#also having to pick the colors from one of my historical au drawings was haunting. just the sheer difference btwn them yknow...... | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

everlarkbirthdaydrabbles · 8 years ago

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I apologize if this is too late, but my birthday is April 13. I love AU anything, particularly historical or sci-fi, and any rating. This blog is lovely. I really enjoy reading the wonderful little things y'all come up with

Happiest of birthdays to you @finnicko-loves-anniec! To help celebrate in style, the always generous @titaniasfics has crafted this delicious bit of Everlark, just for you. Enjoy!

Colors (Outtake from The Pearl of the Antilles)

Prompt: AU anything, particularly historical or sci-fi, and any rating. For April 13th.

By @titaniasfics

Rated: M

Historical AU - French Colony of Saint Domingue, 1791

Summary: Katniss, a former courtesan is married to Capitaine Peeta Mellark. His duties weigh heavily on him as the country moves inevitably towards revolution. His only concern is to keep Katniss safe. Katniss’s only concern is to keep Peeta sane. She resolves on an interesting way to do so.

Author’s note: When I saw the request for a historical au, my mind went straight to The Pearl of the Antilles. It is not necessary to have read the fic to understand this stand-alone. For those who are following this fic, this drabble can be inserted anywhere after the events of chapter 13-14. A million thanks to @eala-musings for betaing, and @akai-echo for reading and cheering me on.

Winter, 1791

Le Cap, Saint Domingue

Katniss watched her husband vigilantly in the days and weeks after the failed revolt, concerned for his ever increasing distraction and agitation with matters over which she could scarcely aid him. He was attentive as always and his ardor towards her had not cooled. But in moments when he thought perhaps her attention diverted elsewhere, his eyes wandered and his thoughts occupied the haunting, dark spaces of his mind. So deep were his meditations that Katniss feared she might never penetrate the multitude of universes wherein his thoughts roamed. She required a diversion that could stimulate the depth of his concentration in a pursuit that would feed not only his body and heart, but also his soul.

After much consideration, she shared her idea with Johanna and Rue, who offered their services in the fulfillment of their friend’s project. Katniss tasked them with the search for colors and dyes of every kind. In a frenzy of activity over the course of a fortnight, the ladies worked their magic between the increasing requests from the ladies of Le Cap for Katniss’s tonics and creams. They distilled, mixed, and employed techniques by the classic chemists of the continent to create oil paints that represented the most essential colors in an artist’s pallet.

Under their pestles and mortars sprang a yellow as bright as a dandelion, white the crisp color of a summer cloud, blue as deep and opulent as Peeta’s eyes, orange that was warm like the sunset, brown as deep as Rue’s eyes and red the fierce color of Johanna’s blood. Greens grew up like ripe banana leaves during the harvest, black as inky and infinite as the night sky, violet like the stripes in the center of the flower after which Katniss was named and finally, rose, like the lips and heart of the Virgin Loa, Erzulie, the goddess of all that represented a woman.

The three ladies labored, each with their own passions and intentions, mixing, mashing, crushing, and draining until the colors in the pots were the colors that they dreamed of when the name entered their minds.

Katniss worked from a place of profound desire for her husband, whose love was as fierce as he was gentle. Rue imbued a mixture of sorrow for the lost father of her child with gratitude for the Capitaine’s consideration of her well being. And Johanna spun her colors with the secret awe she held for the very Capitaine she made a point of disdaining. Each powerful sentiment flowed through their hearts and out of their fingers, imprisoned in the colors they created, filling them with the truest Voodoo known to the Loas - the expansive magic that came from the truth of a woman’s heart. And each had something to give to Peeta, who had, in ways both great and small, encircled them within the impenetrable walls of his protection.

When they had completed their work, they prepared the concoctions in hand-blown, ochre pots baked in ovens with a modern technique perfected by the Italians, designed to resist tainting, and arranged them in a luxurious wooden tray that was a work of art of its own, made of the finest wood. When the cover was lifted, a drawing of their island could be found inside, surrounded by the lapping waves of the sea. There was space for all the accoutrements of an artist’s craft, and would be easy for a painter to carry.

“Something is amiss,” Rue said, her stride having become the distinct waddling of a pregnant woman. She spent several days, collecting fine horse hair and set about the delicate task of piecing them together, braiding each bunch and attaching them to a slat of wood, the handle sanded and painted so that it would be smooth to the touch. She made several brushes of different lengths and sizes and, after her task was complete, set them in individual oil cloth sleeves, each decorated by Johanna’s hand.

“Rue! Johanna!” Katniss said in surprise, her eyes tearing at the sight of the most perfect paint brushes she had ever seen and the elegant sleeves that held them. “These are wonderful. He will treasure them dearly.”

Rue smiled, a small smile that contained a tiny hint of sadness. “It is an offering for the kindness he has shown my family.”

Katniss turned towards Johanna, who scowled with ill humor. “I simply find him less intolerable of late.”

Katniss shook her head, overwhelmed with tenderness for both women. She hugged Rue even though her belly was the size of watermelon, then turned to Johanna, who only gruffly accepted Katniss’s affection.

That evening, as Peeta brooded quietly over his meal, Katniss decided it was time to give him his gift. After the plates had been cleared, she stood beside his dinner chair and presented him with the wooden box, catching him completely by surprise.

“What is this?” Peeta asked when Katniss placed before him the finely wrought artist’s case.

“A gift,” she said as he examined the box carefully, his eyes widening when he opened it. He ran his fingers over each jar, completely absorbed with the contents.

“Oil paint?” he asked, still in a daze as he rotated each hand blown jar, smoothed to a polish by the method that was so new to the island. “They must have cost you dearly!”

“They did not,” Katniss said. His fingers ran over the surface, opening and closing each jar, sniffing each in turn. She began to fear that he might not like them. “You have been so preoccupied of late, so I…we…made each color. Maybe you will find serenity again in the past time of your youth.” Peeta face was inscrutable, making Katniss grow ever more anxious until she spoke in a whisper. “Our home does not yet possess the gift of a painting made by your hand.”

Peeta remained speechless, looking from her to the bottles, handling each paintbrush with care. Katniss was now suffused with a terrible panic. “Rue made those for you, in gratitude, she says, for the kindness you showed her family.”

“Rue?” he asked dumbly, caressing the brushes with a feathery touch, remaining quiet as he studied them over and over.

“And Johanna crafted the sleeves that hold each brush. She will never confess it, but she has grown quite fond of you.”

Peeta raised an eyebrow at this but continued to hold each piece in turn, staring at the handiwork of hours, his hand sometimes trembling as he set down one object and picked up another.

When Katniss could not bear it any longer, she asked, “Have I…have I overstepped myself?”

He paused in his examination of the paint brushes and looked up at her, his blue eyes large and soft. “You made all these…for me?”

“I did. With Johanna and Rue’s help.” she answered.

He set the jars down in the tray and pulled her onto his lap. “You have only overstepped the limits of joy that you bring me. No one has ever given me anything of such great value as you have.” He kissed her fervently until Katniss thought she could taste his awe and gratitude. “You have given me what no one ever has. You honor me in every way. And Rue and Johanna…” he trailed off, overwhelmed by emotion.

“Peeta,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around his neck, leaving soft kisses along his neck.

“You continue to bring me such happiness that I can find no words to express them without being foolish and inadequate,” he said as his lips found hers and he kissed her until they were both breathless.

“You are never foolish nor inadequate,” Katniss said, flooded with a heady sense of relief. “How else but with words can one express gratitude? It is enough for me and I cherish each one.”

Peeta’s eyes became hooded, lingering over her lips. “Indeed, how else but with words can I thank you and yet I can, with less than the breath to whisper one syllable, show you the depth of my feeling without the encumbrance of sound.”

Katniss, who had quickly understood the sense of his words, played his game. “Is that so, met mwen?”

His response was to trace the outline of her body through her clothes, leaving kisses along the exposed skin of her low bodice. She tilted her head, greedy for more of his lips. They paid no mind to the birds that squawked and sang, the sea at the foot of the sand, or the indiscreet hour of the day, in which no one would find themselves retired except under the pretext of illness. They were oblivious to such decorum as Peeta made quick work of their clothes, pausing only to lock the veranda against intrusion. Katniss sat primly at the edge of the settee she often reclined upon when she took to reading in the afternoon.

“Come to me,” she whispered, admiring her husband’s naked body. He bore the scars of his campaigns, the broad musculature of a man who was not unaccustomed to physical exertions, yet whose tendency was not towards the typical sinewy dryness of a man cured by depravations. He was a naturally stocky man who had been drawn to leanness without losing that bulk that made him so imposing. He was sprinkled with blond hair that had turned golden in the Antilles sun, except where those curls darkened at the center of his chest, a fine line of light bronze traversing his stomach and belly until the path plunged into the wild thatch of curls from which his cock twitched in expectation for her.

She reached out, curling her slender hands around the base of that thick, veiny organ, stroking him, watching his breath rise and fall with more effort. She stared up at him as her hands worked, caressing, cupping, sliding like silk against silk. She lifted her chin beseechingly and he rewarded her with a deep, probing kiss that took from its rhythm those of a languid, overheated island. When he released her lips, she kissed the tip of his cock, licking the droplet that gathered in the weepy eye. She had arts for this also and applied them most arduously, taking his cock deep into her throat, her lips sliding along the shaft as she pulled back.

He moaned, whispering her name as he gathered her loose hair and lifted it to better watch as his cock slid in and out of her mouth. Her eyes flicked upwards to capture his eye, holding his gaze as she used the flat of her tongue to lave him from the thick base to the engorged tip. His hold on her hair became firmer as his hips began their instinctive thrusting, in and out of her mouth - a rhythmic pace that she held until he abruptly pulled back.

“No,” he hissed, pushing her firmly back onto the settee with another deep kiss that stole her breath and her reason. He devoured her, kissing her neck, her shoulders, toying with her breasts until they ached beneath his lips.

“Mon amour, mon amour,” he whispered over and over as he sank into her, his lust turning into something reverential, though its magnitude did not change. He was alight with a fire that came from somewhere both within and beyond him, and Katniss held on, ready to catch fire with him. He rocked into her, at first gently, as soothing as the famous warm pools buried in the western mountains before his pace changed and became more insistent. Those bubbling lakes were where the quiet Loas resided, dancing their songs of rain and the shifting winds of the north.

But there were other Loas reserved for the two of them. Katniss had long known this truth. A shift of her hips and the snap of his called those creatures to them, the dance of their wild gods prodding them closer and closer to their finish.

Katniss fell apart first - a powerful shudder that ran the length and breadth of her body. Peeta became caught in it and was likewise carried away, his release accompanied by a shout that she knew must have been heard throughout the house. The force of it bowed his back after which, breathlessly, he dropped his head onto her shoulder, holding himself up with shaking arms.

The cool evening breeze swept across them. Peeta shifted again, sliding down next to Katniss, where he held her close, her back to his front. Katniss watched the plants of her veranda sway, their green an inimitable color that was nonetheless replicated in various shades among all the leaves of the island. Katniss had confidence that, in Peeta’s hands, those colors would spring to life.

Her birds squawked happily, fluttering from left to right in their large cages, pecking at their feed or through the wires at each other.

“Are you grateful, then?” she asked at length, running her fingers along the sinews of his forearms.

A warm chuckle spilled in warm waves over her back. “Yes, I am very grateful.”

“Will you paint something for me?” she urged, praying for anything that would bring serenity back to his soul.

“For you, anything,” he answered between the kisses he rained on her shoulder. And she believed him.

They said no more, allowing evening to fall quietly over them. The odd sound of a servant, closing a door or the murmur of horse’s hooves shuffling in the courtyard beyond enveloped them in a cocoon of rare peace. What more? Katniss asked herself. What more could they ask beyond this perfection they shared but that the future be as forgiving as the present?

“I love you,” he whispered suddenly, as if following the thread of her thoughts.

Katniss turned, her lips brushing his forehead, “And I you,” she responded.

Only time would tell whether those hopes would come to fruition.

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