Burlap and Weeds
A/N – This one-shot is done in response to the prompt: It would have happened anyway for @everlarkbirthdaydrabbles.
* * * *
“Katniss!”
Katniss Everdeen darted into the narrow walkway between two homes and hid behind a pile of refuse, heart-racing automatically. She’d been threading her way back through the streets and alleys for home after trading rabbit and squirrel with the butcher, the baker, and the mystery-soup maker that was Greasey Sae. It had been a man’s voice, deep, powerful, and intense. Her bow was hidden away safely beyond the District fence, the leather satchel hanging at her side had just been emptied of its final incriminating catch, and most of the White Shirts looked the other way at her hunting, but the new Head Peacekeeper was a rule and regulations man with little mercy so it was better to be safe than sorry. She couldn’t think why one of them would be calling after her, not by first name, at least not if not followed by an “Everdeen, halt,” but she’d just assume not find out.
Heavy footfalls thudded past.
It was Peeta Mellark, the baker’s youngest son, and he was still calling after her.
She didn’t need anyone making a scene involving her name, so she whistled and after making sure no one was watching, stepped into view.
“Katniss,” he looked relieved. His brows came together and he looked around to see if there was a problem, “Why were you hiding?”
“Because someone was yelling at me.”
“Oh,” he winced apologetically.
She might have recognized it was his voice any of the years before— because she’d heard him speaking in class or in the school hall to others— but in the years since graduation, his voice had changed into a man’s, like the rest of him, and she still wasn’t used to it. They saw each other at most once a week, when she traded squirrels-for-bread with his father, and while they occasionally met each other’s sideways glances— Admittedly more as time had been going on— they rarely spoke.
And it irritated her that his baritone made her stomach unsettle, settle, and settle again.
She crossed her arms and snapped, “What do you want, Mellark.”
He winced again but drew in a breath and forced a smile, “I tried to catch you right after you were done trading with dad,” he held up something pan-sized wrapped in burlap, “but you were too fast.”
She hated his smile, and the eyes that went with it, as much as she hated his voice, so she stared at the dirt instead.
“Here,” he offered the item, but her arms remained crossed so he circled it under her nose.
The whiff of cinnamon made her look up. She narrowed her eyes, “What is it?”
He offered it again, smiling, “Why don’t you open it and see.”
She refused, but he circled it under her nose again with a grin and the smell was too tempting to resist. It was a pan of something baked but still soggy, with chunks of bread all smashed together that smelled of cinnamon and sweet. It made her mouth instantly water.
“It’s for you. I know it’s Prim’s birthday today.”
She growled and shouldered past him.
“Wait, where are you—”
“We can’t afford it,” she said without looking back.
He jogged and fell into stride beside her, “But it’s a gift.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Yes, it is.”
She kept walking, and he tucked the pan under one arm so he could grab her sleeve, “Katniss, please wait.”
She didn’t stop, but he kept pace with her long enough she finally gave up and turned to glare at him.
“I’m not taking it, Mellark, and that’s final.”
“Why not?”
“Because nothing’s free,” she spat. “Everything, comes with a price.”
“No, really, it’s free,” he offered it with another smile but she looked away.
“Why would your dad do that for her?”
Peeta shuffled back half a step, “Well, he didn’t. I did. But… It’s for you.”
“You said it was for Prim’s birthday.”
“But it’s for you,” he smiled, “to give her as a gift.”
“We don’t need your charity. I don’t need your charity.”
She stalked off again, but he kept up, determined.
“It’s not charity. It’s a gift.”
“I don’t accept gifts.”
“Then take it as a gift from me to Prim then.”
“We can’t afford it.”
He grabbed her sleeve again, this time physically forcing her to a stop, “It doesn’t cost anything, Katniss. Please let me do this.”
“Everything has a price, Mellark. Especially the things people claim are free.”
“Not this. Look,” he pulled back the burlap and showed her again, “it’s bread pudding. It’s a recipe made with stale bread that would just go to waste anyway. I cooked it with heat from an oven already burning, and used leftover sugar and spices and milk from other recipes. It’s didn’t cost anything extra for me to make.”
He gave her a hopeful smile, forehead creased in pleading, “Katniss, please take it.”
There was more unsettling going on in her stomach than settling, and it made her feel an edge of panic, so she snapped, “We don’t need anything from you, Peeta Mellark.”
He blinked several times, the ghost of his smile in place for an extra second before the words finally seemed to hit their mark. He stared at the ground for a few seconds before blowing out a breath. When he looked back up, his eyes stared dully at a point beyond her. His voice was tight, “No one ever does.”
His eyes glanced to hers, but whatever he saw there only turned his eyes duller. He looked back at the same point in the distance for a moment, and then, as if making a decision, turned and walked away.
Her mouth opened, apparently ready to call him back without consulting her brain, but his quick, stiff strides moved him beyond a corner and out of view too quickly. She resented that him being angry— Hurt?— made her feel queasy and out-of-control, like the way she’d feel as a little girl after waking in the middle of the night and realizing her nightmares were real and her father was still dead.
“Dammit,” she muttered. She called after him once she’d rounded the corner, “Wait!”
He kept walking, eyes staring straight ahead so she got in front of him.
He shouldered past her. She got in front of him again. He shouldered past once more.
“Fine,” she spat, stopping in the middle of the lane in his wake.
“Fine,” he grunted back over his shoulder, and then threw the burlap sack and everything in it to the ground. But then he swore and turned around, rubbing at his neck like there were knots in it. “I can’t… The pan. There’ll be hell to pay from mother if I don’t have it back by tomorrow.” He stalked back and picked it up. The contents in the sack had upended, and the whole thing was a leaking, jumbled mess, but he just shook his head and went back on his way without look at her.
Katniss let him go.
* *
Peeta took a pail of slop out for the pigs. It had been his job since he’d been young, the dutiful son required to do the work of a prodigal. It made him angry. Not the work. Not the pigs. But the memory. Seeing Katniss huddled out in the alley, starving and soaking in the rain back when they were both eleven. Throwing her the burned bread he was meant to give to the pigs.
It’s what had first gotten Katniss to start looking at him those eight years ago. Not looking at him much, and not looking at him in a friendly way, but at least looking. Curious, maybe, from across the school yard, at first. And then through school, he’d noticed she’d give him sideways glances in class he couldn’t interpret. Then especially the last year she’d seemed to pay him more attention when she’d stop at the kitchen door to make trades with his dad. He’d spent nights lying awake imaging that behind those glances were good thoughts. But after her reaction two days before, it seemed they’d only been holding resentment.
He wasn’t usually a grumbler, but he grumbled all the way to the sty. He grumbled while emptying the bucket of food. He grumbled on his way back to the back door.
And then almost stumbled, because there was a lumpy scrap of burlap on the middle step that hadn’t been there thirty seconds before. He started to kick it out of his way, mad at everything, including it, but then caught himself. Instead, he reached down and pulled back a corner to see what was inside.
Flowers.
Colorful, vibrant flowers of all shapes and sizes; purples, yellows, oranges and even a red one. With there being just one or two of each and the way they were carefully laid out next to each other and folded up to keep them separated and protected, it clearly wasn’t a bouquet, but a collection. A miniature museum, with artefacts for which he had no names. To his painter’s eye, they could be called something as simple as “stunning,” but to a baker’s son, they were exciting and new, species different from any he’d seen growing within the confines of the District fence.
He looked around for the giver.
Katniss was standing at the edge of the waist-high fence that hemmed in the bakery’s pigpen, chicken coop and firewood shed. She looked nervous and ready to bolt.
Part of him wanted to beam and grin and gush thank-yous like a little boy because the sketches he would draw based on those flowers were already forming behind his eyes. They would highlight the delicate petals and little pods of diffuse white and yellow fibers, some of them nestled in her hair or woven into her braid. But part of him was still stinging— still heartbroken— and wanted to hurl a snark like a child having a tantrum because he knew she wasn’t really giving him something beautiful, she was paying him back. He’d destroyed that dessert, and she felt she owed him for it, it was that simple.
She fidgeted, clearly uncomfortable under his glare. Her eyes even darted to down the alley, preparing to leave.
But he wasn’t a boy, he was a man, and if she’d come to say something, he could hold a conversation. He rolled up the burlap carefully and walked over.
Her gray eyes were a weakness. So rather than fall under their spell— or suffer their cursing— he stared off over her shoulder. “Katniss,” he acknowledged.
But she didn’t say anything at all. He could tell she was staring at him, and eventually he had to risk looking at her.
Her pupils were wide, but then constricted as she went from looking nervous to angry.
He glared at her.
She glared back.
For a really long time.
For a ridiculously long time.
Until it went on so long he actually felt an urge to laugh. And a moment later, she was biting at the corner of her bottom lip, trying not to laugh too. And then, miracle of miracles, she caved first and chuckled.
“Will they help?”
Peeta shook his head, confused, but glad not to be angry.
“The…” Katniss nodded and pointed to the makeshift burlap satchel, “Those. You drew the most incredible nature sketches in Art class year before last.”
Maybe the looks hadn’t been all resentment and pride after all. “Thank you, Katniss. I’ll definitely enjoy drawing them.”
She looked down, pivoting in the dirt on her boot soles. Then, “These only grow beyond the fence so I wasn’t sure you’d ever had a chance to sketch them. It was probably stupid…”
“No. I mean… No, it wasn’t stupid. I’ve never seen flowers like this. It wasn’t stupid.” His heart was beating unreasonably fast. He tried making a joke to relax, “But I can’t afford them.”
Her expression screwed into a question.
“Because nothing’s free,” he reminded her.
Katniss’ single bark of laughter uncoiled all the anger and tension he’d carried in his shoulders over the previous two days. He blew out a breath.
“They’re weeds, Peeta,” she laughed again and it lit up everything. The steel of her eyes were like the gray of a promising morning. The black of her hair was like the shimmer of a raven’s wing. And her mouth was…
He caught himself staring. He forced his eyes up and tried to keep his manner easy, “It doesn’t matter,” he grinned. “Everything has a cost, apparently.”
She laughed again, but he held the satchel out for her to take back.
Her eyes scrunched up, “You can’t be serious? They’re just weeds, Peeta.”
He tried to ignore the fact that was the first time she’d referred to him by his first name only, and nodded, brows high as he teased, “I am. I learned that lesson from someone yesterday.”
She didn’t find it funny like he’d hoped. Instead, she looked sad and seemed to be chewing on the inside her of her lips. After a very long time, she squeezed the fence with both hands and whispered, “Then take it for the bread.”
Peeta’s shoulders sagged and his mouth hung open, “Katniss.” His voice was strained, “Not for that. Please, not for that.” He rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand, tortured as she looked down, “I could have done so much more, Katniss. I should have done so much more. I used to lay awake at night feeling so guilty.”
Her eyes were glassed when she looked up, and she was shaking her head. Peeta shuffled a step closer and held on to the fence too. The flimsy slats wobbled in his grip.
“What more could you have possibly done, Peeta? You were just a boy. Your mom would have probably beat you near to death if you’d tried helping Seam trash like us. And I was nothing to anyone, including you.”
His chest was heaving, and his heart thudding in his ears, urging him to declare himself. “Katniss,” he moved the hand that was on the fence to cover hers, “you’ve never not been someone to me.”
Katniss’ breath came sharp, and her eyes widened. After a few seconds, she pulled her hands free and rushed away down the alley.
* *
She almost didn’t go by the baker’s the following week for trade. Peeta did terrible things to her determination to avoid thoughts of a future for herself. The erosion had been growing; she’d been watching him too long. In the last few years, his presence made her want to linger longer, talk slower during the trades with his father so she could spend a few extra seconds watching him decorate cakes with a touch impossibly delicate for hands so large and so strong, or watch him throw bags of flour or buckets around in a way that made every muscle in his arms, back and broad shoulders flex.
God, she hated his shoulders. Maybe more than she hated the deep blue of his eyes.
But her bag was full of squirrel— Why had she shot so many?— and her feet had pointed themselves in the direction of the bakery. And if she came home with extra squirrels but no bread, she’d have to explain it to Prim. And Prim had already caught the one time Katniss had slipped and made a comment about how Peeta would have liked the colors of one particular sunset.
But even then, she knew going there was a mistake the moment she started up the steps to the kitchen door. Her cheeks were on fire, and she hadn’t even seen him yet.
Only the screen was closed, the interior door usually open in the afternoon because of the heat from the ovens. Mr. Mellark was there with Peeta, kneading dough at the long counter, but he floured up his hands to help him dust the dough off them and then pushed the screen open for her to enter.
“Katniss,” he greeted her with a warm smile.
She wasn’t going to look at Peeta.
She wasn’t going to look at him.
She wasn’t going to—
She looked at him.
And swore internally.
Even though he was looking at her with apprehension, a smile snatched control of her mouth before she had a chance to stop it. She looked away immediately, pretending to listen to his father.
When she looked up again, it was clear Peeta had seen it, because he was smiling.
She scowled at him.
He grinned in respond. She hated those damn dimples.
She flashed him a fake scowl, agreed to whatever trade it was his father suggested, then pushed out the door.
It wasn’t until she was home she realized she’d agreed to the trade, but hadn’t actually stuck around for it. She dropped onto the steps of her front porch, face buried in her palms. She’d have to go back, but now instead of explaining odd behavior to Prim, she’d have to come up with some excuse to explain her behavior to Peeta’s father.
“Stupid Peeta,” she grumbled.
“I get that a lot, but usually just from my mother,” was the chuckled come back.
He was standing in front of her with her loaf of bread wrapped in brown paper.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Katniss said, cheeks flaming again.
He raised his eyebrows, smiling in a way that set off only one of his dimples. She especially hated that one dimple.
“Good to know.” He held the bread out for her, “You forgot something.”
She stood up to take it but he pulled it away right before she got hold of it “Turn over the squirrels first. Remember, you don’t take anything for free.”
She narrowed her eyes, but found herself smiling as she dug through her bag. She held three out for him by the tails, “Hand it over bread boy, before someone gets an arrow through the eye.”
He put his hands up in mock defense, but then handed over the bread and took the squirrels.
He hesitated, “I can’t stay— Not saying you’d want me to— but be sure to check out the paper.”
After he was gone, she unwrapped the bread. Sketched onto the inside of the brown paper was a bouquet, as big as the loaf itself, of the weeds she had given him. With the fine pencil details and shading, and the way the blooms seemed to wrap around each other like they had grown together, he had her convinced they might not be weeds after all.
* *
The next week, Mr. Mellark greeted Katniss at the kitchen door as per usual. Katniss traded with him as per usual. Peeta gave her a warm smile from behind his father’s back. She narrowed her eyes at him to stop, then smiled at him herself when Mr. Mellark had looked away. She finished the trade and left.
* *
The week after that, while she was working out the trade, Peeta smiled again and, she thought, seemed to stand extra tall. Her eyes made it to his, but only after she realized she’d been tracking the line of thick muscle that built along his shoulders into his neck. His eyebrows raised and his grin was both flattered and teasing. Katniss’ cheeks burned as she finished the trade with Mr. Mellark and rushed out in embarrassment.
Though once she was out in the yard and then past the bakery’s fence, she found herself grinning. A fact which Prim picked up on and teased her about once she was home.
* *
And on it went for several months. And even though they didn’t talk, it came to take on the feel of a competition, them on one team trying to pull off their increasingly complicated exchanges without being seen by Peeta’s father, brothers, and once even his scowling mother.
But one week when Peeta smiled at her, he didn’t try to sneak it. And even though it made her cheeks burn, and made one of Peeta’s brothers give a teasing whistle, she smiled back without sneaking too. Mr. Mellark looked back and forth between the two of them, smiled and shook his head, and then went on negotiating the terms of the trade. Once the terms were agreed, three squirrels for a hearty nut-loaf that was only one day old, Peeta rushed to grab it off the counter before his father could. He wrapped the loaf in a sheet of brown paper and handed it to Katniss himself.
He looked from the paper to her and she nodded, understanding. Her fingers grazed his— she told herself it wasn’t intentional— as she took it.
As soon as she was out in the alley, she unwrapped the loaf.
Sketched inside was a bird in flight.
* *
For the following few weeks, Peeta always stopped what he was doing, actually said hello, and stood with them until the terms of the trade were agreed. He would hand-wrap whatever bread his father had agreed. Their fingers would always touch on the bottom of the loaf during the transition— also a game they had going— and there was always a sketch. More flowers. A sunset.
Her face, staring into the distance with a bittersweet expression and hair flowing in the breeze.
The last one didn’t make her smile.
* *
A month before Reaping day, Katniss missed a visit. He tried to go see her once the bakery was closed, but she avoided him. The same thing happened the week after that, even though he went by the Everdeen house several days in a row. When she didn’t show up, and ducked him for a third week, what had been difficulty sleeping turned into a near impossibility. The weight of her anxiety, and Prim’s fate, wore on him.
The morning of the Reaping he knocked on the Everdeen door, white cake box in hand and circles under his eyes. Katniss answered, tense expression turning first to concern but then to anger. She tried to close the door on him but he pushed his palm against it.
He held the box out. She moved as though to shove it back but he withdrew it slightly, “Don’t throw this down or cause me to drop it, Katniss.” His voice was raw with exhaustion, “Please. What’s inside is fragile, and I think we would both regret it if it broke.”
Her nostrils flared and tears threatened her eyes, “You know what day it is, Peeta. How dare you come by for this today.”
“That’s why this is for Prim.”
On cue, Prim appeared behind Katniss at the door. At fifteen, she was as tall as her sister, and she gave Peeta a grateful smile.
Katniss reluctantly stepped out of the way as Peeta handed the box over to her sister. Manners forced her to hold the door open so he could come in. Prim took the box to the counter and opened it. Lily Everdeen came out of the back room, hesitated on seeing Peeta, but then came over to Prim’s side. Inside the box was a batch of sugar flowers, weeds, modeled after the ones Katniss had brought him. They were delicate. Beautiful.
“They’re incredible, Peeta,” Prim said, tears from the emotion of the day straining on her as she looked down at them.
“Three types, one for each of the Everdeen women,” he said, his voice so tired is sounded even deeper than normal. “Try one.”
“I couldn’t eat them,” Prim protested. “They’re too beautiful.”
“That’s exactly the reason you need to eat them. To enjoy them while you have them.” He picked one out and handed it to her, “Go on.”
She did, and gave him a smile at the sweetness of it before throwing her arms around him and burying her face in his chest. Despite Katniss’s glare, he hugged Prim back.
“Take care of them if I…” the girl’s voice broke.
“I’ll do the best I can, if she’ll let me,” he assured Prim while looking over her head and directly at Katniss.
Katniss cheeks were so red with fury they were splotching. He could tell that as soon as Prim had collected herself and stepped away from him that Katniss was on the verge of throwing him out, so he gave both Prim and Mrs. Everdeen a weak smile and nod of support and excused himself.
Katniss was on his keels as he walked out the door, and as soon as it shut behind them, she grabbed his sleeve and yanked him around the side of the house. “What are you thinking!” Tears were rolling down her cheeks, and she was almost in his face and looked like she wanted to hit him, “You should have reassured her, not scared her!”
“Why would I do that, Katniss,” he said after sighing, sad. “None of us know what will happen today. I’d rather give her enough respect to be honest than to pretend. We both know your head isn’t full of fanciful ideas that today will turn out okay either. Even assuming she isn’t picked, there’s every chance someone she knows might be. Where’s the comfort in lying about it? You need to take hold of life while you have it Katniss. Please. For her. For your mom. And for me. I spent my whole life before this year being afraid. What did it get me? Prim isn’t a child anymore than you or I were at her age. It’s not fair to place on her shoulders the guilt you might destroy your life like your mom did if something ever happens to her.”
“You have no right to tell me how—”
“He’s right, Katniss.”
Both of their heads snapped sideways. Prim was out in the lane, was watching them and Mrs. Everdeen was standing a few feet behind her.
“Come on, let’s go,” Prim said without ceremony. “All of us.” Without waiting, she took her mother’s hand and started walking for the square.
Peeta followed several paces behind the three women, and even though he could tell Katniss was ready to turn on him and lash out, he stood behind her anyway while they watched helplessly as Prim was shuffled through the registration and sorting process. When the name was drawn for the girls, he stepped closer and pulled her back against his chest. She didn’t act like she noticed— And maybe she didn’t because of the stress— but as soon as the name was read and it wasn’t Prim’s, she turned and started crying into him.
* *
Late that afternoon, Katniss walked to the bakery and waited in the woodshed where she knew Peeta would eventually come out to do the chopping for the next morning’s oven fuel.
“Peeta,” she hopped off a stack of wood as soon as he showed up.
He startled, “God, Katniss, you scared me.”
“Sorry.”
She kicked at woodchips on the floor around them.
“Are they okay? Your mom and Prim?”
“I think so. They were both sleeping when I left.”
He nodded, “That’s good.”
“They’re both in our bed. I mean,” she scratched at her shoulder and then found a splinter of wood that apparently needed to be twisted off one of the stacked rounds that instant, “they’re in Prim’s and my bed. I mean…” She rubbed at her forehead and then balled her fists at her side.
“You look miserable, Katniss.” He put his hands on her arms and squeezed, “What’s wrong?”
She took few moments to build up her courage, but still wouldn’t look at anything except their feet once she started talking, “This is hard for me to say. But it was easier… With you there today. It was easier.”
He swallowed, “I wasn’t trying to make it easier, Katniss. I was trying to make sure you knew you weren’t alone.”
He opened his mouth to say something but she pressed her hand over it for quiet and wrapped herself into him.
* *
The week after that, when Katniss would normally show up to trade, she asked Mr. Mellark if she could speak to Peeta alone. He nodded and he took his other son with him out into the front of the shop.
Peeta held his arms out as soon as they were gone and she slid into them and stayed there for a minute with her face pressed into his neck.
“No squirrels today,” he asked, voice vibrating out through his chest and into hers.
She leaned back, but not out of his arms, “No. No hunting today. Prim and my mother had other chores for me.”
He raised an eyebrow, “Really? And what would be so important Katniss Everdeen voluntarily didn’t go hunting?”
“Not voluntary. I was ordered. And it was moving furniture.”
“What for?”
“Mother insisted we move some of her things out of the bedroom and into the main room, since Prim kicked officially me out of the bed last week and took her as her new bedmate.”
His brows came together, “Where have you been sleeping?”
“They’ve been making me sleep in mom’s room.” She swallowed, “In my parents’ old bed.”
He smiled. “I don’t understand. You’re blushing, Katniss,” he ran a finger up her cheek and grinned, “but I don’t understand.”
“Reaping day was easier for all of us this time, Peeta. For the firsttime. We all know it.”
Peeta rubbed his hands up and down her arms, “It’s natural to feel that way. Another year we know Prim’s safe.”
She shook her head, “No, it’s more than that. It was you.” She blew out nervously, “I don’t know how to even… This is so embarrassing.” She looked down, swallowed again and then breathed in and out several times, “I can’t say it directly so how about this… Can I have something? Even though I didn’t bring squirrels today, can I still have some bread?”
“What, as in for free,” he joked.
“As in for a gift.”
He narrowed his eyes playfully, “Katniss Everdeen asking me for something without paying for it. Hmmm.” He gave her a squeeze, “I think I’d prefer having you in my debt maybe after all.”
She nodded at the bread loafs stacked on a nearby cooling rack, insistent and serious, “One of those, Peeta. Can I have one of those?”
“Katniss, I would give you anything.”
He moved to go get it, but she didn’t let him go, “No. That’s why they’ve…” She growled, then sucked in a breath, then tightened her arms around his waist, “Tonight, Peeta. Bring a loaf tonight. There’s a fireplace in my parents’ old bedroom.”