One-Shot: No Fucks Left to Give?

When her baby sister is Reaped at the age of 15 and later dies in the 77th Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen rationalizes that she has no fucks left to give.

It's a Townie turn of phrase, slang, though she doesn't really know what it means. Gale seems to think its meaning refers to Merchant boys who think a Seam girl at the Slag Heap has gone past her sell-by date. Katniss coins a new meaning for it:

With Prim gone, she no longer cares anymore.

She can't, but does anyway, bemoan the fact that she couldn't have volunteered for Prim even if she wanted to; she is 19, having aged out of eligibility for the Hunger Games the year before. Sinking into both a deep depression and her own dark thoughts, Katniss begins to withdraw. In a sign that misery loves company, she notices a change come over many of her loved ones as well.

Her mother, dull and vapid, now descends into more or less an even worse catatonic state than she displayed in the immediate months following the death of her husband. One morning, Katniss awakens only to find the house empty and her mother gone. After a full day with no sign of her, the Hawthornes organize an impromptu search party.

It's another two days before Gale and his brothers find Katniss's mother dead at the bottom of a shallow, abandoned mine shaft. The Peacekeepers punt on the cause of death. Some say Belle Everdeen fell in. Others think she climbed down willingly and lingering noxious fumes asphyxiated her.

As a legal, grown adult, Katniss is allowed to stay in her childhood home. There will be no Community Home for her, thank the State. Justice Building housing policy is very strict: when an adult comes of age, they can either remain in their childhood home until such time that they apply for and are assigned a new, single dwelling unit. Or, they can get married and be assigned a new home by the government. In the latter option, this almost always means for the woman that she move in with her new husband.

Concerned for his best friend, and also for his younger brother Rory (still distraught over the loss of Prim, who he may have harbored feelings for), Gale is ready to do something desperate. He offers Katniss the opportunity to move in and live with him and his family.

He doesn't bring up the possibility of marriage, which Katniss is grateful for. She and Gale kissed once, two years ago before the Quarter Quell, but she had found no deeper meaning behind it. Now? How could she possibly entertain romance with a man, or Snow forbid, a family, after what happened to Prim?

Gale goes to the Justice Building anyway, to advocate on Katniss's behalf. His application is denied, on the grounds that in order for her to move into the Hawthorne homestead, Katniss and Gale must marry.

Frustrated, and dealing with his own trauma, Gale responds to being blocked by organizing an uprising amidst the miners. The sedition is discovered, and Katniss is forced to watch in shocked horror as Commander Thread executes her hunting partner and best friend in the Square.

After that, Katniss begins to contemplate suicide.

The only thing that stops her is the surviving Hawthornes: when they were young, she and Gale had made a pact to feed each other's families if something happened to either one of them. That dreaded something had been euphemistically understood as a case in which one of them was Reaped for the Hunger Games. Now, Katniss hunts to feed just herself on one end, while also providing game for the widow Hawthorne and her three little ones.

She takes it upon herself to teach Rory how to hunt. Gale had wanted to pass on the trade down to his little brother once he was old enough. In the past year, 16-year-old Rory has become quiet and withdrawn, much the same as her. Watching him, Katniss just knows that he had feelings for her sister that went far past the point of friendship.

One morning, coming back from a hunt, Rory suddenly takes Katniss's face in his hands and kisses her, much as his dead brother once had done. When they break apart, Katniss stares at him heartbreakingly. She is four years his senior, and he still seems like such a lost little boy in face.

Wordlessly, she eases back down into the tall Meadow grasses and pulls him on top of her, spreading her legs as Rory shoves her blue Reaping skirts up over her hips.

They mate.

When Rory cums, spilling his virgin seed inside of her, Katniss is heartbroken but hardly surprised when he pants out her sister's name.

She and Rory never speak of the coupling after that.

Two weeks after Katniss and Rory have sex, Hazelle Hawthorne is horrified to discover her middle son hanging from the rafters of his bedroom.

Someone has been leaving her food.

Katniss had noticed the foodstuffs on her front porch, where she lives alone, months ago, starting after Prim's death. She and Rory, plus Gale before him, had speculated on who was leaving the packages and why.

A deeper examination of the items had left Katniss with little doubt as to who: there is fresh bakery bread amidst the care packages. Why is an altogether different mystery. How to catch the blaggard in the act poses even more difficult: judging from when she has found the packages of bread, the perpetrator either leaves them on Katniss's front stoop at night, or waits until he (or she) knows she has gone beyond the fence to hunt.

Finally, Katniss organizes a stake-out.

One night, she bursts out onto her front door, armed with her bow, and catches the fiend dead to rights, in the act.

She pulls up short upon seeing how is illuminated in the porchlight.

"Peeta Mellark?"

His terrified blue eyes – eyes as blue as a summer sky – stare back at her out from under bangs of curly, golden hair. The man cuts a handsome figure, Katniss has to admit.

Katniss says nothing, beyond asking, "Why?"

Peeta gulps. "You were in trouble."

She glowers at him. "I don't need charity!"

He bobs his head. "I know."

Katniss appraises him up and down, a slight scowl on her face that is softening by glacial degrees. "I should…. I should say thank you…."

"You don't have to."

Yes, she does. She's never even thanked him for the first batch of bread, two loaves burnt, that he once tossed to her in the rain when they were children.

Katniss gets an idea. At one time, it would have been anathema to her, but she supposes in such dire circumstances as these, she might have had no choice but to go into it anyway, if old Cray had remained Head Peacekeeper.

"Wait…." Her voice is a croak as Peeta has started to turn away.

Wordlessly, she approaches him. She unties the ties at the back of her bodice, the bodice of her blue Reaping dress, so that the top half of her dress falls away, to reveal large, round, womanly and pert breasts. Katniss flashes the man, and she tries not to tremble as she feels her nipples bud and harden to painful tenderness in the cool night air.

Gawping at her boobs, Peeta nearly chokes. "Katty girl…. No!"

But Katniss doesn't care. She doesn't care how he is desperately fighting with himself to avert his gaze, out of some kind of gentlemanly respect, even as he cannot bear to look away. Solemnly, Katniss takes his hand and guides it to cup the swell of her breast.

She pulls Peeta close, and once she has enticed him to touch her, grope her buttocks, grip her thigh, hoist it to curl about his torso at the back of the knee, Katniss kisses him hungrily and with no nonsense.

She feels nothing beyond the perfunctory, as she kisses him that first time. It will ultimately not be the last time she kisses him….

…. But it will be the last time she feels nothing while doing so. For before long, there will be a first kiss that makes her want another.

Taking him by the hand, her breasts still exposed, Katniss guides Peeta with purpose to her front door. She silently brings him inside….

Spread-eagled on her mother's kitchen table, her tits jiggling throughout the carnal act, they have sex.

Peeta mounts her and mates with her. Katniss's breathing soon becomes heavy, ragged and labored, staccato, as she takes this man as her lover for a night. Peeta nurses at her nipples, which Katniss pushes into his face. Casting her long and svelte legs over his shoulder, he pounds into her warm and astonishingly wet heat. The couple buck like beasts in heat, in a carnal and vile manner that Katniss would have once declared fit for beasts only.

Peeta is not a gentle lover, Katniss decides. As the man, he is strong and dominant, but not rough. In some moments of their coupling, he even cedes the floor to her dominance, allowing him to show her how she likes to be touched. How she likes to be fucked.

Not that she has much experience. She screwed Rory Hawhtorne mostly because she felt pity for him. In this meeting of two people, Katniss is sleeping with this Townie as an expression of gratitude. A trade is a trade, and all trades must be fair. And frankly, any Townie boy would pay anything to have a feast on these breasts.

Katniss is almost impressed when, after he has cum inside her, Peeta graciously continues to shag her until he has brought her to orgasm. She's frankly amazed that she did.

The months pass. Night after night, Peeta brings bread and foodstuffs to Katniss's front door, to supplement her game. Night after night, Katniss thanks him with sex. She seduces him, brings him inside so they can shag on the kitchen table, mate between the sheets on her simple cot upstairs, in her bedroom that she once used to share with Prim.

They don't use a condom (prohibitively expensive in this district) when they fuck, despite Katniss's fear that these nightly trysts might accidentally result in their conceiving a baby. But there are other ways for a woman to stave off pregnancy – herbs her mother and sister used – and these Katniss employs.

Besides…. Katniss likes to feel the upstroke of Peeta's cock inside her, as he beds her.

An affair is all that this can be. The possibility of a family being born of it is out of the question. The thought of marriage, even more out of the question.

Merchant man and Seam woman try every position. Katniss rides him, her tits bouncing in his face. She goes down on him, putting her lips around his cock and methodically performing oral sex until he jizzes with a grunt into her throat. Shifting her onto all fours, Peeta nudges her remaining virgin entrance and takes Katniss in the arse, so that with melodious cries, they play what is often called The Beast With Two Backs. Katniss has observed animals mating in the woods in this way…. and finds that she likes it, when Peeta claims her in such a manner.

Her moans and pants as they make love nearly wake the whole Seam.

"Huhhh….. Uhhhhhh….. Errrrmm…. HMMMMMM! Mmmmmmm… Ohhhhh…. Ahhhhhhhh… Ooooooh…. Harder….. Faster….."

The sky is beginning to turn gray, preceding the first light of dawn. Her svelte and naked body pressed to his, Katniss stirs as Peeta shifts against her, preparing to dress and slip out her front door, to begin that long walk across the district back to the Bakery.

She's almost never said anything, in the mornings when he leaves. Sometimes, she has awoken from being ravished half the night to find him gone.

This time, however, Katniss clambers on top of him and moves to straddle him. They screw once more, violently, and when she cums, Katniss pants out quite impulsively, "Stay with me…."

The lust and even…. Love….. in her paramour's eyes nearly makes her lose her breath. "Always…." A beat and then he asks:

"….. Will you marry me?"

She looks at him. Really looks at him, skeptical and even bemused, as she combs her fingers contemplatively through his golden locks, plastered to his forehead from their exertion screwing each other. The man is brave, to propose marriage to her, knowing that only social shunning and disownment would be all that await him in the event of a wedding and a Toasting.

... Yet, Katniss is pretty sure Peeta knows all of this, and still wishes to be with her anyway. Have her as his wife. The thought fills her with warmth and before she can second-guess her decision, she bends over him and kisses him tenderly on the lips. When they break apart, her grey eyes are solemn as she replies:

"Yes."

Late the following spring, wedding bells can be heard ringing in the tower above the Justice Building, usually a signal that someone has gotten themselves hitched.

Inside the small chapel, now 21 and more than old enough to legally wed in the eyes of the district law, Katniss Mellark (neé Everdeen) marries her husband. The man with whom she has, much to her own astonishment, fallen in love.

There are dandelions woven into the bride's chestnut tresses. She is clad in her late mother's bridal gown, found in the bottom of a trunk at the foot of what will be her and Peeta's marriage bed. The wedding dress is a Merchant heirloom that in many Townie circles is still seen as a rite of passage, reverently handed down from mother to daughter. Mrs. Everdeen had absconded with the prized garment when she wasn't much older than her eldest girl, upon eloping with Katniss and Prim's father.

The Justice of the Peace blesses the union, declaring the couple wed in the eyes of the district law. Smiling up into eyes of summer-sky blue and weaving her hands into locks of golden-spun hair, Katniss softly closes her eyes as she embraces and kisses her new husband. Peeta clutches her close and their wedding kiss deepens. When the Baker and Seam huntress lovingly break apart, the small congregation of witnesses breaks out into cheers.

Curling into her husband (Peeta's her husband!) with a bashful smile, Katniss laughs – and the sound turns into a pleased gasp as Peeta tugs her close and kisses her furiously again. Melting into it, Katniss absently tosses her bouquet of dandelions and pine needles aside. She is amused when she learns later that a flummoxed Posy Hawthorne catches the dandelions; the pine needles are left to scatter upon the floor.

Tucking under her knees, Peeta lifts Katniss in his arms without breaking the kiss, sweeping her off her feet and carrying her bridal style out into the morning sunlight before setting her gracefully down.

Leaving the Justice Building to well wishers, Peeta takes his bride by the waist and lifts her onto the back of a rented cart. The walk to their new home together in the Seam is long, but Katniss doesn't mind.

Upstairs in their bedroom, Katniss allows her bridesmaids to change her from her wedding dress into her blue Reaping frock. Among them is Madge, the Mayor's daughter, Posy, and Delly Cartwright, her new sister-in-law by Peeta's brother.

Descending the stair, Katniss stands before her spouse and their roaring hearth, where the pair Toast a bit of bread and share it. Peeta then pulls his bride close, so that the pronounced swell of her belly is nestled between them.

The baby hadn't been planned during their passionate, in-secret affair following their first night alone together in her mother's kitchen, but once Katniss had sensed her breasts ballooning with a mother's milk, felt the little one stirring inside of her, she had cast aside her first reaction of a terror as old as life itself. Peeta had assured her they would be OK – he will provide for his wife and child by selling bread in the Hob, now that he has been written out of his inheritance for taking a Seam woman as his bride. He will never go down into them mines. They'll be OK, Peeta will tell her on nights in their bed as they sleep with the windows open - they'll have each other.

And she does have him, now and forever, as, with the firelight dancing in her grey eyes, now solemn, Katniss tilts her head and permits her husband to kiss her deeply.

A toast is made on the newlyweds' behalf, led by Rye Mellark. "I'd ask to kiss the bride myself, but I don't think I want to get decked…" He glances from his brother to his sister-in-law. "…. Or shot." All the guests laugh uproariously, as Katniss curls into her husband, the picture of a blushing bride as she flushes red with embarrassment.

Mr. Cartwright graciously takes to his fiddle and Katniss and Peeta dance at their wedding. She shyly teaches him how to perform the reel. But it is Peeta's gift to his bride that will prove to be the cadenza. The coup de grace.

Upon seeing the immaculate Toasting cake he has baked for her, Katniss draws both hands to her mouth in astonishment.

"OH! Snow's Roses, it's a vision! But…. but how did you….? You didn't! You shouldn't have!"

Peeta just spoons her. "Do you like it, Sweetheart?" And though she's never been one for public displays of affection, Katniss nonetheless loops her arms happily about his neck to kiss him soundly.

"Oh…. darling, I love it! I love you!" She's even too ecstatic to mind having to shoo her Davey Cartwright, Delly's brother, away from the concoction.

The evening ends with Peeta carrying Katniss into their home with Madge and Delly leading the singing of the traditional district wedding song.

Six months later, Katniss and Peeta's daughter is born.

They name her Hope….. to remind her parents of how they got here, in spite of everything.