Notes: Some background on Peeta's, uh, visual aid. Goes with "The Pan-American High School Scholarship Pageant Competition" chapter 15.

What Peeta didn't tell Katniss was that he was jerking off to a picture, and that it was a picture of her.

Because then that would have become his most embarrassing memory.

He hadn't gone in search of a photo of her or anything. He'd just been walking to class one day in late October when the guy in front of him had dropped a binder. The contents—papers, negatives in plastic sleeves, photos—flew everywhere, the guy cursed, and Peeta automatically stopped to help. When the bell rang and the hall emptied out, they were both still there, him collecting a few last escaped photos as the guy stuffed the rest back into binder pockets.

One of the last photos he'd picked up was—her. Katniss.

He doesn't remember making a conscious choice to take the picture. When he handed the last photos back, he just—didn't give that one back, too.

"Thanks, man," the guy had said. "I appreciate it. I'm Gale."

"Peeta," he'd said in return. "Nice to meet you."

When he got home that night, he'd pulled the picture out from the inside of his chemistry test book, where he'd stashed it for safe-keeping, and drank it in. It was bent a little around the edges from the way he'd shoved it so hastily into his pocket in the hallway, but the rest was undamaged.

It was a close-up of Katniss' face, a grassy field stretched out behind her. Her eyes were narrowed, but playfully, looking at the camera with one hand shading them from the sun and keeping the hair off her forehead. Her skin glowed, the gray of her eyes vibrant and warm. The photo cut off the very top of her head and ended just below the fragile jut of her collarbones, which were crossed by thick black tank top straps.

He'd tried to draw her a half-dozen times, and while the sketches of her as he remembers her at lunch, or in class, turn out okay, he's never felt like they were really her. And every time he's tried to draw her—tried to imagine her—relaxed or happy, it's always felt wrong. Now, seeing this picture, he understands why. The picture was like a secret window into a place he didn't—shouldn't—get to see. It was . . . private.

A couple of days later, at school, Gale had tracked him down.

"Give me the picture," he said.

He was a good four or five inches taller than Peeta, and he was using every bit of it, glower on his face.

"What are you talking about?" Peeta asked, heart hammering.

"I'm missing one of the pictures I dropped. Of Katniss. I've seen you looking at her. And I want picture back."

"Maybe it slid under a locker," Peeta suggested.

Gale glowered harder, then just turned around and left, muttering, "Pervert," as he went.

"You're welcome," Peeta called to his back, like an idiot.

Part of him feels bad for lying, not to mention stealing, and like the pervert Gale called him for lying about stealing a picture of a girl, especially since it was a picture of the girl he liked. But seeing that picture was the first time he could really image what it might be like to kiss her. So he didn't feel nearly as bad as he knew he should.

Gale got to see her like that all the time. All Peeta had was that picture.