(I'm totally drunk right now so I'm gonna take advantage and tell you that I adore you. Like I love everything that you've written and you seem so cool and I seriously just adore you!) (I have to take advantage while I'm intoxicated or else I'm too shy to ever talk to anyone lol)
Omg, thank you! This is so freaking sweet. But dude, you totally don’t have to be drunk to talk to me. I’m just a nerd with a blog like everyone else on here. I just peeped out the shots you took, by the way. You got drunk in style. ;)
For the magnificent peeta-pit, who needed a bit of a pick-me-up. Hopefully this is passable.
When Peeta came home from work, all the lights were off. The air in the living room felt static, prickling against his skin. The kitchen was cold.
Dropping his work folder on the dining room table, he called out into the grey void. “Katniss?”
There was no reply, and his heart thrummed in his ears.
She was always home before him, every day, since she racked up fewer hours in the office than he did in his classroom. Usually, he wasn’t wrapped up with entering grades or speaking with students until after five o’clock, while she was off at four. In these winter months, by the time he arrived home, she usually had the fireplace lit, or was curled up under a pile of blankets with a book and a mug of tea.
But the house was still.
He shouted out her name as he climbed the stairs, awarded nothing but the hollow ring of his voice. His next route was to the bedroom, which was where he occasionally found her. More often these past few weeks, especially.
They were finally ready for a baby. So they took every chance they could get to try for one.
However, he found the door to the master bedroom swung wide open, revealing a navy gloom, shrouded in silver by the glow from the shuttered window. The comforter was stretched tight along the mattress’s edges, untouched since he made it this morning.
His lungs felt like sheets of lead. He needed oxygen. Or defibrillators.
Or just Katniss.
Where was she?
He twisted his fingers in his curls, pulling them away from his scalp. His muscles were running riot. He called out for her once more, the sharp K of her name slicing its way along the tissue in his throat, and he surged forward and out of the room.
Heart juddering under his ribs, Peeta braced himself against the wall. He was about to bolt back to the stairs when he saw it: a thread of yellow light bleeding from under the guest bedroom’s door.
He couldn’t yet reward himself with relief, not until he had the door pushed aside, revealing her slender frame hunched beside the bare mattress, her hands methodically stuffing the sheets into a cardboard box. She didn’t even twitch as he entered, as if she hadn’t heard him come.
What was she doing?
“Katniss, what’s going on?” he asked, pawing at the door frame for support.
She didn’t look his way when she replied.
“Packing up the guest room, honey.”
Honey.
Oh, Jesus. Something was wrong.
He cut to her side, kneeling on the carpet beside her. Her hair was pleated back into its typical braid, but a few vagrant strands flew out around her temples, as if she, too, had been pulling at her hair.
He touched her cheek, and softened when she didn’t pull away.
“Why are you putting this stuff away? Is something wrong?”
Her fingers nimbly folded the cardboard flaps of the box together. Once this was shut, she finally looked to him.
“No,” she said. Her eyes were unreadable.
A storm of questions must’ve been stretching his expression in all sorts of directions, because she flattened her lips, pressing her hand to his knee.
“Peeta, we’re going to need this room for a nursery.”
At first, her words hit his ears like nerf darts against an iron wall. He frowned at her, refusing to trust his initial inference, because she surely didn’t mean—
But then he saw it, the slight twitch in the corner of her lips, tilting them upward. Her eyes were shining, paving light in the space between them. Her fingers curled around his knee.
Oh god. Oh god oh god.
“Katniss, you’re—”
She nodded, swallowing a smile.
“Went to the clinic over my lunch break. Had a hunch for the past week, but…”
He didn’t know what to do other than lean in, ensnaring her in his arms. She felt so warm to the touch. He could feel her heart fluttering.
“Are you okay?”
Her breath curled against his neck, and he died a happy death at the sensation of her lips skimming over the tingling flesh there. “I want this,” she said. “I’m a little scared, but… I’m happy, Peeta. Is it possible to be petrified and ecstatic at the same time?”
He choked out a pathetic laugh against her shoulder, trying so hard not to cry, and also not to die of happiness.
“I’ll do anything you ask,” he promised, pulling back so he could look at her. His hands bracketed her cheeks as he studied her, gauging the soft shapes of her features, praying their child would have each and every one. “For you, for the baby. Anything.”
“Anything?”
The way her eyebrow arched suggested she already had something in mind.
“Anything,” he echoed. “Massage your feet. Bring you Laffy Taffy in the middle of the night. Commit first degree murder. You name it.”
Her lip quirked, and the hand that was cupping his knee slid upward, grazing the inside of his thigh.
“Let’s celebrate, alright?” she whispered.
The migration of her touch told him exactly what she wanted, but for good measure, he feigned cluelessness. “Confetti? Cake? Balloons?”
“How about a repeat of the tryst that brought about this little garbanzo bean, yeah?”
She reached for his fingers, pulling his hand to her still-flat stomach. He could feel the heat radiating from beneath her blouse, wondering whose heat it was.
His baby was under there. Their baby.
Jesus Christ.
Gulping down his disbelief, he let out a breathy chuckle. “Garbanzo bean?”
“Well, I imagine that’s about how it looks right now. We can call it Gabby for short.”
“What about when it’s bigger? I don’t think it’ll be too pleased to know we called it Cantaloupe.”
“I think Pumpkin would be a better choice at that stage,” she said half-jokingly, but the wistful undertone was unmistakable, and it made his stomach swirl with warmth.
“And what about all the stages in between?”
But she was shaking her head, her fingers curling around his as she pulled them lower, down below the hem of her pants. She quickly surged forward, swallowing the startled choking sound he made in response by pressing her lips to his.
“Stop stalling, sweetheart,” she whispered against his mouth, releasing his hand so he could start working his magic. He tasted her gasp when his fingers dipped into her underwear, charting the path he knew so well. She smiled under his lips. “We have plenty of time to work out the details later.”
OF COURSE I'M SITTING IN CLASS WHEN I COME ACROSS THAT "love the way you taste" POST AND NOW I'M TRYING TO KEEP MY COOL BUT OH MY GOD.
HAHAHAHAHA!!!
Oh man, I give you a ton of credit if you can keep your cool! I know I wouldn’t be able to. I’d have made some sort of inhuman noise and then had to leave the room with my legs crossed!
Thank you for letting me bitch and giving me advice :) it's helping me get my "I don't give a fuck" attitude back haha
You got it, buddy. And here’s the thing - I know it hurts. I still let things get under my skin and bother me, even though I know better and I’ve had many years of not giving a fuck. But we’re human. It happens.
(But you know what? It’s okay to forgive yourself - for anything and everything.)
I'm trying to cut them out, but it's hard when you've been friends for years. And it's just really shitty because she is the one who asked what was wrong and it was something about her that I figured would be an easy fix, but apparently not because now I'm being ignored, by her and the whole group. It's sounds so fucking high school and it's so dumb. Sorry to dump it on you when you're not feeling well :/
What was the easy fix?
Whatever it is, that’s really neither here nor there. They’re ignoring you? Fine. They’re exercising their choice and that’s their own decision. It really has nothing to do with YOU, it has to do with their collective decision, their impression of what was said, and what your “friend” told them. So, don’t call them, don’t text them, don’t engage. If they want to reach out to you to connect (and by connect I don’t mean make shitty comments or be passive aggressive, but actually to connect with each other as friends) then you can make the decision on whether or not you want to. Until then, be polite but firm. If they try and engage you in order to be toxic to you, you can tell them no. You will not be a part of any efforts to make you feel bad. You can’t stop people from saying things or thinking things about you or anyone else. But you can stop yourself from listening to it. You can stop them from being in their presence when they say it. And eventually, with practice, you can stop allowing it to bother you.
Just because someone is in your life doesn’t mean they have permission to treat you badly.
How did I end up surrounded by shitty people? It's never ending and I'm not sure how much longer I can take it.
Time to weed your garden, then. You do have a choice in who is in your life. It’s very hard though - you may feel trapped because the toxic people are at your job, or in your family,or your friends, and you think, “I can’t cut them out of my life.” But you can, or you can cut out the influence they have over you. I’ve done it myself - and it’s incredibly hard but very, very fulfilling. If you want to message me privately we can chat about it.
