#thgdrabble

“What else are you supposed to do with candy?” he asks before reaching out and tugging on the end of her braid. He likes to tug on her braid, sometimes, just to make her mad at him.  She’s so funny when she gets mad. She shoves him, hard, to get him back, then starts up a game of tag that he lets her win.  Even though he’s taller than her and the fastest boy in their class.

(He always lets Katniss catch him when they play tag.  She seems to enjoy winning and he likes it when she smiles.)

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Two

If there is a hell, Peeta is presently in its seventh circle.

There’s no doubt about it in his mind.

He stands, alone, along the back wall of Panem Middle School’s gym.  The room’s all done up in pink and white crepe-paper decorations.  In keeping with the stupid Valentine’s Day theme, he supposes.  Peeta watches the other eighth graders dance awkwardly with each other to terrible pop songs, feeling more self-conscious in his scratchy brown suit than he’s ever felt at any other moment in his life.

“Hey,” a familiar voice says.  He turns towards it and sees Katniss -- his best friend for nearly eight years now -- looking up at him with a smile.  She has her hair done up in a different way tonight. The braid is gone, and instead her hair’s all loose and curly and piled up on top of her head.  She’s got on these big, dangly earrings and a pink dress that kind of matches the decorations on the walls.  

She reaches out and gently touches his arm.  

“Hey yourself,” he hears himself say.  But it comes out all croaky and strange. He hates the way his voice sounds these days.  If he’s being honest, he kind of hates everything these days.  

“This dance is lame, isn’t it,” she says. He nods, because if that isn’t the understatement of the century he doesn’t know what is.  He turns to look at her again but she’s watching the couples on the dance floor, most of them standing so far apart from each other you could fit a beach ball between them.  

Katniss never usually wears perfume but tonight, for some reason, she is.  It smells like wildflowers.  The lights strung up around the room are mirrored in her eyes, which aren’t brown or green or blue, but some unusual combination of colors Peeta can’t quite put a name to.  

Pretty, he thinks to himself, suddenly feeling a little dazed.  She’s… really kind of pretty.

Peeta looks away from Katniss and down at the floor.  He wonders, with a small stab of panic, why his heart is suddenly beating so rapidly.

Katniss clears her throat.  “Do you want to… I dunno,” she begins.  She trails off.  Shrugs. “Do you want to… dance?  With me?”

Peeta swallows thickly.  “Um.”  He scratches at the back of his neck.  Is he blushing?  It kind of feels like he is.  “Why not?”  He figures he might as well.  It’s not like there’s anything else to do here, and Rye won’t be back to pick him up for another hour.  

“Great,” Katniss says, smiling.  She grabs his hand and leads him to the middle of the gym.  She says something else to him as she puts her hands on his shoulders.  But his heart is hammering so loudly he can’t really hear it.  

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Three

Peeta runs his hands through his wrecked hair for what might be the tenth time in ten minutes.

It’s Valentine’s Day.  The most romantic and utterly pointless night of the entire year.  And here he sits, all alone, in his apartment.  All because he’s still too terrified to let the girl he’s been in love with since before he even understood what that meant know how he feels about her.

He tries to focus on the Calculus problems on the kitchen table in front of him.  But it’s a lost cause.  Every time he closes his eyes the scene from earlier today plays over again in slow motion behind his eyelids.  The scene where Cato, that asshole, asked Katniss Everdeen -- his Katniss Everdeen! -- out to dinner in front of their entire English class.  

(Katniss had giggled a little before blushing and telling him yes.  Katniss never giggles.  Not ever. It had taken all of Peeta’s restraint not to launch his copy of Shakespeare’s sonnets across the room.)

Finally giving up, Peeta slams his book shut and shoves his chair back from the kitchen table.  It makes a horrible squealing noise against the linoleum floor.  In the moment, though, he can’t be bothered to care what his downstairs neighbors think.  

He begins to walk the length of his studio apartment distractedly, hands clutched behind his back as he fumes and plots and paces.

“I’ll tell her tomorrow,” he vows to himself.  Then he says it again, out loud, for good measure.

This is not the first time Peeta’s had to give himself a stern talking to on the subject of Katniss Everdeen.  Versions of this exact moment played out several times throughout high school (whenever Gale Hawthorne had his eyes on Katniss) and then again their freshman year of college, when Cato asked her out for the first time.  

Peeta’s told himself, at least a half dozen times, that this was it. This was definitely it.  He would tell her how he felt the next time he saw her. Come clean with her.  Stop living this lie that she’s only his best friend and that’s all he ever wants to have with her.

He stops pacing when he gets to his bathroom.  He stares at his reflection in the small mirror hanging over the sink.  

“I’ll tell her tomorrow,” he says, once again.  He straightens his posture, and nods at the young man staring back at him from the mirror.

Peeta only hopes that this time, he’ll have the courage to actually do it.

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Four

Katniss jumps on him in one fluid motion, her thighs coming to rest on either side of his lap as her hands tangle needfully in his hair.

She leans forward and wastes no time as she crushes her lips to his.  Peeta whimpers at the delicious contact, winding his arms around her as he becomes helplessly, utterly unmoored by the feel of her beautiful, lithe body pressed up against his at last.

He isn’t exactly certain how they ended up like this.

Just a minute ago, she’d been sitting next to him on the couch as he flipped mindlessly through one dumb romantic comedy after another.  When he finally gave up and shut the television off, Katniss told him she thought Valentine’s Day was the world’s stupidest holiday.  

“It makes single people feel like shit,” she’d said.  “Especially if they, you know.  Like somebody.”

He’d agreed with her, of course. How could he not?  He’s been dreading tonight ever since last year, when Katniss went out on a Valentine’s Day date with Cato and he’d spent a miserable night alone with his Calculus book in his apartment.  

But now Katniss’ teeth are nipping gently at the sensitive spot where his neck meets his shoulders and Peeta remembers, dimly, that a few moments before jumping him Katniss had just admitted she’d “had the hots for him” for years.  Or words to that effect.  He must have said the right thing in response because now here she is, kissing him quite literally senseless on his couch and grinding against him so exquisitely he’s not sure he’ll be able to hold it together much longer.

“Happy Valentine’s Day, Peeta,” she says, her voice shaking a little as she starts undoing the top buttons of his shirt.

He swallows.  “Happy Valentine’s Day,” Peeta says breathlessly, before all conversation ends.

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Five

“Hey!  Don’t eat those!”

Katniss’ shouting carries all the way down the hall to Peeta’s study.  Closing his book, he pushes back from his chair and pads down the hallway to the kitchen.

“What’s going on in here?” he asks.  But one look at his brother’s face – the corners of his lips covered in post-candy-heart-binge goo, and a guilty look in his eyes -- tells Peeta all he needs to know.

Katniss throws up her hands in frustration.  “He ate all the candy hearts I was planning to use in my class tomorrow.”  She says.  “All of them!”

Rye coughs sheepishly into his hand.  “But… well.  I mean, they’re candy,” Rye says, very quietly.  “And they were just… you know. Sitting out here.  Out in the open.  In a bowl.”  He shrugs. “How was I supposed to know I wasn’t supposed to eat them?”  

He has a point, Peeta thinks.  He’s about to say it out loud, but Katniss shoots him a look that says: This is all your fault, Mellark. You and your family’s stupid sweet tooth. 

After a lifetime of loving Katniss Everdeen he knows enough to stay quiet.  So instead of saying anything at all he pulls her to him and presses a gentle kiss to the top of her head.

“I didn’t even want to celebrate Valentine’s Day in the classroom tomorrow,” Katniss says.  “I still think it’s such a cheesy holiday.  But all the kids expect it and now what am I supposed to do?”

Peeta chooses his next words carefully.  “They’ll still sell more to us you know,” he says.  “It’s February 13th.  We can just run to the store and get some more.”

Katniss pulls back and looks at him.  “But I don’t have time,” she says.  “I have the class party to plan and homework to grade.”

Peeta nods at his brother.  “Rye and I will do it,” he says.  “Won’t we, Rye?”

Rye shoots his younger brother a look.  But he nods in agreement.  “Right. Can’t think of anything I’d rather do this afternoon than go to the Hallmark store and buy candy hearts for a little kid’s class party.”

He’s lying about that part, of course.  But it seems to appease Katniss well enough.  “Make sure you get a good variety,” she says.  “You ate like a hundred of these things, Rye.”

“A good variety,” Peeta repeats.  He grabs his car keys from the kitchen counter and puts a hand on Rye’s shoulder. “We’ll be back in an hour.”

As they drive to the store, Peeta’s mind wanders back to the night he proposed to Katniss.  The way she’d beamed at him when she saw the ring and when she said yes.  How excited she’s been these past few months, planning every tiny detail of their wedding, even if she’ll never admit it to his face.