Chapter Text
“Here, this is for you.” The little girl with the twin braids looked up from her sack lunch. He stood at the corner of her table, and she recognized the boy from her class, the one with big blue eyes and a wild mop of blond hair. In his hand was a cupcake smeared with white frosting.
“Why?” She asked, looking back down at her peanut butter sandwich. Today was her first day at the new school, and the morning had already left her with an ache in her stomach.
She didn’t want to be there. She wanted to be with Momma, but Momma went away for a “rest” and left the girl and her baby sister alone with her grandmother, who doesn’t seem to like them much at all.
The boy smiled at her, revealing a row of slightly crooked teeth. “Because you’re pretty and you sing pretty, and because you look like you need it more than me. My daddy always told me to share when I could.”
The girl’s eyes filled with tears. “My daddy’s dead,” she whispered.
“Oh. I’m sorry,” the boy told her. He continued standing there much longer than she thought he would, fidgeting with his lunch bag. “Is it okay if I sit down since you’re by yourself?”
The girl scooted to make room for him. He sat down, close enough that their legs were touching. “I’m Peeta, by the way,” he said, placing the cupcake next to her sandwich.
She liked having the boy so close. He was warm. She hadn’t realized how cold she was until that moment. “I’m Katniss,” she whispered.
Peeta took a bite out of his sandwich, then spoke with his mouth full. “I like your name. It’s pretty like you are.”
She smiled at that. No one ever liked her name. Especially not Grandmother. Grandmother hated it, said it was “savage.”
“Do you want to be my friend?”
“Okay,” she managed.
“Cross your heart and hope to die? Stick a needle in your eye?”
For the first time in weeks, the girl giggled.
He looked down at his lunch and grinned.
“How are you doing?” Prim asks.
Katniss can hear her sister rummaging around on the other end of the line. “Did you lose something?”
Prim sighs. “I can’t find a note I wrote to myself yesterday, and don’t you dare change the subject. You didn’t answer my question.”
“I’m fine,” she lies. “Things are fine.” Katniss hates being in this house again, hates the memories tying her to it like the roots of a tree. Some nights she swears the walls talk to her, the sound of her grandmother’s voice whispering things like “mutt” and “trash.”
Most of all she hates being here alone. It wasn’t so bad until Prim left. When Prim was here Katniss would eat, still sleep at night, still hold down a job. But she isn’t going to tell her sister any of those things, because at twenty-two Prim is pursuing her dream of becoming an obstetrician. She’s just begun her first year in a prestigious medical program at a school on the East Coast.
So there’s absolutely no way Katniss is going to let her know that living in this house makes her feel like she’s dying inside. Because that top-ranked medical school? It’s expensive. Far too much money for a young woman with zero financial support to attend without digging herself so deeply in debt that it’ll take the rest of her working life to get out of it.
And this place she hates most in the world, her grandmother’s home, is a slightly run-down, Edwardian style house that has still managed to retain its, as a local realtor had called it, “great bone structure.” It’s parked in a currently up-and-coming neighborhood in the Capitol, smack dab in between two homes that have recently sold in the upper-six and low-seven figures.
What it boils down to is this: no matter how much their grandmother may have disliked the two of them, the goldmine that this house represents is theirs for the taking if Katniss can keep her act together- at least long enough to get the necessary repairs completed and put the house on the market.
“Seriously if you’re-” Prim begins to say, but her sister cuts her off.
“Do you want me to call you back later?” Katniss asks, “I need to go, the contractor’s here.”
It’s true. There’s an insistent knock coming from the front door.
“No, I need to meet up with my lab group in half an hour,” Prim says, concern evident in her voice.
The sound makes Katniss wish she were a better liar.
“So I’ll talk to you tomorrow?”
“Of course.”
This is their new routine, a quick phone call in the evenings to touch base. Some nights it’s Katniss’s lifeline, the knowledge that she’s not alone. Some nights, when putting on a happy face feels like entirely too much work, she wishes she’d never agreed to it.
Katniss doesn’t hit the “end call” button after telling her sister goodbye, she simply walks towards the bedroom door and waits for the signal to drop. She gets terrible reception in this place.
When she reaches the front door, Katniss opens it and gestures for the man to enter. She tries to look at him, but he’s facing away from her with the right side of his face concealed by the brim of his ball cap. “Sorry about that, I was just on the phone with my sister. Come in, Mr. Mellark.”
“Thank you, and please- call me Peeta.” He replies easily. Her world freezes as he steps inside the house. “Everyone does.”
Peeta.
Wait. What?
Peeta?
As many times as she’d tried to recall it over the years, Katniss had never been able to remember the last name of her childhood friend. There’d certainly never been anyone to ask. Her grandmother had never met him- Katniss had made sure of that. Their friendship had existed mostly in the walls of their elementary school.
Sometimes, when she tried to recall the events of that year, it seemed almost as if Peeta had been a figment of her imagination; an imaginary friend created at a time when she needed him, with big blue eyes and crazy blonde hair. That crooked smile.
Is this really him? Katniss peeks out of the corner of her eye for confirmation, and her heart feels as though it stops inside her chest. Oh my god, it is.
When Katniss had discussed what should be done about the house with Mr. Abernathy, the attorney in charge of the estate, she’d had to confess when he’d asked that no, she didn’t know anyone who could handle the much-needed repairs on the house.
Haymitch told her that he’d be glad to hire someone reputable to do the work for her.
“ Best man for fixing up your grandma’s place, Ms. Everdeen. Peet does great work at reasonable prices,” he’d paused and scrubbed a hand across his stubbly chin. “He’s the best. But, ah, the only thing you need to know about him is that he's a bit shy around new people.”
“When he was fifteen his parent’s home burned to the ground. Peet was the only one who made it out alive, and just barely at that. He’s covered in burn scars now and doesn’t like to show his face in the day time. Keeps odd working hours. Isolates himself. A real shame, it was a lot for a kid that age to go through. He was a good-looking boy too.”
He’s still handsome, she thinks, looking her fill of Peeta Mellark after twenty years spent wondering what happened to him and one life-altering accident later.
Yes, he’s changed, she realizes. He is badly scarred, with flame-shaped marks twisting up and around his neck, straining across the right side of his face. His smile doesn’t stretch as far as it used to. She is especially fascinated by the way his neck contorts when he swallows, the muscles tensing with the motion.
But his changed appearance isn’t why she’s gaping; she’s speechless because the moment he walked in the door her body felt a pull towards him. An electrical charge came to life as if an unseen hand had flipped a switch and sent the current buzzing through her veins. She has an overwhelming urge to touch him, to possess him, to make him mine mine mine. It’s an ancient call to worship in the basest way, to throw herself on the altar of his body.
But beneath the intensity she’s feeling, the quietest, sanest edge of the voice whispers to her that you are the same now.
Katniss can tell. She knows that his body and spirit are broken in the same way that hers has always been.
He finally looks at her, his body visibly tense after what has become an uncomfortable stretch of silence. His voice sounds dumbstruck when he whispers her name. “Katniss?”
She blinks at him, mute in her astonishment.
“I can’t believe it’s you.” Peeta takes a step toward her, yes please she thinks, but just as quickly he shrinks back.
She knows that he is afraid, unsure of himself. He doesn’t feel whole, but doesn’t he see that she isn’t either? She’s never been.
“Well,” he says, “this is a surprise.” Peeta rubs his hands together, pretends that he doesn’t feel the tension so thick they could both choke on it. “Let’s get started. Show me where this place needs work.”
“I’m sorry Gale. I’m busy,” Katniss tells her neighbor.
It’s a lie. It’s the second time he’s asked her out in a month, the second time she’s declined.
He doesn’t strike her as the type of man who is used to hearing the word no. His cool, too-handsome face is scowling at her right now. “I was hoping you could go with me on Saturday. You make it difficult to keep asking, Katniss. I’m starting to think you don’t like me.”
So stop coming over then, her brain screams. “I’m sorry,” she tells him instead, stepping inside the house and shutting the door behind her.
“Everything alright?” Peeta asks from the living room. He’s up on a ladder, doing she’s not sure what with the ancient electrical system.
He told her the first evening that it was a disaster waiting to happen.
“I heard voices.”
Katniss doesn’t answer right away, leaning against the doorframe to watch him work. She can’t seem to stop staring at his face, the way the left side is smooth and fair while the right is licked by those scars that flame across his cheeks and jaw and snake upward, towards the corners of his eyes, nose, and lips. His face is beautiful in all its contradictions, but his body?
His body is a work of art. The sleeves of his shirt are tight over powerful biceps, the left arm fair, the right marred. His tool belt hangs off his hips and ass, and thoughts of what his naked frame would look like under those slim-fitting jeans have left her lying awake many nights.
What fascinates her the most, what makes her blood race through her veins, is the way the hem of his t-shirt lifts high enough to give her a tantalizing look at that strip of taut, forbidden skin whenever he lifts his arms to work on something overhead. The flesh there is leathery-looking but soft, the colors pale pink and white intermingled, damaged and undamaged skin married together.
She wants to put her lips and tongue and teeth on him. Wants to know if he’s ticklish. Wants to hear him laugh first, and then whimper when she slides his cock into her mouth.
“It’s just my neighbor. He keeps asking me out but I’m not interested.” Katniss says, her voice shaky. She’s starting to feel crazy from the want, from the way he steadfastly avoids getting anywhere close to her.
He behaves like a frightened animal when she’s near.
Peeta squints at the fixture in his hands before digging a screwdriver out of his tool belt. The only time he’s willing to talk to her is when he’s so far out of reach. “Hawthorne?”
“Yeah,” she answers, “how’d you guess?”
The smile twists across his mouth.
Her breathing picks up.
“He watches you,” Peeta replies easily.
The way I watch you? She lets out a strained laugh. “How do you know that?”
“I just do.” He climbs down from his ladder and walks past her. He’s silent again, but the rosiness of his fair skin betrays him. “He’s not subtle about it,” Peeta says, looking in her eyes and then away again.
She knows that he knows, he has to know.
She can’t take her eyes off of him. Katniss takes a step towards him, drawn like an unknowing child to a flame. But once again, she'd startled him, can see it in the leeriness behind his eyes. He backs away from her. “I need to leave early. There’s somewhere I have to go.”
Katniss knows he’s lying, but she doesn’t contradict him. Minutes later, the door slams behind him.
That night in her bed, she brings herself to climax three times with her fingers.
She still feels empty.
She tries again the next evening.
She’s more blatant this time.
Katniss finds him working in one of the upstairs bedrooms. She’s just out of the shower, and her hair lays across her collarbone and down her back in wet strands, her skin damp, her body covered in a long t-shirt. She didn’t put on any underwear.
He’s facing the wall, humming softly to himself, and hasn’t given any indication that he’s noticed her presence in the room.
Katniss approaches him on silent feet, a hunter stalking its prey. When she gets close, closer to him, close enough to see the hairs standing up on the back of his neck, she breathes out his name. “Peeta.”
He stiffens but goes silent. The only sound in the room is the blood thundering in her ears and the shallow exhale of his breath. She runs the tip of her finger down that narrow valley in the back of his neck that houses his spinal cord. Her hand goes to his waist at the same time she exhales against the back of his neck. She swears he stops breathing then, that time stands still. Her body shakes a little with anticipation, as she slides her hand under the worn cotton of his t-shirt, making contact with his side. He’s warm and soft, and her toes curl when she touches the damaged parts of him. She feels his muscles dance beneath her fingertips.
Peeta exhales roughly when she flattens her palm there, and his forehead lands against the wall with a thud. His breathing is ragged in the small room but still, he doesn’t speak, doesn’t try to escape from her snare.
Katniss slides her small, warm hand to that place she dreams about. Her fingers caress his belly, running through the fine hairs below his navel. She moves lower.
“Katniss,” he says, his voice weak. Broken.
She gives him a moment. As badly as she wants him, as desperate as she feels, she won’t force it. “Let me touch you?” She asks finally, her words inadequate and shallow.
“Why?” Peeta’s voice is shaking now.
She can’t tell him why. She couldn’t force the words if she tried. He can’t know how damaged she is, how much she needs him. It’s too raw, makes her feels too depraved. Instead, she asks, “Why not?”
It’s the wrong thing to say. She immediately senses the change in the air, the overwhelming coldness that permeates the room. He takes her hand, forcing it away as he steps out of her space. He won’t look at her. “I know I’m hideous but that doesn’t-“
Katniss shakes her head, furious at her own inability to tell him. All she can say is, “You’re not.”
Peeta laughs an unhinged sound.
Same. Same. Same. Her brain screams.
“You want to know something Katniss? You know what kind of women want me?” He runs a hand through his hair, tugging on the ends, “I never thought you’d...you’d fetishize me like the others. You know, the ones who want to fuck a freak. I should probably be grateful for the offer. It’s the only kind I get. But I’m tired of it.“
She looks at him then, watches him shake with fury, cursing herself for her frozen lips.
“I’m done,” he spits the words out. He turns on his heel and undoes his toolbelt, tossing it on the ground. “I can’t be here with you like this, I can’t work like this.”
She tries not to notice his arousal.
At least I can do one thing right, Katniss thinks to herself. It’s such an inappropriate thought in the current situation that she wants to laugh. But then she’d just cry because she’s managed to fuck everything up.
“Not when…” his voice cuts off. He sounds like he’s crying. And the stupid, idiotic girl that she is, she can’t even look at him. She can’t look at what she’s done. “Not when...before this,” he gestured to the damaged half of his face, “I could have been good enough for you! I could have taken care of you! Do you want to know something Katniss? I’m in love with you! I have been since I was that stupid little boy who gave you a mother fucking cupcake in kindergarten!”
And then he’s running down the stairs. Once again, the door slams.
He’s gone.