Peeta:
It was as if I was staring at a terrible car crash and couldn't look away; ironic considering the girl in question. I could tell she was barely holding herself up against the wall and relied on his arms to keep her from sliding down unceremoniously onto the ground. I glared as he whispered into her ear and his hand traveled slowly down her curves. She smirked and reached under her short, spandex skirt. I watched, awe struck as she slowly lowered her panties down her legs and faced the dark-haired man with what I'm sure was supposed to be a sexy look, but merely came off glazed and distant.
I had a choice now. I could turn around and let her follow through with whatever form of self destruction she had planned for tonight, or I could step in and risk my face being pummeled.
I closed my eyes and tried to consider my options, but all I could think about was the scant lace panties sliding down Katniss' legs.
It wasn't fair. This was the girl I had fantasized about for years. She was friends with Gale for years before she agreed to date him, and it took another two years before she let him take her completely. One night she broke down in the library and told me she wasn't sure about giving away such a personal part of herself to someone who only felt like fire. I still hate myself for that night, when I convinced her she was holding out for a novelistic fantasy. I told her to let go of the fallacy of true love and pure ecstasy that supposedly came along with merely pushing two sweaty bodies together. No matter what she did it was bound to be awkward and it would hurt.
Despite that painful night when I pushed her into another man's arms, for what I thought was my own wellbeing, I still wasn't rid of the dream in which I was the first to push into her. I knew I'd be gentler than Gale. I'd be patient; I'd wait for her to be settled and stretched before going forward. I'd kiss every tear away from the side of her face, her cheek, and her jaw when I finally took the last part of her innocence. I'd pay attention to every gasp and sigh instead of jerking forward greedily. I'd make sure that she enjoyed herself as much as I did.
This fantasy was just that… a fantasy. I brought myself back to the present as the beautifully precious woman I'd admired attempted to give herself to someone she couldn't even make eye contact with in a dim alley way.
I was broken from my reverie as I heard him grunt as his hands made their way up her skirt, "Fuck baby, for someone who never wanted to see me again you're pretty damn ready for me."
Seriously? Even Katniss giggled at his line, and I realized how out of it she was.
I stepped forward and put my hand on his shoulder, throwing him off balance and turning him to face me.
"What the fuck man?"
The man in front me was clearly frustrated, his pants already unzipped, but he edged away from me regardless. We'd been down this road before, and it never ended well for either of us. As he backed up, my eyes fell upon Katniss. Her lips twitched into a smile when she saw me, but she was clearly confused. She reached out for Gale's shirt, but unable to grab it, she began to stumble towards me.
"Peeta!" She finally let herself breathe out when she was flush against my body, gripping me tightly and nuzzling my chest.
"I missed you!" She picked her head up from my chest and I tried to make out some kind of presence in her eyes.
Finding nothing, I looked back at her increasingly pissy man-friend, trying to speak as calmly as possible. "Look, I feel like it's fair to say she's had enough to drink tonight –"
Suddenly he decided to grow a pair. He cut me off and stepped behind Katniss, placing his hands on her hips firmly.
"So why's that any of your fucking business?" He muttered half to me, half to Katniss' slumped back.
"Well, as the guy that's taken care of her for the last year, I'd say it's a lot of my fucking business. Now I could pound you into the wall for holding my girl's panties… or you can run as far away as you can, as fast as you can."
"She's not your girl Mellark! You can make all the threats you want, but she'll always find her way back to me."
I could feel the rage boiling and my fists were balled up and strained at my sides. I reached for Katniss and propped her against the wall of the bar nearest to me.
He stepped towards me and we were soon chest-to-chest staring each other down. He didn't know I was a frequent attendee of anger management, but she did. When he shoved me, I immediately launched myself on him, quickly connecting my fist to his face and pinning him to the ground as he clutched his face in shock.
"Hit me all you want, you'll never understand her the way I do Mellark. You weren't there." He wiped the spot of blood splattered on his cheek.
I was positioned on top of him now, my fist raised when I heard it,
"Stop it! STOP IT!"
"Wait… no… this isn't…" she was crying, trembling, foggy, and slowly sliding down the wall.
Against my better judgment I released him and made my way over to her. I stroked her arms, running my hands up and down until her convulsive shivers began to dissipate.
"Shhhh baby… I'm going to get you home." I whispered into her ear, trying to bring her back to the here and now, but I could tell she was slipping further and further into the ether.
I should have been watching my back, but I was lost in her.
Eventually, the douche bag spoke up: "You can have her for now pretty boy. Just remember that she loved me. Still does. All it's going to take is for her to accept that this was all just a fucking accident."
I could tell he wanted to maul me. I didn't blame him, I want to punch him into oblivion; leave him bruised, broken, and unrecognizable. But he realized something I refused to acknowledge after all these years; when it came to Katniss, maybe the pain wasn't worth it.
I merely grimaced and growled, "GO! Don't make me regret it."
Gale disappeared down the street and I turned my attention back to the broken girl in front of me. She was still shaking and her eyes were focused on something beyond me, off in the distance.
"Katniss, baby, look at me." I gripped her chin and turned her face towards me. Her eyes grew wide with shock, which was exactly what I wanted, checking how dilated her pupils were.
"Can you hear me?" She wasn't rolling on anything extreme, but she was definitely about ready to pass out.
After searching for my face for a few seconds and trying to comprehend the question she finally let out a tentative, "Y-y-yes."
"Good, now what did you take tonight?" I asked her, knowing I couldn't get a straight response. At least it distracted her from the fact that I was dragging her towards the nearest cab.
"Nothing that I brought." She said with a smirk as her legs gave out.
"Fine. Kat, what did the nice man give you?" I tried to pull her up, but she threw herself down to the ground. I was damn near ready to leave her squatting outside of the dingy bar.
She was silent for a while, staring at the nothingness beyond my shoulder. She smiled for a moment, a creepy look of bliss on her features suddenly twisted and she shot up to her feet in a fit of rage.
"Fuck you!" She finally looked at me, right before she brought her hands to my chest and shoved me backwards.
"I was going to get laid and you ruined it! Why?" She was clutching her head now, holding both of her hands up to her ears forcefully. She wasn't waiting for an answer from me.
After a few minutes, I slowly inched my hands towards hers. Carefully I peeled her hands from her ears and wrapped them around me, pulling her into my chest. Softly, I tried to soothe her, "Kat, you're a bit out of it."
We finally managed to stand up and Katniss began to sway, as if we were performing some sort of awkward middle school slow dance on the sidewalk.
"What did your mom give you?"
"She said it would make me relax." She sighed into my chest and began to slump instead of sway. "Mom's favorite."
Fucking Lorazapam. I wonder how much.
"I was being silly." She finally looked at me, with wide innocent grey eyes, stifling a giggle. I didn't know this girl, letting her emotions fly freely and clutching my shirt desperately. Deception at its finest. "I told him I was delicate, and that if he wanted to take me home, he had to be gentle with me."
Fuck. Just hearing her say it made me slightly hard. "I don't think that's very funny Kat."
"Of course you don't." She shoved me again and released herself from my grip, stomping towards a random cab.
"You're Peeta Mellark!" She screamed into the ether.
I quickly strode over to the taxi I flagged earlier, offering to pay a generous tip if they stuck around, but she halted right before she got to the car, her eyes now wild and frantic.
"You have a successful career!" She shoved me again.
"A sexy girlfriend!" Another push.
"A clean bill of mental health!" I moved out of her reach and she stumbled forward.
She caught herself by the hands and though I could tell she was decently scraped up, she was laughing. "Not to mention those damn blue eyes of yours that just… know! I can tell they always know." This caught me by surprise. She managed to pull me to the ground when I reached a hand down to her and climbed on top of me, straddling me near the curb of the street.
She slumped into my chest.
"Please, please let me get you a taxi home. We're really close."
She perked up at my offer, "Fine! Fine, Peeta Mellark, perfect fucking person!" She pushed herself off of me and stumbled to the passenger side of the taxi.
We were finally tucked in and moving. Our ride was relatively silent until we approached my apartment.
"Judge me all you want. I would have fucked him."
I could feel the familiar boiling and churning in my gut as I leaned over, whispering angrily in her ear, "Can you act like you even slightly care about yourself for five fucking seconds!"
"Fine." She exited the cab and after throwing money at the cabby, I grabbed her wrist, turning her around.
"You deserve better than that." For the first time that night our eyes truly met.
She leaned in and her left hand caressed the side of my face as she whispered into my ear,
" I know."
She kissed my cheek before pulling away.
As she swayed up the stairs to my brownstone she spoke over her shoulder, "But it's so much easier waking up hating myself than hating the whole God damn world for taking her away from me."
I sometimes breathe a sigh of relief when I realize Clove isn't home, but tonight I nearly sank to my knees is glorious prayer when I realized we were alone. I lay Katniss down on the sofa, and carefully pull the heels from her feet as she seemed to fight consciousness. I was filling up a glass of water in the kitchen when I heard the crash.
Damnit, I didn't even hear her get up.
I ran towards the sound and could only digest the scene in bits and pieces. The bathroom. The damn mirror. Jagged pieces of glass littered the floor. Red seeping from her knuckles. The way that she stared at her hand in awe, silent tears streaming down her face.
"Katniss…Katniss love what did you do?" I asked, my voice cracking and breaking as I dropped to the floor and slide next to her.
"I thought I didn't want to feel anything. That's why I asked him to meet me… why I took those little white pills."
She was quite for another beat before she turned towards me.
"It all feels familiar. It feels like a family."
Fuck. That meant I was right and she was pumped full of liquor and meds. For a minute I was mildly impressed she had the energy and coordination to put her fist through my mirror, but that gave way to fear as I watched her sob, completely broken on my bathroom floor.
"Shhhh…. shhhh… don't move love."
I reached for the nearest hand towel and wet it before gently cleaning the cuts on her hand.
"And then I realized I couldn't feel my body, but I could still feel everything else. I could still feel the bruises inside. So I thought, what if he fucked me? Maybe then I'd feel something else."
I was searching through my medicine cabinet for some kind of bandage when I felt her pull on my pant leg, looking up at me blankly
"It wouldn't have worked, would it?"
"No baby, it wouldn't."
I grabbed some gauze and began wrapping it around her hand tightly.
"I hate it when you call me baby." She scowled.
"I know." I tried to suppress my smirk.
"But I like it when you call me Love."
I let the corner of my moth lift, but my eyes didn't leave her hand.
"She wouldn't have wanted any of this, would she?" She pulled her hand back and I finally met her gaze.
"We can't think about that right now. Let's just think about what she would have wanted for you right now."
I lifted my hand slowly and placed it on her cheek, rubbing it softly with my thumb.
"Not this. She believed in Prince Charming you know. She'd want me and Gale to work out. She…" she chuckled softly "…didn't it go so…. so sour?"
"I don't imagine Prince Charming would have given you a black eye."
"Ha! Probably not. I don't know what she'd want right now. I just know that she'd think…..I'm disgusting." I dropped my hand from her cheek. She gazed at me, tired and completely defeated
"You know that right? That's why you'd never touch me." She lowered her head, staring at her fist now wrapped in gauze, stroking it slowly with her other hand.
"Katniss… what are you talking about?" I was tired too and didn't want to play any of games.
"It should have been me you know," she whispered so quietly I could barely her it.
Suddenly her head shot up, and she began shouting, "WHY!? WHY PRIM AND NOT FUCKING ME!"
She was red and shaking, but I knew better than interrupt her. She needed to say this out loud.
"I'M DISGUSTING! I'M DIRTY! I'M HORRIBLE!" She was scratching at her arms, as if she could strip the dirt off of her skin.
"I CAN'T FUCKING LOVE ANYONE!"
I grabbed her shoulders and shook her as hard as I dared to. This seemed to calm her down and she took a few deep breaths. She was still shaking but she was no longer screaming.
Her gray eyes bore into mine, "she could have had it all, a husband, children. I don't even know if I'll ever want that."
She let out a heavy sigh, "what a stupid God damn world this is that let her die and me live."
It scared me, when she talked like this. Right after Prim died in the crash she used to mumble about leaving us to go find her.
I reached out and tucked her loose, wild hair behind her ears. "Shhhhhhh. I love you. I love you Katniss. And you aren't allowed to leave me. Prim said, right?"
My one and only heart-to-heart with Prim was a silly moment really. I had offered to give Katniss a ride to school and surprisingly she took me up on the offer. I barely knew her then, and she didn't have many belongings to shove into the trunk of my car, but I knew this didn't because she had her. Prim was something special, something infinitely precious. Katniss was never good at goodbyes so after she kissed her sister on the forehead she silently headed for the passenger seat, leaving the two of us alone. It was then that Prim hugged me close and whispered harshly into my ear, "You take care of her. Watch her and don't you dare let her leave you behind. I'm counting on you Baker Boy."
Prim's innocent smile as she pulled back from the hug masked the surprisingly menacing message she left me with. I got into the car, my face pale and eyes wide. Eventually I explained everything to Katniss and she let her scowl drop, laughing so hard tears ran down her face at the thought of her baby sister threatening me.
"Well, if you're meant to be my watcher Mellark, you better learn how to keep up with me." It was then I first saw her playful grin for the first time. She bit her bottom lip and it was the sexiest thing I'd ever seen. I knew then I was a goner.
"Right." Katniss began again, breaking me out of my reverie. "But you don't love me the way you're supposed to."
Instead of answering her I pulled her into my chest, cradling her gently. She wouldn't remember this tomorrow.