bigapplesauce | Muffins and Interrogation [CLOSED]

… Who the hell is buzzing her apartment?

Sunshine straightens up from where she'd been kneeling next to her couch, the better to clean beneath it. She's midway through a deep clean of her entire apartment, in fact, from the floor right down to the stains in her teapot (which has, over the last twenty-four hours, been put to far more frequent use than normal). And she's definitely not expecting company.

Maybe someone's buzzed her unit by accident. That's a thing that happens, right? She gets up and pads over to the intercom, absently swiping aside a few strands of hair that have escaped the messy bun that's barely containing the rest of it, and then presses the button. "… Hello?"

"Sunshine? It's Peeta." She sounds confused, so he adds, "You invited me over to bake?"

… Oh. Oh, shit, she did, and she completely forgot. Considering the circumstances, it's sort of understandable, but she's been trying so hard not to consider the circumstances.

"Right! Sorry. Yes. Hang on, I'll buzz you in." Sunshine holds down the buzzer for a few seconds, then spins around with a muttered, "Shit."

Well, okay. This is not a disaster. The apartment's in decent shape thanks to the work she's already done, and she can change into something less dust-smudged in the time it'll take Peeta to get up to her unit. She hustles to the bedroom portion of her apartment to do just that, pulling her hair out of its bun as she goes so she can redo it into something a bit less desperate looking.

It's a little too warm for jeans, but it can't be helped; none of her shorts are quite long enough to cover a tragically noticeable hickey on her thigh, and she's not slumming it in sweatpants when she has company. She compensates with a sleeveless top (at least there's no incriminating evidence of her previous afternoon's activities on her arms), then pulls her hair back up into a loose ponytail and ties a scarf over it - standard baking procedure.

She gives the kitchen a sweeping glance as she walks back over to the door - she never allows it to get that messy by sheer force of habit, so it's in good shape - then waits for Peeta's knock.

Peeta frowns slightly as Sunshine's voice comes across the intercom. She seems busy, and he's about to offer to come back another time when she buzzes him in. He decides while in the elevator that if she seems preoccupied, he'll suggest that they can meet up on another day. As much as he was looking forward to seeing her - they haven't seen much of each other since she started working at the bakery - he doesn't want to intrude if she has other things going on; this is just for fun.

He arrives on her floor and steps into the hall, taking a moment to read the signs to figure out which way to go. Once he reaches her apartment, he raps on the door.

By the time Peeta knocks, Sunshine has managed to settle herself a little. The prospect of baking helps - she remembers, now, that she'd invited him for a sort of muffin workshop. Which is perfect, actually. She's great with muffins, but they aren't something that's evolved into a borderline brand for her; she doesn't give them special names or feel overly attached to her recipes. Now that she doesn't spend anywhere near as much time in the base as she used to (which had never been all that much time to begin with - she doesn't like being underground), she might as well pass on a few trade secrets to someone who can put them to good use down there.

"Hey," she says, stepping back to let him in. "Come on in. Sorry, I was distracted - I've been cleaning." Yes. That is all she has to be preoccupied about: tidying.

"Hi." Peeta steps inside and throws a curious glance around the apartment. It isn't a big space, but it feels enormous compared to his small quarters in the base. It suits Sunshine, too; the sunlight streaming through the windows makes what is essentially one room feel larger.

The space does bear the marks of a thorough cleaning, and Peeta pauses just inside the door. "Do you still want to do this today?" he asks, hand on the strap on his bag, hesitating to put it down just yet. "We can always reschedule."

"Yeah," she insists, flapping a hand. "The rest of the apartment could use a break from cleaning. Hell, I could use a break from cleaning." Now that she has another means of distraction, she doesn't mind leaving some of the work for later. ~~Might as well stretch it out for as long as she can.~~

Smile widening, she adds, "And I take your education seriously."

Peeta returns the smile and sets his bag to the side of the door. "Are my muffins that bad?" he jokingly asks.

"There's always room for improvement." Sunshine steers him into the kitchen, then asks, "Do you want anything to drink before we start making a mess? Water? Tea? Or there's juice and milk in the fridge."

"Water would be great, actually," Peeta replies, suddenly realizing how thirsty he is. He finished the last of his water around noon, and walking around the park in the sun has left him pretty parched.

"Nice apartment," he says. The space feels warm and inviting, and there's a faint but lingering smell of baking in the air.

"Thanks," Sunshine says as she pours him a glass and passes it over. "I told them I couldn't handle a garden-level unit because of the lack of sunlight, and I think they overcompensated. Not that I'm complaining." She's had the blinds pulled up all the way since dawn, and the sunlight has been a steady comfort.

She starts pulling out supplies for a muffin-making extravaganza as she continues. "It's not a bad building, all things considered. If you ever feel like moving out of the bat cave…" she raises her head above the temporary shield of a cupboard door and arches an eyebrow at him. Honestly, she has no idea why anyone passably human enough to get around above ground would choose to live down there.

Peeta smiles at Sunshine's name for the base. "Maybe one day," he says noncommittally. Truth is, the base has begun to feel like home, and that alone means he isn't exactly itching to leave it. In the future, though, who knows?

As he sips his water, he surveys the supplies Sunshine is compiling. "What are the plans for this baking party?"

Fortunately, Sunshine prepped for this before she got distracted. There's no shortage of baking supplies, so they'll be able to experiment with flavor combinations. And she's not worried about overproduction; there are enough people living at the base that whatever they make should get snapped up pretty quickly (though they will have to make sure they don't make more than can be comfortably carried back - Sunshine can help with that, though).

"Muffin workshop," she says decisively, arranging their supplies on the counter and stacking a few muffin tins on the stove. "By the time you leave, you'll be able to make spartan muffins out of just about anything. That's the idea, anyway." She surveys the little set-up with a critical eye and absently adjusts her headscarf, unaware that there's a pretty incriminating bruise behind her ear.

Muffins aren't something Peeta made much of before, and they seem to be a standard thing here, so he's pleased with Sunshine's plans. He's pretty quickly distracted from thoughts of baking by the sight of Sunshine's bruise though.

"What happened there?" he asks, pointing toward the mark, brows furrowed slightly.

"Huh?" Sunshine glances over at Peeta, then lifts her hand toward where he's pointing, as if expecting to find a substantial amount of hair out of place (not impossible, given how hastily she'd put it up). But nothing feels amiss.

… Wait.

Sunshine lets out a low groan under her breath and strides into the bathroom so she can look at herself in the mirror. And there it is: a sizable hickey right behind her ear. As she runs her finger over the mark, she experiences a brief, dolby sensurroundsound flashback of how it got there, but she quickly banishes the memory.

Well… damn. There's really no way for her to hide it with her hair up - and not much point in hiding it now that Peeta's seen it. She walks back out into the kitchen with a resigned look on her face. "It's fine," she says flatly. "It's, uh… yeah."

Edited 2014-07-23 01:53 (UTC)

It takes Peeta a few seconds to put two and two together, but when he does, he comes up with - "Spike."

He says the name with a mixture of amusement and questioning concern, because Sunshine's reaction to discovery the bruise is less than pleased. From her reaction and the bruise, he can make a good enough guess as to what happened between the two, and finds his curiosity about them once again piqued.

"We do need to finish that conversation we started," he points out, smirking faintly.

Sunshine feels a brief surge of panic - how in the hell did he know?! - before remembering that she and Spike actually ran into him mid-trek through the park. So he'd seen them holding hands, and… oh, gods. Now she doesn't even have plausible deniability. So much for heading him off with an: oh, well, it was just a magic thing, we're not involved. (And they're not involved. One afternoon of - of questionable life choices does not constitute involvement.)

Shit. She presses her lips together and busies herself with peeling apart muffin wrappers and putting them in the tins. Is she blushing? She's pretty sure she's blushing. Gods and frigging angels.

"Do we?" she asks, giving him a sidelong glance. She's not sure if she should go for warning or pleading, and consequently achieves neither.

He can tell that she doesn't really want to talk about it now - not that she wanted to in the park, either - but the fact that she doesn't shut him down entirely is encouraging. Still smiling, Peeta leans against the bar and gives her a gently searching look.

"When did you meet Spike?" he asks, genuinely curious. From what he witnessed of the two of them together, there is clearly something between them, but Sunshine never mentioned Spike before.

Look at Peeta, getting all male. Granted, it's milder than what she'd expect from, say, Pat, Jesse or Theo - and having it come from someone so much younger than her is unexpected enough that it takes her a minute to recognize it for what it is. He's trying to look out for her - probably not on behalf of absent boyfriends, but still.

She can't decide if that should make her more inclined to answer him honestly, or less. It's not his carthaginian job to monitor her relationships for shenanigans (not least of all because she doesn't need Peeta to tell her she was being impulsive and dumb yesterday; she's figured that much out on her own). But she knows Peeta well enough to know that wherever he's coming from, here, it's genuine and well-intentioned.

And hell, it's not like he's prying. Not yet, anyway.

Sunshine sighs and shifts the completed tin aside so she can start placing wrappers into a second one. "Right after I arrived. He was the first rifty I met." 'Met' feels like an awfully dry word for an experience that included a decent amount of panic, a couple deeply unhappy wards, and nigh-incessant sniping, but she doesn't really want to go into detail, here. "He brought me to the base so I could get processed."

Peeta would be surprised to find that Sunshine thinks he's acting overly protective. Really he's just curious, even more so since she doesn't seem particularly pleased about her last encounter with Spike, even though it's clear she feels something for him. And, yes, that makes him worried, just a little.

He's initially surprised by her explanation of how she met Spike, but then realizes that it all makes sense. Rifties tend to form a special type of bond with the person who first finds them - whether the meeting goes well or not. All he has to do is think about when Daine found him, and the connection between Sunshine and Spike becomes clearer. Still, the way the two first met doesn't explain why she's less than happy about what Peeta suspects was their last meeting, so he does pry a little.

"And how long have the two of you been together?" he asks, softening the bluntness of the question with a teasing smile.

Sunshine lets out a quiet huff. Okay, so she can't pretend that nothing happened aside from your garden variety magic handling, but that doesn't mean she can sell them as a couple (especially without Spike here to do the heavy lifting). She doesn't want to sell them as a couple; it's not as if there's any compelling reason to peddle that particular lie anymore, since she isn't actively helping Spike avoid incarceration or an unpleasant demise. So, she and Spike are bound to some degree. That's... unavoidable. But that's all. Sleeping together doesn't make them an item. She frowns down at the muffin tins, avoiding Peeta's eyes.

"We're not," she replies just as bluntly, making no attempt to soften it. "I was just... helping him out of a tight spot yesterday." She could call it returning a favor if she wasn't wholly opposed to discussing what Spike did to deserve it. As far as conversational topics go, the Giggler is absolutely off the table. Still, look at all that refreshing honesty.

Edited (okay I promise I'm done now) 2014-07-26 14:48 (UTC)

In Sunshine's explanation, Peeta hears shades of Katniss kissing him for the cameras. The memory - of her, of that, of never really being sure about how she felt - rises in him. The ache is still there, too, though fainter than before, which is a worry he's choosing to ignore for the time being.

He has no idea that Sunshine was helping Spike via magic, so his eyebrows raise slightly as he ponders her answer. "You got that" - he points at her bruise again - "helping him out of a tight spot?" Even in all their attempts to fool Panem, he and Katniss never went that far. What kind of tight spot was Spike in?

Oh, gods and frigging angels. "It was a magic-handling thing," she says impatiently, though she's not quite fed up enough to clarify that it was a vampire thing, as well. "I - I was saving his life. In the park," she clarifies, because she doesn't need Peeta to think she either fell for the stupidest line in the book or genuinely had to screw Spike to save his life, like this is a ridiculous episode of some sci-fi show.

Finished with the tins, she sets aside the remaining paper cups and rubs the back of her neck. Then she turns and levels Peeta with an embarrassed glare, wondering if she's going to have to really spell it out for him that life-and-death situations can get a bit, well, fraught, and that sometimes they lead to… other peak experiences. Gods. Of all the life lessons she has no business teaching this kid.

Edited 2014-07-27 23:40 (UTC)

If Sunshine only knew.

Peeta can't help it. He laughs, a snort of incredulous amusement. The magic part might be different, but the rest of the situation reminds him so much of him and Katniss that it just feels a bit ridiculous. He takes in the embarrassment in Sunshine's glare - which also reminds him of Katniss - and smiles.

"I never told you about my world, did I?"

"Oh, shut up," she says in response to his damn laughter. She's not sure if she should be grateful that he apparently gets it or peeved that he also finds it hilarious, and her impulse to defend herself is tempered by a competing desire to talk about literally anything else.

So when Peeta gives her an opening, even a colossal non-sequitur of an opening, she takes it. "No," she says, brow furrowed.

"My country is split into twelve districts and the Capitol. A long time ago, the districts rebelled against the Capitol. They lost. Every year since, one boy and one girl between the ages of 11 and 18 are chosen from each district. They are put in a specially made arena - which can be anything from a desert to a jungle - and are forced to fight to the death. They call it the Hunger Games."

That's a simplified version of what life in Panem is like, but it's enough to provide the basis for what Peeta actually wants to get to.

"Everyone is forced to watch the Games. People in the Capitol view them as entertainment. And if they like one of the competitors, they might send things to them in the arena, like food or weapons or medicine." He's avoided Sunshine's eyes as he's talked, staring blindly out the window instead, but now he meets her gaze. "You want to get them on your side."

He pauses again and takes a deep breath, not looking away from Sunshine.

"I was picked for the Games, along with a girl my age, Katniss. There is a lot of pageantry in the few days before the Games actually start, a chance for the people to get to know the kids, and a chance for the kids to impress possible patrons. I used it to tell everyone I was in love with Katniss. It was true, but it also set us up as star-crossed lovers. That, and everything else I did in the Games, was to protect Katniss. She returned the favor when an announcement was made that two victors would be allowed if they came from the same district. She found me, and played along with being in love. It helped us win, especially when they changed the rules back to allowing only one victor."

His gaze grew distant as he talked, but now he blinks himself back into the present. "We'd defied the Capitol, though, so we were conveniently chosen for the next Games. I was there when the Rift pulled me out." He gives Sunshine a small, crooked smile. "Anyway, my point is I know something about fake relationships and saving someone's life."

Whatever Sunshine was expecting, it wasn't that, and she stands, stiff with growing horror, as Peeta tells his story. At first, she has no idea where he's going with it, or if this is just some attempt to even the scales now that he knows more about her personal life than she wanted him to. But what's he spilling this disproportionate tragedy for?

Then, 'it was true,' sends a jolt through her, sympathy mingling with anxiety, and she thinks poor kid even as she remembers a disappointed sigh ghosting over her skin and a brief nuzzle against her bare shoulder. She gets it.

No. He gets it.

Sunshine remains silent for a few moments after he stops and offers her a smile - look at him, still smiling after all that - and then she says, stupidly, "… Damn." What else is there to say? It's not enough, though, and she gives her head a little shake to clear it. "Um. Gods, that's… appalling." Bad things happen to kids back home, too, but it's not institutionalized badness. It's not like the Hunger Games. It's just… unfortunate accidents, overdoses, moments of stupidity, maybe a vampire with certain tastes, not a slaughter on the television. "I'm sorry." The apology is more for what he went through than her own understandable presumption that Peeta wouldn't have had experience with faking a relationship to save someone's life, but it could cover both.

She also can't help thinking that it's not that straightforward. Yesterday afternoon might not have been smart, or her proudest hour(s), but… it wasn't a lie, either, or a - a show.

Peeta nods in acknowledgment of Sunshine's apology, and walks around the bar to finally join her in the kitchen.

"Katniss and me - it was complicated." He is excellent at understatements. "We had started to build something real, though, whether because we kept having to pretend or because of what we went through together."

He stops at the sink to give his hands a good wash. "She wasn't indifferent to me, anyway," he says, that half sad, half self-deprecating smile back on his face.

Hands clean and dry, he turns to survey the spread Sunshine has collected. He knows about distracting yourself, too (Sunshine's earlier loss to cleaning stands explained), and figures they might both like the distraction of baking right about now. "So, muffins. What wisdom do you have for me?"

Sunshine absently runs her fingers over her necklace as Peeta comes into the kitchen, and nods her understanding when he speaks. Yeah, she gets that, too. Maybe that kind of thing is inevitable, when you throw two sexually compatible people into an intense situation and make them claw their way back out of it together. Hell, maybe it would have happened even without the earlier fake-outs. Though she can't help wondering just how much of it all was a front and how much… wasn't. Or wasn't necessarily. And she can't help remembering his question: not so bad, was it?

Oh, gods.

Focus on Peeta, Sunshine. It's not hard when he shoots her such a thoroughly depressing smile, and she can't resist pulling him into a brief half-hug, as if he was one of her brothers, before giving her own hands a good scrub. And when he turns the conversation back to muffins, she doesn't object.

"More than one lesson's worth," she replies with a wry smile. "But you already know the basics, so I figured we'd focus on flavor combinations."

Peeta's a little surprised by the hug, but returns it without hesitation. As he looks over the ingredients Sunshine has laid out, a thought occurs to him.

"Have you come across any flavors here that you didn't have at home?" It's something he's wondered about before, but he didn't think his world was the right match to make comparisons. With the Capitol in charge, there could have been flavors in his world that were just never made available to him. Thinking of how different Sunshine's world is, he adds, "Or are there any flavors you had at home that aren't here?"

Sunshine shakes her head. When she was searching for herbs for teleportation purposes, she got a pretty good idea of what this universe has to offer, and there wasn't anything wholly unfamiliar to her. "There are some different names that I've noticed, but that's about it. I'm not even sure if it's a different-universe thing or just a different-region thing, honestly."

She knows enough about how limited his resources were in his hometown to be a little hesitant in turning the question around on him, but he's the one who brought it up. "What about you?"

"Well, there's nothing missing that I can tell," he replies. It would be difficult for there to be, given what he had to work with in his world compared to the large variety available here. "I have found some things that I didn't know about before, but I don't know if that's because they didn't exist in my world, or if they just weren't made available to my district."

In theory, he should be able to reproduce anything he made in Panem here. In practice, however, he found that not to be true. Even with the abundance of resources he now has, he wasn't able to exactly replicate a couple of his favorite dishes from home when he tried. Somehow, that failure made his loss, his displacement more tangible than anything else that had happened.

Muffins and Interrogation [CLOSED]

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