Chapter Text
“Greedy gosling,” Peeta whispers, and his voice is thinner than a shadow. His eyes are dazed and dreamlike, and for a moment I wonder whether either of us is actually awake or even really here – but yes, the air is sharp and pure as ice against my face and my thighs are peppered with goosebumps on the sides not bolstered by bearskin, and the world is a gasping, blue-eyed cloud of flushed pink skin and sweet boy-musk and downy milkweed lashes.
“Greedy gosling,” he tries again; a little stronger, but only just. “What are you doing out of your nest? I-I haven’t even started your breakfast yet.”
“I don’t want breakfast,” I inform him. “Not yet. I just want you.”
His eyes go, somehow, wider still. “Well,” he says, a little hoarsely, “here I am.”
Something crackles and flares in my heart; a fresh pine branch igniting with the love already kindled there and adding to the radiant heat of its glow.
Peeta spreads his arms in a gesture of surrender – I’m still pinning his torso firmly but he could throw me off with very little effort – and asks softly, “Now that you’ve got me, what are you going to do with me?”
I consider this quite seriously for a moment. I want to wrap him up in my fox fur coverlet beside the living room fire and kiss the chill from his nose and cheeks. I want to take his hand and lead him upstairs to my den of deerskin and down, where we’ll burrow together like newborn mousekins, all soft bare skin and eyes closed tightly. I want to sit in his lap, legs knotted around his waist, and toy with his curls, giggling as my small fingers make them bounce and spring back toward his scalp, and finally kiss him squarely on the mouth, right when he least expects it.
I want to roll up his trousers – or better yet, remove them completely – and spend the day lavishing love on what remains of his poor right leg with gentle fingertips and careful, lingering kisses. That much wasn’t a dream – the blunt, smooth knob of bone and warm tender skin nestling like a determined, oversized fledgling in the curve of my palm – and I remember all too well Peeta’s heartbreaking words about returning home damaged, unworthy of his sweetheart’s hand.
A cripple and a laughingstock. Weak. Maimed. Haunted by living nightmares.
I remember equally well the moment that led to that grief: the glossy wolverine, compact and snarling; his fanged maw closing around Peeta’s powerful calf and wrenching viciously. Wolverines have an angled back tooth to help them effectively tear flesh; they explained this – showed this – in the recap and I left the room, crying so hard that I threw up what little was in my stomach.
“I’m going to put you somewhere you can’t get hurt,” I blurt.
Peeta ventures a small smile and gently brushes a gloved hand against my shivering leg where it brackets his hip. “You’ve found it, I think,” he murmurs. “I can’t imagine a safer shelter than beneath my songbird’s wings. But maybe we could move it someplace a little warmer?”
I cock my head at him, reluctant to relocate, despite the cold. I like this perch; like my boy safe and snug between my thighs. “What did you have in mind?” I wonder, and Peeta reaches shyly between us to unhook the fastenings on his bearskin.
“Ah,” I reply, echoing his smile, and shift a little, scooting back onto his thighs so he can reach all the clasps. Beneath the fur he’s still half in his pajamas, with a gray thermal undershirt above his corduroys. “You’re hardly outfitted for the weather yourself,” I chide lightly, brushing a hand over his ribs, then I tuck in my legs for a moment to let the bearskin fall open and scurry back up to blanket him with my small body.
“Oh, little vixen,” he sighs, curling his arms around me and enveloping us both in a dense cocoon of warm white plushness. “How does this suit you?”
“Very well indeed,” I reply, burrowing deeply into the crooks and hollows of his body, and press my face into the curve of his neck with a happy whuff of breath. “It’s a good day’s hunt when straight out of the den you bag a plump, unwitting gander.”