I didn't get back to sleep again, if you can call fainting "sleeping." I see Johanna everywhere when I close my eyes, and it keeps my heart racing too quickly for me to rest. I can still feel her body wrapped around mine. I can still smell her pine perfume, reminding me of my time hunting in District Twelve. Perhaps most telling of all, I can still see her eyes, feel them looking into my heart. Those eyes, the way they make me feel... my pulse races, my thoughts run nowhere, my skin tingles. It's a current running through me, and I can't stop it. If I'm honest with myself, I'm not even sure I want to stop it, I kinda like it.
I remember all night long just how her low voice made me feel. She filled me with desire, a sensation I've never really felt before. In the games last year, there was a moment where I felt a flicker of something, some warmth that I never caught again with Peeta, but nothing like when Johanna spoke to me last night. I felt that flicker again when Gale kissed me soon after I got home, but nowhere near what Johanna made me feel last night. Just by running up to me and wrapping herself around me, that woman overloaded my body with a pleasant fire that I have never felt burning in me before, and I don't know whether I want it again now or not. It was... so wonderful, but the timing is so wrong, because I intend to die so that Peeta can go home, live the life he was meant to live, and in order for that to happen Johanna herself must die too.
'Well... if I'm going to be dead soon, should I grab whatever pleasure I can? Shouldn't I be allowed to be happy for the first time ever, for at least a little while? And should I make the first move, because I have no fucking clue how to do that, especially with Johanna...' These thoughts torment me, make my mind spin and spiral so that I don't know which way is up even in my own head. I sit in the center of my bed, crippling myself with uncertainty and doubt until the sun rises, the simple and insidious question of what it would feel like to kiss her running through my head again and again.
I hear Haymitch stir next door, but I don't move. I hear Peeta move down the hall, but I stay still. Eventually I even hear Effie call me to breakfast, but I don't answer and I stay right where I am. I'm afraid that if I move, I'll fall apart and scatter, and then I'll never get my answers. I sit there so long that I hear Haymitch again, bellowing for me to get to the dining room. I sigh, and when that doesn't disperse me, I stand and wander out of my room.
The men are sitting there, one amused and the other angry. I don't care. Haymitch gets my attention with his words very quickly though. "Today in training, you've got two jobs. One, stay in love."
"What?!" I cry, shocked at this man who sees me so well and yet seems bent on making me a fool. "I though we agreed that was over after the tour concluded!" I see Peeta turn and give him a look that seems to say, 'I told you so.' I continue, "Too many people saw it wasn't true, and you even said last night that the parade proved it!"
He sighs and pours amber liquid from a flask into his coffee before taking a drink and answering me, "Maybe so, but try. And two, make some friends. I'm sure that even you can't screw that one up, sweetheart." The way he looks at me makes me wonder what he's thinking. Is he thinking about Rue last year, or is he thinking about the elevator ride up last night with Johanna holding my attention so completely? Somehow, I think it has everything to do with my reaction to the woman from District Seven. Peeta doesn't say a word, but the look he's giving me with that half smile says everything for him. He's still angry with me for not returning his affection for real, but he's enough of a kind soul that he's genuinely glad that someone has my attention, and he's rooting for me. I tune them both out so I can eat, but it's nagging at me in the back of my mind and I don't manage more than a piece of toast and some bacon. I'm trying to act normal in the hopes that maybe that will mean that I am, but my thoughts are burning at a fever pitch and I have no hope of appearing calm.
All too soon, we're on the elevator going down to the training center and Peeta is holding my hand. I don't force him to let go, thinking that he probably has a good reason, and that it will likely save my life or my dignity or both very soon. It doesn't feel right to touch him and I know it, but I do it anyway. What would I say to stop him, don't touch me? You're not who I want to feel against my skin, you don't have the right eyes, you don't smell right, you don't smell like home? None of it makes sense, but with the doors slide open and he sees that Johanna is standing there with Brutus and Enobaria, he drops my hand like touching me burns him.
I don't know what to do, at least not until he nudges me forward, towards the woman from District Seven who has filled my every waking thought for the last day. There have been a lot of waking thoughts, since I haven't actually managed to sleep at all. I can't deny that I want to smell her again, that I want the electricity that being near her brings. I slowly walk to her side, those bright eyes following me the entire way. She's got that look of surprised satisfaction on her face again, and I have to admit to myself that I like it at least a little. I like that I can get her to look at me like that, I like that I can get anyone to look at me like that. I like the thought that in the middle of this hell, I can be someone who is wanted by a powerful and compelling woman like Johanna Mason. That look is everything I never allowed myself, all the dark promises I never even knew I wanted or cared about. We stay like that, me trying not to look at her while she stares at me hungrily. I can't keep my eyes away from her face though, and every time I look up I can see her breath hitch and her eyes flash just a little. When the instructor starts her spiel right at ten, we both jump, but only half the tributes have bothered to show up, so there are only ten others to see our guilty faces.
When we are allowed to choose our stations, I mindlessly follow her to the knots and snares. With no one else listening anymore, she starts to talk. "Lover Boy sure was quick to drop your hand this morning. I wonder why that was...?"
I try not to smile, and though I know I fail I answer anyway. "I think it was because of you. Specifically, your stripping act in the elevator last night, and..." I blush before I say the next part of my explanation, "how I couldn't keep my eyes from you, how I couldn't stop looking at you." When I glance up to gauge her reaction, her lascivious grin embarrasses me even more, and her reply threatens to steal all my air away.
"I noticed that. Who would have though I had anything to offer the Girl on Fire?" Her hands fly to mimic mine as I twist a knot to cover my ineptitude at dealing with her flirtatious words. It distracts me, and I end up focused on her fingers, how long and slender they are. I wonder what it would feel like to have them combing through my hair, or running along my jaw. I wonder what it would be like for those hands to hold me at night instead of Peeta's. I long to find out, to know if she can make me feel safe and let me sleep at night, to know if she can stop the nightmares and protect me from the horrors of the arena. I also want to know if I can protect her as well, to learn whether I can soothe her when she wakes screaming and grant her enough peace to sleep again.
"I...I certainly didn't think so, District Seven. I was prepared to be offended by you, not captivated." Her grin is elated, and there is a flutter in my stomach again. She twists another knot and my feet seem to leave the ground though I don't know why. Then just for a moment, she squeezes my hand and the world itself stops turning beneath my feet.
"You're kinda lost here aren't you, brainless?" My eyes snap to her face as the world races to make up for lost time and threatens to rip my footing away from me. I am shocked and it shows, but there is joy and ecstasy in my gaze brought by her playful name calling. Hearing her call me 'brainless,' like it's an endearing nickname and not an insult, steals the air from the room and I can't breathe, my heart feels on the verge of exploding, my head is muzzy and filled with cotton.
"I...no! No of course I'm not, what makes you say that? How can you say that?" She purrs and moves so close that I can feel the tickle of her words as she whispers in my ear, "You came to me this morning, you didn't speak but your eyes screamed what you wanted, and then just moments ago you admitted that I captivate you. To me you're an open book... brainless." She does it again, says the words that take my will from me, and I know that this time I have a stupidly slavish look on my face. I like her half-insult way too much, and it shows. "N-no I'm not. Of course I'm not. You're just... ummm... you're just..." I can't even form a coherent though anymore, and it's all because of this woman. Barely four years older than me but infinitely more experienced, she drives me wild and I can't even say why exactly.
"Keep up that stammering and I may just have to trap myself a little hunter for my very own..." I freeze at her implication, at the though that maybe she wants me the way I'm believing more and more that I want her. That she wants to take me back to her room and...
Before I can finish that thought, I bolt away from her and the knots that have me paying too much attention to her hands. My face, and other places, burning red, I run to the first station that occurs to me and find myself at the fire starting supplies with the District Threes. 'How appropriate.' I think, knowing that fire won't distract me but not caring. Somehow I don't mind the thoughts of how all-consuming fire is. Just how close my desire is to an open flame. Just how much I want to explore what it would mean to be the fire consuming Johanna's body. As I work with flint and steel, I watch the District Threes struggle to light their tinder with matches. They mutter to each other, constant calculations bouncing back and forth without affecting their success at all. Finally I can stand it no more, so I take pity on them and move to help.
As we talk and I teach them from practical experience, I learn about them. The man is called Beetee, and he is a quiet inventor full of thoughts and simple philosophical assertions. He won his games by setting a trap with electricity as I recall, and on the outside he was given a job with the Capitol. The woman is Wiress, a technical savant if Beetee is to be believed, and she has a tendency to leave her sentences hanging right in the middle. Beetee is used to working with her and finishes them for her.
Our conversation goes nowhere at first, then Wiress notices something. She points to the Gamemakers and mumbles, "Look." I follow her finger but don't see anything out of the ordinary. Instead, I see Plutarch Heavensbee standing among those gathered and assume he is what she meant. "Yes, he's been promoted to Head Gamemaker this year." She fidgets and I know I was wrong. "No, no. There by the corner of the table, you can just..." she whispers, her pause heavy and pregnant in the air until Beetee finishes for her, "Just make it out."
I look again and see nothing, but I trust them and continue scanning. Just as I am about to give up I see it, a patch of air that shimmers and dances. I turn to him for an explanation and he doesn't disappoint. "They've put up a forcefield between them and us this year. I wonder why." I blush again, this time at the memory of firing an arrow at the Gamemakers last year, pinning the apple from the mouth of their roast pig to the wall. I mumble about it probably being my fault and ask about the forcefield. They tell me that ideally you wouldn't be able to see it, but that patch is always there. The chink in the armor as it were, the weakest point in the field and the spot where it can be disrupted. All that phrase does is make me think of how easily Johanna has gotten to me, how close I want to let her get, and the feelings she elicits.
I look around for her but at first I can't find her. Others catch my eye in her place, like Brutus. He is the largest man I have ever seen, a mountain on legs and an emptiness in his dead eyes. I see Enobaria, her filed teeth bared in a mockery of a grin as she clashes swords with one of the trainers, her movements jerky and swift. At first it seems inefficient, the way she fights, but then I notice that she keeps slipping around his guard and it kind of dawns on me that he can't predict how she'll move.
I see Cecilia and Woof, both middle aged and seemingly here to chat. They aren't doing anything at all to prepare, though they call out jeers and taunts, having fun anyway. I find Gloss, but his sister isn't with him like I expected, and I'm a little confused. I remember Gloss and Cashmere winning back to back, so it seems natural in my mind that she'd just be sticking with him. The way he handles a spear reminds me of Marvel, and it's so strong a resemblance that I figure he must have trained the boy himself. I almost sneer in his direction, pinning Rue's death on the head of this man even though I already killed the actual perpetrator.
I finally find Johanna getting ready for a wrestling lesson. I suppose it shouldn't surprise me that she is naked once again, but the oil causes her curves to glisten. She in entrancing and fascinating at the best of times, and now there is nothing I can do to break my attention away from her. In my mind, I retreat to last night with her arms around me and her scent teasing my nose. I remember her warmth, the pressure of her grip, and the tingle that her voice generated. In that daydream, I stayed on my feet and I started to say something to her, but it's always just out of reach. I can't hear what I would have said to her, but I can see what happens when I say it, and the heat in my face drops down to the join of my legs. My breathing grows heavy and I can feel a dampness between my thighs that I am unused to, and I barely resist the urge to slip my hand into the waistband of my training clothes to relieve the pent up tension.
I see in my thoughts those smirking lips close the gap between us, and then it's no longer my thoughts but a very vivid vision of my wishes. I can feel the soft pressure of her kiss, hot and demanding enough that I feel tongues of flame licking at my skin. I feel her fingers, strong from working in the forest, slipping into my hair and massaging my scalp. I walk with her in a daze to my room where she lays me down and slips into my bed with me, her toned body pressed against mine as she holds me close, the smell of pine wrapping around and enfolding me, sending me to sleep only to wake with the rising of the sun with her still there, asleep on my pillow. Then I realize... that smell isn't in my head, but right in front of me.
My eyes focus again and there she is, inches away from me, naked as the day she was born and still glistening with the sweat of exercise making her glow. Her eyes dance with mirth as she grins at me, and when she speaks it tugs all sorts of strings. "I guess I really do have your attention, Girl on Fire. Find me tonight and maybe I'll do something to really make you moan my name..." She nips my ear, a little playfulness and a lot of teasing giving that one action the push needed to make my pulse thrum, the feeling of hummingbird wings battering against the walls of my chest. My eyes are glazed as she saunters away, her bare legs making the heat in my core pulse with every stride.
Training cannot be over quick enough for me. After the second episode, my attention is shot and everyone is staring at me knowingly, except for Peeta of course who has the grace to look a little hurt. He always was the better actor, though again I'm not sure that he is actually acting. When the ending bell chimes, I sprint for the elevators and manage to keep one to myself, though I can hear and see Cashmere laughing at my discomfort as she stands next to Finnick, one arm on his shoulder.
On the ride up to our floor, I think of how Peeta looked. How hurt he appeared to be, and how it is my fault for not being interested, even if that is something that I can cannot change and don't actually even feel inclined to. He went down with me this morning knowing that my attention was somewhere else, but perhaps he wasn't prepared to see it quite so... blatantly.
He had his chance in the arena last year, and oh how I tried to make it believable. I tried to fall in love with him, I tried to make myself feel something other than obligation to him. Somehow it never stuck, and I left the games feeling just as indebted to him for the bread as I had when we went in. After we got home, Gale even tried to get me to fall in love with him. All I could ever feel after that was awkwardness, since I hadn't even known that he felt that way about me. It never felt right, and no matter how much I tried I just couldn't get my heart into it. Neither one of them fit in my life, and now I'm starting to have a suspicion as to why that was and still is true.
The doors open on floor twelve and I hurry to my room to shower and change before dinner. I know that Peeta will tell Haymitch everything, and I need the solitude to figure out how to answer and counter anything he says about it. I step under the fall of the water, and suddenly my thoughts run wild again. I wish that the water was her lips, kissing away the stiffness and the sore muscles and the stress of the day. I wish that my hands were not my own, but hers. I wish that she was here with me, caressing the most intimate places of my body as she helps scrub me clean. I wish for her arms around me so that I can begin to understand what these feelings are, what they mean, and what I want. Most importantly to me, I wish to know what she wants, what she feels, what her desires are where I'm concerned. I feel I need to know...
By the time I make it to dinner, clean yet flushed and still excited, Peeta looks downright angry. Haymitch on the other hand is almost bouncing out of his seat with barely contained glee at finally understanding a little bit more about the hard-headed girl that he threw his lot in with last year. He manages to ask how training went today, so I tell him about meeting Wiress and Beetee and their lesson about forcefields. I tell him about the forcefield in the training center and how it's likely because of me, and I tell him how they had pointed out the chink in the armor to me. He laughs like I haven't heard him laugh in a year, and I calm down. It's good to hear Haymitch laugh, he doesn't do it enough, and when he does he looks younger. Even when Peeta bites out that Johanna(or as he says, "Your precious Johanna") calls them Nuts and Volts, his good mood doesn't falter and I stay centered. I even admit to myself that it kind of suits them, and when I say that with a smile it only makes him even more sullen.
Haymitch grins and says, "Speaking of the lumberjack, is our little burning girl harboring a bit of an actual crush? Are you perhaps dreaming of climbing into her arms like you did those trees last year?" I turn beet red, but I smile shyly and nod once, and he laughs again before muttering, "Explains so much about you..." Then he turns back to me and says, "So you want Wiress and Beetee, I can see that from what you told me of your conversation with them. I'll go ahead and believe that you want Johanna as an ally as well, so there's your pack. I just hope you realize that might mean Finnick will be there too, sweetheart."
I don't waste time wondering why he says that, the easy companionship of some of the Victors tells me the answer. In the back of my mind, there is a niggling little sensation concerning the other person who might be included just because I'm teaming with Johanna. Shimmering waves of golden hair, bright eyes the color of sea foam. If I was still wondering about my proclivities, the fact that I noticed those little details even from a distance would have answered that though. What I'm not prepared for is the poisoned fire that springs to life in my belly at the thought of Cashmere being close to Johanna. Mine. Mine mine mine.
The rest of dinner passes speedily enough and I return to my room once more so I can try and catch a few hours of sleep. I know that I'll be going back to the roof tonight, so I want to rest a little. For the couple hours I manage to grab, I run through trees I don't recognize, and I'm surrounded by the scent of fresh pine. When branches touch me in passing, it's gentle and almost loving, and when I lay down to catch my breath, the earth beneath me is warm and soft.
I wake slowly, my eyes fluttering open just after midnight. At first I'm disoriented and saddened because I'm not in the woods anymore, because there is no pine to make my head swim, but then I register where I am and my nerves are buzzing again. I sit bolt upright with a big grin on my face and clamber out of bed so that I can sprint down the hall. Doors fly open in front of me as I brush them aside so that I can reach the roof, and once I'm free I stand and appreciate the moment. Out here, there is nothing but the open air and the breeze as it lifts my hair, and even though it smells of the city it still reminds me of home.
This time when I see her, I move forward and wait for her to hear my soft footsteps. When she turns to me, I can't help but smile and it's now her turn to look stunned. Her beauty hits me again and the piercing in my chest strikes right though my heart. I sit down next to her feeling like I'm floating to earth, and I murmur, "I wasn't sure you'd be here." She giggles and takes my hand, that simple movement tugging on my heart again. It's a sensation I'm getting used to rather quickly. "Where else would you be able to find me if not here?"
We sit like that for a few minutes, looking at each other while we hold hands, then I have to know. I lean forward slowly, breathing in the smell of her, the scent that reminds me so much of home. I know what I intend to do, but it still seems to startle her when my lips meet hers. For a moment all I can think is how warm and soft hers are, how different it is from kissing the boys, then she takes over. She kisses me with a fervor that no one has had before, like she needs it to live. Her kisses are hot, needy things that arch my back and send shivers over my flesh. Her fingers entwine in my hair and mine do the same in hers, until neither of us knows where we end and the other begins. I feel her tongue flick against my lips and I part them, welcoming her into my mouth as I tentatively explore the way she lights my senses. Where she touches me, flames nibble at me, and when her hands move on there is a yearning emptiness that follows and tries to fill itself again.
Finally, she pulls away and stares at me again. Her hazel eyes are so beautiful from this close that I lose myself in them. I don't know where my thoughts go, but when she speaks she calls me back only to shock me again. "You smell like home." she purrs, her forehead resting on mine and one hand on my face. I am stunned for sure, but I stay awake and I grin. "Really?" I ask, not realizing how much I need the answer until she nods. The singing in my heart soars and I moan for a moment before I reply to her again, "Well so do you, Jojo." I look at her through veiled eyes, wondering how she'll react to the nickname I wanted to try out. When she kisses me I know that she loves it, that I didn't need to worry that she wouldn't want me to name her, that she is claiming me and is letting me claim her too. I kiss her and drink up her joy and forget all about the world for tonight.