This is part two to my drabble “One Night,” which I wrote approximately forever ago.
@butrfac14, you are amazing. Thank you for betaing on short notice! Thanks to @dandeliononfire for the prompt, and to @lovely-tothe-bone for asking for more :)
[The Hunger Games belongs to Suzanne Collins. Photo by Matthijs Smit on Unsplash].
The scent of freshly ground coffee lures Katniss downstairs the next morning. She stumbles by the campers chatting in the kitchen and heads straight for the coffee maker. A summer breeze floats in through the open glass doors, along with the sounds of laughter.
She can’t help but scan the faces of the campers for the man from last night. The fact that she’s not even sure of the color of his hair isn’t lost on her.
Katniss pours herself a large cup of coffee and is stirring in sugar when she spots a man leaning against a wall in the living room. He looks to be about the right height, and she doesn’t realize that she’s staring until he turns to look, shaking his dark hair out of his eyes as he smiles.
Katniss groans internally. One of the few people she has met is Delly, who looks like the kind of person that hops out of bed at six in the morning and likes it that way. Katniss slowly takes a sip of coffee. She doesn’t tell Delly that you can’t miss something you would never attend in a million years.
“You should join us sometime!” Delly smiles brightly, seemingly undeterred by Katniss’ silence. “Or, how about the singer-songwriter class today? I’m leading it.” Delly glances at her clipboard. “Maybe you’re already signed up?”
“We were supposed to sign up?”
Delly frowns, flipping through the papers. “Looks like most of the classes for today are filled. Didn’t you hear the morning announcements?”
She didn’t know they were supposed to sign up in advance, and now she’ll probably be stuck with some class she isn’t even interested in.
“I wasn’t up,” she mumbles. Despite herself, she peers at the clipboard.
Delly gives her a kind smile. “It’s okay, there’s still a few spots in my class. C’mon, it’s about to start.”
Katniss avoids glancing at the dark-haired man in the living room and follows Delly outside to the wide wooden deck filled with campers. Delly gathers her group and marches them to a meadow in the woods. When they arrive, everyone settles into a circle on the grass.
“I see some new faces, so let’s start with introductions.” Delly smiles as she looks around the circle. “Let’s play Rose and Thorn. Tell me your highlight, or ‘rose’ so far at camp, and then a ‘thorn’, or something that didn’t go so well.” She sits back and nods at the girl next to her.
The introductions take some time, as Delly’s class seems to be popular among the campers. Katniss catches the names of a few of them, such as a shy woman named Annie whose bangs keep falling in her face, and a man named Finnick who launches into a story about skinny dipping in the camp lake.
“Okay!” says Delly, smiling at Finnick, although her pen is tapping furiously against her clipboard. “How about our next camper? Peeta?” She nods at a blond man sitting next to Finnick. Katniss notices the guitar slung behind his back, and the way the sunlight catches his blue eyes as he smiles at the group.
“Sure,” he says. “I guess my ‘thorn’ was getting lost on the way to camp.” A sympathetic groan rises from the campers. “But my ‘rose’ was playing guitar last night.”
Finnick elbows him, grinning. “That’s where you were last night! Who were you with? Marvel?”
“Actually…” Peeta trails off. “This other camper, you don’t know her. But she has this incredible voice.” He addresses the whole circle, and Katniss freezes. His gaze sweeps around the group, and for a moment she’s sure he’s going to recognize her, but he barely glances at her.
Finnick narrows his sea-green eyes. “And who is this mystery camper?”
Katniss feels too hot as the sun beats down on the back of her neck. Peeta opens his mouth to respond and Katniss wishes she could vanish like the morning mist.
“Let’s move on, guys,” Delly breaks in. “Thanks for sharing, Peeta.”
Katniss exhales, and the anxiety is replaced with anger. Last night was private, she thinks furiously. Who is he to share that with the entire group?
She realizes she’s glaring at Peeta, and she forces her attention back to Delly, determined not to let him get in the way of the morning session.
But as Delly leads the group in a few sing-alongs, Katniss keeps noticing things, like the way Peeta bites his pencil or how his gaze never lands on her for more than a second.
When Delly hands out a stack of papers, Katniss notices hers is marked with a number in red at the top.
“Alright everyone, we’re going to break up into writing teams to collaborate on an original song!” Delly actually claps her hands together, her ponytail bouncing. “If you come up with something good, maybe you could even use it for the talent show on Sunday.”
Katniss can’t remember anything about a talent show, but apparently she’s the only one because two girls next to her start whispering intently.
“Find the person with the same number as your paper, and they’ll be your song partner. Happy writing!”
Katniss peers at her number as everyone gathers their notebooks and pens. Out of the corner of her eye she sees Peeta walk towards her, and she ducks her head but his feet stop right in front of her.
“Hey.” He peers at her paper. “I think we’re partners.” She tries to stifle a sigh, and is met with his confused expression.
“Hi.” She gets to her feet. He smiles politely, and they head to the outskirts of the meadow. When Peeta stops a few feet past the tree line, Katniss keeps going. If she’s going to be stuck with him, she can at least waste some of their time by walking.
“C’mon,” she says gruffly. “A bit further.” She doesn’t hear him following her, and she turns around to see him looking back at the meadow.
“I mean, this way we’re nearby when the class regroups,” he says.
She kicks at a root sticking in the path.
“I don’t want anyone to steal our ideas,” she mumbles.
“I’d rather that than get eaten by a bear,” he responds, throwing her off guard. She raises an eyebrow.
“There aren’t any bears in these woods.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I looked it up before I arrived.” Her sister made her promise not to wander off on hikes in order to avoid the other campers. She’d made the concession of checking for predators first. “And if there was, I’d climb a tree.”
He doesn’t seem to know what to say to that. She turns around and marches into the forest, and after a moment she hears his footsteps behind her.
They hike downhill, the summer sun filtering through the trees and dappling the leaves on the forest floor. Katniss spots deer tracks, and wonders if the lake mentioned in the camp brochure is somewhere nearby. After ten minutes she knows they’ve walked much farther than they should, but Peeta doesn’t comment. Birds flit from branch to branch, and Katniss lets the silence soak in before sitting down on a log a little way from the trail.
Peeta settles on a rock across from her, absentmindedly strumming his guitar. She scans the instructions from Delly, but she can’t concentrate.
“So when you’re not researching bears, what do you do for fun, Katniss?”
She jerks her head up. “Besides singing?” She shrugs. “I do archery at the community college.”
“You shoot? Why didn’t you bring your bow with us?” His hands dance soundlessly over the guitar frets. “Here I was worrying about protecting you from the bears, but all the while you could be the one protecting us!” He shakes his head.
“There’s no bears out here, seriously -” she starts, but a smile steals onto her face at his mock exasperation. She stares down at her paper.
“An hour to write a song doesn’t seem like much,” Katniss grumbles.
“Finnick says he’s just going to use one he already wrote,” Peeta says. He looks up hopefully at her. “Do you have any originals?”
“No.” She folds the paper in her hands.
He clears his throat, strumming a chord. “Katniss isn’t afraid of bears; she’ll climb a tree to get away…” he sings. He looks at her expectantly. “Now think of something that rhymes.”
“This is ridiculous,” she mutters. He’s just looking at her, so she sighs and tries to think of something.
“If I lose Peeta in these woods, it’ll really ruin his day,” she sings.
The smile slips off his face.
“What?” She scowls. “Your line wasn’t great either.”
“You’re the girl,” he says, a blush blooming at the collar of his t-shirt. “You sang with me last night!”
She picks up a twig, twirling it in her fingers.
“Yeah.”
“Why didn’t you say anything before?” His blush is creeping up his neck to his jaw.
“When was I supposed to say something? When you were announcing it to the entire world?” She glares at him. “What was I supposed to say? Oh hi, I’m the girl with the incredible voice?”
“I don’t think I said ‘incredible,” he counters.
She raises an eyebrow. “I was there, remember?”
“Is that why you’ve been mad at me this whole time?” He leans forward. “Because of my ‘rose’ story?”
She crosses her arms. She doesn’t know why she feels so possessive over that space of time where it was only melody and stars and the cool of the night.
“Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t think; I didn’t even know if I was going to see you again. I just…” He looks up at the trees above them, and a breeze rustles through the branches.
“What?” She says despite herself, when the silence stretches thin. He takes a deep breath and looks right at her, and she wants to look away but she doesn’t.
“I just told the truth. That’s how I feel. Playing guitar while you sang was the best part of camp so far.” He smiles wryly. “Sorry.”
He does look sorry. She pulls a loose thread from her shirt.
“Ok,” she manages. “It’s fine.”
“Maybe we should start over.” He leans back against a redwood tree, the color of the bark contrasting with the blue of his shirt. “How do you like camp so far?”
“It’s great,” she says, proud that she doesn’t sound as unenthusiastic as she feels.
“Really?” he says. “I was a little apprehensive at first. Still am, I guess.”
She can’t figure that out. He’s gorgeous and plays guitar like a god. Why would he be apprehensive?
“You don’t seem like it,” she says.
He shrugs and looks down.
“It’s just – this whole talent show idea, with everyone having to perform. Doesn’t it seem like a bit much?” He pushes a hand through his hair.
“It’s music camp.” She shrugs. “It’s not a big deal.”
“Easy for you to say. You’ll go up on stage and have everyone crying with your incredible vocals.”
“What about you? You’re amazing at guitar.” She’s pretty sure she has the onstage presence of a banana slug, while he looks like the lead singer of a boy band.
He laughs dryly. “Thanks, I guess. But do you want to know a secret?” He shoves his guitar behind him so it peeks over his shoulder, and he leans forward, carefully placing his forearms on his knees before looking up at her. “I’ve never played for anyone before.”
“What?” She crosses her arms. “You’re joking.”
“Nope.”
“What about your music teacher?”
“What music teacher? I learned how to play from YouTube.” She stares at him.
“And your roommates?” she asks.
“I live by myself. Seriously,” he says, “the only person that’s heard me play is right here.”
His full attention is on her, his eyes a bright blue in the filtered forest light. She’s been singing since she was a child, and has sung in so many music assemblies and concerts over the years that she can’t remember a time when no one had heard her before.
She thinks it’s brave, showing up to camp, to play guitar with a group of strangers. But she can’t seem to say it, not when the morning light is caught in his hair like strands of gold. She curls her fingers into the moss on the log next to her.
“Don’t worry about the talent show,” she says gruffly. “You’ll be fine.”
Peeta’s already looked down, his attention on the instructions.
“Should we get started, then?” he asks.
As the morning melts away, Peeta plays guitar softly, coaxing her into writing another verse. Katniss watches the light change as the sun ascends, and at noon she leads Peeta back to the meadow.
so would people be interested in a weasel roleplay? I’m thinking about making one for my friend’s roleplay and wanted to know if anyone was interested.
So i went outside bc my dad told me i should ve able to see some meteor shower about now and i was there for a grand total of 30 seconds before i heard this wild snarl and ran back inside as fast as i could
