Fic: Burn Me Down
Title: Burn Me Down
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Gale/Katniss
Warnings: Brief strong language
Summary: Gale sees the moment when she starts to kiss Peeta.
He's sitting in one of the mismatched and worn wooden chairs in the kitchen. But really, it's more of a slump, with efficiently muscled shoulders curving protectively around his chest. Maybe his heart.
The small tv is flickering behind him and he's watching his mother scrub someone's linen shirt. Someone who apparently had a close physical relationship with mud.
"Need help?" he asks quietly.
She shakes her head. "No, you go watch the Games." She turns around to glance at the grainy image on the screen and freezes.
"Actually, I need more water. I have no idea how this shirt could've gotten so dirty."
He knows she's making up needs. It's one of the few things he lets her do for him.
He'd learned early on that watching the Games was an exercise in self-loathing. At first, they had all huddled around the tv, watching Katniss move farther away from them and through crowds and onto stages. Of course, he had been watching her more closely than anybody.
He knows the way she moves and what it means and what she's thinking. He's as aware of her body as he is of his own. Sometimes more.
She's been doing nothing but lying and shielding herself and surviving since she left.
But when he turns around, he sees it.
Somewhere along the way, she'd started to kiss Peeta. Not the usual empty kisses that he'd gotten used to watching, but a real kiss.
The change is subtle, and only he can read it clearly, but his mother knows something is different. She looks at Gale, watching his expression.
"That's not..." she starts, uncertain but trying to keep her tone casual. She can't cross into the realm of the comforting. "The Games are all staged, Gale."
She's just trying to help. "I know," he says.
It's not that he can't help it, he realizes as his hand goes to his knife without a second thought and sends it into the wall across from him, hilt-deep and just to the left of the tv. It's just that the girl on the screen, his girl on the screen, has pulled something out of him that only she can find, poured fire on it, and stuffed it back in.
Has she even thought of him since she left? Maybe it would hurt too much, but he dreams of her every night and he's still here. Barely.
"How much water did you need?" he asks, and his voice is too calm.
His mother doesn't try to sooth him, knowing that he was never one for being coddled.
"One bucket should do it."
He walks out into the night, slamming the door behind him.
Before he knows where he's running, he's in the nearly abandoned square.
"FUCK!" he shouts at nobody in particular, his fists against his forehead and his knees almost giving out from the weight of it. The word bounces off of the sides of buildings and ends up in the velvet sky, hurdling towards closed windows and the hidden cameras in the woods.
He wants everyone to hear him. He wants them all to know that he's angry and helpless and in love.
That you don't have to be a tribute to be destroyed by the Hunger Games.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Gale/Katniss
Warnings: Brief strong language
Summary: Gale sees the moment when she starts to kiss Peeta.
He's sitting in one of the mismatched and worn wooden chairs in the kitchen. But really, it's more of a slump, with efficiently muscled shoulders curving protectively around his chest. Maybe his heart.
The small tv is flickering behind him and he's watching his mother scrub someone's linen shirt. Someone who apparently had a close physical relationship with mud.
"Need help?" he asks quietly.
She shakes her head. "No, you go watch the Games." She turns around to glance at the grainy image on the screen and freezes.
"Actually, I need more water. I have no idea how this shirt could've gotten so dirty."
He knows she's making up needs. It's one of the few things he lets her do for him.
He'd learned early on that watching the Games was an exercise in self-loathing. At first, they had all huddled around the tv, watching Katniss move farther away from them and through crowds and onto stages. Of course, he had been watching her more closely than anybody.
He knows the way she moves and what it means and what she's thinking. He's as aware of her body as he is of his own. Sometimes more.
She's been doing nothing but lying and shielding herself and surviving since she left.
But when he turns around, he sees it.
Somewhere along the way, she'd started to kiss Peeta. Not the usual empty kisses that he'd gotten used to watching, but a real kiss.
The change is subtle, and only he can read it clearly, but his mother knows something is different. She looks at Gale, watching his expression.
"That's not..." she starts, uncertain but trying to keep her tone casual. She can't cross into the realm of the comforting. "The Games are all staged, Gale."
She's just trying to help. "I know," he says.
It's not that he can't help it, he realizes as his hand goes to his knife without a second thought and sends it into the wall across from him, hilt-deep and just to the left of the tv. It's just that the girl on the screen, his girl on the screen, has pulled something out of him that only she can find, poured fire on it, and stuffed it back in.
Has she even thought of him since she left? Maybe it would hurt too much, but he dreams of her every night and he's still here. Barely.
"How much water did you need?" he asks, and his voice is too calm.
His mother doesn't try to sooth him, knowing that he was never one for being coddled.
"One bucket should do it."
He walks out into the night, slamming the door behind him.
Before he knows where he's running, he's in the nearly abandoned square.
"FUCK!" he shouts at nobody in particular, his fists against his forehead and his knees almost giving out from the weight of it. The word bounces off of the sides of buildings and ends up in the velvet sky, hurdling towards closed windows and the hidden cameras in the woods.
He wants everyone to hear him. He wants them all to know that he's angry and helpless and in love.
That you don't have to be a tribute to be destroyed by the Hunger Games.