FIC: Balanced on this thread (Peeta/Katniss)
Title: Balanced on this thread
Author: spamdilemma
Characters/Pairing: Peeta POV; Peeta/Katniss
Rating: PG
Category: Gen, angst
Spoilers: Through Catching Fire
Summary: Four times Peeta Mellark almost spoke to Katniss Everdeen (and one time he did)
For shadybrightside's fic prompt. Though it deviates slightly? (Apologies.)
(1)
He replays his father's confession in his head almost as much as her song. It had never before occurred to Peeta that there could have been other lives that mothers and fathers had wanted to live. But now that the thought's burrowed itself into his brain, it's since taken flight. Do you see that little girl? his father had confided to him, a child, too young to really understand its implications. I wanted to marry her mother.
Peeta's young, that's true enough. But he understands that there are parts of your heart that can never really forget. Peeta wonders what his father dreams about at night now, sleeping beside his mother in their rooms above the bakery. He wonders what things he keeps, and what things he's grown old enough to discard. He wonders if Katniss's song is one of those things to be kept close or outgrown, like his older brother's boots passed on to him.
He doesn't see Katniss much after that first assembly; Peeta doesn't know anyone from the Seam, after all. His friends are the children of shopkeepers in Town, and it's a fact that seems to remain true. He doesn't know Katniss Everdeen too, he admits to himself, and it feels a strange thing to wonder if he can really forget a girl he's never met.
Peeta does wonder, though, when at the end of the day a man from the Seam comes in hoping to barter for a loaf almost but not quite gone stale, and a clever whistle that accompanies this request pricks his ear. He finds himself listening carefully without knowing why, until it hits him like a punch in the gut. This is her father, the man who'd run off with the girl his own father had loved.
Peeta looks up at his father then, checking his reaction, but there's nothing there. No resentment or unrest, calm as ever. His father even clears his throat to speak, putting a warm hand on Peeta's head. "My son is in the same year as your daughter, I believe," he says.
The man looks Peeta over and smiles. "Is he now? Katniss is just outside if you'd like to say hello," he says and points out the window. Peeta can feel his heart rise up to his throat before he even looks. And when he does dare, he can only think about her song and his father's confession and how he isn't certain at all if he can swallow any bit of it back.
"I -- I should probably check on the trays," Peeta stammers. And the man leaves with day old bread and his beautiful music and daughter, his own father standing over the till counting out change, and Peeta no longer has to wonder about this one thing. He can't ever carve out the same path as his father has.
(2)
He wishes he hadn't thrown the bread at her like an afterthought -- like she'd been lying in wait like the pig. He wishes he'd had more time to hand the rolls over to her like a person. But there'd only been that narrow window when his mother had gone to tend the counter. Peeta knew that.
Katniss didn't, though, and recognition of that digs at him throughout the night and the next day when the sun comes up shining and the world shines clear of all traces of that awful afternoon. A beautiful spring morning. A promise in the air that warmer days were to come. But it only takes a single glance in his mirror to have it all rushing back: the commotion at the back door, his mother's rising threats, and Katniss sinking down into the mud. It only takes a glimpse of Peeta's face to see the bruise gone deep and to know he'd do it all over again. He'd live a thousand awful days rather than bear the thought of her lying at the foot of that apple tree unable to pick herself up again.
And you did do something, Peeta tells himself. He only wishes it'd been enough.
Because that beautiful spring day comes and goes -- and the next day. Day after day after beautiful day. All year he walks with his friends to class and home again and he tries to think of what to say. He never gets any closer to the right words than that first beautiful morning, though, with his swollen cheek and laughing it off as a tussle with his brother. Peeta never gets nearer to her than when he catches her gaze on his black eye, Katniss standing with her little sister across the school yard.
I know what you did, her eyes seem to say: as much a statement as a question. And for a moment, Peeta has the answer. I know what I did too, he thinks to say, and what wouldn't I do for you?
But he lets it pass. He drops her gaze. The distance between them settles. Every outward hurt eventually heals, but all year long it hurts to look at her.
(3)
Peeta can't quite place it -- but the meat tastes different on the nights his father cooks. There's a texture, a sharpness, a something that moves him to ask.
"It's squirrel," his father says, almost shy. "I buy it from the older Everdeen girl."
The meaning behind this takes Peeta aback. His father bartering in secret, behind his mother's knowledge, and more than that, Katniss hunting. Peeta had had an idea that her father would frequent the woods, but that he had taken Katniss too, and now she was venturing there on her own? That meaning twists deeper inside him, makes Peeta nearly sick.
His father notices. "You always liked it before you knew what it was," he points out.
"No, it's good," Peeta manages to say, and his brothers come in from washing up in the back room, and the conversation is at an end. But it cannot be unsaid. Peeta means to keep a closer eye on his father and his -- apparent -- dealings.
It happens on a sleepy Sunday afternoon. His turn for wash duty purgatory. There's a knock at their back door that his father discreetly goes to answer, and it's her. Peeta stays stock still, hands sunk into the greasy dishwater, listening.
He can't make out everything; the kitchen noises are a steady hum. But Peeta makes out enough. His father asking her questions in his quiet way and Katniss, responding to him in kind. Peeta has the urge to make his own business proposition. To simply give her the bread again, or cookies, a bit of cake. Anything to stay her clear of the woods. There were already ways enough to die, living in District Twelve.
His father probably believes he's doing her a kindness, and if he's honest with himself, Peeta knows that Katniss won't take a thing from him again. That that awful day is behind her because she's found her footing, and it isn't spent rummaging through rubbish bins in Town. If he's honest with himself, he likes picturing her high up in the trees where nothing can touch her but the open air.
Peeta lets the meaning take new shape in his mind. Katniss is not his to save. She brings his family meat and they give her loaves of bread. And slowly, slowly this becomes the best picture of all. Eating what her hands have wrought and she doing the same, sitting around their low lit kitchen tables, giving thanks to one another.
(4)
After his brother wins and he's teased with a Better luck next year when you're the last Mellark standing! -- there's a small ceremony. A handful of families (his, basically) and friends from school crowded into their falling down gymnasium. Peeta remarks that at least they can boast that it's standing room only and his brother cuffs his shoulder, laughing. Peeta tries not to wince -- that's where he'd been last pinned hard to the ground. He tries to keep a straight face while he's given thanks for generously wiping the floor with his person.
There's light enough slanting in from the high windows to keep the room from falling into too much dark, but the shadows are growing almost as long as the speaker's voice. And in its pockets are the handful of a handful of people from the Seam. He'd be hard-pressed to recall any of them by name. Until, that is, he sees her of all people, here. Then all he can think of is why?
Because Katniss Everdeen does not do extracurricular anything.
He doesn't intend to lie to himself, into believing that she's here to see him. But then Peeta realizes that she already has. That she's standing there, watching. If he weren't already flushed from the exertion and the warmth of the room, he would be, just at the thought. For a moment, he regrets losing.
Yet he's filled with a rush of hope too. It would be so easy to catch her afterward, accidentally-on-purpose. He could do it. There's nothing stopping him but his own two feet.
But at the point when he's broken the crossroad of his heart's hesitation, her shadow merges with another's and he's lost her. She's moving along with her friend, the one from the Seam that he hears girls whisper about in the halls. The one he does lie to himself into believing is just a friend.
Peeta notices his brother looking at him funny, and he shakes his head. "Think Mother will let us dip into the cookie jar after this?" Peeta asks, trying to regain that earlier lightness.
"Fat chance of that happening," his brother says, and that at least is a truth to be dependent upon.
(1)
Mother wants to move into the new house in the new neighborhood, that new life, but it's here that his father stays his ground. "Our life is at the bakery," he says simply. And it's enough.
Peeta finds himself breathing easier at the fact, which shames him, but it's what he feels. And he has so much time for it now, feeling. He starts baking again for lack of anything else to do, to distract from all that time to feel.
He starts baking for Katniss that summer. He can't put aside the anger at her act even though he understands why she did it. His mother had pointed it out to him before he'd even left: she's a survivor, and she'll do whatever needs to be done. Peeta can't put aside his anger at himself because he knew -- knows -- that about her. He'd just wished too much for it to be more.
And so he bakes for her, pouring out too much of himself, again. His hopes and fears and frustrations. He doesn't expect Katniss to understand; how could she? She's moved three houses down from him, but she's never been harder to reach, to read. Or maybe it's simply him, pushing her further away.
He's becoming more like his father after all. His father, who has a way of disappearing inside of himself when his world begins to forcibly crack at its edges, peeling back to show ugliness underneath. When he has to be the one to turn away a poor trade and watch that person go hungry for a night. When there's a mark on his brother's face that can only be from his mother's hand. It's this realization that shakes Peeta awake from this daylit nightmare.
He's reminded of that awful day in the rain, and Katniss reaching for the bread, granting him with such a look that he couldn't ever deserve. He gives her bread daily now, but it's never enough. Can't be. She's saved his life, and in a way, she's saving him still.
When he walks down the street, their street now, her mother answers his knock and it's to Peeta's surprise that Katniss is home. She meets him in her kitchen where her mother sets before them a cool mint tea before leaving them be. Peeta had only wanted to deliver the bread, but now he's here, and he needs to tell her something. Words had always come easy to him, with anyone else but her.
"Katniss," he says, at the same moment she does, "Peeta." Her blush takes his racing heart to places it shouldn't, because he knows better now. Sees the difference between knowing someone -- and knowing things about someone.
"Peeta," Katniss tries again, "you can stay for dinner, if you'd like."
"Is it squirrel?" Peeta asks, without really thinking.
"What?" Katniss turns to look at him sharply. "No, my mother's been to the butcher's this afternoon."
Peeta can't hold back a smile. "A shame, then. But I'll take what I can get, so yes, I'll come."
Katniss is still watching him, uncertain if he's being serious or not. "Did you really want squirrel?" she asks. "There's still light for me to go and shoot one for you."
Peeta runs a hand through his hair. "No, I was just -- I was just saying things. It doesn't matter."
"It matters to me," Katniss says with sudden anger. "You're our guest and I don't want you sitting there not having it when you could have. And I can't tell, Peeta, if you don't come right out and say it." She meets his eye. "Subtlety is not a strong point of mine. You know that."
And he does. He can rattle off a list several feet long about Katniss Everdeen, and still she eludes him.
"I want whatever you can give me," Peeta says, holding her gaze. Because whatever hopes and fears, whatever love he doesn't expect in return, he will put aside. Whatever else, he can't turn away from her now.
Author: spamdilemma
Characters/Pairing: Peeta POV; Peeta/Katniss
Rating: PG
Category: Gen, angst
Spoilers: Through Catching Fire
Summary: Four times Peeta Mellark almost spoke to Katniss Everdeen (and one time he did)
For shadybrightside's fic prompt. Though it deviates slightly? (Apologies.)
(1)
He replays his father's confession in his head almost as much as her song. It had never before occurred to Peeta that there could have been other lives that mothers and fathers had wanted to live. But now that the thought's burrowed itself into his brain, it's since taken flight. Do you see that little girl? his father had confided to him, a child, too young to really understand its implications. I wanted to marry her mother.
Peeta's young, that's true enough. But he understands that there are parts of your heart that can never really forget. Peeta wonders what his father dreams about at night now, sleeping beside his mother in their rooms above the bakery. He wonders what things he keeps, and what things he's grown old enough to discard. He wonders if Katniss's song is one of those things to be kept close or outgrown, like his older brother's boots passed on to him.
He doesn't see Katniss much after that first assembly; Peeta doesn't know anyone from the Seam, after all. His friends are the children of shopkeepers in Town, and it's a fact that seems to remain true. He doesn't know Katniss Everdeen too, he admits to himself, and it feels a strange thing to wonder if he can really forget a girl he's never met.
Peeta does wonder, though, when at the end of the day a man from the Seam comes in hoping to barter for a loaf almost but not quite gone stale, and a clever whistle that accompanies this request pricks his ear. He finds himself listening carefully without knowing why, until it hits him like a punch in the gut. This is her father, the man who'd run off with the girl his own father had loved.
Peeta looks up at his father then, checking his reaction, but there's nothing there. No resentment or unrest, calm as ever. His father even clears his throat to speak, putting a warm hand on Peeta's head. "My son is in the same year as your daughter, I believe," he says.
The man looks Peeta over and smiles. "Is he now? Katniss is just outside if you'd like to say hello," he says and points out the window. Peeta can feel his heart rise up to his throat before he even looks. And when he does dare, he can only think about her song and his father's confession and how he isn't certain at all if he can swallow any bit of it back.
"I -- I should probably check on the trays," Peeta stammers. And the man leaves with day old bread and his beautiful music and daughter, his own father standing over the till counting out change, and Peeta no longer has to wonder about this one thing. He can't ever carve out the same path as his father has.
(2)
He wishes he hadn't thrown the bread at her like an afterthought -- like she'd been lying in wait like the pig. He wishes he'd had more time to hand the rolls over to her like a person. But there'd only been that narrow window when his mother had gone to tend the counter. Peeta knew that.
Katniss didn't, though, and recognition of that digs at him throughout the night and the next day when the sun comes up shining and the world shines clear of all traces of that awful afternoon. A beautiful spring morning. A promise in the air that warmer days were to come. But it only takes a single glance in his mirror to have it all rushing back: the commotion at the back door, his mother's rising threats, and Katniss sinking down into the mud. It only takes a glimpse of Peeta's face to see the bruise gone deep and to know he'd do it all over again. He'd live a thousand awful days rather than bear the thought of her lying at the foot of that apple tree unable to pick herself up again.
And you did do something, Peeta tells himself. He only wishes it'd been enough.
Because that beautiful spring day comes and goes -- and the next day. Day after day after beautiful day. All year he walks with his friends to class and home again and he tries to think of what to say. He never gets any closer to the right words than that first beautiful morning, though, with his swollen cheek and laughing it off as a tussle with his brother. Peeta never gets nearer to her than when he catches her gaze on his black eye, Katniss standing with her little sister across the school yard.
I know what you did, her eyes seem to say: as much a statement as a question. And for a moment, Peeta has the answer. I know what I did too, he thinks to say, and what wouldn't I do for you?
But he lets it pass. He drops her gaze. The distance between them settles. Every outward hurt eventually heals, but all year long it hurts to look at her.
(3)
Peeta can't quite place it -- but the meat tastes different on the nights his father cooks. There's a texture, a sharpness, a something that moves him to ask.
"It's squirrel," his father says, almost shy. "I buy it from the older Everdeen girl."
The meaning behind this takes Peeta aback. His father bartering in secret, behind his mother's knowledge, and more than that, Katniss hunting. Peeta had had an idea that her father would frequent the woods, but that he had taken Katniss too, and now she was venturing there on her own? That meaning twists deeper inside him, makes Peeta nearly sick.
His father notices. "You always liked it before you knew what it was," he points out.
"No, it's good," Peeta manages to say, and his brothers come in from washing up in the back room, and the conversation is at an end. But it cannot be unsaid. Peeta means to keep a closer eye on his father and his -- apparent -- dealings.
It happens on a sleepy Sunday afternoon. His turn for wash duty purgatory. There's a knock at their back door that his father discreetly goes to answer, and it's her. Peeta stays stock still, hands sunk into the greasy dishwater, listening.
He can't make out everything; the kitchen noises are a steady hum. But Peeta makes out enough. His father asking her questions in his quiet way and Katniss, responding to him in kind. Peeta has the urge to make his own business proposition. To simply give her the bread again, or cookies, a bit of cake. Anything to stay her clear of the woods. There were already ways enough to die, living in District Twelve.
His father probably believes he's doing her a kindness, and if he's honest with himself, Peeta knows that Katniss won't take a thing from him again. That that awful day is behind her because she's found her footing, and it isn't spent rummaging through rubbish bins in Town. If he's honest with himself, he likes picturing her high up in the trees where nothing can touch her but the open air.
Peeta lets the meaning take new shape in his mind. Katniss is not his to save. She brings his family meat and they give her loaves of bread. And slowly, slowly this becomes the best picture of all. Eating what her hands have wrought and she doing the same, sitting around their low lit kitchen tables, giving thanks to one another.
(4)
After his brother wins and he's teased with a Better luck next year when you're the last Mellark standing! -- there's a small ceremony. A handful of families (his, basically) and friends from school crowded into their falling down gymnasium. Peeta remarks that at least they can boast that it's standing room only and his brother cuffs his shoulder, laughing. Peeta tries not to wince -- that's where he'd been last pinned hard to the ground. He tries to keep a straight face while he's given thanks for generously wiping the floor with his person.
There's light enough slanting in from the high windows to keep the room from falling into too much dark, but the shadows are growing almost as long as the speaker's voice. And in its pockets are the handful of a handful of people from the Seam. He'd be hard-pressed to recall any of them by name. Until, that is, he sees her of all people, here. Then all he can think of is why?
Because Katniss Everdeen does not do extracurricular anything.
He doesn't intend to lie to himself, into believing that she's here to see him. But then Peeta realizes that she already has. That she's standing there, watching. If he weren't already flushed from the exertion and the warmth of the room, he would be, just at the thought. For a moment, he regrets losing.
Yet he's filled with a rush of hope too. It would be so easy to catch her afterward, accidentally-on-purpose. He could do it. There's nothing stopping him but his own two feet.
But at the point when he's broken the crossroad of his heart's hesitation, her shadow merges with another's and he's lost her. She's moving along with her friend, the one from the Seam that he hears girls whisper about in the halls. The one he does lie to himself into believing is just a friend.
Peeta notices his brother looking at him funny, and he shakes his head. "Think Mother will let us dip into the cookie jar after this?" Peeta asks, trying to regain that earlier lightness.
"Fat chance of that happening," his brother says, and that at least is a truth to be dependent upon.
(1)
Mother wants to move into the new house in the new neighborhood, that new life, but it's here that his father stays his ground. "Our life is at the bakery," he says simply. And it's enough.
Peeta finds himself breathing easier at the fact, which shames him, but it's what he feels. And he has so much time for it now, feeling. He starts baking again for lack of anything else to do, to distract from all that time to feel.
He starts baking for Katniss that summer. He can't put aside the anger at her act even though he understands why she did it. His mother had pointed it out to him before he'd even left: she's a survivor, and she'll do whatever needs to be done. Peeta can't put aside his anger at himself because he knew -- knows -- that about her. He'd just wished too much for it to be more.
And so he bakes for her, pouring out too much of himself, again. His hopes and fears and frustrations. He doesn't expect Katniss to understand; how could she? She's moved three houses down from him, but she's never been harder to reach, to read. Or maybe it's simply him, pushing her further away.
He's becoming more like his father after all. His father, who has a way of disappearing inside of himself when his world begins to forcibly crack at its edges, peeling back to show ugliness underneath. When he has to be the one to turn away a poor trade and watch that person go hungry for a night. When there's a mark on his brother's face that can only be from his mother's hand. It's this realization that shakes Peeta awake from this daylit nightmare.
He's reminded of that awful day in the rain, and Katniss reaching for the bread, granting him with such a look that he couldn't ever deserve. He gives her bread daily now, but it's never enough. Can't be. She's saved his life, and in a way, she's saving him still.
When he walks down the street, their street now, her mother answers his knock and it's to Peeta's surprise that Katniss is home. She meets him in her kitchen where her mother sets before them a cool mint tea before leaving them be. Peeta had only wanted to deliver the bread, but now he's here, and he needs to tell her something. Words had always come easy to him, with anyone else but her.
"Katniss," he says, at the same moment she does, "Peeta." Her blush takes his racing heart to places it shouldn't, because he knows better now. Sees the difference between knowing someone -- and knowing things about someone.
"Peeta," Katniss tries again, "you can stay for dinner, if you'd like."
"Is it squirrel?" Peeta asks, without really thinking.
"What?" Katniss turns to look at him sharply. "No, my mother's been to the butcher's this afternoon."
Peeta can't hold back a smile. "A shame, then. But I'll take what I can get, so yes, I'll come."
Katniss is still watching him, uncertain if he's being serious or not. "Did you really want squirrel?" she asks. "There's still light for me to go and shoot one for you."
Peeta runs a hand through his hair. "No, I was just -- I was just saying things. It doesn't matter."
"It matters to me," Katniss says with sudden anger. "You're our guest and I don't want you sitting there not having it when you could have. And I can't tell, Peeta, if you don't come right out and say it." She meets his eye. "Subtlety is not a strong point of mine. You know that."
And he does. He can rattle off a list several feet long about Katniss Everdeen, and still she eludes him.
"I want whatever you can give me," Peeta says, holding her gaze. Because whatever hopes and fears, whatever love he doesn't expect in return, he will put aside. Whatever else, he can't turn away from her now.