Hunger Games 26 2

**The characters of The Hunger Games belong solely to Suzanne Collins; I am merely using them to help me tell a story influenced by her wonderful work. No copyright infringement is intended.**

**The following also includes references to a violent event similar to the bombing of the 2013 Boston Marathon. In order to respect the tragedy of that event and the lives of those affected, certain details have been modified and direct references not included. As part and parcel to this theme, certain imagery is also used to convey PTSD symptoms in one of the characters.**

**_Please be advised if any of the above is troubling or triggering for you._**

* * *

—**Warm-up—**

* * *

Peeta is jittery the entire way into the city, and Katniss is glad that she's the one behind the wheel. The bossy iPhone voice plugged into her center console repeats the direction three times to turn left at the street light they're paused at before she silences it with a brush of her finger. Their hotel is downtown, less than a mile from where they'll cross the finish line tomorrow—provided the run doesn't take Katniss out first.

She shouldn't think like that. She definitely shouldn't joke about it, not when that same finish line means so much more to the man sitting next to her than the conclusion of running 26.2 miles. She keeps the crass thought to herself as she pulls into the circular driveway in front of the lobby and slides out so a valet can take her place behind the wheel. Peeta takes an extra second getting out, having foregone wearing his prosthetic for the drive, and Katniss silently wills the other valet not to do anything to assist him. Four years haven't changed Peeta Mellark's attitude about his missing limb all that much; he doesn't want to seem weak or wounded, and it bothers him when people look at him like he is. Thankfully, the other white-gloved man remains silent, taking their bags out of the backseat and ushering them into the lobby, leaving Peeta to rely on his trusty hand crutches.

Katniss slings her purse higher on her shoulder as she follows him inside. When she hears the telltale rattling of her exhaust pipe disappear behind her, she knows there's no going back, no bailing out of this race tomorrow.

There's a short wait behind other marathoners to check in, and then the obligatory shuffling of credit cards between her and Peeta for who's going to pay for the room.

"I'll let you pay for dinner," Peeta insists, pushing his card toward the clerk and Katniss's back at her.

"Then you better order prime rib," Katniss says with a scowl. She turns to the clerk. "Where's the best spot in town to buy him the most expensive meal of his life?"

"Oh, aren't you two sweet!" the woman gushes. "Try Machiavelli's. It's my favorite spot in the whole city! Alright, you're in room 1201. All the amenities, of course—mini fridge and microwave, balcony with a gorgeous view of the bay, maybe the most comfy king-sized bed you'll ever sleep in…"

Katniss's voice hitches in her throat. "We, ah, asked for two queens."

"Oh! That isn't in the computer, I'm sorry…"

Peeta coughs nervously. "Katniss, I don't think it's _that_ big a deal… It's a massive bed, and it's just two nights."

"And we don't have any double queen rooms left, I'm so sorry. I can arrange for a trundle bed…"

Katniss looks at her Peeta and swallows hard over the newly formed lump in her throat. "We, ah… We won't be in the room all that much, I suppose, will we?"

"Not if you're going to force feed me an entire cow tonight," Peeta says with a smirk. "Bad idea before a race, you know."

"Fine, we'll carb-load. Um… Yeah, the room's fine, I guess," Katniss says. It strikes her that in nearly twenty years of friendship, she's never, not once, shared a bed with Peeta Mellark.

(Not that this is really _sharing_ a bed.)

The clerk punches a couple of credit card keys into a machine and slides them across the desk. "Good luck tomorrow morning! We're all betting on you!"

Peeta thanks her graciously and clicks off on his crutches. The clerk hisses at Katniss to wait, and with a quick check to make sure that Peeta is out of earshot, she whispers, "Machiavelli's really is wonderful. But it's, ah, a little more romantic than you might want, though, considering…"

Katniss smiles tightly and thanks her before heading off after Peeta. 'Romantic' is definitely off the table. Surely there's another place to gorge on pasta and garlic bread that isn't solely lit by candles. She's here for Peeta, to support him. On a lesser note, she's here to see if she can do it, too, but this weekend—this race—is about her friend. _Her friend,_ she repeats to herself as she sidles up behind him.

"The shuttle to the starting square leaves at 6 am… We should drop this stuff off and go straight to dinner so we can get to sleep early," Peeta asks her once they board the elevator.

She nods quickly. Wherever they end up going, there's sure to be wine. And a tiny bit of liquid courage sounds awfully good about now.

* * *

She stretches tall from where she's been bent in half, having felt a luscious release in her hamstrings. She twists her torso to the left, then the right, and gazes across the throng of other runners stretching similarly. A tall, gangly redhead dips forward, clearing her view to see Peeta. He's shifting his weight cautiously from right to left, left to right, his eyes trained on the ground until the force of her stare lifts his face. His azure eyes meet her silver, and he's the first to smile.

She's worried about him. She's worried the leg won't hold up for the entire race, even though it hasn't been a problem in weeks. She's nervous his nerves will prevail over his rationality and she won't be there at his side to talk him down from an episode. He's told her a thousand times not to sacrifice her time to stay on pace with him, no matter how similar their wave's start times are. It doesn't seem to matter how many times he's told her not to hold his hand, to let him get through this on his own terms, the impulse to do so is irrepressible.

He reads her mind in that annoying, comforting way that he's always been able to, and raises his left hand to his mouth. He presses a light kiss to his middle three digits and taps them over his heart.

_It'll be okay, Katniss_, the gesture says.

She mimics him, and her fingernails clink lightly on the glinting, golden medallion pinned to her racing vest. Something about the gentle weight calms her. Maybe that's why he'd insisted she wear it instead of him.

The loudspeakers suddenly sizzle with a short burst of feedback before a clear, booming voice echoes across the crowd.

"First wave runners, please take your marks."

Katniss takes a deep, shaky breath to get ready. She's not starting until the third wave, but she has to be prepared now, or she'll never get to mile six from sheer nerves.

"Ladies and gentlemen—let the 74th Panem Marathon begin!"

* * *

_Traveling in and out of the city is hell on the best days, and this is far from the best day. Katniss isn't sure how she's managed to get on this train, but she's not going to question it. She just needs to get where she's going as quick as she can._

_Neither Peeta nor Madge are answering their phones, and they always answer when she calls. That's what happens when you're a couple's combined Best Woman and Maid of Honor. But Katniss isn't worrying about anything that has to do with dresses or flowers and seating arrangements or pre-ceremony festivities; she just needs to make sure that her best friends are okay. The fatalities of the day were low, thank God, but there were scads of injuries. If either Peeta or Madge were amongst them, she needs to be there._

_The train pulls into the station, and people push and shove to get onto the platform. There's a strong sense of urgency in the air as nearly everyone tries to get to someone in the hospital, or to family that wants everyone close by to cope with the shock and horror of the day. Katniss just needs to get to the downtown Marriott and make sure Peeta and Madge are back in their room and safe. She doesn't care if she walks in on "Thank God We're Alive" sex—so long as they're both alive._

_But after pounding for several long minutes on the door to their room, Katniss feels a crushing wave of panic wash over her. They aren't answering their phones. They aren't in their room. Dread sets in about what this could possibly mean._

_The front desk is in a frenzy, but she gets enough out of the clerk she finally flags down that the injured were taken to the Capitol Hill Hospital and no, there hasn't been an official list of fatalities and injuries released to the public yet. There isn't a cab to be found and the buses and local trains still aren't running. Katniss walks the twelve blocks and braces herself for bedlam when she walks in the door to the Emergency Room._

"_I need information about Peeta Mellark and Madge Undersee—who do I talk to about that?"_

_A surly nurse shakes her head. "You need to check with the Red Cross station about whether or not they've been admitted before I can help you. Are you family?"_

_Katniss hesitates. "Er…yes."_

"_Really?"_

"_They're my best friends! I've known them forever!"_

"_Sorry, we can't disclose any information to non-family members, and the Red Cross and the Marathon folks are—well, lines are jammed. It's hard to get in contact with folks' emergency contacts."_

_Katniss thinks bitterly that Madge would have put _her _in before her parents, but she still hasn't been called. There are people gathered in a waiting room off one corridor, and as luck would have it, there's one seat available. Katniss sinks into it and tosses her phone from hand to hand. She's just thinking that she's going to need to find a free power outlet to charge it when it rings. She doesn't recognize the number. Her blood runs ice cold._

"_Hello?"_

"_Yes, is this Ms. Katniss Everdeen?"_

"_Yes, who's this?"_

"_Katniss Everdeen, Ms. Madge Undersee's emergency contact?"_

"_Yes! Who is this?"_

_There's a pregnant pause on the other end. "Ma'am, are you sitting down?"_

* * *

—**Mile 1.9—**

* * *

She's already hoping for a boost of adrenaline, or at least some sort of endorphin high that'll get her to the first hydration station. She should have known better than to have that glass of wine with dinner—Peeta'd warned her not to, but she'd needed something to calm her nerves. She's a long, long way (and way too many years) from her track and field days in high school. Even then, she'd been more a middle-distance competitor.

She grabs a water from the first station and jogs in place off to the side while she does her best to not gulp it down all at once and make herself sick. She resists the urge to stay where she is and let him catch up with her so they can stay on pace for a while—until he invariably overtakes her, prosthesis and all. But if he suspects she's done that, even this early in the race, he'll give her no end of shit about her hovering and coddling him. But she's already finding herself missing the comfort of his presence at her side. His slightly tinny-sounding stride is always so oddly soothing in conjunction with the sound of her heart pounding in her ears.

She tosses the cup into the rapidly-filling recycling can and keeps going. She's sure he'll catch up with her eventually. He always does.

* * *

_They take her into his room as soon as it's allowed, and she sits next to him, clutching his hand and waiting for the last vestiges of anesthesia to wear off. The nurses seem reluctant to do so, but one who's particularly sympathetic lets her slip through, supposing he'll be needing to see a comforting face more than anything else._

_Peeta Mellark has never been a small man. Despite his less-than-imposing height, his broad shoulders, muscular torso, and lean limbs have always made him seem a bigger presence than he really is. Solid, Katniss supposes is the best possible term. She'd seen him, conscious and whole and in great spirits, just three days before, and the term still applied. With a svelte waist and even better sculpted limbs from four previous marathons and uncountable halves and 10ks, Peeta cannot be mistaken as anything but sturdy. But now, lying in a hospital bed, hooked up to all manner of machinery and fluid bags, he seems tiny to Katniss. And extremely pale. Even as a fair-skinned, tow-headed teenage boy who practically bathed in SPF35, Katniss has never seen him look this pale._

_A nurse comes in and changes out a bag of blood and injects a syringe of antibiotics into his central line. When the woman is gone, Katniss takes the chance to perch on the side of his bed and smooth his hair back. They must have had time to wipe down his skin with alcohol before his surgery, but he still smells of sweat and the streets of the city—exactly like a man should after running 26 miles before having his lower leg blown off._

_Still, he's there. She's looking at him. She's looking at him like she'll never be able to look at Madge again. But she can't think too much about that right now; she's pretty sure if she breaks now, she'll never be able to put herself back together. And she needs to keep herself together for Peeta. Madge would be the first person to tell her that. _

"_Peeta?" she whispers to him. "I know you probably can't hear me, but… Please don't leave me, okay? I couldn't bear it. Your family, the Undersees…none of us could handle losing you, too. I've heard that sometimes people wake up from successful surgeries and die of shock later anyway. Or they just never wake up. And I'm telling you now, if you go too, I'm done—I can't live in a world without you and Madge. I lost one of my best friends, I can't lose the other one. So just… Stay with me. Please stay with me."_

_She's crying hard and makes no effort to stop. If she's going to have to be strong for him, hold him together at the seams when he finds out his fiancee is dead and his left leg is missing at the calf, she's going to take this chance to be weak until he opens his eyes._

* * *

—**Mile 7.0—**

* * *

She lets herself out of a port-a-potty, finally relieved after cursing herself out for the last mile and a half for drinking so much at the first several stations. But at least her feet aren't cramping in her shoes anymore. When she gets back on pace, she swears she hears the tinny-clinking of Peeta's prosthesis behind her.

"Jeez, Katniss, you really do have a bladder the size of a thimble," he jokes, his words just barely coming out winded. She resists the urge to kick his good leg out from under him and scowls at him.

"No fair being a showoff," she scowls, feeling a trickle of sweat running down her neck and between her breasts.

"You're doing great so far, don't be hard on yourself! Come on, we'll stay together until the half!"

"What happens after the half?" she pants.

"I kick your ass, that's what," he says with a smirk. He wears such an airy, easy expression on his face, and she feels like she knows it so well. His eyes crinkle more now than they used to, and his mouth is plump from his tendency to worry his bottom lip as he runs, but it's still Peeta. The boy she's known for years—the way she always wants to think of him.

* * *

_She's upset about missing Madge's burial, but she knows she can't be anywhere near as upset as Peeta is. Peeta, stuck in a hospital bed, staring angrily at the ceiling, waiting on his sutures to heal enough to be fitted for the prosthetic he'll have to wear every day for the rest of his life. She refuses to leave his side when he's this unsteady. The Peeta that Katniss knew growing up could be patient and placid and cheerful no matter what the circumstances—but there's hardly much of that Peeta left in the man lying in the hospital bed._

_Most days she tries to keep his spirits up, but she can't even begin to imagine how she could possibly bring about a smile on his face today. The Undersees are putting off the formal memorial until he's released and home, but that's not the point for Peeta, and Katniss knows it. He wants to, maybe even needs to, see the casket lowered to believe this is real. Normally this would be the exact situation Katniss would shy away from, but she can't help but wonder if she's all that's holding Peeta together. His family had come and gone, getting out of the city just as soon as the fallout abated. They had their lives and business to get back to, of course, but Katniss still couldn't believe how quickly they jettisoned. She'd said as much to her boss, Beetee, in a call back to work explaining why she still wasn't going to be able to make it in. Thankfully, he'd understood and told her to take as much time as she needed—she had more than enough PTO to cover herself anyway._

_They sit in silence, watching a _Golden Girls _marathon on one of the few non-basic channels the hospital gets when, out of nowhere, Peeta sits up and throws the remote control against the wall. It shatters, and one of the batteries lands near Katniss's foot._

"_Peeta!" she yelps, her head reeling. He'd seemed fine the second before._

"_What about death is funny to these dumb bitties? How can they just joke about getting old and dying off and being left behind?" he snarls._

_Katniss clearly hadn't been paying any attention to the scene in question, or maybe she wouldn't have been so surprised. "Peeta, it's just…"_

"_It's fucked up, is what it is! It's all totally fucked up!"_

_She's tempted to press the button for a nurse so they can come and give him a hit of some drug that'll knock him out, but instead, she crosses her arms over her chest and scowls at him._

"_Use your damn words, Peeta. Don't just swear at me like _I'm _your enemy."_

_He calms a touch, but he's still brimming with righteous anger. "You wouldn't understand, Katniss."_

"_No, I wouldn't. 'Cause for the first time in your life, you aren't talking my damn ear off. Talk to me, Peeta—that's what all the doctors are telling you to do and you're refusing. What does it matter whether or not I'll understand? Won't it feel better to not have it bottled up?"_

"_It should have been me, Katniss! I was ahead of her the whole race, and then I decided to be stupid and gallant and held back! She crossed over before I did, but I should have been across first! Don't you get it? I shouldn't be here!"_

_Katniss's heart plummets. "Peeta… This isn't your fault…"_

"_Stop saying that shit. That's what _they _say. You tell it like it is, Katniss, so tell me. Tell me what a monster I am. Tell me why I shouldn't want to die because I was being noble and let her die instead!"_

"_No, I won't!" she snaps. "How would you have known? How could anyone have known? You can't blame yourself for something you couldn't have seen coming!"_

_His eyes narrow and his mouth opens and closes several times, as though he's trying to find words that just won't come. Finally his face contorts in anguish and his hands cup over his eyes. She rushes to his bed and tries to pry his hands away and provide any modicum of comfort she possibly can._

"_It sh-shouldn't have been h-her, Katniss…" he sobs._

"_I know, I know… It shouldn't have been anybody…" she whispers soothingly, feeling her own eyes well with tears. "I'm sorry, Peeta. I'm so sorry…"_

_Eventually he opens his arms enough for her to fit herself inside of them and hold him, smooth his hair and stroke his back, and they cry together instead of festering individually. And just as the doctors told them it would, the burden is easier to carry together, as a team, than try to handle on their own._

* * *

—**Mile 9.8—**

* * *

She's found the "running sweet spot", as Peeta likes to call it. Her heart is pounding in her ears and she's forgotten what it feels like to not be sweaty, but she's over a hump, as it were. She has a ways to go, even to get to the half. But having Peeta beside her, cracking dumb jokes and pointing things out along the way makes her feel like she could run another twenty six miles if he asked her to. Maybe even another hundred.

There's a lilt in his voice when he points out a tiny house along the trail, with a white picket fence and primroses growing lushly underneath the pretty picture windows.

"Madge and I were in sync at this point, too, and she told me she wanted that house," he says between breaths.

Katniss smiles. "Madge would absolutely want that house."

"The pink door," they say in tandem, and laugh as hard as their lungs can handle.

Out of the corner of her eye, she catches a sun beam glint on the single pointed tip of the gold pendant over one her chest. It's a bit like Madge is there, even though she's not. A sudden and fleeting whiff of strawberries flits past, more or less unexplainable. She doesn't want to think too much about a pragmatic answer as much as she wants to pretend Madge is there with her once more.

"You gonna make it?" Peeta says, his tone changed a little and his smile no longer quite reaching his eyes.

"Worry about yourself. How's the…"

As if to show off, Peeta skips—actually _skips_—and grins at her, his smile much broader.

"It's perfect. Really."

* * *

_He'd been fitted for a prosthesis and undergone a bare minimum of physical therapy and training before he'd been discharged from the hospital. He had strict instructions to continue his therapy once he got home, and Katniss is personally seeing to it that he does so. She's the one that picks him up at the hospital and drives him back to their hometown. _

"_I'm… I'm not ready to go home just yet," he says thickly when they pull off their exit. For a second, Katniss is confused. _

"_The townhouse," he explains. The new home he and Madge had just barely finished moving into the week before the marathon. "I'm… I'm not ready to be there."_

_She shifts nervously in her seat. She's no shrink, but him avoiding going home and facing his life without Madge doesn't seem entirely healthy. But he looks so scared, still so tiny, that she doesn't want to push him. _

"_The futon in my living room isn't great, but it'd probably do for a little bit, if you need more time."_

"_Thanks," he says. They don't discuss how long 'a little bit' will be. Katniss wonders if maybe in order to grieve his fiancee properly, first he has to grieve his missing leg._

_The problem is, of course, that he has far too much time to grieve his leg. He's still a bit too wobbly on the prosthesis, so working his normal shift at the family bakery is out of the question. The Mellark's having taken longer than most businesses to go paperless, his father sends over some paperwork—mostly quarterly earning statements and inventory lists—that need to be transferred into Excel spreadsheets, but there is only so much of it Peeta can do before his eyes start to cross and a migraine comes on. Katniss more often than not finds him watching movies or old TV series on Netflix, if he's even awake at all. Peeta's always been a workhorse, so maybe it's for the best he has some time off; she just tries not to think too hard about how it wasn't the time off he'd planned to take for his and Madge's honeymoon._

_She and Beetee work a little later than usual one evening, and she tries calling Peeta to ask him what he'd like her to bring home for dinner. He doesn't pick up, so she gets a couple of hot sandwiches and a big bag of fries from Sae's, munching on the fries the whole way back to her place._

"_Look, don't hate me for eating all the—" she calls out when she steps into her apartment, cutting herself off when she realizes that something is wrong. The futon is empty, but Peeta's arm crutches are still propped in their spot against the wall where he leaves them. She puts the greasy food bag down on the entry table and rushes towards the bathroom, where she has a sickening feeling she'll find him, maybe knocked out cold against the sink or bathtub._

_He's thankfully conscious and sitting up, a pile of towels in his lap. She can see that the towel rack was meant to have braced his tumble from the way the entire rack and a good sized chunk of drywall is littered around him. His prosthetic is twisted at an odd angle underneath him, almost like it's also come loose in his fall. He won't look up at her, so she quietly kneels down beside him and waits for him to speak._

_His tone is dismayed when he finally speaks. "It's thirty damn feet from the couch to the bathroom. I figured _that much _I could do without my crutches."_

_She wishes she were better at saying something. Madge would know what to say to comfort him. Katniss doesn't have the first clue._

"_If I can't manage thirty feet, how am I gonna manage the stairs when I move back into our—_my—_house? How am I gonna stand in the kitchens and lug the flour out of the pantry and pull hot pans out of the ovens? How am I ever gonna run again?"_

"_You have to give yourself time, Peeta. You have to keep going to physical therapy, and practicing, and picking yourself up when you fall. It takes time, that's all," she says, reciting the words she's heard any number of his doctors say again and again._

"_This leg… It doesn't feel right. Even if I learn to walk and stand on it, how am I ever gonna… I won't ever run again, will I?"_

"_Of course you will. People with amputations can do anything, seriously. But you're not going to go out and run all around town tomorrow on that limb, no. It's going to take time, Peeta. And patience."_

"_Time," he says wryly. "Guess I have a lot of that, don't I?"_

"_You have all the time in the world, Mellark."_

_He smiles at her softly. It's not much, but it's a little hint of the Peeta that she's always known. She gets his crutches from the other room and lets him pull himself back to standing._

* * *

—**Mile 11.1—**

* * *

It's strangely gratifying when he finally gets properly winded like she is. She'd actually like to tease him about it, but wasting breath on words seems ridiculous. As if he can sense her thoughts, though, he nods over to the side of the road and comes to a stop, jogging in place until he hinges forward and touches his toes.

"You should stretch those crampy hamstrings of yours, Everdeen" he says, looking up at her. Sweat is pouring down his face, which entrances her just a little bit. Sweat ought to be disgusting, but flush-faced and sweat-dappled is a look that becomes Peeta. She bends forward as well, wrapping her elbows around her knees and sucking air in and out of her nose. The little break is welcome, even if she knows he's just going to push her right back onto the road.

Sure enough, their feet are pumping underneath them just a few minutes later, and he's nudging her side softly with his thumb.

"I think we could pick it up a little, don't you?"

"I'm dying over here, Peet," she wheezes.

"No you aren't. Come on… Whoever gets to the next road marker last has to buy dinner."

He knows her well enough that a little competition will keep her motivated. Even though her throat and nostrils are burning and her heart pounds so hard she's amazed it hasn't broken free of her chest yet, she runs for the marker as though her life depends on it. And somehow, it's just fast enough to beat him.

He grins, and grabs them each a water from the station beyond the marker.

"Told you you could do it," he says, pressing a cup into her hand before swishing back his own. "You're far too stubborn for your own good, Katniss."

She _is_ stubborn, and she knows it. But he's not all that much better.

* * *

_She strides through the hospital entryway to the nurse's station. She tells the woman who greets her her name, and that she'd received a call from them._

"_You're Peeta Mellark's emergency contact?" the nurse asks._

_Katniss's throat is dry, but she nods quickly. "He's alright, isn't he?"_

"_He's just fine. He's just through here. The doctor's discharging him in a few minutes, but he'll probably need a hand out to the car. He's in no state to drive himself home, that's for sure."_

He wouldn't be drunk, would he? _Katniss wonders. It wouldn't be like him at all, but with the first anniversary next week, it wouldn't necessarily surprise her._

_She's led through the emergency room to a curtained partition, and nodded through. She holds her breath as she pushes the curtain back, not sure what sort of state she'll see him in—bedraggled, scummy, badly needing a shower, probably. And while he most certainly is all of those things, it's the Under Armour shirt and compression pants that throw her for a loop._

_He was running. How the hell was he running?_

"_Don't say anything," he hisses, tugging his hands through his hair and glaring at the stump of his left leg. His prosthetic is nowhere in sight._

"_Peeta, what were you…"_

_She vaguely remembers passing signs for a detour on her way here. Road closure for some special event. She combs the recesses of her memory for any idea what the event might have been._

"_Oh my God," she says, crossing her arms over her chest. "You… You tried running that 5k for the food bank this morning, didn't you?"_

_He glares at her in return._

_She begins to seriously wonder if that calm, Peeta-like demeanor that's been creeping back over the last eleven months is actually just masking a complete madman. Or a moron. One or the other._

"_Peeta, why would you…"_

_A doctor throws back the curtain and strides in, barely introducing himself before taking Peeta's vitals and handing him a prescription pad. There's a terse warning from the man about remembering his limitations, and then a nod towards an orderly who comes over with a wheelchair. Katniss can see Peeta seething, and places her hand on his shoulder to pacify him, keep him from lashing out like she suddenly knows he's about to._

"_May I, please?" she asks the orderly. The man shrugs, but lets her push the wheelchair towards the exit. She only has to dash a few hundred yards to where she parked her car, but she can tell as soon as she pulls up in front of where she'd left Peeta to wait for her that the damage has been done. He's curled in on himself, refusing to raise his eyes from his lap. He uses his hand-crutches to get himself into the front seat and slams the door behind him. As the orderly goes to take away the wheelchair, she hands him a large bag stamped with the hospital's seal._

"_His belongings. He really should be taking it easier," the man says._

"_Thank you for your help." She slides the bag into her trunk and gets behind the wheel, not bothering with small talk the entire ride back to his townhouse._

_The place still feels like Madge. Her running shoes, high heels, and fuschia raincoat are still by the front door. It twinges for Katniss to see them, but Peeta shuffles by them like they aren't there. Maybe that's exactly what he's doing. She wasn't invited to stay, but she's not going to leave Peeta in this sort of volatile state. At least, not until he tells her explicitly that she needs to go._

_He sinks down on the couch, tossing his crutches to the side and covering his face with his hands. Katniss perches on the edge of the rocking chair across from him, and presses her palms against her shins. She doesn't stare at him for fear of making him feel worse. She sits, waiting for him to stop berating himself in his own head and open up._

"_I could run a 5k in my sleep last year," he says finally. "And my PT said that I've been doing really well on my prosthetic. That I was barely walking with a limp anymore. I just figured if I walked okay, I could run okay."_

"_How far did you get?" she asks quietly._

"_Less than a fucking mile," he sneers. _

_Frankly, she's surprised he made it that far on a limb not designed for that sort of activity, but she doesn't say it. It would sound too much like 'I told you so', and that's the last thing he needs to hear._

_Instead, she finds herself musing and actually saying out loud, "You're the most stubborn person I've ever met, Peeta."_

_He glares at her again. At least he's looking at her._

"_You're going to hate me for saying this. You are, and that's okay, because I know you won't hate me forever. But this…?" She leans forward and puts her hand on the stump of his leg. She can feel his skin burn from where the joint must have rubbed his skin raw. "This is your reality now, Peeta. Eleven months on a prosthetic does not mean you can run like you used to."_

"_I know that," he snaps._

"_Then why did you do it anyway?"_

"_Because I wanted to feel fucking normal again, alright? I thought if I could just do this, I'd feel normal again for one goddamn minute!"_

_She knows that there's nothing she can say to this. It's not her job to, not really. He goes to counseling for a reason. It isn't her place to try and fix his head. It doesn't stop her from wanting to, though. He is still her best friend._

"_I know you won't believe me when I say this, Peet, but… Life can be good again. And if this is how you want to make it good again, that's great. And I know you can do it, someday. But that isn't just a year after your amputation. You have to give yourself more time. Wouldn't it be worth it in five, ten, fifteen years if you had taken your time, and instead of just pushing everything up, you savored it instead?"_

"_I don't want to wait fifteen years."_

"_It was a hypothetical, Peeta." She's still touching his thigh, and it twitches softly under her hand. "I know you don't want to hear that you have to be patient. But you do. You didn't just decide to run a marathon one day, right? You had to build up to it. You'll… You'll have to do it again, that's all."_

"_On a gimpy, crappy prosthetic. Or one of those crazy hook things," he says bitterly. _

"_As long as you're running again, would it really matter what it is you're running on?" she asks._

_He purses his lip, clearly holding back some sort of biting retort. His shoulders unhinge from his ears and he sighs deeply._

"_Years, huh? Not months."_

"_I'm afraid so."_

"_This was our thing," he says, almost to himself. "Even when we were irritated with one another and couldn't agree on what to have for dinner or whether or not we wanted dogs or kids first, this was something we could always agree on. One more mile. Another lap around the neighborhood. We always agreed about that. Sometimes it felt like the only thing we really had in common."_

_Katniss pulls her hand away. She must on some level have known that Peeta and Madge weren't exempt from things like petty squabbles. But they always seemed so perfect on the outside. And she never would have imagined that he'd think it was all they had in common. They had everything in common._

_Didn't they?_

"_We'll get through the rest of this year. And next year. And we'll figure something out, even if I have to make Beetee build you a—"_

_He looks up at her when she trails off. "What? What about Beetee?"_

"_Oh my God, Peeta. I think that's it."_

* * *

—**Mile 12.7—**

* * *

He says he's going full out, but Katniss keeps pace with him too easily for that to be the case. Despite the steady, thunder-like pounding of hundreds of pairs of feet all around them, the sound of his stride is so comfortingly familiar. Tinny and electric. Rhythmic and steady. He barely limps at all anymore, and you'd only notice it if you really, really pay attention. Just like Beetee promised, the leg functions almost exactly like his uninjured one. He's something of a marvel to behold. Beetee could end up with a damn Nobel Prize for this.

All the same, she feels the need to check in. Just in case. He reads her mind again before she can open her mouth and pant out the question.

"Worry about your own legs, Everdeen," he says with a breathless chuckle. He does pick up his pace a little, and ends up one body length in front of her. She studies the difference in the flesh and bio-mechanical calves as closely as she can while still focusing on her own stride, and notes that things look good.

Then her eyes flit upwards, just for a second. Just long enough to glimpse the way his sinewy hamstrings disappear into his running shorts, which mold to his rear like a second, navy-colored skin. She has to shake herself when she realizes she's staring unrelentingly at his ass. And appreciating the view more than is entirely appropriate when it's her best friend she's looking at.

Ignoring her own burning calves, she catches up to him, falling in at his right just as before. He smirks at her for just a second before tossing his head to shake his curls out of his face. If she didn't know better, she could swear that that smirk was telling her: "_I know what you were looking at_."

* * *

_She types one last bit of code into her computer before picking up her buzzing phone to slide her thumb across the screen. She punches in the code that will unlock the security gate outside the industrial complex and allow Peeta's car to enter. She glances over at Beetee, who's standing at a work table with a rag in his hand, buffing the thing she can only think of as being made of titanium and pure genius. He pushes his thin, wire-rimmed glasses up his nose and mutters to himself._

_Their specialty is in improving the performance functions for moving parts in industrial assembly equipment. But when she was looking around for jobs when she'd gotten out of engineering school, an advisor had said in passing that Beetee Latier could build anything. The day after Peeta's failed 5k attempt, Katniss had waltzed into the office and asked Beetee about prosthetics. What he knew about them. How they could be improved, function more like a real limb and not just a lump of steel and flesh-colored silicone. He'd done that same thing—pushing his glasses up his nose and muttered something, only loud enough she could actually hear._

"_Everything can always be improved upon, Katniss. You know that as well as I do." It wasn't a promise by any stretch. But over the next year, as she saw Peeta regain more of his real life footing (going back to work, opening up more in counseling, finally redecorating the townhouse in a style more his own and less Madge's), she could tell that Beetee was thinking about what she'd asked. It was always subtle—"Your friend with the prosthetic, Katniss? How is he?"—but she could tell the wheels were turning in Beetee's brilliant beyond brilliant brain._

_Later, with the resounding success of an industrial patent, he'd taken her to lunch, ostensibly to celebrate their company's success. Over appetizers, he'd slid a simple, rough sketch across the table. She'd gaped at it, unsure of exactly what she was looking at._

"_Bionics," Beetee had explained. "It's a field that's largely untapped. But with some research and elbow grease, and a willing human subject that can be patient as I teach myself as I go along, I think I could just about build something like this."_

_Katniss had wanted to burst into tears. _

_Later that week, when the notion seemed plausible enough to bring up to Peeta, she'd told him proudly, "It would move like your leg did, if he can get all the cogs to sync up. The foot will flex and point, it'll have a real proper ankle joint… It'd almost be like having your leg back, Peet."_

_He'd stared at her, disbelieving. But she pressed him. _Please believe me_, she'd thought. _Beetee wouldn't have told me he could do something if he didn't really believe he could do it.

"_How long does he think it'd take?" Peeta had finally asked._

"_He's not sure. Maybe a year, maybe longer. But wouldn't it be worth the wait if it worked?"_

_He'd picked her up then, a grin spread across his face as he'd spun her in place. His prosthetic had given out on him, and they'd landed hard on the living room floor. She'd had just a second to marvel about how well-chiseled his chest felt (doubtless from the hours he'd spent back in the gym, re-toning and conditioning himself) when it cushioned her fall before he'd put his hand on the back of her neck and pressed their cheeks flush together, giddy laughter bubbling up from his chest. It wasn't quite like any hug they'd ever shared. She was extra conscious of just how close their lips had been for a moment. Which was doubtlessly insane._

_She'd gone back to Beetee with Peeta's promise to participate, and then they'd launched full-force into the hardest work Katniss has ever done in her life. They spent months studying human gait and function, researching and visualizing the precise motor-functions of the human leg—they'd even found a medical school cadaver lab willing to let them sit in on a live-tissue dissection (or let Beetee, anyway; the mere thought had been enough to make Katniss physically ill). Then they'd brought Peeta in, and did everything all over again, applying everything they'd learned to his body specifically. Finally, Beetee seem__ed to completely disappear into his office, pouring over his computer for hours on end until one day, many more months later, he'd asked Katniss to bring Peeta into the office again. This time, to test an actual honest to goodness prototype._

_The test is today. She meets Peeta at the front door of the building so he doesn't have to be buzzed up again. His stride in his prosthetic is nearly seamless now, two and a half years into his rehabilitation. And the promise of today seems to be coaxing an extra spring in his step._

"_This is the _first _prototype, Peeta. It could take months more for him to really dial it in. And it could just not work at all," Katniss reminds him nervously as they walk the corridor. _

"_I've been pretty patient up to this point, haven't I?" he asks, reaching for her hand and giving it a gentle squeeze. "I'm really _not _expecting a miracle here. But if there's any chance this could work, I want to try it. And I'll be as patient as I can be for as long as I need to be. I promise."_

_She thinks back on the day, months and months before, after the debacle of his failed 5k—how much fitter is he now, how much more steady he is on his feet, one of which isn't even his own. And he is patient, or at least vastly more so._

_Still, she wonders if she wasn't right when she said five, ten, or fifteen years. And she can't help but wonder if that's too long for him to wait for the miracle she so desperately wants to give him._

* * *

—**The Half—**

* * *

"You said that this was when you'd kick my ass," she groans. There's a sizable crowd on either side of the course, all applauding wildly and waving, calling out encouragement to the group of running strangers. There's a large banner overhead, proclaiming _13.1 down! 13.1 to go!_ Peeta diverts them over to one of the myriad of aid stations, grabbing water, Gatorade, and a couple of carb gummies for each of them. Katniss presses the gummy between her teeth and her cheek, letting the fruity sweetness spread around inside her mouth before swallowing back her water and sipping at her Gatorade.

"I'm still going to kick your ass," Peeta says between swallows of Gatorade and dumping the cup of water over his sweaty forehead. "But I'm good for a little while longer."

She doesn't have the breath to question him on it further, and she can already feel a stitch forming in her side. She focuses on her breathing to get through the niggling pain, and gulps down the last of her Gatorade before tossing the empty cup in a recycling bin.

* * *

_They go through two prototypes within three months. The circuits misfire in the first within a couple of weeks, and then the ankle joint of the second wears out two months later. Peeta is frustrated, she can tell, but nowhere near as much as Beetee is. But if Beetee's dialed this one in correctly, it might just have the staying power it needs to be with Peeta for the rest of his life. Minutes before Peeta is expected in the lab, Katniss steps behind her boss and touches him lightly on the shoulder._

"_I know this hasn't been easy, Beetee, but—well, I just want you to know how grateful I am that you're still doing this for Peeta."_

_He peers over his glasses and pats her hand, a genuine smile on his face. "This boy of yours is a good one, my dear. I'd like this to work for him as much as you would, believe me. I've got a good feeling about this model. You know what they say about the third time being a charm."_

_She nods, but turns away quickly as a flush colors her cheeks. 'This boy of yours'—Beetee can't possibly be insinuating... _

_Peeta enters just a minute later with the key card Beetee has issued him and clasps hands with the older man right away. He hops up on the work table exuberantly, unsnapping and unwrapping his basic prosthetic and letting it clamor to the floor. Beetee bristles, and Peeta returns the look contritely._

"_I don't ever do that with one of yours. Scout's honor," he says._

"_Glad to hear it. Let's give this another try, shall we?"_

_Beetee starts snapping the bionic leg in place, and Katniss stands to the side, her knuckles pressed to her lips. When everything is in place, Beetee tells him to shift and wiggle his thighs, and turn so his legs are dangling off the table to test the calf and foot function. Katniss watches as Peeta's bare right foot arches and the bionic left mimics the action. _

"_Very good. Let's get started. On your feet, son."_

_With a supporting hand from both Beetee and Katniss, Peeta gets to his feet and shifts in place to get his balance. There's a smile on his face almost at once. "Wow," is all he can say._

"_Feel better than the last one?" Beetee asks. "Stable? Not clunky?"_

_Peeta nods exuberantly. "Wow," he says again, but so quietly, Katniss isn't sure if she really even heard it. "It's… Wow."_

"_I'll take 'wow,'" Beetee says with a smirk. "Walk about, I want to check the mechanisms._

_Peeta does a circuit of the room with Beetee looking on approvingly. Finally, the older man nods and crosses his arms over his chest._

"_This one might be our winner. Don't go wearing it out on a marathon quite yet, you hear?" _

_Peeta grins broadly at the other man. "Not yet. I'll have to train for a good long time with this one to run the Panem again."_

_Katniss's eyes open wide._

_Why the hell would he ever want to run that race again?_

* * *

—**Mile 15.3—**

* * *

"Hey, Katniss?" Peeta finally sounds genuinely winded. For her part, Katniss can only sort of nod at him. Anything more and she'll do something really impressive... Like vomit up one of her lungs.

"I'm gonna go on ahead. You're alright?"

She nods again, and he reaches over and gives her biceps a light squeeze. At the same time he lengthens his stride and pumps his legs to send him hurtling ahead of her. She allows her own steadily building fatigue to win out and slows down. A few other runners pass in front of her, either keeping pace with Peeta or moving on ahead of him. And yet, somehow, he stays in sight.

And is she imagining things, or does he keep looking back at her?

_No, there, he's done it again!_ she thinks as his head peeks over his shoulder and his gaze flits to her so quickly, she'd have missed it if she had blinked. She supposes he's just checking on her, making sure she's not stopping completely, but surely he needs to keep looking ahead. The pavement hasn't been exactly even since they entered the city proper, and it would just take one little divot in the street with a misplaced step of his prosthetic for him to—

He looks back at her again, practically jogging backwards for a stride or two, then turns back around and really lets his speed take over. She keeps track of him as long as she can in the throng, but finally, his bobbing head disappears from view.

_You'll see him soon enough, Everdeen. Sheesh._

She keeps telling herself that. But she misses him already.

* * *

"_I just… I don't get it, Peeta."_

_Several cartons of Chinese food lay open between them, and Peeta takes a long pull from the beer in his hand. He sets his jaw in that way that makes the thick muscle next to his ear ripple and sighs._

"_I'm not really asking you to 'get it', Katniss. But can you at least support me on this?"_

"_You told me you didn't want to see that city again. I'm not making that up, I remember you saying it! Why the hell would you want to run the Panem again?"_

"_I know what I said. And at the time, I meant it. Or, I thought I did. But at the time, I'd never imagine I'd want to be in this townhouse again. I figured I'd be relegated to some group home where crippled widowers go to mourn forever. It's… It's been _years_, Katniss. I have to move on eventually."_

_No matter how noble the sentiment, she just couldn't imagine Peeta Mellark ever really moving on from Madge Undersee. Their matching Prom King and Queen sashes were supposed to be hung next to their wedding photos and the ultrasounds of their first child. They were supposed to grow old and senile together. And Katniss, so content with being single and free, was going to watch them from the sidelines._

_It strikes her that maybe she feels like she should have been the one ready to move on first. Let go of the grief that still lingers in her heart every day when she remembers that she can't pick up the phone and text Madge or ever hear her voice again. How could Peeta, who loved that girl so completely, be ready to let her go first?_

_He reads her mind. She really kind of hates it when he does that._

"_She'd be furious at me for dwelling on her, you know. For not living the life I still have when she can't anymore."_

"_Do you really feel so comfortable in the leg that you think you can run 26 yards? Let alone 26 miles…"_

"_I'll get there. You have to build up to running a marathon anyway. I'm not in bad shape from the gym, I can walk just fine in that clunky limb and jog a tiny bit when I really need to… Yeah. If this thing works like Beetee thinks it could, then I think I can do it."_

"_If…" She stops short, gnaws on her lip a minute while she thinks her words over. "If you do this, Beetee's gonna want me to keep an eye on the leg. Going from walking around and working in the kitchens is one thing, but adding in training for a marathon on top of it…"_

"_I know. I'll be careful. Hell, I'll keep a diary of every weird noise it makes, or every time the ankle joint acts glitchy. I'll oil it up every night if that's what it takes. Beetee wants this thing to last me the rest of my life, right?"_

"_Yes. That's the point exactly."_

"_I'm going to _walk _way more than twenty six miles over the course of my life. What's the point of having something that won't stand up to what I want to do? I promise, I'll start slow. I won't push too hard too fast. And if something feels wrong, or Beetee sees something going awry, I'll back off. But can you at least respect that this is something that's important to me? That this is something I need to be able to do, Katniss. Maybe not tomorrow, but someday. And I don't know how else to go about it other than doing it. You only get over something by going through it, right?_

_His words rattle her. But she sees his point. And of course Beetee will want to know the prototype's capabilities and longevity. There's no point in trying to market something that can't stand up to an active lifestyle. But she's not entirely certain that he'll do everything he says he will in regards to the limb itself. Will he really be able to tell if it's acting glitchy, like she and Beetee can?_

_A thought occurs to her that's so crazy, it might just be suicide. She can't believe that she's even considering it. But if this is what Peeta wants to do (and she knows it is) and she wants to make sure he understands the limits of what he can do with this limb (which she does)... Well, she's not sure what other choice she has._

"_Have people ever, ah… Run the Panem as their first marathon?" she asks tentatively._

_Peeta looks at her wryly. "Why? You wanna give it a go, Everdeen?"_

_Does she _want _to? No._

Will _she for him? For her work?_

_Absolutely._

* * *

—**Mile 18.9—**

* * *

There's a commotion up ahead. At first, she's prepared to ignore it and keep going, because there are more than enough people playing lookie-loo, and if she slows down now when she's so to getting to mile 20, she might not make it. And she'll be damned if she put up this much effort to not make it through to the end.

But still, something makes her turn her head as she's going past. The crowd parts just enough for her to get a look past the medic crouching low in front of the distressed runner; suddenly she's turning sharply to the right and pushing through everyone gathered around.

"Peeta!" she cries despite her ragged breath.

He's huddled over his knees, his pallor stark white, shaking visibly. Perhaps to the medic this looks like the end of some sort of epileptic seizure from the way he's trying to get Peeta to lay down on his back. But Peeta swats him away every time and continues to hug his shins and rock himself to. She cries out his name again, and suddenly, he looks up. It's a brief second that he looks relieved before the shaking continues, and she kneels down next to him and takes his face between her hands. He tries to shrug away—this one is bad, clearly—but she won't let him.

"Peeta, it's okay! It's okay, I'm here," she manages between the rapid rising and falling of her chest.

"Are you his wife? He's not wearing a medic ID tag, is he—"

"Get these people away from him! Give him some space, Jesus!" she screams at the medic before turning apologetically back to Peeta. "I'm sorry… I didn't mean to yell…"

"Katniss, go," he hisses. "Just go away!"

"No," she says, forcing his gaze to meet her own and locking her eyes on him. "No, I'm not going anywhere. And you're staying here with me."

If his glare could shoot flames, she'd be a girl on fire just from how he looks at her. It takes a moment, but instead, his irises grow wider than his dilated pupils, his breath feels steadier, less forced. His body relaxes. He gulps once, twice…

"_Fuck_," he says, letting his head fall forward into her arms. She rubs her fingertips into his scalp and breathes her own sigh of relief.

That was a bad one, she could tell. But it's over. He's back.

"Hey," she says, nudging under his chin for his eyes to meet her own. "We have a race to finish."

"He's still gonna run?!" the medic gapes. Katniss rolls her eyes—clearly he must be new.

"It's better if he does. Trust me."

She barely notices the tenderness in her own legs as she helps him to his feet. They walk briskly to the hydration station just up ahead, and Peeta gulps down water. While he's jogging in place, she glances down at his prosthetic to make sure he hadn't loosened it when he'd gone down.

"It's alright," he says clearly. "So am I."

"Ready to go?" she says, nodding towards the crowd.

"Ready," he says.

It takes a minute or two to find their pace again. But once they do, it's almost like they never stopped.

* * *

"_I can't…freaking believe…I'm doing this…" Katniss pants. Her legs feel as though they weigh a thousand pounds each, but are the approximate consistency of pudding in a water balloon. She's amazed she can still stand. Then there's Peeta, who's jogging in place exuberantly, watching her clutch the stitch in her right side. It's barely been three months in the bionic prosthetic, and already it seems like a natural extension of his body. The gears whirr softly in the ankle joint as he bounces, though it's barely audible over her raspy breath and pounding heartbeat._

"_We've only gone three miles. We said we'd do five while you get your legs under you, and work our way up from there," he says._

"_Easy for…you to say…" She stretches up and puts her hands behind her head as the stitch subsides and her breathing becomes a little easier._

"_Hey, I'm out of practice, too. But we'll get there," he says. He nods them on, and she feels her feet flap against the pavement as she chases after him._

_They're rounding a corner when it happens. Katniss is so preoccupied trying to keep her heart from leaping out of her mouth that she doesn't even register the noise—a loud _boom_! like a back-firing truck—as anything more than background. It's only after she's realized that he's no longer at her side that it strikes her as odd at all. She looks back behind her and her stomach bottoms out._

_He's doubled over like he's the one with a stitch. He's panting harder than she was a moment before. His eyes are the size of dinner plates. And the energy radiating from him actually frightens her._

"_P-Peeta…" she asks softly._

_He lashes out when she tries to touch him, swatting her hand away ferociously as he hisses something inaudible. Her hand stings where his connected with a loud crack. His are both over his ears, half covering his head, and the tremors going through his body are becoming more and more violent._

_She crouches next to him, far enough that she isn't close to touching him. It's taken her longer than it should have to realize what's going on._

"_Peeta, it's okay. You're safe. It was just a truck backfiring, that's all."_

"_Shut up," he groans._

"_It's okay," she repeats. "It's really okay, I promise."_

_He swears something vicious that sounds strange coming from him—he's never spoken to her like that in his life, even in the days in the hospital right after his amputation._

"_It's okay, Peeta," she says, not realizing until after the words come that she's practically begging. "It's okay… Stay with me, okay? Please?"_

_It's several long minutes before he does—he's not entirely back to himself, but he isn't this same shell of a person either. His eyes clear and his posture relaxes. She isn't afraid of him anymore._

"_Oh God…" he murmurs before he crumples in on himself. This time it isn't offensive, like a snake about to strike—it's reflexive, like the snake's prey hoping that the end will at least come quickly. Now she knows she can touch him. She wraps her arms around his heaving back and pulls him close._

"_It's okay… It's okay…" She repeats it until the words begin to lose all meaning for her, but they seem to finally penetrate the shield he's built up when he secures his arms around her in return and sobs into the curve of her neck. He mutters something that makes her heart break._

"_You aren't broken, Peeta. I promise you aren't broken."_

* * *

—**Mile 21.6—**

* * *

She swears the mile indicator signs are mocking her. How can it only have been 21 miles? How is that possible? How does it still feel like a small eternity every time she gets to this point?

And why the hell does her left hamstrings always seem to choose this _mile_ to betray her?

"W-Water?" she asks Peeta hopefully.

"Yeah, just a little further. C'mon, you can make it," Peeta says easily, all traces of his earlier episode gone.

She whimpers. No way is her thigh not going to seize up. Why is it that a simple muscle cramp makes you feel like you're going to keel over and die? It's worse than stepping on a Lego barefooted.

She pushes through it as best she can. If he can make it, so can she.

* * *

_As the months plod by, it does become easier. She's never been in poor physical shape, but she can still feel her leg muscles fill out and her stamina increase. She finally gets the endorphin rush that Peeta and Madge always bragged about—it's better than a cup of coffee most mornings. Still, the last few miles are always tough, even though they're only running the particularly long stretches once a week. And already today, she can tell that she should have finished those last few swigs off her Nalgene bottle._

_The muscle cramp rips through her medial hamstring muscle like fire, though thankfully she manages to collapse on some stranger's grass instead of their flower bed. She grunts in a way that doesn't exactly sound human, which is the only way she can answer Peeta's insistent, slightly panicky question of "What's wrong, what hurts?"_

_When she's waved close enough to the back of her thigh that he understands, he falls to his knees in front of her and picks her leg up by the ankle. Him touching her leg at all sends more fire coursing through her veins, but he maneuvers her knee to fold and slowly, the cramp feels a little less like death and more like a minor annoyance. He reaches under her leg and slowly kneads the sinew he finds with his strong hands, and she moans almost obscenely in relief._

"_Not enough water?" he asks with a wry look on his face._

"_Shut up," she responds, wincing still when his thumb grazes a particularly tender patch on the belly of the muscle._

_He pulls out the tiny flask of Gatorade he keeps tucked in the elastic belt around his hips and hands it to her. She sips greedily, not caring in the slightest that the liquid is approximately body temperature. It helps._

"_Think you can finish it out? We only have four miles left…"_

"_Really?"_

"_Well. Four and a half."_

_She groans. "Can we walk for a little bit?"_

"_Sure. Here, let's stretch you out first."_

_He grasps her ankle again and places it on his shoulder. She can feel the muscle stretch even before he places his palms on either side of her hips and hovers over her. The stretch is intense but much needed, although she's not entirely certain she's paying as much attention as she should be to the limits of her body when his face—particularly his sharp, clear blue eyes, ruddy cheeks, and slightly swollen lips—dips down and practically touches her own._

_There's no way she should feel the desire to stroke his temples and pull him down—it'd be inappropriate at the very least, and awkward at the very best. He's her best friend! They've been friends ever since she could remember. And he's…_

…_No longer engaged. He's effectively widowed._

_His eyes flash some sort of realization as if he's read her mind. He backs away, helps her to her feet, and nods that they should go, setting a quick run-walk pace that she struggles to keep up with on a crampy thigh._

_Even if he says he's ready to move on, she realizes, a part of his heart is always going to belong to Madge._

_She doesn't have it in her to explain to herself why that disappoints her so much._

* * *

—**Mile 25.9—**

* * *

It is an endorphin rush like no other. There isn't a mile marker to indicate 26, because just beyond, if Katniss squints her eyes just right, she can see the finish line. The congratulatory banner is big and brightly colored, and the crowd on either side of the avenue is once again full-to-bursting with onlookers cheering their hearts out.

This was the moment Peeta had promised. That despite the ugliness of four years before and the pain and suffering and agony of some evil monster stealing a day that should be joyful and fun, that life can go on—_should_ go on. One evil-doer can't erase decades of tradition, nor can they keep someone like Peeta Mellark, who lost so much in one wretched moment, from not only reclaiming something he loves, but also honoring the memory of the woman they lost in the same sweeping gesture. Katniss remembers hearing once that terrorism has a 100% failure rate—it never really achieves its end-game of destroying what was intended to be destroyed. If anything, it strengthens it by allying everyone affected to fight all the more to preserve and defend it. Carrying on keeps the spirit alive. Gives people something to fight for.

Katniss hasn't cried for Madge in years, but her eyes brim with tears. _I hope you're proud of him, Madge. I am._

_I hope you're proud of me._

_I miss you. I love you. I'll never forget you_.

She'll always miss her best friend. But the feeling of letting go is palpable as it rises like a weight lifted off her chest.

Peeta hasn't said anything about needing to cross the finish line by himself, but she hangs back just a touch to let him do so anyway. She doesn't need to check on the functionality of the bionic leg, nor does she see another episode on his horizon, despite the influx of stimuli that could trigger one in this place at this time. His head and chest are high, his legs are moving fluidly beneath him, and if it's possible to actually see a moment similar to the one she just experienced—the moment of release—she can see it clearly as she watches him sprint towards the end.

She finishes almost a full minute behind him. He'll log a faster time next time, and there will be a next time for him. She's not so sure about herself. She's pretty sure she got exactly what she wanted out of this experience.

(Well. Almost.)

She loses him for a moment in the throng of finishers, but only for a moment. When she finds him, the look on his face is indescribable.

He opens his arms. Without a moment's hesitation, she rushes into them. She clings to him, already dreading the moment when he'll let her go.

* * *

_They don't speak about the moment on the stranger's lawn. Katniss decides she was loopy from being dehydrated and dismisses it outright. They don't let anything get awkward, because they're friends. They'll always be friends. And really, neither can afford to think of each other any other way—right now, or maybe ever._

_But no matter how exhausted her body gets from running, from work, from day-to-day everything, there's still something else there burning inside her gut. She can't say she doesn't like it. But it'd save her a world of heartache if it would just go away._

* * *

—**The After Burn and Cool Down—**

* * *

Peeta insists they keep moving so they don't cramp up, but instead of walking through what she can only think of as a large block party at the finish line after they get their finisher medals, they take a long, circuitous route back to their hotel. All Katniss wants to do is take her weight off her wobbly legs, but the gentle pace at which they walk cools down her body. Every block or so, while waiting for a light to turn green, they dip down and touch their toes. Katniss hopes maybe this will keep her hamstrings from totally rebelling against her later.

Housekeeping must have turned off the air conditioner, because their room is positively sweltering. Peeta yanks open the sliding glass door that leads to the small patio, and a fresh, cool breeze off the nearby bay pours soothingly over Katniss's still-flushed cheeks as she collapses onto her bed and lets her limbs fall akimbo to her sides. She's sure her stink is permeating the bedspread, but she can hardly believe that sweat is the worst thing these hotel linens have ever seen.

"You really ought to shower before you crash, Katniss," Peeta says knowingly. Her own stubborn streak takes over, and she lays there anyway, stretching her hips and legs as best she can while lying down. She can sense him shaking his head at her even before she looks up to see if he actually is or not.

When her eyes settle on him, he's standing at the balcony railing looking out on the city. She can tell he's deeply lost in thought. And if she had to guess...no, she doesn't need to guess. Another day, another circumstance, she'd go out and ask him if he needs to talk about it. Something is telling her to let him be, and besides, her pillow looks far more welcoming. She battles with her swollen feet to pry them out of her shoes and gulps down half the bottle of water sitting on the table on her side of the bed. Before she knows it, she's fast asleep.

* * *

The room is darker from the sun creeping across the sky to illuminate the rooms on the west side of the building, and every muscle of Katniss's body is sore. It even hurts to breathe for a minute, but she puts her hands on her belly and forces air in and out of her diaphragm the way a yoga instructor once told her to do. Eventually she's able to force herself to sitting, then to standing, and she snaps on the light. She's ready with an apology for waking Peeta, assuming he'd passed out next to her or in the recliner in the corner, but she doesn't see him. She lets her eyes wander to the sliding glass door, and sure enough, the curtains are still billowing in with the breeze and she can see the outline of his form against the backdrop of the bay.

Her running clothes are shellacked to her skin and she's dying to peel them off and shower forever, but she really ought to make sure he's okay. For all she knows, he hasn't left that spot in the entire time she's been asleep. She half-waddles, half-walks towards the door; the cement is pleasantly cool against her bare feet when she steps out and taps Peeta on the shoulder.

He'd come inside at some point to shower and change, based on the clean hair curling across his forehead and fresh-smelling clothes. She's extra conscious of what she must smell like in comparison, but he pats the chair next to him in invitation to sit.

"Beer," he says, pushing a two-shy six pack over towards her feet. "Lots of carbs and salt to help you recover."

"_Everything_ needs to recover," she says with a huff. "I don't think I've ever been this sore in my life. And yes, I'm counting that crazy run you insisted on doing up the side of Slagheap Hill."

"Hey, you survived then, too. You'll survive this. I told you not to fall asleep, didn't I?"

She mutters an imitation of his words under her breath and takes a long pull of the laeger. "So… How are you feeling?"

"Tired. A little sore at the joint," he says, indicating the limb sitting detached next to him. His cargo shorts are rolled up high on his left thigh, making it easy enough to see the angry red splotches on his amputation site. Katniss supposes it isn't all that bad, considering how far he just ran and how much he must have sweated into it. She makes a noise of frustration for him not saying something earlier. "I put baby powder on it, it'll be fine in an hour. I know my leg by now, Katniss, I promise."

His smile relaxes her, and she drinks heavily from the bottle. Still, she was hoping to see a bigger smile on his face, vestiges of that runner's high he loves so much lingering with him through the rest of the day. His face is decidedly solemn. There's a crinkle between his eyebrows, indicative that he's been thinking of something for far too long.

It's then she notices the chain he's gripping between his fingers. He usually wears it around his neck—it has the platinum bauble of Madge's engagement ring looped on it.

_Why is her heart sinking? He's allowed to grieve—she would think it odd if he felt nothing, especially on today of all days. Why does every reminder of his fiancee—her best friend, to boot—leave her feeling so achey inside?_

It's a dumb question, but she asks it anyway. "How are you _really_ feeling?"

He opens his mouth a couple of times, as though he's searching for words that won't come out. "I… I don't know."

He twines the chain around his right index finger, presses it into the tip of his left, and twirls the entire thing around and around. Katniss can hear the chain whistling and the band catching on the clasp every time they meet.

"Everything reminded me about her today. I expected that. But it all felt—different. Detached, somehow. She was there in my mind, of course, and I was thinking about her, but… It wasn't like I was thinking about her and missing her, you know? I was just… I can't explain it. Something feels different, that's all."

Katniss's heart pounds a little quicker. She wills it to calm the hell down.

"Yeah," she says gently. "I think I know what you mean."

It's like that moment in the stranger's front yard again. And when they reached for the same papadum at the Indian restaurant a few weeks ago, and their fingers brushed in a strange way that felt like an electric current coursing through her veins. And last night, over her wine glass and his glass of tea, despite them going to the least romantic restaurant this side of the bay.

Were there more times like this that Katniss had just assumed she was reading incorrectly? Other times she wanted to see something that wasn't actually there at all, so she'd cast it aside and pretended like it was nothing?

He's her best friend.

He was going to marry her other best friend.

She was never supposed to do something so stupid. Like fall for him. But she knows now she did it anyway.

"I don't know what to do next," he says. "There are plenty of things I _want_, but I guess I'm scared of what they mean."

"What do you _want_ to do?" she asks. It feels like a safe question. He could answer with "I want to start my own bakery," or "I want to move to Portugal."

_Those are more likely_, she thinks tersely. _You're fooling yourself, Katniss._

He looks at her pensively, his top teeth scraping across his bottom lip over and over again. Is his gaze always this intense, or is she simply still exhausted from the marathon and groggy from her nap?

"We, um… Should get some dinner. You must be starving. And I owe you."

Her shoulders fall from where she didn't realize they were up next to her ears, and she picks idly at the label on her beer. Her stomach growls audibly. "Yeah, definitely."

He smiles at her in that sweet, boyish way that was probably the original thing that made her start to feel like this, and nods his head toward their room. "How about you go take a shower and I'll go get us some takeout? Any requests?"

"No, whatever you want is fine. You, ah, know what I like."

Her sentence seems to strike a chord with him, but whatever the effect may be, he doesn't actually say anything to acknowledge it. He nods, deftly reattaches his limb, and pads back into the room. He leaves quietly as she drains the rest of her beer, pops the rest of the six pack into the mini-fridge, and strips her clothes off in expectation of taking the longest shower of her life.

* * *

The towel-turban falls down from the crown of her head when she stoops to rub a dab of lotion on the chafed spot behind her left heel. She throws it over the shower rod to comb out her damp tresses in the mirror before grabbing for the built-in hairdryer. The whirring of the motor drowns out some of the thoughts running rampant in her head.

Alternating hot and cold water in the shower had done her muscles a lot of good, but she knows that she'd really only taken so long in order to prolong the inevitable of going out into the main room and facing him. This was the ultimate folly of letting the voice in her head give a name to her conflicted feelings where Peeta is concerned; now she doesn't know how to be around him without feeling like a besotted, pathetic schoolgirl. It doesn't matter how many times she tells herself that it's just a crush of circumstance—it feels so much more real than that. Maybe it will simply pass when they're back home to their relative realities, and it was just the race that put them in this weird place. She'd like for that to be the case, if only so they can just go back to the way everything has always been. No matter what she might feel, losing his friendship would destroy her. Everything else she can learn to deal with.

She hangs the dryer up by its handle and wraps the soggy towel around her breasts. Had she been thinking a little more clearly beyond the comfort being clean would bring, she'd have grabbed her pajamas before high-tailing it to the bathroom. Wandering out in front of him in just a towel hardly seems ideal; but then again, if she'd actually imagined whatever had passed between them on the balcony (_likely_, she thinks a little bitterly), maybe it won't be that big of a deal. She pokes her head out of the door and calls out to him.

"Peeta? I forgot my change of clothes so I'm coming out in just a towel. You might want to, you know avert your—"

The silence assures her she's alone in the room.

"Oh, thank God," she mutters, and flings the towel back over the curtain rod. She pads quickly to her suitcase and pulls out a pair of panties, shorts, and a long camisole, intent on dressing fast enough that even were he to waltz through the door a moment later, she'd still be decent by the time he laid eyes on her. She's stepped into the panties and is grabbing for the camisole when the hair on the back of her neck stands slightly on end; she senses before she looks over at the balcony door that he's staring at her. The sliding glass door is mostly closed, so maybe he didn't hear her. He must have slipped in when she was running the hairdryer. But there he is.

He's not really staring, although she can tell he's a little shocked at seeing her half naked; if her own eyes aren't fooling her, he's actually drinking her in. His eyes flit down to her breasts, where her nipples have puckered from the rush of cool air on her skin. She ought to be timid enough to at least wrap the cami around her torso to cover herself, if not pull it straight over her head. But something about his gaze has pinned her in place. Maybe it's the way his tongue has just darted out to wet his bottom lip.

_This is madness_, she thinks. _Any second now, he's going to color up like a tomato and I'm going to hide out in the bathroom until the heat-death of the universe._ Which makes it all the more confusing for her when he reaches out for the door to pull it open and slips inside. Katniss feels like she's in the middle of a staring contest, and with the way his azure eyes are searing into her, she for damn sure doesn't want to be the one to blink first.

After a heavy moment, her feet do the rest of her thinking for her; she steps towards him slowly at first, then practically leaps into his embrace. Their mouths collide hard enough to press him back against the sliding door, and the back of his head thumps against the plate glass as she fits her lips flush against his.

Never before would she have guessed that Peeta Mellark's lips would be so soft against her own. There's a tiny tang of beeswax from the lip balm that he perpetually carries with him, and a residual bitterness from the beer they'd drank earlier. His tongue presses gingerly at the seam of her mouth, and she allows it in to sweep against hers. The fluid motion is enough to make her knees buckle, and his fingertips press roughly into the exposed skin on the small of her back. When he moans into her mouth, she shivers from head to toe.

_He's kissing me. He's kissing me_, she thinks. _I don't _ever _want him to stop kissing me._

The longer their lips are melded together, the more bold Peeta's hands become. His thumbs slide under the waistband of her panties before his palms flatten along the curve of her waist below her ribs. She wills them silently to continue traveling up and claim her breasts, knead them and pluck her nipples and make her writhe. He seems content to map her torso slowly, though, and that drives her just as deliriously crazy. She semi-consciously bucks her pelvis into his. Through the fabric of his cargos, it's impossible to not feel the way his cock is starting to harden.

"What are we doing?" he mutters against her lips suddenly. They freeze as soon as the words are spoken, although his hands remain clamped around her ribcage. She can't tell if it's his skin or hers that's on fire.

"Something there isn't any going back from," she says, swallowing thickly. Not for her, anyway. She'll never be able to look at him as just her best friend now that she knows what his mouth tastes like.

"Should we stop?" he asks. His voice is really more of a whine, and it gives her a sliver of hope.

"I don't want to. But we can if you—"

He pivots her around so her back is pressed against the sliding door instead, and resumes his attack on her mouth. She hums gratefully as the combination of the cool glass and his warm, exquisite weight holding her there makes every inch of her skin pebble. _Thank God_, she thinks.

He's the one who hoists her right knee up under his left elbow, although she doesn't waste a second wrapping her other leg around his hips and locking it there. Suspended against the glass, she can feel the full girth of him pressing against her stomach, and it's making her core ache. He loops his arm under her rear and carries her to the bed, falling on top of her as soon as her body bounces against the mattress. His lips abandon hers to trail along her jawline and under her ear, down her neck and throat where he nips at her collarbone and sweeps his tongue into the hollow above. She whimpers pathetically as he peppers her biceps and the crook of her arm with kisses. Through hooded eyes, she thinks she might see him smirk just before he latches on to her nipple and sucks it deep into his mouth.

"Oh, God yes," she pants. Her fingers tug on the springy curls at his nape approvingly as he suckles. He leans heavily on one elbow to snake his hand up to pluck her other nipple with his thumb and forefinger. Her whole body shudders. It doesn't seem to matter where his mouth is—it's perfect everywhere it ends up.

The AC kicks on. Despite his body hovering over hers, she's suddenly extremely conscious of how little she's wearing in contrast to how much he is. She curses him for having a button down flannel on that she can't just easily yank over his shoulders to toss aside. She paws greedily at the top button with her fingers, and his eyes flit up to meet hers. Her nipple falls from his mouth with a wet pop, and he pushes up over her, bracing his arms on either side of her head so she has unencumbered access to the entire row of buttons. She bites her bottom lip as she pops them out of their holes, trying not to notice how he's staring down at her while she works. He's looking at her like she's edible, and does that ever make her brain not work correctly.

She's not sure what's more frustrating—the fact that his rolled sleeves at his elbows make it that much harder to slide the flannel down his arms, or that he's wearing a damn undershirt as well. He rears back on his knees and she sits up to hoist the thin cotton over his chest, and she marvels at him when she's tossed the tee aside. The clingy Under Armour he wears on runs doesn't do the chiseled musculature of his abs justice. She leans forward and presses her lips against his sternum again and again, reveling in the rumbling sigh of pleasure she hears within his chest.

"Let me kiss you again," he whispers. He cups the back of her neck and guides her down on the mattress, his mouth slanting over hers as they swap moans and melt together. She spreads her legs so his hips can sink between hers; if possible, his erection seems to have swollen even more, and it's pressing against her so firmly she only needs to roll into him gently to feel him pressing in on her clit. She's sure she could fall apart just like that.

"You have no idea, do you, Katniss? No idea at all," he says between sumptuous kisses. Her brain races to figure out what he means, only to be hindered all over again by the breathtaking way he claims her mouth, the pressure of his chest on hers, his own puckered nipples brushing luridly against her own. Her hips buck against his and he groans appreciatively into her mouth.

She pitches her weight against him, but his superior position doesn't budge at first. She has to grind her pelvis upwards deliberately for him to catch the hint that she wants—_needs_—to be on top. That it'll just make everything that much easier. He rolls onto his back and reaches for her when she sits up and moves off the bed entirely. She smiles at him to assure him she isn't going far, even placing her knee back on the bed to grip his pants by their fastenings. She looks up at him for permission.

"Please," he growls.

She pops the button and slides down the fly, wetting her lips as she loops her fingers into the waistband to tug the shorts down his thighs. Despite the length of their friendship, she's never seen him in this state of undress, and the impressive bulge in his black boxer briefs makes her heart skip a beat. As badly as she wants to pull the fabric down and see for herself, she's suddenly overcome with a fit of ill-advised shyness. She knows she's blushing something furious.

Her eyes fall instead to his left leg. The foot of the bionic limb arches and flexes the same as Peeta's other foot; she wonders just when it was that she decided this was as sexy an attribute of his as any other. She gnaws on the side of the her mouth and has to clear her throat before she speaks.

"Can... Can I?" she mutters, looking down at the limb significantly. He props himself up on his elbows and sort of half-smiles at her before nodding just once. Then he sits up properly and reaches out, a gasp of surprise on his lips when her hands begin to unfasten the appendage.

"I thought you were just gonna—" he stammers, but she leans forward and kisses him softly to calm him.

"It's just _you_, Peeta. I… I want you exactly as you are," she tells him. His shoulders fall and relax. He lets her kiss him again before she kneels before him and begins to work away the intricate strap system that holds the limb in place. With his help, she pulls the leg off and sets it aside. She sits forward on her knees and caresses his thigh soothingly. Some other sound of protest bubbles from his throat when she leans in and kisses him gently just above the jagged-looking scar at his amputation site. She does it again, softer this time, as if to tell him she's not afraid of what makes him imperfect. To her… Well, to her, he _is_ perfect. She's embarrassed it took her so long to figure it out.

Before she can trace the long, toned muscles up to the hem of his shorts, he cups her face with his hands and encourages her up. His arms wrap around her and bring her down on top of his chest as he kisses her again. There's a smile on his face between every collision of their mouths, which makes her giddy. Her knees fall to either side of his waist, and she reaches out to twine her fingers in with his. Their hands fit together better than she could have expected them to, and he pulls her in for kiss after delicious kiss. She's only semi-conscious of the way their pelvises are grinding together until the tip of him finds her clit through their underwear, and she gasps out in surprise.

She _has_ to feel him. She has to know what the weight of him feels like in her hand. She wants even more than that, judging from how damp the crotch of her panties already are.

She shimmies backwards and sits up. His arms fold under his head and his stare up at her is intoxicating as she slowly inches his shorts down the indented V of his hip bones, over the soft trail of wheat-colored hair under his navel, and finally down so that his cock springs upwards and falls against his stomach. A noise of surprise catches in her throat as she sees just how big he is.

There shouldn't be any confusion of just what she's asking, but she's more specific with her gaze when she asks again: "Can I?"

He nods exuberantly, his lips parting and jaw going slack as she laps her palm with a flat tongue just before her fingers wrap around his length to pump experimentally. His cock twitches in her hand, and she marvels how something can be so hard and so silky soft all at once. His abdomen clenches and releases when she circles the head and brushes her thumb over the slit, then pushes slowly back down to his base and starts the entire ascent all over again. His eyes flutter closed and he mouths words she doesn't recognize as she builds a rhythm. She almost startles when his eyes snap back open a second later, and his hands clamp around the top of her thighs.

"Please let me touch you, too," he begs.

She nods, and his knuckles graze her panties where the damp spot between her legs gives away her own arousal. He sort of half-gasps, as if in awe, and brushes his thumb over the dampness before hooking into the elastic and pulling the thin material over. She tightens her grip on his cock as the pad of the digit grazes her folds and slips in between them in search of her clit. Her hips undulate back and forth, and he grunts when her half-exposed pussy brushes the base of his cock.

His fingers stop exploring and simply hold the crotch of her panties aside as she pivots and lets her folds brush sinuously around his length. She braces herself against his thigh as she grinds her pussy against him and pumps his head with her hand. His neck arches back so the crown of his head presses into the mattress; the ropey muscles of his throat strain and pulse as delicious, salty words and nonsensical gurgles tumble from his lips.

"Jesus _fuck_, Katniss," he groans. "God, you're so…"

He bucks and rubs her clit in exactly the right way. She mewls and clenches her thighs. A bead of moisture weeps from his slit and his stomach spasms as she brushes it with her thumb and uses it to lubricate her ministrations, along with the dampness than emanates from her own core.

"Fuck, Katniss. You're gonna… Fuck!" He grasps her by the wrists to still her hand, and looks up at her pleadingly. She leans forward, brushing against his lips before kissing the tip of his nose. She slides off to his side to get to her feet, waiting for him to push himself back on his elbows before sliding her panties slowly down her hips and stepping out of them entirely. He makes a sound of utter desperation when she's bare to him, and his eyes flit over to where his suitcase is laying open on the dresser.

"In m-my… There are, um…"

Her cheeks flame, but she doesn't need any further prodding. Her hands delve into the recessed pockets of the bag until she finally locates the foil packets he's hinted at. She wonders why he'd bother to bring such a thing, why on earth he'd think it was necessary…

She turns and watches him slip his own underwear off and toss it towards the heap of his clothes in the corner. She doesn't mean to sound accusing, but she has to ask.

"Peeta, how long?"

His shoulders tense up and he inhales a slow breath. "Jesus, Katniss. You're a little blind sometimes."

"That isn't an answer."

He swallows hard. "A while. A long while. I just… I didn't know how to tell you."

Her feet carry her to the bed and she crawls over to him. She puts her hands under his jaw to tilt his face upwards, wanting and not wanting to kiss him all at once. "I thought I… I figured I was just fooling myself."

He closes the distance between their mouths with a firm grip on her chin. His kiss is decisive and final. "No idea at all," he says again.

Finally she understands. Although she isn't entirely certain he understands the effect he has on her, either.

She tears into the packet and they roll the condom down his cock together. She throws her leg back over his hips, props her feet up on his thighs, and gulps as she takes him in her hand again.

"Peeta, I—"

"Please, Katniss. I want you so bad."

_I want you more_, she thinks. She grips him softly by the base and trails his head along her folds. When she feels him flush with her entrance, she sinks down inch by luscious inch. His girth takes a minute to get used to before she can sink lower, and she has to consciously relax every one of her pelvic muscles to allow him to fit deeper inside her. His fingernails leave angry red marks on her thighs as she envelops him; when their hips are nearly flush, she sighs at the incredible fullness she feels and rolls experimentally.

"Fuuu…" he says, his hands settling on her waist. She nods in agreement, and continues to sway her hips, letting herself adjust to his size another minute before she flexes her thighs to lift herself up, then drops back down. He groans and his eyes squeeze shut, his head nodding as he sucks his bottom lip in between his teeth. She picks herself up again, yelping quietly as she feels herself sink impossibly deeper onto his length. His hands clench her waist, and when the muscles in his forearms ripple as he starts to guide her, she surrenders some of her control and lets him share in the exquisite workload. Their skin slaps together loudly when the AC unit quiets, and soon only that sound and the desperate noises being wrenched out of each of their throats fills the room.

Katniss can't form words, but Peeta curses like a sailor. His eyes open and his neck arches upwards; the way he stares at her while she writhes on top of him nearly undoes her. Her hands splay over his abs, bracing herself for every continued snap of their hips. He pulls her down towards him a little bit, and the tip of him hits the sweet spot inside her. She yelps in gratitude, riding him deliberately so he hits that spot over and over, until her eyes clench closed.

"No, fuck… Look at me, Katniss. You're so sexy when you look at me," Peeta moans.

She drops her palms to the bed and leans forward. Her hair, still damp at the ends, brushes against his flushed face and he fists it to keep it back. His grip is a little tight, especially when she sinks herself down to close her mouth over his. His entire body is jerking to keep slamming his cock inside her, and every breath he takes through his nose puffs hard against her cheek. She sucks his bottom lip between hers, tasting the last bit of his lip balm before sitting back up and stilling his hips with her palms before picking up the pace again with just the power of her own legs. Exhausted as they may be, they're more than strong enough to get him absolutely begging for her to keep going, "just like that."

His breath gets shallower and he can barely keep his eyes open when his thumb fits between them and finds her swollen clit. She urges him on with impassioned moans, feeling herself creep towards the edge with every rotation of his pad against the little nerve bundle. She clenches her pussy hard around him, wanting to hear him absolutely beg her for his release before she allows the colors behind her eyes to overtake her.

"Fuck, Katniss!" he hisses, raking his fingernails on his free hand up her stomach and palming her breast greedily. "Fuck, _fuck_, I'm so close."

Her bouncing becomes more and more erratic as she feels herself fumbling for the edge herself between his thumb and his cock grazing that spot inside her, and she finally pieces together the words to urge him on. "Me… Oh _God…_" she gasps in reply.

His body tenses from head to toe and he hollers his release with a string of profanity punctuated by the sorts of masculine noises that make her delirious. His thumb continues to circle her clit, more jerky than fluid as he comes, but it's only a few more flicks before she shudders and falls onto his chest with a strangled moan. He cradles her against his chest as they struggle for breath. She rolls to his side to let his chest heave up and down, burrowing her face into the crook of his arm as she gathers her wits and feels the pleasant ache of a thorough fucking completely engulf her senses.

_I just had sex with Peeta_, she thinks. _I just fucked my best friend. Mother of God, I don't think I've ever come so hard in my life._

She can feel his chest, dewy with exertion, press against her back and his mouth graze the curve of her shoulder to press into her neck. She wonders if he can feel through his lips how hard her heart is pounding as he kisses her pulse point and wraps his other arm around her, holding her fast in his embrace.

"Oh my God, Katniss," he says over and over again. "Oh my God."

She wishes she could think of something to say in reply. But she's never been good with words, not like he is, and even if she were, what do you say to the man you've fallen for so completely in all the ways that scare you most?

He presses his damp forehead into her temple, spooning her tightly to his chest before murmuring something she can't quite hear into her hair. She wants to ask him what it is he's said, but the lure of sleep is too tempting, too overwhelming, and it takes her as soon as she feels his arms tighten even more around her.

* * *

**—Next—**

* * *

She wakes cocooned in the bed spread with a pillow under her head, Peeta's arms far away. It's fully dark now, and only the lights from the city shine in through cracks in the floor-to-ceiling black-out curtains. Paranoid, she sits up and leans over to snap on the light. He's in the recliner, and paws at his eyes when the light hits them.

"Shit! Warn me next time, Katniss!" he says. She can see he's half redressed in his undershirt and boxer briefs, but he hasn't refastened his prosthetic to the stump of his left thigh. She's extra conscious of her nudity, and pulls the spread up and holds it tightly around her breasts. She pulls her knees up to her chest, and a dull ache spreads out from her core; not that she has anything to compare it to, but it feels so different than regular post-marathon fatigue. She's never been so pleasantly sore after sex. But the thickness of the air between the bed and the recliner makes her seriously wonder if it's worth the cost. Namely, Peeta himself.

He lowers his hand, his shoulders pressed forward, eyes seeking out hers. That, at least, is a relief—if he couldn't look at her, this would be so much worse.

"How, um… Are you feeling?" he asks softly.

"Well… I just ran a marathon a few hours ago…"

"Katniss, you know what I mean."

She's still struggling to find words when he unsteadily hops over to settle on the bed next to her. He swallows hard as his hand trails up and settles on her knee. The warmth of his palm through the blanket is comforting.

"You know how lousy I am at saying things," she murmurs, letting her own hand slip from her cloak of safety. Their fingers knit together and he sighs heavily.

"I've been, ah… Sitting here wondering what Madge would say if she… If she were here to say anything about all this."

"I'd imagine she'd be pretty pissed you cheated on her," Katniss says morosely. She knows that Peeta Mellark is nothing if not hyper-monogamous. If Madge were alive this would never have happened.

Four years. Is four years really enough time for a man to get over the woman he was planning on spending the rest of his life with? Not only that…but take up with their mutual best friend while he's at it?

"I… I don't feel bad about this, Katniss. Not one bit."

This floors her. She'd figure he'd be the epitome of intense guilt right about now.

"You know she'd want us to be happy, right? She'd want us to be happy and live our lives and move on." His words are so sure and steady, and so much what she wants to hear. She remains, however, unconvinced.

"I can't imagine she'd ever suppose we'd do that together, though. Like this, I mean," she says, gesturing between them.

He turns towards her, and through the blanket hooks his fingers into her hips and scoots her towards him. He has to nudge her face repeatedly to coax her chin from her chest so their eyes can meet.

"I don't regret this, Katniss. I've wanted this. I've wanted _you_. I just don't think it's wrong to want someone else after so long. Particularly not when that someone else is as incredible as you are."

"Oh, please," she says.

"Stop it. You… Damn it, Katniss," he says, and presses his mouth to hers. Everything seems a little simpler when their lips are tangled together, and the pressing guilt weighing on her chest lifts a little.

Their foreheads rest together long after the kiss ends. All Katniss wants is another: more kisses, more Peeta, more of everything only he can give her.

"There's just no way I'm letting you go," he whispers to her.

"So what do we do when we get home? What's left of all this when we're back?"

"I'm not sure yet. But I think it'd be so much easier to figure out together, don't you?"

More kisses. More sex. More Peeta. That's what she wants, if only she'd be brave enough to claim him.

"Okay," she says timidly.

He smiles luminously before sinking in to kiss her again.

"How many more of these races do you really think you'll do?" she asks seriously when they surface for air.

His grin is half-cocked and devious. He knots his fingers in her hair and shrugs his shoulders.

"I don't know yet. How many do you think I can manage?"

"I think you can do anything you try."

He snorts. "I dunno, I think swimming might be off the table. There go all my triathlon plans."

"Then I'll have Beetee build you a waterproof bionic. You can do anything, Peeta. You really can."

Next thing she knows, he's throwing his weight against her and tugging the blanket off her body before she can try and stop him. Not like she'd actually want to. He rolls on top of her; he's hard again and pressing against her deliberately.

"Even this?" he says, rolling his pelvis. "Even _like_ this?"

"O-Oh…" She's sore. But God, does she ever want him again. "Take those shorts off, fuck."

After, when they're sated and locked in one another's embrace again, more exhausted but nowhere near as tired, Katniss looks up at him and smiles. He pulls his fingers through her hair and looks at her like he's had a moment of perfect clarity.

"I don't know if I'll keep running. I don't know if I'll take up mountain biking, or archery, or writing. What I do know is I want to spend as much of the rest of my life with you as you'll allow."

She's not prepared for the way his words thrill her. Her mouth collides with his and kisses him like she's never kissed anyone in her life.

"I'll allow almost anything when it comes to you," she murmurs against his lips.

The words should terrify her. Instead, they only make her want to kiss him more.

So she does.

* * *

**A/N: _My deepest and most profound gratitude goes to _sohypothetically, _for encouragement and betaing prowess, to _Jen Ibarra _for pre-reading and her sagely marathon advice, and to _loving-mellark _for my gorgeous banner. Thanks also to Fandom4LLS, for including this story in their 2014 collection. _**

**_Please keep an eye on this entry, as there is more to come for this particular Everlark. ;)_**

**_I'd love to hear what you think. Thank you so much for reading. And happy reading until we meet again!_**


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