Day Four - Broken Heater
Daddy. Madge relives the moment over and over in head. She actually called Gale Daddy. In front of his siblings. Kill me now.
She dreads having to face him again the next morning, but she womans up and marches into the office anyway.
"Why would they think you're a pervert?" Gale asks, clearly befuddled, when Madge apologises to him.
Madge blushes, because of course the Hawthornes didn't know she meant it that way. To them, it had been funny, not dirty. If she just pretended it never happened, Gale would have thought no more of it; but by bringing it up again today, she just humiliated herself. Again.
"Oh." Gale's cheeks redden too. "Did you mean Daddy as in not the parental kind of Daddy?"
"No!" Madge blusters. "Obviously not. I just thought maybe you might have thought that. I don't know what you guys mean half the time; savage means brilliant and cat means awful. It's so hard to keep track of it all. I just wanted to make sure I hadn't said the wrong thing."
"No, there's nothing perverted about calling somebody Daddy here," Gale assures her.
"Alright. Good." She flees her desk for a little while, hides out in the kitchenette until her face has cooled down and her cheeks have returned to their normal colour.
When she goes back to her desk, Gale has apparently forgotten all about their last conversation, or has decided to change the subject. "Did you have a nice night, last night?"
Madge appreciates the effort, even if it's an unpleasant reminder of yet another thing that was going wrong in her life. "Not really. The radiator in my bedroom broke down and it's going to take a while before they can repair it. I'm freezing."
"That's too bad," Gale says sympathetically. "Don't you have a hot water bottle?"
"It's not enough for me. I'm always cold," she tells him. "Not everyone's body is blazing hot like yours."
God! What is wrong with her? First Daddy, now this?
But Gale is unperturbed. In fact, he's grinning at her in a way that makes her heart melt. Among other things. "Why don't I come round to yours tonight, then?" he suggests. "I think I have the solution to your problem."
Madge's brain stops working. Was Gale really inviting himself over to her place? "You can fix my radiator?" she asks, to make sure she's not just misunderstanding him.
"No. But I can help. It won't be as good, but it'll warm you up just the same." He winks.
Her mouth hangs open. She has to be dreaming. She has to be. But the next moment she's typing her address into Gale's phone and handing it back to him.
"Deadly," he says, his face lighting up in recognition when he checks her address.
"So did I tell you about the gift we got our mam?" Gale asks. "We almost couldn't get it home. It's massive."
By this time, however, Madge is barely listening. And as she watches Gale put his phone back in his pocket, her mind wanders to other things that could, potentially, be massive.
Later, when her doorbell rings, Madge nearly jumps out of her skin.
"Coming!" she calls out. Immediately, she winces.
Madge gives herself one last look in the mirror before answering the door. The oversized sweater she's wearing keeps falling off her shoulder, but that's exactly why she put it on in the first place.
"Hey, you," she greets him. Gale's not in his office clothes anymore, and he looks so ruggedly handsome that Madge can already feel the temperature in her flat skyrocketing. Merry Christmas to me.
Gale grins, and for a moment Madge is so captivated that she doesn't remember to invite him in. "So… can I come inside?" he asks.
Madge giggles nervously. "A little presumptuous now, aren't we?"
His smile wavers. "Er…"
Her face flames, and soon her entire body is on fire. "Of course, of course," she says, ushering him in. Get your mind out of the gutter, Undersee.
What next? It's been awhile since the last time Madge had a guy over like this. "Can I offer you anything to drink? Some tea, maybe?"
"I'd love a cuppa, but I can't stay long," Gale tells her. "I promised Katniss I'd help her pick out a gift for Peeta."
Madge frowns, confused. Why would he make any other plans tonight? "But you said—"
For the first time, she registers the box sitting by his feet. "Oh."
It's a portable space heater.
She should have known. She would have known, if she'd been thinking with her brain instead of her lady parts.
"It's an old one of mine," he says, oblivious to her disappointment. "It'll keep you warm until they fix your heater."
"I… thank you," Madge says lamely. On one hand, she does need a heater, and it was terribly kind of Gale to lug one all the way from the Northside. On the other hand…
She pastes a bright smile onto her face. "This is great."
It was massive, all right.
A massive failure.