#Everlark Drabble

[notsocooljess]

“Whatever”

this is a little drabble/outtake for a fic that i’m currently working on but can’t really seem to find a place for it to fit in with the storyline.

katniss and peeta try to define their relationship a year after peeta returns back to district 12 following the war.

“Haymitch referred to me as your ‘whatever it is that I am’ today,” I say as I nestle my head into the center of Peeta’s chest, getting ready to sleep.

“Did he?” He asks as he wraps his arms around me, and I nod. He hesitates a moment before asking, “Well, what do you want to be?”

I furrow my brow and ask, “What do you mean?”

“Well, I could be your ‘friend,’” Peeta starts, and already I hear the teasing thick in his voice, “but I think we kiss and sleep in the same bed way too often for that one. I mean, how many friends do you know who share a house?” He looks at me with a grin, and I respond with an eye roll and a smile of my own.

“I could be your ‘boyfriend,’ but it feels like we’ve been through a little bit too much for that one, right?”

“Go on,” I say, never wanting him to stop talking when he’s able to run on with a joke like this.

“We could go with ‘partner,’ but it’s a bit too reminiscent of ‘ally’ for my taste,” he states, and I nod. There’s no further explanation needed.

“I could be your ‘husband.’ I mean, we both know more than half the country still thinks we’re already married, but I wouldn’t want that because,” he lowers his voice conspiratorially, “believe it or not, I have a keen ability to make really good bread, and I will be damned if people think I had a toasting without the perfect loaf,” he continues. At this point, I’m really laughing while he smiles down at me.

“Or, I could be your ‘lover,’ which might actually be the most accurate title.”

“Why, because we were ‘star-crossed lovers’?” I ask drolly.

“No, because ‘lovers’ implies we’re having a lot of sex.” In response, I smack his arm while he guffaws.

“Alright, alright,” he begins while wiping away his tears from laughing too hard, “well that’s all I can think of. You got anything?”

I look up at him. His blue eyes are shining brighter in the moonlight with the help of his happy tears, and as his eyes find mine again, an easy softness covers his features. He is perfect.

“So one day you’re gonna give me a toasting with the perfect loaf?” I ask. A smile spreads across his lips.

“The absolute best one. A perfect golden brown crust that’s crispy and buttery and herby. The inside will be nice and soft.”

“Will there be fruit and nuts?”

“If that’s what you want.”

I smile. “Then how about after that happens, you can be my husband. But until then, we know that I am yours and you are mine and we are whatever it is that we are.”

He smiles back at me, and I blush, because after a year of doing whatever it is that this is, I will never get used to how much I love it.

“I love you, my whatever,” he says, holding back a laugh as he goes to kiss me on the cheek.

“I love you, too, my whatever,” I say, unable to stifle my chuckle like he could his.

We hold each other close as the crisp autumn air fills the room. My eyes are just starting to drift closed when Peeta asks, “So, I guess this means ‘lovers’ is totally off the table then, right?”

[katnissmellarkkk]

tis I with a prompt: I request the first time post war Katniss lets Peeta into her bed again 🥺

-

AN : wrote this the night you sent the prompt but I absolutely hated it until now. I finally got around to cleaning this up a bit and now I think it’s cute? Lemme know, all of y’all, if you like it! And my writing muscles are rusty so send me a prompt if you like, to try and work me out please! Can’t make any promises about what’ll trigger my brain but I can sure try! Anywaysss hope y’all enjoy this lil post-mockingjay-pre-epilogue drabble here!

-

I watch with dread as Peeta scrubs away the last bit of sauce still dried to his plate.

“You really don’t have to do that,” I murmur halfheartedly from where I lean against the counter, watching him.

“It’s rude to not wash your own plate after dinner,” he says, his tone somewhat coy. He’s teasing me, I realize. He’s maybe even flirting with me but I can’t be sure and even if I could, I wouldn’t know what to make of it.

“I never wash mine after eating at your house,” I mumble, mostly to myself. I know he doesn’t care about cleaning off my plate for me. I know that he knows that I don’t mind washing his plate either.

But I don’t push the point and neither does he. Because we’re both stalling the inevitable.

It’s past ten at night and it’s time for Peeta to go home now. This time comes every day and we should be more prepared for it by this point, but every single night when the sun has long since left the sky and you can barely make out five feet in front of you without a flashlight, Peeta walks out the front door and my chest aches, as he disappears out into the night.

Ask him to stay, a tiny voice that sounds weirdly like both Haymitch and my mother — at the same exact time — pressures me.

But my tongue won’t cooperate and I can’t make the words form on my lips and I feel my stomach flip as I stutter out an awkward goodbye instead.

“Goodnight, Katniss,” Peeta says evenly, his face smooth and peaceful and totally level as he reaches out and squeezes my hand before moving to grab his coat.

He’s walking towards the door and I feel the familiar dread — the dread that’s been my constant companion for longer than I care to remember — rise up in my stomach and for a split second I want to reach out and grasp his elbow. For a split second I want to grab onto him and stop him from leaving.

And for a moment I plan to ask him to stay, to come upstairs with me, to get into his pajamas and brush his teeth by my side at the sink, to crawl beneath the sheets and hold me until we hear birds begin to chirp with the morning light. In that moment I plan to ask him to do exactly what we used to do on the train, exactly what we used to do every single night, back before everything between us completely shattered beyond recognition.

My hand drops midair before I can make the contact with his arm but it catches his attention just the same.

“What’s wrong?” He inquires, his face becoming concerned.

“Nothing,” I brush off tightly. Instead of saying what I’m thinking, instead of saying what I want, I just force a smile and lightly graze his hand. “Get home safe.”

At that, he shoots me a bemused look. “I live three houses from you. Somehow I think I’ll be fine.”

I nod and chuckle as he leaves, as he disappears into the night, making the shortest of journeys home, unwittingly leaving me to dwell in regret for all the things I wish I’d just come out and said.

As soon as the door shuts between us regret the size of an elephant lands on my chest.

And I know, without a doubt, this is going to be one bad night for me.

-

The funny thing about my nightmares is they never lose their edge. Not with time, not with practice, not with comparison. I’ve seen Cato get eaten by the mutts hundreds of times. I’ve watched Clove stab me with her knives and Brutus chase me through the jungle and Enobaria break my neck with one hand, more than I could possibly count.

I’ve witnessed my sister detonate, as if I’m still standing right there, in the city circle of the Capitol. I’ve witnessed it thousands of times since that day. I’ve witnessed it more often than I’ve managed to actually sleep since that day.

And it never gets easier. It never becomes routine. I’m never ever prepared for it.

Instead I’m left paralyzed as the same dreams plague me over and over and over again.

Other things do change though. I used to thrash around, kicking and screaming as the dreams tortured me for minutes on end. I used to wake up, sweat covered and coiled up in my bedding, trapped in a physical sense that only manages to make my dreams even more intense somehow.

But over time something shifted and somehow, between the bomb that killed my sister and taking down Coin and the trial I scarcely remember, the thrashing stopped and the walking began.

For months now, I’ve woken to find myself in strange rooms, in small crawl spaces I didn’t know existed, inside cupboards and beneath beds no one’s ever used in guest rooms I barely recognize.

But I’ve never found myself outside before. Never, in all the time I’ve dealt with these dreams, have I ever once ended up in my front lawn.

Never, in my wildest imagination, did I picture myself waking from my nightmare, facedown in some dirt, ripping grass from the ground as I let out a rabid scream.

“Katniss,” I hear a voice softly murmur, like speaking to an injured fawn, terrified of scaring them away. “Katniss, it’s okay.”

And my lips cry for the voice before my brain fully recognizes it. “Peeta?”

“It’s just me,” he says, and I feel his hands grasp the tops of my arms, gently pulling me upright. “It’s only me.”

I pry my swollen eyes open and take in Peeta’s kind, worried face, mere inches away from mine.

“You’re here?” I croak, still groggy and confused. “What’s going on?”

“You were having a nightmare,” he explains, thumbing away my tears as more come pouring out. “But it’s over now. It was just a dream. You’re okay.” His hand cups my cheek softly, holding the weight of my head.

I nod plaintively, my body still completely exhausted despite the fact I was just asleep. “I’m okay,” I try to say but all that comes out is a guttural raspy sound and I watch as his face softens even more.

“Come on. Let’s get you inside,” he whispers, offering me his hand.

I take it without question, but find that I’m not upright for long. The moment I’m standing, my bare feet touching the dewy grass, Peeta bends down and scoops me up in his arms.

I don’t question it though. Maybe secretly I wanted him to do that. I definitely didn’t want to wait around to see if Haymitch came outside, asking why I was screaming at this hour of the day.

Peeta carries me into the house as if I weigh as much as Buttercup, kicking the door shut behind him and walking over to the couch. He sits down with me on his lap and drops his arms, as if to let me decide the next move. I could either crawl away from him, put some distance between us, or I could remain where I am.

To me, the choice barely takes any consideration.

I curl up closer to him, the images from the dream still too fresh to handle alone. I press my face into his neck and fold myself into him and hope he reciprocates in kind.

It doesn’t take more than a second for him to respond. As soon as I initiate it, he’s there, pulling me tighter, cradling me against him, rocking me back and forth like I’m something precious to behold.

“It’s okay,” he repeats again and again and again, as if we entered a time warp and we’re back on the train, back in the Capitol in our little apartment, sharing a bed, guarding against nightmares we stupidly thought would be the height of our troubles. “I have you, Katniss. I won’t let anything hurt you now.”

I cry into the collar of his shirt, drained and shaking and still half-crazed, feeling slightly better only when his fingers begins to smooth my hair away from my face.

“I’m right here, sweetheart,” Peeta whispers gently, his hand moving from my hair to my lower back, rubbing soft, soothing circles there to alleviate my trembling.

Time begins to pass. My tears dwindle to nothing. I feel the shaking come to an end. Every last ounce of energy I have left seeps from my body. My eyes grow heavy.

And pretty soon, I feel myself lifted once again, into strong, protective arms, cradling me like a baby as they carry me up the stairs and down to the end of the hall.

I’m tucked into bed gently, with the utmost care. The covers are brought up to my chin, my hair is brushed off my forehead and his fingers lightly dance upon my cheek. But it’s not enough. I still crave more.

“Don’t leave me,” I whisper, and my voice still isn’t mine, it’s someone else, someone who isn’t afraid to ask for what she wants. For who she wants to lay beside her in the darkness.

“Okay,” he murmurs and it sounds like a promise but as he sits down on the side of my bed and takes my hand in his, planting a soft kiss upon the back of it, I know he doesn’t understand what I’m truly asking.

“No, Peeta, that’s not what I meant,” I say, shaking my head, before pushing the covers back. “Can you get in? Can you stay with me?”

I don’t really grasp my word choice and all the underlying meanings until it’s already slipped out and too late to take back again.

But I only have a moment to be filled with regret. Because that’s how long it takes Peeta to slide in beside me.

And as I curl into him, wrapping my leg around his waist, burrowing my face in the curve of his neck, basking in the feeling of utter safety and happiness that I have never, ever found in another pair of arms, he whispers the only thing that could erase my chagrin.

“Always.”

[mollywog]

Complicated

They've finally made it to a place where they’re stable enough that he doesn’t need to spend every Sunday out in the woods. The girls have stopped outgrowing their clothes and with the spring, Katniss’s morning hauls bring what they need for the week. He still loves it beyond the fence, but after years in the mines, six days a week, even a favorite pastime can make a man weary. So lately he’s forgone his hunts for time on the porch rocker.

But this morning he’s back in the woods at his wife’s insistence. She’d said she was worried about Katniss in an unusually cryptic way that suggested she wanted him to judge for himself. Katniss and Ruth are both headstrong, two peas in a pod, though he knows better than to speak it to either aloud. As a result, the tough conversations come better from him.

He’s paid particular attention all morning, but can’t seem to pinpoint the source of his wife’s anxiety. Though she has only just turned eighteen, Katniss seems to have grown into a woman overnight. Or maybe this has been a long time coming and he’s missed it in the dim light of evening. If anything, she seems to be alight from within.

It isn’t until it’s time to dress their kills that he understands his wife’s concern. Katniss’s glow vanishes, replaced by a palid green hue before she loses her breakfast behind a bush.

Shit.

He crouches beside her, his water flask in hand, “let’s sit down and talk Catkin.”

“Do we have to?”

“I don’t need the particulars, just a few questions,” Where her mother would lecture and fret, he knows there’s no use in the would’ve/should've - what’s done is done. “How far along?”

“Not long, but I’m keeping it, if that’s what you’re after,” she says, clutching her midsection protectively.

He nods, “and you know who the father is?”

“Of course,” she snaps and he’s glad to see she’s still got fire despite her exhaustion.

“I’m sorry, I just didn’t realize you had a boy. Does he know?”

“Not yet.” He lets his silence speak for itself. “It’s complicated,” she adds defensively.

“Is he free?”

“One final reaping. Same as me.”

“That’s not what I meant. Is he free?”

She scowls, “No papa, he’s not married nor bound.”

He tisks, “Then I can’t figure what could be so complicated about it. Unless you don’t think he’ll do what’s right? Or maybe you don’t want him?”

She sighs, “it’s not that either,” she rubs her eyes, “I’m gonna tell him, but if I do it now he won’t want to wait to get married and that would ruin things for him.”

“Hmm, Is he a fool?”

“What? No!”

“If you trust him, you should tell him. If he respects you, he’ll heed your concerns. You’re a smart girl, I’m sure you can figure it all out. If not, you'll always have a home with your mother and I.” He means it, but he feels ten years older than he had just this morning, with the thought of their present security gone.

“Thanks papa,” she says, and he smiles despite his concerns. “I’ll think on it.”

Their trip to town is made in silence as he tries to imagine the man and the circumstance but comes up blank; not even a guess.

Their first stop is the Mayor’s, then Cray’s, then the butcher’s. He stands back and watches Katniss handle the trades. It fills him with pride.

When they arrive at the bakery, she falls in step behind him, and he takes the hint to lead. He’d bet she’s looking for a buffer if the baker’s witch of a wife is around, but fortunately for them one of the sons answers today; the youngest if he recalls. “Is your father in?” he asks.

The boy straightens, “Yes sir, but I’ll be handling trades from now on. Come summer, I’ll be the new baker.” The kid’s eyes flit to his daughter then back to him, “I just got word that my loan was approved. I close on the bakery July 5.”

“Really?!” Katniss’s voice catches him off guard and he turns to find her open delight at this seemingly trivial piece of town news, before she drops her eyes to her bag. He looks back at the boy who’s still beaming at his daughter and the pieces fall into place.

‘It’s complicated’ - hadn’t that been what Ruthie’d told him all those years ago when he’d asked her to marry him? He supposes it might have been even more so if her parents had been considering selling her the business and she’s been expecting his child.

The pair regain their composure enough to complete the trade, though neither quite successful at hiding their giddiness.

“Complicated huh?” He says as they walk back towards the Seam, “let me guess, a little less complicated come July 5?”

“Maybe so.”

He hums, “just don’t wait till then to tell him.”

What If?

[endlessnightlock]

Regencylark! Part one of maybe three?

Based on the prompt, Evening, submitted by @mollywog

Under the weary gaze of Plutarch Heavensbee, Esq., Peeta Mellark completed his perusal of Uncle Haymitch's last will and testament and, thoroughly shocked by its contents, cast the document aside. "Can he actually do this?"

Heavensbee shrugged. "I'm sorry to tell you, my boy, he most certainly can. While you shall retain the title, either way, the money was not entailed with the estate. No matter how eccentric Haymitch may have been, he was in his right mind until the end."

Steepling his fingertips beneath his chin, Mellark frowned. "Well, this is a bit of a shit."

Heavensbee, sensing the beginning of a lengthy conversation on the tale end of a journey already fraught with disasters at every turn that resulted in him only arriving two days before the deadline set forth by the will (god rest his soul, though Heavensbee would have some choice words for the man if they were to meet in the afterlife), made himself comfortable in the ancient wingback chair next to the fire. He took a sip of the brandy Mellark's man poured out for them, forcing himself not to shudder. The drink was not of a good quality.

The situation was certainly a bit of a shit. It was apparent to anyone with eyes that Mellark was in no way prepared to take over the estate without additional funds to aid in its upkeep. If Heavensbee were to guess, the young man barely kept up the expenses of this house.

Heavensbee coughed several times, an indication that they had no time to dilly-dally. Mellark finally looked up. "Have you no lady of a particular acquaintance who is wife material?"

The younger man frowned. "One would think so. Unfortunately, one would be wrong. My whole life, I have made an effort to avoid society." He shuddered as if the idea of balls and theater gatherings and garden parties made him ill. "I assumed when the time came that I must take a wife, it would be after I had possession of Lord Abernathy's title and funds."

"How about, er, a special friend? Someone you keep company with regularly?"

"I have no mistress."

Heavensbee was beginning to sweat. This was going poorer than he'd anticipated. Mellark made it sound as though he were a hermit or a monk. "No local woman? A pretty village widow?"

Mr. Mellark stared back at him as if a woman were an alien concept.

"Anyone? Christ man, a scullery maid?"

There was a polite-sounding knock on the drawing-room door. It was Mellark's man again. The future Lord (perhaps penniless Lord?) made no effort to hide his relief at the interruption in conversation. Heavensbee sighed.

"My apologies for the interruptions, Sir, but you requested I let you know when Ms. Everdeen arrived."

Mellark's face lit up in what seemed genuine delight. "Oh, wonderful. Heavensbee, do you mind a short interruption in our conversation? It is not necessary to dismiss yourself. Simply a small matter to take care of."

No, Heavensbee certainly did not mind the appearance of an unmarried woman at the present time. "By all means," he said. Once Mellark's man was dismissed and the two were once again alone in the drawing room, he began his inquiry with delicacy. "Ms. Everdeen?"

"The local gamekeeper," Peeta explained, rising to his feet. Heavensbee followed. "It is a bit untoward having a young woman in the position, but her father before was renowned for his skill."

"Does Ms. Everdeen have a good reputation?"

"Oh, the best as far as I know. She is well-loved in the community. Highly respected. Not given to drink or men. She is quite an attractive woman," Mellark admitted, chewing the corner of his lip in contemplation.

Hope simmered in Heavensbee's belly at the younger man's admiration for any woman, romantic or not. A lot of good marriages began out of mutual admiration. Love was free to blossom in such situations.

"Tell me if you would then. This Ms. Everdeen---she is unattached?"

"I'm not subject to village gossip, Heavensbee. I do not know Ms. Everdeen well, except that she has a mother and sister in her care."

Heavensbee had to restrain himself from smacking Mellark in the back of his head. Simply in the interest of knocking some smarts into the young man. "So Ms. Everdeen is a young, attractive woman, most likely unattached, with an unmatched reputation."

"What are you getting at?" Mellark asked, setting his drink aside.

"My boy, do you not see? When one is in a pinch, such as you are, the deadline for your nuptials is tomorrow evening, and Ms. Everdeen sounds like your best option for a wife. If she is willing."

[oolhan]

our little games

Wordcount: 1.7k

| Post-mockingjay. Peeta and Katniss making up their own guessing game with pastries that he brings home every night from the bakery |

No warnings! It’s literally a fluff fest following my realization about what Peeta and Katniss smells here and @mollywog’s replies conceiving a sudden birth of this prompt. Lol. This is my first time writing for everlark and I kid you not I oiled up my rusty writing skills from lit classes. Thanks also for @distractionsfromthefood for your support! Unbeta-ed, but enjoy!

It started when I came home early from the bakery, surprised to find Katniss curled on the couch covered with her oversized hunting jacket. She looked up from the arm rest and her cheeks were red and dry with tears. Nothing surprising, honestly, it’s just one of those days. I automatically walked up and knelt on her side, forgetting to take my shoes off in the foyer.

“Who is it this time?” I hushed, giving attention to her black strands clinging dry on her cheeks, softly flinging them aside while her head rested on the arm rest.

“Dad…”

“In the woods?” I glanced at her father’s hunting jacket she used as a blanket and carefully move it to wipe her tears, tucking its collar under her chin.

“No, couldn’t get past the door…”

“Okay, do you want to stand up now?”

“No…” A silence.

“Stay with me though?” Ah. There it is. Yeah, alright. Always.

She scooted on the couch to give me space and I obliged, lying down cramped with my shoes still on, faces inches from one another.

“What do you want for dinner?” I whispered, caressing her brow with my thumb. I’ll never get tired brushing her face this way.

She scoffed a smile. “Pancakes?”

“Pancakes?” my eyebrows shot up. Pancakes for dinner?

“Yeah, you smell like maple,” she chuckled, her eye wrinkles right under my thumb.

“Probably because of the maple butterscotch brownies I made for Sae’s granddaughter today,” I murmured, tracing lines on her nose. “She said she didn’t know what maple tastes like,”

“That’s so Peeta of you to do,” she grumbled, mustering all seriousness with her brows. That made me snort.

“Yeah, well.”

“I want those butterscotch stuff now.”

My smile got wider.

----

The next day, I set aside some of the cupcakes I frosted for the seamstress’s kid’s birthday to bring home for Katniss. I never got to take my shoes off when she wrapped her arms around my neck, her face on my chest, the boxed sweets held on my free arm as I put the other over her.

“Hello, again,” I say, giving her a kiss after leaning back. “I’ve got you something,”

I hid the blue box behind me, smirking at her head tilting in curiosity. “You have to guess it first!” I played.

“Is it food?”

“Mhm.”

“Cheese buns?”

“No, I just made those for you two days ago.” I chimed. Her and her obsession with cheese buns.

“Those butterscotch brownies?”

“Unfortunately sold out,”

“Wait,” She reached for the front of my jacket, sniffing it. Then she’s whiffing off my undershirt, my hands, my chest, my neck. I tried not to shiver when her nose pressed under my earlobe.

“Buttercream…”

I tried not to grin.

“Cupcakes?” She eagerly tugged on my jacket.

“Oh, Katniss,” I chuckled, presenting the box wrapped with a simple red bow. She unties it and quickly picks the one with green frosting.

“This would be dessert after venison!”

----

After that, I practically came home everyday bearing random pastries for her to guess. I never get my shoes off in the foyer when she hauls herself on me and give my daily hugs.

“Ooh, something creamy today,” she quipped, leaning back from my undershirt. “Is it a cake?”

“Not even close.”

“Tarts?”

I shake my head.

“Something with custard?”

“Probably.”

“Custard pie?”

“Warmer,”

“Egg pie?”

“Warmerrr,”

“Ice cream? Vanilla cake with cream frosting?” She tugs on my jacket repeatedly, almost shaking me to give up my answer.

“Sweetheart, you’re cold again.” I tried not to laugh at her growing impatience when strands from her braid fell on her face, the box still unreachable behind me, and my free arm curling those anrgy locks between my fingers. Her eyebrows are beginning to crease the way they do when she gets close enough to Haymitch’s geese.

“What is it, Mellark?” Oh, I love nothing more than seeing her scowl.

“Guess, Everdeen. Or I’ll eat this alone after din—” She cut off with a grasp on my head and a kiss on tiptoes.

“Tell me now, Mellark!”

“That’s coercion!” I teased. She leaned up for more pecks, but I backed away chuckling.

“Peeta!”

“Alright, let’s make a deal. Guess this right with three tries, or give me a kiss every time you bite to it.” I challenged, plastering an impish grin.

“How am I supposed to guess it? All pastries have cream!” Her eyebrows are close to meeting now.

“Oh yes, minced meat pie is creamy.”

“Is it minced meat pie?”

“No, it’s not savory.” I clued in, getting impatient myself. I didn’t even take my shoes and jacket off and we’ve been playing this guessing game for minutes now.

Just pick the latter and let me kiss you.

She crossed her arms playfully, “Screw you, Mellark. I’ll take the second option just because dinner is getting cold. Now give it.”

“Groundbreaking choice.” I thumbed her annoyed forehead and unraveled her angry arms, revealing the box from behind and untying the red ribbon.

Her creases came back when she saw the hidden pastry.

“How is bread pudding close to a pie?!” She exclaimed, all angry tone and yet she’s pinching off a piece from the pudding. I made some batches up from the stale ones.

She bites through the pinched bread. I took the first peck.

----

It became a routine. Coming home at dusk. Stomping my shoes on the foyer. Her arms clinging briefly, nose sniffing, her guessing every item right, a peck on the lips, a dinner and a dessert.

“You smell dill and garlic today,”

“Did it cling that strong?”

“Doesn’t matter. I like it, it’s soft, like a little savory treat.” She murmured in my ear, rendering me still when she softly nipped my earlobe.

She never does that.

Her arm swooped under my elbow, taking the blue box from my hands and revealing a bed of focaccia sprinkled with dills. “Hmmm,” she moaned through her bites and I fought the urge to kiss that crumb off on the side of her mouth.

Is she trying to kill me?

I coughed, brushing off her innuendos and finally taking my shoes off.

----

Assuming her favorite days were cinnamon and buttercream, she does more than just short kisses whenever those days come. The soft bites on my neck and earlobes happens only when I come home smelling like it. That’s the time I sink down my fingers in her hair a little deeper or my hands grip her hips a little tighter.

Today, I grasp her braid a little stronger, my arm roping around her backside, giving her neck some nips of my own. I breathed her in, taking a whiff of her own scent—woods, sweat, something feminine, and entirely Katniss—wishing I could store away some of her in this manner, freezing this moment. I let her lift my head and kiss me senseless, mouths meeting, tongues twirling.

“I, uh, frosted someone’s wedding cake today,” Taking a peck on her nose, I tried to catch my breath when we break away.

“requested something with cinnamon and buttercream frosting,” I sighed, brushing off her brow, noticing her now diluted eyes. I failed to bring anything home because of those three tiers.

“Good for them,” she breathed.

“Couldn’t bring home anything,”

“Good for me,” She gulped and collided our mouths again. She took my shoes off along with my jacket. Dinner got cold that night.

---

Fall had a slow welcome. It was a seasonably cold day when she doesn’t push herself to me after I opened the front door. Disappointed, I took off my shoes and head to the living room, finding her standing up from near the fireplace when she noticed me. Our memory book laying on the carpet along with some papers.

“Hey you,” her cold form wraps around mine and I tried not to ask her what’s wrong too quickly.

“Guess?” I quipped, pecking her red cheeks. Did she just come back from outside?

“Butter cookies?” even with her wavering tone, she was right. Although I don’t point out the way she hid a small choke when she hugged me.

“You okay?” I let out warm breath on my palms, placing them on either side of her face and this time I felt her visibly holding her breath, her nose scrunching. “What’s wrong? Who is it this time?”

“No, no episodes. I just… I was nauseous the whole afternoon and tried to walk it out. I think I just miss them,”

“Hm. Come here, let’s warm up,” I led her to the fireplace and sat down together, the memory book lay open in front of us.

“Actually Peeta, I think I’ll prepare dinner.” She suddenly stood up, giving me a kiss on the forehead before heading to the kitchen. That was uncharacteristic of her.

But I didn’t question it. Not yet.

I started to wonder when she doesn’t meet me in the foyer anymore. Our guessing game slowly turned from minute hugs to silent smiles. It was when I brought home some seasonal apple pie that she couldn’t hold back a gag when she tried to hug me.

Doesn't she like apples? Can’t I recall if she hated apples?

“God I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to gag at all. I just, I don’t know, it just smells sour.”

“I baked them fresh this morning so they’re likely not foul. But yeah, okay, I’ll just drop these off to Haymitch—”

“No, Peeta, your hands. They smell so apple-y.” Her expression was a twist of scowling and being disgusted. I sliced dozens of apples today so the scent clung too much even when I washed off with some soap.

“Sweetheart, we chopped all day at the bakery, the smell will last for some hours I think,”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know why, I always liked apples,”

“It’s okay, let me give these to Haymitch and then I’ll scrub off in the shower.”

----

The next day I brought home some of the extra orange cake slices, dreading she’ll also hate these.

They were never put down on the table.

She devoured three slices in minutes.

Also gobbled my orange scented fingers.

----

Still mildly unhappy we didn’t return to our guessing games after a week, I didn’t bring anything with me today. I was taking my shoes off when I saw her beaming by the couch, her face tinted red with anticipation and she looks like she’s about to cry.

“What? What is it?” I rushed to her in my loose shoes and jacket still on.

“Peeta, I think I know why.”

Eyebrows crinkled. My hands on her elbows.

"You know I always love what you make but...

Her fingers fidgeting. Her blushing cheeks and silver stare the only things registering in my mind.

“I think I’m pregnant.”

She guessed right.

[everlarkism]

You voted, I delivered! Just a small drabble of Katniss getting injured while hunting and Peeta takes care of her. Short and sweet, I apologize for my rusty writing, it’s been a while.

Katniss returned home with a few scrapes on her hands and a limp after a hunting session. Usually she had an animal with her, but not this time. She was on a trail with a lot of tree roots that were above ground, took one wrong step and tripped. Once inside, the bow was hung up on a rack and the quiver of arrows were resting against the wall.

“I’m home.” She exclaimed, walking into the living room and leaned into the doorway. Peeta was folding a page in his book and getting up to greet her.

He furrowed her brows, noticing Katniss had no game with her. “No luck?”

She sighs, shaking her head,”I fell. I could always go back out later.”

“Are you alright?” His voice is full of worry as he gently takes her hands into his own, but pulls away as he sees her wince. Katniss turned them over, revealing the small scrapes on them.

Already, the boy was heading to the bathroom for the first aid kit. “No way you’re going back out there, Katniss.”

“But-“

“No.”

Katniss sighs, carefully making her way over to the sofa and sitting down. Why did she even bother to argue? This girl could have a bruise, and Peeta would be worried like this - but that’s the thing she liked about him, he always cared for her. He just never wanted to see her hurt in any way possible.

He returned to the living room and crouched down, placing the first aid kit on the floor. “Do you think you fractured your ankle?” He asks, starting to remove her boot and sock.

“Peeta, I swear I’m fine.”

Her ankle was swollen and not bent at an odd angle, so it must’ve been a sprain - nothing more. He still ended up wrapping it with an elastic bandage so it could reduce the swelling at least. Once the foot injury was dealt with, he sat on the cushion next to Katniss and asked to see her hands. She laid them flat, palm upwards so he could examine. There ended up being splinters, which he carefully took out with a pair of tweezers and disinfected the scrapes then bandaged them up too.

“Didn't know you were a doctor and a baker.” Katniss teased, a smile forming on her face. “But thank you, Peeta.”

“Learned from the best.” He replied, packing away the equipment,”We take care of each other… It’s just what we do.”

“So, doc… What do you suggest now?”

“To rest.” Peeta gestures to her bandaged ankle,”You’re not hunting until that is healed, I’m afraid.”

“Are you saying you’re going to be the one to hunt?” She jokes.

“I’d never dare to take the Girl on Fire’s place.” He shook his head with a chuckle,”Now let’s get you to bed, hm?” Peeta stood and carefully picked Katniss up in his arms, bridal style.

[toastyeverlark]

“So, how’s it working out with Peeta?” 

Katniss doesn’t turn to look, and instead continues trimming the delphiniums in the garden. 

“It’s going great. He’s very good to me.”

Katniss cringes upon hearing the soles of Ines’ shoes crush against the freshly-mown grass.

“Peeta’s good to everyone, though,” Ines grins like a cat.

“And he should be. Isn’t it just something a decent human being should be doing?”

Ines digs her foot into the grass. “Of course it is. What I mean is, you’re not all that special to him, Katniss Everdeen. This marriage will end sooner or later, and it’ll be Peeta who instigates it.”

“And you’re quite a pathetic attention-seeker, aren’t you?” Katniss drops the pair of shears and turns to face her.

“You don’t know anything about Peeta Mellark, do you?” Ines trails around the garden, her every step aggressive and rough as her shoes dig into the ground, causing striking damage to the greenery.

“You don’t know that he doesn’t take sugar in his tea,” Ines stops to pluck a flower from a bush. Katniss had just prepared him a cup of tea with a whole pack of sugar in it a couple of days ago, which he had finished without a drop left in the cup.

“You don’t know that he likes to sleep with the windows open,” Ines tosses the flower behind her. Katniss had asked on their first night together if it was alright for the windows to be shut, and he had told her he liked sleeping with the windows shut as well.

“You don’t know anything,” Ines looks at Katniss in the eye, “You don’t know anything because you didn’t grow up with him, you two aren’t meant to be together, and this whole marriage of yours is just a miserable twist of fate.”

Katniss glares at her without a word, her fists clenched. 

Ines, satisfied with her reaction, twirls around and walks away as if nothing had happened.

Katniss picks up the shears and goes back to trimming the delphiniums, and somehow it gives her some sort of comfort, but not for long. A tear rolls down her cheek.

-

Katniss doesn’t even notice that the front door’s been opened and shut. She doesn’t even notice when Peeta announces his arrival while kicking off his socks and shoes at the door.

She sits sullenly on the floor of their bedroom, staring at a spot on the wall.

“Katniss?” Peeta lightly taps her shoulder, which startles her. “Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. Are you okay?”

“Oh, uh yeah, yeah. I’m fine. How’s the bakery today?”

“I brought back your favourite. Let’s have it in the kitchen,” he smiles and helps her up and leads her to the kitchen table, where a delicious-smelling loaf of raisin-and-nut bread sat.

“I had some spare time today, so I decided to make this for you since you haven’t had it in a while. It’s just the way you like it,” Peeta says as he slices the loaf into pieces with a knife.

He places a slice on her plate, “Have it while it’s warm. I ran home from the bakery just so it wouldn’t cool.”

“Thank you, Peeta,” Katniss takes a bite and breaks out into a grin. “You never disappoint.”

Peeta observes her quietly as he eats his own slice. Normally, she would be telling him about her day and rave about how she was getting better at managing the garden, something she never imagined she would be able to do.

For some reason, the crumb of bread on the table is seemingly more interesting to Katniss tonight.

“Peeta?”

“Hm?” 

“I didn’t realise you like your tea without sugar.”

He stares at her, surprised. “It’s fine. I like it both ways actually.”

“You could’ve told me the other day when I dumped a whole pack of sugar into your tea, you know.”

Peeta laughs. “It doesn’t matter. It’s not that important whether I have sugar in my tea or not. You prepared it for me, and that’s all that matters.”

Katniss sighs. “You didn’t tell me you like to sleep with the windows open either. This isn’t how it’s supposed to work, you know. It’s supposed to be me and you. Not just me.”

Peeta smiles, and pulls her chair towards him. He takes her hands and massages them gently.

“I want it to be just you.”

“We’re in an arranged marriage, Peeta. It’s not like the movies, it doesn’t always work out. I don’t know much about you, I’ve never really done anything for you. You’ve been the one doing everything for me. And for some reason, you seem to know me so well with everything that you do.”

“Katniss,” he looks down at her hands and then her face. “Why do you think that of yourself? Just because Ines tells you that you don’t know about my preference to sleep with the windows open and to have no sugar in my tea, you think this relationship is doomed? Why haven’t you thought about how you decided to learn gardening because I told you that I like gardening? Why haven’t you thought about how you always save the best parts of the game you hunt for me? I’m still learning about you, Katniss, I’m still finding more parts of you to love everyday, as if there isn’t enough to love about you already. I know you’re doing the same.”

He reaches out to hold her face and pulls her in for a long kiss. 

“Okay?”

Katniss nods with an embarrassed smile, her cheeks red and her head dizzy.

“How did you know about Ines?” 

Peeta snorts. “I guessed that she’s been trying to give you some ideas. Ines has always been annoying, even when we were kids. I hoped that she would grow out of it, but I guess some people are just like that forever.”

Katniss chuckles. “Shall we sleep with the windows open tonight?”

“Katniss.”

[adsosfraser]

first kiss

an in-panem, no games everlark oneshot

wc: 2222

Today is the first day. The first day I’m allowing Peeta to go steady with me. We’ve been tiptoeing around each other for the better part of two years now, until I finally crossed that line last night when I leaned in and pressed my lips against his at the Harvest Festival.

Just the thought of it makes me giddy with joy and a blush colours my cheeks.

Of course Madge won’t let it just slide when she sees it.

“What has you all hot and bothered Everdeen?”

My head whips back from Peeta’s vacant seat in the back to Madge’s to the right of me. “What?”

Her eyes trail back to Peeta’s seat and a smirk blooms across her face. It’s honestly terrifying. The maniacal joy in the search for my misery and embarrassment clashes with the cherubic face dotted with freckles and lined with corn silk blonde hair. Oh no.

“Or should I say who?”

Before she can begin the true teasing, I’m saved by our history teacher Mrs. Earworm. There’s a first for everything I suppose.

Last night surely taught me that.

It’s hopeless to even try to focus on the lesson. Though I do have Mrs. Earworm to thank for the consistent background noise that is her droning voice to set up the backdrop of my thoughts and tune out everything.

He’s in a dark green shirt, my favourite colour. I’m in my father’s old sweater and the only pair of jeans my mother owns. I really tried to find an outfit that would make me look beautiful for Peeta, and I wanted to wear his favourite colour, but I could only find the deep red sweater with specks of burnt orange. Throughout the night, I pinch my cheeks to bring colour to them like the girls in Town do with their makeup tins of blush.

Peeta leans closer to me, his breath crystallising in the air with mine in a giant satisfying puff. We sit on a bale of hay off to the side, tuckered out from all the dancing. The sun is long gone and only a few stragglers remain, swaying close together as a slow song plays from the fiddle. No one blinks an eye at us, already too far gone in their drinks or simply not caring about two teenagers dallying out at almost one in the morning.

His hand twitches and lands on my hip. The lanterns and fairy lights above blur everything into a softlight, and cast a halo through his pale messy hair. My heart races as he places his other shaking hand onto my hip and licks his lips. I know he’s staring at mine because I was staring at his not even two seconds ago.

Is this what my mother felt like? Drawn into my father like a moth to a flame?

I want his light to flood into me. I don’t want to capture it in a jar but I want to let it flow in both of us, so we can bask in it together. If he’ll allow.

As I raise my hand to brush away a lock of blonde from his eye, I smile at the small indentations left by the hay in the palm of my hand. Peeta smiles too, not knowing my reason for it, but wanting to share in it all the same. I know I react the same all the time.

It’s impossible not to smile when Peeta’s happiness shines everywhere around him and blocks out even the clouds.

His hand strokes my cheek and I lean into his warm skin with a shiver and close my eyes. I didn’t even notice his hand begin to travel from my hip until I felt his touch, too focused on the sight of his lips and eyes. I let the feeling of his warmth spread through me with a smile and place my hand over his, hoping to give him the same.

“Can I kiss you Katniss?”

I nod shyly, my cheeks blushing an even darker shade of red than I thought possible. They’ve been in a perpetual state of red ever since the Harvest Festival began. Or well, ever since Peeta walked down to my shack of a house in the Seam to escort me to the square, the whole time my hand held safely within his own.

“Yes.” Please.

His short bursts of warm breath puff against the seam of my lips. I close my eyes again. People are supposed to close their eyes when they kiss, right? Madge says it’s creepy to have guys staring straight into her soul.

I inch closer to him, connecting our hips and knees together so they’re flush against each other and there’s no space between them. Except for the fabric of our clothes. His top lip lightly brushes my bottom one and I sigh.

Everything is new and strange but I also feel like I’ve done this a thousand times with him before. I bring my other hand to the nape of his neck, tugging on the curly strands there. We pull apart, but not for long. I stare into his eyes that twinkle under the lights and surge back into him. My leg nestles between his thighs now and-

The harsh crash of a book against my desk nearly sends me into a heart attack. My hands startle away from under my chin and the finger that was on my lip drops to my side.

“Oh it must’ve been good.”

I look back to Peeta’s desk and it’s still empty. My heart drops at the sight but I try to ignore it. I’m just being silly. He probably is running late from the early morning shift at the bakery his brothers no doubt pinned onto him because of last night. I cringe at the thought. I never want Peeta to be in trouble because of me.

“Shut up Madge.” I hiss at her and clumsily gather my things to scurry out of the room.

I can hear her cackle echo behind me until I slip out through the door. I never knew she could cackle like that but I’m not surprised. She’s as special as me, even if she is a Merchant.

My pulse shoots straight up like the game with the hammer and the bell at the Harvest Festival. I don’t know how my poor heart handles me these days.

Peeta is looking directly at me over the shoulder of one of his friends. The circle of boys laughs at a joke he says and I smile at the way his eyes crease with humour. I like down at myself. I’m in a worn-down sweater darned with all different colours and patchy corduroy green pants. I frown down at my muddy boots and tuck back a strand of hair that came loose from my braid back behind my ear.

The shame is instantly gone once I catch Peeta’s smile again. My grin is so broad I fear it might split my face as I wave sheepishly at him. He keeps staring. And talking. And staring. His eyes squint, most likely with another laugh incoming.

I feel stupid waving my arm for almost thirty seconds with no acknowledgement and slap it down against my thigh.

And he rounds a corner out of sight without even a nod of his head to me.

Oh.

I thought he was different. I thought I was different.

So he only wants me under the light of the new moon. Where no one at all can see us under the dim stars. His dirty little secret.

My chest aches with a pain I never knew was possible before. Like someone reached straight inside and held my heart hostage with their inhumane grip. My heart sinks right through the floor under my feet, under the foundation of the school and deep in the dirt. I sniffle, but quickly shut that down. I’m angry. I’m pissed. I am not sad. He doesn’t deserve that from me.

Madge respects my need for space and quiet, sensing my complete change in attitude as I sit down next to her for our next class.

I don’t even know why I do it. Apparently I have no respect for myself and want him to trample all over me whenever he pleases. Or maybe I just want to yell at him, unfurl all of the hurt and anger that simmers in me and unleash it at him so we’re both stuck with it. I linger under the oak tree we always meet at after school for another second. A second too long it seems. Because he’s right on time.

His face looks far too cheery at the prospect of being with me. It just won’t do.

I turn on my heel, crossing my arms over my chest and ignore him. See how you like it, Peeta.

He catches up with me far too quickly, grabbing the crook of my elbow and forcing me to stop in my tracks.

“Hey, pretty girl, what’s the rush?”

“Why do you care?”

“Huh?!”

“You know some of your friends are still out here.” My head swivels to gesture around the schoolyard. “I didn’t think you’d want to be seen slumming it with a Seam slut.”

“Katniss what?”

“Oh don’t pretend like you don’t know exactly what you’re doing. I have some pride, you know. I’m not going to waste my first kiss on someone who doesn’t even recognise my existence but thinks he can

“What are you talking about? I didn’t see you at all today until now. I’m so sorry I wasn’t able to come into history and I needed to use lunch to feed the pigs.” His brows furrow in confusion.

I have to admit, he’s a pretty great actor. Maybe the Capitol would make an exception and welcome someone district into their ranks.

“I was right in the hallway after history. You sure were having a good time with your friends it seemed. Enough to stare straight through me even when I was waving at you for a minute like an idiot and not even give me the basic decency of acknowledging my existence.”

He frowns and turns me closer to him, both his hands on the outside of my elbows.

“Katniss, I didn't see you.”

“You didn’t see me or you didn’t see me?” I still want to be mad at him but it’s difficult with how miserable he looks, especially when his blue eyes are weighed down with everything he feels.

“Honestly I didn’t see you, I truly am sorry Katniss.” He explains sheepishly to me.

“Hmmm.”

I rip open my zipper and tear a piece of plain paper from deep in the bowels that is the pit of my bag. I’ve seen my mom do this test enough to understand what to do. It’s simple enough, really.

“Stay put.” I uncap the marker and walk slowly away from him, squinting myself as I approximate the distance that was between us in the hall. I scribble a letter onto it as I hold the cap in my mouth and press the flimsy paper against my palm. “Now what does it say?”

I hold up the card to my chest.

“Um… little d?”

I look at the letter in my hand and frown. An uppercase B is definitely not a lowercase d but they are similar enough.

“Hold on.” I call out to him.

I flip the paper and scribble a giant A with the marker and hold it up.

“T?” His response raises up at the end in an uncertain voice.

I shake my head with a teasing smile. As I approach him, I wag my finger back and forth at him and place the paper in his hand. The other hand is reserved to hold mine and he squeezes it in relief at my acceptance of his affection and attention now.

“You sir, need glasses.”

He scoffs and rolls his eyes. “I can see perfectly fine Katniss. I don't need glasses.”

“For most things, yes, but my little baker boy I’m sorry to say you definitely did not pass the eye exam today.”

He sighs, looking up from our linked hands into my eyes with a timid smile.

“It’s just-” I nod, encouraging him to say what’s on his mind. “If I admit it then it’s real. I really thought it would go away on its own somehow.”

I smile at the notion and shake my head at him again. Bringing our hands up to my face, I press a kiss to his knuckles.

“It’s okay, we’ll figure this out together. Maybe someone in the Hob will have glasses in good shape.”

I don’t have to say it and he knows it as well as I do. His mother would never buy him a pair of glasses.

Peeta reaches around my waist, pulling my body flush against his and I tuck my head under his chin.

He breathes into my hair. “I’m sorry my eyes didn’t capture your magnificent beauty in the hall today. But you really are so pretty today and everyday.”

“Apology accepted.” I grin up at him. “You know how you can make it up to me?”

He leans into me with a grin, of the same mind as I am.

[jlalafics]

request!

[ peeta needs help learning how to shower with a fake leg. katniss, feeling responsible for the missing leg, volunteers. post first book]

“This sucks.”

Truthfully, Katniss can’t help but agree.

She watches from the bedroom doorway as Peeta attempts to wrap his leg—the prosthetic—that he’s still getting used to. Despite being angry at her for lying, he didn’t even attempt to stop her when she bombarded his house.

It would be too much to admit she was worried about him.

Instead, Katniss came with some of her game and a message from Haymitch to see how he was. She is sure that Haymitch would’ve asked—once he awoke from his hangover.

“What can I do to help?”

“Go back in time and stop Cato from knifing me!” Peeta growls before ripping the wrap off. There’s a flash of anger in his blue eyes before it suddenly fades with the heavy slump of his shoulders. “I’m sorry. This is just new to me.”

Katniss has never seen him like this—angry…despondent...resigned.

“Let me.”

She steps into the bedroom, kneeling before him on the bed. Taking the plastic bag, Katniss has him lift his leg so she can knot the top to keep the prosthetic from getting wet. Up close, she examines it as she moves the plastic up. It looks unbelievably real with carved indentations to look like the calf muscle; the bottom part of the foot even has a print on it.

Only the best for a Victor.

However, this will never replace the feeling of touching the earth with bare feet or even feeling water between his toes.

“There.” Katniss rises slowly. “Let’s get you to the shower.”

“You don’t have to stay.” Peeta stands up. “I’ll be fine.”

“No, now that I’m here, I want to help you through this,” she tells him. “This is your first time by yourself, right?” He nods. “I won’t look if you’re worried about that.”

“Well, we are the Star-Crossed Lovers—” Peeta lumbers slowly out towards the hallway and Katniss rushes behind him to make sure he won’t slip. “—we’ve supposedly seen one another naked a handful of times.”

Katniss’ face flushes at his words and Peeta snorts seeing it.

“Don’t laugh,” she glowers.

“Sorry.” They stop in front of the bathroom. “I have very little reasons to laugh nowadays. I apologize if it’s at your expense.”

“I’m sure whatever you have isn’t any different from any other…man.”

It occurs to Katniss that she no longer sees him as the Boy with the Bread. Peeta, with his strong jaw and broad shoulder…and brawny calf muscles—prosthetic and real—is a man through and through.

Peeta raises a brow. “Now I’m curious about just how many men you’ve seen.” He steps into the bathroom before turning to her with a wry smile. “Thanks for your help. I think I have it from here.”

“O-Of course,” she stammers.

The door closes slowly but not before her eyes catch Peeta, back to her, tugging down his boxers and revealing a firm buttock—

Katniss whips around, feeling breathless at what she’s just seen. Her body is hot, and her nipples tightened, suddenly sensitive to the fabric they brush against.

Slowly, she walks down the stairs and out the door—thoroughly aware of the effect Peeta has on her.

(So Katniss didn't exactly get him into the shower but perhaps that happens in another part of this. Thanks for reading!)

[promptseverlark]

Redwood Scandal

By @mega-aulover

Author's Note:  This is based on the TV show Scandal, a political drama about a President that was in love with his crisis manager. This ficlet, however, takes place in the 1940s instead of the current date, the views on PTSD were much different then and it fits that Katniss would defend someone who was helpless and spiraling.

Special thanks to my beta and best friend @norbertsmom for taking time out of her busy schedule to help edit. 

Rated T

Katniss sat listening to the latest crises involving Ryan Mellark, President Mellark’s brother. She tapped her pencil on her notebook. She should have been concentrating, but her mind was on the man sitting just across from her. Her skin prickled and her heart rate increased when his intelligent blue eyes trained on her. 

Rye was out with a Hollywood starlet and crashed his car in the redwood forest. As a result, Peeta was meeting with three cabinet heads. Plutarch, the head of National Security was quietly listening and avoiding her gaze. Haymitch, the Secretary of State, and Effie, the Secretary of the Interior were bickering. 

"Mr. President," Haymitch groused from the other side of the table. "I'm afraid your brother's antics are..."

"Intolerable," Effie Trinket harumphed with her nose in the air. 

"Haymitch, what are you driving at?" Plutarch asked.

Haymitch took the newspapers and laid them on the table. Rye had become front-line news. The Post labeled him Wrecked-Mellark a play on getting drunk. "And that's a sample of what the Americans feel," Haymitch said. "It's picked up on the radio. They like a war hero, they just don't like a drunk one." 

Katniss wanted to roll her eyes. Rye Mellark was a decorated war hero who liked to drink and it was worrying. She'd seen it coming and warned the other Mellark brother Graham, but Graham didn’t want to hear it. He didn’t want Katniss anywhere near Peeta. He coldly told her to stick her nose out of family affairs. 

Now the situation that could have been averted, had become worse. It didn’t matter what Peeta’s family wanted. She was a crisis manager. She spun bad news like this into rainbows and unicorns. 

"He did irreparable damage to one of the beloved National Parks. And then he...defecated..." Effie sputtered.

"He took a piss, Effie," Haymitch said.

"In front of the reporter!" Effie ground out with clenched teeth.

Katniss looked into those blue eyes of Peeta's. He smiled sadly at her. He was one of the greatest Presidents ever elected, but because of his brother, every great piece of legislation passed was overshadowed by the antics of his older brother Ryan. But to Peeta, his Presidency didn't matter, it was his brother that needed help. Peeta's compassion was one of the reasons she'd fallen hard for him. 

Everything Katniss wanted had been an upscale battle. She fought to be educated. Fought for her voice to be heard. She achieved so much in her young life. Peeta was the one thing she couldn't have. So she sacrificed for him. Gave him everything that she could, her time, her mind, her everything.

Madge, his wife, was terribly jealous of her and thus why Plutarch was presently ignoring her presence. 

"Enough," Peeta commanded, and the cabinet members quieted. 

"Mr. President," Plutarch said, straightening his purple tie as he stood. "I can have your brother reinstated in the military and shipped off to some far-flung island. This way he's away for six months to a year. And in that time the public will forget about him.” 

"Miss Everdeen..." Peeta said, turning to face her. 

"Mr. President, we don't need Miss Everdeen or her council." Plutarch stood in such a way that he commanded the attention of the room.  "We are your cabinet and we advise on all matters of the state. What I've proposed can be enacted quickly." Plutarch finally looked into her eyes and smirked at her knowing Peeta would do anything for his brother, including sending him away. "Mr. President, this is the only way to take care of the problem." 

Katniss sat back and raised an eyebrow. She didn't like the way Plutarch referred to Rye as 'the problem.' Rye was a human being and had Graham listened to her a few months ago, they wouldn't be here.  "I don't think that's the right course of action." 

"I agree with Plutarch, he is a menace..." Effie began. "He has no regard for morality."

Haymitch's lips thinned. "He made a mistake...there are a lot of men like Rye who are messed up because of the war..."

"You're a bleeding heart," Plutarch accused Haymitch.

"Yeah well, I've been through two wars, so maybe there's a reason," Haymitch spat back. He then turned to Katniss, "What do you have in mind, Sweetheart?"

"I think your brother needs treatment," Katniss said, squaring her shoulders. "He might be suffering from shell shock."

"What would you know about the war?" Plutarch sniggered.

She took the Post and said, "I was put on the front lines helping soldiers, nursing them back to health," Katniss said. "I was wounded by shrapnel and Peeta was the person who got me out. I know better than anyone what war was like Plutarch." 

"You don't have to remind us how you two met," Plutarch grumbled.

"Then why are you acting like a blithering idiot?" Katniss questioned.

Peeta coughed, hiding his smile. 

It was while convalescing that she and Peeta got close. 

"Rye needs help," Peeta cleared his throat. "I want to know what you have in mind?"

"There is a clinic run by a man by the name of Dr. Aurelius. He helps people like your brother who experienced great trauma."

"Your brother doesn't need a quack, he needs to grow up," Plutarch said.

Katniss hated the erroneous sentimentality about mental health society held. "With all due respect, Mr. Secretary, Dr. Aurelius is highly recommended."

Plutarch snorted.

Effie was too busy sending nasty looks to Haymitch to speak.  

"There are thousands of broken men who returned from the war. And I'm not talking about men who are missing a leg or an arm. I mean the men who are hurting on the inside. Rye can show them there is nothing wrong with getting help."

"How long?" Peeta asked

"Dr. Aurelius can help him become sober in as little as three months." Katniss watched Peeta's hands as they flattened on the table as if they were reaching out to her as she spoke.  "After three months Rye can make an appearance by planting trees at one of the National Parks. Show some goodwill. We can even get that starlet he was with and several other Hollywood notables to help."

"What if he goes back to drinking?" Effie asked.

"Dr. Aurelius will give him an evaluation. He can recommend Rye to do an outpatient clinic or if he needs to stay, then more time at the Clinic."

"The public loves a comeback story," Haymitch said. "And if it will help the nation, we can make legislation to help the veterans." 

Effie frowned. "We do have a rather important opening of Fort Vancouver coming up...I could use the press."

"Mr. President," Plutarch said. "You can't be considering this?"

"Mr. President, I spoke to Dr. Aurelius, they have a spot open for him," Katniss said. 

"Fine, make it happen, Miss. Everdeen," Peeta said.

Plutarch turned as purple as his tie and rushed out of the room. 

Haymitch cleared his throat, "Effie, do you want to go to lunch?"

"Only if you're buying," Effie flirted as she left with Haymitch. 

Katniss sat in the room with Peeta. 

"Thank you," Peeta said. 

"Your welcome," Katniss breathed. "He…the doctor, helped my mother, you know, after my dad...."

Peeta nodded. Katniss put her hand on the table and Peeta covered them with his. "Katniss."

Katniss closed her eyes, loving the feel of his warmer hand covering hers. Her heart melted and cried for more contact. She looked down at their hands and she spied his wedding band, the moment was broken.  "Peeta...Madge...she's got people watching us."

Peeta squeezed Katniss’s hands. "Screw Madge, I don't love her - never did." Madge was the woman his parents wanted him to marry. The marriage was phonier than a six-dollar bill. "I've only ever loved you, Katniss."

"Peeta we can't," Katniss pulled away. Standing, she began to collect her things. She heard Peeta's chair scrape backward and within seconds he was behind her. His hands gripped her shoulders. She felt his warm breath on her neck. It was the most exquisite torture. She wanted him with every fiber of her being.

"If I could, I'd leave her, leave all of this behind for you."

"No," she whispered, slipping away from his loose grasp. His face was a cacophony of emotions as he battled for control. Peeta loved her but he couldn't show it. "I can't be selfish. People need you, Peeta. The whole country needs you. Remember what we talked about when we met. How we would change the world."

"I wanted to be President and you made it happen."

"Well, the Undersee's money helped," she joked, as she wiped an errant tear that rolled down her cheek.

Peeta laughed mirthlessly. 

When they met, a deep bond formed between them. They spent those long hours recuperating and planning for a future they would never have, even if Peeta was trapped in a loveless marriage. 

Katniss respected that union. She wouldn't-couldn't cross that line. She knew she was all wrong for him. Katniss was from the wrong side of the tracks. She grew up dirt poor and to those few who knew her secret, she was the wrong race. Her father was half black, but passed as a white man. Her mother was a white woman. Katniss looked a lot like her father. 

Peeta didn't care. 

Peeta prized Katniss's ability to think on her feet. He relied on her, and as long as he needed her, she would be there for him. She would devote her life to him.

Peeta lifted her hand and pressed his palm to hers. She stepped back before her resolve broke and she did something foolish, like kissing him. 

"When this is over, Katniss, I'm getting a divorce and then I'm marrying you," Peeta said.  

Katniss smiled. She believed him. Peeta always kept his promises.

[mollywog]

What If?

A follow up to Complicated

They’re in the meadow. Katniss lies with her head in his lap as he braids small sections of her loose hair. Tomorrow is his one late morning a week and he’s enjoying staying up enough to see the sunset.

The reaping hangs heavy as always, but it’s their final one. School is coming to an end and the loan for the bakery is secured. It’s perfect… or at least it should be. But something is off; Katniss has been distracted lately and he’s afraid to ask

“What if one of us is reaped?” She says, opening her eyes to look up at him.

He groans, “let’s not do this, Please? I think we’ve been through every possible scenario. I don’t want to spend our night as hypothetical tributes.”

What-if is a game they play sometimes. It started back when he’d been too nervous to ask her out. Instead of asking her directly, he’d said ‘what if I asked you out?’ He’d felt like a coward, but she’d found it endearing. Now they use it to tease and allay fears they're too scared to say otherwise.

The reaping what-ifs are common enough. Regardless, their what-ifs always end with the two of them together, whether it’s through mutual sacrifice or a rebellion that ends the games forever.

“Okay,” she nods and closes her eyes.

But he can feel the tension radiating from her. He watches her swallow. Panic begins to rise, is she looking for a way out? To what-if her way out of the relationship the same way he’d what-ifed into it? Things were finally falling into place. He’d close on the bakery the day after the reaping and had planned to ask her to marry him before the ink dried; As soon as there was no way his mother could withhold her signature. He’d all but told her that, but maybe she was having second thoughts? The bakery without Katniss to share it would be a bitter victory.

She takes a deep breath and he holds his own, “What if I’m pregnant?”

A moment passes as he processes. “Katniss?”

“Just play the game Peeta.”

He licks his lips, his heart in his throat as he tries to temper his joy… and terror. He wants to scoop her into his arms; hold her and kiss her then sprint to the justice building to make it official, but he needs to be sure they’re on the same page, “What if it’s not what you wanted?” he asks.

She opens her eyes to scowl at him, “Are you trying to say you don’t want this?”

“Not at all. You were the one who wanted to play.”

“Fine,” She snaps. “But you answer first: What if it’s not what you wanted?”

“That’s not a fair question. The only reason I wouldn’t want a child of ours is if you didn’t,” he tries not to imagine what a similar conversation between his parents looked like all those years ago. “Katniss, I love you. I want to spend every moment of the rest of my life with you. A child won’t change that, even if it came earlier than we’d planned or never at all. But I still need to know so I can help: what if it’s not what you wanted?”

She sits up to look him in the eye. “I could never not want this either,” she says before launching herself into his arms.

They’re both trembling as he envelops her in his embrace and he releases a shaky laugh, the product of his nerves. “What if I asked you to marry me right now?” he says into her hair when he’s found his voice again.

“What if I said I still want to keep us - the three of us - quiet until after the papers go through?

He sighs, “Then what if I waited to ask until it doesn’t have to be a secret?”

She nods, “I don’t want you to be a secret either, you know? I just don’t want you to lose your livelihood because of me.”

He’d do it in an instant and she knows it. They’ve what-ifed themselves a life in the Seam as well as on the run past the fence; anywhere, anyway as long as they're together.

She lays back down on the grass, taking up her previous spot. She picks up his hand to hold over her still flat midsection and closes her eyes. He caresses her stomach as he imagines doing the same in their home come July. “What if it’s a girl?” he muses.

She smiles, “What if she has your eyes?”

“And your voice?”

“And your smile?” she says, peeking an eye open to watch as his smile brightens.

[endlessnightlock]

If you feel inspired, #10 “I’ve seen the way you look at me when you think I don’t notice.” from the random prompt list <3

Her dad's guitar takes up a fair amount of space in Katniss's lap, boxy but lightweight, with room to hide behind when her nerves get the better of her. Slightly battered and smooth from use, the balsawood is cool to the touch when she picks its strings and makes it sing. But she's getting antsy, so she puts her guitar in its case and wanders over to the corner of the stage. She's careful to stay hidden behind the heavy velvet curtain. Ms. Trinkett will give her the devil if she catches her peeking out.

People are trickling into the high school auditorium: classmates, a few teachers, and a smattering of parents. She sees Gale and the rest of her cousins file into a row near the stage with Hazelle. Prim and her parents have been here for a while. Katniss hopes the auditorium won't be too full when Principal Flickerman starts the show. She's not a confident performer. Singing and playing are more of a compulsion for her, a hunger she has to feed rather than a bid for attention.

When the clock ticks down to zero (performance time! Ms. Trinkett brightly states), she's waiting for her turn to go on stage with the guitar strapped to her chest.

Madge starts the show with a classical piece. The school's piano is out of tune, but her best friend makes it work. Katniss can't keep the smile off her face. Madge is the shyest person she knows, and she's proud of her friend for getting over that fear to play tonight.

"Wow. Did you know she could play like that?" Peeta Mellark asks. Somehow he'd wandered away from the group he was standing with and up to her side.

Katniss gives a sharp nod, surprised he said anything at all. Not that he doesn't talk. He's popular, friendly, and always hanging out with one group or another. He just never talks to her.

"I mean, of course you do," he laughs at himself. "Is that why you're such good friends? Shared talent?"

She shrugs. "Maybe." She's never considered that before, but he might be on to something.

"Nothing like twenty questions before we go onstage. I'm just a little nervous. Talk too much when that happens."

"No, it's okay," she says. A strain of nervousness makes her insides tight, too. She decides she likes talking to Peeta. He says what he's thinking, but in a more thought-out way than she can pull off. Words stumble across her lips, leaving her embarrassed more often than not. "You can talk. It's not too much."

Peeta grins at her.

"Um, what are you doing?" she asks. "Not like, life in general. For the show."

"Comedy. Going to try getting laughs out of my dumb jokes."

"Oh. I didn't know you did that."

"Me neither, until two weeks ago when they posted the sign-up sheet. I had to find a way to get into the show."

"I was dragged here kicking and screaming. That's brave of you to try something new."

"Or stupid. We'll see." Peeta says. "I know you have a beautiful singing voice, but I didn't know you played."

"My dad taught me. This is his, actually." She pats the fretboard, keeping her eyes on the strings, feeling shy at the compliment. "I didn't know you'd heard me sing."

"I think it was your first public appearance. Kindergarten. Mrs. Paylor asked if anyone knew The Valley Song. Your hand shot up, and when you stood on your chair and sang, my fragile 5-year-old heart was lost," he says.

"That didn't happen," she says.

"Swear to god. You had on a red checkered dress, and your hair was in two long braids. I like your hair tonight, too. It's really pretty."

"Thank you," she murmurs. Katniss pats the braided, pinned updo her mother did for her. She likes the old-fashioned style because it feels in keeping with her mountain heritage.

Vague memories of that red and white dress invade her mind. She does her hair in a single braid most days because it's long and gets everywhere if she doesn't, and she did wear it in two as a child.

"You have an incredible memory."

Peeta shrugs, smiling down at the tips of his shoes.

"Peeta, you're next dear," Ms. Tinkett says, bringing Katniss back to herself. Madge's song was over three students ago in the rotation, and she hadn't even noticed.

"Wish me luck?" Peeta asks her quietly.

"Good luck," she says, kind of dumbfounded by their conversation. She'd caught Peeta looking her way when he thought she didn't notice but never considered what that meant.

She couldn't hear most of Peeta's stand-up routine, but she caught amused laughter from the audience. When it was her turn to go onstage and stand in the spotlight, their conversation was still in the forefront of her mind, and she found her fingers moving over the strings, playing The Valley Song and remembering the little curly blond headed boy from kindergarten.

[daydreamsandcaffeine]

so this is a thing now - a drabble

A/N: Inspired by a post @oakfarmer tagged me in. Enjoy this silly little thing!

—

Rrring. Rrring.

“Hey, Katniss, is Fin-”

“Hey, Annie. Yup, he’s still over here,” Katniss interrupts her dear friend’s obvious question.

“They’re still filming?”

“You know how they’ve been ever since that one post went viral. When an idea comes to mind, they’re laser focused on it.”

Annie sighs, “Yeah I should’ve known better. Well, I’ll head over there and hang with you then.”

“Sounds good. Wine and cheese will be ready when you get here.”

—

Twenty minutes later, Annie arrives at Katniss’ and Peeta’s place. Katniss is sitting on a picnic blanket on the front lawn with wine in hand, munching a piece of cheese from the charcuterie board she prepared. 

Annie joins her. After pouring herself a glass of wine, she looks across the yard to the front of the garage. “So this is our entertainment for tonight, huh?”

“It sure is.”

They clink their wine glasses and settle in to enjoy the show.

Their show? Finnick and Peeta creating spooky season videos like so:

[mtdtsxhoef]

4 5 1 7 8 9 2 6 3 0

[toastyeverlark]

The ticking of the clock seems to be ten times louder tonight. I fight the urge to grab my bedside lamp and fling it towards its glass surface. It’s done nothing to deserve my fury, and has been serving us well for the past few months, unlike our old clock.

I usually have trouble falling asleep, but tonight it feels like my eyes are incapable of closing.

I turn over to the other side in my bed, hoping to feel more comfortable, but it doesn’t provide that relief. I pull the covers over my head, but it just feels too warm and suffocating in this weather.

Frustrated, I sit up against the bed frame and cross my arms. Maybe I just won’t sleep tonight.

“Katniss…?” Peeta stirs, raising his head from the pillow with half-closed eyes.

“Go back to sleep,” I tell him.

“Did you have a nightmare?” he asks in that sleepy soft voice he always has when he’s just woken up.

“Can’t have nightmares if I can’t sleep,” I say, shrugging. “Peeta, go back to sleep. You have a long day tomorrow.”

Peeta, still half-awake and his hair in a mess, gets up from his bed and shuffles over to mine. He sits on the other side of my bed and leans against the bed frame.

“Come here.”

“Um, it’s okay. I’ll go back to sleep in a minute,” I say, sliding back down onto my pillow and turning my back towards him. My face feels red-hot all of a sudden.

“It’s okay to want me to hold you while you sleep.”

He’s smiling, trying to stifle a laugh. I can hear it.

“Go back to your own bed,” my voice appears muffled in the sheets. “You’re going to push me to the edge of the bed if you keep sitting here.”

My heart leaps when he tucks one arm underneath my side. Before I can even process anything, I’m leaning against him, his heartbeat thumping steadily in my ear.

“Now we both have space.”

I can’t help but feel comforted by the weight of his arm on me. His warmth. It feels safe and cosy, and I don’t feel as vulnerable to the terrors of the night.

“Are you comfortable?” His voice is so gentle. I give a small nod.

“You could have woken me up if you were having trouble sleeping, you know,” he starts caressing my hair ever so gently.

“It’s not the first time anyway,” I mumble, “I’ve always managed it on my own.”

“You don’t have to, Katniss.”

“I’m not going to be that inconsiderate to wake you every night.”

“I want you to be inconsiderate.”

He adjusts my position so that I’m lying on his lap and facing him.

“Okay?” He looks me in the eye when he says this. It takes every ounce of my being to not break eye contact, because the butterflies in my stomach are having the time of their lives in there.

“Yeah, whatever,” I manage to say.

He smiles, seemingly satisfied with my response and closes his eyes.

“Now sleep.”

“You’ll get a sore neck if you sleep like that. I’m okay now, you can - ” I start wiggling out of his grasp, but he stops me.

“I told you, I want you to be inconsiderate. What I want to know is, are you comfortable?”

The truth is, I want to stay like this forever. Being in his arms makes me feel like I can, for once in my life, actually close my eyes without a care in the world. It’s a feeling I never want to let go of.

He seems to be able to read my mind. “If you’re uncomfortable, you can push me away any time. I won’t stop you again.”

I don’t move away, and instead I close my eyes.

He plants a kiss on my forehead and whispers, “Good night, Katniss.”

I’ll only be inconsiderate this time.

[wife-of-all-dilfs]

the five stages | f. odair

masterlist

summary: a journey back to a golden period of time of polaroid pictures, white knitted sweaters, and lively sea-green eyes. why? because in the present, those same pair of eyes are ruthlessly unrelenting and you have no other chance of their escape.

pairing: finnick odair x fem!reader

warnings: heavy angst, vomiting, implied smut, depression, maggots, hallucinations, relieving fluff, mild horror. I don’t want to spoil the story too much, so I won’t be adding any more warnings, sorry y’all. this could be very triggering so please read at your own discretion. some descriptions are quite graphic!

notes: I’m super proud of this one—it’s sorta based off “little talks” by of monsters and men and “on the nature of daylight” by max richer. this fic probably won’t get many views, so I’ll be incredibly grateful for any—if any at all—type of engagement! <33

word count: 8k

The bedroom was cold; dark; empty. Empty even though I still resided in it.

My alarm had gone off two hours ago, yet I hadn’t moved an inch. When I finally turned my head to the side, I found that the space beside me was vacant. Cold; dark; empty—I reached out my hand anyway.

Thirty minutes passed before I wrestled myself out of bed and started making breakfast downstairs. The otherwise warm and flavourful plate of fruit-filled yoghurt and scrambled eggs on toast left my mouth feeling dry and my throat lodged.

It used to be one of my favourite meals. At least, when he was around.

Dishes were piled in the sink, dirty and untouched. I sat on the couch, pondering whether today was the day I would finally get to cleaning them. It wasn’t. I couldn’t. We always did that together. I wondered—if I left them in the sink long enough, would he return? Even just for five minutes to help me put them away? One month and seventeen days had passed, and yet I still entertained this thought religiously.

I wasted an hour running circles round the same contemplations before deciding fresh air, as cliché as it was, might do me some good.

Grey clouds concealed the sun’s warm golden light when I stepped outside, but that was fine—I didn’t like anything golden anymore. But he would want me to leave the house at least once a day, so that’s what I would do. I would go down to the beach beside our—my house and feel the sand collect between my toes as I walked to the water’s edge.

But wasn’t that where he was when it happened? Wasn’t he in water? Didn’t those things pile on top of him? Didn’t they sink their fangs into his neck and tear at his flesh until he was blown to…

Bits of egg, yoghurt and stomach bile sat at my feet. My legs buckled, and I collapsed to the ground in a sandy, tear-stricken heap. Since my lower body had refused to cooperate any longer, it took me until midday to crawl back up the dune and to my front doorstep.

Fuck. I needed to rest.

“I need you to rest, sweetheart.”

“I told you, I’m fine,” I whined. “I’m not sick.”

Finnick placed a bucket on the ground beside the bed. The room smelled of lemon disinfectant—a joy I often found in being sick… That is, if I were sick, which I was not. I must have drunk spoiled milk or eaten something bad during breakfast. Nevertheless, Finnick was not having it.

“You’re throwing up everything you manage to get down, and you’re shivering like it’s the middle of winter,” he said adamantly, tucking the comforter up to my chest. “It’s summer, and you’re very much not fine.”

I sat up, ready to heatedly debate the subject, but the room began swirling, and my ears were hissing like a staticky television channel without a signal. A quiet whimper buzzed in my throat as I hunched forward. Damn him, I was sick.

The mattress dipped as Finnick sat beside me. His hand was on my back, rubbing it soothingly as he used his other hand to tuck away the curtain of hair concealing my face. I huffed, half in annoyance, half in an attempt to suppress the nausea rising in my throat, and then sunk back against the pillows.

“Not sick, she says,” he jested, smiling down at me. I rolled my eyes, though unable to hide the weak, betraying smile creeping across my lips. “Close your eyes, sweetheart,” he said, a gentle command. “I’ll see you when you fall asleep.”

The wooden flooring welcomed me with hard, cold arms as I hauled my sandy body through the front door. Images of fangs, bloody flesh, and panicked sea-green eyes flooded my mind.

More breakfast, more bile. No lemon disinfectant.

My knees were folded beneath my body; my body was hunched over my knees. I was sobbing now, so hard that I threw up again (was there even anything left in my stomach at this point?), creating a thick puddle of vomit and tears beneath me. Cries and gasps for air bounced around the house. To call me a mess would be an understatement. I was a disaster. A disaster wrapped up in an unmendable tragedy with a ragged, threadbare ribbon barely holding me together.

And in case I wasn’t aware of this fact, the floorboards were so shiny that they mirrored a reflection of myself. My hair was a being of its own, all wild and unkempt, and my face was another story entirely—a red, blotchy thing I wasn’t too interested in delving into.

But the most unsettling aspect had nothing to do with me, it was that there was someone else in the reflection. Two green balls of light were glowing above my head.

Dishevelled golden hair…

Dimpled cheeks…

My forehead was pressed to the floor as I screamed.

“I don’t want to make you sick as well,” I said, contrarily enjoying the feeling of Finnick’s skin warm against mine, hot blood flowing through his veins.

A day had passed since I first became unwell, and the sickness had continued to wreak havoc inside me.

We were both under the thick covers, our limbs tangled together as he held me atop his chest. (my body didn’t register the scorching summer temperatures. I actually felt as though my core temperature was a few degrees below freezing. Meanwhile, Finnick was characteristically toasty warm. It was perfect for me, but not so much for him, evident in the beads of sweat collecting on his forehead. Nevertheless, he made no complaints).

My body rose and fell with each breath he took. I was trying to inhale whenever he exhaled in a weak attempt to prevent the festering sickness in my body from entering his, and though it was a futile gesture, I did it anyway.

“In sickness and health, remember?” he said.

I smiled. “We’re not even married.”

“Yet, you mean,” he countered. “I plan on spending the rest of my life with you, sweetheart. You know that.”

My heart fluttered at the thought of spending an entire lifetime with him—waking up in each other’s embrace each morning, the warm sunlight peeking through the blinds of our bedroom; Finnick calling me “Mrs. Odair” or “My wife” at every opportunity because doing so made us both giggle like two moronic, love-struck teenagers; and being unable to prevent the deep smile lines on both our cheeks as we age, a constant display of our perpetual happiness.

“Sixty more years of having and holding you,” he continued with a gentle musing in his tone. “For better or for worse... For richer or for poorer.” He then stroked the side of my face and brushed away the sweaty strands of hair sticking to my forehead. “In sickness and in health…”

“…Until death do us part,” I finished, my voice slow with fatigue.

Two fingers sat beneath my chin and tilted my head upward. My eyes connected with Finnick’s. They were soft. Heartfelt.

“Not even then. I’ll love you beyond the grave,” he murmured. Then his lips were slowly curving into a pensive smile. “When we’re both ghosts and haunting the next owners of this house.”

I was now smiling, too. “I’d hoped you would say something like that.”

How could he lie like that? There was no we. There were no next owners. There was only me, alive and alone in a comatose house. And mind you, I was sane enough to know that it wasn’t actually his ghost haunting me, though I wish I weren’t because having that knowledge was even worse. It meant he was truly erased from existence.

“Go away,” I whispered to the reflection on the floor.

He didn’t. His vacant green eyes kept staring down at my crumpled figure.

I shot off the floor and spun around, hot tears streaming down my face. “Go away!” His face remained expressionless. He looked like himself, only colder. “You said sixty more years! You said we’d be together!” I mindlessly picked up and flung a small picture frame at him, only for it to pass through his body and shatter on the floor behind him. “Why did you lie to me?!” My voice was frayed with fury, though underlined with grief.

He said nothing, did nothing. All he did was watch.

My legs buckled, and I was on the floor again. I was whispering, half-sobbing, the same question over and over until the words slurred together. “Why’d you lie? Why’d y’lie?” The only time I stopped was when my tongue grew too heavy to move anymore.

To my surprise, he eventually came and sat beside me, remaining cold and silent—as I too had become.

Glass fragments from the picture frame were scattered across the floorboards. The photo within had fallen out and, ironically, drifted towards me. I didn’t bother acknowledging him as I moved onto my hands and knees and began crawling forward—my palms slicing open and blood seeping out—until the photo was in my hands. My shins had granules of glass pricking into them, but I couldn’t feel the pain; all I could do was stare at the memory in my hands.

The picture had been taken in District Thirteen, a day before he signed up for… the mission.

I was drifting in and out of sleep when a sudden bright flash lit up my eyelids.

“Oops.”

Heavy eyes fluttering open, I was met with a small camera pointing down at me, which was being held up by a lengthy muscular arm, which was connected to an even more muscular and broad shoulder, which was connected to—okay, sorry, I think you get it.

“Finnick!” I shrieked, pulling the covers over my naked figure.

He laughed, the vibrations rumbling deep within his chest, beneath my ear. A soft whirring sound accompanied the polaroid sliding out of the camera, its black film hiding the doubtless embarrassing picture beneath. He placed the film on the sheets beside him, letting the photo develop in darkness.

“I was supposed to cover the flash,” he said, still chuckling.

I rubbed my eyes, which were twinkling with little sparkles of light. “I think you blinded me.”

“Lucky you,” he jested. “You’re finally free from my repulsive exterior.”

I started to reach for the picture beside him—“You’re an idiot”—but then he was rolling us over until his arms were pillared on either side of my head and he was hovering above me.

His hair was a mess, a testament to the night before (and very early hours of the morning), and he was sporting a beautiful, lazy grin. “Yeah? Well, you’re engaged to an idiot,” he said, tilting his head in an arrogant manner. “So what does that make you?”

The sea-glass ring hugging my finger gleamed in the lamp’s dull light as I reached out to touch his face, my fingertips brushing along the edges of his pronounced jawline. Tangled strands of hair and a beaming smile were reflecting back at me in his eyes. No one had ever loved anyone as much as I loved Finnick—disregarding the one exception that was staring down at me.

“Blinded by love,” I whispered.

Brief yet poignant emotion trickled through his features, his eyes. Then, like a flick of a switch, he covered it up and lowered his face into my neck, groaning the words, “So corny.”

My fingers were tangled in his hair, holding him close to me. “Liar,” I laughed. “You loved it.”

“I love you, which is why I put up with your corniness,” he murmured into my skin.

Even after all this time, my heart still leapt whenever he said those three words, even when he was being a jerk about it. I kissed the top of his head. “I love you, too.”

We laid like this for a short while longer—Finnick keeping his face buried in the warmth of my neck, his arms curled beneath my body; me playing with the golden waves of his hair that were somehow softer than my own. He was so heavy on top of me that it was starting to become difficult to breathe, but in no universe would I ever tell him to get off. It was a blissful sort of suffocation.

A sort anyone would snap a picture of just to keep as a reminder of how beautiful it feels to be smothered with love. With that being said, the picture that lay awaiting beside me was brought back to mind.

“Oh no,” I moaned, picking it up and taking a short glance at the developed photo. I covered my face with my hands, repeating the words, “Oh no.”

The photo was plucked from my fingers, and Finnick began humming contentedly to himself.

In the photo, my face had been nuzzled into his bare, muscular chest, eyes closed in sleep-drunken serenity, hair thrown over my shoulder and spilling across the pillow. My hand rested on his contoured stomach with just enough of my upper arm and low light to conceal my breasts. Finnick had a delicate hand draped over my waist. He was gazing down at me with a smile that was just… full of pure love.

I had to admit—it was a beautiful picture. Despite my initial disapproval.

“Beautiful,” I heard him echo my thoughts, his eyes still scanning the photo. Then his brows furrowed, and his head slightly inched forward as though he had just noticed something peculiar in the picture. “Oh, and you are too, I guess.”

My head tilted back against the pillow with an abrupt laugh. I shook my head, looking back at him. “I hate you.”

“Liar,” he said, leaning in closer.

His lips were on mine for what must have been the millionth time in the past few hours. The bedside clock announced that breakfast was soon approaching, though it was clear neither of us would make an appearance within the next hour (or two).

“You love me,” he whispered as he slid inside me.

And I did.

I really did.

The muscles in my cheeks were straining due to how hard I was smiling.

It wasn’t my idea to keep a picture of us half-naked in the entryway of our home. He always was a bit unusual like that. Completely unashamed of who he was and how he acted. Sometimes a little too boisterously, but that’s what I loved so much about him—how confident he was in his love for me, so much so that nothing else mattered, no one else’s opinion.

God, I love him so much.

Love…?

Wait.

That’s not right.

Shouldn’t it be “loved”?

And why was I smiling? I didn’t have anything to smile about anymore. He was gone. Our wedding never occurred. Our faces never wrinkled with smile lines. Our clasped hands never weathered with age. He was gone.

The polaroid slipped from between my fingers. My hands were covered in glass and blood, blood that had painted a dark red splotch in the middle of the shiny film. Figures.

After a short while of staring blankly at the scattered debris decorating the floor, I finally found it in myself to start climbing back onto my feet. My straightened legs wobbled and ached beneath me with the little energy I had. That’s what happens when you can barely stomach food anymore: no energy, always sleeping, always swamped by nightmares or bittersweet memories—at this point, they were one and the same.

Not a strand of gold or a fleck of green was in sight when I glanced over my shoulder. For now, at least. He liked making an appearance once or twice a day.

Pieces of glass crunched beneath my bare, stinging feet as I made for the stairwell. A mess for another day, I reasoned. Just like the dishes. Sticky red footprints stamped each wooden step I ascended, growing less prominent as I reached the second floor.

After taking a right down a short hallway, the encompassing walls littered with magnificent seashells and dried ocean flora, I turned the knob to the furthest room and entered. The floor was landscaped with mountains of clothes which drenched the room in a familiar, all-consuming smell. The scent kind of reminded me of receiving a warm hug, albeit from someone you know you should let go of in more ways than one.

His hair, golden and tousled, caught my eye as I passed the wall of string-hung polaroids in our… sorry, my bedroom. His smile was all dimpled and brilliant, and he had his tanned arms wrapped around my middle. Just moments after the picture was taken, he had tackled me into the water and rightfully earned a smack on the back of the head. In turn, he did it again.

But before that, we were both looking into the camera with the most joyful expressions—huge grins, bright eyes. Frozen in time.

I never let myself look too long at that picture anymore. And I never, ever looked into his eyes. Green used to be my favourite colour. I didn’t have a favourite colour anymore. It was safe to say I didn’t have a favourite anything anymore; everything favourable was a reminder of him.

I picked up a white knitted sweater off the ground and tugged it over my head, staining it with splotches of dark red. Knowing him, he would wear it regardless—whatever was mine, was also his, and was equally the same in reverse, even things as grotesque as blood.

Well, he would have worn it, I should have said.

The sweater had been specifically tailored for him. I remembered how the soft sleeves hugged his arms so well that every fluid curve of his biceps was visible, similar to a building wave before it crested. On me, the sleeves swallowed my arms whole, which I liked to think in their own unique way had also been unintentionally tailored for me, like someone out there knew one day I would need some way to drown in him when he was gone.

Finnick’s fingers tugged at the silk ribbons, unwrapping the opulent gift box that sat on our dining table. Capitol devotees would send extravagant parcels weekly, turning up in abundance on our doorstep. Sometimes Finnick didn’t even bother opening them; sometimes we opened them together just to get a good laugh out of whatever ridiculous item was inside.

He never, though, opened the perfume-scented letters marked with lipstick stains.

“Oh,” I said in surprise as he lifted the lid. Inside was a folded piece of fabric, knitted and cream-white and intricate, though still simple. It was soft to the touch; thick enough to retain warmth. I held it up with two hands, admiring the hand-sewed threads of cotton. Whoever’s handiwork this was, it was nothing to laugh at.

Holding it up to Finnick’s torso, I smiled and said, “Try it on.”

“What?” He shook his head and smiled quizzically. “No.”

“Yes. I think it will look good on you.” I pressed it further against him with conviction. “Try it on.”

He tilted his head and exhaled deeply through his nose, giving me a begrudging, squinty-eyed look. From that, I already knew I had won him over, and watched as he snatched the sweater from my grasp and tugged his shirt off with one hand. I averted my eyes, feeling the tips of my ears flush with heat—we’d been together for over a year now; you would think I’d have grown accustomed to seeing him shirtless.

His head slipped through the neckline and he pulled the sweater down his body. I was right. It looked really good on him. Perfect, actually. The measurements were so precise that the fabric sloped off his shoulders like a compact mountain of snow. The thick-knitted collar dipped into a deep, uneven neckline that partly revealed his chest and made his neck look like a strong, contoured pillar. He looked at me expectantly, as though to ask, “Well?”

“It makes your neck and shoulders look really nice,” I blurted out, instantly cringing inside.

His expression contorted into something of amusement and surprise as he took a slow step towards me. “My neck and shoulders, huh?” he said, grinning devilishly. Oh, now I’d done it. Leave it to me to rocket Finnick Odair’s already atmospheric ego. “Anything else?”

I began backing away, but his prowling strides were so long that the space between us only shortened. When my backside hit the edge of the dining table, I knew I was done for.

“You know,” I began, avoiding his unrelenting stare. “I think it was just a momentary lapse of judgement.” He was closing in now, placing his hands on either side of my body to trap me in place. “It—It actually looks terrible on you,” I said, feigning sincerity and adding a little nod to help further my case.

His eyelids drooped as he gazed down at me, lips curving into that seductive smirk he had mastered long ago. “No takebacks,” he purred, voice low and gravelly. Dear God, I could only pray I wasn’t going to melt into a puddle on the floor. He always did this—took every opportunity to flirt and render me a stuttering, bashful mess. It was his favourite game to play. “This is now my new favourite shirt. All thanks to you, sweetheart.”

But, given the right timing and ever-wavering amount of confidence, I liked to play too.

I inhaled deeply, hoping my voice wouldn’t betray me. “Maybe you should take it off then,” I said, cocking my head to the side. “So you don’t ruin it.”

His mischievous expression revealed his next words before he even spoke them. “Maybe I will,” he said, and then he was tugging his sweater over his head, and I was tearing off my own. As his hands slipped beneath my thighs and lifted me onto our dining table, I prayed the wooden legs wouldn’t collapse under the weight of our next actions.

My fingertips ran over the soft, rippling patterns on the knitted sleeves, my arms crossed in a self-soothing manner. After that day, the sweater had become a sort of good luck charm—or so we agreed upon as we lay panting on the tabletop. He started wearing it to a multitude of events and parties in the Capitol (basically any place in which he needed a pick-me-up, a reminder of what he had to come home to, who he had to come home to).

He even wore it the day we got engaged.

So many happy memories were associated with this one white sweater. So many times, those cloud-soft sleeves were wrapped around my body, suffocating me in the scent of him—if nothing else, at least that remained.

The last time he had worn it was the day of the Reaping for the Quarter Quell; the last time our lives were ever semi-normal. I had fought tooth and nail to reach him before he was escorted onto the train, despite being ordered, “No goodbyes,” by one of the Peacekeepers. In modest terms, I had significantly decreased his chances of reproduction.

When I reached Finnick, he had brought me into a kiss so harsh and fervent that my lips were bruised the next day. He then yanked off his sweater, leaving his upper body completely exposed to everyone around us in complete disregard for his trauma-induced fear of doing so, and shoved it into my hands.

I had just stood there frozen in bewilderment, watching as he called out, “I love you, sweetheart!” Two Peacekeepers were forcing him onto the train, but he too fought for the last word. “Don’t forget—I’m always with you!”

That statement had never been truer than it was now. For better or for worse.

My vision unblurred as I returned to reality. Dismal, grey light was peeking through the shutters that formed the balcony doors, the daylight hours seeming to tick away at a snail’s pace. I used to wish for the days to be longer, for time to move slower, so I could savour the moments I had of happiness and sunlight which used to be plentiful.

Why do wishes only come true when you grow to desire nothing but the opposite?

Slothfully, I crawled onto the unmade king-size bed, my limbs crumpling and balling to my chest as the side of my head hit the pillow. The imprint on the mattress beneath my body didn’t match my own. It was much larger and broader. How long would it take for the springs to forget his body weight and recoil back into place as though he never existed at all?

I inhaled the sweater’s scent with every breath I took (and I tried not to wonder how long it would take for his scent to disappear as well) and hugged my arms around my waist. No pain was worse than the fleeting moments I forgot the embrace was my own and not his.

Hours passed, and so did the evening. A beautiful orange sunset hadn’t slipped through the shutter’s cracks because the clouds never dissipated. Night-time brought no consolation either. Not even the stars or moon made an appearance. Everything that once gave me a shred of optimism was hidden behind a veil of gloom.

I knew tomorrow wouldn’t be any different—the weather, my mood, his absence. Because the end of autumn was closing in, and the days were becoming bleaker. Trees would start shedding their leaves; the leaves would start to die.

I hoped I would too.

I was still curled up on my side, my body aching with stiffness, when my face began scrunching into this ugly, twisted mess of despair. My tears were slow yet heavy, synonymous with the day I had incurred.

But then something strange happened.

Someone called my name.

No. That couldn’t be right. I was the only one who occupied a house in the Victor’s Village; the others had either relocated after the war or were… dead.

But there it was again—my name, distant and eerie, yet spoken with a tone people often used to beckon over and aid a frightened, injured animal. My vision blurred, both from tears and concentration on the voice.

“Hey.”

I couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment my surroundings transformed into a kitchen, just that they had and that I was no longer in my bed but standing upright.

Ahead of me, in the distance, the sun was beating down on the crystalline water, and white frothy waves were cresting on the smooth, golden sand. It was a perfect day; not a cloud was in sight. The only blemish that smeared the blue sky was the reflection staring back at me from the window I gazed out of.

In my hands was a soup bowl and a damp dishrag.

“Sweetheart?” That once distant voice, concerned and beckoning, was standing right beside me.

Blinking, I snapped out of my daze and turned away from the window.

He stood tall beside me, despite being half hunched over the kitchen sink and scrubbing the last of the few dirty dishes stacked neatly on the bench top. His head was turned towards me, his enamoured sea-green eyes peering into my own as though he was searching behind them for what troubled me.

“Hey,” he spoke softly, standing up straight. His touch was warm and gentle as he reached for my hand, leaving soapy bubbles on my palm and fingers. “Where’d you go?”

Three odd things seemed to occur at once: first, I flinched away from his touch, overwhelmed by its paradoxical unfamiliar familiarity; second, I felt an inexpressible relief from seeing him standing before me, seeing his cheeks painted with a soft pink hue as though blood-red roses were hidden just beneath his skin.

The third was an onset of disorientation. I couldn’t tell you why I felt disorientated standing in my own kitchen with the love of my life, just, simply, that I did. There was an answer—it was close by, right under my nose, yet unreachable. We did this every day, didn’t we? We would eat meals together and then wash up together. So, why did I feel so unsettled?

I shook my head, dispelling the confusion that muddled my brain. “Sorry,” I whispered. “I don’t know what happened.” I laughed uneasily, without a hint of mirth.

He laughed too, not to poke fun or because he found my obvious turmoil amusing, but rather to comfort me, so I would feel less alone in my unease. “It’s alright,” he said gently.

Neither of us addressed what had happened; we simply resumed our routine of washing and drying in domestic silence. And as seconds turned to minutes, and as the sky remained sunny, I found myself smiling. All that mattered was that he was standing beside me and that the sun was beaming in the sky. So, I kept smiling.

After I finished drying the last dish, we began placing the plates, bowls, and an abundance of cutlery in their assigned drawers and cupboards, weaving past each other and giggling anytime we got in one another’s path. I was carrying a stack of white plates, eyeing the high cupboard they needed to go in, but before I could even attempt straining onto my toes, the plates were out of my hands and taken into another much larger pair.

The smell of sea salt and expensive cologne wafted from behind me as he towered over my shorter frame and placed the plates in the cupboard.

“I could have done that,” I said, smiling as I turned around to face him.

He had a playful glint in his eye. “Yeah, right. What are you, like, four feet tall?” he joked.

It was an extreme exaggeration since I was no way near that height, but I suppose everyone was miniature in comparison to him, being over six feet tall and all. I feigned open-mouthed offence, to which he gave the side of my head a quick, playful kiss of apology.

He then leaned against the counter with crossed arms. “Plus, when was the last time you actually put these dishes away? I’m surprised you even remember where they go.” He was grinning at me in a teasing manner, but every ounce of humour had drained from my body.

My eyes drifted to the floor.

Well, that was the question, wasn’t it—when was the last time I put the dishes away?

I couldn’t remember. In fact, I couldn’t remember what had happened this morning or the day before. Hell, I couldn’t even remember what we were doing before the dishes.

To be standing in a room, in a place you call home, and have a sense that nothing is in its right place, even though that is where everything has always been, is a disconcerting feeling beyond belief. To be perplexed by your own state of being—your existence—is even worse. I could almost describe it as a nauseating bout of vertigo.

My hands found the counter’s edge behind me, and I exhaled a shaky breath.

He stepped in front of me, one large and gentle hand reaching up to cup my jaw. “Are you okay?” he asked, his forehead wrinkling with shallow worry lines as he inspected my face. I hated that. I hated that I worried him so much. Sure, partners were supposed to lean on each other for support in a relationship (as he too did with me when needed), but I always felt so guilty doing so. Hadn’t he already suffered enough… pain in his lifetime? Who was I to cause him any more?

A sunbeam suffused the room, oozing across his face. The illumination lightened his eyes into a refreshing mint green, though, in contradiction, unearthed a pain that had been previously been concealed. Pain from what, I wasn’t sure. From concern regarding my unusual behaviour? Maybe a thought that was troubling him? Or perhaps he too was enduring a spell of confusion and had an inexplicable feeling that he was out of place.

Whatever his pain regarded, seeing it had rattled the deepest structures in which held my mind together.

It was then that I suddenly realised I hadn’t answered his question, so I gave him a wan “I’m-not-too-sure-myself” smile and then began slinking back to the sink window.

He followed behind me. I could feel him staring into the back of my head, could feel his brows draw together and his lips pull into a tight line, patiently waiting for a further explanation, though I wasn’t sure I could offer him one.

I hadn’t noticed before, but on the windowsill was a small picture frame containing a polaroid picture of us in bed—I was lying on his chest, half-naked and asleep, and he was looking down at me, smiling fondly yet with a sort of mischievous knowability. Running down the middle of the protective glass was a small, jagged crack.

I plucked the frame from the windowsill, inspecting the picture in my two hands. It seemed to uncover a place in my mind—once clouded by disorientation—I’d forgotten. Whether this place was real or imaginary was beyond me, but the fear I felt upon its recollection was incandescently genuine.

“Do you think,” I spoke tentatively, “people can have nightmares while they’re wide awake?” My thumb ran over the crack.

I might have heard him inhale a quiet, sharp breath, but it also could have just been the waves breaking on the distant shore. “Like a flashback?” he asked, an unidentifiable unease in his tone.

“No, not exactly.” I searched my brain for the right words, the right way to tell him how I was feeling, but it was difficult when I could only conjure vague fragments. And it was all I could do to tell it to him elliptically, as I knew saying the words in any other manner would shatter my heart.

“I had this vision,” I began, my words apprehensively staccato, “where I was somewhere else.” My eyes flickered over the picture. “Somewhere… bad. Everything was grey and heavy, and I was alone. Sometimes you were there, but you—you weren’t really you anymore.” I paused and looked up to find him staring at me in the reflection of the window. He looked pained; it was then suddenly hard to recollect a time when he didn’t. My throat started to constrict. “You were gone and…” my voice quietened to a broken wisp of wind, “you were haunting me.”

The room was silent.

He said nothing in response

The transparency of his reflection in the glass was so familiar—so haunting—and it was like another forgotten matter had been dredged from the depths of my mind. Stinging tears brimmed my waterline, and, due to my inability to bear the sight of his translucent appearance, I forced myself to turn around.

I glanced up at him, smiling weakly as I whispered, “I’m sorry.”

He shook his head as if my need to apologise was nonsensical (even I was unsure of what I was apologising for), and he then pulled me into a tight embrace. His chin rested atop my head; my face was buried in his chest, and his arms held me like I was some dilapidated structure that relied on his support to remain upright. Part of me knew this sentiment was correct.

I expected his next words to be ones of consolation or reassurance, maybe an “I’m right here, sweetheart” or an “I’ll never leave you”. Instead, I felt his head turn and heard him say, “Think it’s going to storm?”

With a sniffle, I turned my head towards the window. The arms wrapped around my body tightened as if he somehow knew I would need the extra support. Because when I saw the wall of dark, opaque clouds rolling through the sky towards us, an unshakeable dread zapped through my heart.

My hands clung to the fabric of his cream-white sweater, which then brought to my attention that an inexplicable tingling sensation was spreading down the fingers of my right hand, numbing them.

Lightning flashed on the horizon, and the once serene waves began cresting violently on the shoreline. The dread grew.

Before my attention could drift too far, my name was called again.

I looked up to find those green eyes gazing down at me, swelling with tears. He was crying. Why was he crying? And why was his hair wet? His usually golden strands had darkened to a deep brown and were drenched with cold water that dripped onto my cheeks, and his hair was swept haphazardly across his forehead, a reflection of someone who had just endured an intense storm or had just been fighting for his life against a swarm of—of—

No.

My own eyes began to burn.

“It’s killing me to see you this way,” he spoke, every second word breaking and wavering in volume.

The world seemed to tilt on an axis. Return did the disorientation, ravaging my mind more violently now. “What do you”—My chest was rising and falling with heavy breaths—“What? What do you mean?” My lower lip was quivering, and my eyebrows were scrunched together in confusion. His words replayed in my head: It’s killing me to see you this way.

It’s killing me.

His hair was dripping—no longer with water, but with a thick, red substance that both dripped down and clotted on his skin. He didn’t look pained anymore; he looked like he was in pain.

It’s killing me.

But that can’t be right, can it?

It’s killing me.

Why?

It’s killing me.

Becausemy Finnickwas already dead.

I staggered backwards and out of his, no, this imposter’s arms. He stared at me as blood streamed down his forehead, pouring over his eyelashes and down his cheeks. I was going to be sick. This had to be some sort of cruel joke, a newly invented punishment from Snow. But that wasn’t right either: Snow was dead too.

“F…Fi…” I tried saying his name, my top teeth prodding the inside of my bottom lip, but I couldn’t make a sound.

He took a step towards me, and I almost stumbled onto the floor. “Remember what I told you?” he asked, though it sounded more like an urge.

I frantically shook my head. No, I didn’t remember. I didn’t want to remember anything.

Something dark and mountainous appeared in my peripheral vision, and an odious smell singed my nostrils. My head snapped to the left. Stacks upon stacks of plates and bowls mounded the kitchen sink, each crawling with maggots that were falling to the floor in white, wriggling heaps.

Nausea boiled in my stomach; horror brimmed my eyes.

I quickly turned away, my eyes meeting green again. His face was no longer stained with blood, and his hair was dry, shiny, and golden with life. I was as speechless as my face was drained of blood.

He took one more step toward me, but this time I didn’t back away, either frozen with fear or desperation for one last experience of closeness with him. My heart thrummed as he reached out to cup my face. It isn’t him, it isn’t him, it isn’t him, I repeated madly in my head. Oh, but it felt so much like him when his warm hand met my skin.

“I told you I’m always with you, sweetheart,” he murmured. And I knew engaging with him, in whatever form he took, affirmed my mental unwellness, but I couldn’t stop from leaning into his touch anyway. “Remember that.”

My cheeks were wet with tears. “I love—”

A bolt of lightning flashed, and thunder boomed throughout the house.

I was back in my bed.

My eyelids were heavy with sleep as they fluttered open. I felt detached, destabilised, and unsure of my existence in the world for I wasn’t sure which of the twoI was currently in. Real or fake?

A few minutes went by before I managed to get a grip on reality, which, in fact, was the real one. The Somewhere Bad. I pinched the corners of my eyes, not only finding them damp with fresh tears but also realising that my right hand—previously tucked beneath my head—was numb.

None of it had been real…

The entire time, my body was trying to alert me, to save me from the inescapable heartache I would feel upon waking. He hadn’t held me in his arms. He hadn’t cupped my cheek nor helped me wash the dishes. He wasn’t here. He wasn’t anywhere (not even in his own marked grave because there was nothing left of him to be buried).

Even despite seeing the familiar tall outline standing in the doorway, his features illuminated with each flash of lightning, I knew it wasn’t really him.

Rain was pummelling the roof, almost loud enough to subdue the perpetual rumbling of thunder (apart from the one sky-splitting thunderclap that had woken me). In another time, I would’ve been scared—of the raging storm, of my phantom lover who was watching from the shadows of our bedroom. But not now.

In recent months, I had found that no emotion, not even fear, surpassed the soul-crushing realisation that you have irretrievably lost the one thing you lived for.

On a defeated whim, and for the first time since his death, I let the singular, weighted word breeze past my lips.

“Finnick.”

It was a trembling plea, a desperate beckon.

And he indulged.

His footsteps were silent as he walked towards the bed. I couldn’t see his legs from my position, prompting me to wonder if he even had legs at all. Or did he only have legs when I could see them? That would then insinuate that if I couldn’t see him at all, he didn’t exist.

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? In my case, the answer was simple: no, it didn’t.

It wasn’t really Finnick. It wasn’t even his ghost. It was my mind.

He reached the bed’s edge, and I scooted over to my side of the mattress, allowing him enough space to lie down on his. His weight neither dipped nor shook the bed as he laid down and turned on his side to face me. His eyes were sad, and I’m sure mine were too. We stared at each other for a long, long time, long enough for my fatigued body to start playing tricks on me.

If I focused hard enough, I thought I could hear the sound of his breathing (the wind was picking up outside), feel the warmth of his skin spreading onto the sheets (the remnants of my own body heat were left behind each time I moved), and smell the musky scent of cologne and sea-salted hair (the sleeves of his sweater were tucked beneath my nose).

Maybe for a moment—just one sickly, self-indulgent moment—I could pretend it was really him.

I inhaled deeply through my nose. “You really weren’t kidding when you said you would haunt the next owner of this house,” I whispered as light-heartedly as I could, my voice obscured by the heavy rain pouring onto the roof.

He smiled, and it was one of the most heart-wrenchingly beautiful things I had ever seen. I think I might have given him one in return, though I couldn’t be too sure because the concept of smiling had become so foreign. The last time I was truly happy was… the last night we spent together. In each other’s arms, safe and warm and together.

And then he was gone. Just like that.

Cressida, whom I had only spoken to once in Thirteen when the war ended, was the one to tell me how it happened. Katniss was too personal, too close to him; Peeta’s instability rendered conversation futile. So, I had asked Cressida to tell me every detail—every expression on his face, every word he screamed. I don’t know why. Maybe it was so I could cling onto those last few minutes where he was still alive and breathing, despite dying and bleeding; or so I could replay the moment over and over in my head, as if somehow, someway, I could change his fate.

“He talked about you all the time,” she had told me. “Actually, I don’t think he ever spoke of anything but you. No one minded, though. While we were out there, no one ever really smiled, but every time your name was mentioned, Finnick would get this great big grin on his face, and it was impossible not to look at him and start smiling as well.

So, we all started asking questions about you: ‘What colour is her hair? Her eyes? Where did you meet? What are her hobbies?’—just to see him smile… A week passed, and it was like we all knew you inside out. It was all we could do to hang on to some shred of happiness, even if it meant talking about a girl who, to all of us, was a stranger.”

I was inconsolable after that.

She kept talking, but my sobs had drowned out most of her words, so much that I had asked her to retell me everything later in the day, despite inducing the same outcome. So, she told it to me again, just as she did the day after that and the day after that and so on until I returned home to District Four.

“He also spoke about how you never felt comfortable living in the Victors Village. He had this idea that the two of you would move somewhere far away, outside the borders of District Four­, though he emphasised remaining by the sea was very important—something about how you looked while swimming during sunset and the water was all sparkly around you.”

At this point, she had been holding my hand, knowing full well how debilitating it was for me to hear. Then she had spoken with a quiet incredulity and a facial expression to match, as though she’d never encountered a love like ours before. “He wanted to build a house for you…”

He wanted to build a house for you.

And now he never would. Our love was too ephemeral for that to happen; destined to remain history; to be a memory.

Finnick's eyes stared into mine, the green hue now a dark grey from the overshadowing dimness of the room.

“I would’ve gone anywhere with you,” I whispered to him, placing my hand on the sheets between us. “I would’ve travelled thousands of miles away from this place. Would’ve lived in solitary, just the two of us, for the rest of our lives.” A warm tear tickled the bridge of my nose. His eyebrows scrunched together in shared anguish. “God, Finn, I miss you,” my voice broke. “I miss you so much.”

I contemplated crying, sobbing, screaming, or begging for him to come back, but I was just too tired. All my energy had been spent on grievance throughout the following day, and my eyes were growing heavier by the second as my body was sinking further into a state of relaxation.

Between slow blinks, I watched Finnick’s large hand move to rest atop my own, and at that point, I knew sleep would soon catch me because I swear I could feel his warm touch.

Images flashed through my mind—incomprehensible and melting together, yet somehow still graspable.

Sky blue water rippling with calm waves, the surface glittering in the setting sun. A white stonewall cottage fronted by soft, white sand and tall palm trees. Two plates of fruit-filled yoghurt and scrambled eggs on toast. Three pairs of footprints in the sand, one larger, one smaller, and another between them so delicately tiny I could fit them into the palm of my hand.

Sea-green eyes above me. Golden hair tangled between my fingers. Finnick standing in the wooden doorway of our white stonewall cottage wearing a cream-white sweater and rolled-up slacks. Finnick grinning deeply and then throwing his head back with laughter. Finnick standing in front of our bed, taking my hand in his and guiding me towards him. Finnick. Finnick. Finnick. Finnick. Finnick.

Finnick holding our child.

I was between worlds now, both indistinguishable from the other. My eyelids were drooping, and I was quickly growing insensate. Just before my eyes closed completely, I saw Finnick’s—he who wasn’t really my Finnick—lips move. It wasn’t in my bleak reality in which I heard him speak, but rather in my mind, and God, did his words offer the sweetest relief.

“I’ll see you when you fall asleep.”