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Haymitch, Peeta, and I are boarding the elevator back to our quarters.
I’ve just spent the evening getting to know my mentor’s friends, and I can honestly say I’ve never met a loonier bunch of people in my life. I wonder what they think of me. It does, after all, take a certain amount of insanity to survive the Hunger Games.
Johanna Mason steps into the elevator and I think she’s saying something. Something about how the tree outfits her stylist always dresses her up in make her look stupid (although I personally think she looks really damn hot, but of course I don’t say this) and she wants to do nothing more than shove her axe in his face.
I smile. She winks at me. She has Peeta unzip the dress and he glances at me and Haymitch, confused, before doing what Johanna tells him.
Johanna peels the dress off her skin, smiling lasciviously at me as the forest green material forms a puddle at her feet. I zone out everything in the elevator except for the woman in front of me. Johanna smiles at me the whole way up, posing so I can get a really good look of what she’s showing off. My breaths get shallower. I allow myself to look down once, and immediately look away. One small glance has left a heat between my legs.
I’ve never felt anything like it before. Its wet and a bit uncomfortable.
I’ll need fresh underwear and a shower.
She reaches the seventh floor and turns around, brushing her arm against mine as she swishes her way out of the elevator.
“Let’s do it again sometime!” she calls. Something in me decides I want to do it now.
I make a move to follow her, only to be blocked by Haymitch’s hand on my arm. I glare at him. His face is firm. “No.”
I contemplate causing a scene in the elevator and throwing him off me. Haymitch is still surprisingly strong but he’s older and slower and I know I could take him down in a brawl.
Peeta will help him though, and Peeta’s just as young as me, and even stronger.
I decide I hate the both of them.
When we reach our floor Haymitch abruptly pulls me aside and starts walking.
“We need to have a chat, sweetheart,” he says, loud enough for the hidden cameras in our apartment to hear. “Come on.”
I’m forced to follow Haymitch as he leads me to the roof, where we know for sure we can have a conversation without being bugged. At least, that’s what he tells me. I personally think there is no space in Panem, in the world, where President Snow can’t get to me, but whatever.
Haymitch crosses his arms. I cross mine.
“Do you like Johanna Mason?”
His directness throws me off. Suddenly I feel like a girl again, getting chastised by my mother for showing the wrong type of interest in the same gender. Here in the Capitol I bet it’s no big deal, but in the districts...well, some are more strict than others. I think in District Ten homosexuality is punishable by hanging. In Twelve they mostly let it go, as long as you aren’t obvious about it, although some teasing will happen if word spreads around town.
I look down at my shoes morosely. Haymitch palms my cheek. “You liking girls is not the issue here, Katniss. Its which girl you like that’s the problem, and the fact that she’s not a baker named Peeta Mellark.”
At the mention of Peeta I lose it. Tears slide down my cheeks and sobs rack my throat as Haymitch looks surprised, and then gathers me in his arms and soothes my hair. “I tried so hard to love him, Haymitch. And I do. Just - just not like that.”
I’m ugly sobbing all over Cinna’s beautiful costume, a dress that started out as a prison sentence from Snow before it blossomed into something much more dangerous.
“I know, sweetheart.” Haymitch’s voice is low in my ear, uncharacteristically soft. He tries to wipe all my tears away with his thumbs but there are too many of them, too fast. He settles for rocking me in his arms. “That’s it Katniss, let it out. It’s alright.”
It’s not alright, I try to tell him. It’ll never be, because in two days I’ll have to kill a girl I think have feelings for so a boy that I don’t will live. So I don’t start a war.
Nothing about it is alright.
I part with Haymitch and wipe my eyes with my sleeve. He gives me one last glance before I nod and he leads us back to our apartment.
I don’t have to wait long before he passes out on the couch. Normally we’re only given access to our own floors, and a Games worker would have to give us permission to go to another district’s suite. But everything’s different this year. And most are too afraid of the victors to really stop us.
I knock on District 7’s door and bite my lip. Johanna Mason answers with a sarcastic smile. “Ole Haymitch finally let you out the house did he?”
“Haymitch isn’t my father,” I frown. “I don’t need his permission to do anything.”
Johanna raises an eyebrow. I sigh.
“I waited until he was drunk and snuck out.”
Johanna breaks into a wide, genuine smile. “I knew I liked you, Everdeen. Come on in.”
Sometime later we’re sprawled out on Johanna’s couch. I look around nervously for the male victor, Blight, but Johanna assures me that Blight went to bed hours ago.
“That old geezer hits the hay before most people eat lunch,” she says. She’s got a fond smile on her face, though, and I remember absently that Blight was her mentor. She looks down and we don’t speak for a few minutes after that.
“Hey Jo?” I ask after we’ve both had a few cups of wine, “do you think I would’ve made a good mentor?”
“You? Nah.” Jo sits back on her haunches. I try not to look hurt as I wait for her to explain.
“You may not act like it, Girl on Fire, but you enjoy upstaging people. Nothing wrong with that. I do too. Healthy competition never hurt anyone, but girls like us, we like to be on top.”
I frown in my place, thinking about that. “So, you don’t train your tributes to be victors because you’re afraid they’ll upstage you.”
Johanna looks at me sidelong before sighing and taking a long drink of her wine. “They all die, Katniss. No matter what you do. They never fucking listen. You tell them to go left and they go right out of spite, or whoever fucking knows. It gets really annoying after awhile. And I’ve only been doing it three years.”
I think again about Haymitch, and Blight, who have both been mentoring longer than Jo and I’ve been alive.
It would drive me crazy. Especially since I’m the only female victor, I would never get a year off. Every year, trying your hardest to save two children who’ve most likely given up their will to live since birth. I think of how surprised Haymitch had been when me and Peeta made it clear we weren’t those kind of tributes.
It’s a hell of a way to sober me up from the wine.
“Damn, this convo is getting heavy.” Johanna shifts next to me and plucks the glass away from my shaking hands. She gulps what’s left of it down, and sprawls her feet across the couch. Her head rests against my side. “No more depressing talk, Kitty Kat.”
I snort, at both the nickname and the boldness of her actions. Johanna stripped naked in an elevator in our first conversation and somehow, I find a way to still be shocked by her directness.
“I’m not exactly a ball of laughs, Jo.”
“So don’t talk then.”
Johanna looks me in the eyes and I already know what she’s planning to do next. I may not be an expert on true romance, but every time I was about to kiss Peeta for the cameras I would look at him the same way Johanna looks at me now.
Except I don’t think she’s faking.
“Not here,” I say, breathing nervously. “Not when someone could be watching.”
Snow doesn’t like it when I call out his sick power games for what they are. He doesn’t mind as much when I’m subtle.
A smirk crawls across Johanna’s face, long and slow, and she whisks me by the hand to her compartment. She closes and locks the door before turning on me. “There’s no bugs in this room, honey. I’ve clawed out every single one of them with my axe. And one with my pinky.”
Johanna grips my shoulders and pushes me on the bed. She pauses and searches my face, I assume to give me a chance to back out if I’m having second thoughts.
“Please, Jo,” I whisper. She smiles and descends on me. Johanna lavishes my upper body with kisses, pushing away the soft material of my shirt to feel around my abdomen. I’m still skinny, but since the Games I’ve gained a thin layer of muscle, and my stomach dips into barely visible abs that end above my belly button.
Johanna pushes aside my shawl and I assist by throwing my shirt over my head, not paying attention to where it lands after I’ve tossed it off. I think it catches itself around an empty coat hanger.
Johanna kisses me on the mouth and I kiss her back just as fiercely, her mouth moving with mine in a confident synchronicity that no one else has ever had with me before. She tosses the bra over my head and starts undoing my braid without breaking from the kiss. I’ve already seen all of Johanna Mason, but I need her now, and my fingers don’t hesitate as they help her out of the soft tee and stretchy pants she’s wearing for bed. She gets my hair all the way loose and combs it gently. I stare transfixed as the dark strands of my hair glide across her pale fingers, glowing in the moonlight that shines through the curtains.
Johanna’s other hand dives into my underwear. She does something with her fingers that makes me shoot up and gasp. She looks at me again, eyes searching, and I nod eagerly. Johanna smirks and skims her fingers across my mound again, in soft strokes that barely touch my sensitive skin yet still manage to light me on fire.
“Oh, Johanna,” I moan. I rock my hips against her hand as pleasure grows in my lower belly. My voice produces a low whine that I didn’t know I was capable of. “Please don’t stop.”
I can hear Johanna laugh as she speeds up, her other hand still calmly petting my hair. “I wouldn’t dare, Kitty Kat.”
Jo curls her fingers and works them inside of me, and I feel my insides turn to jelly. A pleasant feeling ripples through my body, and its like I’m twirling on Caesar Flickerman’s stage again, pleasure coursing through my body like Cinna’s flames to fabric. I can feel Jo’s fingers inside me as I come undone. She’s turned me into a breathless, panting mess on her silken sheets in less than ten minutes.
I have to repay her.
I get on my knees and crawl over to where Jo lays in bed. She is panting just as heavily as I am, and her irises are shot black with desire. I straddle her hips and peel back the fabric of her leggings.
She’s not wearing any underwear.
Jo arches an eyebrow. “What are you doing?”
“I hate owing people,” I shrug. It occurs to me that I have no idea how to do whatever Jo just did to me. I’ve never had sex or anything like it before, and it was this supposed “innocence” after all that inspired Johanna’s little prank in the first place.
I’m completely out of my freaking depth here.
I can’t imagine what the expression on my face looks like right now but I’m guessing I look pretty stumped, because Johanna raises up with a cheeky grin on her face and says: “Need some help getting me off, Mockingjay?”
I blush furiously and start to deny it, but Jo brushes a hand over my face and all the fight I have left drains out of me. Without waiting for anything else Johanna brings two of her fingers to my lips and says “open.”
I do as she says and she pushes one and then both fingers slowly into my mouth, making sure I don’t choke as she brings me down to her knuckles. I realize that this was the same hand she used to bring me pleasure before and my tongue slides over the fingers, tasting bits of my own moisture from Johanna’s skin. I’ve made it down her knuckles three times and I see Johanna looking at me with naked wonderlust. I stare into her eyes and forget about her fingers in my mouth. Johanna smiles softly.
Whatever moment we have ends when Jo plucks her fingers out of my mouth and runs them down her own tongue instead. My eyes latch onto every movement. Pleasure starts to bubble up in my core without her touching me.
“Why’d we stop?” I pant, confused. Jo looks at me expectantly. “Because its your turn, brainless. I already made you come. You said you owed me. I was showing you how to do it.”
The confused expression on my face stays and Johanna sighs dramatically.
“Katniss,” she says my name slowly, patronizingly.
“Lick your fingers really good, then stick them inside my vagina. When they are inside my vagina, you need to curl them and thrust so I can orgasm.”
“How will I know when you orgasm?”
Jo lays down and smiles. “Trust me, honey. You’ll know.”
Johanna folds her hands under her head and follows me with her eyes as I straddle her again. I slowly lower myself until I am staring at her core, and I bring my wetted fingers experimentally around the little nub that lines her entrance. Johanna gasps and purrs, a low sound in her throat that makes me want to speed up, to make her come as fast as I did, but I don’t do it.
I want to take things slow.
My tongue darts out experimentally and swipes the moisture along Jo’s entrance.
“Oh,” Johanna gasps, sounding shocked. “You wanna do it that way?”
My eyes light up in earnest. “Can I?”
Jo shrugs and chuckles. “Shit, if you want to. Most baby dykes I know are too scared to eat me out the first go around. Then again, most of them are little Capitol bitches.”
I choose not to respond that, mostly because I can’t, and instead focus on my task. I give Johanna’s center a few shy licks before my tongue finds a rhythm. It’s careful and inexperienced, but it seems to be enough for Jo, as she begins to buck her hips and grind against my mouth. I keep my mouth moving steady but increase the pressure of my tongue along her core. One of my fingers strokes the little nub by Johanna’s entrance and she lets out a low whine.
“Very good, Kitty Kat," Johanna purrs. "Very good.”
After that words fail Johanna and quickly turn into moans and pants. I smile and drive my tongue even deeper. Johanna grips my hair. I bat her hands away with my other hand and keep the tongue strokes going. It takes longer for Jo to come undone in my mouth, but when she does I know it immediately. Moisture floods into my mouth and I savor its taste on my tongue. It has no real taste but somehow, I know it still tastes like Jo.
Some of it drips onto my chin and Johanna pulls me up by my hair again and brushes our foreheads together. She licks the leftover moisture from my chin and kisses me. This kiss is nothing like the frenzied, passionate kisses of before. Its slow and intimate, and my mouth opens to let her in immediately. Our juices have mingled together three times over at this point. We’ve created something new between us, a kind of muttation that the Capitol can’t poison and use against us. They can’t use it because it stays on our tongues, in Johanna’s bug-free compartment.
Johanna brings me release again after that, a slow prodding touch of her hand as we lay cuddled up together. Obviously, I can’t let this stand. We go back and forth getting each other off with our fingers until both of us tire and fall asleep. The last thing I remember before my eyes close is the warmth of Johanna’s body against mine…
I wake up too see a flash of sunlight hitting my eyes. I take a moment to get my bearings, to remember where I am. How I ended up in Johanna Mason’s bed in the morning before the games. Johanna is still asleep, her breasts pressed tightly against my back, heaving gently as her chest rises and falls. I can feel her breaths tickling the back of my neck as she exhales through her nostrils. I’m content to lie here and watch her sleep for awhile, until I remember where I am and what time I have to be in prep for our last day of training before the games. I sigh. Grab a few strands of Johanna’s hair and twirl them in my fingers. I kiss her cheek and whisper low in her ear: “Let’s do it again sometime.” And then I stand up and get dressed. I glance at the clock on Jo’s nightstand and scurry to the elevators.
When I arrive at the District Twelve apartment, Effie is in a state of panic. She flurries around the room decrying my lateness and I hide against the doorway, wondering how I’m supposed to get to my room, shower, and come back out for breakfast without anyone knowing I illegally skipped out all night.
Haymitch and Peeta choose that precise moment to emerge from their rooms.
I am so screwed! There’s no way I’ll be able to sneak in now!
Haymitch locks eyes with me for a second and I think this is it. I’m just about to step inside and face the music when he breaks my gaze and calls out to Effie, who’s resigned herself to sitting on the couch, forlornly stroking a velvet pillow. He sends Peeta back to his room to clean himself up and distracts Effie by complimenting her ugly gold wig.
My heart swells to my chest and I think kind thoughts of my mentor as I dash to my room and hurry into the shower.
When I come out of my room, showered and dressed, the three of them are chatting normally, and I start to relax as I dig into my breakfast.
“Morning, sweetheart. You’re up late today. Did you get enough sleep last night?”
I look up, wondering if Haymitch is teasing me or giving me time to create an excuse. Knowing him, it’s probably a bit of both. He is pointedly not looking at me as he butters a slice of toast. His voice sounds genuine enough. I shrug casually as I grab a jar of jam.
“As much I usually do. No nightmares though, so I guess that’s good.”
Haymitch nods. “Good, good.” And that’s the end of our conversation.
We finish eating without much fanfare, chatting casually about what skills we plan on showing off in training today. Something in my heart stirs at the thought of seeing Johanna again. As we walk over to the elevators Effie tells me airily that she’s “happy you had a good night’s rest, dear, but it does throw a damper in the schedule!” and Haymitch waves her off telling us that a good night’s sleep will do wonders for my focus. He ushers me and Peeta into the elevators.
I blush, thinking of the elevator ride that prompted my evening with Johanna. Peeta pushes the ground floor button and we sail downward.
On the training room floor I see Johanna, her eyes wild as she swings a couple of axes. She meets my eyes and smirks.
My arm brushes her thigh as I head to the archery station.