Oh my word. I'm so flattered and humbled by your amazing reviews that I don't even know what to do. Thank you! They make me so happy (and also help me write!)
I do not own the Hunger Games.
Peeta starts smiling again as she's stitching him up, either because it hurts less than the disinfecting or because he's now been through half the bottle on his own. He gives her a sloppy smile that confirms the latter.
"You're pretty," he tells her, slurring, and she almost smiles. She catches herself though: she's mad at him, even though she has no right to be.
"How about you answer my question?" she demands, again, but more gently this time. She doesn't know what she's doing and she feels her inexperience shows.
"Could we just not talk about this?" he begs, but his sincerity is made slightly less convincing by how drunk he is. "I wanna talk about…the goat."
She rolls her eyes. He looks at his hand, concentrating hard.
"You sure you know what you're doing there?" he slurs, and she blushes. She was hoping he was too drunk to notice her sloppy stitches and how badly her hands are shaking.
"'Course I do," she bluffs and he laughs, loudly, tipping back the bottle and gulping more.
"You're such a bad liar," he giggles. "You have the weird, squeamish look on your face that you did in the first Games."
He proceeds to giggle like a small girl and tip back more liquor, and if she weren't working so hard on fixing his hand she'd be on the floor laughing at how ridiculous he looks. But she is working hard on his hand, and though it takes far too long (her inexperience giving Peeta time to finish the bottle), when she's done it's stopped bleeding and is clean enough that she's not worried about infection. She sits back in her chair, wondering if she should make fresh coffee or heat up the coffee he made on their stove. He is still giggling; of course Peeta would be a happy drunk.
"You're going to throw up," she warns him, which just sets him off again.
"We should eat cupcakes!" he tells her, wide-eyed with excitement. "I never got to have treats for breakfast when I was a kid." He gets up, stumbling around, and she pushes him back to his chair, afraid for his stitches, and gets him a cupcake.
"You're still a kid," she tells him as he focuses on getting it into his mouth.
"Only in age," he tells her. "After what we've been through, no one could consider us children. Our childhoods are over." She's marveling at his way with words, even in this state, when he starts giggling again.
"If you think about it, though, we are children. We could still be in the Reaping!" He giggles, though she has no idea how that could ever be funny.
He's right: by the Capitol's standards, they are still children. She's sure Snow would still see them that way. He always saw her that way; she could see it in his eyes when she'd gone in to get the rose before his execution. It was only when she was with Peeta that he'd stopped seeing her as a scared little girl. That was what the Capitol had hoped for when they hijacked him, she now knows: their separation turned them into children, took away the strength they'd gained making it through two Games. Together, they are a dangerous enemy, with Peeta's charismatic way with words and Katniss' haphazard ability to stir others into action. Separated, they are frightened children, unable to stir the slightest thing into action. It's their togetherness that makes them strong enough to be a threat.
"We're not children," she tells him, firmly. He looks at her.
"Didn' you just say we were?" he asks, turning his head sideways to peer at her. "Whoa…the room is spinning!" He giggles, tries to get to his feet, sways, and falls back into his chair. She sighs; this wasn't what she'd hoped her day would be like. She pulls him up off the chair, propping him up on her shoulder because it's certain he can't walk in a straight line, and manages to get him up the stairs and into his bed. She finds a bucket in the kitchen and brings it to him, hopes he'll be better at cleaning up after himself than Haymitch. He's still giggling at her, even as she gets a cloth to clean the blood from his hand and forearm.
"You're a very different drunk than Haymitch," she tells him. His smile is so bright, it seems to radiate from him. He lights up the whole room. He looks like a different person when he smiles.
"I'm a diff…diff…hmmm…" He's completely lost to the world, she sees this, so she does something dangerous, something she shouldn't be doing on the heels of last night. She slips into bed with him, combing his hair back from his face. He smiles at her, and she feels his radiance brighten her, warm her from the inside out.
"Peeta," she whispers, wanting to tell him to be careful with his stitches, but he groans, and not in pain.
"I love it when you say my name," he whispers, and his hands find her body under the covers: one hand on her waist, the other on her thigh. "It sounds so perfect when you say it, like it's my name, like it belongs to you. I belong…" he trails off, slumping onto her shoulder, but still with that happy smile on his face.
"I love your smile," she whispers, in response to his little tirade. She's pretty sure he can't hear her, but she wants to be sure.
"I love when you smile because of me." She settles him on his pillows, then, hesitantly, lies down beside him.
She remembers this so clearly: his arms around her, her head on his chest, listening to his heart. They're a perfect fit. Never did Gale's arms feel like this. She knows that she and Peeta are a team, an unstoppable team that scares the hell out of anyone who tries to go up against them. As long as they're together, she reminds herself. Together, they can withstand torture, betrayal, fire…Separated, they turn back into those trembling children who were certain to die in the Games.
She's tired, barely slept last night, and she feels herself slipping away. She looks up at his face, puts one hand on his cheek. He's breathtaking. And since it has nothing to do with survival or need, and since he's not going to remember this anyways, she tells him, "Peeta, I love you."
Reviews make me smile.