Author's Note: Changed the rating of my ff and got a smutty scene up and... have twice the reviews I had before! Granted, that means that I went from 1 to 2, but still..

Chapter Five

"I know what you're going to say in a few minutes," says Peeta without raising his eyes from the piece of paper in front of him. He is sketching me while I am sitting on the couch with Buttercup on my lap. The ugly cat and I have become the best of friends in the past months and now I am the first person it usually comes to when it is hungry or scared. Unless you consider Peeta. Or Greasy Sae when she is there. Or her granddaughter. Okay, so probably I am the last person it comes to, but he doesn't hiss at me anymore. That is certainly a plus.

"You do?" I ask without moving, he asked me to stay perfectly still and I proud to say that I have been so far. "Peeta, I need a break to move my arms. Is that it?"

He chuckles. "No."

"No to the break or no, is not what I am going to say?"

"No to both, Katniss," he says, looking at me through his blond curls and then back to the paper. "We have only been here for ten minutes."

Only ten? I feel like I have been here for ten hours. "What am I going to say, then?" I ask with a deep sigh that earns me a glare from Peeta since a lock of my hair just fell from behind my ear, upsetting the composition he made with my hair before he started.

"You are going to say," he finally says, standing up from the floor and coming to put my lock behind my ear once again. He coughs and when he speaks again his voice is mockingly high pitched. "Oh, Peeta, why would we have to go through something like that? Everybody thinks we are anyway. We already live here together and are happy and everything and why would we do this? Isn't it as if we already were?"

I frown when he sits back down on the floor. What is he talking about? I am getting vaguely nervous, but I don't want him to know. "First of all, that is not my voice," I say, "second, are you telling me you want children?" My voice is a bit strangled when I say 'children', but that is good, because I don't want to add the word 'again' and I feel like I just might. It wouldn't be the first time he asks about kids, and it wouldn't be the first time I say 'no'.

"No," he replies quietly, even though I guess it hurts him to talk about that.

Inside my head, I sigh in relief, outside I am perfectly still. "So…" I encourage him to go on.

"So…" he starts, "…Katniss, marry me."

I think he chose the perfect moment to ask me something like this, probably plotting this in his mind for days. He got me immobilized under a vicious cat with the excuse of sketching me and he knows perfectly well that at the very sound of the words that he just said out loud I would already be in the woods.

I notice that minutes have passed since he talked only because Peeta is coughing slightly, probably to snap me out of my dangerous thoughts. I look at him and he looks at me. So we just look at each other for a while, but I know it all comes to me now.

"Okay," I say cautiously, "let's say, just for fun, that I say what you said I was going to say. What would you reply?"

Peeta draws my hair with intensity, the noise of the chalk so harsh I think he is going to break the paper. "I would say," he replies trying to sound calm, "that I love you. That I never want to let you go and that nothing would make me as happy as to make you mine."

"You know I am yours," I say instinctively. "And I love you."

He smiles. "Yes, no, I know," he says quickly. "But I just want our union to be official."

"It's been official since your interview before the Quarter Quell," I sigh.

"Katniss," he says in a pained voice. "Marry me."

I swallow to find my mouth completely dry. I don't know why I am hesitating, I am ashamed to admit to myself that since the end of the war, since Peeta and I have been growing back together and lived under the same roof, I have thought about it. About our wedding day. I think the wedding dresses that Cinna had designed would still be accessible to me if I asked. I could have Effie sending them, all except the one that Snow had picked for me. And maybe my prep team could come to beautify me too, and my mother would be happy to have an excuse to see me, and I to see her. And everybody else. And there's Peeta, I do want to marry him. So, so, so much…

"Okay," I spit out before I can help myself.

Peeta looks at me cautiously. "Real?"

"Real," I reply as a smile creeps up on my face. "I want to marry you." I stand up abruptly and Buttercup flies on the floor with a meow of surprise. "Let's do it."

Peeta stands from the floor and towers over me with his three inches he posses more than me. "Let's do it," he replies. He grabs my waist as I throw my arms around his neck and kiss him. He raises me from the floor and hugs me tightly, attempting to turn on his feet, but with his leg he is only able to get through half a circle before he has to put me back down. "You'll marry me," he cries.

Feeling his excitement and the nervous chuckle that he is trying to suppress, makes me laugh. "I'll marry you," I assure him.

He puts my feet back on the floor. "You know how long I have been waiting for this day?" he asks.

And here we go, his undying love for me since the age of five is back to make me feel guilty. Am I going to find out that he had planned this since the very first time he laid eyes on me? Can I take it? How is he going to take the fact that I have only started thinking about it for a few months? Probably he will be thrilled anyway, probably he expects me to have never wanted this.

"Since we were five?" I say weakly.

Peeta's reaction is not what I expected. He looks at me to see if I am joking and then laughs. At me? "Yes, and I designed the wedding cake and the invitations and wrote Mrs. Katniss Mellark on my diary," he laughs even harder. "No, since when you left and I found you in the rain." He is looking at me lovingly now. "You looked so small and weak. Not that you are," he adds quickly, "but I just wanted to do anything I could to make you feel safe, and I thought that the only way to know that you were always safe was to marry you, because that way, I would have always been at your side."

I feel weird. Deluded that he has thought about marrying me only for – what is that? – a couple of months, whereas I thought, in an extremely arrogantly way, that he has been waiting all his life for this moment. I am baffled that I have been thought about it longer than he has.

"And you?" he asks me. "Have you ever thought about marrying me?"

I feel like I want to get back to him. "Never." But I really can't get back to him for something he didn't do. I smile as he looks a bit uncomfortable. "I'm joking. I thought about it the day you came back to District 12," I admit softly. "And almost every day since." Did I just say that? I might as well start using the phone to call Venia, Flavius and Octavia to talk about makeup and nails.

"Really?" asks Peeta as an annoying smile curls his lips.

"Yes…. What are you grinning about?" I ask without bothering to be annoyed.

"Nothing," he replies, hugging me. "It's just that the girl I have loved since I first saw her has been wanting to marry me for even longer than me…"

xxx

Haymitch looks at the little envelope that Peeta is lending him. "Have you two found a job as postmen or are you stealing my mail?" he asks, putting the glass he was drinking on the table on front of him.

"You don't have mail, Haymitch," I reply, sitting across from him. Peeta sits next to me.

He flaps the envelope under my nose. "I do."

"That's from us," says Peeta, smiling.

Haymitch shoots him a suspicious look. "Is it my birthday?"

"Not that we know of," I say, looking at Peeta, who in return shakes his head lightly. "When is your birthday, anyway?"

He mutters something incomprehensible and opens the envelope. His eyes skim through it and Peeta grabs my hand as if we were sitting through an examination.

"About that," he says when he reaches the end of the wedding invitation. "Mellark is written with two L's."

"Haymitch!" I say irritably.

"Katniss!" he mimics my tone. "What do you want to me to say?"

I roll my eyes. This is so annoying, he is the first person we have decided to tell about the wedding, and the first we are showing the invitation. "Any comments?"

He pretends to think. "Yes, as a matter of fact, I thought you were already married."

Peeta opens his mouth to say something back, I know because I see him with the corner of my eye, but I am quicker and stand up. I put my hands on the table and hiss, "And to think you are the first person we have told!" I push back my chair and walk out of the room and the house, slamming the door. I sit on the steps that lead to Haymitch's front porch and decide that I really want to sulk. Peeta and I have spent a whole month deciding half of the things we have to do for this wedding and wanted Haymitch to help with the other half. How stupid are we, really? He is just going to be useless. Our lives are not at stake, he won't bother helping us. Why am I getting so emotional about this anyway? I knew it all along.

I hear the door opening and closing at my back and I don't even turn. "I hope his geese wake him up every night for the rest of his life," I groan.

"Why, thank you, sweetheart," says Haymitch, sitting next to me. "Very thoughtful of you."

I turn and glare at him, than I decide to turn away without saying anything.

I expect Haymitch to sit there in silence and wait for an annoyed remark from me so that he can give one of his 'funny' comments right back. Instead he is the first to speak. "Peeta said that you were thinking to ask me if I wanted to be the one who gives you away the day of your wedding." His voice is level, and as serious as I have never heard him being.

"Yes," I reply dryly, "come on, tell me." I lower my voice. "How stupid you are, sweetheart," I imitate him. "I am not the right person for this, you know, maybe you should ask Buttercup."

"How can I argue with myself," he mutters, then he doesn't say anything for a long minute, then, after the gaggle of geese decide to walk past us, he adds, "I would really like to give you away." He scratches at his stubble beard. "If you still want me to."

Wow, personal growth; I guess it's never too late for that. I am happy to hear that, but don't want to show too excitement. He doesn't deserve it anyway. "Don't have many people to ask that anyway," I say, shrugging my shoulders and looking at him.

"Guess not," he replies matter-of-factly. "So, I'm back in the wedding?"

I half smile. "Yes, if you help us with all the things we need help with."

"Like sewing you a wedding dress, baking a wedding cake with Peeta and entertaining the guests with my charm?"

I pretend to think. "Hmm… no, no and no. But you can help us with the guest list."

"Okay, first thing: don't invite Paylor, she doesn't like me."

"I wonder why."

"Second thing: you should use your wit to entertain your guests at your wedding, sweetheart."