wesleynotponcy | Room 504, Thursday Evening

"...you don't have to if you don't want to. I just thought you did."

And now she was overthinking it and oh, god, she was so bad at this, and she liked his hands there but what if he was just sitting there thinking about how he could probably fit them both in one hand (if that were anatomically possible) or what if he was thinking about books or trees or whether he'd left something at the library or nothing related to her.

She had to stop thinking. She had to.

Wesley could see the anxiety etched on her face and had to do something, so he did what felt most natural. Slowly, watching her eyes the whole time, he gently cupped his hands around her breasts, feeling them, and leaned in for a kiss.

He couldn't believe he was doing this, he couldn't believe he was doing this, he couldn't believe he was doing this...

Kissing. Kissing, she could do, even when she felt short of breath all of a sudden because even if she'd put his hands there, it was new and it was exciting and there was some sort of tightening in her abdomen, and she really felt like her skin might just catch on fire at any moment.

Not, probably, what they were thinking with the whole Girl on Fire campaign. It had never felt more fitting, though.

As she kissed him, she could feel her body responding in ways she'd never really noticed before -- her skin was puckering under where he was feeling, and now everything was more sensitive, and her fingers were just going to skim up under his shirt, now, so that both could lightly scratch his chest. She didn't mean to hurt him, by any means, but it felt like a natural sort of...reciprocation?

Wesley twitched slightly at that... not-entirely-unwelcome sensation. He wasn't certain why it even surprised him that Katniss, who could do so much with her hands with such precision, could work his body as effortlessly as she worked a bow, but it did and he was amazed.

Experimentally, he ran a thumb over one of her nipples in a repeating motion, keeping his eyes on her face to gauge her reaction.

That just made the tingling below her theoretical belt intensify. It was wonderful, right there where his thumb was, too, but Katniss was a little surprised at the reactions she could feel elsewhere on her body as well. She arched her back without thinking about it -- thinking had, for the moment, sort of flown out the window -- in an effort to press up against his touch.

She closed her eyes, too, because it was just too much for her, at the moment, to see as well. Sensory overload, she'd heard it called. And her own fingers tightened against his chest, one thumb pressing to where she knew she'd find his heartbeat.

In that case, she would find it quicken under her fingers, as this evening's pattern of Wesley surprising himself with his own nerve continued.

Breaking the kiss for a moment and taking advantage of Katniss' arched back, Wesley leaned in to dot a straight line of kisses all the way down her neck, one directly below another. When the fabric of her shirt got in the way, he took a quick breath to psych himself up and then continued as if it wasn't there, gently kissing his way down. He wasn't going as far down as, say, where his hands had been just a moment ago, but he certainly covered more of her than his lips had previously touched.

She was -- warm, he realized, even through her shirt. Somehow he hadn't known what to expect, but he definitely liked that. Warmth was life and fire and all the things that Katniss had in spades -- and it was new, if not entirely unexpected, that she possessed those traits even in a physical capacity.

Edited 2011-10-28 22:18 (UTC)

Katniss' hands relaxed against his chest, skimming down his sides over his skin, and just focused on feeling. She was tingly and warm and his skin felt heated under her fingers.

She was not one for manners, ever Katniss got by on demands and actions, not requests. But not right now.

"Please," she breathed. She wasn't sure what she was pleading for, except for him to keep going. The feeling of his lips against her skin was electric, and it was sweeter than anything she'd ever had or wanted before.

Under normal circumstances, Wesley wouldn't know what to do with a directive like that, and would have needed clarification. But this was not a normal circumstance and he wasn't thinking in terms of clarifying and explaining and rationalizing. He wasn't even thinking of his books.

What he was doing was feeling, feeling Katniss' every twitch and breath and heartbeat, and that alone was enough to communicate her pleasure. That alone dictated that he should continue what he was doing, and it was so refreshing to be so sure of something without bothering with tedious words and analysis. He knew that she loved this with as much certainty as he knew anything.

So he continued lavishing her with kisses until he couldn't reach anymore, then changed his position so that he could continue. As comfortable as it had been to have her weight on him, he wriggled out from beneath her and let her lay flat so that he could reach all of her, kissing his way down her torso until he reached the hem of her shirt. Just as he slipped his thumbs underneath the light fabric, he glanced back up to gauge her response.

She watched him carefully, catching her breath even as she felt she might lift off the bed in sheer anticipation.

"Yes," she decided softly, though she lifted her brows at him as she reached to tug on his shirt, too. If he was going to be touching her bare skin, she wanted access to his, too. "Yes, please."

Well, that was only fair.

Her hands were already there, insistent and demanding, so he dropped her shirt for a moment and simply stretched up his arms so that she could remove his for him. The motion itself felt a bit silly, but it hardly mattered -- the sooner she got his shirt off, the sooner he could get to work removing hers, which was... not an unwelcome concept in the slightest.

Katniss pushed his shirt up and off and now her hands were sliding along his chest, and he was warm and there and she wanted to feel him against her.

She smiled, because even if she was used to half-naked boys, this was her half-naked boy. And now with him like that, it really did seem only fair to shyly reach to press a trail of soft kisses along his shoulder.

She wanted to let him take her shirt off, if he wanted to. Even if she wanted to feel her skin against his now.

Right, this moment felt oddly weighted and monumental. Which made sense, because he had never seen a topless girl ever, unless you counted films about prehistoric societies, and he certainly hadn't found those women attractive. But now... well. One might even say he found her a bit too attractive for comfort right now.

He was very, very gentle removing her shirt, fingers feather-light as he lifted it up and pulled it over her head. And then... oh. Oh. There were breasts right there and they were hers (and she was his!) and they were perfect and he couldn't stop himself reaching out his hand to rub a thumb over one nipple, fascinated.

She wanted to curl up away and hide. She was too exposed, there was all of him looking at all of her and the way he was looking at her kept her still, warming her from the inside.

She had never felt so wanted before.

When he touched her, Katniss arched up into his hand, craving more. She wanted to touch him and be held and forget where he started and she ended.

She settled for sliding her hands down his chest, eyes tracking them as she did so. There was so much of him to take in.

It might've been easy to forget, looking at all Katniss and all her open, unmarked skin, that every square inch of her had at one point been home to scars and burns and stings. It might've been easy to forget, if Wesley hadn't known her the way he did, hadn't watched every second of what she'd gone through with bated breath and very nearly felt the injuries as she sustained them. But he knew what had happened to her, and even if he'd never seen her like this before, he knew all too well where it was that she'd been hurt, both the places where the injuries remained and the places where they didn't.

So every spot of her that had been hurt, visible or not, Wesley resolved to mark with a tender kiss. The near-faded marks from the burns on her shoulders. The tiny scar on her stomach from being shot. The now-invisible tracker jacker stings that he still knew exactly where to find. The mark Johanna had left on her forearm. The long-healed slash above her eyebrow. Each one earned a kiss, soft and adoring as Wesley set out to give her body these new memories, to shower her with the affection she'd been deprived of for so long. Her body -- her beautiful body, always beautiful -- had known pain for so long, and even if he couldn't take that away, he could at least try to write over the darker memories with this.

It didn't take Katniss long to figure out the trajectory of his kisses. Her mind immediately wondered at his memory, when he sought out the places that no longer had scars, that the Capitol had erased from her skin. In a way, she wished they'd left her scars -- her history, etched into her skin.

There were still a few, and he found all the notable ones, but the fact that he remembered where the tracker jackers had nearly made her lose her mind. He found where her skin had nearly melted away from her, when they'd lost Mags. Clove's knife's touch to her lips, long-erased, received a kiss.

"They took away my scars and you found them anyway," Katniss said softly, because it made her forget how to breathe, a little, for some reason. "They, um -- they wanted to augment me, too. Haymitch wouldn't let them."

In the middle of kissing his way from the scar Clove had left on her lips to the shell of her left ear where her own bomb had left her deaf, Wesley heard that and changed directions. Now his lips were traveling down her torso, and despite blushing fiercely at the very idea of it, he proceeded to adorn the circumference of first one breast and then the other with a thousand tiny kisses. He reached one hand up (shaking at first, then still) to hold her breast in place as he kissed it, feeling and tasting and smelling what was pure Katniss.

On his way from the left breast to the right, he murmured against her skin, "You're beautiful. Just right."

And his nervousness made her feel a little more comfortable -- she wasn't alone in her confusion, and in just sort of...feeling her way through this. He was, too. Katniss had sort of abandoned thought as soon as his lips touched the curve of her breast -- she'd been told she was beautiful, sure, by adoring Capitol fans who didn't understand, and by Peeta for the cameras, and it had never meant anything. She believed it, right now, because that was the only word appropriate for how exquisite she felt right now.

She was shy, still, but ignoring that part of her because everything he was doing felt so wonderful. It wasn't just physical, either. Wesley's ministrations warmed Katniss through, and for the first time since Prim's death, she felt loved.

"I'm just me," was her soft reply to that, because she never knew what to say to people when they said that sort of thing. Least of all Wesley, who believed it. She could tell.

Well, Wesley didn't know about that -- he doubted he would ever be able to look at Katniss and think just her. She would always be a larger-than-life figure for him, the beautiful, strong girl who spearheaded a revolution and ignited firestorms wherever she went and somehow, for whatever reason, seemed to love him.

"I love you," he breathed, lips close enough to tickle her skin. In between kisses, he murmured it again and again, until finally he'd covered every square inch of each breast with a thousand tiny kisses and slid up the length of her body to kiss her lips.

It felt trite to say 'I love you too' but she did, with every inch of her. For months, Katniss had been consumed by how much she hurt. Tonight -- and often, lately, distractingly often -- she was filled with how much she loved him. And life, in general, and warmth (though not fire) and simple things like food and fresh air and smiling, but mostly, her thoughts tended to wander to Wesley when she was feeling warm and sweet.

And so, as he kissed her, she didn't say, 'I love you too,' because that wasn't it, she realized. This felt entirely different from her affection towards others, and her initial declaration had been fueled by a cold acceptance of her death, and the last remnants of fear about leaving him behind.

This was more.

She pulled back a bit, reaching a hand up to touch his cheek, and chose her words carefully. She could feel the heat of his skin against hers, and the shakiness of their mixed breaths, and the way her heart was thumping so near his. She memorized it all as she whispered, "Wesley, I think I'm in love with you."

There was a distinction, she thought.

Wesley's breath hitched for a moment, his body realizing before he did the significance of what she'd just said. Then the words made sense and he drew in a quick breath, surprised.

Except that... it wasn't that surprising, if he gave it a moment. He loved books and his mum and helping Angel and that one stake that he nearly always hit the target with. But none of those things were in league with Katniss and the way he felt about her. She was... different. Special. Vital.

"I -- I think so too," he breathed, eyes wide and earnest. "I mean. I think I am as well. In love with you."

Edited 2011-10-29 21:28 (UTC)

"I've never done this before," she murmured, blushing lightly but also beaming from ear to ear. "I mean, I wouldn't know what to look for, but I...have never felt like this before, about anyone."

She shrugged, trailing her hand down his chest hesitantly, curiously. "But I love you so much. And not just because you've been making me feel incredible lately."

"I have?" Wesley wondered, caught by surprise, then blushed faintly. "I mean. You... you have too. And I -- I'm not accustomed to feeling this way either. About anyone." His chest tingled where her hand lay, encouraging him to admit, "I -- that is -- you make me see things differently. Like Faith and the Capitol and vampires and demons aren't -- aren't everything, I suppose. That there's more."

He searched for words for a moment, words that would even come close to approximating what it was about her, then added earnestly, "And how I feel about you, it feels -- just as powerful as anything else. More, even."

"It's bigger than my grief," Katniss said softly, and as she said it aloud, she realized it was true. It wasn't that she'd forgotten how much everything ached, or the isolation she'd felt. It was that this was bigger and brighter than that. "Or my guilt. There's more to life than Prim's death, or Finnick never seeing his child, or reliving the Games in my head. You're helping me remember that."

At that, Wesley leaned in to softly kiss her cheek. Then, deciding he'd have countless more opportunities to resume his exploration of her body, he rolled over to lay on his back beside her.

"I'm glad," he said softly as he settled into a comfortable position. "And you -- it seems silly, compared to everything that's happened to you, but you truly helped me the other night, when I came back. It wasn't -- that is to say, it's not comparable, but -- I appreciated having you here. You helped. You're still helping."

"Good," she said firmly. "And it's -- everyone has their own pain. Mine's just...very loud and explosive. And I've never gone through...what you went through, so I'm glad I'm helping," she added, more quietly. "They never got me. Just Peeta and Johanna and Annie, and I was never good at helping them...after."

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