta's delicious bread, and some fowl I had shot in the woods. Haymitch came over. That night, I noticed, he seemed more sober than usual. He ate. And he watched. I was shocked that the snarky remarks I had invented for him all day in my head didn't make an appearance. Haymitch was disquietingly mute about his eye-opening experience.

When he watched, it was with a look more solemn than his usual customary one. He tracked congenial exchanges between Peeta and I with his eyes as he chewed, and focused on my behavior in particular. It was creepy, honestly. After the meal, when he was heading home, admonishing us, "Now, don't stay up too late, you crazy kids."

As soon as he had gone, I rounded on Peeta.

"What did you say to him?" I barked. I can't stand any suggestion of secret-keeping between any of us after that second go-round in the Games. The mystery spy nonsense ran out pretty quickly after I got to unzip my Mockingjay outfit, hang it in my closet, and close it. It's still closed, like that whole chapter, if I had my way.

"What did I say to him? What makes you think I said anything?" Peeta asks in bewilderment, taking a step back.

"He was acting weird!" I accuse.

"Katniss, he's always acting weird. He's Haymitch," he says, sensibly enough.

"Peeta I swear to god…" I raise my voice and I detect a note of frustration and nerves in it. I knew somewhere this would come out. He recognizes it, too, because when he speaks again, it's in a low, calm tone, like you'd use to calm an agitated animal.

"Katniss, he can use deductive reasoning. I let him figure it out himself. He warned me that you might not be stable enough yet to know what you're looking for. And…and…" Peeta clears his throat uncomfortably, "He told me to be careful about, you know, pregnancy. That's the truth of everything that was said."

My mind skips this last part and settles on the second.
"He doesn't get to decide how stable I am or what I should be doing with my time!" I snap. "I can figure out what I want without the help of Haymitch Abernathy!" Peeta is looking patient, still, and my heart reproachfully recognizes that I might not entirely be making sense or being fair. I'm not sure why I'm angry at Peeta. Instinctively I know he's telling the truth; why would he willingly add either of those last details in?

"He's just concerned, Katniss. He cares about us. It was kind of his job for awhile."

"He never did it very well!" My eyes are bright. I feel confused. Does Haymitch see something in me that I don't want to acknowledge? Does he think I'm making a huge mistake, that I don't care whether or not I hurt Peeta? Will Peeta always be the better of the two of us? I stand up and push my chair back. "I need to go home. I have a headache." I pull my jacket on and flee, as Peeta looks on with bewilderment and a little, I think, sadness. I can't focus on it. It stings.

That night in bed I toss and turn. Peeta doesn't come over to get me. He knows that I'm not fond of people infringing on my space. Buttercup hisses at me as I disturb his sleep, tossing and turning. "Oh, shut up!" I snarl. Finally, when the clock reads 2:30 AM, I pull on my clothing and walk across the green to Peeta's. The door isn't locked. I let myself in quietly. If he's sleeping, I'll go, leave him in peace.

He's not. When I peek around the edge of the cracked bedroom door, I see him sitting in the moonlight, painting. He looks tired yet very much awake. I slowly push the door back with my toe. When he sees me, he looks up, but his expression remains tired and a little distant. "Hi," he says. His tone is dull.

I cross to the room and sit on the bed beside him, but not touching him. I glance at his painting. It's me, sitting on what I recognize as my current front steps, bathed in moonlight that bounces off the snow, my face in my hands. Ah, I think, current events. He doesn't ask what I think about it, or make an attempt to cover it. I look at him and he looks back. And then, I get up. A sound escapes him, and I think he's trying to decide what to do, whether to call me back, but I stand only long enough to turn, and then I carefully perch myself on his lap, placing most of my weight on his good leg. He takes me in his arms and I kiss him, carefully, as though not to break him. I take his face in my hands. "I'm sorry," I whisper.

"I love you," he whispers back.

And that's how it went. After that, we did sleep together every night, and without clothing, ignoring Peeta's common erections. When I expressed some guilt about this one night, Peeta just smiled and said, "I don't have prosthetic hands, Katniss. I can do it myself." Once, he does, and I watch, trying to pick up on what he seems to like for next time. He doesn't touch me, just lets his eyes roam over my body before his orgasm overcomes him and he has to shut his eyes. I love the feeling of our skin on skin. I get turned on, too, especially when his hand shifts in the middle of the night to somewhere sensitive. Sometimes I shift it myself and just leave it there. Usually Peeta will squeeze me gently on my breast or ass or the soft mound between my legs when I do this, but he holds off. He senses that I need to breathe for a little while.

One reason that the trust is winning out, that my fear is being, little by little, eroded, that I'm comfortable lying nude in Peeta's embraces every night, is because I can't deny that I'm getting better. Since that night, I find it easier to wake in the mornings, easier to sleep at night, easier to move around. My funks happen less, although they're unavoidable. I find myself bringing in great loads of game from the woods, so much that I give it out as often as trade it. We don't need that much meat and we're still rolling in coin for life after the first Games. The food that gets out here, though more and better, is still never quite as much as the people would like, and some of it…particularly if you can't afford better…has that gluey Capitol quality to it that isn't very enticing. Johanna writes to me. She's living on her own, in a small apartment that the mayor of her town set up as a part of a complex for those who had lost their families. Johanna likes that she has this is common with the others, however morbid. It means they don't have to pretend to be okay. There are doctors in the complex and Johanna, like me, still has to let them keep track of her, but they let her come and go as she pleases. She even has a dog, a big yellow one that she sends a rare photo of one time. In it, she's laughing. Her hair has grown back all the way, and though short, it's shiny and full. She looks awfully thin…I've had this problem myself…but as close to okay as any of us could be expected to be. Once travel between districts is more reliable, she promises to come see me, and bring the dog. I look forward to it.

Haymitch notices, too.

"Now, Katniss, how's life these days?" he drawls when I stop by to drop off his haul of the groceries and some of Peeta's bread. I drop it on the floor by his feet.

"Fine," I answer guardedly.

"I noticed that you seem to be going about things rather ordinarily these days. For you, anyways." Of course, the snipe at the end.

"Did you expect me to be a zombie forever? Or were you just hoping?" I say coolly. I wouldn't want Haymitch out of my life, but I don't trust him the way I trust Peeta. And I'm suspicious of probing questions coming from his end.

"To what do you attribute this sunny personality?"

I know what he's getting at. I'm not stupid. "It's none of your damn business, Haymitch," I respond testily, "Stay out of it."

He grins. "You see, I could, sweetheart, but we're all one big happy family now. And what kind of a guardian would I be if I didn't place the very core of my happiness in your safety and success?" He says this in a mock-noble voice that incenses me. He still treats me like everyone else knows what's going on, but I'm missing the point.

"Why do you really care, Haymitch? Spit it out."

He sighs. The look of jovial hilarity drops off his face and in the moment, I see how very old he's gotten to look. "Look, Katniss, just be honest with yourself about what you want, alright? That boy's gone through enough already and you know he'd give you the world if he could only lift it."

"Do you think I'm some kind of evil heartless person who's out to get him, Haymitch? Thanks a lot for the faith." I snap. I'm turning to head out.

"Katniss," he calls behind me, sounding tired, "Try to listen to someone besides yourself just once every now and then."

His words have troubled me enough to disrupt my own train of thoughts and plans and I'm more aggravated that I've let him even get to me in the first place. Be honest with myself? About what I want? These questions are troubling because…I'm not sure I know the answers. What do I want? The things I really want, I can't have. I want for this never to have happened. Never to have had to volunteer for the Games. For Peeta never to have been picked. For Rue never to die, for Cinna never to die, for Darius, for Finnick, for Prim. I want Gale to come home, or at least write. Ditto for my mother. I want to not feel so tired, so broken, so lonely. I want to not have to constantly, still, watch my back, paranoid that something terrible will happen. I want to not have to do everything with one eye open. These are not options in the short-term, and some not ever. What do I want right now? Do I want Peeta, or am I just using him?

I need to think. This necessitates a trip to the woods. When I slip under the fence and into the green, and the noise of town fades behind me, I keep walking. I walk and walk, deeper into the glade alone. It's never the same without Gale: the haul never as good, the work never as fast, the process never as fun. It's one of the reasons I cry out here sometimes, curled up in our nook by the rocks, the one we nestled into to eat his bread with my cheese the morning of the 74th Reaping, a lifetime ago. I want Gale back. I want just one more day to hunt, to be us, before all this changed. I don't think about him the way I do Peeta; mostly, I just ache for the simplicity of what I thought all along was a really good friendship, a brotherhood of sorts, before the Games and the war changed everything, before we moved irrevocably beyond that. Gale, in whatever form, is one more thing I hold against the Capitol for taking away from me.

I reach the lake and wish I could strip down, but it's only just the remainder of winter and the air alone is cold. The water will be freezing. I sit on the step to the house where I met Twill and Bonnie, an unlikely pair of refugees who, despite my help, vanished into the chaos like so many others. I light a fire, and sit in front of it, staring into the flames. Slowly, I eat a handful of nuts I picked on the way out. What do I want? It's a completely fair question. I'm afraid that if I answer, "Peeta," I'll be locking myself into a commitment that I'm not ready for, that I'm making with no awareness. I still don't entirely believe we have a future as a race, some mornings. The cynicism is overwhelming. Still, he can't expect me to promise what I'll always want. He's asking about now. Do I just want to feel better? I have pills I don't take for that. I've gotten accustomed to feeling bad. At a certain point, once I decided I wasn't going to kill myself, it even leveled out. I've felt utterly empty, utterly eviscerated, every day, for most of the day—no appetite, waking screaming from nightmares two and three times a night, crying at odd times and avoiding most everyone like the plague.

Except Peeta.

Yes, except Peeta. Even before I was sleeping over with him every night, there were a fair number of nights I did find myself in his bed, find him in mine—clothed, but pressed tightly into each other. No words. Just us. When I wanted no food, no water, no company, nothing at all discernible except to have back things that were gone forever, I still wanted Peeta, still sought him out or at least did not refuse his company. Surely I am not the only one to have noticed this. I realize Haymitch might be playing me. Does he already know what I want, and is just tired of my not coming to an obvious conclusion? Is that part of this? Does he think I've just gotten good at lying to myself? Have I?

If that's the truth, it has to stop. If I've lost all ability to access my true emotions, if the Capitol has taken that away and replaced it with only fear and loss and regret, I may as well be dead. There are no cameras, no spectators, no baby. This is scary, I realize, because now it's just he and I…not even really Haymitch, who, as he acknowledged, realizes that I'm headstrong to the point of thickness. Peeta…who is Peeta? Peeta is the boy with the bread. The boy who would have given me his life, to save mine. Peeta is the boy who remembers the song I volunteered to sing when I was only a child in class. Peeta is the one who waits patiently for me to catch up, hoping that someday, I will. Peeta is the boy who holds me at night and comforts me back to sleep as many times as I need. He is strong, he is a fighter and a baker's son, he is as gentle as my tiny, fragile sister once was. Peeta is the boy who planted her primroses. He is the boy who sits with me to help recreate the faces I don't want to lose forever. Peeta is the boy who loves me despite all my stubbornness, my resistance, my sarcasm, my temper. Do I have any reason to believe any of this is a front, or a lie? I reason. No, I do not. Has Peeta been inconsistent with these actions, excepting the time the Capitol hijacked his mind? Never. I stand up. Okay, Haymitch, I think. You:1, Me:0. I have been a coward.

I shoot some game on the way back, so as not to return with nothing—a couple of squirrels I can trade, a fat woodchuck. I do grab the herbs I spy that are within arm's reach of my path, but I don't go out of my way. Peeta gets nervous when I'm out here for awhile and return with nothing to show for it, plus it seems a little like a waste of an opportunity which, I think wryly, has become a luxury for me. Once it would have seemed unimaginable to risk going into the woods each day just to loiter. My mind feels clearer as I sling my game bag and myself under the opening in the fence. I bring this meat home. There's not enough of it to be worth trading, plus, I want to go see him. I want to put his face again to all these thoughts I'm having regarding it. On the way past Haymitch's, I use an arrow to skewer a squirrel and pin it to his door. It's the closest I come to peace offerings. Haymitch, as obnoxious as he is, doesn't have judgment nearly as poor as I like to think he does.

I leave the game bag on the stoop as I enter Peeta's, so it will stay cool in the snow. I always do this without knocking, both because he doesn't expect me to and because, if he's sitting just off the hall in the dining room, which has the best sunlight, I don't want to startle him into making an error in his painting. He's sitting in there now, but not painting. His eyes are roving over the thick shafts of afternoon sunlight bouncing in and making patterns on the floor. He told me once that sometimes he just needs to watch things and think about them, before he begins. His eyes have a faraway look that dissipates when he sees me. He smiles.

"Figured I'd lost you for the day. Haymitch looked aggravated when I dropped by. Did you do that?" he teases.

"You know me, always the expert in aggravation," I say dryly.

"Why are you in so early? I thought you'd be tromping around out there until dinner. There's a lot of good light left."

Why am I here? "I wanted to ask if you'd take a nap with me," I say firmly.

He looks briefly puzzled, as though I'd asked if he'd like to take a vacation to district 1 with me on holiday. "A nap?" Then he smiles. Peeta is free with his smiles, when I'm around. I cross to him and put both hands on my shoulders, leaning down to kiss him. "Mmmm," he murmurs into it, "Hey, there."

I take his hand and slip it under my shirt, and move it up to cup my breast. He squeezes gently. "You're cold," he whispers.

"Warm me up," I whisper back, teasingly.

He takes my hand and we go upstairs. Peeta's bed, huge, warm and inviting, beckons us. As beautiful as the sunlight is, we close the curtains on our way. The room dims, and it's so breathlessly quiet. Everything around me was loud and chaotic for so long…screaming and crying and things exploding and running and hiding. I seek out the quiet places. When I turn from closing the curtains, Peeta's there. Instead of letting me do it myself, he begins undressing me, gently tugging off my coat and sweater and undershirt, unhooking my bra. He lifts me as though I weigh nothing at all and sets me on the edge of the bed, and then his nimble fingers undo my boots and place them aside, extricate my legs from my pants and finally, as I lie back, sliding off my underwear until there's nothing left but me and my braid, on my back, looking up to him. Like I did that first night, I reach up for him, almost imploringly. This time he teases me.

"What if I just decided to let you nap, while I keep you company?" he asks, perching next to me with all his clothes on. I sit up and wrap my naked arms around him from behind, and lean in to nibble his ear. "I'd be very sad," I whisper.

He closes his eyes and shivers but isn't ready to give in, yet. "Say pretty please."

"Pretty please," I say, obediently.

"I could just paint up here, I guess."

I nuzzle my face into his neck and breathe in. Oregano. Flour. Cloves. Oranges. "Come lie down with me before dinner," I beseech him.

"Why should I?" he's still playing, but suddenly, I'm not, as my hand moves up and finds those silky waves of blond hair that brush my cheek. I lean in closer. "I want you," I whisper in his ear, "I need you. Come soothe it. Please, Peeta."

He turns swiftly to regard me. The words have had the desired effect. He slips his clothes off at the look in my eyes without teasing me anymore, and slides under the covers next to me. I'm already leaning in for the kisses I want. I wrap one leg up over his hip as I pull myself up close to him, and his hands find the end of my braid and unravel it so that my hair falls loose and inky across his white sheets and pillows. After thinking things over today, I feel much more secure overall with myself, and the place between my legs that adores him so is throbbing now. I'm impatient for his love, suddenly. I brush the tip of my nose against his and tell him so.

"So, should I give you some, then?" he asks, stroking my face with the backs of two fingers, tracing them over my eyelids when I blink. I nod. He rolls me carefully onto my back, and then those big, chapped hands are stroking me again, my hair, my cheeks, cradling my face as he hovers over me. His lips are soft and parted as a flurry of hot, openmouthed kisses drops onto my cheeks, my jawline, my throat. I can feel the gentle scrape of his teeth and the flickering laps of his tongue. One of my hands reaches down automatically and finds his cock, hard as stone, twitching just inches above my prone body. I wrap a hand around it and inhale, turned on by the fullness of it, by this evidence of his mutual desire. But Peeta, though he moans softly at the touch, takes both my hands and wraps them up around his shoulders. Whispering into my mouth, which strains upwards for him, he murmurs, "You just hold on to me, Katniss, okay? Hold on. I'll love you all you need." I nod. My eyes are still open, locking on to the brilliant blue they find in his. His openmouthed kisses drop to my breasts, though, and then mine close and see no more, except for the pinwheels of color that blossom behind them as I lose myself in the sensations. His fingers find the curves that lead down between my breasts and my underarms, those sensitive trails, and he maps them lightly. His mouth moves to the flushed tips of my nipples, and he suckles at them greedily. He hasn't had this…we haven't had this…in at least a couple of weeks. It's been too long, I think, fervently.

I wish I could move my hands, touch him while he touches me, but I know he wants to keep his concentration. So I let myself lie back, and merely twist my hands deeper into his curls, not pulling, just holding on as he suckles hard at me, perhaps remembering the last time. His teeth nip and the tip of his tongue probes. He doesn't move away as quickly this time to go on to other places, but showers my breasts with attention, hands petting and lifting and kneading, purring his satisfaction as I begin to find my fingers tightening inexplicably in his hair, as my breathing quickens. I whimper as his teeth find my left nipple again and bite down, firmly. He sits back and slaps one, the lightest he could possibly muster, and watches it swing. He shivers again and cups them both in his palms, flicking his thumbnails over my nipples, which are getting deliciously sore. He's concentrating, but he's also looking self-satisfied.

"You're teasing," I reprimand him.

He covers my breasts in their entirety with big, warm hands and leans in, kisses me, openmouthed. "You said to warm you up. Should I stop?"

I shake my head vigourously. Peeta's eyes twinkle. He resumes his former position, only now those lips are finding their way to the sensitive curves under my ribs, lapping quizzically at my bellybutton and the hollows at my jutting hips. My hand strokes the nape of his neck, the softness of tiny, downy hairs. I feel uneasy, helpless, slightly vulnerable, with Peeta's instructions to lie back and keep my hands to myself, but the sensation somehow makes me more aware, more awake. He's confident, I notice. He doesn't have that old self-restraint; he's not hanging back, double-checking with me. I don't know what to attribute this to: has only one time made him feel more skilled? Is he more convinced that I really do want him now? It he just following his shared blazing hormones? Most likely it's a combination. There's something almost dreamy about it, though, lying back and letting him act upon me. I'm curious as to what will happen next, too. Suddenly, I feel his hands sliding between my legs, driving them apart. I almost sit up, but he's watching my eyes as he does it, staring into them. I see my want reflected in his. His eyes tell me he'd never, ever hurt me. They invite me in. I wait out my apprehension by fixing mine on his.

"Hold them there," he says, suddenly, and reaches up, taking my wrists gently and untangling my fingers from his curls. He moves them slowly to my own thighs and places them just below each of my own knees. It's exposing, this position, and he's asking me to keep myself there, rather than doing it himself. If there's a metaphor in this, it's not too hard to find.

"Peeta?" There's a question in my voice. He eases up to my side and tilts my check adoringly, starting with the easiest of kisses, slow, as light as the brush of butterfly wings. He kisses the corner of my mouth. I lean in for more. He deepens them gradually, moving my lips apart with his own. I'm relaxing, and I'm also craving to see what Peeta can do to me, what he's scheming about. "Okay," I whisper into his mouth.

He returns to me, and like I did to him that first day, he tucks the covers around me, though he's careful not to cover my view of him. As he kneels to me, he leans in, rests his face just against my pubic bone, and inhales. I don't understand this, but I can almost see the quiver that runs from his scalp to his toes. Two fingers stroke my slippery entrance. But he doesn't touch the hard little nub that peeks out for him, urging him on. He just strokes me below, probing, exploring. My fingernails dig into my own thighs in anticipation. I'm drifting in a sea of pleasure behind my eyes. Then, he does something I'm unprepared for, and they fly open. Peeta lows that hot, hungry mouth to that swollen pink kernel, kisses it, begins to lap at the folds surrounding. At the same time he pushes both fingers inside me, groaning softly as he does. I don't know what to feel. I'm shocked, disoriented, and simultaneously paralyzed with arousal.

"Peeta," I get out, "I've been outside all day. I need to shower." I feel weird. Should his mouth be there? He slips out both fingers, hovering just at the tips, then pushes them into me again, more firmly, faster. I cry out, despite myself. He licks up one side of me and down the other. "You taste wonderful," he whispers to me, as I feel the tip of his tongue probe the hot, slick slit, lap at it, the tips of his fingers spreading me. He must have a full view of me, with me humiliatingly having to give it to him. Except it no longer feels humiliating. It feels erotic, handing myself over. He pushes the tip of his tongue inside, and then, I can think no more. My ability to think is taken away. I'm aware of letting go of my own thighs at some point to grip the rails at the head of the bed, my chest heaving. Peeta's tongue works me, moving slick and hot over my most sensitive spot, which has missed out until now, only having had hands to attend to it. Now I'll really need him, ha. I can't possibly last. I whimper his name, quietly, then again and again, and one hand finds its way back into that hair, holding him when he finds the right place, the right movement. His other hand works me, sliding his slick fingers in and out, moving slow and then faster as he works me to my climax. By the end, his fingers are almost pounding, and my hips buck so that I hardly know how he stays on. I call his name, over and over, when a flood of semi-consciousness hits me. I arch up, gripping his shoulder as he begins to move slowly again, lightly kissing above the nub that has now become almost painfully sensitive. He smiles, licks his lips. I'm panting, covered in sweat, my nipples at attention, eyes closed, mouth open, when I feel his weight drop beside me.

"Holy fuck," I say, when my mouth begins to function.

"Technically not," he says.

"You….where did you get that idea?" I'm thunderstruck. Innocent Peeta? Maybe his brothers?

He makes a noise like, 'heh.'

"Katniss, I've been dreaming of doing that with you for almost four years," he says, straightforwardly.

The face I'm making must be both comical and skeptical. "What…else…have you been dreaming about…?" I ask, the words coming out one at a time. I have a sudden craving to know the answer to this question. But he doesn't give.

"Ah, guess you'll have to keep hanging around me to find out," he jokes. "Now, if you don't mind, I have serious issues right now." One hand closes around his prick, the other reaches down, and I let him press it against the slippery flood that is me, even though it initially makes me jump. I lean in and kiss his ear, suckle it gently, whisper, "Thank you, Peeta. That was…unbelievable," and he moans as he comes. We're both a mess now, but I need that nap more than ever. My mind is blown. I feel as though the entire world is content with me, and I with it. I'm sleepy. Plus, I kind of like the idea of sleeping with Peeta in the evidence of our own lovemaking. He kisses me before we sleep, and I taste something new, which is, of course, myself. I examine it, probing his lips gently, lapping them. It's not bad, like I was afraid. It's just very new. Strange. He seems to enjoy the testing. He tugs at my hair, ever-so-slightly. Then he curls around me and I begin to drowse. There is, I think finally, before I go, no evil without good to balance it out. I've had my evil. I'm ready to welcome in the good.