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

A/N-This was a scene that I'd started when 'Down the Rabbit Hole' was from two points of view, which was only for about five seconds. I changed it and expanded it a bit while writing 'The Talk' and let it be a little more cutsie. I'm putting it here mostly because I don't really know where else to put it and I like it too much to not include it.

Brotherly Conversations

Gale sat uncomfortably slouched on the couch. His mother was cleaning Posy's face, getting her ready to head to the Everdeens' to watch the scores. Rory and Vick were engrossed in a card game. Gale's stomach was in knots.

Vick threw his cards down with a grin, "I win again!"

Rory looked at the cards in disgust before huffing, "This game is stupid."

"You just don't like it 'cause you're losing."

"You're only any good at it because your girlfriend taught you."

"Uh-uh!"

"Uh-hu!"

Gale felt momentarily pulled from his constant worry about the impending scores that only the prospect of tormenting a younger sibling can provide.

"Girlfriend? Aren't you a little young for a girlfriend?" Gale leans forward, smirking at his youngest brother.

"She's not my girlfriend. She's just my friend." Vick shoots Rory a sharp look, "You're just jealous because you're afraid of girls-"

"Am not!" Rory looks appropriately scandalized. He turns to Gale for support, "I am not afraid of girls."

Gale has seen Rory's attempts to talk to girls and feels inclined to agree with Vick on this point. Before he can say anything for or against Rory's abilities with the female population his brother is barreling on, "Besides, you shouldn't hang out with her anyways. She's just a snobby rich girl and you're just a hobby to her. Gale agrees with me, don't you Gale?"

Gale has no idea what you're talking about. He gives his brother a confused look, "Your friend is some town girl?"

"Some town girl?" Rory huffs, "It's the Mayor's daughter."

The sluggish gears in the back of Gale's mind begin whirling to life and he looks at his youngest brother. Vick's color is darkening, none of them really blush but they do darken under normal stress. He's looking anywhere but at Gale.

When he'd come home the night before to his stewed rabbit with vegetables he'd been curious about them, but when he'd asked his mother had only said Vick's 'friend' had sent them home with him. At the time he'd assumed someone had finally had some luck getting something to grow in the coal dust coated ground, now he realized, with a sickening drop in his stomach, that they'd come from the Undersees' garden. Should have known, who else has a damned garden in this forsaken place?

"That's where you've been going after school?" Gale glowers down at the boy.

Vick lifts his chin, "Yeah. I like hanging out with Madge. She's nice to me and lets me help and listens to me." He glares over at Rory, "She doesn't treat me like a little kid."

"You are a little kid," Gale tells him. "And you don't need to be hanging around with Undersee."

"Why not?"

Why not?Gale narrows his gaze. There were a million reasons why not. She's rich and spoiled and superior. She has no idea what real life was like. She probably views Vick as some kind of charity case, just like Prim and Mrs. Everdeen. She's beyond useless and she's close to the Capitol and who knows what treasonous thing Gale's said that Vick might accidentally repeat. He can't seem to get his mouth to work properly though and all he does is stare irritably at Vick.

His youngest brother takes this as some kind of confirmation that Gale has no good reason for him to stay away from Undersee so he crosses his arms and turns to their mother. "Mom doesn't think me being friends with Madge is bad."

Gale's mother smiles over at her youngest son as she tugs Posy's dark hair into pigtails, "Of course not."

Gale shoots his mother an irritable look which she counters with raised eyebrows that seem to say drop it so he does. For the time being.

He flops back on the couch and crosses his arms. Vick frowns at him.

"She's really nice. She lets me help her weed the garden and she makes me tea and she smells pretty."

"You can't smell 'pretty', Vick," Rory tells him snottily.

"Well she does."

Gale really doesn't care one way or another how Undersee smells, and he tries to ignore his brothers as they argue it out.

"-and she's soft. Like a big pillow."

Gale's eyes widen at that. That particular statement needed further elaboration. "What?"

Vick is the picture of innocence, "I gave her a hug, and she's all squishy."

Rory snorted, "It's cause she's got boobs, you idiot."

For a moment Vick just frowns, unsure exactly what Rory has said, then his color deepens again, "That's not what I meant!"

Rory doesn't hear him though, he's dissolved into a fit of unmanly giggles. Vick's face scrunches up and he throws himself over the table and onto Rory, little fists pummeling any little bit of his brother he can get to.

"Boys!" His mother yells, "Stop that! Both of you!"

She leaves Posy standing on the kitchen chair while she strides over and pulls Rory from Vick's furious grasp. Gale picks his youngest brother up and exchanges a look with his mother: she'll deal with Rory, and he can deal with Vick.

He carries Vick into their shared room, depositing him on the bed. He's scuffed up and has a little snarl still on his lips.

He makes to jump up, go back out and finish his tussle with Rory, but Gale pushes him back onto the bed.

"Stay there till you calm down," he tells him.

Vick crosses his arms and sulks, tracks of furious tears dried on his face. Gale grabs a rag and tries to clean him up.

"I'm fine," Vick pushes it away and turns his head.

Gale sighs and flops down on the bed beside him. He rolls to his side. "You and Undersee, huh?"

Vick glares at him, his long eyelashes still have flecks of tears on them, "You have a friend that's a girl, why can't I"

"That's…different."

His and Katniss' friendship, their possibly more, if, when she came back from the Games, wasn't at issue. Katniss was like them. She understood them, their life, the way things were. Undersee didn't. She couldn't.

She wasn't bad, Gale would admit that. She was decent, he would even give her that. But she wasn't one of them. She didn't have that essential need that they did.

He and Katniss understood each other, they'd survived together. Saved each other, in a sense.

What had Undersee done for Vick that was in anyway close to that?

"How?" Vick flopped over, on his stomach, and looked at Gale, wide eyed and sincere. "She's nice. We talk and she even told me to be nice to you. That you're having a hard time. And she listens to me, and nobody listens to me."

Gale arches his eyebrows, "I'm listening to you right now aren't I?"

Vick rolls his eyes, "Just 'cause you have to. 'Cause I was kicking Rory's butt."

Before he can stop it, a laugh burst out of Gale's chest. Vick really had been walloping Rory.

He stops laughing and grins a Vick, "Yeah, well, no more kicking his butt. It upsets mom." His smile shrinks a little, "And I'm always here to listen, Vick. You guys are important to me and I want to be there for you."

"You're busy…"

"I'm not too busy for you, okay?"

Vick bites his lip and nods, staring at the mattress. He looks back up at Gale, "I-I can still talk to Madge too, though, right?"

Whether it's the way she smells, pretty or otherwise, or the fact that his baby brother is becoming somewhat aware of female anatomy, which Gale sincerely hopes isn't the case for a few years, Rory is bad enough, Undersee has him in some kind of snare.

He pats Vick on the head, then ruffles his hair.

"Fine, talk to Undersee. But, uh," he frowns as he sits up to get off the bed, "no more hugging her, or smelling her, or, uh, anything else, okay?"

Vick rolls his eyes again, "I don't tryto smell her. I just do." He looks thoughtful for a minute, "And I think she needs hugs, she always seems so sad."

They walk the few steps across the tiny room to the door. Vick already knows he and Rory are going to have to apologize to one another, this was just a cool down.

Vick looks up at Gale, "You should hug her sometime, she's not too bad at it, and she really is soft. You'd like it."

Gale's eyebrows arch up. He probably would like it. In fact he's certain he would. A little too much. He isn't blind and he's perfectly aware of female anatomy. Though judging by the way Vick said it, Gale doesn't think his brother has as much a gutter-mind as he and Rory apparently do.

"I'll think about it," he tells Vick as he gives him a little scoot out the door.

They need to get this apologizing done so they can head to the Everdeens.