"I want to be held and told my name. I want to be values in ways that I am not; I want to be more than valuable."
Madge wished she had a pencil and paper to write him a letter; though, if she did, she doubted she was brave enough to write down even half her thoughts. She didn't trust him the way he apparently trusted her. What was she supposed to do with his trust? What the hell was she supposed to do with him, sitting patiently at the foot of the bed, gazing at the place in the wall where she imagined a window? She hardly recognized him. Perhaps it was his swollen nose and bruised eyes, or the absence of a scowl, or maybe her perception was the only thing that had changed.
"Does it hurt?" she said.
Gale snapped out of his daydream of the woods and tore his eyes from the imaginary window. Madge hadn't spoken in nearly an hour. "Does what hurt?"
She tapped her nose. Oh right, that. It hadn't hurt until she reminded him. "Not really," he lied. "Nice punch, though. You're the first person who's managed to break my nose." And others had tried.
Madge flushed red-hot with guilt. "It wasn't exactly a fair attack," she said, looking down at her lap.
"Are you trying to apologize?" said Gale, a teasing lilt to his voice.
"Yes," said Madge, taking him by surprise. That was all she needed to say. A thousand letters couldn't more effectively sum up how she felt than a three-letter word and the sincerity of her clear blue eyes. This time, Gale looked away first.
"I deserved it," he muttered.
"No," said Madge. "I mean, yeah, there've been times when you did deserve it, but not today. Besides, I've said some things to you over the years that were worthy of a punch in the face."
Silently, Gale agreed. He recalled a few of those things she'd said. Undersee wasn't above striking below the belt. Then again, he drove her to it. He realized that, basically, he'd been hitting himself for the past eleven years.
Another stretch of heavy silence spanned between them. Madge smoothed the wrinkles from her skirt, gathered her voice, and spoke. "I don't know how this-" blushing, she fluttered her hand nervously at the bed, "-normally works. I know the mechanics, obviously. What I mean is...it's okay. I'm okay. It doesn't...really hurt much anymore."
Gale winced at how wrong this scene was. The more she talked, the worse he felt; listening took more effort than offering to die. "I wish I could be less miserable," she said. "I don't know how, though. Besides, what I want doesn't matter. I can't have it."
Madge slumped against the wall, exhausted. She wanted to be treated like a person, not a factory part, not an empty vessel, to be used and filled. She craved affection, the illusion of choice, of love. Forget the real thing. She accepted that love did not exist in this room, with Gale, with any child they might make.
"Come on, Undersee," he said. She noticed he was standing now only when he stepped towards her. "This isn't going to work, unless you tell me what-"
"Madge," she blurted. "I want you to call me Madge."
Gale waited for more. Nothing happened. "That's it?" he said.
"No, I want…" She couldn't finish. What she wanted was too embarrassing, too frivolous. He'd only laugh at her, like always. But maybe not. After all, compared to execution, her request wasn't much. She looked to her feet and whispered, "I want to be wanted."
Gale barely heard her. He wished he hadn't. Her muted sorrow cut more deeply than any teary outburst. It wasn't like her to whisper, to be ashamed, and vulnerable. He didn't feel at all like laughing. Somehow, to Madge, the silence was worse. She picked at the hem of her skirt and filled the void in a slightly louder rush. "I want you to treat me like the girls you take to the Slag Heap."
"No," he said, prepared to do almost anything, but not that. Her face crumpled and he
realized the refusal had come out harsher than he intended. "I'm sorry. I can't do that. You're not…" He paused, thinking now about what he wanted. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, holding her ankles, a loose curl falling in a blonde spiral across her forehead, she looked like a work of art in a world where art wasn't allowed to exist. To say he'd never had a dirty dream about the mayor's daughter would be a big, fat lie.
Gale crouched down in front of her. He took her hand and pried her fingers loose from their fist. "I do want you," he said, tracing the lines of her smooth palm with his calloused thumb.
"Don't lie," she said, jerking away.
He caught her hand again before she could tuck it away. "I'm not." With an uncomfortable jolt, he realized that she didn't have a clue how beautiful she was. Physically, he couldn't help but want her.
"You're not a slag heap girl," he said. Even in his wildest dreams, he'd never taken her there, because even in his wildest dreams, he knew she could never be just a random hook-up. "I can do better than that."
"How?" she asked, a hint of distrust showing at the quirked corner of her lips.
Keeping hold of her hand, Gale stood. "It'll be easier to show you than tell you."
Madge tipped her head back to look at him again. The tenderness of his expression, so foreign to her, was unsettling in the way it made her heart lurch. "Okay," she said, letting him pull her to her feet.
Madge reached under her skirt to slip off her underwear, as she had the past three nights. "Not yet," said Gale. She let her hands drop to her sides. If he took one more step, there'd be no space between them. She fought her instinct to back away as he trailed his fingers down her arms, barely touching her, his breath stirring her hair. When he reached her wrists, his hands retraced their path upwards, to her shoulders, her neck, under chin. He tilted her head until her eyes met his.
"Can I kiss you?"
Madge nodded. Kissing, she supposed, was part of how this normally worked. She closed her eyes, kept her lips tightly pressed, and waited. Nothing happened. Then Gale's hands fell away.
"Have you ever kissed anyone?" he asked.
Madge opened his eyes and found that he'd retreated, almost like he was afraid. A few hours ago, he faced death without a second thought, and now a kiss had him shaking in his boots. Not literally, of course. He stood just as tall and firm as ever, only his voice, and his eyes, gave him away. Seeing that he was nervous made her less so.
"I'm not that inexperienced," she said.
Gale quirked an eyebrow. "Who've you kissed, then?"
"It's none of your business."
"I'll tell you who I've been with."
"We don't have that long," she said, crossing her arms. If this was his idea of doing better, then the rumors about him must be highly exaggerated. But then he flashed that fatal Hawthorne smirk, the one she'd seen him use on other girls, reducing them to dopey-eyed puddles of lovesick adolescence. She'd always scoffed at those girls.
"True," he said, shrugging. Just like that, Madge melted.
"Peeta's brother," she said. "We had a thing, but it never got serious. It was weird, really. I always felt a little like I was kissing my own brother." She realized she was babbling, but couldn't stop. "I mean, not really. That's what it'd feel like to kiss Peeta, so kissing Rye felt like kissing my brother's brother, which is still weird, but not quite as-"
Gale closed the gap between them in one stride. He cupped her face in both hands. "Madge?" he said seriously.
"What?"
"You're cute when you babble."
Then he kissed her. There was nothing brotherly about it.
From the first kiss, everything fell into place. Gale cleared his head of the world outside this room, everything that wasn't Madge. He kissed her softly once, twice, on the third, she uncrossed her arms. His thumb grazed across her bottom lip. He kissed one closed eyelid, and then the other, as his hands slid to her hips.
When she began to kiss back, Gale wrapped his arms around her, and pulled her close to better gauge her responses, how her body tensed at something new and gradually relaxed. Patience came surprisingly easy. This was new for him too. The girls he hooked with were fleeting, a temporary catharsis, gone tomorrow. But Undersee...for better or worse, she was a fixed point in his life. He didn't know her well; he knew her better than anyone else he'd been with.
Swept up in the kissing, Madge didn't realize she was on the bed until she felt Gale fumbling with the bottom button of her shirt. Panic struck. She opened her eyes and pushed against his chest. "No," she said, furiously shaking her head. "No, I don't want-"
"Okay," said Gale, holding up his hands. Too much, too soon. He craved the feel of her skin against his, but quickly reminded himself that this wasn't about him.
"I'm sorry," said Madge. "I'm just not ready for-"
"It's okay," he said again, leaning in, letting his lips hover just above hers. "You don't have to apologize for anything." Oddly, he was content with just kissing her. It was strange, a little awkward, a little...wonderful.
Kissing, however, wasn't what that Capitol required, and one way or another, the Capitol always got what it wanted. Gale waited until Madge was good and distracted, before he dared slip his hands under her shirt, keeping below her ribs. He nudged his knee between her legs and rocked against her, easing her into the motion.
Her breathing grew heavy. He felt her heart pounding against his chest. She began to hesitantly match his movements, each push and pull hiking her skirt a little further up her stomach. The heat of him between her legs was unexplainably satisfying. She felt him harden, and instead of terror, a spark of curiosity spread a strange and tingling warmth through her body. She whimpered, the sound vibrating around his tongue.
Gale broke the kiss and buried his face against her shoulder, panting against her neck, startled by how that little sound affected him. Keep it together, Hawthorne. It was hopeless. He couldn't hold out much longer. The battle was lost.
"Madge," he groaned, her name muffled and apologetic. They couldn't afford any accidents now. They'd spent too much time talking. "I need to-"
She couldn't speak to tell him not to apologize, it's okay, so she wriggled her arm out from between them and brushed her fingertips across the back of his neck.