As promised, we don't clean up the flour. We finish making the pancakes together, with him standing behind me and his arms overlapping mine as our entwined hands slowly work as one. With me smiling involuntarily the whole time and him constantly stopping to plant kisses on my neck and cheek, it takes us an hour to make a single batch of pancakes, but the end result is worth it – they melt in our mouths as we stretch out perpendicular to one another on the flour-covered tile, my head resting on his firm stomach. Effie would have a stroke if she saw us eating like this – forgoing silverware, plates, shame. Who needs it? The meal is slow and warm and comfortable, and I smile when I see Peeta dip his folded pancake straight into the jar of syrup. That's us, right there. Breaking tradition.

The fun ends when Greasy Sae, who still insists on doing random check-ups on our living state and (occasionally) help out with the housework, walks in the door and immediately begins screaming profanity at the two of us for making such a huge mess. All Peeta and I can do is laugh as she thrusts her umbrella at us and sprays us with rainwater; we roll around on the ground, hysterical until his shoulder knocks over the jar of syrup, to which Sae yells, "WONDERFUL, NOW IT'S STICKY TOO!" before she slams the container of stew she brought onto the counter and stalks out the door, still muttering. She accents a few choice curses, though, and this only makes me laugh harder.

"You know," Peeta says after the slam of the door has stopped reverberating in our ears, "I don't think we've laughed this much in a while." He's still lying on the floor, maneuvering around the steadily growing puddle of amber. The realization that we will have to use the spile to get more syrup again is a sobering thought, but I push it away as quickly as it appeared.

I twist around on the floor and army crawl a foot forward to snatch an already-damp washcloth from the counter, then turn to throw it to Peeta. He catches it, having been watching me move with a light of amusement in his eyes.

"We won't be laughing when we're the only ones cleaning all of this up," I say, carving a wavy line into the layer of flour on the tile. I watch Peeta struggle to reach the spot on his back where the syrup has caught him, twisting both arms every which way. "Here, let me."

I move over to him again, where he hands me the towel. He sits facing away from, his good leg curled under his left outstretched prosthetic. I settle myself behind him, extending both of my legs to press against his, and I'm glad that his long flannel pants cover the cool metal and plastic of his prosthetic. I wipe the syrup off from the spot below his left shoulder blade that he couldn't reach, chuckling when I think about how ridiculous we must look; when it's clean, I press my forehead into the warm skin covering his spine and the smooth muscles surrounding it. His left hand runs up and down my leg, and I feel him tracing something into my skin with his finger – letters? Words, like I had done earlier?

"What are you writing?" I say into the warmth of his skin.

His fingers don't stop as he speaks. "I don't know, try and figure it out."

So I try hard to concentrate on the movements of his fingers – I know his handwriting. I've seen it in recipe books, on memos recording phone messages, transforming thoughts into impromptu love notes left around the house.

Jagged lines traveling vertically across the top of my thigh. A.

Straight, simple strokes edging closer to my knee. L.

Multiple lines crossing over my kneecap. W.

The back of his smooth thumbnail tracing intersecting outlines on my shin. A.

His finger bending and swirling onto my calf. Y.

The curve of his final letter tingling on the side of my ankle. S.

His hand goes back to ghosting up and down my leg as my heart rate increases and tears of pure emotion well in my eyes.

Stay with me?

Always.

I withdraw my leg from under his hand as I kneel to press my lips to the back of his neck, the sensitive part. Soon he has turned enough to bring my mouth to his, both of his hands tangling in my hair. When he starts to lean back, his palm moves to the small of my back, and he takes me down with him effortlessly. My knees press into the floor on either side of him, and on the left one, I can still feel the imprint of the W burning into my skin. We lie on the floor, our lips moving for the first time that morning not with the light-hearted joy we cultivated in our laughter, but with the deepened passion that comes with the gratitude for life that only he could unearth within me. I love you. So much.

When my hand, fixed to the floor to support majority of my weight above Peeta, slides an inch forward, it lands in something sticky. I break the kiss for a second to glance at my hand and, sure enough, the puddle of syrup has expanded. Maybe there is some logic to wiping things off the floor. Peeta turns his head to see what I'm looking at and we both burst out laughing when we come back to our senses. "Maybe Sae was right to yell at us," I suggest, reaching for the washcloth near his head. I roll off of him, maneuvering back into a sitting position next to him and crossing my legs as I scrub my hand clean. I glance up, catching his eye, and the way he looks at me is so full of love I feel the familiar prick of tears behind my pupils again. So, so much.

"I don't know about that," Peeta says thoughtfully. "We're already being punished with the rain – we're stuck inside all day. Isn't that enough?"

I raise my eyebrows. "When has the-" In my mind I complete the sentence: When has the world ever stopped at enough punishment with us? But I know that saying this out loud will only hurt him. His eyes are clear, free of the clouded doubts that I know will never really go away, but I don't want to risk anything. I never want to risk anything.

This all passes through my head in a split second, and my pause would go unnoticed by anyone who didn't know me inside out. Peeta knows me inside out, but I know I should cover it up anyway. So out loud, I say, "When has the rain kept going all day? It'll be over by afternoon. We'll just wait it out." His eyes, only because I know him inside out, tell me he senses something is off. Thankfully, though, the moment passes; he takes my hand to pull me to my feet and kiss my forehead. I press my sticky palm into his bare chest and smile at the barely-visible mark it leaves behind. He catches my hand, fans out my fingers, and presses his outstretched hand against it; the sticky residue glues us together, binding us in the midst of our floury warzone. I hold the moment close to my heart as thousands of unspoken words pass through our eyes. You and I, we are so much. So, so much.

I don't want to break the magic that has somehow graced us with such a good morning, but it's difficult to deny the fact that our house is a mess. While Peeta collects bowls and wooden spoons and glass jars in the kitchen, I maneuver the vacuum cleaner around the whole first floor of our house, trying to get all the flour off the hardwood. When the furniture is (decently) clean, I join Peeta in the kitchen again as we scrub the floor clean of syrup. It's a challenge, so he insists that we stop for frequent kissing breaks. It slows down the work, and by now I really just want a clean house, but I can't deny him – or myself – any of the smiles that spread across our faces when our lips part, infectious reminders of how great life can be.

When the house is clean, we spend the day holed up inside. He paints. He helps me paint a picture that isn't horrendous, standing behind me and maneuvering my hands and arms with his own again. I sit in the armchair with my legs draped over the arm and he sketches me. I try my hand at sketching him sitting him at the kitchen table. It does not work. I scrap it and make him stick figure drawings until he sees how hard I'm trying not to laugh, rises from his chair to see my progress, and collapses laughing, bringing me down with him in a kiss.

Only after we see more flour smeared from Peeta's bare back and hair onto our clean floor does he raise his eyebrows suggestively. "I know how we can get clean," he says; the playful, joking seduction in his voice makes me think of Finnick, but on happy terms. I can't help but smile.

We intertwine our hands, forget to put on shoes, and run outside into what has become a full-blown storm. Thunder claps above us, rain runs down our faces and hair and backs, and when the gray of the sky lights up, it is absolutely electrifying.

For a split second, I remember the lighting tree in the Quarter Quell. I remember the worry laced through Peeta's reluctance to be separated from me, the quick kiss that we shared to reassure ourselves of our safety. How far away can you possibly get from the truth? That was the last time we had kissed before he was hijacked, before I lost him. Before he came back to me. Before we made a new life amidst the grief and the ghosts, a life comprised of moments. This. Moment. Is. Perfect. And that's where we are right now, our fingers clasped tight, running around our front lawn, crossing into all the lawns of the Victor's Village, finally letting the rain wash away the ashes of our war. He'll never really be the same again. My feet are freezing, and it doesn't matter. But maybe that's okay. Peeta is laughing, I am laughing, and as I slip in a patch of mud and land on my back, my hand pulls his down, and he collapses next to me; the hand not holding mine moves to my cheek, and he turns my laughing face towards his. Maybe we'll get through this, you and I. Still not letting go of my hand, he pulls me by my waist into the curve of his body, where I fit perfectly – always have, always will. Maybe, one day, we'll be okay. As he presses his lips to mine, his hand floating back to my soaking hair, my laugh continues underneath the kiss, and I feel home.

Maybe, just maybe, that day will be today.