Summary: In the weeks after their break-up, Peeta tries to heal, to move on and forget his girlfriend, but his subconscious and his body have other ideas..
Rating: E for explicit sexual content, explicit language, and graphic scenes of masturbation. If that doesn't appeal to you, keep on scrolling.
A/N: Once upon a time, the fandom would randomly lose our collective shit over a post or an idea and creators would challenge each other, unprompted, to create and share. In the case of this particular piece, the challenge was dubbed the Peeta Mellark Masturbation Series... which is literally the least creative and most accurate name possible. For several weeks in 2015 (fuck me it's really been ten years?), a flurry of pieces were written and posted, everything from canon compliant, pining during Catching Fire Peeta to post Mockingjay explorations to modern au's, all featuring Peeta Mellark indulging in some self love.
The link above will take you to an ask which is, as far as I’m aware, the only list of the pieces contributed. Sadly… some of the links may no longer work as creators have left tumblr or changed their url. I didn’t check them all out.
But here is a direct link to my humble entry in that glorious fracas.
Okay, so I’ve been majorly procrastinating on the latest chapter so I’ve been writing some Valkyrie x Loki college AUs, inspired by this post.
This is the first in the series, and I’ll be writing more and maybe eventually curating them onto Wattpad, but for now, they’ll live here. Story under the cut!
Raindrops Keep Falling
“Is it...shit,” Valkyrie Sutton groans, looking up towards the sky. The gray clouds that were lurking on the horizon when she went into the library have shifted to covering the whole sky in a hazy, dark formation. She looks down at the final essay that’s supposed to be in her professor’s mailbox in five minutes and looks back up again.
“Fuck me,” she whispers to herself. Suddenly, thunder cracks above and rain begins to pour down. “Don’t bring your backpack, Val, it’ll be fine Val!”
She takes off in a run from the library, trying to simultaneously shove her essay into her jacket and shield her eyes from the driving rain. She darts across the street, into and through traffic, and past the campus Starbucks.
“Hey! Val!” A familiar voice calls out after she runs right past them. She turns and starts running backwards blindly.
“Tony! Hey!” she calls. “I’m on my way to turn something in, but drinks later?”
“You bet your ass!” Tony is laughing at her shaking his head when she turns around and runs directly into someone.
“Sorry! Gotta go!” Valkyrie nearly screams into the stranger’s face. She takes quick note of how he seems vaguely familiar, but can’t pay him much mind. That is, of course, until she notices he in holding an umbrella in his hand. She hesitates a moment.
Don’t do it. You haven’t sleep in three days you are not capable of rational decision making.
She lunges forward suddenly and grabs the umbrella from his hands and darts down the sidewalk.
“Hey!” he calls after her, but she’s nearly rounding the corner of the block already. He sighs and then, despite better judgment, goes after her. After all, that umbrella cost a pretty penny. His long legs carry him fast and he catches up to her in no time. He slips his hand around the handle of the umbrella and carries it along with her, because he cannot shake her vice-like grip on the thing.
“I’m just going to assume that you’re acting entirely irrationally because it’s finals and not because that is your natural state. I’ll wait to impose that judgment until after we arrive at wherever it is you’re in a hurry too, however,” he says with a smile.
Valkyrie looks up at him again, narrowing her eyes at him. “I don’t like you.”
“Well, that’s just fine, bandit,” he chuckles to himself. “You don’t have to like me. You just have to give me back my umbrella.”
“This is weird, right?” Valkyrie asks him suddenly. He looks at her and her eyes are wide and extremely bloodshot.
“Uh…yes,” he agrees, startled by the sleepless look in her eyes. He would almost mark her down as attractive if he wasn’t nearly convinced she’s entirely mental. “Are you planning on letting go of this umbrella any time, or…am I going to have to pry it from your dead hands?”
“What?”
“I’m not threatening to murder you!” he exclaims suddenly and then winces. “I’m Loki, by the way.”
“I didn’t ask, but thank you. Can you at least walk faster if you insist on holding onto my umbrella,” Valkyrie sniffs.
“It’s my umbrella.”
“No it’s…oh, right. I forgot, sorry. I keep sort of…you know…like everything’s out of…not real…I’m sorry I haven’t slept in like three days I don’t even know what I’m saying.”
“Oookay, Swiper,” Loki nods slowly, slightly mesmerized by her. Well, like they say, you can’t stop watching a car crash. And this car is crashing brilliantly, flaming out in bizarre glory.
“We’re here,” she says suddenly, looking at Loki.
“Great, let go of my umbrella and we’ll go on our merry ways,” Loki says. She just stands there, looking at him, like a deer in headlights. “Are you…in there?”
She gasps suddenly and then produces a cell phone from her pocket. “You’re coming in there with me.”
“What? No!” Loki protests, but the girl is suddenly dragging him by the umbrella into the building. She flashes her ID to the security guard and Loki fumbles around for his, eventually producing it before the elevator doors open up for them. They awkwardly maneuver their way into the elevator with the umbrella still open, both of them clutching it tightly.
“You better have a good story,” Valkyrie says, looking to Loki again. He is busy pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Me? A story about what?” Loki demands, finally dropping his hold on the umbrella in pure exasperation. Valkyrie could cheer in excitement if she wasn’t about to drop dead, or cry, or fall asleep standing up. Which she might have for just a second just now.
“About how you held me up. About why I am late turning in my final paper because of you!”
Loki lets out a sound somewhere between being strangled and laughing. “Me?! You stole my umbrella and I…why are you laughing?”
Valkyrie doubles over, letting go of the umbrella and is hysterically laughing, even as the elevator doors open and Loki tries to guide her out of the elevator. “It’s just that…umbrella is such a weird word. The more you say it, the less it sounds like anything.”
“Are you…” Loki pauses to take a deep breath. “Are you serious right now?”
He turns back to the elevator and the doors have closed. With the goddamn bloody umbrella inside.
“Shit.”
Loki turns slowly back towards the hysterical girl in front of him and he’s not unconvinced she’s not crying now. He sits her down in the chair and holds his hand out.
“Where is your essay? And who is your teacher?” he demands with a sigh of impatience. Valkyrie looks up at him and stops laughing and she unzips her jacket without breaking eye contact. He looks down at the paper.
Valkyrie Sutton
Prof. Thomas Raffel
History 101: Cultural Mythology
An Examination of the Influence of Nordic Lore on Contemporary Culture
“Let’s turn this in, shall we?” Loki offers Valkyrie his hand and she takes it. He pulls her up and heads towards Professor Raffel’s office. He knocks on Raffel’s office door impatiently. He turns to Valkyrie suddenly and purses his lips. He lets go of her to reach down and pull a small silver band off of his right hand. He slips it quickly onto her left ring finger.
“It’s a contingency plan. Just in case,” he says lowly, with a flash of mischief in his eyes. Valkyrie swallows hard, getting lost in his lovely green eyes for just a moment. She nods in understanding, though she really doesn’t, and sure enough Professor Raffel answers the door. Loki slips inside and closes the door behind himself, leaving Valkyrie left out of the office. She groans but leans up against the wall, trying to listen to whatever is happening behind the closed door. All she can make out is faint laughter.
Less than five minutes later, the door opens up again and Professor Raffel and Loki are parting ways. Loki throws his arm around Valkyrie’s shoulder.
Professor Raffel looks at Valkyrie. “A special young man you’ve gotten ahold of here, Miss Sutton. Take care of him, eh?”
The second the door is closed again Valkyrie shakes Loki off of her as they head towards the elevator. The doors open. No umbrella.
“So he took it?”
“Yes.”
“Even though it was late?”
“Yes.”
“Not marked down?”
“No.”
“What did you say to him?”
Loki grins wickedly. “I’m not really sure you want to know.”
The elevator doors open again and they walk in silence towards the exit. When they get to the street they pause a moment, looking at one another, assessing the enemy.
“Why?”
“Well, now you owe me a favor, Valkyrie Sutton.”
She narrows her eyes at him. “And what favor is that?”
Loki grins. “Time will tell. Until next time, Artful Dodger.”
He turns and goes, leaving Valkyrie dumbstruck and half asleep in the middle of the sidewalk. She doesn’t trust him. She doesn’t even like him. But owing a favor to him…well, it’s the least she can do since he just inexplicably saved her ass.
“Wait!” Something jolts her to life. “Your ring!” She pursues him down the sidewalk. He turns at the sound of her calling and groans but waits for her to catch up.
“You left your ring with me,” she says, pulling it off her finger and placing it in his hand.
“Right,” he nods appreciatively. “Wouldn’t want you making off with more of my property today.”
“No…” she says quietly. And then he’s gone again, making his way down the sidewalk like nothing happened. She watches until he’s disappeared around the corner.
You ever have one of those moments where you listen to a song and you kind of wish that someone feels that about you? For me, one of those songs was Ain't No Sunshine. Just 'cause I don't leave often and the dramatic imagery of that just... It's beautiful. (I know, stupid)
So when I left Illinois and saw that it was going to be a bit rainy for the first week I was gone, I smiled a bit to myself -- there's my imagery being left for my friends and family. However, I figured, since it's summer, the sun would of course attack Illinois like it ALWAYS does.
The rain hasn't really stopped from what I've heard and my house (my basement full of my stuff I left) has flooded. Twice. The first time, my mother called and told me about it very calmly. Told me that some things got wet, but it's fine. She joked that I was the one who had to take care of the house after her demise -- which I agreed to under the pretense that it would be a long while before that happens... Y'know, to let me start preparing. This morning I received a call from my brother.
Everything is in ankle-deep water.
Mostly everything is ruined.
I better be doing something really fucking good with myself in New York -- How's finding a job.
I talked to Mom -- she was still calm.
I was already feeling like I wasn't really wanted back home.
The moon was very large that afternoon, and I distinctly remember it being rounded off at the edges. It might have been mistaken for a dirty plate suspended in midair and covered with glow-in-the-dark paint by someone whose eye had not been trained to see that it wasn't and who had no concept of reality.
The sun was nowhere to be seen. Then I realized there was a glow-painted dirty plate hanging from the windowframe, and when I pulled it down, I saw that the sun had simply been behind it from where I was standing. Of course, any time someone has hung a dirty glow-painted plate from your windowframe, it means you must engage in a fistfight with them... and the only weapons you can use are swords and rubber-soled boots. Unfortunately for me, I then remembered that I had put the plate there. So I challenged myself to a duel, accepted my challenge, and somehow lost before I'd even started fighting. This would have struck me as nothing unusual had I won as well, but I didn't. I just lost.
Frustrated, I decided to make some cotton candy, a task that would have been much simpler if I knew how or had the means to do so. Instead I ended up wrenching the walkers from the hands of some fossilized people who happened to be walking down the hallway of the nursing home where I was working at that moment. Freed from their need to go slow, the old people began to rejoice, and ran down the hallway for about a foot and a half before they all collapsed into a useless, elderly heap on the carpet, which was the same shade of gray as most of their clothing and hair, preventing me from finding them. They chortled very loudly to themselves, and in a blind fit of happiness, I sat down and took a nap.
While asleep, something interesting happened. Fortunately, I can't remember what it was, so I'll just leave you with a few things that come to mind at the moment. An aluminum-reinforced chair with poorly painted fiberboard backing. A small fragment of the sun, turned into a paste and brushed with nineteen times. A green dot that I don't want anymore because the warranty is up and I can't see green very well anyway.
That's it! Now, off to find a small fragment of the sun to brush with.
