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adore-laur · 1 year ago

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AULD LANG SYNE

— gold rush christmas flashbacks (read parts 1-4 first)⏳

❅ ❅ ❅

How's one to know if love is everlasting?

Harry used to prioritize the notion with you, sealing the promise with a glistening diamond ring on your finger, because that's what love is, right? Marrying the one person you can't live without. He vowed to be eternally yours, making up for lost time with secret oaths of pleasure and intimate words that unfurled from his tongue like the petals of a rose.

Each garland of his ivy intertwined perfectly with yours, the spark of young love nurturing every vine that started to wilt from the first dusting of snowfall.

Yet that light soon eclipsed with a shadow of neglect.

The last glimpse of radiance Harry witnessed was one he took for granted. You were right there, shining just for him, but the moment burned out right beneath his fingertips.

He remembers getting lost in the cadence of your voice and the familiarity of your presence. Blue lights had danced over your figure as you stood on your tiptoes and turned the house into a winter wonderland, a certain glow to your skin that only he knew the cause of.

❅ Time Gone By ❅

Harry stopped you from gracing around the room like an angel on ice skates by trapping you in a one-armed hug from behind, a champagne flute of vintage Dom Pérignon in his hand. Your delicate fingers reached up to hook a shiny ornament on one of the tree's upper branches, right where they started to narrow. It made him realize it had been far too long since he'd been home as he took in the evergreen standing tall and proud before him.

Cheek to cheek, Harry swayed your frame to the faint Christmas music playing in the background. He watched your every move, from how you resettled the ornament an inch over because you were a perfectionist to how you leaned back into his chest to get a better look at your work. He wanted to put you in his pocket like a plucked primrose and take you everywhere with him.

"How many more..." Your voice faded as your spirited eyes scanned the living room. You released yourself from his hold when you spotted the box of ornaments, much to his reluctance.

Harry sauntered over to the fireplace while taking a sip of his drink. After setting his glass down, he grabbed the fire poker and opened the chain mail curtain to shift the logs around. The flames instantly grew stronger, crackling louder as orange embers tried and failed to escape. They seemed to know there could only be one clinquant brilliance in the room.

Magnetizing admiration guided his gaze to you once again as he sat down and folded his legs on the carpet. Once he was comfortable, he grabbed the half-empty bottle of champagne on the hearth and poured more of the effervescent liquid into his glass. The roaring fire heated his back as he coated his tongue with refined notes of ripe fruit and vanilla. Moonlight gleamed through the window and reflected off the many decorations he had helped place in every crevice of the house. The sweet smell of sugar cookies straight out of the oven made his stomach rumble with delight.

Then there was you, the only thing he could truly focus on for longer than a minute.

With your hair pinned back with silver snowflake clips, it was like he was seeing you for the first time. A halting feeling of falling in love all over again nestled into his heart, and you didn't even have to say a single word.

"Why are you staring at me?"

Harry almost laughed at your question. How could he not stare at you? You were made for him.

Smirking over the rim of his glass, he said, "I have a complaint," then took a quick sip and stood up.

You turned back to the tree, pensively looking it up and down. "Do you not approve of my decorating?"

"You're doing a wonderful job, baby." He emptied his hand and beckoned you toward him. "Come here. Take a break for a little bit."

You shyly shrugged your shoulder up to your cheek, his favorite habit of yours, and made your way to him. You wrapped both arms around his waist, then rested your chin on his chest with raised eyebrows in silent questioning.

"My complaint," he said lowly while smoothing his thumb over your temple that had somehow collected glitter, "is that I can't see the bump when you wear sweaters."

The tightening of your hold warmed him through, along with the knitted material loosely draped over your upper half. "It's too cold to wear anything else," you replied, smiling knowingly.

Reaching around your waist, Harry bunched the material of your sweater behind your back and tugged on it until it tightened around the small, growing curve of your stomach. "There," he whispered satisfactorily, grinning and glancing up at you with a boyish glint in his eyes.

You just scoffed amusedly and swatted his hands away before unraveling yourself from him to continue hanging the last of the ornaments. Two glass spheres dusted with lines of gold glitter were still waiting to be put on the tree with your strategic placement. Blue twinkling lights still needed to be strung and weaved around the protruding branches. The tinsel garland, adorned with sparkling leaves and flowers, still needed to be embellished on the staircase's banister. Harry, however, thought all those things could wait. He wanted his wife's undivided attention.

One of the cardboard boxes contained mistletoe, so he searched through them while he hummed along to Eartha Kitt's rich, sensual voice. After noisily sifting through miscellaneous Christmas items, he finally found the artificial red berry attached to an even more artificial plant. While your back was turned, he plucked it out and quietly walked toward you, turning up the volume of "Santa Baby" with the remote on his way over.

"Hey," he said, tickling the nape of your neck with the mistletoe.

You squealed and damn near elbowed him in the stomach. "Stop! You're supposed to be helping me."

"We have all night to do this."

"There's only a few more hours until Christmas. We should have done this weeks ago."

Harry's warm hands traveled under your sweater and splayed over your first-trimester bump. It wasn't fully rounded out, yet it was still a bump, and he loved it dearly, even if a baby hadn't been meant to happen so soon. "We've been worried about other things, yeah?" he murmured secretively, even though no one was around to eavesdrop.

"Yeah," you replied breathily.

"But just think... this time next year, we'll be spending Christmas together as a family of three."

"When are we going to tell people? I won't be able to hide it for much longer."

The anxiousness on your face worried him. He knew that sooner or later, the ravenous public would find out. It was only a matter of time before the vultures came circling, and his pledge of protection would again be at risk.

"Let's talk about it later," he dismissed, rubbing a circle around your belly before retreating his tender touch and spinning you around. Once you were facing him, he asked, "Can I have a kiss?"

"You're trying to distract me."

"Just one kiss. Pretty please."

You trailed your fingers down his arm. "Begging gets you nowhere."

He mockingly grumbled an echo of what you said and bent down slightly to wrap a strong arm around your waist, effortlessly lifting you as you scrambled to hook your pajama-clad legs around him.

"I want to dance with you," he said, staring at your glowing cheeks. “I beg of you."

"Put me down, then."

"What kind of dance do you fancy? Polka? Waltz? Ballroom tango?"

You laughed as Harry set you back on the floor. "Remember when you danced the polka with my grandma at our wedding?"

"I couldn't keep up with her!" he replied humorously, loving how your eyes reacted by sparkling. "Had me tripping over my feet and everything."

There was a beautiful mixture of yours and his laugh at the memory, and amid the mirth, Harry grabbed your right hand with his and held it against his chest while his other rested on the small of your back. It became a gentle sway to "Silver and Gold" with the occasional twirl and romantic dip, the two of you spinning around in a personal snow globe. He touched his forehead to yours, lazily smiling down at your lips, then nudged your nose with his before tilting his head to kiss you nice and slow. Lips that tasted like sugar melted into his, soft and addictive. His senses were heightened by the champagne he drank. His feet stopped moving as he got lost in the moment, entirely focused on how your kisses couldn't seem to catch up with his. The breathless sounds you released and the wet pops of your lips separating made him fall under your enchanting spell.

"Your phone," you mumbled through lazy kisses.

"Hmm?" Harry hummed distractedly, kissing you again before opening his eyes and licking his swollen lips.

"I think your phone is ringing," you said more clearly, pulling away.

He processed the default ringtone and sincerely hoped it was just his mother wishing him a Merry Christmas from across the pond. Sighing, he unlaced your fingers with his and gave the back of your hand a semi-comforting pat before walking over to his vibrating phone on the hearth. He had seen the disappointed look on your face—it pained him every time. Deep down, he knew who might really be calling him.

The assumption proved to be correct when he checked the screen. The familiar number was work-related. He answered the call with a guilty scratch behind his head and left you in the living room.

How easy it could have been to just ignore it, but second nature had a poisonous grasp around his heart.

❅ ❅ ❅

How's one to know when the first crack in the glass will shatter into a million fragments of love astray?

A capricious shift in your husband's demeanor created the first sign of rupture. Pixelated countenances of despondency and physical guises of weariness were little fissures that shaped a shard so minimal that you could have brushed it aside if not for the inescapable ache in your chest that mercilessly came around at nightfall like clockwork.

The withering love between you and him was a ticking time bomb made of glass left to be disarmed by whoever was audacious enough to get their hands near the lethal sparks.

Yet the fuse burned out quicker than expected.

That fateful detonation happened at midnight in the winter. Harry was the culprit, and he never realized it until his unspoken fear blew up in his face.

You remember it all too well. The stillness was so deafening in your empty home, barren winter seeping through the walls and icing over a bed of primroses to paralyze them from growing further.

❅ Time Gone By ❅

A pathetic excuse of a Christmas tree in the corner was the only provider of light in the otherwise caliginous bedroom. Sitting in the opposite corner, you tucked your knees to your chest and let your husband's slurred greeting on the phone fill the lonesome silence. It was better than nothing, you supposed.

The first question you asked him was a straight nosedive toward the forthcoming bone crush. "Have you been drinking?"

Harry sniffed and replied, "Whiskey, yeah."

You shook off his lethargic tone and plastered on a smile. "Must be nice."

"Pour yourself a glass," he said, his voice sounding far away. You assumed you were on speakerphone. "It's the holidays, innit?"

"Can't. I need to pump later."

"Oh. That's right." A strange lull of silence passed. "How is she, by the way?"

Brass-knuckled fists squeezed your heart when you told him, "She misses you a lot."

It was an unequivocal lie. You weren't sure if she would even remember him when he eventually came home. In the year since her impromptu arrival, her own dad had been across the world more than he'd been at the house in Nashville.

"I'll be home at the end of January," Harry assured you. I just have a few more promo appearances that I need to make."

He didn't need to, did he? With a snap of his fingers and his gift of persuasion, it shouldn't have been that hard to fly back to his family when needed. You wondered if he heard himself, ignorant of the fact that his selfish words pierced you as a mother doing everything on her own. Surely, he felt guilty, but he was an expert at shrouding the parasite.

"Why can't you cancel everything and stay with us for the holidays?" you asked, letting out a muted laugh.

Through a phone call with no way to see your face, Harry didn't quite catch your attempt at being humorous. "You know the answer to that," he answered accusatorially.

"No, I really don't." The mercurial shift in moods with him was something you'd gotten used to. "Tomorrow is Christmas, and you're in Los Angeles. Not with your family. It doesn't make sense to me."

"Are we arguing right now?" he asked through a yawn. "I'm too tired to argue, love."

Patience wearing thin, you took a brutal dig at his buried flaws. "No, you're too drunk to understand how miserable this has been for me. God forbid that I want you home with our baby."

Harry scoffed and then dared to bitterly laugh. "Don't give me that petty shit, all right? You know my job, and you know my schedule. It's never changed."

"It should change now that you're a dad, don't you think?"

"Why do we always end up fighting when I call you? I've got better things I could be doing."

Cruel. Harry could be so casually cruel when drinking. On the last phone call, his tongue, as dangerous as a deadly weapon, had been laced with Hennessy and Coke.

"Our daughter's first Christmas, and you aren't here," you thought aloud while shaking your head slowly. The worst type of tears, ones stemming from frustration, prickled behind your eyes.

"You're being mean," Harry said quietly, every outside noise from his end being cut off except for his breathy voice, sounding like a gust of wind had taken it and carried it to you. His phone was now held up to his ear.

You stood your ground. "I think I'm being fair. I'm not asking much from you."

"Fuck's sake," he muttered before clearing his throat. "I can't do two things at once."

His words were a poison-soaked dagger to your flesh, cutting right to the bone and unleashing the blood of vulnerability and hurt from the man who had once vowed to never cause you such harm.

Being a husband and a dad—Harry, of all people, should have been able to balance those two responsibilities with no problem. Where was his sudden spitefulness coming from?

You let out a morose noise of disbelief and confessed, "I hate you sometimes."

Harry sighed. "I love you," he said with that goddamned soft voice of his, a blatant attempt to veer away from the issue at hand.

Your emotions finally broke through, the lump in your throat growing until it started to ache. Looking down at the silver wedding ring on your finger, you wondered if he put it there just to lock you in. Little did he know that you were about to go down an agonizing route to get the key.

"Right now," you said shakily, "it feels like you don't give a fuck about me or our daughter."

He groaned, and you could picture him running a heavy palm down his flushed face. "We were having an innocent conversation, honey. Why do you always get pissed at me?"

It was a blazing assumption in the dark, considering he was the one who started it. He had lit the fuse with a single spark, and now time was ticking.

Who would pass the bomb over to whom?

Whose tears would douse the flare?

Which one of you was capable, and which was a coward?

"I get pissed because I wonder why I ever married you," you admitted, trying not to choke on affliction. "I wonder why I ever had a child with you. Why do I stay with you when you treat our family like an afterthought?"

"You're making me out to be a monster," Harry said with a twinge of helplessness. "I love you, okay? I would die for you both."

"You barely see us, so I doubt that."

"Christ, why do you say things like that?"

Running your fingertips across the carpet to seek comfort, you replied, "It's how I feel, Harry. It's how I've felt for the past year."

"Then fuckin' leave since I make you so miserable!".

Tick.

The fragile bomb was in your hands.

Tick.

There were only seconds left to make a decision.

Tick.

You passed it over to him with a detonating question.

"Do you give me permission?"

A deathly silence.

"I'll leave," you continued, your ears ringing. "You don't seem to mind. I'll talk with a lawyer, and we can settle a divorce."

Boom.

Harry inhaled sharply through his nose. "Don't even think about doing that."

"You just told me to leave!" you shouted.

"No, hey." His breathing was becoming shallow, and his voice was desperate. "Hey, listen to me. I'll come home. Just give me another month, and I'll be there. I won't leave again. I promise you that."

This was different from what you had wanted. Married life with him was supposed to have been blissful. Parenthood was supposed to have been alongside him. The room spun around you as the clock ticked with each passing second. It wouldn't change anything. You might as well set it in stone and float it down the river.

"I don't believe you. I want a divorce."

"Baby, please. Look, can you video call me? Let me see you."

You screwed your face up and rested your pounding head against the wall. "I can't look at you right now."

"I'd like you to look at me when you say you want a divorce, yeah?" He was on fire from the explosion. "God, I'll get on a plane right now, okay? Please."

He was only willing to do what you asked when he needed to save himself. It was never for you.

"My decision is final," you told him. "I can't be in this one-sided relationship. All I need is for you to be a dad and a husband. Here, with us. Not thousands of miles away."

"I'll come home. Let me... shit, let me find my laptop, and I'll book a flight."

"Well, when you come home, your things will be packed by the front door."

"Stop," he whispered painfully.

"Just listen to me, Harry!" you yelled, finally losing your patience. Taking a deep breath, you lowered your voice and continued, "If you love me, you'll let me leave. It's what's best for us."

"You're my wife." Then, show some compassion. "Do you hear me?" Barely. "You can't just leave like this." Yes, you could. "I'll lose my mind."

Your mind was made up.

"I'm going to hang up, okay?"

"No, we're going to talk—"

"When I hang up, I need you to breathe," you interrupted gently. "I need you to stay where you are. I need you to not do anything stupid."

"You're drunk too, right?" Harry said. "We're both drunk, and we'll forget we had this conversation." You heard a mattress creak and then a slight stumbling of feet. "Let's go to bed, sweetheart. Tomorrow is Christmas. I'll call first thing in the morning."

"Okay. Bye, Harry." You knew you wouldn't answer.

"Did you get my gifts in the mail? I spoiled you two so much." You didn't like how his breathing had gotten faster. "Hey, can you give her a kiss goodnight for me? Please?"

"I will." It was the least you could do. "Goodbye, Harry."

"No, baby, stay on the phone. I love you."

You swallowed down the last shred of your dignity and pulled the phone away from your ear, telling him to breathe one last time before ending the call.

All at once, the four walls of your bedroom caved in on you, and the feeling of suffocation began. The ground ate you alive as you sunk down into a fetal position and cried out into the wool carpet until it burned your cheeks. You could blame the drink in Harry's hand all you wanted, but you knew his integrity had fallen short lately. He couldn't be what you needed, so why stay and suffer in a situation so futile?

A sharp wail suddenly pierced through the wall behind you. Moving your teary eyes to blearily gaze at the clock, you saw the big and little hands join at the Roman numeral twelve.

How terribly blue of a Christmas, yet the reasoning had been long overdue.

❅ ❅ ❅

How's one to know if the bone crush is worth it?

As Harry looks at you now, a newfound love coursing through his veins, he knows that it is. The fireplace warms you and your daughter, both wrapped in a blanket. You're letting her help you open your last present.

It's crystal clear that the scene in front of him is entirely what he fought for. A family to protect. The home he sits in. The love he spent so long missing.

He walked through hellfire summers to revive your love for him and trudged through icebound winters to ensure you never forgot about him. All to get to that spring garden of everlasting primroses, which never entirely died.

"What did your mom get?" Harry asks his daughter while powering his phone off.

She holds up a tiny jewelry box and looks back and forth between her parents. You take it from her and inspect it, then look up at Harry and give him an unreadable glance.

"Open it," he insists softly.

You slowly lift the top, revealing a gold ring that weaves into a flower-shaped diamond. A gasp gets caught in your throat as you take it out. "Harry..." you trail off.

This time, you say his name differently than when you found his wedding ring in his dressing room months ago. This time, you say it with a particular fondness that puts him together again.

"I thought maybe we could try gold this time," Harry explains, kissing your cheek. "See if that works."

He thinks of the silver ring you had put back on your finger after you both decided to try again. It reminded him of hurt more than he'd like it to, so he bought a ring with a different, more sentimental purpose.

"I think it'll work," you say with a genuine smile.

A Christmas long past left scars still unhealed, but each wound led him right where he belonged.

❅ ❅ ❅

#harry styles imagine #harry styles fanfic #harry styles x reader #harry styles angst #harry styles au #harry styles #adore-laur #auld lang syne #gold rush series

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lemonluvgirl · 2 years ago

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Some Loves Bloom Like Flowers, Ours Burns Like the Stars

Story inspired in part by the lovely fic: In Bloom by Celia_and,

Also inspired in larger part by the artwork entitled “The Star Crossed Lovers” by Andretries. Please check out her awesome art!

Part 1: Some Loves

She remembers watching her first lovemark bloom at the tender age of four. She already had two others, one on each ankle for her father and mother, respectively. But those had been on her body so long, she must have been an infant when they sprouted. This was the first time she actually got to see it happen.

Marking the progression as the love burst forth across her skin with her own eyes.

Her mother and father had just finished letting her hold her new baby sister for the first time and after she watched in rapt fascination as the tiniest yellow bud unfurled over the top of her wrist.

A Primrose, as perfect and delicate as her little sister.

By the time her little sister’s name is called in the Reaping, twelve years later, the primroses have formed an unbreakable ring all around her wrist.

So of course she volunteers.

How could she not?

On the train that night she doesn’t cry. She watches the recaps and hears the program hosts speculating about her. The camera caught an image of the yellow flowers encircling her wrist as she shook hands with her district partner on stage. They debate about what kind of love the yellow flowers signify.

“Well Claudius, lovemark blooms are rare, you know. Only one in perhaps one thousand people experience a love strong enough to cause the reaction in their lifetime. However, science tells us that blooms on the legs and arms usually signify familial love.”

She frowns at the screen.

It’s not that she had been trying to hide it. You can’t really hide a love like the one she has for her little sister. But it doesn’t belong to these people who sit back and watch as 23 children get sent off to die each year.

It’s none of their business who she loves, or what’s written on her skin about them.

Her stylist asks if she wants the ring of evergreen leaves that curl around her right ankle covered up with makeup for her tribute interview.

The question brings tears to her eyes as she remembers her late father.

She has an image of him in her mind, dressing for work in the morning, and smiling in the mirror at the way he had three rings of flowers spread out across his arms and chest. His right bicep was ringed with small, unremarkable white flowers.

Her namesake.

His left arm with the sunny yellow primroses for her sister.

And not one, but two bands of soft, beautiful peonies had taken the place of honor across his chest, over his heart and stretched around his back and ribs. An everlasting circle of love, twice over.

“I like them,” he had said about the flowers as he shrugged on his shirt.

“This way my girls are with me, always,” he added with a wink.

She recalls the light of love in his eyes as he bent to kiss her mother’s cheek before grabbing his lunch tin and helmet as he walked out the door, whistling a little tune.

Sometimes she wonders about the flowers, and if they actually comforted him when the mine shaft collapsed. She wonders, morbidly, how long they stayed on his skin before his body started to decay, trapped beneath the dark and unforgiving earth.

As the stylist waits for her answer, she pushes back those thoughts.

“Cover them,” she says with finality.

So he does.

Her right ankle and part of her right foot get swathed in a peachy layer of goop, but when she walks out on the stage she only gets asked questions about the primroses. She is relieved that she doesn’t have to talk about the ring of evergreen leaves that even five years after his death haven’t faded one bit.

She is more relieved that she doesn’t have to explain why her other ankle is bare where there had once been a beautiful band of pink peonies.

Those flowers had wilted and died in the winter when she watched her little sister starve away to almost nothing.

And they never grew back.

When the boy from her district gets asked during his interview if he has any blooms he refuses to confirm or deny anything.

But then he confesses that he does have this secret crush on this girl from his district. A girl he’s liked forever.

When he says those terrible words, “She came here with me,” Katniss has to hold herself back from shaking in anger. The cameras are still watching, so she can’t scream the words she wants to at him.

How dare you?

The urn she pushes him into that night lies shatters on the floor as she spits mean, hurtful things about his lies and his audacity.

“The marks aren’t just some joke you know! Not to the people that actually have them!” She screams at him, so angry that he has tried to spin this to his advantage. That he is making a mockery of something that is sacred for some people. Something that can’t be controlled.

He stares up at her with unblinking, wide eyes, as the floor beneath his palms turn red.

Their mentor intervenes then, breaks them apart and chastises her for her short sightedness.

“It's a television show, sweetheart. If those idiots out there think that he might have some flowers hidden under his shirt for you then they’ll be more likely to spend money on the two of you come gametime.”

Others join in, trying to reason with her. Trying to get her to see that his tactic is a smart one. But all she can think about is her father’s flowers, buried beneath the dark earth, remaining on his skin long after the breath had left his body. Love like that shouldn’t be mocked, or exploited for personal gain.

Even if this is the Hunger Games. Especially because this is the Hunger Games.

Only one of them can make it out of this thing, and that is enough of a tragedy without the added weight of secret flowers.

She looks at his wrists at dinner, but they are clean. She tries to remember if she ever saw any blooms on his arms or legs during training, but no. The skin she remembers seeing was clear and blank.

Not one bloom on his arm for either of his brothers. Not one glimpse of a small leaf or even a whisper of a vine on his ankles for his parents.

So she shakes her head, and washes her hands of him.

Peeta Mellark doesn’t love her.

He probably doesn’t love anyone.

Things change for her in the arena.

It starts with Rue.

She knows she shouldn’t get attached. But she is so much like Prim, it hurts.

When she dies, she buries her in flowers and arranges her hair.

A stray tear falls on the back of her left hand, and when she goes to wipe it she sees it.

Another yellow flower. This one has five petals and a green center. It’s dainty and beautiful, like the little girl who was named after it.

It's Rue, branded on her skin as clearly as a tattoo.

She cries and rages some more, and falls into a stupor as she watches the hovercraft descend to retrieve the body. Afterwards she sits in the woods and has never felt more alone.

One more person she has loved that has been taken from her. One more flower that will leave nothing but a memory.

She asks herself the same questions over and over in her head. Why is love so painful? Why does it never stay?

She’s still contemplating the futile act of opening up one’s heart as the parachute drops a basket filled with fresh bread. She eats it mechanically, because she knows what it cost for District 11 to send it. She knows all about debts and how they can linger.

She allows herself to wonder if he is still alive, and if maybe he really does have secret flowers underneath his shirt for her. Little testaments of loss and pain that live on his skin, just like her.

When they make the announcement about the rule change, she can’t help herself from crying out his name.

She finds him by the river.

He’s feverish, and half starved, but his camouflage is brilliant. He whispers little jokes in her ear about kissing and acting like they’re in love.

But when the time comes to help him strip off his shirt and bathe in the river she falters. She can’t think of anything more terrible than finding flowers on his chest at this moment. Not when his leg looks that bad.

But then, wait, no, she can think of something worse. Not finding any at all.

So she closes her eyes, and doesn’t look. Even though he tells her he doesn’t care if she sees him.

She keeps her eyes closed and goes by feel. She bathes him until she can no longer feel the crusty sensation of dried mud underneath her fingers.

She makes him wait, hidden behind a large rock while she washes his clothes.

And even when she helps him redress she doesn’t open her eyes.

Things change again in the cave, when he tells her the story of the first time he saw her.

The preceding kisses feel like nothing compared to the raw honesty on his face after telling her that her voice captured his heart at the age of five. For one brief and shining moment she wants to believe it. She allows herself to bring up the bread, and that day in the rain. He tries to brush off the gift, the sacrifice he made that day but she won’t let him. She tries to make him understand how much it meant, but she’s not good with words and the cameras make her nervous.

She kisses his forehead as she tucks him into the sleeping bag and stays up half the night worrying. Dreading the thought of finding his body cold and lifeless in the morning.

She thinks she regrets not looking when she helped him bathe in the river.

When his fever spikes in the night so high that she wakes up sweating, she tells herself it's better this way. Not knowing. Because if she never knows for sure then maybe it won’t hurt as much when he…

Just the thought of having to sit by and watch him fade makes her sick. She assures herself several times that it's not the beginning of an ill-advised love. She doesn’t have anything left inside of her after Rue. Nothing left to give, and nothing so foolish as to hope. She simply doesn’t want to be left alone in this awful place.

But then they announce the feast, and he tries so hard to stop her from going.

It just makes her all the more determined to save him. She’s never been very good at listening when people tell her no.

So, she does it. Half from spite and a need to prove him wrong and half from some foreign thing that she feels rising up in her.

She wonders what it could be.

It feels like a need.

To protect him? To pay him back? To carry on the love story for the cameras? To save herself from that aching emptiness she felt when Rue died?

It's all of these things at once and somehow none of them that motivate her to run into the fray and put her life on the line. She forgets to worry about her spiraling emotions when Clove holds the knife to her face. Her heart jumps into her throat. She concludes she may very well die, and Peeta too, without ever making it back to the cave, or figuring things out.

Whatever it is, or was, between them, and whatever her true reasons for trying to save him, they work surprisingly in her favor. As does her former alliance with Rue.

Clove waits a beat when she calls Peeta’s name. Thresh spares her life.

She makes it back with the medicine and she saves him, right before passing out from blood loss.

He’s still slightly put out when she wakes up, grumbling about how she shouldn’t have risked it. They argue back and forth until he says, "The problem is we're both still alive. Which only reinforces the idea in your mind that you did the right thing,"

"I did do the right thing," She replies stubbornly.

"No! Just don't, Katniss!" His grip tightens, hurting her hand, and there's real anger in his voice. "Don't die for me. You won't be doing me any favors. All right?"

She’s startled by his intensity for a moment.

"Maybe I did it for myself, Peeta, did you ever think of that? Maybe you aren't the only one who-who worries about-what it would be like if…"

She trails off and his eyes take on a special look then, but she hardly notices. While she was talking, the idea of actually losing Peeta hit her again and she realized how much she doesn’t want him to die.

And it's not about the sponsors. And it's not about what will happen back home. And it's not just that she doesn't want to be alone. It's him. She does not want to lose the boy with the bread.

So the kiss that follows after is different from all the others.

Of course it is.

How could it not be?

She worries about what kinds of things could be lurking beneath the hem of her shirt, after a kiss like that. She sighs and shakes her head, determined to refrain from looking until this is all over.

It ends with both of them alive, even though it very nearly didn’t.

Only some quick thinking on her part and some very implicit trust on his, and a handful of dark skinned berries saves them.

The true surprise comes when they board the hovercraft and the doctors have to cut away his shirt to restart his heart.

Her hands stop pounding on the glass and she stops screaming incoherently at the sight of his bare chest, clearly flowerless.

She can see it, even though she’s outside of the room.

There’s nothing. Nothing but a bunch of freckles spread across his chest like a scattering of stars.

She doesn’t feel relief, or grief. Or much of anything.

She feels numb.

Which is strange because the moment before she could have sworn she had never felt more alive.

They edit out the part where the cameras catch his unmarked chest, but they keep the part where she goes crazy for him, screaming and crying and shouting for the doctors to save him.

It's like a big red bow tied around the whole performance. It wraps up the perfect love story that they present in the recap. The perfect finishing touch.

She smiles and wears flowy dresses, and accepts his kisses and repeats the words of love and devotion that everyone wants to hear.

Her mentor makes sure to tell her that if she doesn’t do these things there will be hell to pay. She still has her sister to think about, so she plays along.

Until the train ride home.

The train stops unexpectedly because the engineers need to make some calibrations. They get out to stretch their legs and walk along the tracks. She lets the pretense fall. She tells him how relieved she is to be going home and to put this all behind her.

He gives her a bewildered look and then Haymitch joins them. "Great job, you two. Just keep it up in the district until the cameras are gone. We should be okay," he says and she sighs in relief. Grateful to almost be home. They watch their mentor walk back to the train in silence.

She almost makes a joke about how tired he must be of putting on this act, but the look on Peeta’s face stops her.

"What's he mean?" Peeta asks.

"It's the Capitol. They didn't like our stunt with the berries," she blurts out, caught off guard by how upset he suddenly sounds.

"What? What are you talking about?" he says.

"It seemed too rebellious. So, Haymitch has been coaching me through the last few days. So I didn't make it worse," she explains.

"Coaching you? But not me," says Peeta.

She almost rolls her eyes at the offense in his voice.

“Peeta, you already had everyone convinced,” she replies, holding back from adding, you were so good, you even had me convinced. Right up until I saw your bare chest.

They argue for a bit after that. And he storms away.

She has no idea where he gets off. What did he expect?

She had never been more relieved than the moment she woke up in the remake center and found no flowers blooming over her heart. Grateful that she hadn’t fallen for ruse.

The skin of her chest remained blessedly blank, except for the small beauty mark near the crease of her underarm. But she’d had funny little freckle for years. And it looks nothing like a flower.

Still she feels uneasy when she sees his expressionless face as they pull into the District 12 train station. It feels too unreal to have survived what they did together and to have emerged relatively unscathed, the skin above their hearts still blank slates.

It's better this way, she tells herself, as she grips his hand while preparing for the cameras and the audience. They were strangers and they had only done what it took to stay alive. No one can fault them for that.

And yet, the moment they leave, and the crowds disperse and he drops her hand she feels oddly empty.

Like something is missing.

Part 2: Bloom Like Flowers

He is angry with her in the following months after their Games and she doesn’t understand why.

They are alive, they are rich, they are victors. They don’t owe each other anything.

Except then the Victory tour comes and their mentor very clearly spells out that there is no getting off this train. Flowers or no flowers.

They are stuck in this together, for the foreseeable future, which doesn’t look too bright anyway because Snow knows.

He knows about the lack of lovemark blooms on their torsos. He knows it was all an act, and he wants her to convince everyone anyway.

That she loves Peeta. That he feels the same for her.

She wants to tell him he’s mad, but then she thinks of her sister who still has six more reapings to go.

She grits her teeth and does her best. Peeta does his, and even gets down on one knee in front of the entire country and asks her to tie herself to him for the rest of their lives. The audience eats it up.

It's not good enough.

They don’t convince everyone. Especially not Snow.

But if anything good does come out of the tour it's that they’ve found a way to become friends, without the aid (or hindrance) of pesky flowers.

He’s a good companion when her nightmares hit on those long and harrowing nights on the train.

And the best part is she knows his chest holds no blooms for her. So she doesn’t feel one bit guilty when she accepts him into her bed on those nights. This is just friendship. Just survival.

It's safe, when almost nothing in their lives is.

She doesn’t feel bad asking him to stay. She actually feels relieved when he whispers back a one word response against the silk of her hair.

After the tour she tries to get a handle on things.

She can envision the general shape her life will take.

Marrying Peeta. Mentoring each year. It doesn’t feel as daunting as it could. Especially if she can keep Prim safe.

Peeta will be a decent husband. At the very least she knows he won’t pressure her into physical intimacy. He doesn’t feel that way about her.

And yet, Snow will want them to have children. Maybe not now, but someday. Sooner rather than later. He’ll expect it. Everyone will.

She can’t think of anything worse than bringing more children into this world under the pretense of her and Peeta’s infamous ‘star crossed love’. With the Hunger Games an insurmountable inevitability, and children’s victor’s being picked more often than not.

Except then, she can actually think of something worse. Giving herself to someone she knows doesn’t want her that way. Peeta being forced into her bed, and being forced to give her children and raise them alongside her while he gives up any chance at ever finding a girl who could make flowers bloom on his chest. A girl he could love and have a real family with.

So when they get back home she tries to think of a plan, a way to escape. Maybe they won’t be forced to continue this farce if they can just get away from here.

Yes, that’s the answer. They’ll run. Leave it all behind.

The one who takes her by surprise is Gale, her hunting partner, and best friend.

The afternoon after she returns from the tour, she tells him about her plan, asks him to come along. He agrees, but when she admits that Peeta and Haymitch are coming too he gets upset.

She asks him why. He rolls up his sleeve and shows her the pointed tip of an arrow shaped leaf. She couldn’t be more shocked than if he up and kissed her out of the blue.

She stares wide-eyed as he unbuttons his over shirt and reveals more leaves, and clusters of tiny white flowers spread out over his upper arm, curling up his shoulder and branching out towards his chest.

“Since when?” She asks as she stares at the katniss blossoms, with something like anger and sadness mixed into one.

“The first leaf started the summer before your Games. We were in the Hob and Darius was pulling on your braid, pestering you for a kiss,” he says, eyes distant as he recalls the memory.

“What?” she asks, confused as to why that day, and that interaction particularly inspired his skin to manifest the plant that is her namesake.

“That’s when I realized it, I guess,” he says looking at her with something that feels uncomfortably like those long lingering gazes that Peeta pretends to give her, right before he leans in for a camera approved kiss.

“Realized what?” she asks as she leans back slightly, angling out of the danger zone.

“That I minded.” Gale replies, like it's all so obvious.

But it's not. Not to her. And when she makes no move to show him any matching blooms, says nothing about loving him back, he leaves, angry and adamant that he wants to stay and fight. Join the rebellion.

Get himself killed, she thinks. She resolves to leave without him. Determined not to fall into this trap of flowers and secrets again.

That is, until she hears the unmistakable crack of the whip in the town square.

Everything after that is a dangerous blur of anger, fear, and pain.

She can’t think straight until after her mother injects Gale with the morphling and he finally rests. Then she can finally breathe.

She stays up half the night, her eyes and eventually her fingertips tracing the sprawl of leaves and blooms that reside stubbornly over his arm.

The next morning she wakes up and everything feels different again. She thinks that while she has no flowers to match Gale’s, and there will never be a real opportunity for her to grow any, (because she’s going to marry someone else) the least she can do is stay.

Stay and fight.

She figures she owes him that much.

She knows that Peeta understands, because he tells her she doesn’t have to explain anything. The look on his face when his eyes catch on the flowers sprawled across Gale’s arm tells her that he does.

He really understands and she’s so lucky to have someone like him in her life. She could almost kiss him, she’s so grateful. But things aren’t like that between them, so she doesn’t.

Gale heals and goes home, the rest of the district goes on lock down.

She makes it a couple of weeks before she’s itching to get outside the fence so bad she can practically taste it.

She hurts herself trying to get back. They’ve turned on the fence and she has to drop 25 feet or so to the frozen ground to avoid electrocution.

She gets a cracked heel and a bruised tailbone for her troubles.

But it's not so bad because Peeta offers to carry her up and down the stairs and he brings her cheese buns everyday. They work on her family plant book together, and sometimes it's so quiet she can almost forget about well—everything. Everything except his abnormally long eyelashes and his startling blue eyes.

He catches her staring one day and she blushes.

But he doesn't tease her about it. He knows better than to read too much into things between them. Just as she knows better than to read into how much time they spend together, how close they’ve grown.

She has never been so absurdly glad that neither of them have any pesky flowers to contend with underneath their clothes.

A few weeks later, while Cinna is fitting her for her wedding dress he asks about the funny freckle near her heart.

Actually, it's freckles now. Plural.

They are oddly shaped, almost like miniature stars.

She shrugs and tells him she’s had that for so long she can barely remember a time when she didn’t.

But later, when she thinks about it before bed, she is pretty sure the first one sprouted around the time she was eleven or twelve.

Snow announces the twist of the Quarter Quell right after her wedding dress gets chosen.

She runs out into the cold and forgets about everything but the horror of facing the inside of another arena again.

It's hours before she realizes she won’t be going in alone.

Then she drags herself up so quickly, and races to Haymitch’s so fast, she probably could have broken some kind of record for running in the snow.

She makes him promise to save Peeta this time.

She asks him for his word.

He gives it.

Then they get drunk.

She stumbles home on wobbly legs and doesn’t make it to the bathroom before puking.

Prim helps her out of her clothes and runs her shower.

She stares at herself in the mirror and realizes with horror that the little freckles above her heart have spread, down the top of her breast and towards the middle of her chest.

She gets so sick, she throws up again, this time managing to get mostly everything in the bowl.

They train for the Quell with a single mindedness that she once would have admired.

But now she just feels cheated somehow. Whenever Peeta instructs her to run another lap, or whenever he pulls out that big notebook of his and gets lost in writing the words between the margins, she harumphs internally.

But she doesn’t complain out loud.

She knows he’s just doing what he does best. Being a good friend. He’s trying to give them their best chance of staying alive.

But she can’t help but miss the quiet way he used to just sit with her. Or the way he used to carry her up the stairs. In his strong arms.

Each night she stares at the growing arrangement of freckles on her skin that look remarkably like stars and she worries. Worries about whether she should say something. But they’re not flowers. They look like stars. And she’s never heard of anyone having lovemarks in the shape of stars. Vines, yes. Leaves, sure. Flowers, most definitely.

But stars?

She goes to bed, thinking, no, it's better this way. We’re going back into the arena. We can’t afford distractions. And she says nothing.

Her resolve holds until Reaping day.

They call her name first, then Haymitch’s.

Peeta volunteers like she knew he would. But she can’t help feeling slightly angry with him. For throwing his life away. For never thinking of himself first.

“You didn’t have to volunteer,” she whispers as they pull away from District 12, possibly for the last time. They didn’t even get to say goodbye to their families.

Peeta gives her another one of those incredulous looks, and he rubs the back of his neck in that self conscious tick he has. She’s noticed he does that sometimes.

“Yes, I did,” he states with a finality that makes it apparent that there’s no use in arguing.

She sighs.

She guesses she’ll just have to work that much harder to bring him home this time. Because he deserves the chance to have a future. After everything he did for her in their last Games. And for everything he’s done since. She’s convinced now, that he never meant to trick her into falling in love with him. He just wanted to help save her life.

When he hugs her later that night she swears she can feel another freckle form, right at the place where his lips touch her neck.

She almost asks him to check for her, but then the attendant comes in with hot milk and they break apart. She loses her nerve, and thinks again, it's probably for the best.

She doesn’t want him to feel guilty when she gives her life for him.

It's not his fault that this happened. That she was too weak to stop herself from feeling this way, even after she found out he didn’t feel the same.

She really meant it last year when she said she couldn’t control it. Her father, back when he had been alive, had once told her that lovemarks were both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because they reassured the ones you loved of the depth of your feelings. They were a tangible reminder of an invisible promise.

But they could also be a heavy burden to bear if the person you loved didn’t feel the same way.

If there’s anything she doesn’t want, it's to be a burden to Peeta. Not now, when all she wants is….

When she gets ready for bed that night, she marvels at the tiniest little star stamped right below her ear. And smiles sadly at the thought that she was right.

The fanfare for the Quell is predictably pompous and lavish. The crowds coo and cry.

She hates it all. Hates them more.

But she loves the dress Cinna makes for her to wear during the chariot ride.

When he spots the overgrown collection of stars that have made their presence undeniable across her cleavage and chest he raises one eyebrow at her.

“Cover them.” She instructs, just like last year.

She’s already being forced to give her life, she doesn’t owe these people her soul as well.

Cinna quietly gets out the body paint, and proceeds to cover up the little constellations that have made their home on her body.

He doesn’t say one word about it and she doesn’t venture anything either.

She almost says something on the rooftop.

She’s lulled into such a relaxed state that for a moment she almost says it.

My body grew stars for you. Almost like it didn’t know what to do with all those feelings. Like you were too extraordinary for simple flowers. Then again, nothing about us has ever been conventional. It’s fitting don’t you think? Because of what they call us. The words are on her tongue, but she stops herself.

She lets him show her the sunrise instead. She holds his hand, and promises to enjoy these last few moments that they have together.

He says something about wishing he could stop time and she smiles up at him.

And when the sun rises the next day, she accepts a chaste kiss from him before their preps lead them away.

~ Part 3: Our Love Burns Like The Stars

The arena is hot, dense, and terrifying. But they have allies, and sponsors. Even if she is wary of trusting a guy like Finnick. He’s had so many lovers, and his skin remains creamy smooth. Not a flower in sight.

How do you trust someone like that?

But then Peeta hits the fence and her whole world stops.

It doesn’t start again until Finnick literally breathes life back into his lungs.

And then she knows that she’ll be indebted to this man, to Finnick, for bringing back her loved one. At least until death claims her, which judging by the ferocity of the dangers in the arena, could be very soon.

It becomes apparent after the death of Mags, and then the Morphling, that something is going on. Something that feels bigger than just her and Peeta’s unspoken resolve to keep the other alive.

She doesn’t know exactly what it is, but she can almost feel it.

She wonders if Peeta feels it too. She turns to look at him, but he’s too busy scratching at the itchy exposed skin that peeks through his uniform, that the poisonous fog left irritated, even after they had washed it off their skin and scrubbed themselves with sand.

They’re all itchy, but she worries what’ll happen if Peeta sees the stars on her chest beneath the red irritation.

Her salvation comes in the form of a green, foul smelling salve.

She applies it liberally, and makes sure to cover her chest with the green goop thoroughly.

She doesn’t think anything of it when Peeta does the same.

They get more allies in the form of the surly and hostile Johanna Mason, along with the victors from District 3, Beetee and Wiress. They figure out the design of the arena, and manage to fend off an attack from the careers with minimal injury and only one casualty.

On the third day, Beetee comes up with a remarkable plan to rid them of the careers by using the Lightning Tree to electrify the sand of the beach. It’s a plan that could reduce the number of tributes from eight to five, putting the odds in their favor again.

Before sunset Katniss asks Peeta to practice his swimming with her.

While they’re out in the shallows, far enough away from the others that they won’t be overheard, they talk strategy.

Peeta says he thinks the plan is going to work, and she admits she thinks it will too.

But she dreads what will come after. The dissolution of their alliance. Being the one who has to shoot first. She tells him this, and he proposes that maybe no one will shoot. That the alliance will hold.

She shakes her head and tells him even if that were to happen, the Gamemakers could still intervene. Kill them off one by one with mutts and tidal waves.

“You know and I know there’s only one person walking out of here, and it's going to be one of us,” she tells him with her lips, but her eyes tell him she’s going to do her best to make sure it's him.

Peeta looks pained at this.

“Katniss, I don’t know what kind of deals you made with Haymitch but he made me promises too.” He pauses to remove a gold pendant that hangs on a cord at his neck.

“If you die, and I live, I’d have nothing. There’s nobody else I care about. It’s different for you. Your family needs you,” he says as he opens up the pendant, which is actually a locket containing the faces of her mother, sister, and Gale.

Katniss feels her heart sink in her chest at the sight of those faces.

“You have to live. For them,” he tells her.

“What about you?” she croaks, voice thick with emotion. She stares down at those faces, the same ones she promised to return home to last time.

But this is different.

This time there’s no home left to return to, without him. The bright little points of color on her skin have made sure of that.

Peeta gives her a small look, one devoid of self pity. “No one really needs me,” he says, and there is nothing in the world that could break her faster in that moment than those five untrue words.

She can't stand the thought of Peeta thinking that about himself. Can't stand the thought of one or possibly both of them going to their graves without her making it clear that he is needed. That he is essential to her survival.

“I do,” she says as she reaches up to slip her arm under her sleeve. She watches surprise and confusion race across Peeta’s features, but doesn’t stop until she can pull down the top edge of her uniform, and expose the small galaxy of stars that swirl across the top of her chest. She pulls her uniform down her other arm, and it falls slightly, revealing more and more lovemark starbursts.

“I need you,” she states with a finality that leaves no room for doubt.

Peeta’s eyes look down at her in wide shock.

“Are those?” he begins, reaching out a finger, almost touching the one that dips underneath her collarbone.

“Stars, yes,” she confirms, a sort of bittersweet amusement trickling into her voice. Here she is, at the end of the world, finally telling the boy who’s been leaving lovemarks unknowingly across her skin for the past year that she loves him. And of course it's hard to believe because who grows stars on their skin as a sign of love?

He’s still eyeing the marks with a certain level of incredulity, even though they are clearly shaped into patterns of constellations. They might not be traditional, but there are a lot of them, and they’re all his.

“Ridiculous, I know, everyone else has flowers. But I guess—” She doesn’t get to finish what she was going to say because then he’s kissing her. Kissing her like he’s never kissed her before, and it's a relief, a revelation, and a captivation all in one.

Those camera ready kisses had been nothing compared to this, Peeta Mellark stripped back and down to that raw honesty she had seen once before, in another arena.

He only stops after a long time, after he’s gotten very acquainted with her tongue and teeth, to tug off his shirt and show her his own skin. Covered in marks.

“They’re the same,” she breathes as she traces a finger over the thick cluster of stars that have set up camp right over his heart. His chest is full of them. In all shapes and sizes. There are too many to count. They’ve almost grown on top of each other. His skin is so crowded.

If she thought she had a galaxy painted on her skin, Peeta holds a large portion of the known universe on his.

And then as she stares, some of the larger ones become more familiar.

She remembers seeing them that day in the hovercraft, when the doctors were trying to restart his heart. They weren't recognizable, they looked like freckles from far away.

Tears fall from her eyes, and she sobs into his neck.

He holds her, and kisses the tears from her cheeks, and strokes her hair.

“You had them this whole time didn’t you?” she doesn’t so much say the words as she does whimper them against his skin.

“Yes. They started when I was five, and they just never stopped. They’re all over my back and shoulders as well. They started to appear faster…after I started to spend more time with you,” he admits and this makes her cry harder.

“I saw them after our last Games. In the hovercraft, when they cut away your shirt. I thought they were just freckles.” She confesses and her shoulders shake with little sobs. He smoothes her hair and kisses the tears off her lips with a gentleness she knows she doesn’t deserve.

She suddenly feels very small and very foolish, and very cowardly.

“It's ok,” he tells her, “I’m just happy you know. I didn’t think—I wasn’t sure I would ever get to tell you,” he confesses and lets out a shuddery breath, his voice is tight now too.

“I’m sorry I wasted so much time,” she says, winding her hand around his neck and pulling him in, so that they’re close enough to stir each other’s air, close enough that their foreheads can touch.

“Don’t be. I—I was scared too. Of how many there are, of scaring you away,” he admits and she kisses him for it, slow and sweet.

“They’re beautiful,” she tells him honestly, because she’s never seen anything like his stars. Never seen so many lovemarks in one place, with so many blending colors. She could never fathom anyone loving someone that much, let alone her.

“Mine aren’t as pretty, compared to yours,” she whispers sadly, but he shakes his head vehemently.

He pulls back and stares unabashedly at her chest, the tops of her breasts littered with the evidence of how much she cares. Her stars aren’t as plentiful, they’re delicate, and more spread out. But they are in perfect balance with her curves and the lines of her body. He drags the tip of one finger across the array, while his eyes trace the paths the stars make as they dip underneath her bra and under her arms, across her sides and around her back.

He turns her in his lap, this way and that, as he explores her skin for a few precious moments, noting just how much of her has been claimed by those stars. He never moves to take off her uniform or her bra, he just investigates as much of his domain as he can politely, while the cameras are no doubt on them, zooming in to catch every second of his perusal and every loveworn sigh.

“You have so many stars, Katniss,” he says finally, as his fingers rub circles into the stars that band around her back. She hadn’t known they had spread that far. Maybe it had happened after he hit the fence, or when he held her after the jabberjays.

Maybe they sprouted in the last five minutes, when she finally allowed herself to admit the truth.

“I never dared to dream that you could love me like this. At most I hoped that maybe you had a flower or two, on your arm or your leg for me. Or even some leaves or vines in some little spot where you had room to spare.” He confesses.

She makes a sound at him, half disbelieving, half frustrated.

“You have no idea, Peeta Mellark.” She says as she holds his face between her hands and stares into his disbelieving blue eyes.

“I didn’t want to fool myself into believing I—that I could compete with the other serious loves of your life.” He says, one hand tracing the ring of Primroses on her wrist. She knows its more than that. She can almost read the way his eyes scan her skin for some sign of foliage that could belong to another man.

“You never had any competition anywhere.” She says, almost with a snarl, as she slams their lips together, pushing her whole self into him, her breasts against his chest, her legs wrapping around his waist, her hands in his hair,

Peeta meets her kiss with a fire of his own, gripping her to him, slanting his mouth against her, pressing into her and moaning as the space between their bodies disappeared.

“I wish I hadn’t been trying to hold myself back all this time, I probably could have grown more stars for you, if I let myself,” she tells him wistfully, when they break apart for air.

“OK, then we’ll both agree to stop holding back,” Peeta says, and before she can even wonder out loud how he could grow a universe of stars on his torso, and still be holding back his love for her, he covers her mouth with his again and all questions are lost.

She can feel the new stars bursting across her skin as they kiss, like whole solar systems being born.

When Peeta groans deeply into her mouth, like her kisses are torture and bliss all wrapped up in one, she sighs and swallows the sound whole, taking it deep into her chest, where she can keep such a precious thing safe.

She’s the one who refuses to stop kissing him, even when his erection becomes impossible to ignore, and she becomes so wet from grinding against it, she fears actually soaking through her uniform and into his lap.

She’s about to suggest they wade into deeper waters, maybe scan the beach for a cove or crevice they can hide in so they can finish what they’ve started, when midnight strikes and the manufactured bolt of energy shoots down from the sky and hits the Lightning Tree.

Finnick wakes up and the moment is lost.

She decides he has the most inconvenient timing on the planet. And she kind of hates him for it. Life debt or no life debt.

But Finnick proves himself invaluable when the group tries to separate them the next night. Beetee insists that he wants her and Johanna to take the wire back to the beach while Peeta and Finnick guard him at the Lightning Tree.

She argues, vehemently, against going. Peeta does too. Saying something about not letting his heart out of his sight for even a minute. The endearment makes her blush slightly.

Johanna scoffs. It's clear that Peeta’s claim, and their increased affection towards one another borderline disgusts her.

Finnick is the one who cinches the argument.

“Look at all those stars.” He points to the gaps in their uniforms, where the stars peek through the holes left behind by exposure to the poisonous fog and the elements. Without the dark green tint of the medicine, the stars are easy enough to see.

“They’re growing more by the day, hell, the hour!” Finnick adds wryly. Noting the ones that are climbing up Katniss’ neck, which Peeta had spent the morning kissing.

Then more seriously he says, “It’s like the old stories. About loves so strong that they don’t bloom like normal, but burn and light the way for all to see.”

Everyone is silent after that. Even Peeta, and she can tell he’s surprised by Finnick’s words. It doesn’t look like he’s heard these stories Finnick is talking about. Neither has she. And she has a hard time putting stock in fairy tales and legends.

But when Peeta looks at her, his eyes lighting and turning to something like liquid recognition, it looks like he believes them.

“Peeta and I are staying together. Or we’re leaving together. Your choice.” Katniss says fiercely, finally handing them the ultimatum.

Beetee opts to let them both stay and guard him at the tree while Finnick and Johanna go back to the beach with the wire.

Things turn sideways when Beetee blows himself up, and in the confusion the careers attack from the jungle. Not from the beach like they intended.

But Katniss has never fired her arrows faster than when Enobaria tried to ambush Peeta from behind, and Peeta has never wrestled someone to the ground more ferociously than when Brutus jumped Katniss and tried to strangle her.

Enobaria gets an arrow through her throat and Brutus gets his thick neck snapped. But her and Peeta are alive and ok.

And for a few moments they just hold each other, until Beetee breaks it up. He’s alive, and talking, amazingly, after having electrocuted himself to hell and back. But he can’t walk, or even sit up. In a whispered croak he tells them that they need to cut their trackers out. So the rebellion’s hovercraft can rescue them.

Now.

Then he passes back out.

“Do you trust me?” Katniss asks as she raises the knife over Peeta’s forearm.

“Always.” He replies without hesitation, his own knife poised over her arm.

Finnick and Johanna get back just in time to see their gruesome little scene play out, blood dripping down their arms, like a suicide pact, but they stop panicking when they see the trackers, blinking red on the forest floor.

“We still need to cut the power.” Finnick warns as he rips off a piece of his uniform to tie around Peeta’s bleeding arm.

“I know.” Katniss says as she raises her bow.

Behind her Peeta is steady as a heartbeat.

She takes a breath. Takes aim. Hears the twelfth chime of the clock.

And lets go.

Epilogue: Lighting the Way For All to See

Ten years after the rebellion and the war that freed Panem, Peeta takes her to a beach.

It's not the same beach as the one they saw in the arena, thankfully.

It’s a beach right outside Finnick and Annie’s house.

It brings up memories of that night so long ago, when they first discovered the love they had for each other. What followed was a harrowing escape from the arena, in a hovercraft that was almost downed by Capitol forces because Peeta insisted on getting all of them out. Finnick, Johanna, and Beetee too.

But none of them died that night, even though the hovercraft’s alarms rang for hours and they almost lost altitude more than once. Everyone made it through that escape and then made it through the year of war that followed. They did what victor’s did best and survived. The rebellion caught on like fire and Snow eventually got smoked out of his mansion. Katniss got to shoot a president, and then she and Peeta led a movement to impeach another when it became clear that Coin had too much in common with her predecessor.

Prim got married to Rory Hawthorne and moved to District 2. The flowers on Gale’s arm never did grow to cover his heart. Instead they receded from his shoulder and remained firmly planted on his arm. Like the love for a sister, or in her case, sister-in-law. In time, Katniss grew sprigs of hawthorne on her arm for her best friend, who had bowed out gracefully when she and Peeta got engaged in District 13. He knew he couldn’t compete with the stars that everyone had seen on the beach.

Katniss hadn’t been exaggerating when she said Peeta didn't really have any competition anywhere.

It's her idea that they wade farther out into the water.

And it's also her idea that they make love under the cover of the waves, nestled in a small crevice of rock on the beach.

Peeta is hesitant, thinking of Finnick and Annie worrying about their extended disappearance, but she is sure.

No more waiting. No more holding back.

They had made that promise to each other years ago, on another beach. But Katniss still lived by it, and so did he.

Peeta’s mouth is sweet and gentle, but his hips and arms are strong. He holds her against him with almost no effort, still so robust even a decade later.

He cradles her head in the same way he had that night.

Carefully, reverently.

He takes his time kissing down her neck, starting with the little star below her ear, that she told him he gave to her just a few days before their second arena. He sucks on that spot, eyes glued to her skin to watch for blooming stars, like he’s still in awe of the way he can paint love on to her skin with just one touch. Even after all this time, they still wake up with stars in new places some mornings.

When he gets to the first star, the one shat started them all, he pauses.

Its the one on top and slightly to the left of her heart, she had explained to him how she got it one night in 13. The day after that time in the rain, when he threw her the bread that saved her life.

She feels his tears sliding down her skin, more than she hears them, and she knows he isn’t really sad. Just overwhelmed like she is. This whole thing still feels bigger than them, sometimes, bigger than they could have possibly imagined.

People sometimes still look at them like they’re something out of a storybook, or legends living among them.

She fears they might drown in the expanse of the expectation some days. They are both human after all. They have arguments. They yell and get upset just like other couples. But other couples don’t topple regimes with their love.

But then his mouth is there to anchor her in the moment again. She moans, grinding her hips down against him, seeking friction to alleviate the need that has clawed its way up from deep inside her bones. He’s hard and ready for her, but when she begs, he tells her, “Not yet.”

She tries to understand, tries to be patient. They’ve done this a thousand times, but tonight feels different.

This hunger in her, that feels deeper than the sensation of distinct lack inside her hollow places. It makes her clutch his shoulders and chase his lips. It feels like she’s dying in between the time it takes for him to press another kiss to her skin, her breasts, her lips, and then it feels like she’s being resurrected each time he finally does.

He works her open, with thick but careful fingers, groaning at the needy wetness he finds coating her thighs, dripping from her empty want of him.

And then finally, finally, after he’s stretched her out with three fingers and has her keening into his mouth he finally joins their bodies together.

It's still a tight fit. She tries to remember to breathe around the feeling of stretching for him.

It's the same and not the same all at once.

He feels like home to her, and now, like possibility.

Because they’ve finally decided to stop holding back (not from their love for each other. They gave up all pretense of that back on the other beach).

But from letting that love take root and bloom inside her body.

Creating life and combining to form something new.

She stopped taking the pills that prevent pregnancy weeks ago. It could happen any time now.

But what she really wants, she thinks as Peeta moves powerfully inside her, all hot and hard steel, with velvety ridges catching and dragging exquisitely against her clenching muscles, is to conceive a child with him under the stars.

On the sand.

In the salty ocean waters that once baptized their union’s start.

What she really wants is the evidence that life can be good again, can be great even.

She wants to grow that kind of hope inside her like a seed, planted under her heart.

She wants to see her husband grow new stars on his arms for their children.

And most of all, she wants to grow some new constellations of her own, now that she knows that love is worth it. That not only can it stay, but it can light the way through the darkness for all to see.

The End

#everlark #soulmarks #kind of #thg #fanfiction #lemonluvwrites #katniss everdeen #Peeta Mellark #soulmates #soulmates au #CANON DIVERGENCE #my writing #HEA

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