Disclaimer: All stories are individuals of themselves and are unrelated to each other.

Gale has poured his glass of wine and is just getting ready to lower himself into his recliner when he hears the door burst open.

There's a loud sigh and a frustrated jangle of keys before the door slams shut again. Leaving his glass of wine on the coffee table in the living room Gale races toward the front door, ready to fend off an intruder, when he stops in the walkway.

"Thought you had a date tonight?" Gale asks, finding Madge with her head resting backwards against the door and her eyes tightly closed. They snap open at his words and he inches backwards. "I'll take it that it didn't work out?"

"He stood me up," she says. Madge kicks off her shoes by the shoe bin and walks past him. "I waited for 45 minutes in the restaurant and when I finally texted him to make sure he was alive I got this response." Madge digs through her purse for her phone and when she finds it she holds it out to him. "Take it!" Madge blurts. "I can't even look at it!"

Gale pulls her phone from her hands and reads the message aloud. Right under Madge's hi, just wanted to make things are okay, reads: "Can't you take a hint?" Gale's stomach clenches for his roommate and he sighs as she slumps down at the kitchen table. "At least he acknowledged your existence."

"Oh shove off," Madge groans. She drops her head into her hands. "He couldn't have just told me he didn't want to go out with me?" She rubs at her temples and sighs again. "Pathetic."

"What, the fact that you didn't pick up that this guy was a douchebag, or that he abbreviates his words when he texts?" Madge slumps further into her seat. "C'mon, Undersee, I told you the first time you brought him around here that he wasn't a prizewinner."

Still, she sighs. Gale Hawthorne may not be the best roommate but he isn't exactly the worst person in the world. He leaves his dirty clothes on the floor in the bathroom and forgets to run the dishwasher and sometimes locks her out when she goes to get the mail, but at least he's always honest. He sinks into the chair next beside Madge and slides her phone across to her. Hesitantly she reaches forward and grabs her phone, finally pulling her head up.

"I hope I didn't ruin any plans you had tonight," she says quietly.

He lets out one loud laugh. "A mental breakdown from Madge Undersee, ruin my plans? You're kidding." Madge peers at him through her waterfall of golden hair and rolls her eyes. "You're fine," he adds a touch quieter. "I know you liked the guy. I'm sorry." Her shoulders lift slightly. "Did you eat, then? No?"

"No, I was waiting for him."

Gale lifts his hand and pats her shoulder. "Pasta?"

"Pasta," she nods. He pushes himself away from the table and digs through the cabinets, pulling out a pot and filling it up with water from the tap. She scrolls through her messages and deletes the thread from the boy from tonight, and then erases his number entirely. Madge glances over her shoulder at Gale who's placed the pot on the stove. "So what are your plans for tonight?" she asks.

"Now, eating pasta and watching TV while drinking wine," Gale answers without turning to face her.

"Before?"

"Just watching TV while drinking wine. Now I'm getting carbs too."

"Doesn't sound half bad." Madge leaves her phone on the table and moves to stand, easily finding the bottle of wine he left out and pouring herself a glass. "Mind if I join you?"

Gale and Madge devoured the buttery angel hair pasta in minutes and are currently on their fourth episode of Full House and their third glass of wine. The alcohol is starting to get to Madge and the television is starting to get a little bit fuzzy.

"You know," she says during a break, "my night couldn't have turned out much better than this."

"Christ," Gale chuckles and knocks back the rest of his glass. "You're not drunk already, are you?"

"Pfft," Madge rolls her eyes and takes another sip of her wine. "No."

"My God, Undersee, you are the textbook definition of a lightweight." He looks at her curled up on the couch and is relieved to find her smiling. Gale may not have been in a relationship for the past few years but he most certainly knows the feelings of heartache—hell, he felt it when Madge left tonight for her date. He's happy she's doesn't seem to be suffering. "You doing okay?"

"I'm fine," she nods. Madge swirls the wine in her glass and lifts her shoulders. "I'm not as upset as I thought I'd be. The more I think about it the more relieved I am that whatever I had with him ended when it did before dragging out into something unnecessary."

"Oh yeah?" Gale reaches for the bottle on the table and pours himself another glass of wine. "And why's that?"

"He always bought me expensive things," Madge says, lifting her eyes toward him. "He'd show me off to all his friends like… like I was a trophy or something. I liked the attention that he gave me. I don't think I really liked him, you know?" After a moment of silence she drops her eyes from him back down to her wine. "I don't know why I'm telling you this. You don't care."

It's true that Gale a year ago wouldn't have cared, but after having roomed with Madge for quite a while now he does care. He cares a lot. Sometimes he thinks that if Katniss hadn't suggested Madge and Gale become roommates, considering they were living in the same city and both paying an obnoxious amount of money for renting essentially what they have now, that he still wouldn't give a damn what Madge Undersee was doing or when or why. He most certainly didn't like her at the beginning of all of this.

"Sure I do," Gale finally says. "You're a person. You deserve to be treated as one."

Madge has thoughts and feelings and for someone to disregard them completely and keep her as just someone to showoff is completely disrespectful and all around wrong. The way she thinks is incredibly elaborate, she always seems fifteen steps ahead of everyone else. And Madge feels everything with everything she's got, she never half-asses any of it.

"Mm, I guess." Madge chugs the rest of her wine and then looks toward him. "Can I have the bottle?"

"You should stop drinking for the night," Gale tells her. "But I'll give it to you if you want it." Her evening blue eyes dart back and forth from the bottle still in Gale's hands and up to his face. She gnaws down on her bottom lip. "This'll be my last glass if you don't have another."

She sighs and tips her head. "Okay." Madge sets her empty wineglass on the table and rests her head against her knees which are up on the couch. "Why do I always find such crappy guys?" she asks, clearly not actually expecting an answer. "How can I be the sort of girl that guys don't want to stand up after a few dates?"

"Oh, for fuck's sake, Madge," Gale returns to bottle to the table and takes a long swig of his wine. "That guy, whatever the hell his name was because I don't even care enough to know, was such an asshole! Him standing you up had nothing to do with you."

"But didn't it?" Her hands run over the patterns on the couch and she lifts her shoulders again. "Ever guy I've ever dated just throws me aside after a bit."

"You're better than all of those jerkoffs put together," Gale says seriously. "They want someone who worships them and you're not the type to do that. Shit, I'm tired of watching you throw yourself a pity party so stop it."

"Maybe it's you," Madge says suddenly, lowering her legs to the ground and turning to Gale just across the way. "Maybe they see you and they get threatened!" Gale snorts before he can help himself. "Why is that funny?"

"Because we're just roommates," Gale says. Because he's secretly been pining over Madge for months now and may or may not glare daggers at any guy she brings over. "Because it's not as though I go around shoving people into walls and telling them to treat you nicely."

"Are you sure you don't threaten people?"

"Not verbally," Gale shrugs.

Madge's jaw drops and Gale quickly takes a drink of wine so he doesn't have to speak. "What do you mean not verbally?" she finally asks.

He finishes off the glass. "I don't like how some of them look at you," he admits offhandedly. "It's not a big deal."

"You don't like how they look at me?" she echoes, her jaw widening more so. "Are you kidding? You bring girls around every few weeks and have very vocal sex and I don't like that very much but it's not as though I walk into your room with duct tape to shut them up!" Gale's own jaw nearly snaps open at her words. "You have your life and I have mine they're not supposed to… to…"

"To what?" Gale frowns.

"To intersect!" Madge blurts. She throws her hands up in the air and quickly leaps from the couch. "Oh, God, you're not supposed to care about me!" He wastes no time in following her down the hall and to her bedroom. She leaves the door open and collapses backwards onto her bed while Gale stays in the doorway. "That was never part of the roommate contract we signed," she groans. "Feelings. God."

"Are you saying you don't want me to care about you?" Gale asks from his spot. The alcohol has punched him in the face; he shouldn't have drunken that last glass of wine so quickly. "Because it's a bit late for that one."

"And when did that start happening? Humor me. When?"

"After you went out with one of those Mellark brothers," Gale answers immediately. Despite the fact that Katniss is dating Peeta, Gale refuses to believe the bread boys anything but trouble. "You came back home and you told me how his hands were sweaty and he kept trying to hold yours but you didn't want to hold his hand because they were sweaty."

Madge snorts and lifts her hand immediately to cover her mouth. "You were jealous?"

"No," he lies. Gale tilts his head toward the ground. "Maybe."

"Well the first time I cared about you was when you came home from that bar one night with a black eye," Madge blurts. "You would barely speak to me and I nearly had to break into the bathroom so I could heal you!" Gale smiles, remembering how she sat on his knee to stop him from getting up and running to his room. "But I never thought that you…"

He sighs, knowing where she's headed, and then hesitates before asking, "May I come in?" That was one of the rules of the roommate contract Madge had insisted on, no entry into each other's rooms. Madge nods and he paces into her vanilla scented space, sinking down on the edge of the mattress. "Why am I not allowed to care about you if you care about me?"

"You never did before," Madge says, sitting up and scooting next to him. "The first time I got stood up on a date you hid from me in your room."

Gale chuckles. "I didn't know how to comfort you then."

"And now?"

"And now I know that you deserve better from all of those assholes you've dated because if they weren't idiots they never would've let you go, or stood you up, or walked away. God knows I wouldn't." Madge peers up at him instantly and a cord of tension snaps inside Gale. "Shit." He slumps forward and drags a hand through his hair. "I didn't…" he sighs. "No, I did. I meant that."

When he works up the courage to look back at her Madge has the sweetest smile on her face. Her cheeks are brilliantly pink whether it be from the alcohol or because she's blushing Gale doesn't quite care, she looks so lovely.

"So this caring about me thing…" Madge murmurs. "It's not like you care about a sister, right?"

Gale laughs loudly, shaking his head. "No, a bit more advanced than that, I'm afraid."

"Good," Madge sighs. "I don't think I'd be able to stand it if you looked at me like you look at Posy." Gale laughs again and slowly reaches over to grab Madge's hand. "I guess we've just complicated a lot of things, huh?"

"It would seem so," Gale nods. "And I don't think with the pair of us being tipsy or questionably drunk make this the right time to talk about any of it, either." After giving her fingers a quick squeeze Gale releases her hand. "So… I'm going to go sleep this off and we can talk in the morning?" As he stands Madge grabs the hem of his shirt and pulls him backwards. He lifts an eyebrow at her but she just gestures to her bed. "You're kidding."

"You've gotta sleep… I've gotta sleep…" With a wicked grin Gale climbs back into bed alongside Madge. It takes them a bit to wiggle under the covers but the second they do his arm is wrapped around her, pulling Madge flush against his body. "Mm," she sighs, letting her eyes flutter shut. "Nope, tonight couldn't have turned out much better than this."

"I think we're going to have to rewrite the roommate contract a bit," Gale whispers.

A/N: Decided to write roommates as well! Hope you liked it.