AN: This is my first time writing a Hunger Games story using pre-existing characters, so please be kind! Thank you so much for reading, please review if you feel obliged! :)
PS: Thank you all for the wonderful reviews and favorites! I've never gotten so many reviews in my life and it makes me feel quite humbled! I'm glad you all have enjoyed this and I hope to write more soon to entertain you. If you have any suggestions for future fics, please let me know!
"I had to do that. At least once."
I stood there with my mouth open, two fingertips touching my lower lip, staring at the fence ahead of me. I was stupefied, completely taken aback. Of all the surprises that had been thrown at me in recent memory, this one took the cake. My nose tingled with the scent of fresh oranges, which was so potent that it still lingered in the air around me. I seemed to be able to process everything except that which had just happened to me.
His lips were warm. Full. Soft. I would have recognized them anywhere, but to feel them was something else entirely. My ears were so full of the sound of my quickly-beating heart that I didn't hear him treading through the grass as he walked away, and I only realized he had left when I turned to talk to him and he wasn't there.
He was about to duck under the fence when I summoned my courage and called his name. "Gale!"
I noticed his hesitation; he lingered at the fence for a few quiet seconds before standing up and turning to look at me. I swallowed and had to remind myself that this was Gale, my Gale, and I shouldn't feel so intimidated by him.
"Gale," I said in a much softer voice, akin to the whisper with which I had first told him my name not too many years before. Sometimes, it was hard to shake the feeling that everything I did was on camera. But here, in the woods beyond the district fence, we were safe. We were alone. We were free. There were no miniscule cameras hidden in trees, no Gamemakers waiting for the perfect moment to send fireballs hurdling towards us, no bloodthirsty mutts who would come rushing through the woods at any second.
I was his, and he was mine. There was no need to put on an act.
He finally made his way over to me, and I looked up at him, our gray eyes meeting. I could feel the heat rise in my cheeks and I pursed my lips as we stood there in silence. Say something, Katniss. You always manage to say something. So why not now?
He was the one who wound up speaking first. "If I ruined your—"
"Shh," I cut him off, putting my left hand up. "You didn't ruin anything. There's nothing to ruin…Not…" It hit me then that he was talking about Peeta. He was talking about the boy I'm supposedly in love with, the one who came out of nowhere, who has imposed on Gale's territory. I'm not blind. I can tell that Gale's sour attitude is largely due to his demoted role as my "cousin". I wouldn't like it either, if I had to watch him kiss another girl over and over, professing his love for her to the whole world. Even if it were just for the sake of appearances, it would be hard to stomach. And hard to convince me that he didn't feel otherwise.
He scoffed and folded his arms over his chest. "No? You don't have to keep the act up anymore, Katniss. You both got out of the arena, wasn't that good enough? Or does he want more?" He let out a short, halfhearted laugh. "Should I be watching for an engagement ring on that finger, then?" He motioned toward the hand I had in the air.
His words hurt, but I knew I needed to hear them. I would rather listen to him take out his anger on me than watch him silently fume for the rest of our limited time together. I waited for him to go on, to throw more guilt in my face, to make me further regret the direction my life had taken since that fateful last Reaping Day.
"I can do you a favor," he mumbled, looking at his feet and then looking back at my face. "I'll forget about that kiss. Since I know that's what you want to do. You have someone else, and you don't want things to get complicated. I understand. You aren't a very complicated girl, Katniss. If things go your way, you're happy. If they don't, you make damn sure that they do. So tell me what you want."
As he stood there, waiting for my answer, I had to try to collect my thoughts. All this time, it had been about what the Capitol wanted, what Snow wanted, what the audience wanted – never, not once, had it been about me. I was a pawn. My desires and my feelings were insignificant; I served one purpose and one alone, and that was to keep up an image. A completely false image that painted me as a love-struck teenager who was desperate (stupid?) enough to risk my life for the boy I held so dear.
They had it all wrong. Had it been Gale instead of Peeta, we never would have done such a thing. We wouldn't have had to fake anything for the cameras. I wouldn't have been so anxious in my own skin, paranoid of all the eyes constantly watching my every move. I could have been myself rather than some foreign, sugarcoated shade of a girl who did not resemble me at all. But they had peeled away every layer of my own being and I had no choice but to do their bidding.
"I…" It was hard to even get a single word out, because I had learned the importance of choosing my words carefully. Now was no different. I may have been with Gale, but this was as crucial a moment to me as any other. "I want things back to the way they were…Maybe not as…not as miserable, in Twelve, but…"
He watched me as I took a deep breath and licked my dry lips. They still tasted like him, and I knew that wouldn't fade for days, if not weeks. Maybe it would never go away. Maybe Gale's taste, his scent, his being, would always linger on me whether I wanted it to or not. Whether my eager audience wanted it to or not. And suddenly, I didn't care.
"But?" he prodded me in a much softer voice, and the intensity was gone from his steely eyes. As I looked at his face again, I felt much more at ease. It was only Gale. My Gale. I had nothing to be afraid of.
"But I want to be with you," I finally managed to get out. As the words left my mouth, it felt as though some great burden had released itself from my body. It left and dissolved in the air around me, and before I knew it I was pressed against Gale, my arms wrapped around his neck, pressing into the ground with my tiptoes. There was no hesitation as I crushed my lips to his and we shared a slow, tender kiss. His strong hands pulled me even closer and I got a little nervous as I felt my hiccups start to come back, but when he kissed me again, I forgot all about them.
There would be no forgetting this, not tomorrow, not years from now. I could only hope that he would realize that those feigned kisses with Peeta were nothing compared to this. With Gale, there was passion and trust and freedom, and it was real. So very real. We had lost ourselves in our tangle of kisses and tugs and little pulls here and there, and by time we gave ourselves room to breathe, ten minutes must have passed. Far from the most innocent of kisses, true, but it gave me a sense of stability, something I had been lacking lately. It gave me hope that not everything was going to change for the worst.
As we started to head to the fence, leaving our sacred forest behind until the next blissful Sunday arrived, Gale chuckled quietly to himself. I could feel the color rise to my cheeks and I was concerned that I had something on my face, or that I had given him a little too much tongue, even though I had only let slip a tiny bit. Honest.
"What?" I asked after he crawled through the fence and stood on the other side, holding up the damaged wire for me so that I could get through more easily.
"You're smiling, that's all," he replied with a handsome grin.
And it's true. The only time I smile is when I'm with him.