Work Text:
She dreams of a meadow. She sees sunlight, reaching across the expanse of the sky to warm the brokenness in her body. Warmth holds her, encompassing her in a feeling of comfort she has not felt in months. When Katniss wakes, the warmth settled into her bones lingers trepidatiously and quietly awaits its immediate eviction. The sun-soaked memory struggles momentarily with grief; a lifetime cord of strife not easily asundered by one night of restful sleep. When her body shifts, and her eyes open, the sun is high in the sky. She watches the shadow cast by the tree outside her window, the leaves delicately floating across the wooden floor. Winter has lost its grip, and she senses spring.
She shifts her body, her hair brushing against his cheek. He is impossibly still, his lips slightly parted in rest. The glow of the rising sun finds him, and for a moment the warmth of her dream does not feel so distant. She remembers their conversation from the night before, his offer and his hesitation that hung in the air, dancing anxiously around them.
He stirs, his legs tangling with hers under the sheets. She finds a home in the refuge of his shirt, suddenly overwhelmed with the emotion of his presence. Peeta is here, in her bed. Her head rests on his bicep, his arm tossed protectively over her body. She hasn’t felt this safe in months. This feeling of safety she only has ever felt with Peeta Mellark. The fabric of his shirt bunches in her knuckles and she does something stupid--she feels tears form in her eyes.
She feels his familiar hands cup her back, his body folding her into him and his hand trailing her arm until his nose is in her hair and she is inhaling spice and feeling the sun warm her back. The distance created between them from the war, the hijacking, the loss, feels like it is waving a white flag. To think she had not touched him in months, had not felt his breath on her skin, it’s almost too much for her to bear. His skin brushes against her own, their scars forming a mosaic between them under the comfort of their cocoon.
The birds take up a song and Peeta breathes her name like the answer to every question she’s ever had. Her body responds to his call, her eyes finding him, impossibly blue in the morning sun. “I missed you,” his whisper is like a balm to the wound of her heart. She bounces between the blues of his eyes and the curve of his lip. She reaches the impossibly short distance and captures his lips with her own.
Katniss feels his breath shudder above her for the shortest amount of time, before he’s returning for her, properly this time. She feels his calloused fingertips drag themselves through her hair, over her arms, up her neck. His touch falters slightly before he is painting new memories over the tenderness of her pain, her bruises, her scars.
Suddenly the warmth of her dream does not compare to the familiar heat she feels inside of her that is only wielded by Peeta’s hands. He awakens her, breathes life into a broken vessel in great need of a caretaker. Their breathing is a fury of desire, drowning them both in warmth and heat. When their bodies press together desperately, Peeta’s eyes beg the question that only Katniss can answer. “Please,” her whisper is a plea that he is hopelessly bound to meet; unable to fight against the hand of fate that has once again dropped him into Katniss Everdeen’s life.
Peeta’s mind is suddenly crystal clear, the version of Katniss laying before him, rumpled, sleep soaked and bathed in sunlight lacks the shiny qualities which has plagued him since his capture. The antidote to his illness lies before him in all her vulnerable glory; her grey eyes imploring him to settle into her body and inviting him to make a home there. He knows there is no sea he would not cross, no universe he would not travel to, no war he would not fight to simply be able to exist alongside her. He answers her without question, pause, or hesitation. He knows his days were numbered the moment his name was plucked from a glass bowl.
This time he reaches for her, his hand cupping the back of her neck and pulling her body under his. She is alive in his hands, here, in District 12, their home. She is so willing, steady under his touch, beckoning to the call of his soul reaching out to hers. When she reaches for the warmth of his skin, he willingly sheds his shirt, prepared to give her everything he is in exchange for a moment he will live the rest of his days remembering.
After, she knew this would have happened anyway. The warmth from her dream embraces her like an old friend. She finds the impossible blue of Peeta’s eyes and watches the sunlight fall over him in waves.
So, when he whispers, “You love me. Real or not real?”
She answers without question, pause, or hesitation. “Real.”