Chapter Text
There is something mysteriously heart-breaking about how isolating a city can be. Hoards of people move around in and out of the crowded subway cars, too absorbed in their own lives to notice more than the immediate world around us.
I am reminded of this as I walk into my office after hearing little more than a half-hearted greeting from Gale all morning. I set down my bag and my keys in my too-small office and try not to do something stupid, like cry.
My mornings until two weeks ago used to be filled with the scent of freshly made scones and soft whispers, but it seems as though that magic has vanished. The small window into the human experience has been slammed shut, taking him with it.
I remind myself that this is my fault. This was what I wanted. This was what I asked for. This is what I get for my self-sabotaging and needlessly cruel ways. Even the most saintly of men can’t tolerate that forever.
“Why are you pushing me away? We talked about this!”
Sundays are usually my favorite days of the week. Our standing tradition of waking up at 10 am and staying around in PJs while we lazily love each other until our hearts are content is more intimate than I ever thought I would have the luxury of basking in.
Funny how one call can cause the ghosts from the past to barge in and break down your carefully-constructed fortress.
His pleading does little to dispel the dark cloud that stands between me and reason at the moment. Grief has always had a strange way of making me catatonic, even after so many years. So, I stay quiet.
“Goddamn it, Katniss, I thought we were past this! I need you to talk to me. I don’t know what’s going on here and I can’t help if I don’t know. I can’t stand to see you like this!”
He’s right. He usually is, infuriatingly so. The hours in therapy gave me all the “tools” to communicate. Its not Dr. Aurelius’s fault that I can’t seem to put them to use when I am so deep in my self-pity.
The words slip out. I don’t even hear them until they echo in my ears.
“Then leave.”
It’s a dare. A challenge. Leave me if you can’t take it.
We both stop breathing. Time freezes.
But I have always spiteful, even to those I love more than life itself.
“Go.”
Even in my worst state, I never expected him to actually do it.
The days pass painfully slowly. Unremarkably.
I see reminders of him everywhere. The coffee shop we used to meet at when we first started dating. The lamppost he used to lean on while he was waiting for me after work. The couch we spent many a night just talking and learning each other. The restaurant we were at when I asked him to move in with me. The pillow that is starting to lose his scent.
Most of his stuff is still here, untouched. Some mornings, when I am still too groggy from sleep, I expect to walk out into the living room to see him reading at the kitchen table. I have almost deluded myself into thinking that that fight had never happened. That he is still mine.
But I came home from work the day after the fight to see his key sitting on the table and his duffle bag gone from its spot on the top of our closet. It is not for another month that I finally see him again.
He knocks on the door on a Saturday morning.
Even in his disheveled state, eyes dark from lack of sleep, hair a little too long, he is beautiful. I take my first deep breath in two months. He is overwhelming to every sense and I can process nothing but Peeta.
Neither of us speak. The pain that is still evident in his blue eyes stands in his way. My cowardice prevents me.
I see him gesture gently with the boxes in his arms and step aside to let him in and he walks into the bedroom.
I gently shut the door so I can take a moment to collect myself. My mind begins to reel with thoughts of him. Are we fixable? Does he even want to? Can I survive living without him?
No.
It is that thought that propels me forward, until I am standing right behind him.
“You look awful.”
His shoulders jump in surprise (those shoulders).
“My brother’s living room has no windows.” He says, his voice gruff and gravelly.
That explains the no sleeping.
He continues packing up our life together, removing every shred of him from my apartment, starting with the bathroom before moving onto the bedroom. Its not until he gets to the kitchen that I am reminded of the little fight that I have left in me.
“I’m sorry, Peeta.”
My voice breaks in the middle, but the words linger in the air between us.
“Me too.” He lets out a wry laugh.
In the three years that I have known this man, sarcastic has never been a word that I could use to describe him. Earnest to a fault. It breaks my heart all over again to think that I have been the straw that finally broke him.
“You must know I didn’t mean it,” I plead.
He turns to me and the anger on his face is evident. The patient man that used to hold me when I cried, who has talked me through panic attacks, who helped move my mother with dementia into a nursing home has gone away from a moment. This man before me is hurt beyond belief.
“How would I know that, Katniss? You have never been one to say something you don’t mean. That’s what you told me the day we met.”
The bar is busy by the time Madge and I walk in. We push our way through the hoards of 20-somethings on the dance floor, all varying levels of sobriety, to make it over to Gale.
“Glad to see you finally made it,” he screams over the pounding bass music. Whose idea it was to come here tonight, I can’t remember but I would love to shoot an arrow through their eye right about now. “Peeta and Delly are at the bar getting drinks and Annie and Finn are on the dance floor right now. I think you guys will really like them.”
Gale must be slightly tipsy already because that is high praise that he would never hand out fully sober. He and Madge start to make goo-goo eyes at each other as he slides some fruity cocktail across the table to her, so I decide to make my way to the bar and order myself a couple of tequila shots. I’m gonna need it if I am expected to make it though tonight without decking someone.
A voice comes from behind me and I am suddenly 17 years old again.
“Fancy seeing you here,” Peeta whispers. I turn to see the piercing blue eyes and charming smile of Peeta Mellark, Mr. Most-Likely-To-Succeed himself standing behind me. How he somehow found himself into this crusty Philly bar, friends with Gale (quite possibly his polar opposite) I am unsure but I am unexpectedly grateful of that fact.
“I could say the same to you. I thought you went to Georgetown.” I yell.
He leans in closer. “I did, but I moved here to work for a non-for-profit that works out of the art museum. So not I am here.”
I chuckle at that, “Of course you work for a charity. That is just about the most you thing I could possibly think of.” Not that I know much about him, not really. He was just hard not to notice in our small town. He was class president, captain of the wrestling, and debate team champion. Everyone knew Peeta Mellark, even if you have never spoken a word to him. Which I hadn’t in the 12 years that we had spent in school together.
He smiles shyly. “Thanks, I guess. I think that’s a compliment.”
He glances away sheepishly, almost like he is nervous. And I am suddenly aware that I have moved closer to him in the couple of minutes we have been talking. The two tequila shots must have kicked in because I barely hesitate when I say, “Well, I’m glad.”
His surprised face is adorable before he fixes me with a raised brow, clearly dubious of what I just said. “You are just staying that because Gale put you up to it.”
I don’t think much about what that could mean before I respond. “I never say anything I don’t mean.”
I am left momentarily stunned as he hastens his work to clean himself from my life. I reach across the space between us to freeze his hands. This is going too fast. I just need to slow him down so I can get this out.
“But I didn’t mean that. I was just too lost in missing Prim that I wasn’t thinking and then you were just gone.” My voice breaks on the last word. I don’t even know that tears are streaming down my face until I feel the pad of his finger gently wipe them off my cheek.
He takes a deep breath before answering, his voice breaking too, “That’s what I thought you wanted.”
And that’s it. I cannot hold myself back anymore. I launch myself into his chest, grasping frantically onto his back to pull him closer, where I can keep him safe. Safe from the hurt that I cause him, safe from the lingering trauma of being unwanted as a child. “I never wanted that. I have never wanted that and I will never want that.”
I give him a moment to listen to my words, to really hear them. The affirmations keep coming. Trailing my lips over his body as I kiss anywhere I can reach. His eyes (I see you), his nose (I want you), his cheeks (I need you), his jawline (I miss you), his neck (I desire you), over his heart (I love you).
At this his whole façade crumbles. He clings to me as the hurt of the last two months roll off us. The fragile, beautiful mosaic of brokenness and love that brought us together is being reconstructed, piece by breakable piece.
We have no place for regrets.
He lifts me into his arms and carries me to the bed. Our bed. And we spend the night tangled up in each other. Making up for the time lost. Me apologizing for every hour of sleep lost, every nightmare I couldn’t comfort him, every time I could not reassure him of just how good he is. Him being reminded of just how much I love him, how we belong together like pieces of a puzzle falling into place.
In the morning, I wake up first. We are a mess of tangled limbs, still intertwined from the night before. I take the moment of quiet to trace the lines of his face. How angelic and beautiful he is with the sunrise streaming through our window. Just how perfectly imperfect this life we have built together is. How much this man snuck up on me. How inevitable our coming together has been. How real this love is.