i.

Peeta Mellark's birthday was in the summertime.

Birthdays in kindergarten at the District 12 Primary School were a cause for celebration, as much celebration that there could be in the bleak community. The birthday child was given a paper crown, crinkled and yellowed with age, its plastic gems coming unglued from the base, to wear upon their head for the duration of the day. The children didn't mind the dilapidation of it, though.

They loved it. They loved the way the crown made them feel special for a day.

On May 8th, Katniss Everdeen was given her full day with the birthday crown. When the school day was over, and her father had come to collect her, she chattered happily about being the birthday queen for a day, and told him how excited she was for Primrose to have her chance at being the birthday queen.

Children whose birthday fell in the summertime, despite school not being in session during their birthday, were given their chance to wear the birthday crown during the last week before the summer recess. As Peeta's birthday fell the latest of all the children in his class, he wore the crown on the last day of school.

On the last day, during the scheduled class snacktime, Peeta makes his way to his cubby hole to procure a large container. Inside the container were stacks of clumsily frosted cookies, decorated by Peeta with his father's help. Crown on his head, Peeta passes out one cookie to every child in the classroom, a luxury that most children weren't able to indulge in and markedly different from the usual snack of dried squirrel jerky or stale crackers.

He gives the biggest cookie in his container to Katniss, a tree, garnished with childlike strokes of green icing. Peeta places it on her desk, crown falling into his eyes and chubby cheeks tinged with pink, before scurrying off to give the next student their treat.

Katniss eats half of it, wrapping the rest as a surprise for her daddy to have when he picked her up. Before the day is over and it's time to go home until autumn, she scavenges the classroom for a bit of old construction paper before writing Peeta a note in her clumsy, childish scrawl, which she leaves in his cubby hole.

Dear Peeta,

Thank you for the cookie. Happy birthday. Have a good summer.

Katniss

ii.

She runs into him on the day of his thirteenth birthday.

Katniss hadn't spoken to Peeta Mellark since primary school. Since before he threw the bread for her in the rain that day, saving her and her family from starvation and giving her the hope to begin hunting, to fight for her and her family's lives.

Since before her daddy died.

She and Gale Hawthorne have been hunting together for a few months now, meeting early every Sunday morning to hunt before the sun shines too brightly overhead. Their schedule is the same from week to week: hunt in the morning, sit down to eat a little bit, and then make their way to the Hob and the town to trade their bounty.

Gale doesn't go to trade with her today, having caught his foot in one of his snares. He's in obviously in pain, and Katniss knows he shouldn't perform his normal rounds with her, lest he seriously injure himself.

So Katniss goes to trade on her own.

Her last stop is the bakery. Mr. Mellark is always kind to she and Gale, giving them more for their trades than they know they deserve.

But they never complain.

Today, Mr. Mellark isn't the one who opens the door, like it normally is. Peeta Mellark answers her patterned knock. He looks different from the last time she saw him in school. He's taller, taller than she is now, his cheeks, while still full, have lost some of their childish roundness,and his shoulders are a little broader than she remembers.

His eyes are the same, though.

"Hi Katniss," he says softly, piercing her with his gaze.

"Your—your dad is the one who normally gets the door," she mumbles, scuffing something nonexistent off her shoe.

"He isn't feeling well today," Peeta explains. "He told me he was expecting you, though."

Katniss nods, wanting nothing more than to be done with the trade and get out.

She rummages through her knapsack, pulling out the usual haul, two squirrels, fatter this week than usual, and offers them to Peeta with her outstretched arm.

He nods, carefully taking the squirrels from her and placing them on the counter, before turning to grab the customary loaves.

"Thank you, Katniss," he says, handing her the bread with a small smile.

She nods in return.

They look at each other for a moment more, before he speaks.

"Well, have a good day."

Katniss nods again, before mumbling out. "Happy birthday, Peeta."

Because while she's forgotten everyone else's birthday from her kindergarten class, she hasn't forgotten his.

And before he can say anything in return, she turns on her heel and runs.

iii.

Peeta Mellark spends his seventeenth birthday in a cold sweat, shaking and feverish from the wound Cato inflicted on his leg.

Katniss holds his head in her lap as he sleeps, brushing away the sweaty fringe from his brow, and pressing the water-soaked rag to his forehead in a vain attempt to lower his fever.

But she knows there's nothing she can do for him now. Nothing she can do for him in this cave, when the medication he so desperately needs is out there, out at the Cornucopia.

Fate has a twisted sense of humor, Katniss thinks. In District 12, your seventeenth birthday was almost a cause for celebration. It meant you were one year closer to being done, to finally being free from the reaping forever. If, that is, you were lucky enough to make out at eighteen unscathed.

On his seventeenth birthday, Peeta Mellark is closer to death than he ever would be at home.

He jerks violently in his sleep, an incoherent mumble falling from his lips, and Katniss knows she has no choice, she must go out to the Cornucopia and get what he needs.

He jerks again, and she rubs her hand over his cheek before tentatively lowering herself to kiss his clammy forehead.

Peeta seems to relax a bit at the contact, and she almost thinks she sees him smile faintly in his sleep.

Katniss gets up, wrapping his jacket around him to stave off any cold, and looks back at him from the mouth of the cave.

She decides she'll sing 'happy birthday' for him if she comes back alive.

iv.

Katniss isn't with Peeta for his eighteenth birthday. She is in District 13, a district she, and everyone she knew, thought had been annihilated decades before, crushed by the unrelenting tyranny of the Capitol.

Peeta is missing, kidnapped by the Capitol, probably scared, injured, and alone, if he isn't already dead.

Katniss lays awake on Peeta's eighteenth birthday, alone in her family's assigned compartment. Her mother and Prim are in the hospital, assisting in the birth of a refugee woman from 12's baby. A true miracle baby, she supposes. A baby who survived the bombing of 12, a baby being born in a district that isn't even supposed to exist.

She thinks of Peeta. She hopes he's alright. At least, as alright as he can be in the Capitol.

She thinks of the days they spent together before the Quell, after their evaluations. Eating, laughing and joking on the roof, as if they were normal teenagers. As if they hadn't been sentenced to death a second time.

She thinks of his arms, so strong and muscled, arms that could lift and throw hundred pound objects without any effort but also could handle delicate pastries and cakes with care, and the way the held her while they slept. His hands, so much larger than hers, nicked with burn marks and scars, that could create such beautiful things, hands that she knew were capable of killing.

She thinks of his mouth. How he could spin words so eloquently, something she knows she'll never be able to do. How he could force a smile out of her by telling a bad joke, despite whatever terrible situation they were in. How he kissed her with his mouth, bringing feelings she never knew she was capable of having to a head.

Katniss thinks about his kisses often.

How their first kisses, the kisses for show, always felt like an apology to her, apologizing for putting her in the situation they were in, despite the fact she knew that their fake romance was a big reason as to why she was still alive.

She thinks about the kiss on the beach during the Quell, replaying it over and over in her mind. She wanted that kiss, wanted it more than anything, and wanted it to continue forever. Katniss feels warm when she thinks of that kiss, the hunger she felt roaring as it'd never been sated.

Katniss imagines Peeta with her, in 13, rather than in the Capitol. She imagines herself kissing him like she did on the beach, his hands cupping her face and her hands tangled in his hair, and she feels it warm and low in her belly. Feels the hunger.

She lets her hand drift down beneath her underwear as she thinks of him on top of her, his strong, solid body pinning her down, but not in an uncomfortable way.

She never feels uncomfortable when she thinks of him like this.

She rubs herself to completion, her mind conjuring up images of her and Peeta kissing and touching, together, warm, happy, sated, and safe.

When Katniss is done, she cleans herself up before collapsing back into her hard District 13 issued pillow.

She sleeps better than she has in months.

v.

Peeta Mellark is fast asleep in their bed the morning of his twenty first birthday. He's naked, and Katniss can see his broad back rising and falling steadily with his breathing from her vantage point at their bedroom door.

His back is muscled, strong from the hours spent rebuilding the district with the others in town. She can see his scars, fusing together his patchwork of skin. Scars that she also bears, scars that show how much they've overcome.

The bed dips as she climbs back in it, and Peeta makes a noise in his throat, smacking his lips together before he falls silent again. She cuddles up to him, brushing an unruly lock of curly blond hair out of his eyes before wrapping her arm around his waist, and begins to hum softly.

Her humming stirs him awake, and he moans a little bit, cracking one blue eye open moments later to look down at her, before wrapping his arm around her waist and pulling her flush against him.

"Mmm. Good morning," he says, pressing a kiss against her temple.

Katniss smiles to herself before looking up at him, struck by how his eyes seem to get bluer and bluer every day, before kissing him softly.

Peeta kisses her back with equal gentleness. There's no pushing, no insistence and their lips move in tandem together, dancing the same dance they have since they were sixteen.

Katniss breaks their kiss, before pressing a kiss against his bare chest. They lay together, their silence only broken by the soft chirping of the birds and rustling of the leaves outside their window, before she begins to sing 'happy birthday'.

Peeta squeezes her waist as she sings.