a/n; This has been staring at me on my computer for a long time, and then it was negated by everything I had to do in life, and now it's back! So. Yay writing. I've missed this place. Sometimes I unintentionally fall of the face of the earth and float in space for a while, and that's my problem. Happy St. Patrick's Day.

I'm still going to work on Sweet Heart (and something will come out of me eventually), but this just happened to be a side project that became a tad gigantic, and a build up of unfinished things are detrimental to my motivation. Since this is just nearly completed, I'll be posting chapters up frequently. Happy reading.

truth or dare: one - the game

Town kids have always been the more annoying of the two demographics of District Twelve. Not that Gale doesn't have any bias against them already (getting into meaningless fights over wealth and pride and everything that could ever spark a conflict between them never left him with a good impression to begin with). But, that notwithstanding, the lot of them always came off having too much time on their hands. That extra time usually led to stupid, meaningless extracurricular activities.

Gale takes note of a few whispers one day, during a boring lecture in the school classroom. It starts with a group of boys gaggling towards the back of the room, their voices soft enough to slide under the teacher's notice at the front. Gale sneaks a look behind him, watching one boy gesture to another, while the other one wads up a single piece of paper. He chucks it at a girl nearly half the room away from him. It miraculously hits her in the middle of her golden head. She squeaks so loud, every one turns to look at her. The boys in the back stifle their laughter behind closed fists.

"Melanie!"

The girl squeaks again, a flush rising with vigorous abandon across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose, and before she can get out a single word, she resembles a ripe, summer strawberry.

"I'm s-sorry, Mrs. Schultz. I didn't mean – "

"A disruption of class means five minutes off your lunch break."

"But I – "

"No excuses, Melanie."

Mrs. Schultz falls back into her long-winded tale of the history of coal mining, coal manufacturing, coal-related everything, while Melanie slumps, crosses her arms, and looks close to tears. Gale assumes she hears the boys' laughter, because she turns to look back at them, glaring when they begin to laugh harder.

Gale's not sure what he finds more amusing – the fact that Melanie is so utterly embarrassed about being called out in class (there always seems to be more shame in being called out than being upset over the lost chunk of time for eating) or that the boys find so much humor in throwing a balled up piece of paper at a girl. They've probably never kissed one.

When the time comes for lunch, Gale takes his time leaving the classroom. Melanie shrinks further into her plastic chair, avoiding eye contact with everyone except the group of tormenting boys, her stare following them past her and out the door.

Gale stops by her desk as he walks down the aisle, squatting down to pick up the pencil carelessly shoved by her elbow during her moment of flustered astonishment.

"You dropped this," he says to her, and she jumps, turning to face him. Her freckles pop against the immediate blush that rises on her cheeks.

"O-oh, Gale. Thank you." She reaches out with her fingers, taking the proffered item. Gale smiles, conscious to make it crooked and sure. He notices her swallow.

"Anytime, Melanie."

He turns to go, and he hears her sigh behind him. He grins to himself. He's just started coming into his own with the girls around the district, and while he's always had an interest in the female population, he's only begun to clumsily grasp the handhold for his reputation. Curious and emboldened, he decides to swivel back around.

"Listen," he starts. "About those other guys…"

"Oh." She shakes her head, embarrassment already rushing up her neck and into her face, again, for the third time. "They were just playing a game they made up."

Gale takes a step closer. "A game?"

"They call it Truth or Dare," she says, the distaste curling her lips into a sneer. She crosses her arms in defiance, but Gale doesn't have to ask her to explain. "They make a group to play it. Then the person who starts asks someone if they want to answer a truth or do a dare. Whoever doesn't go through with it loses." She wrinkles her nose at her explanation. "It doesn't matter how the person answers the truth or how they do the dare. It's stupid."

Gale thinks about it. The idea was a definite evolved step up from seeing how far they could spit wads of paper from their mouths or putting glue on the chairs before class started. It's still immature and foolhardy, but he'd be disappointed in the town kids if it wasn't.

"Yeah…" he answers. "It is stupid."

He's then shuttled out of the classroom by the teacher, lips pursed like she'd been sucking on a lemon all day. He catches a smile from Melanie before he gets through the door, and he decides she's pretty when she isn't so flustered. He'll have to keep that in mind.

First, however, he's going to find Katniss.

Katniss Everdeen isn't a fun person. She's withdrawn, austere, and her skin would give him all kinds of cuts if he handled her wrong. Not that Gale can talk much – he's far from unicorns and rainbows, himself. But she is a fearsome, vicious thing, and her braids don't soften any of those sharp corners. He's bumped into them a few (several) times, and she hasn't gotten less rigid over the past two years.

So, he figures, why not?

"Have you heard about that new game at school?" he asks her on their next hunting day.

"Truth or dare? Yeah," she says. "It seems pointless."

"Pointless?"

"A lot of guys in my class have hurt themselves doing stupid things."

Gale laughs at that. "I didn't expect any less from them."

She looks over to him. "Why are you asking?"

"Curious," he says, by way of answer. "Have you not tried it?"

Her look becomes annoyed and disbelieving. She scoffs out her reply, tone on the precipice of exhausted and irritated.

"No."

"Want to?"

"Are you kidding?"

He shrugs. "When do I ever kid with you? So, truth or dare?"

"This is stupid," she persists.

Two can be persistent. He's too amused at her easy aggravation. "Truth or dare?"

It takes a minute before her annoyance ebbs away, the quick fire of her temper to come around and settle back. She's not unpredictable, but when the shield of irritation falls, Katniss nearly smiles. Her lips don't twitch, but her eyes gain a clear glint. It's about as equivalent to a smile that he gets. She's never been one to back down from a challenge, and he takes pride in the fact that he guessed correctly.

"Okay. Fine." She regards him. "Dare."

Dare. It almost sounds like a victory. He glances around at the stems of the trees, then to the drop-off in front of them and the enticing valleys in the distance. There's nothing immediate that comes to mind – from what he's seen from her, she's decent at all the things they do. It's been nearly two years since he's begun to hunt with her, but all he knows of her is her skill at killing things and climbing up trees to...kill more things.

Their progression with one another is a slow kind of freight train. Ever since he caught her that day with his snares, they've been going through the motions, growing accustomed to each other because – just because.

Growing accustomed. He holds back a laugh. It's closer to forced toleration. He's not even sure why they still hang around with one another, hunting together when they can do it perfectly by themselves. He's pinned it down to both of them exploiting their talents more than any other convenience they've found. It's easier living when there are four hands and eyes and legs than only two, and he's fully in favor of it.

And she's so uptight, he thinks. He wouldn't call the time they spend together calming, or great, or nice. Often times, it's like he's all by himself in the forest, tracking and killing. They handle themselves with care, the silence between them a threaded and adopted cushion.

He's just a little used to her, now. If, for some reason, they decided to call it quits and never hunt together again, he wouldn't care less.

"I dare you to…" he struggles for a moment. "Smile."

"Smile?"

"Yeah," he shrugs. "You're what, fourteen? What fourteen year olds never smile?"

She leans back, the motion so slight in how she shifts. He sees her defenses rise up against him.

"Who cares? You never smiled."

"Sure I did," he answers, not quite sure if it's truthful. It was a hard time two years ago, and there's nothing nice to dwell on. "You never saw them because you weren't looking for them."

She opens her mouth, but she hesitates. He's suddenly very curious in what she has to say; her face is fully guarded in the moment she stops herself.

"I might not have been looking for them, but I would have seen them."

She's got a lot of conviction in her voice, and he can't tell if it's because she's defensive, or if she's being honest. She does tend to get mad all the time, yet she claims that girls are dramatic, picky, and unnecessary with what they need. It doesn't matter what she claims – she's as much a girl as every other one of them. She's already as prickly as they come. He shudders to think what she'll be like once she gets all hormonal.

"Whatever you say," he says, letting her off. "So, smile."

"No."

"You'll risk losing on the first try?"

"Lose?" she splutters. "You can lose in this game?"

"C'mon, Katniss, it wouldn't be a game if no one lost."

"This is so dumb," she mutters under her breath, the shadows the sun cast on her skin like darkening clouds.

Then, miraculously, she straightens, pushing back her shoulders all prim and proper, like some kind of regal queen, and she quirks her lips up in the most unspectacular show of happiness Gale has ever seen.

He scoffs loudly. "You call that a smile?"

Her whole face twists into an angry frown. "It's a smile and you know it."

"Maybe I should have specified that you have to actually show your teeth."

"But you didn't," she says, flicking her words at him. "Not my fault you weren't thinking ahead."

"Okay, miss priss, you don't have to get mad about smiling, of all things."

She grimaces at him. "I'm not mad. I'm not prissy, either."

He raises his eyebrows. "Yeah, you are."

"No, I'm not."

"I'm only being honest."

"How do you get prissy from me just not liking to smile? You don't smile!"

He stares at her as she crosses her arms, huffing. It's so entertaining, watching her lightly sulk, eyes throwing daggers into the ground in front of her.

He sighs after a minute or two, realizing she won't talk if he doesn't. "Alright, let's drop it. It's your turn."

"I hate this game. Why are we playing it?"

"Catnip, we haven't gotten through one round, yet."

She reigns in another thing she was about to say. She's complained about the nickname at a constant rate over their time together, with no precursor of stopping. He loves riling her up with it. She glares. "Truth or dare," she demands without inflection.

He fears what she'll tell him to do if he picks dare. "Truth."

She frowns one more time at the answer. Even her face is prickly as she stares in front of her, as if looking for the question to appear in the trees. Then she turns her eyes to him, glancing at his hands before glancing at his face, then his boots.

"Why are we doing this?"

He quirks his face at her. Was she serious? No, he takes that back. She's always serious.

"Okay, we don't have to play this game if you really hate it so much – "

"No," she says, cutting off his sarcasm. "I mean, this," she says, and gestures between them. "Hunting. Meeting up and doing this together."

Her thought process is so similar to his that it startles him. He straightens a little in his seat.

"You mean, you don't enjoy my company?"

She stares at him, unaffected by his dry humor. "Give me one good reason."

"It's obvious," he says, answering her like he's answered himself. "Protecting our families. The food both of us bring in is more than we could ever do by ourselves."

"I don't need you. I could feed Prim and my mom fine, by myself."

He pauses. "I'm sure you could."

"But you need me, don't you? How could your family survive without my help?"

A sudden burst of anger balls up inside his throat. She couldn't be more wrong. He doesn't need her. He'd be fine without her extra hands, without her shadow always a few steps behind his own. She's a menace more than anything, her mood always sour, infecting him with her robotic words and stiff arrows like a nasty disease.

"We were fine before you came into this forest. You're the one who followed me around like some lost dog."

She physically bristles. "I'd never seen a snare before."

"That's why you followed? Because of a snare?" He barks a laugh.

"You never told me to leave."

He cuts off his laugh, and he looks at her. A wave of compulsion takes over him, and he wants to be as careless with her as he can. Being a girl stopped him from doing it before, but gender hardly matters, especially with a girl like her.

"You don't think I tried to get you to leave? You were like some annoying bug, always buzzing around me. You were so loud. You scared away all the game for weeks. The times we went to the Hob, I purposely gave you bad tips because I wanted you to give up on what you were doing. I let you trade for ridiculous things, and I didn't correct you. I made sure the bad customers treated you like shit and the good ones treated you like shit. That's how much I wanted you to quit."

She blinks at him, looking neither hurt nor surprised. She doesn't care. But why would she?

"I caught onto that later," she answers. "I didn't like you then. I still don't like you."

That makes him angrier. "I've never liked you, either."

Toleration. Yeah, that's it. It's never been harder to look at her, but she continues to look at him, and his pride keeps him from breaking the stare.

"So, what's your real answer?" she asks.

"What I said was my real answer," he growls back. "You're good with a bow. That's all that matters. If you get Reaped, it won't be any kind of loss. I'll be here, taking care of my family." He stops, thinking back to something. "I never told you to stay with me. You know, I never told you to do anything. So I guess you should be asking yourself instead of me."

There's a long silence, but it's nothing like the cushion they've slowly crafted between them. It's rough, hard, and grating.

"You're good with snares," she says, finally. "That's all that matters."

He almost thinks she's joking with how she mimics his answer, but her voice is flat and her face is devoid of anything conspicuous.

"You don't have to show up, tomorrow."

"You don't have to show up, tomorrow."

It's all true, he thinks, once they go their separate ways at the day's end. He's good with snares. She's good at the bow – and climbing trees. A handful of useful things. He never told her to leave, and she never asked if she could stay.

And neither of them has to show up at the same spot at the same time. They don't have to exist to each other. All it'll take is some ignoring, some avoiding, and some apathy. That's easy.

But Gale arrives at the same time, at the same spot, and Katniss does, too. Neither speaks a word.

Their mid-day break arrives, eventually, like it does every day. Everything's been the same, flawless and emotionless like it had been before their quasi-argument.

"Truth or dare?" he begins, disregarding her obvious, don't talk to me look of disdain.

She kicks at a rock, and it surprises him when she doesn't huff or sigh or verbalize her displeasure at the question. He can see it plainly on her face, and that's better than nothing. If she didn't seem slightly sour, he'd feel compelled to ask her what was wrong.

"Truth."

"Why'd you show up?"

She crosses her arms tighter around chest. "Why'd you show up?"

Two years. He sighs tiredly. They're not ever going to get any further than where they've gotten if she crosses her arms and sneers and never answers any of the questions he asks. She can't even play the game right. But that's fine. He doesn't care. She can be grotesquely un-fun and terrible at rules all she wants.

"I don't know."

She glances at him, and she might be gauging his sincerity. She might not. She might be thinking of his head popping off or his heart stopping. He's given up on trying to discern what kinds of things dart through a mind like hers.

"I came because you're good with snares," she says. "You're not nice. We aren't friends. But…we have families."

Then she shocks him all over again by smiling some pitiful, skeleton smile. It's a lot better than the day before, and it actually holds a handful of emotion in it. Granted, it's still unimpressive, and the state it's in needs some serious renovation work. But Gale feels it like a punch in his jaw.

It's pretty.

The thought sprints through his mind without his permission. It's true, sort of. It's only a novelty because he's never seen it in the light of day.

"Then let's go take care of our families," he says, forgoing to smile back. She immediately reverts to her soul-sucking self, face sterilized of emotion as if it was a simple switch. She doesn't seem to be bothered by his lack of companionship, and he has to hold back the riptide of indignation that washes through him.

It isn't his fault she acts like a fucking machine all the time.

After that, truth or dare becomes a natural occurrence between them.

"Dare."

Nine times out of ten, she chooses dare. His creativity started lacking after the sixth or seventh dare - mostly because there wasn't much for him to get her to do. And if there was something he decided, and she didn't like it, he'd say it wouldn't be fun if she liked it, and then it'd devolve into a weird stalemate where they wouldn't talk to each other. Or, more accurately, where she wouldn't talk to him. Katniss gets dramatic, and it's different because it isn't an angry dramatic, like he'd expected it to be. It's more of a sulky dramatic, and he's not sure if she does it on purpose. A lot of the things she does come off brazenly nonchalant or hilariously oblivious.

"Climb to that branch," he says, pointing to a precariously thin branch stretching high into the air.

She follows his finger, glancing at it with a bored expression.

"Another tree branch?" she says.

"After you shot those three deer in a week, I figured I'd give you a break."

Watching her go through with that dare (which was half to make her fail and half to see if she'd take the challenge seriously), he decided she meant business when she deemed his dares worthy. It also wasn't a good idea to scare the deer population so much, so he kept the hunting challenges back for a while.

"Fine," she sighs, already beginning to climb the tree. She pulls herself up with fluid motions, bending and twisting her way from level to level. Her clothes snag against the bark on occasion, but those are her only missteps. She could pass as a forest creature if she wanted to, living among the leaves like a flightless bird. Then all at once, she's ten, fifteen, twenty feet above him, if not higher, and she straddles the branch that he indicated. It bends significantly under her weight.

"Done," she says, breath coming out of her easy. "Your turn. Truth or dare?"

He leans against the boulder behind him, crossing his arms over his chest. He likes to pick truths more than dares, because she's not nearly as good choosing questions to ask him as she is at thinking of things he isn't nearly as confident in doing. (He's not as good with the bow, as she loves to shove in his face all the time by daring him to do things she knows he can't, and he isn't as great a climber as she is). He also isn't a diva about backing down like she can be (he once dared her to be nice to him for a day, and she boggled that one so terribly she spent the day complaining about it, instead). He didn't even give her that hard a time about it, since she made it so easy for him to make fun of her.

He contemplates for a moment, then figures, what could she possibly make him do that she hasn't done already? "Dare."

There's a sheen that envelopes her eyes whenever he answers that way. He calls it her eye smile - otherwise known as the only smile she makes in public. Besides the skeleton smile she graced him with a couple weeks ago, this is the only other smile she gives up more than once.

She's quiet for a few seconds. "Come up here with me."

He gives an automatic scoff. "Are you kidding? If I touch that branch, it'll snap."

"No, it won't," she disagrees, running a fingertip along the wood. "You won't be able to make it half-way up the tree, anyway."

There it is - the edge of challenge and the hint of mockery. Gale grimaces as he pushes off the boulder, making his way toward the tree.

"Fine," he says, wrapping his arms around the lowest branch and heaving himself up on it. "When the branch breaks and you end up breaking a leg, it'll be your fault."

"It won't be my fault because you won't make it."

He can't help but think she might be right. He watched her make her crazy maneuvers to get up the tree - but he won't tell her that.

"Oh, I'll make it," he says, inching his way further along. "You're gonna eat your words, Catnip."

"Save it for when you don't fall."

He peers up at her through the leaves, and her stare is from such a height that it gives off a hefty amount of condescension from the angle. He huffs, grabbing onto the next branch. This never got as easy as she made it look.

He almost slips all of four times on skinny, sturdy branches, and it takes him a lot longer than it took her, but when he finally makes it to the last branch beside her feet, he grins triumphantly, and he tries to hide all his heavy breathing.

"Ruined your hopes, didn't I?" he says brightly.

"You haven't made it all the way, yet."

He gives her a look. "Oh, come on. This proves I could get on your branch if I wanted to. Isn't that enough?"

"No."

As serious as ever. He rubs at his forehead in frustration.

"It's gonna break."

"Is this your way of forfeiting?" she asks, voice edging toward victorious.

He grits his teeth at her tone. He knew the dare was a bad idea. But...

He glances down, the ground a smaller square in his view. He can't tell how high they are - twenty feet? Twenty-five, thirty? He's never been a fan of heights, but the sight of it spikes a sudden adrenaline through him. He brings his head up and catches Katniss' eye. As crazy as it is, he enjoys this. He really enjoys this.

"I don't forfeit," Gale says, the conviction high in his words. "Move."

She complies reluctantly, giving him just enough room to swing himself onto the branch. The branch bounces, then bows in a dangerous arc when he settles, straddling it like she does and facing her. Their eye level is off as her body bobs with the tree, and she's two heads shorter than him on the decline.

Her glare is a flatline. He tries to cherish it while combating the need to get the hell off the branch.

"Satisfied?" he asks.

She scoffs by way of answer, and he hears the vital sounds of snapping. She doesn't seem worried about it; in fact, she seems more irritated with him than concerned about their situation.

He glances down at the forest floor. "Maybe we should get off."

Her lips purse. "Whoever gets off first loses."

He can hardly believe her. "It's a game, Katniss. We could both get seriously injured."

The branch moans a little longer, and both their bodies sink further. "If you're so worried, get off."

"I'll get off when you get off."

"I'm not getting off."

"Look, we can both get off together. It'll be a tie."

She seems affronted. "I don't want a tie."

They lose another centimeter. Gale starts to panic.

"Okay, fine. I dare you to get off the branch."

"You didn't ask me first."

His fingers tighten around the rough edges of bark. "Shit, Katniss. Truth or dare?"

"Hm," she says. "Truth."

He can feel his blood pressure rising. He hisses, "You are the stupidest - " crack "- most reckless girl - " snap "- hell, you're worse than the town kids - "

Then, of course, the branch breaks completely.

All his words disappear as he falls forward, catching Katniss' brief look of surprise as she slips back. This is all her fault. Bull-headed, stubborn, reckless, stupid, uncaring, dramatic, robotic, and every other negative descriptive word he can imagine.

She's right in front of him as they fall, and he reaches out. He clumsily grips her forearm, and he attempts to yank her around. They move around awkwardly, him doing his best to spin around in front of her before they hit the ground.

It's the fastest and longest moment of his life. He lands flat on his back, his lungs collapsing for a handful of precious seconds. Katniss' weight is not helping matters. She thankfully gets off before he spends too much time struggling to breathe.

"Damn it," he wheezes, his lungs clumsily handling the air he manages to suck in. His eyes swirl with the vision of green leaves and brown branches like spiderwebs and gauzy strings.

Katniss' shadow appears above him. "Are you okay?"

The difficulty breathing stops him from snapping something snarky at her. "Fine."

He's lucky he didn't land on any stray rocks. He feels around him sightlessly and feels only grass, dirt, and stray twigs. He manages to push himself up, leaning heavily on his right palm, and he coughs the air back into him.

"You didn't have to do that," Katniss says, peering down at him.

Gale glances up to where they had fallen from. The branch is still dangling by a slight piece of fibrous wood, like a loose thread on a shirt. He's probably going to have a bruise spanning the entirety of his back. It's going to be a bitch walking around.

"Maybe not," he says. "But I'm a gentleman."

She doesn't seem amused by his answer, though there is a triumphant glow to her.

"I guess that means I win," she says smugly.

He looks up to her. "What?"

"You hit the ground first," she gestures. "That means I win."

What was he expecting? Gratitude? His face quirks, her reaction and his lingering pain mixing into an outburst of laughter. Once he starts, he can't stop. He just laughs and laughs, and at her increasingly bemused face, he laughs some more.

"What is so funny?" she asks.

He pushes himself up, using leverage from his knees. "That," he says, in between chuckles. "Is that last time I help you."

"Help me?" she says indignantly. "I would've landed the same way with or without you. You're the one who hurt yourself by trying to be heroic."

Definitely an impulsive judgment on his part, and a bad one at that. "Yeah," he mutters. "You're right. You win, fair and square, Catnip. I lose. Game over." He begins to walk around, his body protesting the action.

Katniss blinks at him. "You're going to lose, just like that?"

He glances over to her, surprised at her surprise. "I touched the ground first. Rules are rules." Not like he's going to win against her, ever, with her level of crazy being so high.

"Oh," she says quietly. "Well, we can keep playing. We could play in...rounds, until someone wins or loses. I win this round, but we can keep going until someone wins two out of three."

He stops walking around. Was she trying to be nice?

Looking over at her, he can't care to hide his suspicion. Something was up. Or he was looking too far into it. Knowing her, she just wanted to keep besting him and rub it in his face every chance she could get.

"No," he says. "We don't need to. We'll start up a new one, anyway. You win today," he says, then he grins. "But I'll win tomorrow."

At this, the eye smile comes back. She flicks her braid over her shoulder.

"I don't think so," she says haughtily. "I'll beat you like I did today."

He ardently wishes he could bring her smug countenance down a notch or two. She is begging to get her ass kicked, and Gale thinks he can if he stops being so soft with his dares.

She'll see.

"Whatever, Catnip," he says, adding a derisive punch to his words. "I've been going easy on you."

"Easy on me?" she glares. "I have a hard time believing you."

"Believe what you want."

Her eyes follow him. "You can't scare me, you know."

"I'm not trying to. I'm being honest."

They don't fall into much conversation for the rest of their time in the forest, but he feels like he's being dissected with her silver eyes, glinting like scalpels. He makes sure to smirk at her to keep her unsettled.