Disclaimer: I'm just playing with Suzanne Collins' characters and her world. They're hers. Not mine.

The Talk, pt 6, or Wishful Reading

"Is it supposed to be this thin?" Rory opened one of the condoms, was waving it around his head like a flag.

"Put that down!" Gale growled. What if Posy or his mother came in? He'd already had to lie to his sister when she found a wayward package one of them had left out. She'd started crying, thought it was candy and her brothers were holding out on her.

"Why aren't you sharing?" Her little voice had quivered.

Gale ended up promising her a treat from the sweet shop for her silence about the 'boy candy', though when he'd have any extra money for it he didn't know.

"Posy's asleep already and mom's conked out too," Rory assured him. He stretched the condom out. He has a pile of the retched things at the foot of his bed.

Vick was immersed in one of his books. Gale was fairly certain the boy had seen more vaginas and breasts than some doctors, definitely more than the doctors in District Twelve.

"Gale, what's foreplay?"

To Gale's great annoyance, Rory starts snickering. "Haven't you figured out Gale's not very suave with women, Vick?"

Gale hurled his pillow at him.

Why does he have to such a pain in the ass?

"Touchy." Rory smirked, dodging the pillow. "Or maybe not. Might be the problem."

Gale sits up, ready to tackle his brother, go dunk him in the water barrel out back, when Vick pipes up again.

"It says that foreplay can help prepare the sexual organs for intercourse and in some increase arousal and enjoyment." He nods, "It can include the digital or oral stimulation of er-og-en-ous zones."

He looks to Gale, gagging, "Oral I know, but what's it mean 'digital'?"

For a minute Gale just stares, why does he need to explain this?

"Digit," Rory wiggles his fingers for emphasis.

Vick looks down at his hands, then to his book, then to Gale, his expression one of a boy who has just given up trying to understand why people do any of the things they do.

"You put your fingers…"

Gale quickly nods, glad he hadn't had to elaborate.

Vick groans, "Okay, a penis I understand, there's a reason. And it's not really that hard…I don't think." He sighs, "The mouth thing is disgusting, I don't understand it, but okay, whatever, I guess it wouldn't hurt anyone." He wrinkles his nose, "But fingers. Those are hard, and you have nails on them, stuff can get under them and you-ugh!"

Gale just grunts.

"They can do things with their hands too, can't they Gale?" Rory wags his eyebrows as he makes a lewd gesture. If Gale had another pillow he'd smother him with it.

Vick eyes Gale warily, glances down to his hands, then back up, "You wash your hands real good after don't you?"

Flopping back down, Gale doesn't even answer. He really doesn't want his brother thinking about where his hands may have been.

It's quiet for a few minutes, Gale hopes maybe they've moved on then he hears Vick drop his book to his lap, "Gale, when you put your fingers in, can you feel the cervix?"

He doesn't know what a cervix even is. He doesn't even lift his face from the bed.

"No Vick."

"Are you sure? It says depending on the point in the cycle it might feel like the 'tip of a nose' or lips." He squints at the book, Gale doesn't even want to know what at, then whispers, "They're like the Kraken in there."

He's silent, then, "Huh, if you insert two fingers you can, uh, palp-it-ate, palipate, palpate the ovaries…ow."

Rory frowns, "Why would you want to."

"It's a wellness check. It says they take swabs too." Vick's nose wrinkles. "Being a girl is rough."

Being your brother is rough.

"Hey Gale, do you use lub-ric-a-tion?"

"N-What?"

Vick jabs the book, "It says before intercourse you should make sure to either use lub-ric-a-tion or that your partner is suff-sufficiently aroused and has produced vaginal secretions or intercourse could be painful." He gives Gale a hard look, "You said it didn't hurt them."

"God, Gale, what kind of asshole are you?" Rory shakes his head in mock indignation, "Going in dry."

Gale sits up, "Where the hell did you learn that?"

Not from him, that's for sure.

Rory shrugs, "Bristol and Thom."

I need new friends.

"Vick, they-they're-it's-urg!" He crushes his face back into the mattress. Maybe he'll suffocate during the night.

"Maybe if you were better at foreplay…" Rory whispers, just barely keeping from laughing.

Gale rolled his head a little, glared at his brother. He was excellent at foreplay. He was a foreplay expert. He hadn't had one complaint, thank you very much.

Rory bounces over and skims over Vick's book. "Flirtatious talk and provocative clothing can be used during precoital activities." He grins, "Well, I'm in with Undersee then."

Not even in your dreams.

"What makes you say that?" Gale needs a good laugh.

Rory's mouth evens out into a cocky smirk. "She says hi to me at school and she's nicer to me than she is to you." He raises his eyebrows, "And she wears that pretty purple bra, always lets the shoulder fall just below her sleeve."

Gale snorts, "The straps fall down you idiot."

Rory shrugs, "Whatever. It's definitely provocative."

For a boy who'd been lusting over a nudie magazine for the past several hours, Gale found it a little funny that a bra strap was 'provocative' for Rory.

"I like her peach colored one better," Vick says. "It kinda," he takes his hands and mimes pushing his chest up, "and then she has this little line right in the middle…"

"It's called cleavage," Rory tells him, a little superiorly. "I heard some girls at school saying Gale has a real thing for it."

Gale narrows his eyes. He did, but he wasn't going to discuss it. Not with his increasingly nosey brothers.

Rory flings himself back onto his bed and Gale resumes pressing his own face into his mattress.

"So, which of Undersee's bras is your favorite, Gale?"

He looks up. Rory is trying and failing to look innocent, but he's baiting him.

"Come on, Vick and I said, your turn."

Huffing, Gale pushes his face down into the mattress, refusing to join in.

Gale could remember at least ten different colors, all the straps too loose, prone to falling down. Why she didn't fix them was a mystery, but he enjoyed the little flashes. He was particularly fond of the one with lacey straps, it did wonders for her bust line. She wore it during the summer, under tank tops…

He shook his head. He didn't need to be imagining Madge or her bras.

"I bet she has matching sets, her dad has the money." Rory smirks over at a very confused looking Vick.

"Matching? Aren't both sides the same?"

Rory huffs, "Don't be stupid, of course both sides are the same. I mean her bras probably match her panties."

Gale groans, he doesn't need the thought of Madge in matching bra and panties rattling around in his brain. Visions of her with that lacey bra and a pair of equally shear panties would only lead to a long, restless night.

Vick's mouth forms a little 'o' as he ponders Madge's undergarments. His face deepens in color and Gale wonders if his brother's imagination is as good as his own. Judging by the little grin that forms on Vick's face, his guess is yes.

Rory reaches under his pillow and produces several new magazines. Didn't Thom have better things to waste his hard earned money on?

"I bet she looks good in one of these."

He flops on his stomach, throwing the magazine open. Despite his mind furiously telling him not to, Gale gets ups and walks over to see what fresh hell Rory is about to unleash on him.

The magazine is turned to a voluptuous platinum blonde with wide doe eyes and a pout on her cherry lips. She's wearing some kind of bizarre Capitol contraption, black, with straps and fasteners, frills and lace woven in.

He doesn't understand those people, all that crap would just get in the way in his mind.

Rory doesn't seem to think so, though, just stares, transfixed by the image. Gale doesn't want to even imagine what's running through his mind.

"What a waste of money," Gale mutters, rolling his eyes at his brother. The only thing he can see as appealing about the black getup would be taking it off.

Rory's eyebrows rise and he smirks up at him. "If you had a girl with a body like that, that looked at you like that, you'd buy one." He looks fondly down at the girl, "If Madge Undersee would wear one, I'd buy her it in every color."

You couldn't afford even one.

"It's part of the foreplay, Gale. I guess you wouldn't understand."

Gale smacks him on the back of the head.

Vick pulls one of the other magazines out and begins flipping through it. He stops on a page with a redhead, in an alluring, pink shear bra. Gale can quite clearly see her nipples through the material.

"I like this one. It's pretty." Vick gives the page a bright look. "Rory's one looks uncomfortable."

Gale decides Vick's taste in women's underwear is much simpler, much closer to his own.

Vick pulls the image closer, "But why is there a cut in the pan-" He lowers it shaking his head, "Nevermind, I get it."

Thank god.

Gale takes one of the magazines. It's older than he expects, clearly well used, which is a little concerning, he wonders where Thom got it and how filthy it is.

The girls, he realizes, aren't Capitol models, though they could've been with a little effort. The magazines must be pretty old then. Those weren't cheap, not that he'd know, he'd just been with Thom when he was bartering with some Peacekeepers over some once. Or twice.

Whoever had owned it clearly had a preference, busty blondes in light colors or nothing at all. The pages were worn noticeably. He doesn't blame the guy, they're all very attractive.

"Look, carpet matches the drapes," Rory jabs at one of the photos. One of the few women with any hair on her.

Vick frowns, "Did they make all of them shave?"

They must've, aside from the one Rory had found, which only had a sparse amount, none of the women had even the smallest amount of hair. They were tantalizingly smooth.

"Or waxed them," Rory offers. "One of the guys at school said they do that sometimes."

Vick cringes. He glances down at the magazine, then up to Gale. "Do Town girls shave?"

Gale closes his eyes. He hates to admit to having been a couple of Town girls slum moment, but clearly his brothers already know it had happened. When he opens his eyes both boys are looking at him, expectantly.

"Uh, one did and the other didn't." There, that was enough of an explanation.

Vick nods, "I wonder if Madge does…"

Gale briefly envisions Madge in the shower, then in a tub brimming with bubbles, her lips cherry red and pouting, maybe biting the lower one between her teeth, as she concentrates on shaving her legs. His hand tingles with the thought of the pale, smooth skin gliding under his palm.

He needs to get a handle on his imagination.

His brothers and their interest in female anatomy, lingerie, and body hair were definitely going to make many more long nights for him.

His poor mother, three boys with very painfully active imaginations, no wonder she was so good with laundry.

"She has such light hair, it probably wouldn't matter," Rory says as he cranes his neck up and examines Gale's find. His eyebrows arch up, "Ole Haymitch really has a type, huh?"

Gale freezes, immediately drops the magazine. "What?"

He looks at his hands. He begins praying he hadn't really just been thumbing through Haymitch Abernathy's nasty old magazines. They need to boil water, they need every caustic material they can get their hands on, they're going to have to burn every surface those magazines touched…

"That dirty old bastard gave you these?"

After the hell he'd put Gale through, he went and encouraged this crap in a couple of little boys? He was getting his ass kicked.

Rory jabs the paper, "No. We found them in his bathroom when we were helping mom."

"You stole them!" He isn't sure if he's relieved Haymitch wasn't handing out his surely disgusting magazines or irritated his brother's equally disgusting mind led him to swipe them.

"We're gonna take them back," Vick tells him.

Rory nods, "He has so many, he'll never notice a few gone for just a few days." He shrugs, "Besides, he's been so busy training he doesn't have time to appreciate them right now."

"Appreciate them?"

"Yeah," Rory curls his hand, swings his wrist, "appreciate them."

That's a mental image Gale never knew he didn't need. Haymitch, alone, in his bathroom, with nude pictures. Hastily, he tries to pull the image of Madge bathing back. Better to be a pervert than to have that nightmare cycling through his mind for weeks to come.

Gale walks back to his bed, grabbing his pillow from the floor. He flops onto his thin mattress and covers his head.

After several minutes, something makes a snapping noise and Vick yelps.

"Stop playing with that!"

The condom Rory had been stretching earlier, and had apparently begun doing again, had snapped, flown across the bed, and hit Vick. He didn't seem hurt, just irritated.

"Stop yelling!"

"I would if you weren't such a jerk!"

"You're a jerk!"

"No you are!"

Gale had only just sat up, about to put an end to their shouting match, when, to his horror, his mother sleepily walks in.

"What is going-"

Her sleepy eye widen when she takes in the scene.

Rory still has part of the condom in his hand, is stretching it in preparation to shoot it at Vick who has got the bit of condom that had hit him raised above his head, possibly to throw at Rory.

Gale is simply sitting, half way up, on his bed, a dumbfounded look on his face. His only relief coming from the fact that apparently his brothers had put the nudie magazine away already.

His mother sighs, "Why…"

Her eyes close and she shakes her head. Maybe she doesn't want to know.

She walks over to Rory's bed and pick up one of the condoms, her face darkening in color as she reads the words 'Razzle Dazzle Raspberry'.

Finally, she narrows her eyes at her sons. "This explains why Posy kept asking about 'boy candy'."

Damn it.

"Gale…"

"Yeah," Rory crosses his arms in mock disappointment. "Gale."

"Rory, be quiet." She drops the wrapper, looking a little disgusted. "Gale, there are some things a mother just doesn't need to know, and this is one of them."

He opens his mouth to tell her he hadn't so much as grazed past a girl in months, since before his whipping, but ends up saying, "That crazy housekeeper pushed them on me!"

She gives him an unimpressed look, "And why did you keep them?"

He frowns at her. Gale had considered tossing the condoms, but part of him wondered if he could find an alternate use for them and another, small, very small, hormonally frustrated part of him liked to be wishful of their potential.

His mouth flaps uselessly, no words come out in his defense.

She sighs, "Just, oh, put them somewhere Posy can't get to. I won't be the one explaining them to her if she gets her hands on them again."

After that Gale had taken every last one of the flavored terrors out of the room and hidden them under a loose board in the shed. He, rather sadly, didn't foresee any need for them, and Rory was not going to reach an age when he could use them if he didn't stop being such a pain in the ass.