Chapter Text
Eleven-year-old Katniss never had a reason to carry a key.
Her dad was always home when she was back from school or her gymnastics practice. And if he wasn’t, she could just hang out outside until she heard a car pull in. She could drink from the garden hose and help herself to an apple or two from the tree nearby. Or she could just cross the street, checking both ways before she stepped on the road, and ring her best friend’s door to see if he was up for playing in their tree house.
And when it was too cold to be outside, like it was that day, they would just go up to his room to play.
Katniss loved Peeta’s room, almost as much as she loved her own. He had two older brothers, so naturally, their house was bursting with toys. Action figures with limbs missing. Warplanes, tanks, and cars that were worse for the wear after years in the line of duty. And legos, so many legos. But the best part was the shelves full of comic books and children’s novels. When they weren’t playing with toys, they would lie down on his carpet with their heads together and read.
“Is it dinner time already?” Peeta looked up from The Little Prince and asked his parents who were standing at the door. But they weren’t looking at him. They were looking at her. There was a peculiar expression on their faces and Mr. Mellark had his arm around his wife. Katniss wasn’t used to seeing them like that, not unless they were posing for a photo. Something must have brought them closer together now. But what was it?
“Katniss, love,” Mrs. Mellark began in an unusually soft tone, “your mum is downstairs. She needs to see you.”
“My mum has a shift in the hospital today. It must be my dad.” Katniss hauled herself up from the carpet. “It is my dad, right?”
They were silent for too long, so she pressed, “It is my dad, right?” She was too afraid to try to put things together. “It must be my dad.”
She turned back to look at Peeta. He must have also sensed that something was wrong but he couldn’t offer her any explanation either. His helpless shrug unnerved her more than his parent’s demeanour.
“Katniss, it is best if you could ju-”
Katniss didn’t listen. She pushed the Mellarks aside and rushed downstairs.
That was the last time she was in her best friend’s room.
—
Eighteen-year-old Katniss is cursing herself now.
She had been working on that midterm paper the whole day. Fretting over each word and the formatting. And she was happy with it. Really, properly happy with it. But before giving it a final read and submitting it, she decided she would walk to the vending machine to get a chocolate bar. Get some sugar in her system.
And now she is locked out. Swearing under her breath the whole time, she kicks the door and tries to push it open with her shoulder. No luck. The door doesn’t budge.
She can picture her assignment on her computer screen, waiting for her while her laptop battery slowly drains. Abandoned, alone, scared. Never to be submitted on time. She feels like a mother who accidentally locked her child inside the car. She decides never to judge anyone in a similar situation. All it took for her brain to glitch was a couple of hours of studying; what must prolonged sleep deprivation be doing to those poor mothers’ brains?
She walks back to the vending machine to check the time on its little LED screen. It’s 23:34
She has a vague idea that she can call security in these situations, and she has a number saved in her contacts. But her phone is locked inside her room, too. Plus, it is almost midnight. There is no way someone could come in time for her to submit the paper.
Katniss leans her back against the cold wall and slouches down on the floor. After a second of consideration, she tears out the wrapping on the chocolate bar. She might as well try to enjoy the most costly candy of her life.
“Locked out, are you?” Peeta calls from the other end of the hallway, freshly out of the elevator. Katniss pulls her head out from between her knees and scowls at his approaching figure.
“What gave it away, Sherlock?”
“Easy, now. I wouldn’t poke fun at my intelligence if I were you. Only one of us remembered to take his keys…” He holds them out for her to see. “...and the other is sitting on the floor in her pyjamas.”
“Why do these doors have to automatically lock, anyway?” says Katniss, gruffly. “Do we really need that much security?”
“Maybe you don’t. But I happen to live across the hall from a total lunatic, so I, for one, am grateful for the automatic lock.”
“You're kicking me while I’m down, huh?”
“Alright, sorry,” Peeta chuckles. “Do you need to ring security from my cell? Or do you have a friend nearby?”
She doesn’t answer, but her expression must give her away. “Christ, do you have any friends anywhere?” Peeta pipes up.
Katniss opens her mouth to say something horrible, terrible to him but nothing comes out. At first.
Then she starts sobbing.
“Geez, Katniss. You know I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I am not crying because I don’t have any friends,” she reassures herself. It is most definitely not that. She is crying because she won’t be able to upload the assignment in time now. And because she can never seem to find the right words to put him in his place. What was it that he said just now? “I am the one who lives across the hall from a lunatic, so I, for one, am grateful for the automatic lock.” It was funny. And he looked so smug saying it. Why can’t Katniss get to have those moments? Why does it have to be her who is locked out of her room on a Friday night, eating a chocolate bar on the dirty floor in her Snoopy pyjamas? This is not the uni life she imagined. Hell, this is not the life she imagined.
Peeta doesn’t look smug now, though. He looks worried. “I am sorry, okay? I was just joking. sh*t, don’t cry, please.”
“It’s okay.” Katniss wipes the tears on her cheeks. But the crying doesn’t seem to stop. “It’s not you. I am just crying because I need to upload an assignment by midnight and I can go to a friend’s but she is a bit far so I won’t be able to make it to hers by then.”
Peeta checks his phone, then looks at her like he is debating something. “Did you have it backed up somewhere online?”
“Of course I did,” she sobs. “I’m not an idiot!”
“I didn’t say you were, Christ. Stop having a go at me. Just come in and use my computer. I need to drop my bag and leave anyway.” He turns the key in the lock and pushes his door open. Then he reaches out a hand to pull Katniss to her feet.
She walks into his room after him, timidly. “Thank you, Peeta, really. I owe you one." She watches Peeta turn on his laptop.
“Don’t mention it. The password is neverwalkalone. In case you get locked out of the computer, too.”
“Still a Liverpool lad, huh?” she laughs. “Thank you.” She catches his small smile as he opens a browser and switches it to guest mode. “I could’ve guessed your password, by the way,” Katniss says, reaching out to grab a Kleenex from his table and blow her nose. “It would have been my first guess.”
“Yeah, alright. Tell yourself that,” says Peeta. “I am taking my keys ‘cause I don’t trust you with them.”
She settles on his desk chair. “Do you have any more jokes left or can I get started?”
“I have so many more but you’ll miss your deadline if we go through them all.” Peeta quickly throws the covers over his unmade bed and chucks a jumper at her head. “Here, take this in case you’re cold. It is clean. Well… cleanish.”
“Thank you,” Katniss says for what feels like the millionth time.
“I’m off, then. Just close the door behind you when you’re ready to go. Be careful, though. I really don’t want to find you crying in the hallway again.”
“Ha ha.” She decides not to mention that she only started crying after he found her. “I thought you said no more jokes.”
“I said no such thing.” He closes the door behind him and leaves Katniss alone with her assignment. She manages to upload it with only a couple of minutes to spare, quickly checks the plagiarism score, and lets out a relaxed breath.
Then she closes the laptop and starts looking around. His room is a mirror image of hers, if not a bit smaller. It must have been a cosy party that first night.
On second thought, it could just be that his room is much messier. She turns on the swivel chair to take in the whole room. Her eyes flit from the bundle of clothes on the floor to the mess of books and papers on his nightstand. When she lands on a very busy corkboard, she gets up to take a closer look.
The board is overflowing with ticket stubs, little drawings, and photos. She recognizes some easily: Peeta and his twin brothers outside their parents’ bakery, squinting at the sun with their arms around each other; a very old birthday photo with his parents and a Spider-Man-themed cake; a photo of him and Delly Cartwright in what must be their high school graduation.
With a pang in her stomach, Katniss notices that she isn’t in any of the photos. But she must be just outside the frame in some. She shakes her head and tries to avoid the photos for the rest of her little expedition. An expedition to get to know this Peeta Mellark. She quickly finds a timetable on the board and cannot help but laugh. Small wonder she had such an easy time avoiding him so far. He is studying politics; his faculty is on the opposite side of the campus.
She picks out a random book from his bedside and then settles on the desk to wait for him to come back. But the exhaustion must catch on her, no later than around the second page. She wakes up with a start in a sunlit room. Peeta’s jumper is around her shoulders and the book, Machievelli’s The Prince, is still in her hand. There is also a little note on the table.
Morning,
I came back a little after 2 & you were passed out on my desk. I am leaving a fiver in case you want to grab breakfast before going over to your
imaginaryfriend’s place.You owe me & not just for the fiver. Remember, I know where to find you.
Peeta
P.S.: You were drooling all over my desk. The damage is done & there is nothing you can do now. But the image will haunt me forever so I thought you should know too.
Katniss grins at the note, too preoccupied with the handwriting itself to be mortified by its contents. It is still too familiar, still the one on the notes that he passed to her in class and on the many letters and postcards she left unanswered. But there is something grown-up about it, too. She passes her fingertips over his name, noticing how he writes his a’s differently now. And he uses ampersands instead of writing the word and. They look like the left half of a dragonfly.
In the end, her imaginary friend turns out to be the friendly superintendent. She comes to the rescue after Katniss rings the security office from the payphone. “It happens to everyone at least once. Like a rite of passage,” she says as she jingles her keys. “Just call us and we’ll come down to let you back in.”
Once she is safely inside, Katniss checks her phone to find a good morning message from Prim. Then she pulls out a notepad to write her first correspondence to Peeta in seven years. As she slides it under his door, she can almost picture his lopsided smile reading it.
Hiya,
Thanks for letting me use your computer and the fiver. Let me buy you a pint sometime.
Katniss
P.S: If you need a hand getting that desk down the stairs, dousing it in petrol, and setting it on fire, you know where to find me.
