Johanna was sitting beside Peeta, who was working in the garden. Katniss and Gale were off in the woods and they were keeping each other company, talking about anything they could think of and Johanna handing Peeta things when he asked for them. She knew better than to risk messing up his garden. It was starting to get chilly, so he was preparing some of the plants for the cooler temperatures.

"Oddly enough, there's been lots of requests for the spiced cakes already, which usually doesn't happen until it really starts to get cold."

"Have you started making them then?"

"Not yet! If if make them too early there won't be enough time between when I stopped selling them and when I started making them. If I have them too often they're not special anymore, and it's not a seasonal treat anymore." Peeta explained as he started digging a new hole with his trowel.

"That's true," Johanna replied. "…you could still make them for me, though." Johanna loved the spice cakes Peeta made.

Peeta chuckled. "Listen Jo, just because you live here now does not mean you get to request my seasonal items whenever you want."

"…how about peanut butter cookies?"

"Okay, that I can do for you. I promised Effie peanut butter pie for dinner tonight, so I'll already have the peanut butter out."

"Fucking thank you. District 2 has shitty peanut butter cookies. Gale said they were fine and kept getting them for me. He has no taste, I swear. They were always too hard and tasted like… burnt cardboard."

"Maybe mine are just exemplary," Peeta teased, brushing his hands off on his jeans.

Johanna laughed. He probably wasn't wrong.

The careless footfalls of someone who had just spent too long being quiet in the woods sounded behind them and they turned around to see Katniss, tucking a stray piece of hair behind their ear.

"Heads up, he found a dog." Katniss said to Johanna, before leaning over to press a kiss to Peeta's cheek.

"A-a dog?" Johanna questioned.

"Yes," Katniss replied simply, before entering her house.

Peeta and Johanna made eye contact and Peeta shrugged.

Seconds later, Gale emerged from the tree line, holding a brown mass to his chest.

Johanna stood to greet him, arms crossed over her chest loosely. "What is that?" She asked as Gale came close enough.

"A puppy," Gale replied simply.

It didn't look like a puppy, not really. It was brown and black, filthy, scrawny, and its fur stuck out in odd places. Its golden eyes were half-lidded.

"Why?" She asked.

"It's hurt. We found- it's mother is dead. They got caught in a trap… not ours but I took this little fella. I'm gonna fix him up and find him a home. But we're not keeping it."

"Nope," Johanna agreed.

Gale nodded as he walked towards their house.

"So, it's a girl." Gale said, plopping a damp puppy onto a towel he put in front of a heater vent. The dog looked a little more alert than it had. Gale had given it some meat and gave it a bath, as well as bandaging the pup's wound on it's leg. The dog curled up into itself.

Johanna hummed indifferently, not looking away from the show she was watching.

"She's pretty cute now that she's all clean. Think she's got some German Shepherd in her if she isn't a full one." Gale added, scratching the dog behind the ears.

"But we aren't keeping it." Johanna reminded.

"No, we are not." Gale agreed, sitting besides her on the couch.

"You're keeping it,"

Johanna snorted into her hand at Katniss' words. The little dog followed Gale around like her life depended on it. He was clearly smitten with the little creature, but he still was adamant that they were not keeping it. He was lying to himself at this point, and everyone knew it, but Johanna was willing to see how far he would go before cracking. Truthfully, Johanna didn't mind the pup around as much as she thought she would, but damn if she was going to let Gale know that. It had been weeks and at this point, she just thought it was funny.

"He still says we're not,"

Katniss rolled her eyes. "What's he call it?"

"He calls it Cricket when he thinks I can't hear him."

"What an idiot," Katniss crossed her legs. "We're going to that new pet store tomorrow."

"Alright,"

Gale opened the front door to the house and was greeted by the sight of the scraggly little pup he rescued from the woods with a red plastic bone in her mouth and a teal collar with purple and green stripes around her neck. Her tail was wagging and she jumped up at him happily.

"Hey you," he greeted the dog as he scooped her off the ground. A green identification tag hung off the collar that read 'Cricket'. "What's all this, huh?"

Johanna walked in from the kitchen. "You're not as slick as you think you are, Hawthorne. You love this little fucker and we both know you never once looked for anyone to take her."

He rubbed his neck awkwardly. He had been caught.

"You're damn lucky she's cute." Truthfully, little Cricket had been keeping her company during the day for weeks. The dog liked to cuddle and loved attention. Johanna had fallen in love with her as well.

"So, we're keeping her?"

"I wouldn't have gotten all this crap for her if we weren't." Johanna replied, stepping over to pet the dog. Cricket dropped the bone from her mouth. She had more toys in a box under the window and an honest-to-goodness bed beside the couch that she'd grow into as she got bigger and a leash that matched her collar hung in the closet. She and Katniss had gotten a little excited with buying things for her.

Gale smiled. He looked like a child in that moment, eyes shining with joy.

Johanna smiled back at him and Cricket liked his face, making him laugh. The dog squirmed and he put her down and she clumsily ran over to her new stash of toys and pulled out a rope and threw herself on the ground and started chewing on it.

Gale took that moment to pull Johanna close to him and kiss her. So maybe this wasn't how they thought their family was going to work originally, but that was fine by him. He had always wanted a dog.