Chapter 3: One Cliché After Another


Katniss sprayed the disinfectant on the mat in front of her, wincing at the sharp smell of the chemicals. She had no idea what was in the solution she was using, but she did know that it was blue, it was strong, and it smelled terrible.

Her eyes drifted upwards, catching one of the cheesy phrases that was painted in big, bold letters across that part of the gym: IT ONLY SEEMS IMPOSSIBLE UNTIL IT'S DONE.

She frowned and had to internally scoff at the stupidity of the quote. Obviously the person who had chosen that little slogan had never tried raising a teenager on their own with a dismal income and no family around to help.

You're not here to judge the quotes on the wall. You're here to work, she reminded herself sternly. Those were the four words she'd repeated to herself throughout the years of raising her little sister with only the income of one shitty job after another: You're here to work.

Waitressing at the diner on third shift, making no tips. Temping as a file clerk and getting nothing but papercuts. Working nights picking up trash downtown at the bus stop. Painting curbs for the city in blistering heat. Customer service for a struggling cell phone company. The one thing all of her jobs had it common were that while they sucked, they paid the bills. And she had plenty of those.

She didn't get invested in her work, make friends with her coworkers, or do anything above whatever it took to make it to her next raise. She was there for a paycheck. Nothing else.

Reaching over, she hoisted herself up off the mats and stopped dead in front of the next machine. She didn't even know what the piece of equipment was called. The only thing she knew was that she could clearly make out the imprint of someone's sweaty butt cheek on the seat of the machine. She gagged softly before attacking it with a vengeance with the icky blue spray.

These people must really sweat a lot to need stuff this strong, she thought with a grimace. It burned the inside of her nose. Gross. Across the room, her best friend Gale cleared his throat.

Stop scowling, he mouthed to her. She took a deep breath (and coughed at the chemicals) and tried to put a pleasant look on her face. Gale had gotten her the job at the large gym where he worked and the least she could do was act like she appreciated it, even if her boss was the most irritating creature to ever grace the planet and every one of her coworkers were infuriatingly peppy. If she wasn't getting paid and getting a chance to do something physical she was certain she would have already quit.

Each morning an annoyingly large group of staffers had to gather in the main lobby, talk about silly goals for the day and clap for stupid accomplishments from the day before. Everything felt stupid and forced. Then they were to each grab a bottle of disinfectant that smelled like it would eat through lead paint and painstakingly wipe down every square inch of the gym.

Every. Square. Inch.

And there were a lot of those at Panem Fitness.

She sighed, trying her best to just be thankful she had a job. And did she ever need one. She'd stormed out of the customer service job after getting sworn at and completely berated by a customer on the other end of the line. The second she'd had the nerve to even try to defend herself from the abuse, she's been called down to her supervisor's office. It felt good to toss her headset at him and tell him to screw himself.

What didn't feel so good was going home and having to tell her little sister she'd quit another job.

She'd never forget the look in Prim's eyes when she muttered, "At least you didn't get fired again."

Of course Prim hadn't meant it that way. Her sister was good and sweet and pure and that was the main reason Katniss fought so hard to protect her. Maybe she hadn't made it in the world, but damn it, Prim would.

Heaving a sigh, she leaned against the solid steel frame of one of the machines and slid to the floor with a grunt. Not even eight in the morning and she was sweating from the effort it took to scrub the sweat off the god-blasted machines.

It had been a really sucky, awful year. Well, five years if she was keeping count. It had all started when her father and Gale's had been killed in an accident in the factory where they'd worked together for years. She and Gale had been friends since they were kids, but their fathers dying in the same accident had really made them grow closer. Not close like some people thought – their friends had teased them for years that they were 'meant to be'. She rolled her eyes at the thought. Gale was like an older brother to her and boy did he act like it. Always being protective, criticizing her dates, her car, her general life choices…no thank you. While she didn't want to date him, she'd been more than thankful to have him as a best friend. Both of their families had fallen into poverty after the deaths of their fathers and having a friend that understood what she was going through certainly helped things.

Having Gale as a friend had helped her through some of the darkest times of her life.

Her mother had turned to the bottle after her father died and just when Katniss thought their lives had hit rock bottom, she'd gotten the call. Their mother had driven her car into a telephone pole and died on impact. They'd buried her next to their father before grass had even grown on his grave.

It turned out she didn't even have a clue what rock bottom even looked like until that moment.

It had been one shitty job after another as she was thrown into what life was like as a parent to her younger sister, Prim. Stricken with grief, broke, and scrambling, she'd somehow gotten through the last five years. She's lived paycheck to paycheck and not a cent extra.

That had all changed when Gale called from work. When he'd offered her a job with steady hours and halfway decent pay, she'd taken it after one of the other trainers at Panem Fitness had suddenly quit. She supposed it wasn't too bad – she didn't work any nights, she didn't have to wear ridiculous nylons or her mother's old skirts, and she was at least moving around. She didn't really like working some weekends and having to actually talk to clients, but she wasn't in any position to be picky. At twenty four she knew her resume and her bank account couldn't handle any more gaps. She and Prim were two months behind on their rent of their house they were living in on the same exact day Gale had called her with a job offer. That was two months ago – since then she'd actually gotten them caught up on the bills and had already made at least a quarter of what Prim's school books for the year of nursing school would cost.

She had to keep this job – in the past year alone she'd worked at the cell phone place, the Starbucks, and just a year ago was the city job. None of those had worked out well. The past twelve months were the crème of the crop when it came to her shitty list of past jobs. Sure there were a few douche guys that came into the gym, but she had Gale to fight them off for her if she needed him to. She just had to make this work. She paused her work wiping down a stair machine and thought of Prim. Her little sister was nineteen and starting her second year of college. And unlike Katniss, Prim was determined to actually finish school.

Katniss sighed, tossing her towel over her shoulder and grabbing a fresh one. She sprayed down another machine she still didn't know the name of or much less how to use and tried to focus on her work. She'd dropped out of school after her dad's accident and put her Physical Therapy major on hold. That program required more than just the standard four years of school. What had she been thinking? At this point she'd be lucky to even finish her two year degree. Most of her time and energy went to paying the rent in their small house and making sure Prim got to school on time. She spent her evenings tending to their small garden (Hey, it was basically free food) and doing things like making anatomy flashcards to help Prim study. Her life was far from glamorous.

She had no social life and a job was a job – she felt like every sorry, woe-is-me cliché that ever existed.

Speaking of cliché, she thought with a grimace. One of her coworkers, Cato, was walking towards her with what looked like purpose in his step. She turned back to her work and prayed to God he wasn't coming over to try to initiate round two of their awkward relationship. Ulgh, she thought – she wouldn't even call it a relationship. She'd been bored when she first started, trapped in a cycle of self-pity and crying about the state of her life. She'd come in to pick up her first paycheck one Friday night after having a round of beers with Gale. Cato had just been ending his shift when he'd asked her out to dinner. Hungry and a little buzzed, she'd been just lonely and at a low enough point in her life she'd said yes.

Big mistake.

He'd been nice enough at first – a mixture of friendly, talkative, and only slightly boring with the sports chatter. Then he'd had a few drinks at the sports bar he'd taken her to and got a little too friendly.

"Is that Katniss Everdeen I see?" he drawled, walking cockily towards her mat she was wiping down. The smell of the cleaning solution was burning her nose and eyes as she debated how to handle this situation. Insult him and hope that he moved on? Or try to gracefully let him down easy?

She winced before looking up. "Hey…Cato. How's it...uh, going?"

"Dope," he answered in all seriousness, nodding to the quiet techno music that was already playing over the speakers. "What you up to later?"

Dope? She asked herself. Was that seriously a state of being? Ulgh….

"Uh…just working. Maybe going out with Gale later," she answered casually, pushing herself to a stand. Cato had inched steadily closer and as she stood she came almost eye to eye with his crotch. Awkward….

After attempting a somewhat sloppy goodnight kiss on their first date, he'd asked her out again. Shamefully, she'd been just low enough in life to say yes. She'd kicked herself as soon as Cato picked her up in his overly shiny car, the engine loud and tires squealing as he'd pulled away from her house. She was bored, she was lonely, and going out with him had been something to do – a decision she almost immediately regretted. Cato only cared about what he wore, how he looked, and oh – how she looked standing next to him. He'd informed her that he didn't normally date shorter girls, but she had 'great ass' so that made it alright. Katniss had rolled her eyes at him right there at the table. Then at dinner she'd nervously tossed back one too many glasses of wine and allowed him to take her back to his apartment. She was about to let herself have some shallow, meaningless sex (hey, it'd been awhile) with him…until the moment came. She called it fate, he'd called it a mixture of too many drinks at dinner and blamed it on the 'supplements' he was taking to help him get ripped, but he'd ultimately been unable to perform. Not that it mattered – she was pretty sure all the steroids he had to be taking to maintain his ripped, muscled physique had something to do with it. Katniss had breathed a sigh of relief before calling herself a cab and heading home. They hadn't worked the same shift recently so their run-ins had been sparse and awkward, to say the least. Cato had caught her in a moment of pity and rock-bottomness that she wasn't proud of and she couldn't help but feel like she'd dodged a bullet of some sort or another. A bullet marked 'Poor choices' or 'Pity party', perhaps.

"Yeah he uh…said you guys were good buddies. I kinda hit him up earlier."

She put her hand on her hip and frowned. "Hit him up for what… exactly?"

Cato gave her a smirk. A pretty cocky smirk in fact, for a guy who couldn't even get it up and pretty much only talked about himself on their dates.

"Advice. On how to get you to go out with me again."

"Gale," she muttered darkly, shaking her head. "Son of a bitch."

"What?"

"Uh, nothing, just…you asked him for advice on how to get me to go out with you again? Cato…we kinda…did that and it didn't go so well."

He shrugged, maintaining his casual stance. "I'd had a few too many cocktails that night. Whatever, right? Just think it over, holler at me when you know when you wanna hang next. Later," he mumbled before striding away.

Katniss groaned internally and tossed the rag down onto the mat. "What I ever saw in that…"

She needed to focus and just show up, do her work, and go home. It was stupid to date coworkers and she knew that going into the fling with Cato. However, her loneliness and the fact that her life was completely stalled at the moment had driven her to make a choice she wouldn't normally make in a million years. She just needed to get Prim through nursing school and then get herself back into PT school. Easier said than done. Her eyes flicked up to see the cheesy quote on the wall and it just seemed to mock her now.

IT ONLY SEEMS IMPOSSIBLE UNTIL IT'S DONE.

Jesus, she swore, kneeling to scrub at the mat. Don't let Cato or the stupid wall ruin your day. Come on, Katniss, you're here to work. You're here to work. You're here….ulgh. You're at work.

Just as she'd refocused and committed herself to having a better attitude, her boss, Seneca Crane, stuck his head out of his office.

"Katniss! Kat, I need to talk to you. Will you come to my office please?"

She rolled her eyes at the floor (ignoring his nickname for her) before looking up in his direction with a fake smile. "Be right there Mr. Crane."

Hoisting herself to a stand, she tossed the rag into the hamper in the hall and tried to not drag her feet as she walked into her boss's office. It was a place she dreaded, and for several reasons. It was a small room with a clear glass window overlooking the main gym, but her boss had it so decorated with tacky pictures of scantily clad women adorned in workout gear and weird poses to show off their muscles. It reeked of sweat and protein powder and cheap Axe body spray.

"Thank you Kat, please…have a seat."

"It's Katniss," she said dryly, plopping down on the chair. "I don't go by 'Kat'."

"Never?" he looked up in surprise.

She shook her head.

"No."

His plastic-looking smile faltered slightly before he corrected it.

"It's such a great nickname though! Really? You never went by Kat?"

Her boss smirked a little as he ran his hand through his freshly washed hair. It looked somehow still wet from his shower but greasy all the same – she wasn't sure she wanted to know how he achieved that look. Sighing, she leaned forward and tried to look like she had the faintest interest in why he'd called her in there that morning. Maybe if I look like a give a single fuck about what he has to say he'll say it quickly, she silently hoped. Mr. Crane took a deep breath and leaned back in his squeaky desk chair. She kept her eyes straight forward to avoid having to look at any of the pictures of women who looked like they had zero body fat who had twisted themselves into awkwardly posed photos.

"Never," she said firmly.

"So inflexible! Sheesh…" He made a face and let his chair squeak as he bounced backwards against the back of it. "That's part of the reason I called you in here today, Katniss," he said, emphasizing her name. "Gale is a good employee. Customers liked him, I like him, he's good with the divorcees that come in, he's fit….so when he told me he had a friend that I might want to hire…. I took his word for it. But…."

She clenched her fists around her knees and nodded. "Right….okay," she said, because what else could she say? This didn't sound promising.

This sounded like the end of her job at Panem Fitness.

Shit.


Guys, where to even begin? Your support for this story has reminded me all over again why I love this fandom. So many of you have reached out to me (I'm behind on responding! eek!) and told me your personal stories or shared your goals with me and that is just so amazing. I think everyone has struggled with body image (myself included) and I hope that I can portray that in my writing. I will try to make this as real as I can and share Peeta's journey with you. I am so pumped for this fic! Your thoughts and comments and favorites have been so inspiring.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart! 3