(no subject)
Title: Tall Grass
Author: broken__records
Pairing: Katniss/Gale
Word Count: 1010
Summary: Post series. Five years after the war and he is suddenly back in your life.
Five years after the war and he is suddenly back in your life. First, he is looming in your doorway, taller than you remember, a week’s worth of beard on his face, smiling sideways at you, saying, “Hey, Catnip.” You feel something slip inside of you, your heart or your stomach. You couldn’t have realized how terribly you’ve missed him until he was right there taking slow steps toward you.
And then later - because he stays, he comes back to Twelve and he stays - you are back in the woods with him. Only now you are lying in the lush summer grass, and he is above you, his arms on either side of you, holding him up. His body blocks out the sun perfectly, and the light sets him aglow and the grass tickles the back of your neck and his mouth is hot and insistent on yours.
Peeta thinks you’re hunting. Peeta thinks you’re hunting alone. Peeta doesn’t know what you actually do with your three hours in the woods, or that it involves so much skin and sweat and this impossible ache that you can’t ever seem to quell. Peeta continues to love you and trust you. You continue to hurt him and lie to him. It’s an old pattern really.
“We could still do it,” he says, still hovering above you. You like it, feeling enclosed by his body. When you were younger, you found his protective nature stifling, but now that you are not in any actual life or death danger, his protection is different, less severe, more affectionate.
“Do what?” He ducks down to press his mouth against a freckle near your collarbone.
“Take off, live in the woods,” he says into your neck. “There’s no one to catch us now. It could just be you and me.”
You laugh softly. “Yeah, right.”
“Nothing’s stopping us.”
You turn your head and press your mouth against his wrist, feeling his pulse. You leave your lips there and look out over the edge of the hill, hoping to keep him in this single quiet moment for a while before he makes you say it.
The thought of saying these words to him makes you angry. But it’s an anger you welcome these days because it’s not like your old anger, not like that fire that lived inside of you for so long. This is a quiet anger, a manageable anger. All you have to do is sink your teeth gently into his skin until he laughs and pulls his arm back. And like that, like a miracle, your anger fades. It almost makes you happy, to be angry like that.
There are a lot of things that make you almost happy these days. Only a few that make you genuinely happy. Being here, with Gale, is one of those few things. Peeta is another one of those few things.
You close your eyes and say, “I’m marrying him.”
You feel Gale’s shadow suddenly moving and then it’s gone. Just the hot sun pressing down on you. You open your eyes again to find him lying beside you. Tall pieces of grass obscure parts of his face making it hard to gauge his reaction. After a while he says, “Is that what you want?”
You look up into the sun until you can’t stand it anymore, think you might go blind, and then you turn your head back to him. You have known him for so long. It’s as if those years when he was gone never happened, he feels so integral to your daily life now. You can’t seem to remember how you stood his absence. Even just the thought of it now is unbearable.
“I wish I could just keep you both,” you say quietly.
His face has turned to stone, the way it does when he’s angry. You remember how ruthless he’d been during the war, how almost bloodthirsty he’d seemed. You had never seen such rage in him before then. He had frightened you even. But that wasn’t him back then, not really. Still, you have trouble predicting how he might respond to things. You are constantly looking for that flash in his eyes you saw so many times in Command.
Which is why, when it comes down to it, you know what choice you’ll make. And when he says, “Yeah, but you can’t have both, Katniss,” it’s easy for you to say, “I know.”
And he finally turns to look at you with his face open in surrender to your decision, because it has always been up to you, and you have always been dragging your feet selfishly, not wanting to give up either of these two people, not wanting to have to hurt anyone else.
“You know, I overheard you say to Peeta once during the rebellion that I would pick whoever I thought I couldn’t survive without.”
“And it’s him,” he says, sitting up and looking down at you.
You wish you were thirteen again and nothing like this had happened yet. You wish he was just your best friend, your hunting partner, and nothing more. You wish Prim’s name had never been picked. You wish Peeta’s name had never been picked. You wish you’d been killed in the first arena or the second arena or the war. You wish Gale had been killed in the war, or never come back to Twelve, or never loved you at all. You wish Prim was still alive to be your voice of reason, to grow up and be an amazing doctor, to grow up at all. But you are older now, and so much has happened, and you are only now starting to accept the fact that you cannot change these things and that maybe not everything has been your fault, no matter how much blood you are still washing from your hands, and you love him too much to do anything other than echo, “It’s him,” and watch him stand and walk away and be swallowed up by the trees.
Author: broken__records
Pairing: Katniss/Gale
Word Count: 1010
Summary: Post series. Five years after the war and he is suddenly back in your life.
Five years after the war and he is suddenly back in your life. First, he is looming in your doorway, taller than you remember, a week’s worth of beard on his face, smiling sideways at you, saying, “Hey, Catnip.” You feel something slip inside of you, your heart or your stomach. You couldn’t have realized how terribly you’ve missed him until he was right there taking slow steps toward you.
And then later - because he stays, he comes back to Twelve and he stays - you are back in the woods with him. Only now you are lying in the lush summer grass, and he is above you, his arms on either side of you, holding him up. His body blocks out the sun perfectly, and the light sets him aglow and the grass tickles the back of your neck and his mouth is hot and insistent on yours.
Peeta thinks you’re hunting. Peeta thinks you’re hunting alone. Peeta doesn’t know what you actually do with your three hours in the woods, or that it involves so much skin and sweat and this impossible ache that you can’t ever seem to quell. Peeta continues to love you and trust you. You continue to hurt him and lie to him. It’s an old pattern really.
“We could still do it,” he says, still hovering above you. You like it, feeling enclosed by his body. When you were younger, you found his protective nature stifling, but now that you are not in any actual life or death danger, his protection is different, less severe, more affectionate.
“Do what?” He ducks down to press his mouth against a freckle near your collarbone.
“Take off, live in the woods,” he says into your neck. “There’s no one to catch us now. It could just be you and me.”
You laugh softly. “Yeah, right.”
“Nothing’s stopping us.”
You turn your head and press your mouth against his wrist, feeling his pulse. You leave your lips there and look out over the edge of the hill, hoping to keep him in this single quiet moment for a while before he makes you say it.
The thought of saying these words to him makes you angry. But it’s an anger you welcome these days because it’s not like your old anger, not like that fire that lived inside of you for so long. This is a quiet anger, a manageable anger. All you have to do is sink your teeth gently into his skin until he laughs and pulls his arm back. And like that, like a miracle, your anger fades. It almost makes you happy, to be angry like that.
There are a lot of things that make you almost happy these days. Only a few that make you genuinely happy. Being here, with Gale, is one of those few things. Peeta is another one of those few things.
You close your eyes and say, “I’m marrying him.”
You feel Gale’s shadow suddenly moving and then it’s gone. Just the hot sun pressing down on you. You open your eyes again to find him lying beside you. Tall pieces of grass obscure parts of his face making it hard to gauge his reaction. After a while he says, “Is that what you want?”
You look up into the sun until you can’t stand it anymore, think you might go blind, and then you turn your head back to him. You have known him for so long. It’s as if those years when he was gone never happened, he feels so integral to your daily life now. You can’t seem to remember how you stood his absence. Even just the thought of it now is unbearable.
“I wish I could just keep you both,” you say quietly.
His face has turned to stone, the way it does when he’s angry. You remember how ruthless he’d been during the war, how almost bloodthirsty he’d seemed. You had never seen such rage in him before then. He had frightened you even. But that wasn’t him back then, not really. Still, you have trouble predicting how he might respond to things. You are constantly looking for that flash in his eyes you saw so many times in Command.
Which is why, when it comes down to it, you know what choice you’ll make. And when he says, “Yeah, but you can’t have both, Katniss,” it’s easy for you to say, “I know.”
And he finally turns to look at you with his face open in surrender to your decision, because it has always been up to you, and you have always been dragging your feet selfishly, not wanting to give up either of these two people, not wanting to have to hurt anyone else.
“You know, I overheard you say to Peeta once during the rebellion that I would pick whoever I thought I couldn’t survive without.”
“And it’s him,” he says, sitting up and looking down at you.
You wish you were thirteen again and nothing like this had happened yet. You wish he was just your best friend, your hunting partner, and nothing more. You wish Prim’s name had never been picked. You wish Peeta’s name had never been picked. You wish you’d been killed in the first arena or the second arena or the war. You wish Gale had been killed in the war, or never come back to Twelve, or never loved you at all. You wish Prim was still alive to be your voice of reason, to grow up and be an amazing doctor, to grow up at all. But you are older now, and so much has happened, and you are only now starting to accept the fact that you cannot change these things and that maybe not everything has been your fault, no matter how much blood you are still washing from your hands, and you love him too much to do anything other than echo, “It’s him,” and watch him stand and walk away and be swallowed up by the trees.