A/N: This chapter involves a lot of wading through Katniss's oblivious ignorance, so I'm sorry. (The end of the chapter's good, though. I promise.) Remember, Everlark endgame, and in the meantime... just keep swimming.

007. Have a Cupcake War

As Katniss curls up underneath her brittle dormitory sheets for the first time in a week, she tries to wash the slate of her mind clean like a whiteboard.

They agreed to pretend that nothing happened.

It was for the best—which was something they're both acutely aware of—that they continue on their joint path as just friends, just as they always had before. People kiss all the time, she told him a few days prior to her departure, and it doesn't have to mean a thing.

Still, she never could've predicted that "for the best" would leave a throbbing hole in the bottom of her stomach, like someone had taken a branding iron and cauterized the open wound his lips had left along the seams of her soul. It'd left a scar.

When Johanna comes home much later that night, her dark hair is matted flat across her temples instead of pricked in spikes like usual, plum-tainted rings circling under her lids.

"You look like you've had one hell of a week," Katniss mumbles to the fabric of her pillow, her voice so low and muffled it sounds like it's been shoved through a sock.

Johanna just chuckles darkly. "Hell is the perfect descriptor." She flops on top of her own mattress, some inhuman groan-like sound resonating from her flattened body. "What about your break? Any partying? Alcohol poisoning? Unplanned pregnancies?"

No, Katniss thinks to herself, but my best friend since pre-K kissed me—and I kissed him back—and somehow we mutually decided to act like it never happened.

When he kissed her, she finally understood what all those shitty coming-of-age novels and sappy love songs were burbling about, because she'd seen colors she didn't know existed, her body wracked with tingles. She'd never felt so assaulted, so liberated in her entire existence, infected with some poison that would surely kill her off but she kept injecting into her systems over and over again. His mouth filled her up with poems, his tongue painting landscapes across her bottom lip like she was an empty canvas. He'd redefined kissing. He'd redefined her.

And then, as if the gods had administered an electrical shock to both of their heated, tangling bodies, they suddenly lurched backward perfectly in sync, her hands flying to cover her swollen lips.

"Oh my god—" she gasped.

"I'm so sorry—" he panted.

They didn't say much else; he let her scramble ahead of him out of the treehouse, her feet carrying her with lightning speed until she was back at the bakery, back in the cool sheets of the guest bedroom, hiding like a whimpering baby underneath the comforter. She didn't know exactly when Peeta came back, but it was past midnight when she heard a soft rapping on her door, and when she stumbled across the floorboards to answer it, she found him standing before her with disheveled curls and gentle eyes.

"How many Fruit Roll-Ups would I have to buy you to convince you to come sleep in my bed tonight?"

She crossed her arms, desperately trying to conceal the violent flipping in her belly with a completely stony gaze. "Three, maybe four."

"How many more would it take for you to forgive me?"

All she could think was, there's nothing to forgive. If anything, she should be the one levelled from guilt. She'd been the one to ask him to fight for her, and she'd been the one to kiss him back, and wrap those silken golden curls around her fingers; she'd been the one to practically achieve enlightenment with the taste of his kiss.

But if this was going to mend their suddenly shattered conception of friendship, by pretending all their woes could be reimbursed by candy, then so be it.

"Add an extra two, and you've got yourself a deal."

So now, as she sits coiled like copper wire on her mattress, she doesn't know how to respond to Johanna's question. She eventually settles on a halfhearted "It was fine," although fine is the polar opposite of what it was. Her break was beautiful, and revolutionary, but heart-breaking and confusing and complex, all because she and Peeta had crossed a line. So what if they'd agreed to back-track and pretend they'd never overstepped their boundaries—all that matters is they had, and Katniss had tasted pure sunshine when all she'd known before was winter rain.

But their agreement to remain just friends was mutual. Is mutual. She was the one to suggest it, actually, when they curled up together in his bed the night he kissed her. Neither Katniss nor Peeta are familiar with model relationships—Katniss's father died too young, Peeta's parents divorced, Katniss's relationship with Gale was volcanic and her relationship with Marvel is dull—and so to say that Katniss doesn't have much faith in love would be a drastic understatement. It's not that she believes it doesn't exist; she simply accepts it as something more toxic than liberating, something that brings people together only so it can shred them to tiny, frayed tabs of paper, warping them beyond recognition.

Moreover, Katniss has an awful tendency for fucking up everything she touches, and she wouldn't dare risk ruining the good thing she has with Peeta just because she can't funnel her hormones into something more productive. She doesn't need Peeta as a boyfriend. She needs him as her best friend, as her constant, as her teddy bear to hug when the air gets too heavy, as her sunshine when the clouds crush the earth below.

For this reason, she refuses to entertain the idea of whether or not she actually wants something more of him. It's a silly, useless thought. She can't handle anything greater, so whether she wants to or not is irrelevant.

Besides, Peeta could never want her like that. She's his moon, his little shard of luminescence when the world is dark, his anchor when his feet are wobbly, his company when everyone around him flees.

She knows he'll never love her in that way.

He deserves someone better at any rate.

The night she comes back to campus, Marvel swings by her dorm room and offers to take her to grab some Thai food. With knots yanking at her stomach lining, she concedes, shooting Peeta a quick text message.

Katniss: Marvel's taking me to dinner.

After they decided to keep things platonic, Katniss and Peeta never discussed where this left her with Marvel. Did the fact that they more or less "took back" the kiss mean she should keep nursing her fling with the Wonder Bread epithet? Does she even want to be with him?

Her dinner date with Marvel is just coming to a close when she finally feels the familiar vibrating in her pocket. She doesn't know why it took him so long to respond.

Peeta: Oh. That's fun

She frowns at the irradiated screen. Peeta has always been one of those obnoxious texters who sends three-page messages in bulk, so a measly three-word reply leaves her mouth dry, sending her fingers dexterously flying across the keys.

Katniss: …are you okay with this?

His response is instant.

Peeta: Well since we're just friends, I don't see why I shouldn't be

Her lungs contract—Peeta isn't one for brusqueness, so this is new—and the words leave a sour taste fizzling on her tongue. What the hell is that supposed to mean?

She doesn't know how to respond, so she doesn't.

She leaves a safe few inches between her and Marvel as they meander back through campus, the once-comfortable silence between them suddenly suffocating. He stops her by a park bench saturated in waxen-orange lamplight, prompting her to sit with him.

He ruffles his hair. "Kat, are you… is something wrong?"

If she could tell him the truth, she would—that everything is wrong, that her world did a violent one-eighty over break and she doesn't know where she stands with anything anymore—but she doesn't want to tell Marvel these things. She doesn't want to tell Marvel anything.

He still doesn't even know about Peeta.

"I'm alright," she lies, her eyes focused on the floodlit pavement. "Just had a long break, you know?"

He pretends he understands, his palm resting empathetically on her knee. "I mean, you've never talked much, but tonight, I feel like… I don't know, it's—it's almost like you're not even here."

Her eyes flit up to his, searching for something in those flat pools of brown, but whatever it is, she doesn't find it. It's now that she realizes he's right; she's not here at all, not mentally.

She wants to anchor herself back into her body, however, so without thinking it through she leans in, pressing her lips to Marvel's. But his chapped lips feel like putty, not holding their own weight, not sending any electric impulses down to her belly, to the juncture of her thighs where she'd felt something the last time she kissed someone, her someone; it's almost as if his kiss is on mute. So contained in the background, leaving her empty and cold and uninterested.

He's still Wonder Bread. She hadn't minded Wonder Bread before.

But now, kissing him feels like waiting for paint to dry.

It's safe to say Annie and Johanna are just short of throwing an entire parade to celebrate Katniss's newfound singlehood.

The three of them are perched on the sofa at the student union, each clutching some variation of iced tea when Katniss quietly makes the announcement, and within a moment her two friends are fawning over her like she just told them she rescued a small child from a burning building or installed clean drinking water worldwide.

When they ask her why, she doesn't know exactly what to tell them, so she dishes out a vague answer. "He's a nice guy, but we were both wasting each other's time."

It's not exactly a lie.

"And I'm sure this has nothing to do with you spending your break with that baker boy back home," Johanna prods, her tongue curling evocatively around the top of her straw.

Katniss can feel herself blushing and she immediately makes an effort to pass it off as anger. It's better than the alternative, at least. She doesn't want to have to explain the truth as to why she's so cherry-cheeked. "This has nothing to do with him. This was my decision."

Annie amusedly lifts her brows. "Uh-huh."

"What, do you really think my entire universe revolves around Peeta?"

"I think both of you are in an entirely different universe of your own," Annie jokes, but then she leans in a little closer, those emerald-highlighted irises growing more sympathetic. "Look. I'm not saying you did it consciously, but there's no way that you ending things with Marvel had nothing to do with him."

Katniss is well aware that breaking up with him was directly caused by Peeta—he had finally fought for her, he'd done what she asked, and he'd earned his role as the alpha-male in her life, leaving no room for frivolous escapades with Marvel—but she's not about to admit it to her friends. So she only sighs, rubbing her temples in dampened frustration.

"I just don't think I'm capable of dealing with romance healthily," she mumbles, not even beginning to realize the truth to her own words.

When she calls Peeta that night, he answers on the second ring. She's texted him a handful of times since she came back to campus, but she hasn't heard his voice since she left; his honey-silk cadence is one of the only things that can calm her completely, and after the day she's had, she needs it.

"Hello?"

She audibly sighs at the sound of his voice. It's like a symphony.

"Is this an okay time to call? I think I'm going to explode if I go another day without talking to you," she admits. He's the only person she could ever be this honest with—this vulnerable around—and she knows it.

She hears him laugh slightly on the other end of the line. "Now's a great time. Just let me wash up first—I just finished painting, and I really don't want to get acrylics all over my phone." She waits patiently as the line turns to static, curling up underneath the blankets of her lofted bed. It doesn't take long before he returns, his breath swirling over the phone. "I'm back. What's up, buttercup?"

She blushes slightly, then clears her throat. "I broke up with Marvel."

The moment the admission leaves her lips, a swell of cool air fills her lungs, and it feels wonderful. Telling Annie and Johanna about the breakup had seemed like a chore, but this… for some odd reason, it feels right.

"Wow. My kissing skills were that supreme, huh?" he toys, and she's thankful he's joking with her. That's what she needs from him. After her conversation with Annie and Johanna, this is rejuvenating.

She rolls her eyes even though he can't see it. "Don't flatter yourself, Mellark."

The sound of rustling sheets echoes from his side of the phone as he shifts, probably into his bed, and he lets out a long sigh. "Mind telling me why you did it?"

She sifts through the details in her brain like she's digging for gold in a tray of dirt, deciding what to give him and what to filter out. There are certain things he can't know.

"It just wasn't going to work," she eventually replies, deciding that this may be the best course to take. That way, she doesn't have to lie to him; she just gets to carefully select what he knows. "I couldn't tell him anything about me. Not like I do with you." Not even close. "And I know that you and I are just friends, but I feel a thousand times more comfortable around you than I did around him, and I just… I don't know. I think you've cursed me, Peeta. I don't have any extra room for another guy in my life."

"Now I feel guilty," he says, but a slight chuckle follows anyway.

"Don't. That may change eventually. But for now… I like what we have, Peeta."

"I do, too," he replies quietly, but there's a twinge of something in his voice, almost… wistfulness? But for what? "Just… if you meet Prince Charming, don't turn him down on my account, alright? You deserve to be happy."

And here they are again, full circle: thinking so highly of the other, thinking they don't deserve each other's company. Katniss is not the most humble of people, but when it comes to Peeta, she's impossibly modest, just as Peeta is around her.

He will never see how great of value he is to her.

And she will never understand how much he cares for her in return.

When finals week comes vaulting around the corner like a rabid mutt, Katniss finds herself confined to her room, her nose deep in the binding of her books, vowing to pretend the world around her doesn't exist. She assures herself that she can do it, though, that she can make it through the week without flinging herself from her lofted bed, because at the end of the tunnel she's got her ray of sunshine waiting for her.

She misses him like drought-ridden land misses rainfall, like dieters miss candy bars; she craves him, craves his contact, because she once read somewhere that a person needs seven healthy touches a day, and she averages about one-and-a-half when he's not around.

Besides, she sleeps so much better in his arms. She always has.

When she's driving back toward Panem with Annie behind the steering wheel, she half-listens as her friend chatters on about Finnick—about how she's staying with him this summer, how they'll pretty much be attached at the hip for the next few months, and suddenly Katniss realizes that what Annie has with Finnick is nearly identical to what she has with Peeta, only Peeta isn't in love with her, and they actually use his bed for sleeping rather than whatever Annie and Finnick do.

She thumps her head against the dashboard and elects not to think about it any longer.

When Annie drops her off at the bakery, there's nothing beyond her own desire for self-preservation keeping her from sprinting straight into the lobby, so it doesn't take long before she bursts through the front door. She sees a familiar dash of blonde hair as a Mellark shifts behind the register, chatting with a young couple buying a few loaves of bread, but his curls are darker and his eyes don't glow the same.

Still, after the couple passes her on their way out, she turns to him and smiles. "Hey, Hans."

He rounds the front counter to bring her into a tight hug. "Congrats on making it through your first year in the big world, lil' sister!"

"And I managed to do it without tugging all my hair from the roots," she laughs as she pulls back, her smile genuine. There's just something about the Mellark men that put her at ease, and although she remembers how at this time last year, Hans was barely more than a stranger to her, she's grateful things are different now. With her own family a thousand miles down south, having a proxy household here keeps her grounded and reminds her that maybe the world isn't as cruel as it's cracked up to be.

Her eyes scan the bakery, pinning on the door to the kitchen; she nearly expects Peeta to come bursting into the lobby. But he doesn't.

She cocks a brow. "Uh… where's Peeta?"

"Oh! He, um… he wasn't feeling too well this morning..." He scratches the back of his neck. "He's probably puddled up on the floor of the bathroom upstairs. He's been like that all day."

Katniss's stomach churns, but she only nods and thanks Hans, dragging her suitcase along as she lets herself upstairs to the second floor of the bakery. After quickly dumping her stuff in the guest room—the room that smells faintly of mothballs and licorice, the room she's spent obscenely low amounts of time in considering how often she's stayed here—she hurries down to the bathroom at the end of the hall. The door is screwed shut, but the yellow-tainted stripe of light at the bottom of the door suggests he's in there, so she quietly knocks three times.

"Go away," the voice on the other side of the wooden slab moans.

She leans her cheek against the door. "You owe me five Fruit Roll-Ups, Mellark. I'm here to collect your dues."

There's a slight shuffling sound, and a cough, before the knob twists and the door flies open. Before her stands an exhausted, threadbare, I've-been-shoved-through-a-meat-grinder-twice-over version of her best friend. But he still manages a smile, and it makes her stomach transform into a kaleidoscope of butterflies.

"Well aren't you a sight for sore eyes."

She wants to hug him, to wrap herself around him like taffy until her skin is fused with his, but his complexion is bone-white with a slight green tint and she's momentarily afraid he's about to vomit all over her. So she holds her ground.

"You look like shit, Peeta," she says quietly, her eyes scanning him over and over again.

He runs his fingers though his disheveled curls. "Aw, you're too kind."

She defies her decision to keep a few feet between them and steps closer, her palm finding his flushing cheek, clammy to the touch.

"How do you feel?" She flinches once the words fall from her lips. Fuck, that's a stupid question.

"Like a herd of drunken elephants did the tango on my stomach."

When he leans his forehead on the framework of the door, his eyes squeezing as he swallows, she suddenly remembers the last time she saw him this sick. At the realization, her stomach flips and she, too, feels like she's about to vomit.

"Oh god, Peeta—"

His eyelids shoot open as he looks at her in alarm. "What?"

No. This can't be happening. "You don't—you don't have—"

She can't say it out of fear that the word itself will burn a hole straight through her tongue. Recurrence. Cancer. The vocabulary alone is toxic enough.

He frowns, obviously not on the same page as her. "Katniss, I—I don't understand…"

She feels dizzy. Oh, god. She can't do this again. She can't watch him go through this again. No. No.

"Please tell me that—that you don't have… that it isn't back—"

His eyes widen even further, inflating to the size of moons as he waves his hands in front of him. "God, no! Katniss, it's just a stupid stomach virus. Dad had it last week."

She feels her chest deflate, all the heat that'd been pooling in her cheeks suddenly releasing into the air between them. Before she can think over what she's doing, she's closing the space between them, her head burrowing into the warm curve of his neck. He's sweaty, but the sensation that relief leaves behind as it courses through her veins numbs her to everything else, because she'd completely overreacted; he's okay, he's fine, he's alive.

"Katniss, if the c—if it were to come back, I'd tell you right away, alright?"

She nods, and she believes him. She should know better, anyway. Peeta has never tried to keep things from her. He'd rather douse himself in kerosene and light a match than keep her in the dark on something so important.

They eventually have to tear themselves away from each other when Peeta suddenly coughs, running to the toilet to shove his head into the bowl. She crouches beside him—she's always been anything but squeamish, convinced her stomach is lined with steel—and lets her palm lightly graze over the planes of his back until the quivering in his muscles lessens.

If she's counting, they're at two healthy touches so far. Only five more to go until he's (theoretically) good as new.

While she's waiting for Peeta to recover from his last viral encounter, Katniss grudgingly agrees to tag along with Madge as she goes shopping.

"Don't get me wrong—I love being at UPenn, and Philadelphia is incredible, right?—but it sucks being so far away from home all the time. I mean, you and Annie can make the trip down to Panem in roughly two hours, which is doable almost any weekend. But it takes me at least four, and that's if I'm ignoring every damn speed limit sign I come across." Katniss remains mute as Madge continues to vigorously dig through the pile of jean shorts. "And Gale, he's—well, you know how Gale is, of course—he's really intense, which is great when we're together, but he sucks with texting back and he gets angry about a bunch of stuff I don't have control over, and… I don't know, Katniss. I love him, but I'm surprised we survived the year."

Katniss merely nods in return, unsure of exactly how to respond. But when her silence extends a little longer than it should, Madge suddenly turns to her, forcing a sympathetic smile over her soft features. "I'm sorry, all we've talked about so far is me. How've you been handling the distance from home?"

Katniss tugs at the end of her braid, pulling it over her shoulder. "It's been, uh… rough, I guess. I Skype with Prim every week, but I've only talked to mom a handful of times."

"That must be tough." And then Madge smiles. "How about with Peeta?"

What is it with everyone's obsession with her and Peeta's friendship?

She forces air through clenched teeth, reasoning that there's no point in evading the topic. Madge will expertly wheedle it out of her eventually. "It hasn't been easy," she admits, her gaze avoiding Madge's pointedly. "I thought it'd just be a lot of restless nights, you know? Where we'd be sad most of the time and I'd miss having his company. But, uh… we've argued a lot. More than we really ever have."

Madge's brow dips in a frown. "Over what?"

She only shrugs, deciding there are some things she should keep to herself. "Pretty trivial stuff, mostly," Katniss grunts, but Madge's attention doesn't let up, and eventually, she sighs in submission. "I guess I just don't know where I stand with him. And I don't think he knows where he stands with me. It's making us say and do a lot of stupid things." Like get into pointless relationships with oddly-named college boys. Or kiss each other.

She expects her ambiguity to cause Madge to retreat, but she remains surprisingly focused, her light eyes growing even more sympathetic.

"That doesn't surprise me. You're both dealing with a lot of change—you're immersed in a new culture, and Peeta is suddenly without all his friends, and without you... I think you're both just a little lost, trying to navigate through these situations without each other, and it's taking a toll on both of you."

Katniss wants to contest, wants to grow defensive, wants to tell Madge she's wrong, but she can't. Katniss has never dealt well with adjustment—with her father's death, with her family moving south—but she always had Peeta for the worst of it, and Peeta always had her when he was going through periods of change as well. Now they're facing brand new worlds, but they don't have their partners attached to their hips.

Madge is right. Katniss has never felt as lost as she has this past year.

She pinches the bridge of her nose, eyelids clenched shut. "I just don't want our friendship to change, you know?"

"It may have to," she replies gently, as if she's speaking to a child who dropped their lollipop on the ground. "Both of you aren't who you were a year ago, and the conditions of your friendship aren't the same at all. And, Katniss… you know, you two may want different things than what you did last summer."

Katniss glowers at her. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Has it ever occurred to you that you may want to be more than friends with Peeta?"

Her mouth tastes sour and dry like it's been stuffed with old cotton balls. She pops her jaw to say something, to yell at Madge, to spurt out a bunch of loaded accusations, but she doesn't know how to say any of it.

She doesn't know what to say.

Truth be told, she hasn't thought about it. She hasn't allowed herself to think about it. After he kissed her, she considered what would happen if they'd changed the status of their relationship, but she knew things would grow far too complicated, so she simply avoided it, not giving herself a moment to even consider whether or not she could want to be with Peeta like that.

"I'm not trying to upset you," Madge says softly after a moment, "but it makes sense, you know. It explains why you've been fighting so much over what you mean to each other. Maybe Peeta wants—"

Now this is where she draws the line. "Stop," she hisses. "Peeta would never want that from me, okay?"

"But what if he does?"

"If he does, then someone needs to smack him over the head with a brick until he realizes he deserves someone better than me." If Peeta's a dandelion in the forest, then she's a blazing, destructive flame; he deserves another flower that'll bloom alongside him, growing toward the sunlight, rather than something that'll inevitably burn him and all his little dandelion friends to a crisp.

The smile Madge sends Katniss's way is almost sad, almost… pitying, and it only enrages her more.

"I don't want to talk about this anymore," Katniss growls, turning to a rack of neon crop tops that look like something a pothead sewed.

She's surprised but thankful when Madge yields.

Katniss is convinced she'll become an atomic bomb and completely obliterate all of Panem if one more of her friends tries to tell her how she feels about Peeta—first Johanna and Annie, and now Madge, too?—and she decides only one person can remedy her anger.

So what if that person is technically the cause of it?

Mid-afternoon light floats through the open window in a medley of shades, casting over Peeta's still form as she slips silently into his bedroom. She notes that although he's snoring—he never snores, not when he's healthy—at least some color has returned to his cheeks, and he must've showered this morning because his curls are softer, less wayward.

She feels something stir in her belly as she comes to kneel by his side of the bed, her chest tightening as she watches him. Even now, in his unconsciousness and faulty health, she still finds him more beautiful than any other man she's met; he looks like something out of a folktale with his honey-blonde curls, milky skin, and impossibly long lashes that refract each splinter of sunlight. Peeta's height has never been impressive, but he makes up for it with his broad shoulders (back before his knee gave him problems, he'd always sling her over his shoulder like a sack of flour; she'd have to pretend to be annoyed, but he always saw right through it) and that sculpted jawline that could inspire poems and songs of its own accord.

He's no Finnick Odair, no Greek god known only for his sex appeal and seductive pretenses, but he is perfect in his own way, and it kills her.

It kills her because she came her for verification, for confirmation that there's no way she could ever want more from Peeta Mellark than what he's given her, but as she sits at his bedside, she fights the urge to reach out and touch him.

God, he's beautiful.

She crouches beside him, taking his hand in hers to wake him up. She finds herself unconsciously grinning as his eyes flutter open, a hazy film coating over the deep blue as he blinks a few times, but soon he focuses on her.

And then he murmurs, "I'm dyin', Forrest," in his best Sally Field impression—which isn't much considering Peeta is about as good with celebrity impressions as Katniss is at flirting—and all the built-up tension fizzles.

He gingerly shifts over in the bed, pulling back the covers and yanking on her arm. "Come on, Forrest."

"Only if you stop calling me Forrest."

She curls up underneath the blankets with him, noting that even though his fever has quelled, his skin still bears a comfortable warmth, and she snuggles right up against him with her back to his chest. It's a position they've adopted in an innumerable amount of instances before, but suddenly she's hyper-aware of everything she used to overlook. Like the way his arms snake around her, one hand flattening over her belly and the other curving right under her breast; how his nose nuzzles into her pleated braid; how his hips settle so perfectly against her like they're pieces of some awkward heterosexual jigsaw puzzle.

How many years had she spent writing off this position as something entirely platonic? Because now, suddenly, it feels like so much more. Her heart is thrumming wildly, her belly clenching with heat, the juncture of her thighs aching in a way she knows is anything but innocent.

Can Peeta tell? Does he know something's wrong with her?

He must have no idea, because he only makes matters worse when his grip on her tightens, his lips grazing the outer shell of her ear in a way that makes her brain want to pop like a helium balloon.

"I think I'm feeling better already," he whispers.

Dear lord. Any day before now, she wouldn't have dug for a double-meaning in his words, but now it's sitting right there with a congregation of flashing lights pointing straight toward it. She can't ignore it anymore.

She turns around, effectively wriggling out of his grasp.

"Peeta, we need to talk."

He looks up to her expectantly, his blue eyes sparkling with innocence under those long, golden lashes.

But he doesn't say anything, so she continues.

"You haven't ever thought about us being more than best friends, have you?"

His expression freezes into a sheet of silica glass, the emotions flickering across his face unreadable; she'd give anything to know what's running through his mind.

It seems like years before he replies.

"Well, I did kiss you over spring break, didn't I?"

"I thought we agreed to pretend that didn't happen."

"Okay, fine. I didn't kiss you over spring break, but if I had, it would mean that I had thought about it," he says slowly, cautiously.

Her palms are drenched in sweat and she's convinced her heart is about to burst straight from her rib cage.

"And… what exactly did you think about it?"

His gaze digs into hers, as if he's searching them for what she wants him to say. "That we could never go back. That it would change everything."

So he must not want it. Good. That means they're on the same page.

Right?

She swallows and bobs her head in a nod. "Okay. So should we swear on it or something?"

"Swear what?"

"That we're never going to be anything other than best friends?"

The look of shock that hijacks his feature is so total, so pluralistic that she has no idea what he's thinking or feeling, but he quickly recovers, coughing and blinking.

"That's… that's what you want?"

Her fingers clench and she promises herself that this is what she wants. She wants Peeta as he is. Madge had pointed out that everything around them is rapidly changing; Katniss needs to anchor them down into this moment so they don't get swept along with the currents, so no more change can possibly tear them apart. She needs him to promise her that things will stay the same. Because they're perfect just the way they are.

"Yes. It's what I want."

At least Peeta wants it, too. He didn't have to say it; she's positive he agrees.

(I mean, she's not particularly pretty, and she's irritable and quiet—why would Peeta ever want more from her?)

"You may wonder why I've gathered you all here today," Peeta says as he marches back and forth like a military general in front of the ovens.

Cocking an eyebrow, Katniss looks to her left (ingredients) and to her right (even more ingredients) and wonders exactly who he's talking to besides her, but she'll play along.

Straightening her spine, she lifts her fingers to her forehead in a hand salute.

He makes a weak attempt at concealing the glimmer in his eyes and the smile that plays at his lips. "Well, Cadet Katniss, we are about to go to war."

"With who?"

He stops his pacing, his jaw tightening in mock-aggression. "With each other, Cadet."

She eyes him suspiciously for a moment—he's wearing nothing but a tight grey t-shirt and the Batman boxers she bought him for Christmas a year back, and she's even less decent in her cotton boy shorts and one of Peeta's old, incredibly large tees that swallows her tiny frame. He'd woken her up no more than ten minutes ago, dragging her to the kitchen without even a hint of an explanation.

It's one o'clock in the morning.

In the middle of June.

And they're surrounded by an eclectic assembly of ingredients.

In their underwear.

She rubs her temples, not entirely convinced she's not dreaming; what the hell is going on? "Peeta—Sir, I mean—I don't think we are properly dressed for battle."

"The only armor we need speed and determination, Cadet."

"And for weapons, Sir?"

He pauses for a moment, his eyebrows crinkling as he gages the materials on the countertop behind her. "A piping bag, I think. And cupcake liners. We can bring in the tanks and the mustard gas later if necessary."

"Sir, if you don't mind me asking—what kind of war will we be fighting?"

There's a sharp glint in his eyes as the corners of his lips curl in that beautiful crooked smile of his, pincushion dimples and all.

He inhales.

"A cupcake war."

She can't help but roll her eyes. What are they, five years old? Her entire façade drops as she groans, "Peeta—"

"It's on my bucket list, okay?" he laughs good-naturedly, his muscles relaxing as he abandons his own military persona. "I'm not quite sure exactly what I had in mind when I wrote it, but it's there, and it has to be done or otherwise my life loses all meaning. Alright?"

"When I agreed to help you do everything on your bucket list, I hope you know I had no idea what I was getting myself into," she grumbles, but she can't stifle her grin as he tosses her an apron.

"At least it's all been realistic as of yet." He, too, slips an apron over his head. "Prom, treehouses, candlelight dinners, cupcakes... We're doing this at one in the morning, by the way, because I feel like I've been completely underwhelming you with my requests and my version of excitement involves sleep-deprivation, apparently."

She doesn't dare disagree that she's found the list to be fairly minimal so far. She'd expected polar plunges or rock concerts, not things as tame as they've been. At least it's manageable, she reminds herself. "So, are all the other things on the list just as boring, or do they actually get interesting as we go?"

"Well, we're on number seven right now… I think number three is when it really picks up. Number two, for sure. You'll probably want to bail by then."

"I told you I'd do the entire thing." Her hands firmly prop themselves against her waist. "I'm a woman of my word, Mellark."

"Just wait until you hear number two, and I promise, you'll run screaming."

Katniss has always been a creature of curiosity, and so now she feels the sensation burning in her lungs like a forest fire. She wishes he'd tell her the whole thing, but she knows that's not how it works. One at a time, Everdeen.

Turning her back to him, she leans against the countertop littered with all sorts of ingredients. "So… what exactly is this 'cupcake war' going to entail?"

Absentmindedly, Peeta rests a hand on the small of her back; the gesture is nothing but friendly, as he's done it a million times before, but there's something about it that sets her on edge. She's been like this the entire summer—incredibly sensitive to his touch, questioning his motives—and she wants it to stop, to go back to the way it was, but now it's everywhere. He's everywhere.

He begins jabbering on as if she hasn't transmuted into an iron pole at his side. "Well, the actual 'war' part is where both you and I have a batch of cupcakes, go out back, and mercilessly pummel each other with them until we're out and drenched in frosting. I figure you'll probably win, considering you've got aim and speed on your side and I've got the grace of a stoned giraffe, but I thought this process would be a good learning experience for you. Have you ever tried to make cupcakes before?"

She shakes her head. She can make Kraft mac n' cheese, variations of watered-down stew from whatever game she'd catch out back with Gale when she was younger, and gourmet PB&J, but other than that, Katniss has absolutely no culinary experience. The Mellarks have never let her near the flour… for good reason. If she doesn't confuse sugar with salt or cocoa powder with nutmeg, she's guaranteed to completely carbonize the batter in the oven.

Peeta only smiles, his hands grappling at a sack of flour. "Well, we've got our work cut out for us, haven't we?"

He begins by sliding a large mixing bowl between them, tossing in ingredients without even measuring them, simply going by weight and feel. Katniss tries to help, stirring in pinches of baking soda and cracking the eggs into the batter (Peeta has to fish out little shards of eggshell when her cracking goes awry), but ultimately the star of the show is him, and she decides that she'll let him do all the baking in their friendship from here on out.

As they're mixing the batter, Katniss doesn't know why—maybe it's because it's the middle of the night and they're both in their underwear—but her senses are on overdrive. Every time his hand glides against her back, his arm brushes against hers, his fingers guide hers between ingredients, she feels heat flushing in her cheeks and pooling between her thighs.

Her head is pulsing, wanting it all to stop—they're just friends so he shouldn't make her feel like this—but her skin craves his touch, and whenever he leans over her shoulder as she throws a few spices into the bowl, his chest enveloping her back and his hot breath swelling over her neck, she'll snuggle up against him.

When the two dozen cupcakes are safely in the oven, Peeta then teaches her how to make the cream cheese frosting as they wait—which is something she supposes she might actually be able to recreate, considering there's only four ingredients, and it involves a lot of mashing and violent stirring. (Katniss's specialties.)

Actually frosting the cupcakes proves to be an entirely different challenge of its own, however. Peeta doesn't dare trust her with her own piping bag; he lets her share his. After the cupcakes have cooled, he lines them on the counter and demonstrates how to squeeze the frosting onto the crest. His turn out impeccably, the frosting curved in softly-tipped bubbles, and he promises to help her as she tops off her own. His hands curve around hers to help her secure the bag, adding just the right amount of pressure.

"God dammit, Peeta. How are your hands so steady?"

"Years of practice, my lady," he whispers, his lips just barely skimming over her earlobe.

His chin is propped over the arc of her shoulder, her body practically swathed in his, and for a moment she forgets she's holding anything at all because all she can focus on is those perfect hands of his. She wonders what else besides frosting cupcakes, carrying massive sacks of flour, and playing with her braid those glorious hands can do.

The blush that ensues is furious as it enflames her cheeks. Fuck. She can't keep thinking like that.

When the cupcakes are all frosted, and Katniss is literally about to shove her head into the oven to hopefully scorch away all of her not-so-"friendly" thoughts of the youngest Mellark, he hands her a tray with a dozen cupcakes, taking another platter for himself.

The June air is mildly humid but completely still as they make their way to the backyard. Katniss hasn't been back here in years, and even in the dim luminescence of the street lights out front and the half-moon over the forest's canopy, Katniss can clearly make out the silhouette of the tree under which she'd withered when she was eleven. When Peeta had brought her the bread. Her throat thickens as her feet plant in the grass, her mind shooting back to that rainy afternoon.

That's when it all had changed. That's when he'd saved her. That's when she began owing him, which would be a debt she could never repay.

She's nineteen now. She's much healthier than she was then, much happier. But still, she feels her stomach churn as she looks down at the tray of cupcakes in her hands. Even though it's been eight years since then, and two or three since she last went to bed with an empty stomach, the thought of wasting twenty-four cupcakes when there are still people starving in this town…

When she turns to Peeta, she's startled to see him already watching her, his eyes sympathetic instead of questioning.

He doesn't have to ask. He knows exactly what she's thinking.

"What do you say we give each other one clean shot and then call a cease-fire?" he offers, his smile gentle, considerate. "That leaves eleven cupcakes for each of us. And, to be honest, I'm pretty hungry. I could probably eat all of them."

She wants to hug him harder than she ever has, to thank him for understanding her discomfort without making her explain. Peeta has always been able to read her like an open book.

He sets his tray down on the concrete steps, backing up a good five meters and holding his arms out at his sides, squeezing his eyes tight.

"Give me your best shot, alright? Pretend I'm Justin Bieber. Perez Hilton. I don't care, but completely nail me. This is war, remember: there's no time for mercy."

She tries to not linger on his request to "nail him" for too long before setting her own tray down, her fingers fondling the cupcake liner, memorizing the dimensions and feel of the cupcake. She's much more confident with a shotgun than her throwing arm, but when she and Gale used to hunt she'd sometimes strike birds down with rocks, and she figures this isn't much different. Even better now, considering her target isn't moving and he's a lot larger than a sparrow.

But where does she want to hit him? She toys with the rim of the cupcake for a moment as she scans over his body. No, she definitely doesn't want to get any frosting in those beautiful curls, or on those Batman boxers. She could go for those toned legs that look almost copper in the poor lighting, but there's a slight chance she'll miss; she ultimately decides to play cupid and aim straight for his heart.

How symbolic.

She braces herself on her feet, coiling, then launching the cupcake straight at her best friend through the dark.

She can't help but smile when, just a few seconds later, he stares down at the glob of frosting etched just over his left lung.

Not bad.

He nods in admiration, dipping his index in the frosting and clamping the finger between his lips. But he doesn't say anything until after he's grabbed a cupcake of his own, returning to his spot about fifteen feet away, his eyes focused nervously on the pastry.

"I'm going to make an idiot of myself," he chuckles, swiveling the object around in his fingers. "My sixteen-year-old self must've been just dying to be humiliated in front of you when he wrote out that list."

"I doubt sixteen-year-old-Peeta knew it'd be me."

When he responds with a genuine, "It was always going to be you," she dismisses the comment. She can't afford to dissect his remark and search for some profound meaning under its surface; she's already confused enough as is when it comes to how they feel about each other.

She braces herself as he squares his feet, her eyelids plastering shut like crinkled paper. She doubts he'll even hit her, because while Peeta's hands and eyes are incredible independently, his hand-eye coordination is pretty pathetic. The boy may be the 21st century Monet or Renoir, and his upper-body strength is absurd, but expecting him to throw a small object with decent accuracy is like asking Miley Cyrus to go back to being Hannah Montana.

Katniss is a small target, anyway. He'll be lucky if the cupcake even grazes her.

So she's surprised when she feels something cool swipe over the crook of her elbow, looking down to see a streak of frosting marbled like war paint over her skin. Looking up to Peeta, she sees he seems just as amazed as her, his laundry-detergent blue eyes impossibly wide.

Ten minutes later, the two of them are hunched on the kitchen floor, their backs to the cool steel cabinet doors, several rumpled-up paper liners strewed over the floor by their legs. She can't imagine why either of them had thought downing five cupcakes apiece at nearly two in the morning was a wise idea, but it's too late now. She looks down to her slightly swollen belly and pouts.

"Remind me of why we did this."

Peeta only chuckles, wiping the back of his hand over his forehead. "I honestly don't know. I feel like more violence is happening in my stomach right now than during our actual war."

"Whatever we did back there was much closer to a tennis match than to actual combat, Peeta."

He nods in agreement, lifting an arm to unceremoniously wrap it around her shoulders, dragging her in closer to him. The way his fingers curl around her upper arm, his breath swirling through her hair as he presses his forehead to the top of her skull, sends shivers ripping through her core.

The fact that they're sitting there in nothing more than t-shirts and underwear only makes things worse.

Impulsively, Katniss cranes her neck to turn to look at him, her nose only inches from his. Those pools of blue that outshine any Crayola marker immediately find her own gaze, and Peeta smiles, his dimples hollowing in his cheeks.

And suddenly the effects of her own sleep-deprivation emerge from the shadows, dissolving her inhibitions until her imagination rages unhindered; every thought that she tries to suppress during the day is suddenly set free, swarming in the front of her mind, completely hijacking her rationality.

As she sits there, her eyes raking over the same face she's gazed at a billion times before tonight, she begins to see so many things she'd ignored before. Like the way his eyes look like the Atlantic, drowning her in their surfs until all she can see is him, only him, always him; how his tongue juts out to lick over those lips that had tasted like how the color gold would taste if she was to drink it, and dear god she wants to kiss this boy again, here, now, until she can't remember how anything but his breath feels in her lungs.

It's two o'clock in the morning.

In the middle of June.

And they're surrounded by cupcake liners and chocolate crumbs.

In their underwear.

And she wants more than anything to abandon their "just friends" pact.

But before she can take action and potentially make a fool of herself, Peeta's hand lifts from where it'd been resting over his legs to cradle the side of her face. The other hand, which was caressing her shoulder, snakes out from behind her neck so that his thumb can brush over the corner of her mouth.

"You have, uh… a bit of frosting," he murmurs, his voice as heavy as an iron paperweight.

She watches as he brings his thumb back to her mouth, gently grazing over her lower lip as he drags his own bottom lip under his teeth; the action is so absent-minded that she wonders if he knows he's doing it, but either way, the sexual tension in the room could outweigh a blue whale, and it's crushing her under its bulk. Suffocation has never felt so pleasant.

"What the hell are you two doing?"

The sound rips them both from their trance, Peeta's hands jerking away from her in a flash as they both turn to look at the entryway of the kitchen. A ruffled-looking Mr. Mellark towers there in his flannel pajama set, frowning at the pair of teenagers.

So much for sexual tension.

"We—we, uh… we were baking cupcakes—"

"At two A.M.?" His silver-streaked curls are flying off in all sorts of directions, and if Katniss wasn't about to vomit from shock she'd actually laugh at how comical the scene is. A father walking in on his son and his son's best friend while they're eye-fucking each other in their underwear with cupcake-liners peppering the floor.

Huh.

Katniss lets her hands cover her face—it does little to hide her cherry-red blush, but she hopes it's the thought that counts.

She almost has a heart attack when she hears Mr. Mellark suddenly chuckle, and when she frantically glances to Peeta in the fear that his father is going off the deep end, he looks almost as frightened as her.

Mr. Mellark only rolls his eyes.

"Well, I guess there are worse things two nineteen-year-olds could be doing at two o'clock in the morning."

If you'd like to express your frustration with Katniss and Peeta's retrogression or Mr. Mellark's poor (or perfect?) timing, feel free to talk to me on Tumblr—I just created a new, entirely THG-oriented blog at the-peeta-pocket. I'd love to answer questions/address concerns or just fangirl in general with you all over my favorite fictional couple, so drop on in for a bit if you can!

(P.S. For those of you who are wondering when the 'M' components will come into play, that'll be next chapter! Thought I'd give you a fair warning, and also a promise that some long-overdue Everlark is on the horizon.)

Please leave a review if you can! I'd love to know what you're all thinking.