A/N: little bit of smut in this one, changed the rating for it, lol. hope you guys enjoy... xoxo

It wasn't the first time Gale had been caught with someone's girlfriend, or fiancée, or wife.

When the war had ended and he had started to gain popularity, he had never went to bed alone. He had a system: finding a girl he enjoyed was just the beginning – Gale loved the thrill of the hunt, the chase. The more he had to work to get a girl in his bed, the more exciting it was. But he'd fuck her until he was tired of her, then he'd move on.

At first it was just girls he worked with, girls he met at a local bar, girls he saw at the supermarket. But then it was like a high – he became addicted. Single, married, engaged, a mother, alone, with cats, whatever – as long as she said yes, Gale would fuck her for as long as he could get away with it. But if her husband came home too early, or if she started to want to get serious, then Gale would almost disappear as quickly as he came.

Game over.

It wasn't an era of his life that he was very proud of, but it had happened.

And as Gale sat at Greasy Sae's booth in the Hob, he reflected on each and every time he had been caught with a committed woman.

And not a single, solitary time did he ever feel ashamed of himself.

Except for yesterday.

As soon as Peeta thundered into that living room, Gale dashed out like a wild cat and decided to let Katniss handle the heat. It was what he was used to, he thought to himself. He was so ashamed that he couldn't even tell Johanna what had happened, he just turned his phone off and sunk into bed.

"Where's the hunting partner?" Sae asked him.

Gale shrugged, "Probably at home, waiting for me to leave the district."

Sae just shook her head, "Or she's probably out in the woods waiting for you."

"How do you know that?" Gale snapped.

Greasy Sae just smiled and started to clean off the top of the bar. "She came by early this morning, thinking she missed you and told me to let you know where she is."

Gale thought he was going to throw up his lunch. He grabbed his bow and quiver and headed out of the Hob, eager to get away from Sae's knowing smile.

How could Katniss still want to talk to him? He had acted like a complete coward, throwing her under the bus and leaving.

Or maybe she's calling me out here so she can yell at me like she did when I got here, Gale thought. It seemed very likely, but he kept an arrow nocked – just in case.

He trudged up the old snare line, gathering a few rabbits and resetting the snares delicately, taking his time before heading to their rock. It struck him that the forest had changed so much without hardly changing at all. The old snare line still looked like it did when Gale was eighteen, still felt the same beneath his fingers, the woods still smelled the same. But something was different, more than ten years had passed since the last time he had stood in this spot, nearly all the trees had regrown from the fires, and everything was almost the same.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, hearing the long forgotten Mockingjays singing to each other in the forest. He remembered an old song Katniss used to sing to them and they would repeat back to her.

Are you, are you,
coming to the tree?

He remembered the melody from their childhood together and repeats it by whistling it to the birds above him. He waits a few seconds before opening his eyes and the mockingjays repeat the soft and slow melody back to him – Gale smiles.

Before too much whistling, the lyrics of the entire song come floating back to him and he can remember catching Katniss sing it to herself in District 13, when Peeta was captured.

By the time he had reached the top of the hill and their rock came into view, Gale had started humming the last verse of the song. Although he wasn't completely surprised to see Katniss sitting with her back to him, he was surprised to hear her soft soprano mixing with the melody of the mockingjays.

Wear a necklace of rope, side by side with me.
Strange things did happen here,
no stranger would it be,
if we met up at midnight in the hanging tree.

"You have a beautiful voice," Gale softly said.

But Katniss didn't respond, she just sat quietly on the rock, in some jeans, hunting boots and a plaid button up shirt – not nearly enough for as cold as it was outside. Gale noticed that her hair wasn't in its usual braid, it was just hanging loosely around her shoulders. He crossed the distance between them to take his place on the rock beside her, but he scooted a little closer and put an arm around her.

"I'm sorry about yesterday," he began, but she put a finger to his lips.

"They aren't done yet."

Katniss didn't look at him, she just closed her eyes and swayed in time with the music of the mockingjays.

Strange things did happen here,
no stranger would it be…

Gale contemplated singing with her, but her voice was so beautiful he just couldn't bear to interrupt her. Instead, Gale rose from the rock, pulling Katniss with him. When she opened her eyes at him, confused, he simply leaned down and whispered into her ear, "We didn't finish our dance yesterday."

He puts her hand around his neck and the other inside his own and holds her close, humming the melody of the song.

The thing Gale has always loved the most about being around Katniss is the lack of need for words. He knows he can say far more by holding her than he could by actually speaking. And he knows that she can understand everything he's trying to say.

As he holds her, Gale wonders if it's going to be like this for the rest of their lives: doing something completely innocent – like dancing, with ulterior motives. Will every innocent gesture hold more feeling for him than it does for her? Forever?

He stops dancing when the mockingjays stop singing to them – simply holding Katniss close, with her head on his chest, wondering if he should pick up where he left off yesterday.

"Do you ever think about them?" she suddenly asks.

"Who?"

She pulls away from him and walks back to the rock, silent for a second. Gale can see how swollen and red her eyes look – like she's been crying.

"All of them. Finnick… P-Prim. Madge."

He just nods.

She looks up at him and he can see a tear slipping down her face, "Do you ever talk about them?"

He shrugs, "Sometimes. Annie and I talk about Finnick a lot. But I don't really like to mention…her." For some reason, it still bothers him to say her name.

She nods, looking at her boots. The silence settles again, and Gale contemplates reaching for her hand.

"Peeta hates to talk about any of it," she offers.

Gale just sits silently and reaches an arm around her shoulders for support. He waits patiently, knowing Katniss wouldn't breach a subject like this unless she sincerely needed to talk.

She takes a deep breath. "We used to talk about them all the time – especially when we were making the scrapbook. But we don't anymore. I don't even know where the scrapbook is now."

Gale knew about the scrapbook – Haymitch used to mention it nearly every time they spoke, but now that Gale thought about it he hadn't mentioned it in a long time.

"Do you want to talk about them?"

She shrugs, still looking at her shoes. "Talking about them is hard, but I think about them a lot."

"I do too," Gale says, lamely. The silence settles again, and Gale can't stand it any longer – he's been living in silence too long.

"What do you think about?" he asks her softly.

She sighs, "I wonder what Prim was thinking in her last moments."

Gale feels as if he's been stabbed in the heart with a knife of his own making.

"Do you think she blamed me?" Gale asks, "or any of us? Do you think any of them blame us?"

Katniss shakes her head, "No. They all were aware of the consequences of war – especially Finnick, Boggs, and Johanna. But Prim and Peeta…they were both so innocent."

Gale just nods and pulls her even closer. "I've been over everything in my mind a million times," he says.

"Somehow I knew you'd never forget about it."

He sighs, "I had actually planned to join up with Beetee for a year to find out what really happened. If I found out it wasn't mine, I was going to come here and tell you."

"It wouldn't have mattered," she says.

"Of course it would, Katniss!" Gale starts rambling. "If it wasn't my bomb then it's not my fault and I – "

"Gale!" she shouts. "Calm down."

She takes a deep breath before pulling back to look him in the eyes, "It wouldn't have mattered who's bomb it was because Prim would've wanted me to be friends with you either way," she whispers.

I think she would've wanted a lot more than that, Gale thinks to himself. Prim always wanted him to end up with Katniss, she had told him more than once during Katniss's first Games.

"Do you ever regret how it turned out?"

"Every day," Gale manages. "Every, single, day I wish I had done something different in the command room."

"No," she says. "I mean before that. Before or during the first Games."

What a loaded question. Of course he wishes he had.

"I wish…" Gale begins. But he doesn't know how to finish the sentence. There are so many things he wished he had told her before she boarded the train – hell, he had spent years wishing he had volunteered to go with her. But he knew he couldn't tell her that.

"I wish the peacekeepers had let me finish my sentence," he admits.

She leans her head back to look up at him, "What did you want to say?"

Gale almost grins with the memory of it. Just before she was sent to the train to whisk her away to the Capitol, Gale had given her strict and certain commands on how to stay alive once she was in the arena, find a bow, find water, find food, hunt.

But the peacekeepers came to get him, took him away before his most important command. I want you to remember— he had said to her. But the door had shut before he finished it.

He reached his hands around her, one at the small of her back and the other at the nape of her neck, tangling in her hair. He couldn't look her in the eyes.

"I wanted to tell you that I loved you, and I'd be watching."

Katniss pulls back to see his eyes, but he can't force them open. Unwanted tears began spilling out of his closed lids, and he finds himself even more ashamed than he was when Peeta walked in.

"I spent the entire Games reliving that moment, wondering if it would've changed anything. Especially when you found Peeta. Would my love have hurt you or helped you? Would you have made it out live? Would you have come home to me? I spent the entire Games wanting answers that I didn't have."

He takes a deep breath, preparing to go on about fighting for her love, but he can't – he's cut off. Katniss smashes her mouth to his.

It's almost a sweet delicate kiss, but there's a hunger beneath it – a hunger that Gale hasn't felt since the last time he kissed her. He feels as if it's someone else who puts his arms around her, someone else's fingers that move up and down her back, someone else's mouth moving against hers.

She reaches underneath his jacket, tearing it off his arms, moving to the buttons on his shirt.

He reaches for her hands – it's the hardest thing he's ever had to do, but Gale knows he wants to do this the right way. She looks hurt, confused, but Gale reaches for his jacket, his bow, and his quiver before kissing her on the cheek.

"Let's go somewhere more comfortable," he whispers in her ear.

The whole way to the lake house, Gale's mind is racing.

Is she serious?

Does she really want me to do this?

What if she changes her mind?

If Katniss had willingly kissed him like that at age seventeen, Gale wasn't sure he would've been able to break off the kiss and take Katniss by the hand to the lake house. He wasn't sure he would've had the capacity or willingness to slow down and make love to her. As a boy, he would've been taken over by the idea of sex and would've ruined everything.

But now, Gale was 29 years old and experienced. He knew how to slow down and take his time, how to make a woman feel loved.

Not that he had ever really done that on purpose – no woman had ever mattered like she had. No one ever would – but he had enough practice to know what he was doing.

Katniss, on the other hand… Gale wasn't sure that she had ever made love or had sex before, and his mind was racing with all the ways he could go wrong.

He casually took her hand as they walked, surprised at how easily her small slender hand fit into his much larger, rougher hand. He spotted another mockingjay in the tree and started to whistle more of the song that Katniss had been singing earlier.

It only takes them a few verses to get to the lake house and Gale's not even sure how his conscious mind picked there, of all places. He opens the door to the small house, letting her go inside first. It's cozy, small, just like Gale remembers.

Sure enough, it was just as they left it, back when there was still a chance. Back when he still had a chance.

He looked in the cabinet above the counter, finding the hideaway for the old quilt they kept here—just in case. It had come in handy on more than one cold winter night, and as Gale spread it across the makeshift bed he knew it would come in handy again.

The plates, forks, knives, and cups were all accounted for too, although it seemed that more than one spider or rat had made its home inside in his absence. The fireplace was intact as well as the table, chairs, and bed.

He set down his bow and jacket on the table and walked outside the door to the firewood pile. He couldn't remember a time that they had ever used the fireplace during the day, but the temperature was dropping quickly and Gale was afraid of getting too cold.

When he came inside and stocked the fire, he was surprised to see Katniss skinning the animals on the table. "These rabbits will make a pretty good soup," she comments.

"Think we'll be out here all night?" Gale chuckles.

She shrugs, "Peeta said it was supposed to rain from mid-afternoon till tomorrow morning, so who knows."

By the time the fire is roaring, Katniss is finished putting the animals and the few other things they found in a pot of water. She set it on top and turned back to Gale, putting her arms around his shoulders.

"Were you the one who started the mockingjays on that song earlier?" she asked.

He nodded, afraid to speak. Katniss looked, smelled, sounded so beautiful to him that he was afraid he would ruin the night by speaking.

"That song always reminded me of you, ya know," she states. "'Cause you always wanted me to run away with you into the woods."

Gale smiled, "How about now? Would you run away with me now?"

Katniss giggled at him and reached up to pull her face closer to his, inching closer until she was a breath away.

He knew he had no choice, no way out of this that he could resist Katniss and go on with life. Gale Hawthorne knew that as long as Katniss Everdeen wanted him, he would have no choice but to say yes.

And so he closed the distance.

He gently pressed his lips to hers, putting his arms around her waist to lift her off the ground and towards the bed. He sat her on it, toying with her flannel shirt as she ripped off his button down. Her hands were cold on his chest, and he almost cried out at the frigid touch, but instead he put his lips to her neck, trying to go slow, trying to make love.

When her torso was uncovered, Gale sat back and shucked off his hunting boots, reaching for hers as well. Her long hair fell around her shoulders, making her look innocent and pure to him. He leaned down to gently kiss her lips again, while reaching for the buckle of his jeans.

When he was naked in front of her, and she was naked before him, Gale wrapped them into the giant quilt waiting for them. He shifted his weight on top of her, poised to surrender everything to her.

"Are you sure?" he breathed, looking deep into her eyes.

She nodded.

Gale didn't need anything else to be said. He buried himself inside her, making her cry out against his mouth. She moved beneath him, crying out his name and tangling her hands in his long hair. Gale simply put his arms around her back and made passionate love to her, showing her that this was how a man was supposed to treat a woman – that this was how he would treat her forever.

He felt his orgasm building inside him, but he tried to hold off, desperate for her to get hers first. He felt her body jerk, heard her scream against his ear, building and building until...

She screamed, pawing at his back, looking at him through blank eyes.

Gale let go, orgasming and collapsing on top of her. He panted, pushing himself up onto his forearms so he could look into her eyes.

She smiled at him – the first genuine smile he had seen all day.

"I love you."

the morning sun was almost too much for Gale, waking him up out of a deep, content sleep. The quilt was drawn to midway up his chest, and for a second he questioned why he was naked.

then he remembered.

He had spent that night making passionate love to Katniss, and had even told her he loved her. He rolled over on the bed, reaching his fingers out to pull her back to him, but the bed was empty.

Katniss was gone.

He sat up, searching the rest of the small room for her, but she was gone. She had taken his bow too.

He rubbed the sleep off his face, betting she had went hunting for breakfast or home to take a shower. He found his watch on the side of the bed, it read 9:43 am.

Damn, he had slept in late.

He got untangled from the quilt and reached for his pants, putting on his clothes to try to set out to find Katniss. Knowing she didn't have a cell phone only annoyed him – she could've at least left a note. He reached for his phone out of his jacket pocket.

Missed Calls
Johanna (5)

Five missed calls from Jo? Gale thought something must surely be wrong.

He punched her number on the speed dial and sat back on the bed.

"Where in the world are you?" Johanna hissed.

"I'm at the lake house."

"Is Katniss with you?"

Gale chuckled, "She was, but she took off somewhere. After the storm rolled in we thought we should stay."

"And you couldn't call me?" Johanna hissed again. "Well, Peeta was looking for miss brainless this morning and came to your mother's. I covered for your asses by saying you were hunting, and it's nearly ten am, Gale! You two should be back by now!"

"I know, I know," Gale soothed. "Let me find her and we'll come back."

"No, Gale. No 'we.'"

"Why not?"

Johanna sighed, "Peeta thinks you two ran away together and he wants to blow a bullet through your brains, Gale."