Chapter Text
KATNISS
Oh no, I think, not him.
He walks in the back door with a blast of arctic air and a flurry of snow that swirls around him, stomping sludge covered boots on the floor I just cleaned this morning, then looks up from his feet to fix me with those glacier blue eyes that always used to flit away from mine, but this time widen in surprise. I'm covered in flour, up to my elbows in dough that refuses to yield to my amateur kneading attempts, and right in the middle of both over and under proofing several batches of bread dough. I was praying for no customers in the next hour, and at least customers come through the front door of the bakery, ringing the little bell and giving me a moment to wipe my hands and school my face. But this is far too much. Not only is someone coming in the employee entrance but of all people, Peeta Mellark.
"Oh," he says, with the audacity to be surprised to see me there. "Hi Katniss."
"This area is employees only," I tell him with a scowl. Why does he know my name? I only know his because I heard his mother yell at him once, years ago.
"I know," he says, giving me a warm smile with just a touch of shyness.
"Then go around," I snap. I'm trying and failing to wipe the clingy, sticky dough off my hands so I can get the sweaty hair off my forehead. I'm surely red faced from the ovens and he's giving me this odd look that makes me want to shove him back into the snow myself.
"Sorry," he offers, still grinning like he won some sort of contest. "Do you work here now?"
"Yes. If you want to buy something you need to be on the other side of the counter," I say.
He puts his hands up in defeat and retreats toward the front of the bakery, looping around to the front side of the glass display cases.
"I'm just looking for Haymitch," he says, pulling the orange and red knit hat off his head and ruffling ashy blond curls free of snow. "I'm Peeta, by the way."
"I know," I say. "Haymitch isn't here. What do you want?"
His eyebrows shoot up.
I could kick myself. I should be nicer to him. Peeta Mellark is owed at least kindness from me, besides he's probably cold and hungry. There's snow caught in his eyelashes somehow, which doesn't seem possible, and his nose and cheeks are bright red from windburn like he's been on the slopes for days.
He just threw me off showing up like that. Up close. I'm used to him being at a comfortable distance. A blond head in a crowd, an orange coat on the ski slope, blue eyes just touching my gaze and then darting away. That's how it's been with him for seven years now. Well except for last year. He shows up every winter with the rest of the tourists for skiing and fireworks and happy white Christmas celebrations in the expensive cabins by the lake, haunts my town with his boyish presence for a few weeks, then vanishes with the snow, back to what I can only assume is a perfect life in some city somewhere far away from my mountains.
He's not quite so boyish anymore. And when did he get taller than me?
"I'll wait for him then, but I'll stay out of your way, I promise," he says.
I take a breath and decide to be more polite. "Can I get you anything? Are you hungry?"
I owe him bread after all, two loaves with the same yellow flower logo on the packaging. I remember the exact flavor of the ones he gave me years ago, full of nuts and raisins. Now that I work for the bakery I've been learning how to make it. Haymitch calls it trail mix bread.
"No, thank you. I could use some hot chocolate though," he says.
"We don't sell that," I tell him, a bit disappointed I can't finally settle this debt.
"No, but I know where the mix is stashed. If you don't mind letting me behind the counter, I'll make you some too."
Why is he always smiling? Is that what family money, descent winter boots, and annual Christmas vacations does to a person? And why does he know his way around this place so well?
I sigh and give up. "Okay fine. Are you his grandson or something?"
"Nephew," he admits, returning to my side of the counter and opening a lower cabinet full of crumbled up mail and other random junk.
"Sorry," I mumble.
He laughs. "No need, he's actually alright when he's sober. But I probably don't have to tell you that."
I meant that I'm sorry I snapped at him for coming in the back entrance of his family's business, but I guess I do empathize with anyone related to my sour mouthed boss.
"Here we go," he says, tugging a slightly squished cardboard box from the depths of the cabinet.
"There's milk in…" I motion with a still messy hand toward the industrial sized fridge in the back but then remember be probably knows. "Never mind."
"Thanks. Do you want some?"
"Okay," I allow. I shouldn't, but I love hot chocolate too much to say no.
He hunts down two mugs while I wash my hands and try smoothing my braid into something less frantic. After all these years of the constant, needy ache of owing this boy, of knowing I have to find a way to thank him eventually, I'm finally talking to him and the first thing he does is offer me something new. Life is emotionally abusive.
Hot chocolate isn't quite the same as those life saving loaves of bread, but still. Standing in the bakery that bread come from, with the dandelion logo that gave me hope as a child printed on rows and rows of yellow paper boxes on the shelves overhead, it's hard not to think about it.
I wonder for the hundredth time if he knew how badly I needed them. Did he realize I was rummaging through the trash cans behind his cabin because I was looking for food that I wouldn't survive without? Did he wonder if there was a little sister at home burning furniture after the heat got shut off? Or why adults let us get into that position in the first place? Or did he just see someone in the cold, alone, and offer them something warm? I don't even dare to wish he doesn't remember that day. He's probably spent every Christmas since we were eleven wondering why I didn't say something.
"Okay so are you a marshmallow girl or a whipped cream girl?" He asks, handing me a warm mug with a curl of steam rising from it that tickles my nose and smells like heaven. "I am a whipped cream girl myself."
"Whipped cream is good," I say.
"Great. Because I couldn't find marshmallows," he says, scooping a spoon full of fresh homemade cream into my cup that is supposed to go on black forest cupcakes tomorrow morning. I force myself not to laugh.
As I take my first sip of hot, rich, creamy chocolate, noisy whining and yipping cause me and Peeta to both look toward the back door. It bursts open in a flurry of snow and fur as a huge gray and white husky dances loudly into the bakery, followed by a cloud of vodka smell and a weary Haymitch, who shrugs his coat off before even shutting the door. I clutch the warm mug in my hands as the winter air pierces my thin sweater.
"Shut the fuck up Effie," Haymitch grumbles at the dog, who swings past me and Peeta too quickly to receive the pets she's begging for and circles back to her owner with a warbled dog sound I've only ever heard her make. Haymitch grumbles something else before finally lifting his haggard face and noticing Peeta has intruded upon the kitchen.
"There you are boy. Need your help today. This one’s useless with bread," he says, jabbing a thumb in my direction.
"Hello to you too," Peeta says. "My flight was awful, thanks for asking."
Haymitch ignores this and turns to me. "Sweetheart, this is my nephew Peeta. I have three but he’s the one who gives me the least lip, so I like him best."
"Do you talk to all of your employees like that?" Peeta asks.
"Only the ones who are a pain in my ass," Haymitch responds with a mockery of a smile in my direction.
I flip him off which makes Peeta nearly choke on a laugh and set his hot chocolate down on a counter next to my bread dough, which to Haymitch's point, is not impressive.
"Tell you what, I can't help today because I have the SUV and my mom will want it back, but if you pick me up tomorrow I can lend a hand," Peeta offers.
"I can make bread," I insist, insulted that he's pawning my job off on a nephew. I need this money and if Peeta does all my work I'll loose it. "Considering the training I've gotten, I've done great."
"What training?" Haymitch grumbles.
I give a pointed look which only makes him roll his eyes. "Yeah yeah, you want to be taught the bread. Well here is your teacher, shipped him in from out of town."
"I am a much better teacher than him," Peeta whispers loudly, leaning toward me. "I smell better too."
"Most people do," I say.
"Wouldn't want to interfere with your resort time," Haymitch says mockingly. "Snow bunnies don't chase themselves."
"No, but my brothers have that under control," Peeta says with a long sip of hot chocolate. "It's no problem. The slopes are the same ones as last year."
I glance at him from the corner of my eye. I didn't think he was here last year. I didn't see him and we always cross paths at least once or twice, even if we never speak.
The sound of the small bell above the bakery front door dings and I leave the conversation to greet the customers, who appear to be a gaggle of bundled up faces gleefully pressed up against the display glass. I wrap warm loaves of fragrant bread in paper marked with the dandelion logo, tuck pastries and cookies into their yellow box, bright and pretty as ornaments, and hand them over the counter to waiting hands. Several more people walk in and an ill prepared tourist in long johns and basketball shorts asks for directions, and by the time I return Peeta is helping Haymitch up the back stairs to the apartment over the bakery. Effie's feet make click clack noises on the hardwood as she bounds up the steps ahead of them.
When he comes back down, Peeta gives me an apologetic look that I do not want and glances at the bowls of dough around me in the kitchen. "Did he really not teach you anything?"
"Nope," I huff, finding my hot chocolate mug again even though I should be getting back to kneading. "There's a recipe book but that's only gotten me so far."
"Sorry I can't stay today. I'll come back tomorrow and we'll sort this out," He says.
"It's not your problem," I say.
He only shrugs. "He's not always this bad, you know. It's just Christmas. Is tough."
I'm not sure what to say to that. I have my own reasons for hating winter and it's socially imposed time of cheer. There's a reason it was December when I was frozen and starving at his cabin on the lake and it's not exactly a time I look forward to. But I can't afford to loose myself in liquor like Haymitch does. People depend on me.
"We'll talk tomorrow?" He asks.
"Okay," I allow and he gives me a friendly smile.
"It was good seeing you Katniss," he says as he disappears out the door, hands shoved in his pockets, winter air filling the place he left behind.
PEETA
Her eyes are silver, like flying saucers from another planet. I've never been close enough to really tell before. I don't think I made a very good second impression, but how was I supposed to know she'd be there? Working in my uncle's bakery of all places. If she doesn't quit before the end of the day I'll come back tomorrow, try for a third shot. Does the first time even count? All I did was put a couple of loaves of bread down in the snow on the back patio and run away.
I've spent years trying to work up the courage to talk to her. I didn't even know her name for a year after that first meeting. I was at the Christmas festival downtown with my brothers. They weren't happy being stuck with me so they ditched me almost as soon as we got there, which I didn't mind really. I had money in my pocket for candy canes and kettle corn. I remember the bag was warm in my hands, seeping heat through my gloves and wafting fragrant air up onto my face, and then there she was. Under strings of white lights, on some rickety platform plastered with the festival posters. Someone had her stand on a stool so she could reach the microphone. She had a red dress with black tights underneath and her coat was way too big for her, nose bitten red by the cold and two black braids she carefully smoothed down her front. Then she took a breath, and sang Silent Night.
I'd never seen someone so lit from within, blurring out my periphery. She had the voice of an angel, echoing clean and crisp through cold air, the way sound always travels farther in winter. At least my dad says it does. Sometimes I wonder if my memory exaggerates that song. I was only twelve, maybe it was just the first time I'd really noticed a pretty girl. But no, I noticed just about every girl in my class, and there was Delly Cartwright on my hockey team who was really cute. But no one made a lasting impression like my mystery girl. Even the adults stopped to listen when she started singing, pausing their purchases and milling about to gather in a circle around her voice. Like she was a lone candle on a dark night or the star to lead the wise men in the Christmas story. I'm not that wise and I'm barely a man but I do feel the itch to follow her through the night sky.
When she finished, the old man came back on stage to usher her away and said, "give it up for young miss Katniss Everdeen!" in a thick mountain accent. I nearly dropped my popcorn clapping.
And now she's working at The Dandelion. What are the odds something like that would work out in my favor? Slim I'd say. Could I get even luckier and find out she broke up with that snowboarder boyfriend she had last Christmas? I probably shouldn't think that far ahead. I'll just try and be her friend, if she's into that. She did quite a bit of glaring and trying to get me to leave. She's different than I imagined, even though I knew she would be. More guarded, more unreadable, funny and strange. Weird but fucking beautiful. I guess you'd have to be to put up with my uncle.
I navigate the mountain streets as best I can, trying and failing not to slip the car tires on the ice patches that seem to gather at every single stop sign. I'm not great at winter driving, but I always try to get over to see Haymitch at least a couple of times while we're in town. Someone should really keep an eye on him this time of year and I learned young that nobody is going to bother if I don't.
I turn left and slide the SUV down a short incline along the road that feeds a string of cabins along the north side of the lake. Each one is built of thick logs and puffs pale smoke into a sky so heavy and gray the smoke disappears quickly into the clouds. Our cabin, the one we rent every year over Christmas, is at the end of the road, hung with glowing lights that sparkle in the freezing air.
I've changed quite a bit in the seven years since I first saw Katniss here, but this place hasn't. It's a time capsule frozen in ice. Same pines heavy with last weeks snow fall, same porch furniture where I placed the bread, same plastic trash bins down by the wood shed where I saw her digging around. And out past it, the slope of the yard that levels off suddenly to a perfect flat plane of snow I know hides a frozen lake beneath, where the tree line stops and there's nothing but open sky beyond an icy beach.
As if it knows where my thoughts have drifted, the sky lets loose a sprinkle of fresh snow, coming down with no sound as I put the car in park and stare out over the lake. Katniss probably has a boyfriend and clearly finds me aggravating. Teaching your uncle's employee the ropes of a struggling small business isn't exactly a romantic setting and no matter what happens I'll only be in town for a few weeks. I didn't start college this fall and if I don't get a proper job soon I'll get kicked out, so I have plenty to worry about back home. But despite all of that, I feel a warmth flickering in my chest, warming me against the cold and the odds and the logic.
Fuck it, I'm falling for her, like snow on the beach.