Gale. I'm with Gale.

Johanna told herself as Gale peppered her neck with kisses. His hands found the ridges of her hips and came to rest there.

She tightened her lower body, and he misinterpreted her movements as increasing arousal. He lowered his hands down her thighs and brought his lips to her mouth again. It felt so good, and she hoped she could fight off the impulse to push him away.

But he shifted a little too fast, taking hold of her hips again and pulling her close to him with a forceful motion of his arms. She started to shake but refused to cry, looking wide-eyed over his shoulder at the door.

But he knew.

"Need a minute?" he asked breathlessly as he loosened his embrace.

"Yeah, but I didn't want to push you away," she admitted reluctantly.

"But you can tell me if you need a break." He didn't know what else to call it.

"Next time I'll try to tell you," she said as she got lost in his sympathetic gray-flecked eyes.

Yes, I'm with Gale. She reassured herself. He tries so hard to be understanding even though it doesn't come naturally to him.

Gale once naively believed he could help Johanna heal her anxieties fully and quickly. Now he'd accepted that her difficulties were a long-term challenge, but sometimes when she threw her arms out and pushed him away he wondered how many more times he could endure the rejection. Gale liked fixing things, but he couldn't fix Johanna. When in the heat of the moment she looked at him fearfully as if she didn't even know him, an unmanageable sadness seized him. He felt compelled to hold her and tell her how much he loved her. Oddly, they didn't say "I love you" often, but they always said it then. And Gale knew that he did love her, but he hadn't expected that love to be mingled with so much hurt for him. Then again, when had love not been mingled with hurt in his life? He wondered if love worked that way for everyone.

None of this is her fault. He told himself.

While Gale was caught up in his thoughts Johanna vacillated between nudging closer to him and inching away. Discouraged, she finally wrapped her arms around her upper body and slowly rubbed her left upper arm with her thumb. She could feel the pressure but not the way she was supposed to feel it. The sensation was muted. Dissatisfied with the results of this simple test of her ability to feel Johanna rubbed her arm again, this time for comfort.

To Gale it looked like Johanna was covering herself so he couldn't see her.

"Tell me what happened just now. I want to stop doing things that make you feel like that."

"I can't talk about it, Gale." Johanna said, holding herself tighter.

"Not even with me?"

"Especially not with you," she said. Johanna felt dizzy and wished he'd stop asking questions.

"Don't you trust me?" Gale continued, knowing it was a stupid question as soon as he asked it. Of course she didn't. If she trusted him she'd have told him the answers to his questions already.

"Yes. But to explain what happened just now I'd have to tell you the details of what happened to me back then, and I'm not sure you'll be glad you know the details once you do. I'll never stop thinking about the fact that you know them either. I don't want that between us."

Gale took a breath so deep that it made his whole upper body rise.

"Johanna, I know I'm not a gentle man…" he sighed.

"Stop. Don't do that to yourself. You didn't do anything wrong," she interrupted. "Besides, I'm not a gentle woman."

She grinned, but Gale couldn't be dissuaded from continuing.

"So, I don't remind you? Is that what you are saying?"

"Almost anything can remind me sometimes. Coffee. Cologne. The color white. Looking straight up at the ceiling."

Gale swallowed hard. A year ago his rage against the Capitol and her attackers at this moment would have been uncontrollable. But now he was thinking of her and what it would be like to go through life constantly reminded of how sadistic people can be. Suddenly all he wanted to do was show her how loving he could be to counteract the effect.

He looked down at her arms where they were wrapped tightly around her.

"I don't know what you want me to do," he admitted.

"Gale, what I want you to do right now and what I can handle you doing are two entirely different matters."

Gale was glad that he was not looking at her. If he were she wouldn't open up like this, and Gale knew enough to know that holding pain inside you only makes it grow.

He asked again, a different way. "What is something I do that bothers you? You don't have to tell me exactly why it does."

Johanna was not sure if she should answer, but he seemed so sincere in wanting to avoid whatever disturbed her that she decided telling him some things was worth the risk of humiliation, rejection, and increased anxiety.

Gale felt her slump onto his shoulder, her mouth now close to his ear.

"Don't tangle our legs in a way that makes it hard for me to move them, and don't lift my arms up and over my head. I think those two things bother me the most."

She trembled again, and he brought his arms up and wrapped them around hers. As an afterthought he reached down and pulled the sheet up too so he could cover her up if that's what she wanted.

"I could live without doing either of those things for the rest of our lives, Johanna."

He lightly draped the sheet over her, and she took it in her fingers and held it in place. Gale noticed that she made sure to keep him inside the sheet with her. She was hiding herself from the world, not from him.

"What else?" he asked.

She lowered her head.

"Gale."

"Please, Johanna. I can't stand it when you look at me like I'm one of them. Help me be the opposite of them."

A familiar pain shot through his chest. He was already haunted by the probably of being responsible for the deaths of children by creating that weapon, and he didn't want hurting Johanna weighing on his conscience too.

Johanna was struck by the magnitude of his fears even though he'd admitted only a small portion of them out loud.

"You are not, nor will you ever be, like them," she said with unmistakable intensity.

Her eyes softened as she watched the relief he felt relax the small muscles of his handsome face. She grazed his cheek with her soft lips. The innocent gesture felt disproportionately sensual to Gale. Johanna unfurled her arms and placed her hands on his thighs. Not wanting to upset her again, Gale tried to stifle the hissing breath he took as she squeezed his thighs firmly.

"No, that's okay. I like hearing that," she said as she kneaded his muscles with her hands.

Gale blinked his eyes closed and let out a long sigh ending in a little groan. Everything she did turned him on. Just the thought of her turned him on.

…"I need to…feel more in control sometimes," Johanna explained. "Let me…let me do this for you today. Then maybe I can let you do it back."

He opened his eyes again and stared into hers, nodding his head.

"I think that would feel really good actually."

Gale had never imagined that he'd ever be willing to take things so slowly. Johanna had never thought she'd need so much reassurance, but together they'd managed to accommodate each other so far.

Johanna smiled a shy smile that Gale didn't even know she was capable of smiling. Johanna? Shy?

Then he suddenly thought of something.

"Say my name," he blurted out.

She tilted her head curiously, still smiling.

"Now?"

"Whenever. Whenever you think of somebody other than me or someplace other than right here then you can say my name. I'll answer you, and that'll help you remember I'm here."

"I like that idea." She said softly. "But you might get tired of hearing your name."

Johanna realized the tragedy of that statement too late, so she added, "It won't be this way forever. I promise. It's gotten so much better already."

She paused, deep in thought for a moment. "Thank you for understanding. For loving me and wanting me anyway."

Gale struggled to look up at her as the ache for her slowly built.

"Huh?"

Johanna grinned. "Just something somebody* told me once when I thought nobody could ever love me again. They said, 'any man worth anything will understand…He'll still love you and want you.' I'm so glad that you're the man proving that to me, Gale. Thank you."

(*the "somebody" was Peeta - who said this to Johanna in another story I've written - "Dead by Morning" - in the chapter called "Shame")