One-Shot: Risk

When their mother passes away unexpectedly, soon after the 3rd Quarter Quell, Prim takes a huge risk by dropping out of school at the tender age of 14.

It is a huge risk, and Katniss fears it will be a red flag to the Peacekeepers that something is wrong, but her baby sister feels it is important to preserve their mother's healing legacy. Katniss may not agree with Prim's decision, given that Mother wanted them both to finish their education and become proper district ladies, but the beautiful Seam huntress has to respect it.

Katniss continues to take risks herself, by ducking the fence every day to hunt game. It is more of an imperative then ever, to make sure she and Prim are fed. With her patients, Prim's story is that Mother is ill in bed, rather than buried in a shallow plot in the backyard, placed there by her daughters in the dead of night.

Katniss isn't sure how long that will hold up. Eventually, the Peacekeepers may send round a welfare check. There are still nine months to go before Katniss turns 18 and becomes a legal adult, one who could apply for guardianship of Prim. Until then, the Everdeen sisters are secretly living as orphaned dependents. Dependents without a parent.

Katniss knows they cannot last nine months. Scraping up enough to get by between healing and hunting won't matter if she and Prim are taken to the Community Home to be molested and have their chances at being Reaped for the Hunger Games go up exponentially.

Katniss begins to consider if she should swallow her pride and go down into the mines. It would mean extra income. Gale is already down there, so at least there would be a friendly face, but that would also mean leaving Prim alone. What if the Peacekeepers came round and Katniss wasn't there to protect her?

Katniss slowly cuts back on her customer base to prepare herself for the possibility of having to go down into the mines, mostly with the Merchants in Town. The one exception is trading squirrels for bread at the Bakery with the Baker's youngest son.

She and Peeta Mellark have been classmates in school, though they have rarely spoken. Before these Hi, Bye moments on the back loading dock, they only interacted once and it was years ago. A charged moment in the rain…..

One day, when Katniss has just about worked up the nerve to go down to the Foreman's office and apply for a shift on the digging crew, she stops by the Bakery to give Peeta his squirrel…

…. only for the man to gift her with a loaf of bread and bag of coins in return.

She glowers fiercely at him, and is about ready to fling the money back at him, her pride injured, when he tells her, "It's my allowance, saved up." His piercing blue eyes… eyes as blue as a summer sky…. bore into her. "It should keep you going, at least for a while."

She wants to cry. He knows. How he figured it out, she isn't sure, but now she is convinced he is going to run to the Peacekeepers, just to stop her from….

"I won't let you go into the mines," he whispers.

Katniss drops her head. "What do you want?" she mumbles.

Everyone has their price. For a growing man like Peeta, he will probably hit on her for a free blow of his cock. A desperate shag here in this alleyway. Townie boys like to get with Seam girls, and Peeta would be getting a virgin to boot. Even though the thought of sleeping with someone goes against all of Katniss's principles on love and romance and marriage, she would do it to protect Prim.

Instead, Peeta just smiles. "I want to see you again, and not just here on the loading dock. Show me the Meadow, the woods where you hunt. I… I want us to be friends."

Katniss's grey eyes blink dolefully at him. "I've never been very good at making friends," she mutters.

Peeta smiles. "That's OK. It takes practice, but it's also easy, if you're willing to learn."

She smirks in bemusement at him. Easy for him to say – a Merchant boy with no shortage of friends. She swallows hard, her throat suddenly dry while gazing at him.

"OK. Meet me beyond the fence tomorrow morning."

She didn't specify which time of the morning, but it's probably just as well – as a Baker, Peeta would be early to rise, just like her, to load the ovens with his strong, calloused hands.

Gale is now in the mines six days a week, so Katniss has long ago gotten used to not seeing him waiting at their boulder at the pinks of first light. There is no sign of Peeta, and with a huff, she marches into the woods alone.

By the time she returns at mid-morning on this Saturday, however, she finds Peeta waiting for her. He is holding a sketchpad in his lap and doodling. Drawn to him, Katniss sits down beside him.

Staring out at the horizon, Peeta suddenly asks her:

"What's your favorite color?"

She quietly considers the question, plucking a blade of grass and twirling it between her fingers.

"Green." A pause. "What's… What's yours?"

He turns to smile at her, and she sucks in a breath sharply at the way the sunlight makes the golden strands now falling into his eyes sparkle. "Orange."

Katniss snorts. "Like Effie Trinket's hair?"

"No, more like….. more like a sunset kind of orange."

Katniss licks her lips. Sunset. It seems to suit the man.

Katniss and Peeta meet in the Meadow every morning after that, except Sundays. Katniss comes up with an excuse for having a day's break, but the real reason is that she doesn't want Gale to see a Townie lurking here. The two men don't co-exist well in her mind.

On weekday mornings, when they are both still needing to be in school, Katniss hunts practically in the navy dark before she returns and finds Peeta waiting up for her. At first, she is dismayed when he tells her he has been rising even earlier to load the ovens, just so he wouldn't miss another chance of seeing her.

Together, they will watch the sunrise.

One dawn, Peeta announces, "You know, I wish I could freeze this moment, right here, right now, and live in it forever."

The statement sounds schmaltzy and foolish but instead of scoffing at it, Katniss merely mumbles, "OK."

She can feel his twinkling eyes on her, smirking at her. "Then you'll allow it?"

Katniss meets his stare evenly. She nods. "I'll allow it."

Peeta grins. He starts to turn away, when Katniss suddenly reaches out a hand and cups his cheek.

Turning his face back to her, she hesitates the briefest instant before solemnly closing the gap.

Their lips meet.

Katniss is shocked enough that she gasps when Peeta moves to deepen the kiss, even kiss her back. When they finally break apart, their moment of intimacy bathed in the light of the rising sun, she is trembling, exhilarated. Frightened.

Somehow, with him, she isn't frightened enough to shy away from making a tradition out of it. Every morning from then on, she and Peeta kiss each other goodbye.

It feels like they are meeting, courting in secret. Katniss knows she shouldn't be doing this, yet she can't bear to stay away.

Every kiss from Peeta leaves her heart pounding and with fire burning her blood.

She's never felt this way about anyone before.

Peeta must sense her anxiety, for he never pushes her. Katniss is always the one to initiate the kiss goodbye at their parting.

She opens up to him. Talks to him about her fears for the next several months, that the Peacekeepers will discover two young women, underage and living alone without a parent. The only options left to them then would be: go to the Community Home (out of the question), somehow wait for May 8th, her 18th birthday, to go apply for guardianship of Prim (doubtful they would make it), or get married.

The age of consent to wed in District 12 is 18, unless a parent or guardian were to give their written permission for a minor to marry even younger.

"I'd marry you," Peeta tells her quietly.

Katniss sits back, blinking at him, astounded. "What?"

"To protect Prim, I would marry you, even before we're 18." Peeta seems quite serious about this. Katniss starts to unbraid her chestnut hair, then re-braid it at lightning speed – a telltale sign that she is nervous.

"I'm not built to love like that," she tells him quietly.

"I could wait for you," Peeta promises.

"Your mother would never give her permission," she points out. Mrs. Mellark hates anyone Seam.

"So, we'd ask my dad then."

"Or my uncle." At Peeta's blinking, Katniss shrugs. "My mother's brother, but they were estranged. I'd doubt he'd allow me to marry you and come crawling back from the gutter." Another thought comes to her: what about Hazelle? Katniss and Gale's mother are not family, though they're as good as. Katniss and Gale have sometimes been mistaken for siblings or cousins.

She can't really believe she and Peeta are having this conversation. As though they are actually considering it as a way out of her and Prim's predicament! It would mean going back on her principles… Yet if there were one reason to go back on her own vows of chastity, it would be for the sake of Prim and her safety.

Katniss is still thinking about marriage when she meets Gale for their Sunday hunt.

She's missed her best friend's companionship when he is down the shafts during the week. Other than Peeta, he is the only other person who knows her secret, about her mother's death. Her hunting partner has been worried for her, and for Prim.

That must explain why, as they are saying goodbye to each other in the Meadow, Gale suddenly takes her face in his hands, tilts it back and kisses her deeply on the mouth.

When they break apart, Katniss is stunned. Thunderstruck.

"Marry me, Catnip. We could go to the Justice Building right now. I'm over 18; we'd only have to ask my mother to sign off on permission for you. I'll take care of you, and Prim."

Katniss shies away, biting her lip. Before Peeta, she would never considered a proposal of marriage from any man. Now she has been thinking long and hard about it…

…. Just with someone else.

"Gale, I…. I can't….."

It is a quiet night in the Seam. Prim's last patient left hours ago. The sisters are seated at their meager kitchen table, Katniss skinning something (she's forgotten what animal the meat belonged to), Primrose knitting.

"We're going to die old maids, aren't we?" Prim declares.

"What makes you think you'll die an old maid?" Katniss frowns, amused. Men both Merchant and Seam will be lining up around the block to marry Prim once she comes of age. She's the real beauty of the family, having inherited the fair Merchant looks from their mother.

Prim shrugs. "Well, it isn't as though you're ever going to get married. And I…" She shakes her head, ducking it back into her needlework. "It's a shame Mom will never have grandchildren."

It seems like Prim is trying to tell her something, but Katniss can't quite put her finger on it. "Little Duck, what….?"

A knock on the door interrupts them. A customer, but at this late hour?

"I'll get it." Prim bustles to the door and answers it. Katniss watches from her perch as Prim draws back into the foyer, seeming strangely flustered.

"You shouldn't be here!" the young Healer admonishes in a hiss.

Katniss rises, starting to cross into the foyer. Perhaps it's Rory Hawthorne, come around with a fake injury again. Gale's brother has been doing that lately, in the hope of getting to be around her sister more.

To Katniss's surprise, Delly Cartwright, the daughter of the Merchant shoe cobbler, emerges into the sitting room. "I had to see you again," she tells Prim.

Katniss frowns. "About an injury?"

Delly looks askance at her, her cheeks suddenly the same shade as her fiery red hair. "Yes. Clumsy me."

Prim is smirking in what might be chiding amusement, but she has Delly hop up on their table to examine what appears to be a sprained ankle. As Prim removes the boot, she and the shoemaker's daughter share shy smiles. Katniss is no Healer, but she has to wonder whether this examination is just for show. Did Delly really sprain something?

Hovering back in a corner, Katniss might as well not even be there as Prim examines Delly's ankle – or pretends to. Finally standing up, Prim suddenly sucks in a breath as Delly pulls her close. The two women embrace, their lips coming together with a tender give and take.

Katniss's mouth drops open in astonishment. Though she is surprised, and even scared for her sister – same-sex unions are not permitted under district law, Twelve law – she can't say she isn't happy for her and her love.

Once again, Prim has been taking a huge, adult risk. Katniss can't help but admire her sister's bravery. If only she had such courage.

Something akin to a bolt of lightning surges through her and Katniss is suddenly marching out of the house, leaving her sister and classmate still making out. She has to find him. She has to see Peeta.

Ironically, the first place she looks is the Meadow, even though they've never met here at night before. So it is to her surprise and delight when she finds a crop of golden hair twinkling in the moonlight and standing at the boulder. Almost as if he has been waiting for her.

"Katty girl…." Peeta breathes in relief as she strides up to him. She would ask him what he is doing here at night, risking curfew, but hell, it doesn't matter! Maybe he sensed he needed to be with her as much as she needs to be with him. "What are you…?"

"Yes," she states simply, firmly.

"I'm sorry?"

"Yes," she repeats, nodding her head. "Yes. I will marry you." Elation breaking across his face like the dawn, Peeta starts to take her in his arms, but Katniss shies away. She has to say her piece. "But if we get married," and she places her hands lightly on his chest. "You can't ever tell me what to do!"

A slight pause as Peeta studies her, waiting.

"And we won't have children," she adds. "Not as long as there are still Hunger Games. We can't afford to make a baby – they're just something to love only to become something to lose." Her grey eyes shimmer in the moonlight as she searches his face, suddenly anxious. She's delivered her terms for this potential marriage.

"Go ahead, then," she croons. "Ask me."

"Ask what?" Peeta blurts. He appears to be in disbelief.

Katniss rolls her eyes, smiling. "Ask me to marry you. Propose."

Peeta gets down on one knee. "Katniss Magenta Everdeen, will you marry me?"

Katniss smiles. "Yes." A beat. "If you'll have me."

Peeta rises, a hand caressing her cheek and she leans into it with a sigh. Her husband-to-be smiles.

"All right. Let's go talk to my father."

With joy, she throws her arms around him. Drawing back, the handsome Baker and beautiful Seam huntress gaze into each other's eyes. Katniss's lashes flutter, lidded.

Slowly, Peeta leans in and kisses her deeply on the lips.

Katniss gasps.

Fireworks.

They've kissed before, but this is the first time that Peeta has initiated one between them. It is also the first kiss that has made Katniss yearn for another.

As Katniss and Peeta embrace and kiss, they don't realize they are being watched. On the other side of the fence, Prim sees her sister kissing the Baker's son and gawps in shock.

Behind where the couple has now clutched at each other still more firmly and swayed on the spot, enough that Katniss now falls backward into the tall Meadow grass while taking her lover with her, another figure watches from the shadow of the treeline.

As he watches Katniss spread her legs for this Townie, as he watches Mellark shove Katniss's blue Reaping skirts up over her hips, the interloper watching from the woods burns with rage.

Before the star-crossed lovers can consummate their union, a sudden angry shriek pierces the air and running feet approach.

Katniss and Peeta break apart sharply, their arms still around each other.

"Gale!"

Peeta barely has time to rise up off of his lover before Gale is tackling him to the dirt.

"Gale! – NO!"

Gale is strong, but Peeta has a wrestler's speed, dexterity and adaptability. Gale actually pulls out a homemade knife and the pair of men grapple with each other, Katniss hovering and trying to break up the fight. A fight that feels to the death, like the finale of the Hunger Games.

"Leave him alone!" Katniss dives in and tries to yank Gale away from her lover; her hunting partner just shoves her aside, none too gently, and she lands in the dirt.

Peeta is now pinned to the earth, Gale over him and with the Seam hunter attempting to bring down the blade on his rival's neck.

Katniss reappears and tries to bend Gale's arm back. "Gale – STOP!"

Suddenly, the moonlight captures a flash of golden curls as Prim lunges into the fray and stabs Gale in the neck with something. Jamming in what looks like a syringe, Prim pulls the plunger.

The effect is instantaneous. Gale almost comically flops over, now knocked out.

"What…. what was that?" Katniss breathes in shock, helping Peeta to his feet.

"Morphling," Prim states flatly. "It'll knock him out for a couple of hours." She nods to someone behind her and Delly emerges. "Dell, help me carry him back to my place. We can't alert the Peacekeepers!"

Katniss watches as her sister and her…. her sister's lover actually manage to lift a large man such as Gale between them. Prim sends her a look, glancing between Katniss and Peeta.

"Blessings on you both, and your Toasting." The Healer and the shoemaker's daughter slip away into the darkness.

"I…. I suppose we should…."

Her voice stuttering, Katniss moves to flounce after them, only for Peeta to catch her arm and steer her back into a sapling. He is hovering a hair's breadth away.

"Katniss…." he murmurs. She shivers. "Tell me to stop."

Dumbly, Katniss shakes her head. His lips seal over hers, and they embrace.

Peeta's palm dips to grope Katniss's ass, first feeling up one cheek and then the other. When it dips lower still to grip the inside of her thigh, she responds by raising her leg up to hook about his waist.

When she finally breaks the kiss, her head spinning, Katniss solemnly takes Peeta's hands in hers. With purpose, she guides him back into the trees…..

She takes him to her father's hunting cabin, the one by the lake where her parents honeymooned after their Toasting. By the light of a small fire, Katniss and Peeta kiss lazily, languorously.

Katniss shudders with pleasure as Peeta's fingers deftly work to undress her. Her blue Reaping dress has four buttons in the front, along the bodice, and he undoes each one, so that the blouse parts like curtains to reveal the swell of her bare breasts, which Peeta now cups. Her boobs have blossomed large and mature as she has grown into womanhood, her tits pebbled, hard and firm. Peeta swallows one and suckles as Katniss sags back into him with a groan.

Katniss's breathing has become ragged, shallow, staccato, labored. Hiking her blue skirts up over her hips, Katniss sinks to the dirt floor on all fours and temptingly bares her ass to him.

There is the clang of a belt buckle. Katniss braces herself for what she knows is about to happen.

Peeta mounts her and mates with her.

He takes her fiercely in her curved and shapely buttocks, his cock sliding into her anus until his balls rest against her skin, exposed to the cool night air. Peeta begins to rut against her in heat, and Katniss bucks her hips back, drawing him in further. She supposes this is the position from which the phrase The Beast with Two Backs originates. Sexual intercourse has always seemed as though it was more fit for beast than man, for she has seen animals mating in the woods in this fashion. Up until recently, making love has seemed like a useless waste of energy – energy that could be better spent some other way. But ever since she has fallen in love with this man now humping her, Katniss has secretly wanted to try it for herself.

"Huhhh…. Uhhhhhh…. Ermmmm… Hmmmmmm… Mmmmmmm… Ohhhhhhh….. Ahhhhhh… AHHHHHHH… AHHHHHHHHHH!" The noises being torn from Katniss's throat are like none she has ever heard. No one should hear her scream from out here but even so….

Peeta claps a hand over her mouth to swallow her cries as his thrusts weaken into little bursts. With the other hand, his fingers weave and fist themselves into Katniss's chestnut locks and yank her single braid back, not quite to the point of discomfort but enough that the action is keeping her head erect. Katniss rocks against him plaintively. "MMMMMM! HMMMMMMM! MMMMM-HMMMMMM!"

Her muscles lock up. Her grey orbs roll with dazed amazement into the back of her head.

Her toes curl.

She cums.

Still bent over on all fours, it takes a moment for a thoroughly fucked and ravished Katniss to catch her breath. Finally, she turns about in her lover's arms once he has pulled out and holds him close, kissing him desperately. Her lips part like a flower busting into full bloom, allowing her to draw his tongue into her mouth.

Then later his cock into her mouth. Katniss performs oral sex on Peeta quietly, if also clumsily, as he rides her face. Her lips pucker and seal around his foreskin and she sucks. Only when she slowly tucks his balls under her bottom lip and massages them, licks the upper reaches of his shaft, with her tongue does he ejaculate deep into her throat with a shout. The experience is fun and thrilling - she's never seen a man's penis before, much less touched or tasted one.

The couple tries every position that night. Katniss returns the favor by sitting on Peeta's face, letting him lick her wet pussy. Then she swings a creamy thigh over his hips as she moves to straddle him. She impales herself on his cock, pressing her hands lightly into his chest as she rides him, bouncing up and down on him so that her nipples sway tantalizing in his face. Finally, the man gets her flat on her back. Grey eyes expanding, Katniss solemnly spreads her thighs for Peeta, lifting her knees and pushing her hips up to grip him about his torso.

Peeta eases himself inside Katniss.

Kissing tenderly, they make love.

After he has cum, spilling his seed deep inside her fluttering walls, after he has brought her to orgasm, Peeta tells Katniss he loves her.

Katniss hesitates and looks deep into his eyes.

She says it back.

Weeks later, the bells are chiming in the clock tower above the Justice Building. When the bells toll, it is usually a sign that a couple has gotten hitched.

Indeed, Peeta and Katniss Mellark, newly wed as husband and wife, now emerge from the Justice Building ahead of a small group of witnesses and well-wishers.

They had received permission from Peeta's father to marry before they both turned 18. Katniss and Peeta had then set a date to go and stand before the District Justice of the Peace, so that they would be wed in the eyes of the district law.

Peeta takes his bride by her hips and lifts her onto the back of a rented cart, pecking her lightly on the lips. "You look beautiful."

Katniss beams radiantly. She is clad in her mother's wedding dress – the Everdeens' one family heirloom. Mother had run off with the bridal garment when she had married Katniss's father. In Merchant circles, where Mrs. Everdeen had grown up, a woman's wedding dress is seen as a rite of passage, passed down from mother to daughter. Spotting where her sister and Maid of Honor is standing near Delly Cartwright, Katniss hopes that one day, Prim will wear this dress. It would be more meaningful than what most Seam brides wear on their wedding day: a rented gown, second-hand.

Katniss and Peeta were assigned a new dwelling once they married, and Peeta now pulls the cart to their new home in the Seam. Immediately, Katniss's bridesmaids sequester her upstairs to change her from her wedding dress into her blue Reaping dress.

For the most important part of the marriage ceremony is still at hand.

Descending the stairs, the new Mrs. Mellark finds her husband waiting for her, armed with the poker, a fire roaring in their hearth. Quietly, the couple Toast a bit of bread and feed each other a piece. Flames dancing in her grey eyes, Katniss then solemnly tilts her head and permits her husband to kiss her. As husband and wife embrace, Katniss carelessly tosses aside her wedding bouquet of dandelions and pine needles. Delly catches the dandelions; the pine needles scatter forgotten upon the floor.

Delly's father strikes up a reel on his fiddle and Katniss and Peeta dance at their wedding. Gifts are presented to the bride and groom. But it is Peeta's wedding present to his bride that will overshadow all others.

When he drops his hands from his bride's eyes to reveal their Toasting cake he baked himself, the new Katniss Mellark is nearly speechless.

"OH! Snow's Roses, it's a vision! But…. but how did you….? – You didn't! You shouldn't have!" Her grey eyes are sparkling with emotional delight.

Peeta spoons her. "Do you like it, Sweetheart?" And though she is not one for public displays of affection, Katniss reaches up to throw her arms around her husband's neck and kiss him soundly.

"Oh….. darling, I love it! I love you!"

Later, Peeta sweeps a laughing Katniss off her feet and carries her bridal style across the threshold while Prim leads the singing of the traditional District 12 wedding song:

"May your house be a palace and your hearth never grow cold…."

That night, their wedding night, the newlyweds make love in their bed, consummating their marriage. They try to keep it down for the sake of Prim, who will be living with them, her guardians, until she is 18, and both work up a sweat, but thankfully the open window cools the moisture from their bodies as they rub against each other in heat.

Later, lying naked together in post-coital bliss, Peeta asks his wife:

"You love me. Real or Not Real?"

Katniss tells her husband:

"Real."