Okay, Chica - A G rated prompt: Katniss gets goosebumps when she holds Peeta's hands.
Thank you to the INCREDIBLE @mega-aulover for this prompt :) I hardly get the excuse to try and write fluff and I have to say I enjoyed the entire exercise!
She'd like to say that getting close to Peeta again was as easy as breathing, but that would be a lie.
It wasn't easy. It was difficult. Full of false starts and awkward interludes and enough unsaid words to fill a shelf of books. Katniss understood this because she knew there was no way to ever truly start over with Peeta Mellark, even if she truly and deeply wished she could erase the past year of him being captured, tortured, and everything that followed until the end of the war.
There were layers of history and trauma in between them, and Peeta wasn't always aware of the context or meaning that colored their interactions, but neither was he oblivious. He felt things and picked up on things and he could still read the room with startling precision.
He remembered odd snippets sometimes, and the major events of their history together but the day-to-day workings of their relationship (which was still stuck in some strange place between cautious allies on good days and distrustful antagonists on the bad ones) seemed to puzzle him at first when he came back if not downright confuse him.
He legitimately didn't understand why Gale hadn't come back to District 12 with her after she had been exiled.
They got into it one night after seeing his face pop up on the nightly newscast. He asked questions with an internal compulsion that she had come to recognize. It was an extension of his 'Real or Not Real' mechanism.
The coping strategy he defaulted to when something just didn't sit right in his mind. And she knew that it was finally time to tell him why Gale hadn't come home, why she hadn't wanted him to accompany her back, why it might be better if he just stayed away indefinitely. Or at least until the still razor-sharp pain she got inside her chest every time she thought of him lessened somewhat.
So she told him about that day outside the president's mansion. She told him about the bombs and about what Snow said in the rose garden. About Coin and her tests of loyalty at the victor's meeting. She told him about Gale and Beetee's bombs and how no one knew for sure how it had happened, who had given the authorization, or what design they had used.
But the implication hung heavy in the air as it had that day that Gale had come to bring her the final arrow to end the war.
"So that's why he's not here." That had been his only reply. Katniss had nodded, not looking at him, lost in her thoughts about how far they had all come from the people they had once been three years ago.
Peeta had taken her silence and had wadded through it, unafraid to confront the dark waters that threatened to drown out the moment of honesty between them.
"There are a hundred reasons why he's not here." Katniss finally replied looking at him and finding his blue eyes dark, sad, and full of that special kind of empathy that never felt inconsequential, or cheap. Even as lost in his own mind as he tended to get sometimes, Peeta's reactions to other people's pain were the same as they used to be. Pure and noble, and not stemming from any misguided sense of pity.
His hand reached over to cover hers, and he enfolded her own small hand into his grasp. Goosebumps spread from the place where his skin touched hers.
"I'm so sorry Katniss." He said, tone even and quiet. "We were all forced to do horrible things in the games, and in the war, but that really is something terrible to try and come back from. But maybe with time you and he could—"
"There's no coming back, Peeta." She said cutting him off.
"But, if you could find it in your heart to forgive me after I tried to kill you then surely you and Gale can work this out. You two have been through so much together."
Katniss nearly recoiled at not only his words but the earnestness with which he said them.
"Everyone's been through a lot these past two years. You included. I don't need to work out anything with Gale. He can stay right where he is for the foreseeable future."
"But you love him," Peeta said quietly, but his eyes were confused and his brows were pulled down and tight together.
She shook her head slowly at him, recognizing immediately the familiar tone of his voice. It usually preceded a barrage of questions in the real or not real vien.
"No, Peeta. I don't. Gale was never the one I loved. Not like that. "
"Well, my memory isn't the most reliable but from what I've pieced together about you two before the games, and then everything that came after, I was sure..." He trailed off and she reached out and hesitantly placed her hand over his. He looked down and frowned slightly, but in a way that illustrated his confusion.
"I wasn't. When I came home after the first arena all I wanted was for things to go back to the way they had been before, clear-cut and easy. But I couldn't go back. And trying to feel something for Gale beyond friendship was one of the biggest mistakes I ever made. I just didn't know how to let go of that part of my life, where all I needed was my bow, the woods, my sister, and my best friend. I might have loved him once, the way you love someone who is like family to you. But I was never in love with him. I've finally learned the difference between real and not real when it comes to that. " She said it with such surety, such conviction, and the way she stared at him. It was like her gray eyes were trying to press some kind of message into him.
He looked startled by her words at first, then he blinked, and it was like he was seeing her clearly for the first time.
Well, maybe not for the first time. There had been many moments where the secret and mysterious nature of the inscrutable Katniss Everdeen was revealed to him in snapshots and quick glances. Like catching sight of something that arrests your eyes right before the door snaps shut.
But looking at Katniss at that moment Peeta knew the door wasn't going to close this time.
No, the warmth of her hand in his, and the look in her eyes told him that this time the door was open for him, as long as he was brave enough to walk through it.
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