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

Happy Valentine's Day!

Sugar

Gale's father had promised him he would help him with the snares. So, when Sunday morning rolled around, he bound into his parents' room and jumped between them in the bed.

"Get up!"

"Gale!" His mother whispered harshly, "Not so loud. You'll wake the baby."

He cringed. He'd forgotten about Rory.

The baby stirred in his basket, made a few creaking noises, but mercifully stayed asleep.

His father put his pillow over his head. "Just a little bit longer."

Gale flopped on him, "Please, dad, please. You promised."

It was eight in the morning, they were wasting daylight.

Finally, after an hour of waking his father again and again, Gale finally managed to get him out of bed. His mother made them a small breakfast of the last of rabbit from the week before, then packed them some bread and cheese for lunch, before they ambled out the door.

Gale bounced along, eager to start the day.

###############################

He was less eager when the day was ending.

His feet drug along the pavement as he followed his father through the backside of the merchants' stores, peddling what he could to the ones he knew would buy.

His father was finishing with the cobbler, he was bargaining over several pelts, when Gale let his eyes wander. Immediately, they caught on a flash of color in the dull alley.

A ball, red with a stripe, flew up, over the tops of the dumpsters, then back down again, before flying up again.

Curious, Gale backed away from his father, still deep in discussion with the cobbler, and crept over to where the ball was coming from.

A little girl, smaller than him, blonde headed in a blue dress, covered from top to bottom in white powder, though someone had taken the time to wipe her face clean, was throwing the ball as high as she could and catching it over and over again. It took several tosses before she felt eyes on her.

She'd already thrown the ball up, it had just left her hands, when she looked over at Gale. Her mouth formed a little 'o' in surprise before turning down, her eyes widened, panicked, and she darted off, back into the store. The ball came crashing back down, hitting the empty space she'd been in, then bouncing and rolling to the center of the alley, into a puddle.

Gale felt a hand on his shoulder, turning to find his father frowning.

"Scares easily, doesn't she?"

His father walked to the puddle and picked up the ball, drying it on his shirt, then striding up to the door the girl had run in to.

A minute after he knocked, an old man in chipped glasses came out, wiping his hands on his apron. The tantalizing smell of chocolate, a treat Gale had only had once that he remembered, wafted out after him. His bushy eyebrow arched and he smiled brightly. "Ah, can I help you?"

Gale's father smiled and held the ball up, "Your girl left this."

The old man squinted, pushed his glasses up his nose, and smiled before catching sight of Gale. When he did, his smile faltered.

"I see." He waved his hand at Gale, "Some boys took her other one, just the other week, so she's a little…"

The old man shrugged, made a vague gesture with his hand. What that meant, Gale didn't know.

Gale's father frowned, "Boys from the Seam or boys from Town?"

The old man, his name tag is for the sweet shop and says Herschel, smiled sadly, "Does it matter?"

Judging by the way his father's brow creased, it mattered to him.

When Herschel from the sweet shop disappeared back into the store to find the girl, Gale's father held the ball out to Gale.

"You scared her, you give it back."

Gale scowled, "I didn't mean to scare her!"

His father smiled, tossed the ball up and caught it. "Doesn't matter what you meant to do, what matters is what she thought." He took Gale's hand and put the ball in it, "It takes many good actions to erase just one bad one. Unfortunately, you aren't trying to erase your own bad actions, just people like you."

That made absolutely no sense to Gale, that he was having to give some stupid girl her stupid ball back because of what other boys had done, but he held onto the ball anyway, resigned to his fate. He hoped she didn't try to kiss him. Girls did weird things like that when you were nice to them.

When she appeared, just as powder covered as she had been, trying to hid behind Herschel the candy man, Gale thrust the ball out.

"Here."

She must've been a little slow, at least that's what Gale thought, because she just stared at the ball, then to Herschel, then back to the ball. Finally, Herschel prompted her.

"Take the ball, Madge. Thank the nice boy."

Madge blinked, eyes flickered from the ball to Gale, then snatched it from him, as if she thought he might try to pull it back. She ducked back behind Herschel, peaking out just enough of her little blonde head to look between Gale and his father with her wide pale eyes and murmur, "Thank you."

Gale's father gave her his brightest smile, the one he usually reserved for Gale when he got his snare right on the first try, "You're very welcome little lady."

He shot Gale a look.

"You're welcome," Gale muttered.

Herschel the candy man gave Madge a little nudge back toward the smell of chocolate, giving Gale and his father a quick smile, which they took to mean they were done there.

He and his father had turned, were several yards off, when a tiny voice called out to them.

Madge came running toward them.

She's going to kiss me! Gale was prepared for this. His father had warned him about the magnetic charm of the men in their family…

She skidded to a stop in front of them and thrust a paper sack she'd been clutching in her little hands into Gale's chest.

"Poppa say give'is you."

Then she took off, didn't even try to kiss him, just ran back down to old Herschel waiting in the doorway.

Gale frowned, opened the sack and found several clumps of something brown.

"Fudge." His father clarified.

"Why did they give me fudge?" His nose wrinkled.

His father smiled, "Maybe he's making up for something too."

Gale could imagine a thousand things someone from Town could be making up for, and it would take a lot of fudge to make those amends. Did making amends for something you hadn't done make something charity? He stopped, "Should I take it back?"

There's a boom of laughter, "Gale, when a pretty girl gives you candy, you don't take it back."

Gale wrinkled his nose, "Ugh!"

"You didn't think she was pretty?"

"No." He answered, a little too quickly.

"You looked awfully scared when she came running to us. Did you think she was scary?"

Hardly. "I thought she was gonna kiss me."

His father laughed again. "Is that why you look so disappointed with the fudge? You want to go back, get a kiss instead? Or maybe give her one?"

Gale huffed, his father had lost his mind. Of course he didn't want her to kiss him. "She's all dirty." Who knows what that white stuff was.

"I think it was powdered sugar," he smirked. "Make a kiss that much sweeter."

Gale stopped, rolled his eyes, "You are so weird."

"You think that now," his father chuckled, "but in a few years…"

I'll believe it when it happens.

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Madge was covered in powdered sugar. Gale could see it in her hair, across her cheeks in a pale blush where she'd attempted to wipe it, at the tip of her nose, along her arms, and, most tantalizingly, across her chest, down past the point where her shirt dipped to a 'v'.

"Did you have an accident?"

She wrinkles her nose.

"Well, I was making fudge and I had the powdered sugar out, and I thought I'd closed it, but when I went to put it up…" She waves at her hands at herself. The mess spoke for itself.

"I can't leave you alone for five minutes, can I?" He smirks. He'd just run down to his truck to grab his papers for work, it had been less than five minutes.

Madge sighs, begins dusting herself off, "If Katy-Jo Lewes would just let me put it in containe-"

Gale cuts her off, kissing the traces of the sweet powder off her lips. His mouth trails to her neck, then chest, smearing the powder on his own face as he went.

"You're making us both sticky," she murmurs.

So?

He makes a needful noise in the back of his throat.

His father had almost been right, the kisses were sweeter, but Gale was positive it was the girl covered in the powder that made them so, rather than the confectioners' sugar.