Peeta looked up as the bell above the door tinkled. Gale swaggered in the bakery like a cowboy, dead squirrelly objects in each hand and a mission on his face. As Peeta started to go out back to fetch his father, a notorious eater of squirrel bits, but Gale said sharply, "No, wait. We have a lot to talk about."

"Is this about Katniss?" Peeta had been avoiding this conversation ever since he had returned victorious from the Hunger Games, but he couldn't avoid Gale for long. Gale was a hunter. For manflesh.

"Of course it's about Katniss." Gale glared into Peeta's dreamy breadlike eyes. "It's always about Katniss with you, isn't it?"

Peeta didn't really know how to respond with this. "What?"

"Katniss with her stupid braid and her face and stuff. Is that why you like her so much? Because bread sounds like the word braid! I thought as much." Gale slammed a dead squirrel on the counter and made a disgusted face.

"Waitwaitwait," Peeta said. "Isn't this the conversation where we fight over Katniss?"

"No," Gale murmured. "This is the conversation where I confess my beautiful gay love and make out with you with flour spilled sexily on your abs." He leapt over the counter like a graceful otter, grabbed Peeta and forcefully kissed him. Peeta, using all the strength of a heterosexual man who has sworn his fealty to the Baguette, pushed Gale away.

"Gale? What the hell dude?" Peeta grabbed a broom and shook it threateningly at Gale. "I barely know you!"

Gale gazed at Peeta's beautiful bready face. "Barely know you? I remember you from my first day of school. My father pointed at your father and said, 'Do you see that douche? Owes me like twenty bucks from a poker game. Steal his lunch money, son.'"

"Um."

"So I followed you every day home from school, as you followed Katniss home from school every day staring at her braids like some sort of sexy fucked up wheat enhanced creature."

"Um?"

"And when I first looked at you, your teeth shone in the sun like the pearly glaze on that flower shaped cookie you gave me once. Remember?"

"Um... no?"

"It was pink and you smiled at me, and I knew then that you love me just as much as I love you," Gale sighed, looking into the distance of a memory. "Then we made love on this counter."

Peeta edged away from the counter. "I'm pretty sure I would remember that."

Gale laughed. "My bad. That was one of my sex dreams. I have loads of them. I write them down and read them to my chipmunk friends in the forest."

"One of? One of?"

"I write poetry, too. The chipmunks love it." Gale searched around his pockets. Peeta clutched his broom tighter and scanned the room for a better weapon.

"Oh wait, here, I found one..." Gale cleared his throat and began to read:

"Peeta, baker's son, plump and well fed,

I see your face in every loaf of bread,

I long to stick my fingers in your dough,

break through your crust, see how far they can go-"

Peeta interrupted with several gagging noises that resembled strangling cats. "What the fuck are you doing to me Gale?"

Gale chuckled. "Believe me, when I'm doing stuff to you, you'll know it, sugartits." Several things happened in the next two seconds.

As Gale inched creepily towards Peeta, Peeta decided it would be a good time to break into tears and start attacking him with his broom. But just as the broom broke on Gale's rough n' tough biceps, a scream penetrated the air of District Twelve like Gale's fingers did in poetry.

"What was that?" Peeta ran to the window with shards of broomstick in his hands. Gale laughed.

"Oh, they probably just found Katniss's body. I shoved her off a cliff. It was awesome."

Peeta frowned. "What cliff?"
Gale sneezed. "oh fuck."