One-Shot: Countertop Confessionals

From where she is peeking out from around the corner of the Merchant shop-front across the street, Katniss Everdeen takes a deep breath, attempting to pump herself up. She's never approached the Town Bakery from the front before – certainly never with a trade; for those, she has always made her transactions on the establishment's back loading dock, approaching through the rear alley.

What she's trying to psych herself up to do is too heavy with personal meaning such that she would never attempt it during her daily trade. She couldn't express what she must in a dingy back alley, of all places. Just the same, she carries a squirrel carcass as a pretense. Call it an entrance fee. Most businesses in Town are strict about forbidding loitering or casual conversation in the front of their shops, unless you're buying or you are making a trade. Certainly, the rule would be enforced all the heavier if Seamers frequented Merchant shops enough to enter from the front (which they don't), and Katniss figures the Baker's wife enforces the no-loitering rule most zealously.

Katniss takes a deep breath. From this distance, peering in through the Bakery windows across the way, the place looks empty on this lazy Sunday afternoon.

He is there, working the front counter. No trace of his mother in sight.

It's now or never, then. The words Katniss has come to say have been four long years overdue as it is. Just get in, say your piece, and get out.

The adrenaline rush surges her body forward, and she marches across the cobblestoned street and into the front of the Bakery before she can change her mind. Her gaze holds him in her sights with such a singular focus, she doesn't even hear the tinkling of the bell in the wake of her arrival.

The Baker's youngest son glances up from where he is swabbing down the countertop and freezes. His blue eyes – eyes as blue as a summer sky – expand in surprise. His sun-kissed blonde hair flops adorably across his forehead.

"Katniss…." he breathes. A broad smile dawns across his handsome face, and all over again, Katniss is struck by how she rather likes his smile. Perhaps she appreciates smiles more because she has little cause to smile herself, unless her sister is about. "I was expecting you about this time, but at the back door…."

Katniss, no-nonsense, deposits the squirrel onto the countertop. A beat, and then, flushing, she sets it on one of those round display racks – which happens to be empty of pastries - perched here. "Is…. is your mother around?"

"No," Peeta blinks. "Out on an errand."

"Good," Katniss clips shortly, the breath whoosing out of her in a sigh of relief.

She catches herself in embarrassment, even as Peeta knowingly chuckles. His mother's reputation as a bigot is well earned across both class lines in District 12. Much of the Seam calls her the Witch, if always behind her back.

"For a second there, I thought you were going to ask me to fetch her…"

Katniss smirks weakly. "No. You're just the person I wanted to see."

She swears that the man's cheeks turn pink. He grins at her winningly. "Well, I'm flattered. What sort of bread will you be wanting to trade for….?"

The mention of bread pushes Katniss to have out with it. "I wanted to say thank you!" she blurts out. Peeta halts and cocks his head to study her, bemused. Now it is Katniss's turn for her cheeks to blush pink. She nervously fidgets with the skirt of her blue Reaping dress, over which she is wearing her father's leather hunting jacket. The fabric of the dress is getting hopelessly creased. Katniss tucks her chestnut braid back over her ear shyly. "I'm sorry that I've never found the right words to say it, until now, but…." her voice trails off awkwardly.

Peeta has a ghost of a smile on his face again, comprehension beginning to dawn. "You mean…. the bread from when we were kids?"

Flushing even further red, Katniss cringes. "Please don't ask me to say it again," she begs, implores. "It was hard enough the first time, and painfully overdue!"

Peeta grins at her kindly. "Katniss, it's just saying Thank You."

She ducks her head. "People say thank you so often, it loses its meaning. As a platitude." She dares to meet his impossibly blue eyes. "If I was going to thank you at all, I needed to make sure this Thank You meant something."

Peeta dips his head to her deferentially, gentlemanly. "It does," he assures her. "More than you." She blinks at him dolefully, unsure what he means by that, but Peeta doesn't explain himself and she doesn't ask him to. Eyes crinkling with warmth, he begins to lazily scrub the counter once more. "Although, I can't imagine why you would think it so hard…."

….. Is he making fun of her? Mocking her? Katniss peers at him, searching for any signs of that are less than sincere. She is struck dumb when she finds Peeta's confusion genuine. She wants to scowl. As if he doesn't know! Seamers are an indebted people, who pay back what they are owed. All debts must be paid – it is a core tenet of the culture of her people. But perhaps she should not expect a Merchant to understand that.

And now she has paid back what she has owed in arrears for the last four years: her very life. A thank you for the bread that had saved her life and that of her family is probably not commensurate recompense.

"Well…. there it is. I've said my piece. So, um….. I'll see you in school." It comes out of her strangled, lame, replete with all of her social awkwardness. She turns on her heel and starts to flee for the door.

"Your bread!" Peeta calls out.

"Not hungry. Keep the squirrel, as a gift!" Katniss tosses back over her shoulder.

"Katniss…." She is nearly at the door when she feels him take her hand. Instantly, an electric shock tingles up her forearm, and spinning about in surprise, she sucks in a sharp intake of breath.

For a moment, she and Peeta stare at each other. He finally smiles at her bashfully.

"I have to repay you somehow," he tells her.

Katniss averts her eyes. "You don't owe me anything…." She mumbles.

"For a squirrel and an overdue thank you that clearly took courage for you to give, yeah, I do," Peeta presses. He tilts his head with a lopsided grin. "All trades must be fair, right?"

With her free arm, Katniss hugs herself. "What do you want?" She has a feeling she knows. Gale, her hunting partner, always says Townie boys are only after one thing. She's 16 and has never experienced her first kiss – not even the customary Reaping Kiss on Reaping Morning for good luck – but if Peeta is going to try to kiss her, she'll allow him this boon.

Just as she is about to nervously pucker her lips in invitation, she is startled when Peeta names his price. And it isn't a free kiss. "I'd appreciate it if you came through the front door more often. I'd…. I'd like us to be friends."

Katniss eyes him suspiciously, her grey orbs like flint. "Not when we're making our trade," she haggles, nodding over to the squirrel carcass still hanging grotesquely off the pastry display rack. "I needed that game just to get in the door. There are laws against loitering, you know."

"And you were clearly keeping an eye out for my mother," Peeta chuckles. Katniss chuckles back. How strange. Only Prim can make her laugh in a manner so uninhibited. "Don't worry. There's no law against conversation. And I'd keep my mother away. Just come and bring Prim by." He smirks. "I've seen her admire the cakes in the window often enough."

Katniss smiles weakly. She has never been able to say No to her Little Duck, when Prim tugs at her big sister's blue skirts and cherubically pleads with her to go and marvel at the cakes in the Bakery window.

"They are quite…. lovely," she admits out loud.

Peeta almost puffs out his chest with pride. "I'm glad you think so. And I should hope they are. I decorate them."

Of course he does. Katniss glances down at his palm, which is still holding her hand. He has such large, calloused hands, yet she can easily imagine how gentle and delicate they are when at work. Dropping her own hand from his quickly, she turns rouge.

"I….. I guess I'll be stopping by with my sister, then."

"Please do," Peeta entreats, and his smile makes her heart do something funny in her chest. Her stomach flip-flops.

She turns and all but runs out the front door of the Bakery.


"What's your favorite color?"

It is the following Sunday, and the Bakery is quiet. Peeta is the only one manning the front, but his workload appears to be light. Seated at one of the small bistro tables, Katniss divides her attention between watching him sweep the floor and watching Prim studying the immaculate cakes in the front window – from a different angle, this time.

"Why is that relevant?"

Peeta purses his lips and shrugs. "Just making conversation. You see, Katniss, the way the whole friendship thing works is you have to tell each other…. the deep stuff."

"The deep stuff?" Katniss shakily laughs. "Uh-oh, like what?"

"What I said. What's your favorite color?"

"Well, now you've stepped over the line," she deadpans prissily.

Peeta laughs and pauses in his sweeping, planting his broom the way a conqueror of a foreign land plants a flag in the old tales. "Favorite colors are too deep for you?"

She smirks dryly. "More like not deep enough."

"Then what's the problem?"

Katniss dips her head into her lap, playing with the hem of her Reaping dress, murmuring. "I've never been very good at small talk. And I'm even less good at making friends."

"Well, there's only one way to learn how. It takes practice," Peeta encourages her kindly.

Prim chooses this moment to insert herself into the conversation. "My favorite color is cyan!" she proclaims proudly.

"Cyan?" Peeta laughs. "That's a very specific shade of blue." He actually sighs wistfully.

Katniss blinks at him. "How do you know that?"

Peeta ponders her, bemused. "Oh, right. You must not have Art as your elective."

"And you do?" Every district child in Upper and Lower School can take one elective each semester. Katniss takes Chorus, even though she doesn't sing much anymore and wouldn't want that bit of information getting around.

"How do you think I've gotten the cakes to look the way they do? I love art! Especially painting."

Katniss blinks at him dolefully. "I didn't know you could paint."

"When I have the materials, never mind the time." Peeta sighs again. "If only I had paints that could make that kind of blue….. cyan….."

Katniss smirks, glancing back to where Prim is back to skipping about the bakery, looking every bit like a nymph or wee sprite. "She just says that's her favorite because it's also her middle name."

"Really?" Peeta drolls, surprised. He seems almost tickled.

Katniss smiles shyly. "Most…. Most folks in the Seam, they…. They tend to name their daughters after the colors of the rainbow. At least, my ancestors do. We're also often named after plants."

"So….. Katniss is a flower, then?" Peeta studies her, grinning. "And what a pretty flower it must be too."

She blushes harder. "It's actually a root," she mutters.

Prim flits back into their midst. "And Magenta is her middle name!" she crows, pointing at her big sister. "Because when Katty blushes, she turns magenta!"

"Is that so?" Peeta laughs, glancing between the sisters.

Katniss tries to scowl at them for ganging up on her, but it feels forced. "I hate my middle name," she mutters.

"I think it suits you," Peeta declares. He tries it out on his tongue. "Katniss Magenta…. Beautiful….."

Katniss turns even further red, trying to bury her face in her skirts to hide how she's blushing. And…. smiling.

"You're right, Prim! Your sister does look magenta when she blushes!" Peeta chortles. Though he doesn't seem to be laughing at her. "I take it that must be your favorite color, then?"

Katniss lifts her face out of her dress. She takes a moment to answer. "Green," she finally confesses. She glances at Peeta. "What's yours?"

"Orange," Peeta smiles.

Katniss blasts out a laugh. "Like Effie Trinket's hair?" She shakes her head. "Boy, if you were Seam, I'd feel sorry for you if your mama made your middle name Orange…."

Peeta giggles, pleasantly knocked off-step by Katniss's witty repartee. "It's Joseph, actually."

Katniss blinks. "What, your middle name?"

"Yeah. Never particularly liked my middle name, either. But, you're right: it's better than being named Orange…." He shakes his head. "I don't even like that shade of orange. More like…. more like a sunset kind of orange…. That's my favorite."

Katniss stares at him, swallowing hard. Sunset. It seems to suit the man.

His easy openness inspires her to confide in him: "I, um…. I take Chorus. For my elective. Not… many people know that."

From the almost omniscient sparkle to his blue eyes, Katniss is struck by the possibility that Peeta Mellark already knew that.


It is the morning of the Reaping, which just so happens to fall on a Sunday this year. Any other Sunday, Katniss would have spent the morning hunting beyond the fence with Gale, but on this, a holiday, the Peacekeepers will be watching. So she stops by with Prim at the Bakery early.

The place might be empty, as it usually is this time of the weekend, yet Katniss is amused to see Peeta still running around like a tree shrew.

"With this being a holiday, you'd think there would be a back-up on bread orders…." she hums demuringly.

Peeta casts a stressful grin back at her over his shoulder. "We close early on Reaping Day to get ready to go to the Square. But we still have to have batches ready in advance: a rush always happens the morning after, once the betting markets on the tributes open. We tend to cater to a lot of Peacekeepers out of the Barracks."

Katniss's face roils in sympathetic disgust for him. Behind where the pair converses quietly at the counter, Prim is studying the cakes in the window again, but with a more subdued air. Catching Katniss glancing back at her sister, Peeta indicates Prim with a jerk of his head.

"She OK?"

Katniss wipes at her eyes, lest Peeta see the moisture pooling there. "She's nervous…. It's her first Reaping….."

Peeta is watching Katniss knowingly. "Sounds like someone else is nervous for her too…."

Katniss lets out a shaky exhale. Peering up into his blue, warm and kind eyes, she boldly reaches for Peeta's hand. "Please tell me she's going to be all right."

Peeta sends her a smile that makes her stomach do somersaults. "She's going to be all right." His voice is soft and crooning, like velvet. A beat, and then he shrugs. "Twelve-year-olds hardly get picked their first time out anyway."

Katniss cocks an eyebrow at him chidingly. "Hardly is not the same as never, Peeta. I counted four pre-teens sent in last year."

"Well…. if you're that concerned…." Peeta purses his lips. "Why not arrange for Primrose to get a Reaping Kiss? There's still time!"

Katniss gawks at him, letting out an awkward laugh. "I don't believe in that stuff! And I don't want Prim taking any stock in it, neither! Kisses for good luck…." She snorts. "Superstitious crap…."

"So, you're telling me you've never had one?" Peeta appraises her. "A Reaping Kiss?"

Katniss makes a show of glancing around. "Do I look like the making out type to you? Besides, who would kiss me?"

Peeta is wearing an expression that is unreadable, but it drops faster than a curtain as he goes back to wiping down the countertop. "What about Gale Hawthorne?"

Katniss frowns, folding her arms so that her breasts puff out under the bodice of her blue dress. "Gale and I aren't like that."

Peeta takes this in silently, yet with interest. "So…. you wouldn't even want to try it?"

"What? Kissing?" Katniss blinks at him, startled.

Peeta chuckles. "Even just on today, of all days. The Reaping Kiss. It's tradition."

"Why?" Katniss snorts. "I've never been kissed in my life, and I've gotten through four Reapings just fine without one!"

Peeta shrugs, tossing the dishrag over his shoulder. "Suit yourself." He busies himself rearranging the pastry display rack before stilling, navel-gazing almost down at the tarts and treats. Finally, he turns and looks at her. "So, if you're not into…. Kissing…. Does that mean that stuff that comes from kissing is also off the table?"

Katniss crinkles her brow at him, skeptical. Even suspicious. "…. Yes," she says at last, quietly. "I'm never getting married. And I'm certainly never having kids." She distracts herself by tracing her finger along the spotless varnished wood of the countertop. "Babies are something to love only to become something to lose. Prim already has such a hold on me, and she's my sister. I don't want to belong to a husband too, or bear a child by him, just to have that child possibly taken away."

She can feel Peeta's eyes on her, and when she lifts her head, he is gazing at her intently. "I understand…." he whispers softly. Yet there is something in his countenance that appears sad. A melancholy in his eyes…. whatever feeling is expressed in them, Katniss knows she has never seen such eyes…..

Flustered from having this conversation, Katniss glances back over her shoulder. "Prim? Come on, baby, it's time to go…."

"Wait!" Peeta dashes forward around the counter. Plucking a cookie off the pastry rack, he presents it to Prim with a bow. "For luck, miss."

Katniss suspects Peeta might have even gone for bestowing a Reaping Kiss on her sister for good luck, if he didn't figure that she, Katniss, would disapprove. Still, his gesture touches her, and she stares at him cripplingly, feeling indebted all over again.

"…. Thank you…."

Peeta just smiles at her bashfully. "You're getting better at that!" he cracks, teasing her.

Katniss chuckles. Gazing at him, she almost does it. Almost goes back on her own principles, just this once, even just to see what it would feel like, in spite of how she protests her disinterest.

But she partly loses her nerve and ends up touching her lips to Peeta's skin, pecking him goodbye on the cheek. She feels him jerk a little in shock, and Katniss gathers Prim and sweeps out the front of the Bakery rather than explain herself.


Prim makes it through her first Reaping. Every Sunday that following year, the Everdeen sisters pay a visit to the quiet and at-a-lull Bakery. While Prim plays, Katniss and Peeta talk.

Katniss tells Peeta about her mother, still so emotionally depressed and withdrawn that she doesn't understand her eldest daughter. Peeta opens up to Katniss about his own mother, and how cruel she can be. The impossible expectations she places on him.

"I'll probably inherit the Bakery," he tells her. "Leven helps his wife's family with their business, and Rye doesn't want it. I love the work that I do, don't get me wrong, even though I know it will be my responsibility…. but to inherit it, I'll have to marry someone of station."

Katniss feels sorry for him. One of the few freedoms people have in District 12 is to choose whom to marry or not marry at all. Now, it seems even that is being taken away from Peeta. She's heard of the practice, common enough in Merchant circles: most wealthy families will betroth their children in advantageous matches, mostly to forge business alliances. Arranged marriage…. it's all so very….. Capitol, to her mind.

She fascinates herself with the shine of the countertop's hardwood. "If I ever did marry – which I won't…. I'd want it to be for love."

She is struck when she meets Peeta's eyes to find him staring at her almost with…. longing…. "Me too…."


That following summer is a Quarter Quell year, which affords a special twist upon the Games. As punishment for how the rebels destroyed whole Capitol families, the tributes are to be Reaped together as relatives. An age range isn't specified.

Even so, Peeta tries to reassure the girls that they'll be free and clear. "I have to hope that my mother won't be picked," he grouses. Internally, Katniss decides that she would dance a jig if Miriam Mellark were Reaped for the arena, but then she stops herself, horrified, for if the Witch were picked, one of her sons would be as well. Peeta in the arena…. Katniss couldn't bear the thought, not even for the satisfaction of seeing his horrid mother fight to the death as well. The harlot would possibly even have it in her to win.

"You ladies are lucky – no male relatives," Peeta is continuing. A pause, and then he inwardly seems to curse himself. "I mean – not that it isn't sad that your father isn't alive, it's just…."

"Peeta…." Katniss lays a gentle hand on his arm. "I understand. Honestly, it's just as well that Daddy isn't around to see this." Having nightmares of her father dying in that mine explosion are bad enough. The thought of her dad in the arena…. Katniss shudders.

"We have an uncle, on Mommy's side," Prim offers up. "But we don't ever talk to him."

At this, Peeta blanches, turning to Katniss for an explanation. She shrugs.

"Mother grew up in Town. We're half-Merchant on her side of the family. When… when she and Daddy had their Toasting, our grandparents disowned her."

"That's right…." Peeta nods slowly. "My father mentioned it once – it was quite a scandal."

"Your father?" Katniss frowns. The Baker wouldn't have known her mother, surely! "Did…. did your father know my mother….?"

Peeta pauses, head cast down into the countertop. "They might have been acquaintances, I don't know," he replies evasively. A pause and then: "Well, actually…. My – my dad was in love with your mother at one time."

Katniss gapes at him. "What?!"

Peeta purses his lips. "Apparently, he wanted to marry her. Once. That's what he told me when he pointed you out, on the first day of school." He smiles wistfully. "You were in a little red dress, and your hair…. It was in two braids instead of one."

Katniss is astonished. For she realizes that, yes, Peeta is remembering that day correctly. It only gets more remarkable from there.

"Later, in Music Assembly, Teacher asked who knew the Valley Song, and your hand shot straight up! You sat up on a stool and sang it for us, and I….. I could have sworn….. I heard the birds outside the window fall silent."

Katniss gulps, her throat dry and her lips even dryer, which she now licks. "You…. you have a remarkable memory," she rasps, dazed.

The look Peeta gives her fills her with warmth. Heat. "I remember everything about you," he admits quietly. "You just weren't paying attention."

Katniss blushes magenta, starts to turn her face away. She meets his gaze just long enough to softly smile and admit, "I am now."

Katniss and Peeta gaze into each other's eyes. They both seem to almost forget that Prim is there, until the little girl, glancing between her sister and their friend curiously, pipes up:

"You guys should share a Reaping Kiss!"

Katniss jerks sharply out of whatever trance she's been in. "Hmm? What, Little Duck?" She is murmuring dazedly.

Prim is smirking impishly. "You should ask Peeta to give you a Reaping Kiss."

Gaping, Katniss actually lets out an awkward giggle as she demurs. "Oh, no, Prim. I – I don't need a Reaping Kiss…."

"Probably not," Peeta agrees, through a red face of his own. "Besides, the Quell twist means there's only one chance of either of you being picked. They'd have to draw your uncle before drawing either of you. I'd say the odds are in your favor."

The Everdeen sisters leave to go to the Square after that, Katniss quiet and lost in thought the whole way.


The 3rd Quarter Quell has been going on for three days. There are only half a dozen tributes left.

Katniss is exceedingly glad that no relatives of hers were picked, guaranteeing her and Prim's safety. She is especially glad that no Mellark was Reaped, especially not Peeta. Standing in the Square for Mandatory Viewing with her mother and sister, she scans the crowd for that crop of blonde hair and eyes of summer-sky blue, but can't immediately see him.

Suddenly, there is chaos on the Games coverage. One of the tributes – a girl from District 7 - is firing an arrow heavenward. There is a flash of lightning, and the screens abruptly go dark.

For a brief instant, the District 12 Square has been plunged into darkness. Then:

KABOOM.

A shop front some yards away unceremoniously bursts into flames.

"Firebombs! RUN!" someone bellows.

Pandemonium reigns. Peacekeepers are deployed to restore order, only to have many in the panicked crowd actually turn and attack them. Katniss turns and nudges Prim into their mother, before shoving them both towards where there is now a bottlenecking effect from people attempting to stampede out of the Square.

"Get to the fence!" Seeing her family as safely off as she can, Katniss plunges back into the crowd in a panic. Grey eyes scanning fretfully, she begins shouting his name. "Peeta! PEETA!"

Finally, through the haze of the smoke, she sees him. Their eyes lock, and then they are running to each other. When Katniss is steps away from him, the smoke suddenly swirls, obscuring him from view, and she lunges the last bit of distance.

Something soft and warm suddenly crashes into her lips, and she lets out a muffled "Mmmph!" of a squeak, before there is a sudden flash of fiery blaze and everything is consumed in fire.


Far away in the Capitol, in the presidential suite, the television screen broadcasting the Games as well as the watch parties in the districts goes dark. President Snow blinks and reaches for the remote, clicking it.

"It's not possible…..!" When the remote refuses to work, he calls for his aide, the Head Gamemamker. "HEAVENSBEE!" No answer. "….. Plutarch Heavensbee!..."


Katniss's ears are ringing. The smoke is beginning to clear from her vision, revealing mad chaos all around her, entire Merchant shop fronts ablaze. Her nerve endings tingle with awareness as she realizes that someone is holding her by the waist.

Blinking, her grey eyes pop and she lets out a startled gasp of amazement, which is promptly swallowed by Peeta's mouth on hers. Her first kiss, at last, and all initiated after they more or less crashed into each other.

Katniss is stunned. She has no idea what to do. Peeta is kissing her….. kissing her…..

…. and Katniss is astounded with herself as she feels how she is beginning to kiss him back….

"Erm…" she makes a tiny, whimpering noise in the back of her throat that suddenly morphs into a pleasured moan. "Mmmmm…. Mmmmmhmmmmmmm….."

She swoons in his embrace, her limbs reaching up, water-soft, to loop about his neck and broad shoulders. Dreamily, Katniss allows her hands to sink into his hair, her fingers weaving into the golden strands that she's always secretly wondered about. Her eyes roll into the back of her head as they close, the lids fluttering shut.

The lustful groan she makes now parts her willing lips under his, and she coaxes Peeta's tongue into her mouth to dance and grapple with hers.

Katniss has to confess, she has often had cause to wonder about Peeta's lips. What they would feel and taste like when pressed against her own. She is astonished by how his hands, which are so calloused and rough from working the ovens, could entrap her so easily and tenderly.

Peeta kisses her like a perfect gentleman, like…. like a lover, and Katniss has to appreciate how, even in this fraught moment, he doesn't take liberties with his hands.

The district is burning around them, bombs are still falling, and yet it is as though the Merchant Baker and the beautiful Seam huntress are lost in their own little world. Katniss's breath hitches as Peeta now kisses her with such enthusiasm that he lifts her completely off her feet, so that she dangles.

Her one foot pops, of its own accord.

Rebels have now scaled the guard towers and cast the Peacekeepers down from them, commandeering the spotlights and flashing them heavenward. And as Peeta Mellark and Katniss Everdeen embrace and kiss, fireworks whizz and explode with a piercing shriek into the nighttime sky above District 12.


A jolt from nearby causes Peeta and Katniss to break apart sharply, if also sensuously, their arms still wound about each other. They are both breathing hard, panting.

"Stay with me," Katniss breathes, her pupils dilated with something that might be lust. Even….. love…..

Peeta looks adorably dazed. "Always," he breathes.

"Come on!" And taking his hand, Katniss leads Peeta with urgent purpose out of the exploding Square; fingers laced together, they break into a sprint for the fence at the edge of the district.

Katniss's lips are still tingling from the pressure of Peeta's. What they just did – kissing in the middle of a firebombing…. It was madness! They are lucky they weren't killed!

Ducking under the fence, Katniss and Peeta charge across the Meadow and into the safety of the treeline beyond. Katniss knows that Gale will have guided any survivors, including her family, to the cabin by the lake where her parents honeymooned after their wedding.

Suddenly, she is being steered into a tree, smacking her head against the bark.

"Peeta! What are you….? – Hmmmmm!"

Her yelp dies a peaceful death in her throat as Peeta kisses her furiously on the mouth. Katniss melts instantly, despite her better judgment, violently kissing him back.

And then they're full-blown making out, utter relief at being alive fueling their passion. Hands are reaching, clasping, fisting fabric and tearing it off, casting articles of clothing to the forest floor.

Peeta's palms are now feeling up Katniss's bum, groping the globed cheeks of her ass. When they wander lower, grasping the flesh at her thigh, Katniss gallingly and in one, fluid notion helps the man hike her leg up to his hip. She curls her leg about his torso, at the back of the knee. Peeta lifts her in his arms, bracing her against the tree. He is bunching the skirts of Katniss's blue Reaping dress up over her hips.

They break the kiss sharply, panting, both of them still on adrenaline.

"Katniss….." Peeta breathes, and the sound of her name on his lips causes liquid to pool at the apex of her thighs. "Tell me to stop."

Dumbly, she shakes her head. In wordless invitation, she spreads her legs.

Peeta mounts her and mates with her.

They make love.

It is with crippling relief that they frantically copulate, jerking frantically against that tree. Katniss feels her own breathing become heavy, staccato, labored. Her grunts, groans and sighs of pleasure rise in both volume and pitch, the faster she and Peeta fuck.

"Huhhh….. Uhhhhh…. Mmmmmm! Hmmmmmm…"

…. Katniss is bewildered to discover how much she actually enjoys having sex. Before, she has thought of intercourse as a waste of energy, energy that could be better expended somewhere else. The dirty deed, the act of humping naked against another person in heat, until now has always seemed to Katniss to be vile and beastly, fits for beasts only, rather than man. She has seen animals mate in the woods in this fashion, and it has always appeared crude.

But as they come together, as she and Peeta undulate against each other, as Peeta thrusts into her and Katniss lifts and thrusts out her hips to meet his every upstroke, she becomes aware that there is something sacred, even solemn and tender, in the dirty deed in which they indulge.

Heat, warmth is building up inside Katniss's core. Peeta has parted the bodice of her blue dress, nearly tearing the fabric, so that it parts like curtains to reveal her porcelain breasts glinting in the moonlight, her nipples hard. Face-planting into her boobs, Peeta feasts on Katniss's tits, the pump of his hips into hers fading. Her pleasured cries crescendo.

"Please…. Please Peet-ahhhhh….. Ahhhhhhhhh!... AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

When she is close, Katniss feels her fingernails dig into the skin of Peeta's shoulders, fisting the flesh there until her knuckles turn white.

Her heels dig into his bare buttocks as her toes curl.

With an gobsmacked wail, she cums.

Once she has helped bring Peeta to orgasm, the handsome Baker's son tells the beautiful daughter of a coal miner that he loves her.

….. Katniss says it back.

"….. I love you, too…"


Katniss and Peeta finally arrive at the District 12 refugee camp by the lake just after sunrise the next morning. No one asks about Katniss's mussy hair, her chestnut tresses now loose from its braid. Nor do they ask about her pink, kiss-swollen lips or the rumpled look of her blue dress.

Hunting with Gale for food, Katniss has no time to be alone with Peeta, the man whom she took as her lover, let alone time for them to discuss the base and carnal act of intimacy that passed between them. The kiss they shared in the Square.

Three days after the bombing, a hovercraft with unfamiliar insignia picks up the District 12 survivors – 800 in all.

The horde of humanity is spirited to District 13.

Katniss, her mother and sister are assigned a family-unit apartment. Katniss is dismayed when Peeta is told he must find living arrangements in a separate dwelling. Katniss had helped her paramour search for his family on the hovercraft, before concluding that they all perished in the bombing.

From the pained look on his face, Peeta appears just as reticent to leave Katniss. Enough that, in full view of her mother and sister, Peeta now drops down to one knee before Katniss.

"What….. what are you doing….?"

Peeta presents her with a dandelion sprig, in lieu of a ring. "Katniss Magenta Everdeen: ….. will you marry me?"

Speechless, Katniss dazedly takes the flower and runs it through her fingers contemplatively. She ignores her mother's gasps and her sister's squeals and prancing at her feet as she seriously considers Peeta's proposal of marriage.

…. At last, she takes a deep breath, takes Peeta's hand and pulls him to his feet. Softly, she kisses him.

"Yes." A heavy pause, and then: "But if we have a Toasting…. You can't ever tell me what to do!"

Peeta just smirks, and they embrace.


Katniss and Peeta marry in the Everdeens' apartment, in a quiet and intimate wedding ceremony with only a handful of witnesses crammed into the small one-bedroom dwelling. An artificial heater is used to solemnly Toast the bread in lieu of the traditional fire in the hearth – District 13 has no fireplaces underground.

The bride is clad in her mother's lace wedding dress, the white garment the Everdeens' one family heirloom. Katniss had nearly killed her mother upon realizing she had gone back for the garment during the bombing, but now she is ever so glad it was saved. There are dandelion flowers woven into her chestnut hair.

Katniss is solemn, introspective as she and Peeta exchange very simple wedding bands and vows. Tenderly, newlywed man and wife each feed each other a piece of toasted bread. Finally, her grey eyes smoky and sparkling from the light of the heater, Katniss parts her lips and tilting her head, she permits her…. her husband to kiss her.

Husband and wife kiss tentatively, and then the wedding kiss deepens in its passion as Prim, Mrs. Everdeen and the Hawthornes burst into applause. Embracing her groom, the man she has married, Katniss lets her eyes flutter closed as she errantly tosses her meager wedding bouquet aside, not caring where it falls. The clumps of dying dandelions are caught by Prim; the pine needles scatter upon the floor.

Katniss and Peeta dance at their wedding, the new Mrs. Mellark shyly teaching her husband how to perform the reel. But the real highlight of the night is the wedding present Peeta has for his bride.

Peeta presents Katniss with a small, yet immaculately iced cupcake. He flushes sheepishly. "I know Toasting cakes are traditionally supposed to be much bigger, but war rations being what they are…"

Katniss shuts him up with a firm, sound and chaste kiss on the lips. "I love it," she expresses to him solemnly, sincerely, her grey eyes shining as she smiles. "And I love you…."

The marriage ceremony ends with Peeta sweeping his bride off her feet and carrying her, laughing, across the threshold, of their newly-assigned apartment, for married couples, as Prim leads the congregation in the traditional District 12 wedding song.

Katniss and Peeta make love on their wedding night, even as Katniss warns her husband that she does not intend to have his baby, and certainly not in the middle of a war.

Fate has other plans.

Katniss falls pregnant with Peeta's child just before the war ends. She carries the baby to term for the sake of her husband, knowing how he has always wanted to be a father. When their daughter is born, Katniss and Peeta name her Lily, following family tradition and to symbolize rebirth as they watch the Capitol fall to the rebels on the holo. Seeing the fire and flames engulfing the city, Katniss decides that her daughter's middle name shall be…. Orange. Peeta laughs until he cries.

After hostilities cease, a new government is established and the Hunger Games are abolished, the Mellarks, Prim and Mrs. Everdeen return to a District 12 razed and burned to ash. The family rebuilds and soon Katniss feels her stomach begin to round once again. Feels her breasts balloon with a mother's milk. She is expecting again, and this time, she bears a son. Unlike his sister, carrying him is easier, though not by much.

Now, Katniss nurses her baby boy from where she sits in a sundress on a picnic blanket, watching her husband and daughter play in the Meadow. When the baby begins to fuss, she calms him.

"Oh, ssssh…. Sssssh….. did you have a nightmare? ….. I have nightmares too….. Someday, I'll explain it to you – why they came…. Why they won't ever go away…. But I'll tell you how I survive it: I make a list in my head of all the good things I've seen someone do…. Every little thing I can remember. It's like a game: I do it over and over. Gets a little tedious after all these years, but…. there are much worse Games to play."