hunger games fic: will you tell me again how we're gonna be just friends
will you tell me again how we're gonna be just friends. hunger games. r. gale/katniss. gale/johanna. gale says goodbye to katniss, and then hello again. he’s not good about following rules, especially when it comes to her.
"We could have had such a damned good time together."
"Yes, isn't it pretty to think so?"
- the sun also rises
But burned into my brain all these stolen images
Stolen images, baby stolen images
Can you picture it? Babe, that life we could've lived
- lana del rey
Johanna told him, “God, you are a dumb fuck.”
Her toes curled into the cushion of his chair. Outside, the sun filtered in lazy and yellow through his threadbare curtains. She slurped too loud from the cracked grey mug, and smiled at him, feral, sharp.
Gale was on the couch, leaning forward. His elbows rested on his knees. He was watching audition tapes for the anchor positions on the seven o’clock news. A blonde girl with green eyes chirped a goodbye. Johanna scoffed into her mug.
“Next,” she says, dismissing the girl with a wave of her hand. Gale listened to her. They settled on a redhead, her hair coiled and curled on top of her shoulders, her eyes flint gray and smart. She used to be from Three, and her smile only faltered for a second when she was asked. Gale liked that about her.
But before that, before Jo curled into his armchair like a cat and finished his bottle of whiskey with a loud smack of her swollen mouth, before his fingers fumbled down her back and she shuddered underneath him, before all of that, Katniss smiled at him.
Katniss smiled at him in the woods and nothing was the same again.
You’ve heard this story before.
“This is the finale,” Katniss told Peeta a long time ago, when they were young and she didn’t quite love him yet. The day turned to night around them and Katniss’ grip tightened on her bow and then the dogs went after them. Gale was at home with Prim on his lap, her little blonde head tucked against his shoulder. Prim watched with one eye open, one eye closed but Gale couldn’t bring himself to look away from the screen.
This is the finale, Gale thinks.
Katniss leans against a pillar in his room, her thumb dragging over the dulled edge of plaster, her hair still braided to the side. It has been years of this by now, of Katniss’ braid and that extra step she won’t let him take towards her.
She says, “If things had been different, Gale.”
“Things aren’t different, Catnip,” he tells her, leaning back in a chair. She rolls her eyes.
He wonders what exactly needed to be different, if it was the Revolution or Prim or his job, if it was Peeta or Johanna or something else entirely. He’s never worked for anything as hard as Katniss.
“I’m not going to make a speech,” he states evenly, eyeing her from across the room.
“I wasn’t asking you to,” she sighs. Her back straightens and she takes two steps farther away.
Gale says, soft, “Jesus, Catnip.”
Katniss hesitates at the door.
Don’t get your hopes up. This story has an ending and surely you know what it is. Gale Hawthorne is famous and so is Katniss Everdeen because they both saved our great and glorious country. They saved us. That sort of thing comes at a price.
Let’s go back to the beginning.
Peeta fell in love with Katniss when she was 12 but it took longer for Gale. There was no magic moment, no love at first sight.
Katniss was a thin, gangly thing with a tendency to scare away rabbits and annoy him at first. She was stubborn and frustrating and a little bit of a smart-ass.
It started slowly for Gale, but some would say that made it stronger.
Peeta doesn’t know her at all, he wanted to scream through the village. Peeta doesn’t know jack shit about the way she smells or acts or thinks or loves, he wanted to say.
Once he realized it, that there was this whole swelling section of his heart that was reserved for Katniss and the woods, he started wishing for things. That's the problem, really.
He almost volunteered.
Effie Trinkett sang, “Peeta Mellark!” and Gale’s weight shifted onto the balls of his feet, the leather soles thin and worn enough that he could feel the dirt pressing back against his shoes.
He thought, forgive me, Katniss and he didn’t move.
His body was young and strong but he had to will himself standing still, his fists clenched, his knees locked, because if he didn’t he would’ve run up on stage or fell to his knees or run away, five miles and five more and five more until he was gone.
In his weaker moments he’ll stir that memory over and over, and he’ll wonder if he didn’t move because he wanted to protect everyone or if it was because he was just too scared for anything else.
There was the war, of course.
But this isn't a story about the war.
This is a story about love.
Gale woke up in the hospital next to Johanna.
“Thought you should know,” she drawled, chewing on a straw and flexing her forearm, “your bomb killed little Everdeen.”
Johanna flexed her arm again and Gale could see all her veins swell with morphling, the sickly blue color of her blood through her drawn skin. She looked more dead than alive under all that fluorescent light.
“I can imagine this is going to create some problems for you, huh?” she asked, and her smile stretched her skin too tight on her face. He felt sick.
He thought it was a joke.
His stomach churned up bile and whatever they’d been delivering to his system intravenously. Gale threw up over the side of the bed, his vomit dribbling into a murky puddle in between the beds.
“Sorry,” he heaved, wiping his mouth.
Johanna didn’t laugh. He had expected her to. Her head looked wobbly on her thin stick of a neck, like he could snap it if he wanted. Johanna cracked her elbow, twice, and sneered.
“Clean up in Aisle PTSD,” she yelled.
Gale has passion, Gale has fire, Gale has, even when he’s lost everything else, extremely strong opinions.
The new government asks him to stay in Two and be the Head of Communications. They want him to start a newspaper, open other channels of information that will allow honest and intimate exchange of news to every citizen. It’s all very important, they tell him.
They say, “We don’t trust anyone else to tell these stories and our history.”
Katniss went back to Twelve with Peeta, not that she told Gale that.
Haymitch had pulled him aside and said, “She left. Thought you should hear it from me instead of some nosy son of a bitch.” His breath was rank and Gale was strangely comforted by that, by that and the way Haymitch teetered to the left, uneven on his own feet. It’s a brand new world, but Haymitch is still a raging drunk. It’s the little things, really. Gale couldn’t do anything but nod, couldn’t ask the only question that mattered, couldn’t get the words -but does she love meout of his mouth. It felt a little bit like grieving.
Gale had told them, when they asked, “I’m only 20.”
Gale had told them, “Yes, I’ll do it,” and his hands trembled. The thin cotton of his shirt clung to his skin, soaked with sweat. But he did say yes. That is the important part.
The cafeteria is serving meatloaf for lunch, with sides of mashed potatoes and green beans.
Johanna Mason scoops a bite of mashed potatoes off his plate with her finger and smacks her lips, grinning at him while she sits down across from him. Her elbow clangs against the edge of the table and she winces.
“Karma,” Gale murmurs into his water, and Jo’s eyes narrow at him.
“So I hear you’re a big shot now, Hawthorne,” she continues, picking a green bean casually from the tray and licking at her fingers.
Gale chews slowly on his meatloaf and shrugs his shoulders, scraping his knife against the cheap metal of the tray to annoy her. Her eyes dart between his mouth and his mashed potatoes.
“Are you saying I wasn’t before?” he teases, and she scoffs. Her fingers rap against the top of the table, rapid and uneven. He feels something kick lightly against his shin and he rolls his eyes.
“Someone’s grumpy today.”
She shrugs. He knows her well enough to know that it’s practically a smile.
“Later, General,” Jo spits, her mouth smeared into an almost smile, an eyebrow cocked.
“See you never,” he says. The fluorescent lights in the cafeteria glare at him from the tabletops. He almost has to squint to be able to see her the way he wants to.
Jo looks like she wants to ask him something, her fists balled at her side. She’s halfway to leaving and the whole line of her is something - lean, small, fragile.
“See you never,” she reiterates, laughing.
It’s only after she leaves that he notices she was wearing his shirt.
There aren’t any forests in Two.
Gale spends too much time indoors.
Katniss stands in his door and says, “Hello, Gale.”
She might as well have said, I’m here to rip your heart out.
It’s been five years. Five years, three major news stations, a National paper and District ones as well. Gale dated a redhead named Carla, a reporter from Six, for two of them. Johanna moved to Two three years ago. Things are different. Shit’s changed, is his point.
The doorway creaks loudly, and Gale stares.
“Come in,” he manages, his palms clammy. Something in his stomach churned.
(Gale can almost hear Johanna, her words slightly slurred, her mouth slanted, her foot tapping on the ground.
“Shit’s changed, huh?” she asks, unkind but not quite cruel.
“Shut up,” he mumbles to the Jo in his head, eyes slightly downward.)
Katniss takes a careful step back into his life.
He should’ve known it would end like this.
(Johanna moved back into his life with the same momentum she was thrust into it.
A knock on his door in the middle of the night, her bare shoulder pressed into the doorframe while she waited for him.
It was three am and he was still drunk or almost hungover.
He opened the door and there was Jo, her hair cut short and mean again in that strange way that suited her, her mouth matching that. Her palm pressed flat against his chest.
“Johanna?” he asked, rubbing at his eyes. There was a girl in his bed, from what he could remember.
“I have your shirt,” she says, flat. Her hand was still on his chest, and then she pushed him inside.
“I need a place to stay and you’re the only person I don’t completely hate.”
It was early and quiet in his house. Johanna walked around the perimeter of the room, looking at books, running her finger over the bindings and tsking when she found dust. Gale’s blood ran through his body slowly and it felt like some kind of dream. She carded her fingers through what was left of her hair and straightened her back. She was wearing a white wife-beater, a flimsy thing that rose up past her belly button and she smiled at him like she knew what he was thinking.
He never really had a choice in the matter, did he?)
Katniss is not his first heartbreak. Katniss is his biggest heartbreak, she is something he’s never quite sure he’ll recover from, loving someone like that, so completely and easily you didn’t even realize it.
Katniss wraps her fingers around his fragile heart and she has no problem squeezing, the beat irregular and pulsing in her calloused hands.
He never told her, God I love you do you understand the way I love you oh Katniss. She has never been a gentle person and he knows that better than most. Gale told Johanna, “Yeah, I used to love Katniss,” with a shrug. He tried for casual, as if it hadn’t been a defining characteristic in his life (there used to be little enough - he was Seam, he loved his family, he loved Katniss but these days it’s all so complicated), and he knows he failed. Loving Katniss isn’t something he can hide, even when he wants to. It manages to sneak out from under his breath or into his movements or inflection - I am in love with Katniss Everdeen, his body is always telling him.
Johanna’s laugh sounded like a bark, the echo hollow and harsh as it bounced around the gilded walls of the room.
“Oh, sweetheart,” she leered, and that made him burn, made him embarrassed, “I need another drink.”
Gale says, Catnip, whisper soft against the space in between her breasts, his hands splayed on the expanse of her tanned, scarred skin, the ridges of her rib cage pressing gently against his palm. Her heart thumped loudly. Gale took a lot of pride in that.
Catnip, he says again, his voice cracked, his voice broken, his insides undone.
Katniss wiggles underneath him and arches her back off his expensive sheets, her feet slipping against the silk, her hands scrabbling against his back. She is so warm, her mouth burning hot against every bit of skin it brushes over, sending him into quick bursts of shivers. Her nails rake at his scalp and he tucks his face in between her breasts.
He has wanted this for so long - he can’t explain - he has to remind himself to breathe. She smiles at him and his heart almost shudders to a stop right there, two fingers inside of her and his mouth on her breast.
“Gale,” she moans, gravelly and rough when he fucks her with his mouth, her legs spread wide as she comes all over his gray sheets.
He doesn’t let that stop him, barely lets her ride it out before thrusting into her, deep. She scratches at his back. His mouth still tastes like her.
“Oh, fuck Gale,” she says again, voice breaking, and that is all it takes.
Katniss spends the night, her body curled up against his, her hair spread across his pillow.
The clock chimes three. Gale plants a kiss on her forehead.
“I’m hungry,” she says, lazy.
There’s a moment of silence in between them, then. Neither of them has been truly hungry for five years so the phrase rings hollow, feels like a lie. The moment passes.
“Let’s go eat then,” he whispers into her ear. There is a sense of intimacy with her that he’s never possessed with anyone else. Gale thinks, and believes, that he could hold her forever. He backs away from the thought quickly enough.
She says, halfway to the kitchen, “You can ask about him, if you want.”
Gale stills, his heart thumping erratically in his chest.
“Are you still with him?”
“Yes.”
She has the decency to look at him when she says it. Gale feels very, very stupid all of a sudden. He hadn’t thought she would say yes, but he doesn’t know why.
“Is he in Twelve?”
She says, “You know me better than anyone Gale,” her voice fierce and faded and kind of sad. Her fingers shake when she rips the top off her yogurt.
“That’s not an explanation, Catnip.” She almost flinches. Gale wishes she would have. He expects it’s been trained out of her by now.
“I’ve always been in love with you, Gale.”
So this is the moment, he thinks. For the better part of his life he has waited to hear those words from her, whispered into his ear, kissed onto his mouth, pressed into every inch of his skin and it’s happening like this. Katniss, mouth pink and swollen, hair gnarled down her back, barefoot in his kitchen with Peeta waiting for her back in 12.
If he could fall out of her love with her, he wishes he could do it now.
“Fuck you, Katniss,” he spits out, the words flying out of his mouth before he can keep them in.
“You just did,” she says evenly, eyes still steely and sharp even when the rest of her is relaxed. He wonders if Peeta taught her that, this strange sense of calm she seems to exude all the time now. The thought makes him sick.
Her voice cracks on his name this time. She is dangerously close to tearing up.
“This isn’t fair,” he says.
Katniss laughs.
“Why would you possibly think life is fair?”
“What are you even doing here?” he roars, the sound echoing through every corner of his new, clean kitchen.
“What do you even want from me?” he yells again, as she stands in front of him in his own t-shirt. She shifts her weight from foot to foot and doesn’t seem to have an answer.
She says, again, “No one will ever know me the way you do.”
Gale is not proud of the way his heart flips, how his knuckles grab at the edge of his marbled counter. He has known this for years.
Katniss’ hair is not in a braid.
“I have to leave tomorrow,” she says, careful, “but I would like to visit again.”
“Of course,” Gale says, feeling 17, almost choking on the words, “please come back.”
Johanna says, “Been there done that.”
Gale’s eyes narrow at her. Across the room, Katniss leaves. The back of her dress dips down, following the trail of her spine, the fabric blue as it spills over her skin. Peeta’s tie was blue, too and Gale wasn’t even wearing one.
Johanna raises an eyebrow.
“Trust me,” she says, inspecting her nails, “this doesn’t end well for the us’s of the world.”
“Thanks, asshole,” he scowls, throwing back the last of his scotch. His cufflinks are red. They match the lipstick smeared on Johanna’s mouth.
“Anything for a friend, handsome,” she leers, winking, pressing a gentle, sour kiss to the corner of his mouth.
“Is that what we are now?” he asks, absentmindedly. The ice rattled around in his empty glass. His eyes never left Katniss and that exposed patch of olive skin. The blue was dark, murky.
Jo sips from her champagne flute and rolls her eyes.
“Don’t play dumb,” she sighs, frustrated, “it’s not a very attractive quality in a man.”
“Who says I’m trying to impress you?”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Johanna laughs, her lips wet from champagne. From where he is standing, tall and large over the curved wisp of her body, he can see down her dress.
Gale almost apologizes. He gets them another round instead.
“I fucked Madge Undersee when you were in the Games.”
Katniss flinches suddenly, sharply. It’s more of a shudder really, something he feels where their skin touches. He shifts on the bed and gives her some space.
Gale doesn’t know why he said it. Katniss sucks in a breath through her front teeth and pulls her knees up to her chest.
He’s not sure if it’s the confession upsets her or the reminder of a District 12 that isn’t charred black, isn’t a ruin of ash and scars. Katniss used to be a fierce thing, lean but strong, her words razor-sharp. They’re both different people now. Gale is smart enough to recognize that at least. Funny how much he still loves her, this new Katniss.
“And I kissed Peeta,” she says, shrugging her shoulders.
Gale wants to scoff, wants to shake her hunched shoulders. As if I didn’t fucking know that, he thinks, bitter.
Gale remembers Madge, the salt on her skin when he kissed the dip at the base of her throat. Her skin was white and soft, fingers smooth and nervous as they ran down his body.
She knew how he felt about Katniss but Madge let him in her anyways, whispered his name into his shoulder while her eyelids fluttered shut. Gale has nightmares about it now, Madge turning to ash in his hands, her mouth opening to scream before her hair starts smoking. Her lips bleed red and spread all over his skin.
Katniss braids her hair to the side.
“I don’t know what you want me to say, Gale.”
He looks at his hands.
(He wanted her to say, “Damn you, Gale!”
He wanted to watch jealousy burn through her face as quick and dangerous as she did for Panem.
Now, it’s easy for him to feel foolish about it. Katniss doesn’t even have the energy for jealousy anymore. Maybe if they hadn’t gone to war and he got to kiss her in the woods and he never let go of her hand, maybe if they had managed to stay in Twelve, well - that Katniss would probably be jealous. This is a dangerous game though. Gale tries not to play it.
He wanted a lot of things, he realizes now.
He still wants-
He still wants but they are not all tied to Katniss, anymore. Not this Katniss.
He hasn't been able to bring himself to call her Catnip lately.)
“So, you two are fucking then?”
Johanna leans against the wall, her arms crossed tight against her chest. The question is teasing and one side of her mouth flips up. She eyes the stir-fry cooking as he chops the broccoli.
“Jesus, Jo, subtle as always,” Gale mutters, peppering the vegetables with a little too much enthusiasm.
“Way to hit me where it really hurts.” Her eyes feign innocence. A hand flits over her throat but her smile glints. She keeps her nails short these days.
“Like you’re one to talk,” he continues, ignoring the way Jo’s face settles into mockery. The tile in his kitchen is black and white, slippery under his socks. Jo’s barefoot, her toes curled under and gripping at the slick surface.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Gale raises his eyebrows. Jo tries to smile but it settles into a scowl instead.
“You know I don’t want to say it.”
“Then don’t,” she snaps, quick. Gale used to flinch when she talked like that, his whole body tense from it. Those days are long gone. He’s seen much worse of her now.
“If you can talk about Katniss why can’t I talk about Finnick?” he asks. Jo clears her throat once. Something in the pan pops. Gale pokes at it with his spatula.
Something switches in her face, suddenly. One second she’s Jo and then she’s Johanna Mason, all short hair with an affinity for murdering people slowly while smiling. Gale could be mean about this, if he wanted. He could do more damage than she ever did with her ax. There’s something in him that’s itching to.
“Oops,” she mutters, eyes narrowed as she knocks the pan off the stove. The oil splatters against his skin. Gale hisses through his teeth before sticking his arm under the cold water in his sink.
“How clumsy of me,” Jo lilts, smirking as she picks up a piece of chicken.
The feeling passes. Gale sighs. “And you wonder why you don’t have any friends.”
This is the exact moment Gale knew it was going to end:
Katniss was stretching on the bed, her bones cracking.
Gale said, "Let's talk."
Katniss' entire body tensed, her muscles coiled underneath her skin, ready to run. She was always waiting for him to say Prim.
"We don't have to talk about anything," she shrugged, stepping into her jeans.
Gale swallowed the bitter taste in his mouth and walked her to his front door.
"Later?" he asked, careful.
Katniss hesitated before saying, "Of course."
Gale feels like he’s been waiting for the punch line his entire life. There have been too many almost perfect things in his life, things within his grasp, the pads of his fingers brushing around it and then - then it’s gone and he’s left empty handed.
He could love Johanna if he wanted to. He practically does already and that’s a miracle in and of itself. He thinks about Katniss less these days. Gale doesn’t have the time for it. It’s been a year since she left.
Johanna really only wears his clothes anymore, the shirts cut and tied and and twisted and tucked into whatever semi-clean pants she picked up off the floor.
They match, in more ways than one.
“I’m sorry about all of this,” he tells her one night. Johanna’s eyes are bright, even in the darkness, and she shrugs.
(She has never told him much about Finnick, but he remembers, on his way to visit Peeta in the hospital wing, catching Johanna sleeping. Finnick was there, sitting by her bed, his ring glinting in the light. There was something in his face that made Gale sick.
He asked Haymitch about it, later, over a shitty drink in his room.
Haymitch said, “You’re not the only one who gets a tragic story, Hawthorne.”)
“What are you talking about?” she snaps, reckless, impatient. Johanna never sleeps in his bed and he never asks her to.
It’s warm and Johanna’s skin is damp when he palms her hip, pulls her closer. He is tired of this ache he’s been carrying around for years. Johanna’s hair is still short. He wants her to keep it like that forever.
Gale’s fingers brush against her shoulder.
He says, “I think I might love you.”
Johanna blinks at him, shocked.
There's no tragedy here, anymore.
Katniss hesitates.
Katniss still leaves.
Gale feels older than twenty-six, feels the echoes of war wounds in his bones, feels the loss of Katniss just as acutely.
He does not go after her.
"We could have had such a damned good time together."
"Yes, isn't it pretty to think so?"
- the sun also rises
But burned into my brain all these stolen images
Stolen images, baby stolen images
Can you picture it? Babe, that life we could've lived
- lana del rey
Johanna told him, “God, you are a dumb fuck.”
Her toes curled into the cushion of his chair. Outside, the sun filtered in lazy and yellow through his threadbare curtains. She slurped too loud from the cracked grey mug, and smiled at him, feral, sharp.
Gale was on the couch, leaning forward. His elbows rested on his knees. He was watching audition tapes for the anchor positions on the seven o’clock news. A blonde girl with green eyes chirped a goodbye. Johanna scoffed into her mug.
“Next,” she says, dismissing the girl with a wave of her hand. Gale listened to her. They settled on a redhead, her hair coiled and curled on top of her shoulders, her eyes flint gray and smart. She used to be from Three, and her smile only faltered for a second when she was asked. Gale liked that about her.
But before that, before Jo curled into his armchair like a cat and finished his bottle of whiskey with a loud smack of her swollen mouth, before his fingers fumbled down her back and she shuddered underneath him, before all of that, Katniss smiled at him.
Katniss smiled at him in the woods and nothing was the same again.
You’ve heard this story before.
“This is the finale,” Katniss told Peeta a long time ago, when they were young and she didn’t quite love him yet. The day turned to night around them and Katniss’ grip tightened on her bow and then the dogs went after them. Gale was at home with Prim on his lap, her little blonde head tucked against his shoulder. Prim watched with one eye open, one eye closed but Gale couldn’t bring himself to look away from the screen.
This is the finale, Gale thinks.
Katniss leans against a pillar in his room, her thumb dragging over the dulled edge of plaster, her hair still braided to the side. It has been years of this by now, of Katniss’ braid and that extra step she won’t let him take towards her.
She says, “If things had been different, Gale.”
“Things aren’t different, Catnip,” he tells her, leaning back in a chair. She rolls her eyes.
He wonders what exactly needed to be different, if it was the Revolution or Prim or his job, if it was Peeta or Johanna or something else entirely. He’s never worked for anything as hard as Katniss.
“I’m not going to make a speech,” he states evenly, eyeing her from across the room.
“I wasn’t asking you to,” she sighs. Her back straightens and she takes two steps farther away.
Gale says, soft, “Jesus, Catnip.”
Katniss hesitates at the door.
Don’t get your hopes up. This story has an ending and surely you know what it is. Gale Hawthorne is famous and so is Katniss Everdeen because they both saved our great and glorious country. They saved us. That sort of thing comes at a price.
Let’s go back to the beginning.
Peeta fell in love with Katniss when she was 12 but it took longer for Gale. There was no magic moment, no love at first sight.
Katniss was a thin, gangly thing with a tendency to scare away rabbits and annoy him at first. She was stubborn and frustrating and a little bit of a smart-ass.
It started slowly for Gale, but some would say that made it stronger.
Peeta doesn’t know her at all, he wanted to scream through the village. Peeta doesn’t know jack shit about the way she smells or acts or thinks or loves, he wanted to say.
Once he realized it, that there was this whole swelling section of his heart that was reserved for Katniss and the woods, he started wishing for things. That's the problem, really.
He almost volunteered.
Effie Trinkett sang, “Peeta Mellark!” and Gale’s weight shifted onto the balls of his feet, the leather soles thin and worn enough that he could feel the dirt pressing back against his shoes.
He thought, forgive me, Katniss and he didn’t move.
His body was young and strong but he had to will himself standing still, his fists clenched, his knees locked, because if he didn’t he would’ve run up on stage or fell to his knees or run away, five miles and five more and five more until he was gone.
In his weaker moments he’ll stir that memory over and over, and he’ll wonder if he didn’t move because he wanted to protect everyone or if it was because he was just too scared for anything else.
There was the war, of course.
But this isn't a story about the war.
This is a story about love.
Gale woke up in the hospital next to Johanna.
“Thought you should know,” she drawled, chewing on a straw and flexing her forearm, “your bomb killed little Everdeen.”
Johanna flexed her arm again and Gale could see all her veins swell with morphling, the sickly blue color of her blood through her drawn skin. She looked more dead than alive under all that fluorescent light.
“I can imagine this is going to create some problems for you, huh?” she asked, and her smile stretched her skin too tight on her face. He felt sick.
He thought it was a joke.
His stomach churned up bile and whatever they’d been delivering to his system intravenously. Gale threw up over the side of the bed, his vomit dribbling into a murky puddle in between the beds.
“Sorry,” he heaved, wiping his mouth.
Johanna didn’t laugh. He had expected her to. Her head looked wobbly on her thin stick of a neck, like he could snap it if he wanted. Johanna cracked her elbow, twice, and sneered.
“Clean up in Aisle PTSD,” she yelled.
Gale has passion, Gale has fire, Gale has, even when he’s lost everything else, extremely strong opinions.
The new government asks him to stay in Two and be the Head of Communications. They want him to start a newspaper, open other channels of information that will allow honest and intimate exchange of news to every citizen. It’s all very important, they tell him.
They say, “We don’t trust anyone else to tell these stories and our history.”
Katniss went back to Twelve with Peeta, not that she told Gale that.
Haymitch had pulled him aside and said, “She left. Thought you should hear it from me instead of some nosy son of a bitch.” His breath was rank and Gale was strangely comforted by that, by that and the way Haymitch teetered to the left, uneven on his own feet. It’s a brand new world, but Haymitch is still a raging drunk. It’s the little things, really. Gale couldn’t do anything but nod, couldn’t ask the only question that mattered, couldn’t get the words -but does she love meout of his mouth. It felt a little bit like grieving.
Gale had told them, when they asked, “I’m only 20.”
Gale had told them, “Yes, I’ll do it,” and his hands trembled. The thin cotton of his shirt clung to his skin, soaked with sweat. But he did say yes. That is the important part.
The cafeteria is serving meatloaf for lunch, with sides of mashed potatoes and green beans.
Johanna Mason scoops a bite of mashed potatoes off his plate with her finger and smacks her lips, grinning at him while she sits down across from him. Her elbow clangs against the edge of the table and she winces.
“Karma,” Gale murmurs into his water, and Jo’s eyes narrow at him.
“So I hear you’re a big shot now, Hawthorne,” she continues, picking a green bean casually from the tray and licking at her fingers.
Gale chews slowly on his meatloaf and shrugs his shoulders, scraping his knife against the cheap metal of the tray to annoy her. Her eyes dart between his mouth and his mashed potatoes.
“Are you saying I wasn’t before?” he teases, and she scoffs. Her fingers rap against the top of the table, rapid and uneven. He feels something kick lightly against his shin and he rolls his eyes.
“Someone’s grumpy today.”
She shrugs. He knows her well enough to know that it’s practically a smile.
“Later, General,” Jo spits, her mouth smeared into an almost smile, an eyebrow cocked.
“See you never,” he says. The fluorescent lights in the cafeteria glare at him from the tabletops. He almost has to squint to be able to see her the way he wants to.
Jo looks like she wants to ask him something, her fists balled at her side. She’s halfway to leaving and the whole line of her is something - lean, small, fragile.
“See you never,” she reiterates, laughing.
It’s only after she leaves that he notices she was wearing his shirt.
There aren’t any forests in Two.
Gale spends too much time indoors.
Katniss stands in his door and says, “Hello, Gale.”
She might as well have said, I’m here to rip your heart out.
It’s been five years. Five years, three major news stations, a National paper and District ones as well. Gale dated a redhead named Carla, a reporter from Six, for two of them. Johanna moved to Two three years ago. Things are different. Shit’s changed, is his point.
The doorway creaks loudly, and Gale stares.
“Come in,” he manages, his palms clammy. Something in his stomach churned.
(Gale can almost hear Johanna, her words slightly slurred, her mouth slanted, her foot tapping on the ground.
“Shit’s changed, huh?” she asks, unkind but not quite cruel.
“Shut up,” he mumbles to the Jo in his head, eyes slightly downward.)
Katniss takes a careful step back into his life.
He should’ve known it would end like this.
(Johanna moved back into his life with the same momentum she was thrust into it.
A knock on his door in the middle of the night, her bare shoulder pressed into the doorframe while she waited for him.
It was three am and he was still drunk or almost hungover.
He opened the door and there was Jo, her hair cut short and mean again in that strange way that suited her, her mouth matching that. Her palm pressed flat against his chest.
“Johanna?” he asked, rubbing at his eyes. There was a girl in his bed, from what he could remember.
“I have your shirt,” she says, flat. Her hand was still on his chest, and then she pushed him inside.
“I need a place to stay and you’re the only person I don’t completely hate.”
It was early and quiet in his house. Johanna walked around the perimeter of the room, looking at books, running her finger over the bindings and tsking when she found dust. Gale’s blood ran through his body slowly and it felt like some kind of dream. She carded her fingers through what was left of her hair and straightened her back. She was wearing a white wife-beater, a flimsy thing that rose up past her belly button and she smiled at him like she knew what he was thinking.
He never really had a choice in the matter, did he?)
Katniss is not his first heartbreak. Katniss is his biggest heartbreak, she is something he’s never quite sure he’ll recover from, loving someone like that, so completely and easily you didn’t even realize it.
Katniss wraps her fingers around his fragile heart and she has no problem squeezing, the beat irregular and pulsing in her calloused hands.
He never told her, God I love you do you understand the way I love you oh Katniss. She has never been a gentle person and he knows that better than most. Gale told Johanna, “Yeah, I used to love Katniss,” with a shrug. He tried for casual, as if it hadn’t been a defining characteristic in his life (there used to be little enough - he was Seam, he loved his family, he loved Katniss but these days it’s all so complicated), and he knows he failed. Loving Katniss isn’t something he can hide, even when he wants to. It manages to sneak out from under his breath or into his movements or inflection - I am in love with Katniss Everdeen, his body is always telling him.
Johanna’s laugh sounded like a bark, the echo hollow and harsh as it bounced around the gilded walls of the room.
“Oh, sweetheart,” she leered, and that made him burn, made him embarrassed, “I need another drink.”
Gale says, Catnip, whisper soft against the space in between her breasts, his hands splayed on the expanse of her tanned, scarred skin, the ridges of her rib cage pressing gently against his palm. Her heart thumped loudly. Gale took a lot of pride in that.
Catnip, he says again, his voice cracked, his voice broken, his insides undone.
Katniss wiggles underneath him and arches her back off his expensive sheets, her feet slipping against the silk, her hands scrabbling against his back. She is so warm, her mouth burning hot against every bit of skin it brushes over, sending him into quick bursts of shivers. Her nails rake at his scalp and he tucks his face in between her breasts.
He has wanted this for so long - he can’t explain - he has to remind himself to breathe. She smiles at him and his heart almost shudders to a stop right there, two fingers inside of her and his mouth on her breast.
“Gale,” she moans, gravelly and rough when he fucks her with his mouth, her legs spread wide as she comes all over his gray sheets.
He doesn’t let that stop him, barely lets her ride it out before thrusting into her, deep. She scratches at his back. His mouth still tastes like her.
“Oh, fuck Gale,” she says again, voice breaking, and that is all it takes.
Katniss spends the night, her body curled up against his, her hair spread across his pillow.
The clock chimes three. Gale plants a kiss on her forehead.
“I’m hungry,” she says, lazy.
There’s a moment of silence in between them, then. Neither of them has been truly hungry for five years so the phrase rings hollow, feels like a lie. The moment passes.
“Let’s go eat then,” he whispers into her ear. There is a sense of intimacy with her that he’s never possessed with anyone else. Gale thinks, and believes, that he could hold her forever. He backs away from the thought quickly enough.
She says, halfway to the kitchen, “You can ask about him, if you want.”
Gale stills, his heart thumping erratically in his chest.
“Are you still with him?”
“Yes.”
She has the decency to look at him when she says it. Gale feels very, very stupid all of a sudden. He hadn’t thought she would say yes, but he doesn’t know why.
“Is he in Twelve?”
She says, “You know me better than anyone Gale,” her voice fierce and faded and kind of sad. Her fingers shake when she rips the top off her yogurt.
“That’s not an explanation, Catnip.” She almost flinches. Gale wishes she would have. He expects it’s been trained out of her by now.
“I’ve always been in love with you, Gale.”
So this is the moment, he thinks. For the better part of his life he has waited to hear those words from her, whispered into his ear, kissed onto his mouth, pressed into every inch of his skin and it’s happening like this. Katniss, mouth pink and swollen, hair gnarled down her back, barefoot in his kitchen with Peeta waiting for her back in 12.
If he could fall out of her love with her, he wishes he could do it now.
“Fuck you, Katniss,” he spits out, the words flying out of his mouth before he can keep them in.
“You just did,” she says evenly, eyes still steely and sharp even when the rest of her is relaxed. He wonders if Peeta taught her that, this strange sense of calm she seems to exude all the time now. The thought makes him sick.
Her voice cracks on his name this time. She is dangerously close to tearing up.
“This isn’t fair,” he says.
Katniss laughs.
“Why would you possibly think life is fair?”
“What are you even doing here?” he roars, the sound echoing through every corner of his new, clean kitchen.
“What do you even want from me?” he yells again, as she stands in front of him in his own t-shirt. She shifts her weight from foot to foot and doesn’t seem to have an answer.
She says, again, “No one will ever know me the way you do.”
Gale is not proud of the way his heart flips, how his knuckles grab at the edge of his marbled counter. He has known this for years.
Katniss’ hair is not in a braid.
“I have to leave tomorrow,” she says, careful, “but I would like to visit again.”
“Of course,” Gale says, feeling 17, almost choking on the words, “please come back.”
Johanna says, “Been there done that.”
Gale’s eyes narrow at her. Across the room, Katniss leaves. The back of her dress dips down, following the trail of her spine, the fabric blue as it spills over her skin. Peeta’s tie was blue, too and Gale wasn’t even wearing one.
Johanna raises an eyebrow.
“Trust me,” she says, inspecting her nails, “this doesn’t end well for the us’s of the world.”
“Thanks, asshole,” he scowls, throwing back the last of his scotch. His cufflinks are red. They match the lipstick smeared on Johanna’s mouth.
“Anything for a friend, handsome,” she leers, winking, pressing a gentle, sour kiss to the corner of his mouth.
“Is that what we are now?” he asks, absentmindedly. The ice rattled around in his empty glass. His eyes never left Katniss and that exposed patch of olive skin. The blue was dark, murky.
Jo sips from her champagne flute and rolls her eyes.
“Don’t play dumb,” she sighs, frustrated, “it’s not a very attractive quality in a man.”
“Who says I’m trying to impress you?”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Johanna laughs, her lips wet from champagne. From where he is standing, tall and large over the curved wisp of her body, he can see down her dress.
Gale almost apologizes. He gets them another round instead.
“I fucked Madge Undersee when you were in the Games.”
Katniss flinches suddenly, sharply. It’s more of a shudder really, something he feels where their skin touches. He shifts on the bed and gives her some space.
Gale doesn’t know why he said it. Katniss sucks in a breath through her front teeth and pulls her knees up to her chest.
He’s not sure if it’s the confession upsets her or the reminder of a District 12 that isn’t charred black, isn’t a ruin of ash and scars. Katniss used to be a fierce thing, lean but strong, her words razor-sharp. They’re both different people now. Gale is smart enough to recognize that at least. Funny how much he still loves her, this new Katniss.
“And I kissed Peeta,” she says, shrugging her shoulders.
Gale wants to scoff, wants to shake her hunched shoulders. As if I didn’t fucking know that, he thinks, bitter.
Gale remembers Madge, the salt on her skin when he kissed the dip at the base of her throat. Her skin was white and soft, fingers smooth and nervous as they ran down his body.
She knew how he felt about Katniss but Madge let him in her anyways, whispered his name into his shoulder while her eyelids fluttered shut. Gale has nightmares about it now, Madge turning to ash in his hands, her mouth opening to scream before her hair starts smoking. Her lips bleed red and spread all over his skin.
Katniss braids her hair to the side.
“I don’t know what you want me to say, Gale.”
He looks at his hands.
(He wanted her to say, “Damn you, Gale!”
He wanted to watch jealousy burn through her face as quick and dangerous as she did for Panem.
Now, it’s easy for him to feel foolish about it. Katniss doesn’t even have the energy for jealousy anymore. Maybe if they hadn’t gone to war and he got to kiss her in the woods and he never let go of her hand, maybe if they had managed to stay in Twelve, well - that Katniss would probably be jealous. This is a dangerous game though. Gale tries not to play it.
He wanted a lot of things, he realizes now.
He still wants-
He still wants but they are not all tied to Katniss, anymore. Not this Katniss.
He hasn't been able to bring himself to call her Catnip lately.)
“So, you two are fucking then?”
Johanna leans against the wall, her arms crossed tight against her chest. The question is teasing and one side of her mouth flips up. She eyes the stir-fry cooking as he chops the broccoli.
“Jesus, Jo, subtle as always,” Gale mutters, peppering the vegetables with a little too much enthusiasm.
“Way to hit me where it really hurts.” Her eyes feign innocence. A hand flits over her throat but her smile glints. She keeps her nails short these days.
“Like you’re one to talk,” he continues, ignoring the way Jo’s face settles into mockery. The tile in his kitchen is black and white, slippery under his socks. Jo’s barefoot, her toes curled under and gripping at the slick surface.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Gale raises his eyebrows. Jo tries to smile but it settles into a scowl instead.
“You know I don’t want to say it.”
“Then don’t,” she snaps, quick. Gale used to flinch when she talked like that, his whole body tense from it. Those days are long gone. He’s seen much worse of her now.
“If you can talk about Katniss why can’t I talk about Finnick?” he asks. Jo clears her throat once. Something in the pan pops. Gale pokes at it with his spatula.
Something switches in her face, suddenly. One second she’s Jo and then she’s Johanna Mason, all short hair with an affinity for murdering people slowly while smiling. Gale could be mean about this, if he wanted. He could do more damage than she ever did with her ax. There’s something in him that’s itching to.
“Oops,” she mutters, eyes narrowed as she knocks the pan off the stove. The oil splatters against his skin. Gale hisses through his teeth before sticking his arm under the cold water in his sink.
“How clumsy of me,” Jo lilts, smirking as she picks up a piece of chicken.
The feeling passes. Gale sighs. “And you wonder why you don’t have any friends.”
This is the exact moment Gale knew it was going to end:
Katniss was stretching on the bed, her bones cracking.
Gale said, "Let's talk."
Katniss' entire body tensed, her muscles coiled underneath her skin, ready to run. She was always waiting for him to say Prim.
"We don't have to talk about anything," she shrugged, stepping into her jeans.
Gale swallowed the bitter taste in his mouth and walked her to his front door.
"Later?" he asked, careful.
Katniss hesitated before saying, "Of course."
Gale feels like he’s been waiting for the punch line his entire life. There have been too many almost perfect things in his life, things within his grasp, the pads of his fingers brushing around it and then - then it’s gone and he’s left empty handed.
He could love Johanna if he wanted to. He practically does already and that’s a miracle in and of itself. He thinks about Katniss less these days. Gale doesn’t have the time for it. It’s been a year since she left.
Johanna really only wears his clothes anymore, the shirts cut and tied and and twisted and tucked into whatever semi-clean pants she picked up off the floor.
They match, in more ways than one.
“I’m sorry about all of this,” he tells her one night. Johanna’s eyes are bright, even in the darkness, and she shrugs.
(She has never told him much about Finnick, but he remembers, on his way to visit Peeta in the hospital wing, catching Johanna sleeping. Finnick was there, sitting by her bed, his ring glinting in the light. There was something in his face that made Gale sick.
He asked Haymitch about it, later, over a shitty drink in his room.
Haymitch said, “You’re not the only one who gets a tragic story, Hawthorne.”)
“What are you talking about?” she snaps, reckless, impatient. Johanna never sleeps in his bed and he never asks her to.
It’s warm and Johanna’s skin is damp when he palms her hip, pulls her closer. He is tired of this ache he’s been carrying around for years. Johanna’s hair is still short. He wants her to keep it like that forever.
Gale’s fingers brush against her shoulder.
He says, “I think I might love you.”
Johanna blinks at him, shocked.
There's no tragedy here, anymore.
Katniss hesitates.
Katniss still leaves.
Gale feels older than twenty-six, feels the echoes of war wounds in his bones, feels the loss of Katniss just as acutely.
He does not go after her.