Blooming in the Spring

Chapter 5

The words slip out of my mouth before I even have a chance to process them.

"Peeta, do you want to stay here tonight?"

I only ask because he's clearly dozing off in the armchair he sits in by the fireplace. After everything with the painting, he cooked us supper and returned to his book in the living room after cleaning up. We've gotten into this routine in the past several days. We quietly sit in the living room together--or on the porch when it's warmer outside--and he cooks and I help clean and he busies himself with reading or painting or drawing on a little sketchpad and I watch him. Not closely and not all the time, but every once in a while I've found my gaze turned towards him, studying his face and the way he moves and breathes. In the years I've known him, the only time we have had this quiet contentment together was before the Quell was announced when he helped me with the plant book. I use it as an opportunity to get to know him again, this new Peeta that feels so familiar yet so distant too--like a childhood friend or an extended family member you know you have met but don't quite remember.

It's getting close to 10 o'clock and we sit in the fire's dying light. I listen to the sound of the crickets through the cracked open window; they've only just started to sing again as each day gets warmer and spring approaches. I pretend not to see but I watch Peeta slip into slumber three times before I ask him to stay.

He hesitates for a moment, on his lips a dozen excuses as to why he can't stay. It's funny. I'm the one who's supposed to be wary of him, to be afraid of him. He's still a risk, they all tell me. But it seems that Peeta is more afraid to be around me than I am him. I wonder if it's because part of him is really still frightened of me. I wonder if a part of him always will be. Or, maybe he is afraid of hurting me. I remember the fear and guilt in his eyes when he watched himself attack me on-screen during the war. How he wanted us to kill him for it. Whatever his reason, I don't ask him about it. I don't know that I would want to hear the answer either way.

"I'm not sure that's such a good idea," he whispers, as quiet as a mouse.

I feel my cheeks flush a little, though I'm not sure why I'm embarrassed. I expected him to be hesitant, he has been around me since. . .Well, since longer than I can remember I suppose. Even before he was captured by Snow, there was a wary sort of distance between us. He hated me and Haymitch for lying to him in the first Games. For playing him as we did. As I did.

"I just thought you might not want to walk home and there's the extra bedroom upstairs," I say, playing it off like it's no big deal. It isn't, really. I don't want anything from him by asking him to stay and I am perfectly capable of spending the night in my house alone. Though part of me has grown to resent nighttime when he leaves and I'm left in complete silence, no sound of his steady breathing to keep me company. It's selfish of me, I know. He doesn't owe me anything. In fact, I owe him much more than I'll ever be able to repay. But I can't help but crave the comfort he brings, especially after all of that time without him. The time when I truly started to believe that I'd always be without him. A few months ago, I never would have believed I'd be back in my house with Peeta sitting across from me. I never would have believed a lot of things.

He thinks for a few more moments but sleepiness eventually wins him over.

"Just for tonight," he says, nodding. I stand, feeling tired myself, put out the dwindling fire, and grab the extra throw blankets from a basket beside the couch.

We slowly make our way up the stairs together, a safe amount of space still between us. I can't help but feel a pang of longing for the nights he used to spend here before the Quell. In separate bedrooms, of course--my mother would never allow otherwise, even if she didn't really believe the love story between us. His was always the one on the far end of the hallway. It was actually meant to be my mother's but she ended up sharing the largest bedroom in the middle of the hall with Prim. Neither of them liked to sleep alone. I have only allowed myself into that bedroom once since returning to 12. I cannot bear to go inside, to see Prim and my mother's things. Both are gone but in different ways. Their things remind me that I will never get either of them back. So the door stays shut.