prompt by @triassictriserratops
Modern AU. Katniss and Peeta are best friends. She keeps sabotaging his relationships and he's finally fed up and confronts her about it.
[I'm sorry, I made it hilarious]
"Prim! Ew!" I pushed her away, falling backward on my bed as she shoved her phone in my face.
"Look!" Prim yanked on my hands, which I used to guard my eyeballs from her phone. "Oh my God. You are such a baby!"
"I don't want to see a cadaver! I don't care if it's for science! It's gross!" I shoved her away and rushed for the other side of the bed, throwing myself off it.
"Oh, I'm Katniss, and I love to be a scared little baby." She mocked in a breathy voice. "Look at me!"
"You're literally such a nerd you can't even bully me correctly."
"I-"
"What the fuck Katniss?!" We both jumped, hearing the front door slam open. Peeta's irritated face appeared at my doorway. "What in the-- oh hey, Prim."
Prim stared at him with her mouth open. Hanging upside down from my bed like that she looked twelve years old again. She glanced towards me with an alarmed expression.
"What right do you think you have to come in here like that?" Prim flipped herself right side up, pushing up against the mattress to sit up and glare at him.
"Uh-" Peeta looked sheepish. "Yeah, my bad."
"Your bad?!" Prim jumped off the bed. "'Your bad'? Fuck off!" She shoved him out of my doorway. "Apologize!"
"I-" Peeta's mouth opened and closed for a moment. He turned to glare at me, "No! Ask your sister what she did!"
"Um," I tried to speak up, but Prim waved me off.
"She did nothing; you're the one who came in here like a Neanderthal. Apologize!" She insisted.
"What? No!" Peeta tried to shoulder past her, but she pushed him back. He leaned against the hallway with a groan.
"Prim, you don't even live here. Go away." He said to the ceiling.
"How-"
"It's fine. Can I just talk to him? Alone?" I interrupted.
Prim looked into my eyes, picking up that I would be fine. She turned back to Peeta. "I'm going to be in the kitchen." She walked off.
"Bye!" Peeta said sarcastically. Under his breath, he added, "Little twerp."
"I heard that!" Prim shouted back. Peeta ducked out of the way of a flying object. "Ass!"
He stuck out his tongue at her. Turning my way, his face shifted from annoyed-at-Prim to actual anger.
"So..." I picked up a book from my nightstand. "You heard."
"I heard? Oh, man, did I!" He crossed his arms, looking incredulous. "Katniss, this got back to my mother. My dad called to ask me to go with them to church. Are you fucking kidding me?!"
I cringed, holding the book close to my chest. Peeta crossed the doorway into my room and shut the door behind him.
"I can't believe you would do this to me!" He was just getting started. I could tell he was highly wound up. An all-out rant was on the way. "Did I do something to you? Was I too nice to you? Did I feed you too much? Was it wrong of me to help you pass your driving test?"
I chewed on the inside of my cheek. Ouch.
"'Cause I've been wracking my brain for, like, I don't know, the past three hours trying to figure out why my best friend would throw me under the fucking bus!" The arms were above his head, oh man. "I'm in a sex cult?! Really? A doomsday sex cult. Do you have any idea how my parents are taking this? My mom was sobbing, sobbing. I don't think she's cried since 2008. My dad was saying that if I wanted to be gay, it was fine! But I didn't have to be in a cult to do it?! You told them I was in a gay doomsday sex cult?!"
"Yeah..."
"And, come to find out, it's not just my catholic parents who know this. My brothers," he started to list people off on his fingers. "My teammates, my coach, my girlfriend, Haymitch fucking Abernathy, for Christ's sake. I should thank my lucky stars that my Gammy doesn't know, she'd drop dead!"
If it was possible to cringe harder, I would do it right then.
"Are you going to say anything?" his voice got quiet. He stared at me with wide, unbelieving blue eyes. As if he were seeing me for the first time, and whatever he saw, it was freaking him out. "You just torpedoed my whole fucking life. Do you get that?!"
The book fell from my hands, and to make matters worse, I started to cry.
"I didn't mean for it to get this far!" I sobbed, my hands fluttering about my face. "I didn't even mean to say it! And then Glimmer told everyone. I just wanted her to go away!"
"What." He blinked at me. He looked crazed. "What. The. Fuck. WHAT THE FUCK! What are you saying?!"
"I was just trying to make it stop," I hiccuped, choking on some deeply intense sobs. "I never wanted to start a rumor. I swear it on my life, Peeta. I would never do that to you!"
Peeta stepped up to me the way someone would a live mine. He put his hands on my shoulders and stared into my eyes. He still looked insane. "I." he cleared his throat. "I could kill you, I fucking swear it, Katniss. What in the world possessed you to tell people I was in a gay doomsday cult?!"
I wailed guiltily as Peeta lightly shook me. "I don't know!"
"Tell me!"
"I don't know!" I insisted, covering my face. "All I did was tell Christie you were in a cult so she wouldn't go out with you! Johanna added the gay part! I guess someone else said it was a suicide one. I swear! I'll swear it on Prim's life. Oh! Let's do a blood pact!" Peeta stared at me as if I lost my mind while I grabbed him by the shoulders to shake him back. "Yes! It'll be like being kids again! I have a knife!"
"I'm not doing a blood pact with you!" He stepped away from me as if repelled by some deep, intense force. "You're fucking tainted! Traitor! Judas!"
"I'm not Judas!" I sobbed.
"Judas!" he pointed at me.
"Peeta, come on, please!" I wiped a hand against my eyes. "It was an accident, I swear."
"Why did you say I was in a cult at all??"
"It doesn't even matter!" I bellowed miserably, turning to collapse face down on my bed. "Christie went out with you anyway."
"What does Christie have to do with anything???"
"You're supposed to be my best friend," I accused, pointing a shaking finger blindly. "Not Christie's."
"What?" I felt the bed dip. "Katniss, why are you doing this?"
"I don't want you to have a girlfriend," I moaned. I was so pathetic. "You're going to fall in love and leave me forever."
"Why would me getting a girlfriend stop us from being friends?"
"Don't you get it?" I sat up to stare at him. "I don't want you to have a girlfriend."
"Why?" He said insistently.
"BECAUSE I WANT TO BE YOUR GIRLFRIEND!" I screamed. I put both my hands on his chest and shoved him. "Why are you so dense?"
Peeta stared at me, shocked. He was half on the floor and half on my bed. "You want to be my girlfriend?"
"Yes!" I pulled on my hair. "Isn't it obvious? I moved with you to butt fuck nowhere so we could go to college together."
"I thought you just wanted to save on rent!"
"WHY?!" I tossed a pillow at him. "I could have just stayed with my dad back home."
"Oh."
"Yeah," I looked away, smoothing a hand over my messed-up hair.
"Well, you could have just said that instead of ruining my entire life." Peeta climbed back onto the bed. "I thought you knew I liked you."
"WHAT"
"What do you mean what?!"
"Exactly what I mean!"
"Oh my god," Prim rolled her eyes from the kitchen and took a long drink from her glass. "They're idiots."