#everlylark

It’s not her. It’s one of her friends, the one she calls “Johanna” or, when she’s feeling feisty, “asshole” or “cunt,” but when she says these things she doesn’t mean them, not really— not in the way I do, anyway.  

“Here, Everdeen,” says the one called Johanna, plucking me from the drawer and tossing me through the air until it’s Katniss’ hands that clasp me to her chest. “If those don’t get you fucked, then nothing will.” The abrasive voice reaches me even where I rest, smothered in a ball, cradled against the warmth of Katniss’ breasts.

Katniss groans, the sound a distinct cross between embarrassment and annoyance. “Jo, I don’t think that the underwear I wear will make any earthly difference—”

“It will,” the one called Annie says, her voice earnest and sweet. “It really will. It will boost your confidence.”

“Ha!” Johanna hoots like she’s just won a wet t-shirt contest. “Ya hear that, Everdeen? Even Little Miss Orphan Annie agrees: no granny panties for you. Tonight you’re playing Dick Hunt, and you’ve got to feel fuckable when you’re playing or the boys ain’t gonna play.”

“You’re revolting!” Katniss protests, but I can feel her race pulsing through the skin of her palm, and I know she’s going to cave.

Katniss rests me on her comforter, and from this vantage I can see Johanna walk over to the closet, can hear the mirrored door squeal on its rusty track as she slides it open.   

“Oh God— oh Christ— Jesusfuckme, Katniss. It looks like your closet barfed up business casual.” Johanna rustles through Katniss’ garments, oblivious to the feelings of the skirts, button up blouses, and smart-but-sensible sweaters that she casts aside like they're worth nothing at all. “Tell me, Katniss, exactly when you traded in your vagina for a smooth patch.”

Katniss flushes a furious shade of red and scowls at the she-beast tearing apart her closet. “Jo, it's called ‘being gainfully employed.’ And it's got nothing to do with whether or not I still have a vagina.”

“Keep telling yourself that,” her friend mutters under her breath, scraping the hangers noisily along the rack as she searches through the clothes.  

Katniss doesn't seem to hear her, or at least she pretends not to. But I do. And, as loathe as I am to agree with anything Johanna has to say, it's been far too long since Katniss has bothered to wear me.

Maybe the she-beast has a point.

With a rowdy “a-ha!” Johanna rips a silver dress from one of the hangers and holds it out in front of her, a wicked grin crawling onto her face. “Well, lookie here. The old girl’s got some freak left in her.”

Annie and the one called Madge converge on Johanna, each looking more pleased than the next. Their faces beam as they appraise the dress, their eyes alternating between Katniss and the dress as if to decide how one could possibly have any relation to the other.   

Madge reaches inside the dress and pulls out a price tag, still attached. She frowns as she looks at it. “Why haven’t you ever worn this?” There’s nothing malicious in the question, and I’m thankful Katniss doesn’t take it the wrong way.

...Because I’d really, really like to spend time with her tonight in that silver dress, and that ain’t gonna happen if she gets pissed at her friends.

Katniss shrugs. “I bought it when I was dating David, when I thought he was going to propose… and then after… what happened... I just came to associate it with him, I guess. So in the closet it stayed.”

Johanna grimaces and begins to shove the dress back in the closet, but Katniss practically leaps off the bed in protest. “No, no… don’t put it back.” She sounds so determined, suddenly, as if some thought has occurred to her. “I’ll wear it.”

I can’t help but notice the knowing look Annie shoots at Katniss. If she knows Katniss half as well as I do— which, okay let’s be honest, she probably doesn’t— then she has to be wondering why Katniss is suddenly able to face this particular demon.

I think it must be because of him, the one I’d heard the night before— groaning and moaning and panting her name. He’s a loud one, which is kind of annoying when I’m tucked in for the night and hoping to catch some beauty rest.

His name is either “Oh god” or “Peeee-tahhhhh.”

I’m not sure how I feel about him yet.

Katniss takes the dress from Johanna, refusing to meet her friends’ eyes, and then picks me up and takes me with her into the bathroom. She drops me onto the cold tile, just a couple inches shy of the soft, plush bath mat. It’s moments like these I’d love nothing more than to give her a piece of my fucking mind. (A little consideration is all I’m asking for when I spend my day literally covering her ass… well, maybe not her ass, but other precious cargo).

Through the open door, I can hear Madge. “It’s old school night at the Hob, and they’ve got well drinks for four bucks, so we’re thinking about hitting that up. Sound good to you, Kat?”

Katniss slides me up her legs, one, delicious leg at a time, and I lose myself in the sensation of her smooth skin caressing my fabric. It feels like heaven, how I fit around her so perfectly, cupping her sex like I was made for her.

“Yeah, sounds great,” Katniss mutters, trying her best to sound enthusiastic. “I honestly don’t care where we go.” She slides the dress over her head, the fabric falling just below her ass, and then all I can see is her feet, the way she anxiously, absentmindedly scratches at her left ankle with the big toe of her right foot. Over and over, she scratches, like her skin is crawling off her body. She’s not used to wearing me— or dresses this short— and I think she must be uncomfortable at how exposed she is. But I can tell that she’s trying to resist how the dress and I make her feel.

The one named Annie comes into the bathroom and stands behind Katniss. Her voice is, like always, quiet and patient. “Something is definitely up with you,” she says, the sound of Katniss’ zipper punctuating her words as she zips up her friend’s dress. “No— someone. And when you’re ready, you’re going to have to tell me who that someone is.”

I can feel Katniss tense up, but she doesn’t reply.

The next hour is a fog of preparations and fussing, the constant prattle of Katniss’ friends as they pluck and paint and perfume every last inch of her. I can tell she’s anxious; her temperature is raised, and the heat from her body radiates into me, making me delirious.

Finally, after what seems like days, she moves into the refreshing night, sliding onto the cool leather of Johanna’s car seat, and when the bare skin of her ass touches it, she hisses and crosses her legs to conceal a secret only I know.

Her secret?

Tonight Katniss Everdeen feels sexy and alive.

As we enter the club, I’m rendered blind and deaf by the low lights and thumping bass. I don’t know where we’re going or who we’re with, but Katniss starts to drink.

And drink.

And then she drinks some more.

She starts to dance, and when she moves, I move too. Her slender thighs and curves rub against my fabric sensually, agonizingly, but it isn't long before her body comes to a halt.    

The music is droning on, some man talking about how he loves big butts and he cannot lie (a sentiment I happen to share), when I feel it— the warmth and wetness of her arousal.

It happens suddenly, and I can feel her arms knock in frustration at her sides, her fingers mindlessly worrying the fabric of her dress, as she fights an unwinnable battle.  

I think it must be him— her lover, this Peeta— that she sees.

There’s nothing worse than knowing someone, loving someone, existing for someone, and not being able to protect them. But you can’t protect anyone in this world.

Especially when you're a pair of panties.

I don’t know what this “Peeta” looks like, I can’t discern his intentions. Right now I can’t even hear him. All I know, all I intimately know, is how Katniss responds to him. Maybe I know this better than she does herself.

At just the sight of him, her body comes to life.

The next few minutes are an overload of feelings I don’t have the time or ability to process. All I know is this:

Her pulse rages, her temperature rises, and just when I’m certain that she’s going to pass out and take me down with her, I feel something inside of her burn up and disintegrate to ash.

She runs away, and as she crashes into the street, I can see the cracked pavement glowing orange from the light of the street lamps. She’s crying, her entire body racked with sobs, and over the din of the people on the street I can hear her gasping for breath. She grows chill in the night air, and when she shivers I shiver, too.   

She's heartsick over him.

I think I hate him for it.

But then I hear his voice.

I know it’s him, I recognize the way he says her name, how every letter is filled with urgency and desire. I know that feeling, the need for her warmth and closeness, and it's the way he's speaking to her, begging her, that makes me think I’ve underestimated him after all.

She's a difficult, headstrong girl. I know this about her. Her neglect of me tells me something fundamental: she doesn’t let anyone get too close. She protects herself with reasons and justifications and shabby excuses why she deserves to be alone— and will always be that way. She keeps the world at arm’s length. Anything that could lead to intimacy she casts aside in some masochistic, misguided form of self-preservation.

Every day that Katniss passes me over for a more sensible pair of panties— the Old Bitties, as I like to call them— it reaffirms something else I know about her: she rejects the frivolous and ostentatious for the simple and true. In the battle between show and comfort, the latter always wins.

And the way her body responds to him, even as they fight and he curses and she curses back, makes me think that he's as natural and right a fit for her as any of her favorite clothes. She may be crying and trembling, but when he touches her, her pulse thrums and her clit throbs, and, in the time I've known her, no other man has had that effect on her.

That has to rate for something.

As they skirmish, an unfamiliar voice interrupts them, asking if she’s alright, and I can feel Katniss’ embarrassment, the way her entire body flushes at  feeling so vulnerable and exposed. But the boy is sensible, even now.  

He touches her— I know this because I can actually feel her aching for him— and he takes her somewhere dark and quiet to talk. His voice is low, nearly inaudible over the bass, but each decibel courses through her bloodstream anyway, travels through every vein and capillary until it suffuses her bloodstream. “If you want to ask me how many girls I’ve slept with, Katniss, that’s fair. I’ll tell you. But I think what you really need to know is how many I’ve slept with since the day I met you.”

When he tells her this I want to scream, “Ask him, motherfucker, just ask him,” and I know her pussy does, too, but her pride won’t allow it. Her pulse hammers inside her body, and I think that his pulse must, too because when he speaks again he sounds furious.

“You won’t ask… And why’s that? Afraid you’ll hear something that might prove your idea of me wrong?”

I want to exalt to the heavens, to slap him a high five and then set myself on fire, because it is in this moment I know Katniss Everdeen has met her match.

And he loves her, I know he does. He murmurs to her body, “The answer is one. You. Only you. From the minute we met, it’s just been you.” He thinks this is a song he sings just for her. He can’t hear how every cell of her body sings it back to him, word for word and note for note. His words are an incantation summoning all her passion.

And she has so much passion.

Katniss fights it, she tries to stop him from saying what I know he wants to say— needs to say— and she does what she does best: she pushes him away.

She lies to herself, she lies to her feet, she lies to the sky and to him and to everything and anything that will listen. She insults herself, she insults him. She pushes and bristles and fights because that’s what she does.

But she wants, too, with every ounce of her being. She’s so wet for him that her need for him soaks me, drowns me. It’s suffocating to hunger for someone the way she’s hungering for him.

When he presses his body against hers, his warmth seeps into me, intoxicating me. His voice infects me like it infects her, and I’m useless against it, useless to protect her. I couldn’t if I wanted to.

He sees her for exactly who she is and calls her on her games. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing… It’s not fair. You’re not being fair. It’s not fucking fair—”

Every syllable, every sound out of his mouth courses through her, and she reaches out and touches him to create a conduit for everything that’s mounting within her. It’s too much, too unbearably much. And I know she’s touching him because I can feel the hard, unrelenting press of Peeta’s cock against her body as he responds to her.

It doesn’t matter who’s talking anymore or what they’re trying to say, all that’s left is Katniss’ aching need and the way Peeta’s length feels grinding against me, grinding against her. Everything they’re saying is just words, words, words, empty placeholders for what was always going to happen anyway. They deny what they want. They elide the truth. But they take what they want and, in the taking, make a new truth.

He’s kissing her, and she’s throbbing, and he’s biting her, and she’s bucking, and when his hands skate below the hemline of her dress and hike it up over her ass, exposing me, I want to gasp with her, too. The night air is so cold it feels like fire on my wet fabric, and when his fingers begin to rub her they rub me, too.

I think I fall in love with his hands first.

They’re rough and callused, but his fingers are gentle and dexterous. They dance across her body, pressing and massaging and dipping, and what he’s doing feels so good I don’t even notice that its his hands that have ripped me down Katniss’s hips until I land in a pool around her ankles.

I fall to the ground, gasping and delirious, but before I can make sense of what’s happened, and why I’m suddenly so cold, I’m flying through the air.

I land several feet away from her— from them— between a smashed piece of chewing gum and a pile of cigarette butts. The ground here is mercifully dry, but the smell of the butts is nauseating.

As I collect my bearings I can see that Katniss’ leg is wound around Peeta’s hip, her arms snaked around his shoulders, and when both of her legs hook around his back, he reaches down to press his cock inside her. Every time his hips undulate she slides up against the wall, moaning and keening and pleading to her absent god. He kisses her, roughly, and swallows her frantic words, her senseless babble. Through his jeans I can see the muscles of his ass clench as he buries himself in her.   

Her fingers grasp the tense muscles of his shoulders, and through the darkness, over the din of the music and their bodies colliding, in the distance between me and them, I can feel them fighting to hold onto each other. She cries and he groans, she wails and he grunts— their bodies finally speaking a language worth using.  

They move together like this, a frantic dance to a bitter song, until she comes and he comes, too.

They’re panting and sweaty, and the air around them reeks of sex. He holds her to his chest, and I can practically hear everything he wants to say to her— his thoughts are so loud— but she does what she always does and pushes him away.

“That was—” he begins, his voice filled with awe.

“A mistake,” she tells him. A lie, as hollow and empty as the alleyway carrying their echoes.

She’s kisses him gently in goodbye.

And that’s when she leaves me.

There is a flickering, drowned light and the sensation of familiar fingers curling around me. They hold and stroke and caress me, and as soon as I hear the voice, I know who’s taken me.

“Look at you,” he says, his voice soft and kind. “You’re coming with me.”

It’s not her. It’s him. The one called Peeta.

He tucks me into the front pocket of his jeans, and as he walks down the alleyway and into the night, his fingers stay tangled in me.