Want

(quick warning: this chapter contains smut)

They're sitting on a park bench during his lunch hour. She warms her fingers around the hot cup of coffee, watching her feet swing back and forth, occasionally bumping against his. He's talking about some project they're trying to launch in District 4, a new railroad, maybe? She nods, but she can't seem to pay attention.

They're great. He's great. In the beginning (after the whole cinematic re-meeting and argument in the coffee shop, that is), she could forget everything that had happened between them, and he was just a great guy she was dating. But as the midnight conversations piled up, it became harder and harder not to let old wounds reopen. She was attached to him again.

She studied his face, tracing over his firm lips and strong jaw, animated stormy gray eyes. There was a faint scar across the top of his right temple to the middle of his forehead. That was new.

There were lots of unanswered questions and unsolved conflicts, just barely under the surface. He broke up with her for Katniss. She stole pain medication when he was close to death. He abandoned her in her burning house and she watched her father burn. He overthrew a government and she changed her name and killed her old identity. He was the only person who still called her Madge, and she couldn't bring herself to tell him that her name was May now.

"You want to be with me, right?" She suddenly blurts out. She flinches at her words. He freezes in the middle of his sentence.

"What?" He's startled, reeling back. She stares at the ground. "How could you even ask me that? Of course I want to be with you."

She bites the inside of her cheek. Now's the time. She thinks to herself. Ask him. She knows they can never move forward if she doesn't get this out in the open, however hard it is.

"Why did you break up with me?" The words are painful to say, but they release her. "Things were going so well, I started to feel real things for you, and then you just left me. Why?"

He shifts back farther away from her. Her fingers itch to grab his shirt, pull her back closer to her.

"We didn't work." He says cryptically, and she fights the urge to shove him.

"Please don't do that."

"What?"

"Shut down. Move away from me, never tell me what you're actually thinking." She tries to swallow the lump rising in the back of her throat, but she doesn't have the strength. She studies his face, the way it's retreated back into the carefully controlled blank stare. She hates that expression.

"I care about you." She tells him, watching the words settle onto his chest. He stares at something behind her in the distance mutedly.

There's a long pause of them just sitting in tight silence. Despair and anger bubbles in her stomach, and just as she finally stands up and turns to leave, his fingers catch her wrist.

He starts softly.

"You were the Mayor's daughter, you had breakfast, lunch, and dinner handed to you on a silver platter, and I tracked coal dust through your living room every time I came over. And I heard what your father said. About me... and money. And I realized that it was crazy, that we could never actually work, that I shouldn't be with you."

The explanation crashes over her and her mouth falls open. All that time she'd spent obsessing and analyzing over his words, her words, her actions all leading up until the day they ended. None of the possible reasons she'd come up with were along the lines of this.

"Because of something my father said? Gale, that's so stupid!"

He shakes his head vigorously. "It's not. If he chose to, he could have given me to the Peace Keepers, and you know where I'd be? Prison. Or dead. I had my family to think about."

She pauses for a minute, tries to understand his side of things. Yes, she'd been aware that they'd been in different positions in District 12. And she could admit it now, some of the things her father had said that fateful afternoon had had thin linings of truth in them. But they could have made it work. If he'd only...

"Why... why didn't you just tell me that?"

He half-smiles at her humorlessly. "You would've tried to fight me on it."

"Yeah, I would have." She drops her eyes, twists her fingers around each other nervously. "I thought you broke up with me for Katniss."

"No."

"But you love her."

"Loved. In a different way. It's complicated." It stings a little to hear the truth she already knew actually said out loud, but she's happy he didn't lie. He takes her hands earnestly, searches her eyes for something.

"I want you, ok? I do. When I'm with you, I'm not thinking about anyone else."

"Ok." She forces out. But he catches her chin, tilts her head up so he can look her in the eyes. And she melts.

He almost expects their talk to ruin everything. His honesties hurt to admit, and the picking at old wounds was more painful than he'd imagined.

But it doesn't. They move past it.

She meets him outside his building after work, and they walk around, grab some dinner, talk about their days. Or sometimes Madge cooks. It's so... normal. Stable.

He's never felt this safe. And cared for.

They walk down the wide city streets, passing other couples and families and friends in their path. The night is chilly, but bearable, and he'd used to the cold. Madge shivers a little next to him, and he gives her his jacket. She smiles sweetly and appreciatively, and he feels himself unabashedly grin.

They get to his apartment, where Madge throws her bag down on the barely-used couch in the main room familiarly. She ends up sleeping here most nights, because they both sleep better together (without her next to him, the bed's too cold and he can't smell her skin and feel the ends of her hair tickle his face).

Before she even takes off his jacket, she suddenly shoves him against the closed door.

"M - "

And she kisses him, lips soft but hard and unafraid against his. The way her tongue licks into his mouth says I want you, and it makes his stomach tighten.

Though she does sleep in his bed tucked against his chest more often than not, they haven't gone farther than some heavy making-out and some harmless grinding. Neither has really made a move for more before now.

But she in't scared anymore. Her questions are answered. And she understands (finally) how he feels about her, that he cares, and that she isn't going to end up heartbroken and crushed again. She believes him.

And she is wearing his jacket, and holding her hand and his hair is just the tiniest bit mussed in the back, the way that makes her fingers desperately itch to run through it.

So she grips his shoulders, pulling herself up to his face and balancing on the balls of her feet. After he catches up, his hands take hold of her hips and switch their positions, pulling her backwards away from the wall. They stumble blindly through the apartment, knocking a chair over in the process.

He stops when they get right outside the bedroom, pushing her against the wall and kissing down her jaw.

Besides himself, she's been the only person in his bed. The few women he'd been with had always picked him up, taken him back to theirs. A faceless woman with a body. And he'd slipped out before they woke up the next morning, always half disgusted with himself.

This is going to be different. She is Madge, and he loves her.

He's looking in her eyes, blue, blue eyes and it's like he's tripping and falling and he can't find his footing. It's terrifying. She's swallowing him up, there's nothing else, it's just her.

Yeah. He loves her.

His lips suck almost angrily at the skin below her earlobe and her fingers dig into his shoulder blades. Her back is flat against the wall, every curve of hers pressing into his hard frame. He takes her scent in, thinks about -

Suddenly, a red flag goes up in the forefront of his mind.

"I have a - " He takes a deep, steadying breath, hands still on her shoulders, as if he's "Well, it's sort of personal question."

"What is it?" She asks impatiently, shrugging off his jacket and dropping it to the floor.

"Are you - are you a virgin?"

Everything comes screeching to a stop.

She is still a virgin, and all of a sudden she hates that fact. Admitting it will make him see her as naive again. He'll see her as that little girl getting all hot and bothered making out under the tree outside her house. She's not the mayor's sheltered, spoiled daughter. She's not a little girl anymore.

But she doesn't want to lie to him, so she nods her head.

There's a thick pause.

"Don't look at me like that." She snaps suddenly, and he noticeably flinches.

He looks earnestly confused when he replies, "Like what?"

"Like I'm fragile. Breakable. I'm not."

Instead of answering aloud, he just traps her between the wall and himself, her back hitting the cold, metal surface hard. His lips kiss hers harshly - bruising - to tell her that he knows she isn't.

It takes her a second to catch up, but she does, gripping his shoulders. Her fingers quickly slide up to disappear in his dark, soft hair, to tangle in it. His chest presses against hers completely.

She's suddenly hyper-aware of his cock pressing against her. She supposes it should startle her, but it only makes her want to unabashedly rub against him.

So she throws a leg around his waist. He catches it, his grip squeezing her thigh, and he pushes himself up against her. She shivers at the contact, red hot snakes of pleasure shooting up from her stomach. She grinds into him just the tiniest bit, and smiles against his lips when his hips jerk into her because of it.

Noticing his clothed chest, she starts to unbutton his shirt clumsily, finally just ripping open the last two. She runs her fingers down his chest and stomach, taut and muscled and tan. Then back up to his broad shoulders, pushing the material off.

Suddenly, he hoists both her legs up around his waist, making her yelp. He carries her into the bedroom, kicking the door closed with his heel and dropping her on his bed and climbing on top, sinking down between her thighs, his knuckles brushing against her calf.

His mouth is all over, making more marks behind her ear, on the corner of her jaw, on her collarbone, nudging her face around so he can kiss her until she's sighing into his mouth.

His hands have awkwardly hiked up her dress, but he seems reluctant to take it off.

So she silently sits up, lightly pushing him off, twisting to get to the zipper in the back. For a second, he looks guilty, like he's done something completely wrong, but that expression vanishes when she pulls the fabric over her head, leaving her in just a bra and panties.

She folds into herself instinctually against the sudden chill.

But she looks up to meet his eyes, the way that he's looking at her like she's this radiant, beautiful thing that he's just seeing for the first time. He slowly moves back to his previous position, his hands warm and gentle on her skin.

He goes back to kissing her, slow and sweet at first, but quickly speeds up as his touch roves over newly exposed flesh and she's finally completely under him.

His stubble scrapes against her chin and cheeks, like a burn, she moans when his hand slides down her back and over her ass, taking a handful and hitching her closer. He pushes a thigh between her legs, tangling them together and her heart is beating too fast. She shudders at how good it feels when she rubs herself against it.

He groans low in his throat, and she echoes it with a breathy sigh.

She realizes that he's still wearing pants, and her left hand jumps down to unbutton them, and starts to push them down his hips.

His head spins as she helps him get his pants off. He has to hold back from not fucking her into the mattress. The old familiar hunger in the pit of his stomach is back, roaring angrily.

His hands travel up her stomach to her chest, moving up until they're cupping her breasts. She squeezes her eyes shut and her nails scrape against his bare shoulder blades, scrabbling for something to hold onto. He unhooks her bra, tossing it off behind him, and she bites her lip hard when his fingertips brush over her breasts.

He drags his tongue flatly up her stomach and then back in between her breasts, thumbing both her nipples. Her skin is so soft and feels so good against his mouth - he wants to devour her.

She makes an embarrassingly eager sound, and it shoots straight to his cock.

His fingers press against her through her underwear. He carefully asks, "Is this ok?"

"Yes!"

It comes out much more pleadingly than she means it to. But she doesn't have time to be embarrassed, because his mouth is on her collarbone again. He slips a finger up into her, and her breath catches and she can't hold back the gasp. Then another finger, and he's pushing in and out of her in a steady rhythm, and his thumb rubs circles around her clit.

He chews painfully on his bottom lip trying to ignore how great she feels, and the way he's aching to be inside her.

He crooks his fingers and she groans huskily, grabbing the back of his head roughly and bringing his lips down to hers.

Her hand ghosts over his erection - just a pass to see what happens. He chokes on air and his fingers freeze she starts to draw back her hand in alarm. He stops her, muttering a, "Sorry, keep going."

She dips her hand back down, and explores the hard, hot length of him. He keeps making all these sounds, and she revels in the fact that she's the cause of them. They're beautiful. She making his shoulders cave and shudder.

His breath is hot and comes in jagged exhales against her neck. And his fingers start to move again.

They don't let up for a second, curling into her again and again, until she's fucking up against his hand and god, if it isn't the sexiest thing he's seen in his entire life.

"Gale I - " She suddenly takes her hand off of his cock and grasps his wrist, and he stills.

He gulps, forcing himself not to whine from the loss of contact. "What?"

"I - I want to have sex." She looks up at him through half-lidded bedroom eyes. "Fuck me."

It's a miracle he doesn't come right then. Instead, he settles with a strangled noise in the back of his throat, the sliver of his rational mind still functioning at this point yelling at him to be responsible.

"Are you - ?"

"I had the shot this month." She says quickly, and before he has a chance to say anything else, she's back to kissing him.

It's a little awkward with the positioning, but it's resolved quickly enough.

He grits his teeth and sinks into her excruciatingly slow, hearing her breath catching in her throat loudly. He's forcing himself to be patient and gentle, when really all he wants to do is pound into her and hear her scream. But he waits a moment, biting his tongue, and studies her face carefully.

She feels stretched, but she doesn't bleed like Delly said she did the first time. It's hurt - but a good kind of hurt. His eyes meet hers, and he seems to be looking for some go-ahead, so she does a half-roll of her hips to spur him on.

It does.

She's rewarded with the way he groans loudly when she does it. He's got one hand next to her middle, propping himself up, while the other holds onto her hip so hard she's sure she's going to have bruises from each one of his fingers.

Her heartbeat pounds in her ears, and she opens her eyes briefly because she's curious. Even though it's sort of awkward and the back of her neck is starting to hurt a little, she's distracted from all that by how good he looks and feels. His face covered by a sheen of sweat, and he blinks his eyes open and he's staring down at her in that intense way that never failed to consume her.

His mouth slackly open, breathing in short, hot pants, a tiny crease between his eyebrows, and a tiny piece of hair sticking to the sweat on his forehead. All of a sudden, he looks determined, and his hand jumps down from her cheek to her clit, rubbing circles with his thumb, making her literally scream out loud.

It's like nothing she's ever felt before. He never misses a thrust, and her chest is heaving and she can't feel her fingers.

Her toes curl and she jerks her hips against him, making their hipbones clack together briefly as she comes.

He gets in a few shallow thrusts before he comes with a shout, vision whiting out and making all his bones feel like jelly.

He collapses on top of her, sweat-slick skin sliding against hers as he rolls off and onto the bed next to her. She feels cold without him covering her.

But then he's back, turning her onto her side and pulling her back flush against his chest in a protective spoon. She's exhausted and giddy all at the same time, and the last thing she remembers before she falls asleep is Gale pressing his lips softly against the back of her neck.

A/N:

Welp. Yay, Gale and Madge!

Heads up, there will only be one more chapter after this one before this story has reached it's end.

Thanks to everyone (as always) for reading/favoriting/and ESPECIALLY REVIEWING. I know there was a long pause between this update and the last, and for that I apologize.

Hope everyone enjoyed!

Please review!