Work Text:
By @dandeliononfire
Triggers: Brief mention of abuse by Peeta’s mother. (No specifics.)
“I don’t know about this, Peeta.” Katniss frowned as she looked from her roommate to the monstrosity in front of her.
Or, more like the mini-stronsity. A long, rectangular tiny house on wheels more accurately.
Peeta touched her arm and gave her a pleading look. “At least go in first, before you say you don’t like it.”
Her roommate of eight months, and the person she’d deny was her best friend if questioned directly for the simple fact she was too embarrassed to admit she’d opened up so fast to a member of the opposite sex, had brought her to a for-sale tiny house after their landlord gave them a thirty day notice two days before.
Somehow, while she’d been frantically searching the classifieds for a new place to park, preferably for both of them, he’d come up with a dwelling for himself he’d have to actually park.
At least he had a new, big, black Silverado pickup to tow it. A rig she found incredibly sexy. Almost as ruggedly handsome as she’d come to think of him.
Envy didn’t begin to describe how she felt about his truck, but on her wages as a retail warehouse cashier she was lucky to afford her used Hyundai. Not that he could afford it either. As an adjunct art instructor at the State University, he made only slightly more than she did, but it still wasn’t a lot. His main advantage was a wealthy mother who was recently elected to the Capitol. Her ambitions aimed much higher than freshman senator, and the way she had emotionally and physically abused Peeta as a boy was a potential liability to her fake compassionate public persona. While Katniss knew Peeta would never out his painful boyhood to the public, the woman’s desire to protect her fledgling career had of late driven her to grand unilateral gestures. Peeta had refused every insulting attempt to buy his guaranteed silence.
Which was why Katniss had been surprised a few months before when Peeta told her he’d accepted a new truck from her. But after seeing it, and riding in it just once, she couldn’t say he’d made the wrong choice.
It was practically orgasmic. On the evenings she’d draw the short straw to fetch their take-out, she worked hard to hide her glee when he’d toss her the keyring. Peeta had never caught on, but she’d sunk so low as to mark the short straw. That way, when it was her chance to choose, she always won for losing.
He was so gullible is was sweet.
If asked, she’d possibly sell her body to him in exchange for that beautiful piece of machinery.
But who was she kidding, that would probably be his for the asking anyway.
Roommate.
Friend.
Confidante.
Good friend.
Crush.
Best friend.
The ideal man. Warm, caring, thoughtful, strong, courageous. And sometimes painfully honest.
She flushed, brought her thoughts back to the present, and felt a pit grow in her stomach. She was about to lose him. She’d known it the moment he’d pulled up to the tiny house and shouted, “Surprise!” and beamed a grin at her while his hand squeezed the truck’s steering wheel so hard that his fingers turned white.
But it felt more like, ‘Surprise! Today I will rip your heart out and roast it on a spit for dinner, sweetheart.’
Because bringing her to a tiny house meant he wasn’t interested in sharing a new place with her.
She didn’t want to lose the boy who baked her fresh bread every week, kept her in a plentiful supply of cheese buns because he felt she was too skinny, and who never complained when she wanted to binge watch Project Runway. It had been the luckiest day of her life when he’d responded to her ‘roommate wanted’ ad. As far as Katniss was concerned, it was like she’d won the lottery.
And now she was about to lose her soul. She scowled, only because she was desperate to wipe the grin off his face. It was making her emotions swirl, but not in the pleasant way it usually did.
“Come on, Katniss,” he laughed at her and pulled the door open. “You might like it.”
“I doubt it,” she grumbled, but climbed the short block of steps and entered after he applied a gentle pressure on her arm. But she did like it. It was craftsman, cute, and charming. Her heart fell. If she loved it, when she wanted to hate it, she had no hope of convincing him it was a bad idea.
She expected him to still be grinning, but instead he was biting his lip and his eyes were avoiding her. “Peeta, what’s wrong?”
He looked down and scuffed his toe on the little welcome mat. “You don’t like it.”
She hated that her selfishness was stealing his joy. “I do, Peeta. It’s great.” He looked back up, obviously deflated. It made her heart hurt, and she felt compelled to fix it. “Show me around,” she rested a hand on his arm to reassure him, and did her best to paste on a smile.
He nodded, and regained some of his enthusiasm once he got into it.
It was spacious for a tiny house, on a long fifth-wheel trailer frame. It had a tall ceiling and long windows that let in plenty of light, which made the wood paneling and white trim seem bright, and the space airy.
Her heart sped up, but also beat harder, torn between being happy at the rejuvenated smile that made his blue eyes twinkle, and a feeling of settling, heavy resignation to her own looming emptiness. The full realization of how much time they actually spent together hit her hard. Every night there was dinner, sometimes a beer and ping pong at the local pub, television, or Netflix. And a few nights a week they both did their own things, like bills or reading for her and grading or working on art for him, but always checking in with one another throughout the evening and never a closed door between them until bed.
What if this meant the effective end of their friendship? What if he thought of her only as a roommate, and not as a long-term friend?
Katniss had been able to handle secretly having a thing for him, sort of handle it anyway, but his friendship had become something real and not something she was sure she could live without.
Peeta was still trying to show her details of the house and had asked her whether she liked something. She had no idea what he’d just shown her, so she just mumbled an affirmative.
“So here,” he pushed down on the cushions of the long couch that lined one side of the main space. “The bottom here lifts up for storage. And aren’t these neat?” He pulled out stack of nesting chairs from a cubby in the nearby wall and then folded down a panel into a table that would comfortably sit two. Behind that was hidden a small flat screen television.
“Yes, very clever,” she nodded, and tried to seem enthusiastic for his sake.
“And check out the bathroom. It’s got an actual full-sized tub. Can you believe it?”She couldn’t, but he seemed determined to prove it. He opened a door at one end of the house and slipped into it. She peered inside, mouth hanging open as he waved at her to join him.
“Uh, Peeta? This is barely big enough to be a closet. My closet. And you know I’m not one of those sophisticated women who spend all their time and money building massive wardrobes and shoe collections.”
“I do, and that’s one of the reasons I love you. Don’t be a scaredy cat.” He yanked on her sleeve and she was forced to either lose her balance or else take the exactly one and a half steps into the center of the tiny bathroom. “The incinerating toilet isn’t going to incinerate you, Katniss.”
“Peeta, we can’t both fit in here.”
Though, in fact, they did. But just. While they occasionally brushed past each other in the hallway outside their normal-sized bathroom at the apartment, or in their normal-sized kitchen, it was never quite this close.Katniss didn’t hear a single word he prattled off about the many cleverly constructed amenities.
The space needed ventilation though, or else the incinerating toilet was malfunctioning, because the little room was impossibly warm.
She interrupted him.“Peeta, is this place hiding a full-sized furnace somewhere?”
His brows came together. “No. Why?”
The rise in temperature was internal, then. “Never mind.”
Katniss backed out of the room before he could drone on more about the way the vanity pulled out like a sideways drawer, or about the in-line water heating system. He must have noticed her fidgeting with her coat, because before she could respond he was standing behind her helping her out of it.
“This is great.”
“Huh?”
“Taking your coat off.”
“What?”
When she turned around, he was grinning again. Taking her coat had provided him an opportunity to reveal a hidden coat closet under the stairs at the far end of the house. Stairs Katniss assumed led up to a loft where the bed would be.
She sighed and he pushed the cupboard closed and frowned. “
You don’t really like this at all.”
She hated the way his shoulders sagged in disappointment. “I like it. It’s nice, Peeta.”
“You’re a terrible liar, Katniss.”
He was right. She was a terrible liar. There were only twenty eight days left with him and Katniss decided she might as well just be honest. “It just reminds me that I’m about to lose my best…” She swallowed, “…the best roommate I’ve ever had.”
When she looked up, she caught him staring. He looked over her shoulder for a moment.
“And see? Here.” He stepped past her into the kitchen. It was all butcher block and stainless steel. The white ceiling beams that supported the loft above were suspended less than four inches above his wavy golden hair, and the space reminded Katniss of a fancy ship’s galley.
His icy blue eyes came alight as he showed her the full sized refrigerator, sink, and range. He rubbed the back of his neck and bounced on his heels. “Baking cheese buns in here would definitely be doable.”
Was he trying to tell her they’d still be friends? That was some measure of comfort. But if she was honest, it wasn’t enough. How had she let herself grow so addicted to the way his pupils grew and contracted, or the way his jaw bulged when he grit his teeth in concentration, or the way his eyelashes kissed each other when they blinked? She wanted to step into him, run her fingers through his hair, rest her forehead against his shoulder and have his arms surround her. That was the kind of comfort she wanted.
But since that wasn’t on the menu, she turned around and frantically looked for something to redirect her thoughts.
“This is nice,” she waved her hand weakly and admired a panel that opened to reveal a small combination washer-dryer unit.
“Yeah,” he said from close enough behind her that his breath made the few escaped hairs of her braid dance against her neck. She barely stopped the shudder that tried to work its way up from between her thighs.
Just as she was mastering her emotions, bringing them back to earth, he shimmied past her to get back out into the main living area. If the air had warmed standing nearly chest-to-chest with him in the little bathroom, it had been heated by a nuclear blast by the way his entire body had slid against hers.
She turned back to face the kitchen for a moment, hoping the heat in her neck and cheeks would subside.
“I guess I was wrong,” he said after a moment. “I’d thought you might like it, since we’ve been watching that tiny house show on Tuesdays…”
When Katniss turned around, he was staring out a window. She found her her way to sitting on the couch. “I do like it. It’s perfect for you, Peeta.”
Peeta crossed his arms. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but the lines of his face were tight and his normally gentle eyes seemed uncertain when he looked back from the window.
“I thought it would be perfect. You talk about traveling all the time, Katniss. It’s clearly a dream of yours. I get summers mostly off. And while I hate taking anything from my mother, I’m pretty sure I could get her to pay for this.”
He frowned when she didn’t say anything. How could she? She knew she wasn’t hearing him right. And so it was better to keep her mouth clamped.
“No major rent to pay? We could live on my salary alone during the school year, if we needed to. And you could bank your paychecks, and then when June hits every year, we could pack up and find someplace new to spend the summer.”
He wanted her to share the place with him?
She couldn’t begin to see how that would work. “Peeta…” Surely he could see that it was beyond possible, much less reasonable. And she knew she couldn’t possibly share a space this small with him without losing her ability to think. At least in their apartment she could retreat to her bedroom when she needed to put some distance between her thoughts and him. “I’m pretty sure you don’t have an extra bedroom hidden away behind one of these panels somewhere.”
“No. I was thinking maybe we could…” The way he worried at his lower lip with his teeth while looking back out the window her made arousal, fear, resignation, loss, and hope boil. She pressed her palms over her stomach in a futile attempt to calm it.
He drew in a long breath and then released it slowly. His face had turned red. “You’re right. I… You’re always calling me back to earth and reminding me I’m too much a dreamer. Of course, I was just… I just didn’t even think, probably.” He chuckled in blatant self-depreciation and wandered away, finding a cabinet to open and examine. “Pretty stupid, forgetting something basic like that.”
The little bits of hope that he might have meant for them to share a bed left her like a bird fleeing a rabid cat. Just like she’d been telling herself for months, it was only her who’d been affected, afflicted. Not him.
Her lungs felt like they were in a vice. She got up from the couch and had to open a few hatches before she finally found the cupboard with her jacket. She went to the door.
Her hand rested on the knob. “Peeta, while I’m sure you mean well, I don’t think you really understand how hard it would be for me to be this close to you all the time. It wouldn’t be like it is now. I… couldn’t take it. And-”
“What does that mean?”
“And the last thing you need is me cramping your life up, Peeta.”
“That’s hardly what I’d call it.”
“That’s exactly what I’d call it. You don’t owe me anything. There’s no reason for you to try and… and…” She didn’t even know what to call it. Find her a place to stay? Provide her a home? Try to make some of her dreams come true? Put like that, it sounded like a lot more than just friendly consideration.
In her hesitation he offered, “You didn’t see upstairs yet. You should at least see what it looks like before you walk out that door, Katniss.”
She felt sure she would die of a broken heart within sixty seconds if she didn’t get outside and run until she collapsed.
“Peeta, I’m sure it’s fine.”
The knob didn’t cooperate when she tried to turn it. Her thoughts were so scattered she didn’t register she was twisting the wrong way.
His hand, warm and big and heavy, rested on hers and stilled it.
“Just humor me, okay? It’ll only take a moment.”
Peeta’s other hand pressed into the small of her back and she was powerless to do anything other than go where the light pressure he applied directed her. Soon, she was climbing the steps with him just behind, her arm trailing behind her because he had kept possession of the hand she’d had on the doorknob. Why was he holding her hand? And why would he want to? Her palm was slick with perspiration.
Her thoughts raced and tumbled with the same two ideas over and over again: It wasn’t real. She had to get out before it killed her.
She stopped as soon as she was high enough on the steps to have a full view.
The loft was low, maybe four and a half feet along the high side, framed in the same bright wood and white trim. Large skylights illuminated a full-sized mattress centered on the floor on top of a box spring. A bed shrouded with inviting, fluffy, white down bedclothes. The kind you sink into.If the living space downstairs had been made somehow airy by the use of wood, white and windows, this little space was positively radiant.
Peeta somehow managed to fit his big, clumsy feet onto the same step as her, leaving his chest pressed against her shoulder blades. He stroked up and down the sides of her arms with his fingers. The contact felt like it generated electrical current, and her skin prickled. “What do you think?”
“It’s… nice, Peeta.”
She felt the heat of his breath seep through her hair. “I don’t want to give you up, Katniss. The only way I’d ever give you up was if you didn’t want me around. Well, even then, I’d just go away and leave you alone, but I’d still be stuck on you.”
“Peeta…”
“You know, we could carry on like we do now. Eat together. Read together. Watch TV together. But the only difference is we would also be together.”
Her head screamed ‘no!’ She wasn’t going to shack up with him. It would deteriorate. She knew it. He’d figure out eventually she wasn’t worth his attention. She would always be waiting for the other shoe to drop. For things to go sour. For him to leave, or for her to blow up and storm out. But her heart was pounding in her ears with a ravaging scream of ‘yes!’
She was officially a girl on fire.“There’s a problem though,” he said slowly.
A groan of panic met her ears. Hers. “I’ll always be afraid you’ll wise up and walk away from me, if you’re not anchored down. Because I know you’re too good for me and one day you’ll realize that too.”
“What?”She tried to spin around, but there wasn’t enough room on the step and he held her in place. “That’s not true,” she protested, chest heaving.
“It is true. You’re everything I’ve ever dreamed of.”
Had he actually just said something unthinkably romantic, and with perfect delivery?
Katniss’ heart was trying to beat itself black and blue against the inside of her rib cage, and she jumped a little when his lips grazed the spot on her jaw right below her ear. But then her eyes drifted closed and she found herself tilting her head in hopes he’d do it again. He did.
She grunted.
And then licked her lips, finding her mouth dry, and throat sandpaper. All the moisture in her body was pooling somewhere else.
His lips pressed down again, this time on the side of her neck. This time, she didn’t stand a chance of arresting the shiver that ran up her spine.“Well?”
“Isn’t this too fast?”
“Only if you feel it’s too fast, Katniss. Or if you fool yourself into believing I haven’t been thinking about this every single day for the pretty much the last six months.” His hands left her arms and wrapped around her waist from behind. She held onto his forearms.
“You’d only known me two months by then, Peeta.”
“Kat, I was lost the first time we hugged.”
It was all too good to be true; him behind her, hands on her, lips against her, and his voice uttering phrases like ‘you’re everything’ and ‘I was lost.’
“I could paint a plaque for over the front door. Maybe make it a little sunset scene. It could say, ‘The Mellarks-’” The breath went out of Katniss in one quick rush. “-and underneath it, instead of ‘home sweet home,’ it could say, ‘home is found in the heart.”
It took her a few inhales to catch her breath. “And do you see those pegs up there, behind the bed? I thought you could hang your father’s bow there.”
Katniss’ eyes started to sting.
For a few moments, they both stared forward into space, or at the bed, in their own thoughts. Katniss felt overwhelmed, and expressing emotions had never been a strength, so she felt the need to cut the gravity of the moment. “You realize that rhymes, Peeta.”
“What does?”
“Heart and… Mellark.”
“That was the Mellarks’. The apostrophe was after the ‘s,’ Katniss, not before it.”
“I thought you were calling yourself “The Mellark,” she joked.
He chuckled against the point where her shoulder met the base of her neck.
“I didn’t realize you thought I had such a big ego.”
“Well, I didn’t realize your ego was so big either.”
He gave a surprised but happy hmmmm, and Katniss realized he’d taken it as her speaking in code. She cleared her throat.“I didn’t mean that, Peeta.”
“Well, it’s something you can find out, anyway.” His voice was low, and he kissed the same spot on her neck, this time also letting his teeth graze her skin. She shivered again. “Wait, there’s more,” he made a languid mimic of an infomercial voice-over. “For today only, Mellark Sales will add a brand new Chevy Silverado pick-up as a free gift with the first qualifying order.”
He withdrew his arms and nudged her until she took the last two steps and climbed into the loft. Katniss could either sit on the narrow floor between the foot of the bed and the edge of the loft, or she could sit on the edge of the bed. The latter seemed dangerously likely to result in him sitting next to her.
It seemed too good to be true. And she’d be exposing a weakness, permanently. An admission she would never be able to take back. That she wanted him. Wanted what he was suggesting. A partnership of the most lasting and intimate kind. While she stooped over, deciding where to sit, Peeta sat on the edge of the bed himself. Whatever confidence he’d had standing behind her seemed to waver in the light of her uncertain expression.
“It’s a package deal.” He gave her a weak smile, a look in his eyes of fear and courage. Not confidence. Not ego. He was still trying to make light, like she had. “I know how much you love my truck. I knew you’d fall in love with it the moment I saw it. It’s why I accepted it. I’m not dumb. I know it’s the only really negotiating point I have.” She frowned at the self-deprecation she heard in his voice, trying to formulate how to correct it.
“Peeta…” She sat down next to him, surprised that the bed dipped so much that she ended up thigh-to-thigh with him instead of the few intended inches. It caused their arms to press hard together and he had to pull his back so they weren’t both tilting sideways. She sensed it flounder behind her as he decided whether to try putting it around her shoulders, or her waist. But his Adam’s apple finally jerked, and he simply put it down on the bed behind them.
It left her pressed against his unprotected side, with the sensation of being tucked under his arm.
He cleared his throat and sighed with resignation, clearly expecting her rejection. “Katniss, look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to just spring this-”
“I think that’s exactly what you meant to do, Peeta.”
“No. It’s not.” His voice sharpened, and he brought his arm back, wedging it between them so he could hold a finger up. “I have been thinking about this for awhile. And this week isn’t the first time I’ve looked at this house.” His hand dropped with a quiet slap onto his leg. “I’ve been trying to build up the courage to talk to you for awhile. But with the landlord kicking us out… Well, it felt like a sign. Because I couldn’t just let you go off and find yourself a new apartment and forget about me.”
She looked at him sideways a few times, mouth pulled to the side as she struggled with whether to let herself believe any of it was true.
Could it be true?
She’d never been that lucky in life before. Quite the opposite.“Please,” he said.
“Me too,” she said finally, taking a chance.
“What does that mean?”
His shoulders lifted, and he pulled her chin around with his finger. There was fear, and confusion, and hope in his crystal blue eyes.“You too, what, Katniss?
She averted her eyes.
“Look at me, please.”
The torture in his voice tugged her and she gave.
“I was trying to find an apartment for both of us.”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t want to lose you either.”
She could tell he wanted to push her. To ask why. To make her confirm what she might be saying. But maybe he thought that was too risky, because instead he looked down to her lips and back to her eyes to search for a warning of some kind.
But as soon as his tongue darted out over his lower lip something came over her and she shoved her mouth against his. His startled mumph gave way to a moan. He wiggled his arm back behind them and twisted, pulling her closer as they tested first the boundaries of each other’s closed mouths, and then the boundaries of everything else. Within a minute he had dropped onto his back and she was on top of him, his hands causing tiny sparks of welcome pain where his fingers, dug into the back of her skull, tugged the roots of her hair out towards her braid. When she lifted her face away, his eyelids were screwed shut.
“Is that a yes” His panting voice sounded desperate.
Was it?
Her lip was sensitive and a bit swollen when she bit it. Was that a yes?
“For God’s sake, Katniss. Please tell me that was a yes and not something half-way. I can’t take it.”
Maybe it was a yes.
She ran her tongue along her lower lip, soothing it. With his lips within her easy reclaiming, the ticklish twisting in her stomach, and the weight of her body pressing her down against him, it was impossible not to know she’d never not need him. His mouth formed into a tight, tense frown. His fast breaths noisy through his nostrils. Her eyes unfocused for a split second as she concentrated on the feel of him and the way the quick rises of his lungs lifted her. Her body pushed down against his, half involuntarily but all welcome. The moment he groaned and his eyes flew open, she forced his lips apart with her tongue and initiated a second, longer round of exploration.
Where his face had been tight lines the last time she pulled away, the second time it was slack with relief.
She pinched his arm.“I want the ring. You have to give me the ring, Peeta.”
He nodded dumbly, clearly so far gone as he looked up at her that he’d agree to give her anything.
“We’ll go today and find one. You can pick it out.”
She smirked.
“That’s fine too. But I meant the keyring with the truck key on it, Peeta. The keyring. It’s mine.”
She pecked a quick a kiss to the tip of his nose and grinned.
“Anything you want, babe,” he said tenderly, after his eyes had roved and studied her face for a few seconds. His fingers dragged from the spot behind her ears, down her neck, until they gently clasped her shoulders. “You own every part of me, Katniss. Lock, stock, and even my truck. And anyway…” he pulled her back, kissed her quickly, and then tried to roll them so his weight was on her. She wriggled away, uncomfortable with her legs hanging off the end of the bed, and also wanting to improve the mechanics of their next bout.
Peeta raised an eyebrow as she shimmied upwards, a happy, hesitant grin spreading on his face. When she gave him a shy smile of invitation, he crawled up over her with the enthusiasm of a boy on Christmas morning. “Anyway?” She prompted, after he’d kissed her again, and his hands had started exploring with a bit less trepidation.
His hot breath tickled her ear, “And anyway, you look so hot driving that truck that it makes my blood boil. I actually marked the long straw a couple weeks ago so I can win when it’s my choice.”
“Really?” She grunted out a burst of laughter, half distracted by his hands, “That’s a deplorable violation of my trust, Peeta.”
She let her hands ride up his back under his shirt, scraping her nails gently against his skin. “I thought so too, until I figured out you’d started cheating first.”
He lifted up onto one arm and grinned down at her.
But the grin didn’t last. It dropped away, his face serious.“I love you, Katniss. You don’t have to say it, but I have to.”
She drew in a deep, slow breath and held it like his eyes were holding hers. The race of her heart slowed, and transformed into a hard thud-thud she could hear in her ears. She swallowed.
“Me too.”
He seemed momentarily distant, but when he came back, a dark confidence fell across his face. She reached for his sides and tugged him down.His kisses changed, less excited exploration and more devouring hunger. She could barely do more than make choked whimpers and catch little gasps of breath while he took possession of her mouth. He left her panting, and boneless, and nipped at the racing heartbeat at the base of her neck.
“Yes, I know your secret,” he half-growled, half-chuckled once he drew a moan and a breathy rendition of his name from her. “You have two weaknesses, Kat. One for my cheese buns and one for my truck. The one’s round and squeezable and the other long and-”
“Peeta! Oh my god!”
She slapped his shoulder and belly laughed.
But when he moved against her in a way that completed the sentence for him, she closed her eyes and grunted.
He dotted a line of playful kisses up her neck.
“And every time, the moment you’re out the door to go after dinner, I’m at the window looking out so I can admire how strong and quick you climb up into that thing, and the look of total boss on your face as it starts rumbling for you.”
The image of Peeta watching her through the curtains gave her a sense of power, and with that, a desire to tease him.
“Peeta, are you saying you’ll like watching me ride your truck?”
“Oh, you can count on it. Just like I’m going to like your tiny house.”
She groaned, but the accompanying eye roll was worth it because he shimmied off her and pulled her up, “Come on. I have to get you both those rings before you change your mind and tell me none of this is real.”