#thgss

Confidently and without an ounce of trepidation, he sauntered up the narrow walkway, dodging the patches of black ice that covered the cement from where the flanking snow banks had melted down in the afternoon sun.

“Um, yeah. Nobody’s gonna call it that,” his stoic, gray-eyed companion groused under his breath. He walked behind Finnick, his hands hitched in the waist of his pants like a cowboy clutching his holster on his way to a shootout, trying to appear unconcerned and unhurried, the embodiment of quiet swagger. Channeling his inner John Wayne and all that shit.

“Gonna actually agree with Gale on that,” chuckled the third friend, the one with shoulders as broad as a football field. He ran his fingers nervously through his wavy blond hair, clutching a bottle of Jäger to his chest like a protective talisman. Because goddammit—it was New Year’s Eve and Katniss was in there. If he had any chance to “hit it”—and he knew he had no chance, none at all, not tonight, not ever—there’d be no way in hell he’d “quit it.”    

Finnick groaned as he climbed the steps of the porch. “Are you guys gonna be total pussies about this? Because if you’re gonna sit around all night pining over Madge and Katniss with your thumbs up your asses like you do every year, then I’m gonna make an executive decision and take us to a bar instead. Because it’s depressing, frankly.”

He rang the doorbell, giving it an aggravated jab, and crammed his hands in his pockets, shivering in the wind. Before Thom or Delly could answer, he pressed on, “Peeta, fuck. I’m telling you. Tonight’s the night, my man. You’ve been dancing around it since your nuts dropped, and I think you need to send the year out with a bang. She broke up with Dorkus a couple months ago, so you’ve got no excuse.”

Peeta’s eyebrows shot up as he processed the news. “Wait, she what—”

Before he could finish his question, the front door swung open, their beaming and very pregnant hostess grinning toothily at the trio. “You’re here!” she squealed, as if she’d had no idea they’d been planning to attend her annual party. Like they hadn’t been there every year for the past five years. She flung her arms around Finnick’s shoulders, her eyes pressed closed as she squeezed him as tightly as her belly would allow.

Despite his tendency to backslide into bro speak, Finnick had been one of Delly’s best friends since childhood, standing by her through messy breakups and the death of both her parents. It was a well-known but never publicly discussed secret: Finnick talked like a douche, but he was actually a total marshmallow. “It’s so good to see you,” she breathed, all sincerity and sweetness, an almost comical version of Mrs. Dalloway.

Delly stepped aside to usher them in. Never one for small talk, Gale gave her a perfunctory nod of greeting and followed Finnick toward the sound of laughter and clinking glasses wafting from the basement. Only Peeta lingered at the threshold, holding the bottle of Jägermeister out for her to take.

“For you,” he offered, azure eyes widening as he realized what he said. “I mean—not for you,” he gestured toward Delly’s stomach. “But for the house.” He scrubbed his face with both hands and added lamely, perhaps to atone for his awkwardness, “Looking good, Del.”

She laughed and gave Peeta an affectionate squeeze on his bicep, trying not to compare his muscle tone to her husband’s lack thereof. (Hey, she was married, not dead, and Peeta had always been more of a brother to her anyway. Such was her justification for copping the occasional feel.)  

“She’s here, you know,” she whispered meaningfully, quirking her head toward the basement stairs.

Peeta could feel himself turning a profuse shade of red. Delly was well aware of his crush on Katniss—if you could call an undying love and/or potentially unhealthy fixation a crush. It’s something the two of them had discussed at length throughout the years, but he still cringed every time she brought it up, at the thought of how painfully obvious and pathetic he must seem to everyone there. How probably even Katniss knew and that, at best, she pitied him for it. Katniss had certainly never given him any indication that she was interested in him, not during their school years and not in the years since. And he’d just found out, not more than two minutes ago, that she had broken up with her long-term boyfriend Darius.

It was a lot to process on the spot.

“Is he here too?” Peeta asked, his voice no more than a hoarse whisper.

Delly shook her head, a serene smile toying its way onto her lips like this was all some sort of cosmic plan coming together perfectly. “No, I don't think we’ll be seeing any more of Darius.”

Peeta grunted—an actual grunt, a sound he couldn't ever remember making before—in satisfaction. He generally got along with everyone (see exhibit A: Gale Hawthorne), but there was something he'd never trusted about Darius. He'd been friendly enough, Peeta supposed, an uncommon trait for one of Katniss’ boyfriends, but there was a seedy salesman quality to him, an aura of untrustworthiness, that made him seem leagues below the affections of Katniss Everdeen.

“What happened?”

Delly shrugged apologetically. “That's not really for me to say.” Her eyes darted over Peeta’s shoulders, scanning the room behind him to make sure no one had emerged from the basement to eavesdrop on their conversation. She squeezed his forearm and leaned toward him, adding conspiratorially, “But I can say that the breakup was her idea.”

Peeta nodded, feeling grateful for a couple things. “And she's here alone?”

Delly’s grin was infectious, somehow climbing its way onto Peeta’s face like a rash. “You betcha.”

Okay, so he was grateful for a few things.

“C’mon,” Delly encouraged him, guiding him downstairs by the arm. “At least aim to say hi to her before the year is over, yeah?”

************

Gale

He shambled down the checkered linoleum stairs toward the sound of Frank Sinatra, keeping his eyes trained straight ahead so that he wouldn’t accidentally make eye contact with her before he was good and ready.

Once a year. That's how often he got to see Madge Undersee now. And, like every year, this one night of awkward banter, pseudo-sexual jokes, and fleeting glances would have to sustain him through a year’s worth of shitty dates and uncomfortable morning afters with girls who weren't her, who didn't come close.

It had gone on like this for years; their meeting at Thom’s and Delly’s party. One year they'd chatted for hours upstairs alone, the TV quietly playing Shaft in the background, unheeded, as she placed her hand on his arm, and he rested his hand on her knee. Another year they'd played beer pong with each other the entire night and somehow managed to go undefeated. When she’d given him a celebratory hug, his fingers had grazed the top of her ass, and she’d moaned into the shell of his ear, bucking her pelvis lightly against his—something he’d masturbated to more times than he cared to remember.

Every year they flirted, and the way her eyes danced across his face, skittering across his lips before falling to the planes of his body and down to his crotch, set him ablaze. He wanted to fuck her and marry her, but their flirtation never went beyond the party.

It couldn't.

Because she was already married to someone else—and had been since they’d graduated high school. So there was that.

Not that he wouldn't be above sleeping with her, married or not. He’d loved her for as long as he could remember, long before she had married Bristel and become Madge Collier. If there’d been such a thing in reality as the rule of dibs, she’d be his and he’d be hers, and there wouldn't be anything else to say on the matter. Case closed.

But even if he could take Finnick’s suggestion and finally act on his feelings for her, to confess or kiss her or touch her, there was no way he’d be able to walk away at the end of the night. He'd stand in front of a firing squad for that girl.

At the bottom of the stairs, Finnick turned to him and gave him a reassuring pat across the back. “Go find yourself a shortie. Ideally a new one.” He stalked off before Gale had the chance to point out that at an annual, recurring holiday party among people who'd known each other since grade school, the odds of meeting a new “shortie” weren’t exactly in his favor.  

His gray eyes did a vicinity sweep of the room, scanning from one corner to the next to take inventory of the usual suspects. Looking at everyone and no one—and really only looking for her.

Over by the hors d’oeuvres, he saw Clove Kurpinski aggressively spreading cheese onto crackers, the canapé knife digging into the cheese ball every time a syllable oozed out of David Marvel’s odious mouth. Marvel prattled on, making himself laugh, oblivious to the fact that Clove looked ready to gouge his eyes out with the blunted blade. Cashmere and Gloss, who Gale had always assumed to be cousins, were making out on the sofa next to the stereo. Cato Taylor sat alone next to them, stealing furtive glances at one—or both—of their asses, periodically adjusting himself. A couple feet away, Enobaria Davis wolfishly stared down Brutus and some ginger Gale only ever knew as “Foxface” because of her startling similarity to something vulpine and rabid. Enobaria looked like she’d enjoy ripping out both their throats with her bare teeth for having too good of a time together.

Without a second thought, Gale veered away from them, wending his way through the crowded room and heading into the back corner.

A large group of people were congregated around the beer pong table, everyone laughing and shouting boisterously over the music as a still-sober Finnick trounced a decidedly un-sober Thresh. The whole gang was there—Johanna, Castor, Pollux, Rue, Jackson, the Leeg sisters, Boggs, Katniss...

Everyone but Madge.

Of the group, Katniss was the only one hanging back, silently scowling as she clutched a beer-filled solo cup to her chest. Since she looked about as social as Gale felt, he homed in on her.

“Catnip.” He nodded in greeting, crossing his arms against his chest.

Her scowl eased up fractionally at the sight of him. “Gale. How’s it going?”

He shrugged. “Could be worse. You?”

“Could be better.” She took a sip from her cup but declined to explain further. “You here alone?” she asked.

He tipped his chin in the affirmative. “Yeah.” He exhaled heavily, making a sound some might call a sigh. “And you?”

Katniss took another pull from her cup, a gulp this time. “Yeah. Me and Darius…”

“I heard,” he said, cutting her off in an attempt to be helpful. He scanned her face for signs of distress, but, finding none, turned away to watch the drinking game instead while they talked. “So what happened with you two?” he asked. Casual, not at all prying. Not one bit. Peeta’d fucking owe him for this.

One of her shoulders jerked up noncommittally. “We tried for two years, but we just couldn't give each other what we needed.”  

Gale fought back a smirk. “There’s a few ways I could go with that—”

“And any way you’d go, you’d probably be onto something,” she grumbled. She ran a finger along the ring of her cup, staring down into the murky amber liquid as if she were searching for an answer in its depths. “It was a disaster… the games we ended up playing, trying to hurt each other.” She smiled ruefully. “Relationships suck.”

They fell into an awkward silence, neither being particularly good with words or inclined to discuss matters of emotional importance. Katniss broke the silence first, telling him what he really wanted to know. “She’s not here.”

Gale tried to maintain his calm facade even though his heart thundered in his ears at the mere allusion to Madge. Katniss didn’t even have to say her name. His body reacted instinctively, an old habit he worried he’d never break. “I know,” he said, pressing his arms tighter together against his chest as if to protect himself from an arctic wind. “Do you know when she’ll be showing up?” He took his phone out of his pocket, checking the time: 9:36.

Katniss’ eyes, the same steely shade of gray as Gale’s, locked on him. He hated the pity he saw there. He never could stand to be pitied, and he despised what her eyes told him.

But he didn’t expect her answer when she finally spoke. “Gale—she’s not coming this year. She and Bristel... “ Her voice faltered, breaking off entirely.

He felt impatient, desperate suddenly for her to fucking speak, to tell him what she knew. “They what?” There was a warning edge to his voice, as if to tell her not to say it after all.

But he knew what she was going to tell him, could feel it in his bones. His stomach plummeted in freefall.

“They’re expecting,” she told him, her voice low. “They haven’t told many people yet because they wanted to wait until she was past the first trimester, but she’s been so sick from the morning—”

He held a hand up, unable to hear more, and took a faltering step toward the bar in the corner.

“Gale,” she urged, reaching her hand out to stop him, as if it was her responsibility to explain to him how two people in a loveless marriage could decide to have a child together.

“It’s okay, Catnip,” he said her with a reassurance he didn’t feel. “I—I just need a drink.”

So that was it, then. Madge was never going to leave Bristel. She was going to have his baby. And for what? Out of some sense of duty?

Gale knew what duty meant; he’d made vows and taken oaths too, but what Madge was doing could only be described as a waste.

She’d wasted her life and was wasting his, too.

Gale sidled up to Thom’s bar and took a seat on one of the stools lining the counter. The bar was tucked into the back corner of the basement, adjacent to the furnace room, its proud owner and proprietor slinging drinks to his guests from behind the counter.

“Hey buddy!” he exclaimed at the sight of Gale, ignoring the dour expression on Hawthorne’s face. Thom swiped the counter clean with a dish rag, leaning his elbows on the damp surface. “Glad you could make it.”

Gale tipped his chin in reply and gave a thin-lipped smile. No offense to present company, but he’d like nothing more than to call it a night and spend the rest of his evening in the comfort of his own home, one hand down the waistband of his pants, the other clutching a beer. But since he’d driven with Finnick and Peeta and was, for all intents and purposes, shackled to them, he figured he’d spend the rest of his night on his ass, right here, drinking at the bar.

All roads lead to inebriation.   

“What's on draft?” he asked to make small talk—something he really didn't want to have to do but that common courtesy required. He shifted uncomfortably on the hard wooden stool, accidentally knocking his shoulder against whoever was sitting next to him. “‘Scuse me,” he mumbled without bothering to look.

Thom’s face beamed at the question. He looked happier than a proverbial pig in shit. “It's a winter ale I brewed up… dry hopped, so it's got a nice citrusy flavor. One of my best yet, in my humble opinion. Whaddya say, sis?”

Thom’s eyes locked on the person to Gale’s left, waiting for a reply. In the handful of years he’d known Thom, he had never once heard mention of a sister, much less seen one. Morbidly curious about what a female Thom would even look like, he swiveled in his stool to take a proper look.  

He’d assumed when he sat down that the person next to him was a guy. Why he had thought this, he had no idea. He was a she, and most obviously so. She was of slight frame, with narrow, sloping shoulders and slender hips. Her form-fitting black dress was short, barely covering the swell of her ass. Her blond hair cascaded in soft waves over her right shoulder, framing a heart-shaped face with wide blue eyes and a pert nose.

Thank Christ she didn’t look a thing like Thom. The world could only handle so much of that.

He couldn’t help it—he felt ridiculously adolescent about it—but the sight of her sent blood stampeding to his groin. He’d never been stricken so immediately, so intensely, by the sight of someone before. At the cellular level, coded into his DNA, his body reacted to the woman who sat next to him.

And then she swiveled in her chair to face him directly.

His stomach lurched uncomfortably at what he saw; he’d never realized how closely related attraction and repulsion could be. A green vine, decorated with thorns and leaves, crawled along the left side of her neck, disappearing beneath the neckline of her dress and reappearing on the bare flesh of her left thigh. The tattoo disappeared again mid-calf, beneath the soft black leather of her boots. The left side of her head was shaved, her scalp covered in the offending vine.

She was pierced in more places than he could count: her lower lip, her nostril, her eyebrow, all along the cartilage of her ear, including a long bar that spanned from the top of her ear to the side. And that's just what he could see.

Every piercing, every line of ink, was on her left-hand side. Gale couldn't begin to imagine what that meant, if there was a method to the madness.

She stared at him impassively, looking equally unimpressed by what she saw. No matter. She wasn’t his type either.

Thom cleared his throat after a lengthy pause. “Cres?”

She tore her clear blue eyes away from Gale and looked at her brother. “Yeah, the beer’s great,” she said, her voice even and affectless. She neither pandered nor pissed on his parade—she told him directly, without prevarication, what she thought, nothing more. Her tone was commanding and confident. Gale thought she sounded like a woman who could appreciate a fine scotch, who would just as soon not waste her time on her brother’s exceptionally average homebrewed beer.  

Thom nodded, satisfied by the verdict. “Gale, this is my stepsister Cressida. Cres, this is one of Del’s old friends from school, Gale Hawthorne.” Hitching a thumb toward Cressida, he added, “She came to visit this year for Christmas. Flew in all the way from Chicago.” He slid a glass of beer across the counter to Gale. “Here, try summa this. Let me know whatcha think.”

Thom’s attention was called away by Delly, who had approached the bar in what could only be described as the trademark pregnant lady waddle. That left Gale alone with Cressida. The way she looked at him, like she could see into every nook and cranny of his mind and was skeptical about the worth of anything she saw, was deeply unsettling.

Gale cleared his throat and took a swig of beer. “So you live in Chicago?”

“Yep.”

Her response was simple, and Gale might have thought she didn't want to be bothered anymore by him except that she kept her body squarely facing his. She waited for him to continue, pushing him to say something less inane.

“I ah… have a buddy who lives there. Works for the Chicago PD.”

She arched her pierced eyebrow at this, and as she did, he noticed that she had three jagged lines tattooed across her brow, marked like some feral creature had clawed at her. “A pig?” she asked, smirking. “Let me guess. He likes to arrest homeless people and thirteen-year-old kids for skateboarding.”

Gale felt heat rising to his face at her words, his temper flaring at the provocation. “Is that what you think of cops? That we just bully people?”

She spluttered on a mouthful of beer, trying not to choke on it. “Shit—you said ‘we’? You're a cop? I knew there was something not quite right about you.”

Gale scowled at her but tried not to show her how aggravated she’d made him. He wasn't naive enough to think everyone understood or even respected his job, but that didn't mean she had to be a dick about her opinion. “What?” he said derisively. “You couldn't tell? I must’ve left my cloven hooves at home.”

Cressida gave a short laugh, spinning her bar stool back toward the bar. Conversation over.

For some reason, that thought was unbearable to Gale. He didn't know why he should care about her opinion, but he did.

“I might be a cop, but that doesn't make me a fascist.”

“Hey, whatever helps you sleep at night,” she countered.

He snickered, beyond fucking annoyed by this woman’s attitude. “So tell me, Cressida, what’s your noble profession?”

She reached across the counter, scooching a bowl of nuts toward her. “I'm a director.” She tossed a handful in her mouth.

He rolled his eyes. The artistic type—talk about being a walking cliche. “Okay, so let me guess… You make thought-provoking exposes about the fast food industry. Or,” and now he could feel himself really getting on a roll, “even better… documentaries on revolutions in third world countries… You know. Because it helps you sleep at night.”

“The global south,” she muttered under her breath, almost inaudibly.

He leaned toward her. “Excuse me, what did you say?” He meant to sound confrontational, truly, but at this distance he could breathe in the scent of her perfume, some rich blend of vanilla and clove, and it made his thoughts hazy and indistinct.

“I said, ‘the global south.’” She swiveled in her chair to stare him at him directly, her face no more than a foot from his—mere inches, really. As she spoke, Gale’s gaze fell to her lips. The lower lip was fuller than the top, and they looked wet, freshly licked. He watched her lips move, each syllable a weapon aimed directly at him. “If you don’t want people to mistake you for a fascist, then you shouldn’t use outmoded and socially degrading terms coined by the fucking USSR to dismiss people who live differently from you.”

He wanted to snarl at her, to throw his beer in her face like a petulant child. And maybe, just a little, he wanted to kiss her, if only to shut her up. “For fuck’s sake,” he growled, clutching his beer and downing it in one angry gulp. “Enough already.”

Sliding off the bar stool, he stalked away, hackles raised. It was bad enough he had to spend his evening here; he shouldn’t have to suffer insults and jibes by some obnoxious bohemian reeking of Nag Champa.

As he walked away, he might have heard the sound of soft laughter sending him off.

For exactly the next hour and thirty four minutes, he stewed on the conversation. He simmered and worked himself up to a boil as he pounded one beer after another, thinking of the rebuttals and insults he’d like to hurl Cressida’s way. How living in a big city didn’t make her the center of the world or the moral authority on anything. How a hipster haircut, an apparent disregard for bodily pain, and a professed disdain for social order didn’t make her more enlightened or worthy. She benefited from the system as much as anyone else.

He’d long since ceased to dwell on Madge’s absence, or even to note it. When Katniss approached him at a quarter to midnight and asked him how he was holding up, it didn’t cross his mind what she meant.

“Catnip, can I ask you a question?” He had to lean close to her and yell it over the din of the drunken crowd. His speech came out slightly slurred, a caricature of his normal voice. As he bent down and slung an arm across her shoulder, partially to prevent himself from falling over, he noticed a look of panic wash over her face. Her body tensed up as she made to step back from him.

“What the hell—Katniss, did you think I was going to kiss you?”

She stared up at him in horror, her mouth forming a silent “o,” her normally olive skin ashy and pale. “Yeah… I kind of did. I’m sorry… it’s just…”

Gale laughed and shook his head. “No, I wouldn't do that to Peet. Anyway, I wanted to ask you what you call Africa.”

He watched the frown lines form on Katniss’ forehead and through his drunken haze wondered what he’d said wrong, if she hadn’t understood the question. “Africa, Katniss. What do you call it?”

“Um... I guess I call it Africa? But, Gale, when you said you wouldn’t do that to—”

He rolled his eyes and squeezed her shoulder. “No, I mean, what do you call it?”

She shook her head, trying again. “A continent? So, Gale, back to what you said a second ago…”

“It’s a third world country, Katniss, that’s what it is. And Cressida over there,” he pointed without looking to the empty bar stool Cressida had long since vacated. “She called it… fuck… what did she call it again?” He pinched the bridge of his nose and looked around the crowded room, scanning it, desperate to ask her. “Forget it, Catnip. I gotta go ask Cressida.”

No matter where he looked or who he asked, he couldn’t find her. It was like she had never existed; she was simply gone. It was like she was dropped into his world for five minutes to screw with his head for all of time.

Ridiculous.

Finally he gave up and, pushing his way through the throng, escaped out of the sliding glass doors into Thom and Delly’s backyard. The night was cold, the air bracing, and in the silence he could finally hear himself think. Out here he felt halfway sober.  

After a moment, he heard the striking of a lighter and the deep inhalation of breath. He whirled around and saw Cressida’s silhouette backlit by the flickering Christmas lights. She leaned nonchalantly against a low brick wall, smoking a cigarette, the orange glow of it playfully illuminating her face.

Of course she’d be a smoker.

“Hey,” he said, sounding winded, like he was the one that had a pack-a-day habit.

“Hey yourself,” she replied. He closed his eyes and soaked up the sound of her voice, its low and soothing tone. His eyes snapped open when she continued to speak. He hadn’t expected her to say anything else to him. “You here to arrest me for smoking within fifteen feet of the building, officer?”

He was about to say something asshole-ish when he caught it—the mischievous expression in her eyes, the smile tugging at the corner of her lips.

“You’re fucking with me, aren’t you? You were fucking with me earlier, too.”

She laughed and nodded, taking a long draw from her cigarette. He wanted to take it and toss it on the ground, grind it beneath the heel of his boot. It was a filthy habit. He couldn’t stand it. He couldn’t stand her.

“I should be sorry,” she said, not sounding at all sorry. “It’s just… you’re easy to fuck with. I kind of like it.”

The words lodged in his gut, the way she said fuck binding him into knots, completely useless and prostrate at her feet.

“So the whole fascist pig, third world country stuff…”

“Well,” she admitted, “I did mean some of it, but you don’t seem like anything I couldn’t handle.”   

In that moment he knew, he absolutely knew without a doubt, that she could handle him, manage him, do whatever she wanted to or with him. It made no sense at all. She was completely wrong for him. And he was probably extremely drunk, but he knew she was something he wouldn’t regret, even if he came to hate her.

“Wanna grab a drink?” he asked, his voice the sound of metal scraping on metal, a pick axe striking solid rock.

She stubbed her cigarette out on the wall, flicking the butt carelessly into the neighbor’s shrubs, and walked toward him. He winced as he watched the butt fly through the air, biting his tongue from pointing out how rude it was to do that.

“I think that’s probably a terrible idea,” she whispered, reaching out and placing her palm on his chest. Her cold fingers felt like fire irons searing his flesh. “So… okay. Let’s.”

He grabbed her wrist, firmly but gently, and pulled her body flush against his. He couldn’t be sure if his mouth found hers or if her mouth found his, but before he could rationalize what was happening, their mouths were pressed harshly against each other, their tongues battling for dominance. He bit her lower lip, sucking it into his mouth to nurse it when she hissed in pain, her freezing hands winding their way beneath his shirt to warm themselves against the skin of his abdomen. The muscles of his stomach twitched in delicious agony, and he groaned into her mouth, wanting her. Wanting all of her, the beautiful and the ugly.  

As their mouths and hands danced, pulled, scratched, bit, tugged, the sound of cheers and whistles erupted from within the house. Noisemakers pealed in the new year, the voices of their friends drunkenly improvising the lyrics to Auld Lang Syne. Gale had forgotten all of them, everything but Cressida. The sum total of his world was in his grasp.

She was nothing he had ever wanted. And she was everything.