Chapter Text
PART 1: THE FIRST FALL OF SNOW
The Hob is one of Sejanus’ favorite places in the whole of District Twelve.
It’s more alive than the peacekeeper base, than the town, than the desolate mines. The hanging signs reminding the citizens to WORK IT, EARN IT fade into the background through the push of bodies, the dancing and sweating and drinking. It’s full of fights and romance and the music of the Covey.
It makes him feel alive, too.
Beanpole and Bug have been absorbed by the crowd, already latched onto a pretty girl to dance with. Coryo disappeared into the back alley before they made it into the building, surely looking for the quiet, private entrance to the back room where the Covey prepare for their shows, perpetually in search of just a few short moments alone with his Victor. Which leaves Sejanus on his lonesome, shouldering his way through the crowd to find a table, to find the bar, to avoid the dance floor.
A hand grabs his wrist, tugs him to the side.
“Hey there, Private Plinth,” Billy Taupe grins. “You’re looking awful lonely tonight.”
“Hello, Billy Taupe.” He shakes his wrist free.
“This is the peacekeeper I was telling you about,” he’s saying to his companion, a man with coal dust caked under his nails. He’s like all the men in Twelve, looks older than he probably is, time in the mines staining his skin and hair and teeth and washing away any distinct features. Outside of the Covey, there’s very little color to be found in Twelve. “He ain’t like the others.”
It strikes a cold cord down his spine. Any collaboration with the rebels is a secret, needs to be a secret. Talking about it in the open like this, it’s playing with fire.
“Nicetameetcha,” the man says like it’s all one word.
“How do you do.” No matter what, his Ma raised him with manners.
“Doin’ much better now that you’re here.” It’s said with a smile — and it’s a nice smile — and the man leaning his elbows on the high-top table. Like he wants to climb across and sniff at the collar of Sejanus' shirt.
“Your man seems busy with Lucy Gray tonight,” Billy Taupe works his jaw, getting up from his seat to scan the crowd over Sejanus' shoulder. He wants to be back up on that stage. “I thought my friend here might keep you company.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Sejanus says, even as Billy Taupe is already walking away, like nothing he has to say matters. He turns to Billy Taupe’s friend, the one whose name he still hasn’t gotten. “I’m just getting a drink while I wait for my friends.”
“Let me get you one,” the miner insists.
Peacekeepers are paid mostly in board and food, but there’s no doubt in his mind that he makes more than this man does and, thanks to care packages from Ma, wants for very little in comparison. His stomach is always full; his pockets are, too. The same, he’s sure, can’t be said for this man. “No, thank you. I can pay my own way.”
“Oh, come on.” He looks up at Sejanus through his dark eyelashes, his eyes a startling dark blue. He has kind eyes. “You’d deny a man his right to buy a drink for a pretty thing like you?”
It hits Sejanus, then, that he’s being flirted with.
He’s never exactly been described as a pretty thing. Ma always insisted that he was handsome like his father. Pa called him delicate, but that was less about his looks and more about his mental state. And his schoolmates poked fun about how no one would want an omega built so much like an alpha, taller than Felix and Festus and Arachne and broader than them all.
It’s flattering, surprising, and he almost acquiesces based on that alone — until he remembers the wisdom passed down from his mother when parties started becoming something he was invited to, from older peacekeepers when he visited the Hob for the first few times: never accept a drink from a stranger that you didn’t see poured with your own two eyes.
“No, really, I’ll get my own drink.”
“No need,” comes a voice from behind him.
And there, like summer sun back in District Two, is Coriolanus, the familiar, minute quirk in the corner of his mouth when he’s trying not to smile — like it would be dangerous if their teachers and classmates see him showing amusement or anything that isn’t a detached superiority to his peers.
Sejanus has cataloged all of Coriolanus’ expressions, small as they are. The slight lift of his groomed eyebrow, judgement, contempt, annoyance. The gentle squint, the tilt of a sharp chin, pleased, self-congratulatory. The twitch of muscle beside his nose, a sneer without the follow-through, disgust, anger. The soft flutter of his blonde eyelashes against his high white cheekbones, shadowing the grey sleep-deprived hollows under his eyes, exhaustion, hunger, pain. The pink seeping into his cheeks, pale and unnoticeable to the untrained eye, a shade Sejanus has only seen when he’s been caught looking at Coriolanus’ plush, chapped lips too long.
He’s still not sure what that one means.
But here in the districts, here as peacekeepers, that small quirk in the corner of Coryo’s mouth turns into a full smirk, his broad hand landing on the back of Sejanus’ neck and smoothing along the overheated skin there.
Making Coriolanus Snow smile had always felt charged, dangerous, rebellious, like standing up to Doctor Gaul in class, like running from a desperate boy with a weapon in a bombed-out arena with breadcrumbs stuck to his fingertips. It’s like the raging storms that would come to District Two in the winters of his childhood, covering the quarries and factories and little adobe brick houses in thick snow.
Forces of nature.
“Everything alright here, Bulls-Eye?”
“All good,” Sejanus agrees and slips the wide, calloused palm of his hand around Coryo’s glass, tugging it playfully toward himself. “This drink for me?”
“It was,” the raise of an eyebrow, “but I don’t know if you need it.” Coryo tugs the drink back, presses the cold condensation against Sejanus' cheek. The ice inside clinks together. He must’ve paid a pretty penny for ice in his drink. “You’re already red in the face, solider.”
“Hey, we was havin’ a conversation here,” the miner protests.
“And now you’re not,” Coryo bears his teeth in some semblance of a smile — but more like a guard dog’s warning than anything. “Bye.”
The miner looks at Sejanus like he’s expecting him to protest. But how can he, why would he ever, when Coryo’s thumb has started a soothing back-and-forth at the base of his skull?
“Did you not hear me?” It’s a growl more than it is a sentence. “You’re dismissed, citizen.”
The Hob is hot, crushed full with dancing bodies, but Coryo’s breath against his ear is hotter. “You okay?”
Sejanus has to shout to be heard, even as close as they are. He closes his eyes. “Always rescuing me.”
“He didn’t seem like he was taking no for an answer,” Coryo shakes him gently by the scruff of his neck. He hands Sejanus his glass for real this time. “Drink up. You look like the heat is getting to you.”
That’s what it is: the heat. That’s why he feels lightheaded, why everything feels too loud. He wants to strip his jumpsuit off, tie the arms around his waist the way they all do as soon as their patrol shift ends and they’re free to roam the base.
“Ice and everything,” Sejanus comments with a flush, letting the cool white liquor slide smoothly down this throat. “Just like home.”
Coryo blinks at him, then grins maniacally. “Home.”
“Hm?”
“You just called the Capitol home.”
It’s Sejanus' turn to blink in surprise. “Oh.”
“Missing your personal icebox now that you’re stuck in a District Twelve summer?”
“Maybe a bit,” he’ll admit it. He’s no snob, but he’s spoiled. He’s always been a little spoiled, with a mother like Ma as his only companion for so long. “How’s Lucy Gray? Did you manage to see her?”
Coryo nods, looking over his shoulder back at the stage. A handful of Covey play their instruments without accompanying vocals, getting the crowd heated and hyped up for the main attraction. “She’s getting ready to go on.”
“Did you give her a kiss for good luck?” Something sour and green twists in his stomach at his own teasing. He takes another gulp of his drink.
Jealously is not unfamiliar to him. He’s been jealous before. In Two, in the Capitol. Jealous of kids with friends. Jealous of kids with siblings. Jealous of everyone in District Two, for being allowed to keep their view of the mountains and the desserts and the forbidden old language Ma would sing to him in, the one Pa never let him learn.
But one thing he’s never really had to do before is share. He’d given up on sharing with his classmates one by one, as they refused food from his hands, as they kept a wide berth around the District boy with his homemade District treats that his District mother spent hours meticulously putting together. He’d never had to share Coryo, not really, because Coryo had been contained and reserved with just about everyone else in their lives. Sejanus was different. Sejanus is different.
Lucy Gray is different, too.
She knows Coryo like he does — or maybe better than he does. She knows the lengths he’s willing to go to for the people he considers his: a compact filled with poison, a brick coming down on a head, a handkerchief in a tank, stitches in the shoulder. She knows that he’s cruel and vicious and awful as much as he’s handsome and charming and unfailingly kind when he loves you.
She’s beautiful. More beautiful than Sejanus has ever been. He’s built too stocky, soft in the stomach and wrapped with thick muscle. With his enlistment, he’s lost his one true beauty: his thick curls. But Lucy Gray, she’s built like a bird, small and willowy like she’d bend in the wind. Her waterfall of chestnut curls that frizz in the humidity, her red-painted lips, the naturally perfect teeth behind them, her big brown eyes and fluttering lashes, her skin tanned and glowing from the sun.
What must it be like, to grow up that beautiful?
“Maybe a bit,” Coryo echoes with a self-satisfied tilt to his chin. So proud to be her man.
His stomach turns. The cold glass of the drink feels best pressed against his dizzy forehead.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I don’t feel so well, Coryo.”
“Are you going to vomit? Do you need to leave?” His hand lands between Sejanus' shoulder blades, the other taking away the cold glass and depositing it on the empty wooden table. “Maybe you need some air. Let’s step outside.”
“No, I don’t want to miss the show.” But his feet are already following Coryo out of the building and into the stifling summer air. There’s not even a breeze to cool them down. “The show,” he insists again.
Coryo’s hands on either side of his face, his back to the stone wall of the building. The cover of night turns the alleyway private around them, music and chatter distant. “Lucy Gray will sing again next weekend. Are you sure you’re okay, Sejanus?”
“I feel odd.”
“Did that man give you something?” Spindly fingers grasp his chin hard enough to bruise. He finds that he doesn’t mind the pressure, opens his mouth like he knows Coryo wants him to. “What did you take?”
“I didn’t take anything. All I’ve had since we left base is the drink you gave me.”
Coryo lowers his voice. “Are you on morphling? Did you take it before we left?”
“No, I swear. Morphling doesn’t make you feel like this. It’s numbing, it’s empty. This is —“ he wiggles against the wall, trying to parse out what it feels like. “—itchy. Like I’m too big for my skin.”
“Okay. We’re going back to base. At the very least, you should lie down. At worst, the infirmary.”
He doesn’t remember much of the walk back to base, just flashes: his stumbling feet on the dirt road, Coryo’s lean muscled arm wrapped tightly around his around his waist to keep him walking straight, the heat of Coryo’s body along the line of his, the sweet scent of roses wafting up from Coryo’s skin.
He finds himself dropped down into his empty bunk, skin overheated and itching still. One blue jumpsuit is pulled and twisted and kicked off until it hangs limply above his still-tied boots. A high pitched whine — is that coming from him?
Coryo chuckles, a warm sound like Ma’s chocolate chip cookies, and sits at the end of the bed. He takes each of Sejanus' feet in his lap and unties his boots, dropping them to the side with a heavy clomp.
“I don’t know what you’re on,” he teases, “but I like you like this. Helpless.” His hands are cool on Sejanus' bare ankles.
“It’s nice,” he agrees.
“It’s nice to be helpless?”
He shakes his head against the pillow. “No, your hands. Your hands are nice. Cold.” He shimmies himself down the bed enough to hook his ankles around Coryo’s back, trying to tug him in closer. “More.”
Something lights in Coryo’s eyes; it’s an expression he catalogs as Coriolanus Snow, Future President of Panem, a sharp focus in his eyes during classroom debates, the hazy pleasure that comes from besting their peers at their own games. He crawls between Sejanus' thighs and settles his body weight on top of him.
“Is this what you wanted?”
Sejanus only hums, wraps his arms around Coryo’s shoulders like a child with a beloved teddy bear.
“Still feeling overheated?”
He shakes his head. “No, I’m all better now.”
“Hm.” Coryo’s hands smooth down his sides, then back up under his sweaty shirt. “You smell good. Like cinnamon and stone.”
“You smell like roses.”
“My mother,” Coryo whispers into the skin of his neck, “she smelled of roses. I remember that.”
“I like roses.”
“I like this.”
“I like you.”
He tilts his chin down at the same time Coryo tilts his up and suddenly they’re kissing. It’s nothing like the one and only time they kissed chastely as fifteen-year-olds in an Academy closet. It’s nothing like the only other kiss Sejanus has ever had, Clemensia Dovecote and a dare at a party with Felix Ravenstill huffing like a dog over two omegas together. It’s wet and gasping, Coryo’s tongue in his mouth.
“Coryo,” he moans, his shirt coming up over his head and landing on the floor. His thick fingers fumble with the zipper on Coryo’s jumpsuit, tugging it down desperately. “Coryo, I want more.”
Whispers: are you sure? I’ve never — me neither. Is this okay? Hands: on his neck, on his thighs, holding his hip. Mouths: Coryo’s shoulder, his bicep, his plush pale lips. A connection, slot A into tab B, that makes Sejanus throw his head back and gasp.
By the time their bunkmates return, they’re both asleep.
“I have to tell you something.”
He sees Coriolanus tense in his peripheral vision, but he keeps his attention on the jabberjays. They scuttle around in their cages, ruffling with feathers with each movement, a fluttering white-blue-black mass chirping softly to each other.
Coryo looks over his left shoulder, then the right. Scanning for eavesdroppers, for enemies in every shadow. Always so paranoid. Has Coryo ever truly felt safe?
“Is it something I want to hear?” he asks.
Sejanus ducks his head. “Probably not.”
A long, sharp breath leaves Coryo’s nose. His lips press together into a thin line and a deep line between his eyebrows appears: frustration, exhaustion, paranoia. “Sejanus—“
“Please just hear me out.”
But Coryo is already shaking his head. Only a handful of months ago, it would’ve sent his perfect curls swaying. Now, it just reshapes the tracks of sweat sticking to his buzzed skull. “I can’t listen to this. I don’t want to know what you’re doing talking to rebels, Sejanus, I really don’t. And if you’re stupid enough to—“
It just blurts out of him: “I think I’m pregnant.”
Coryo’s whole body stills. His hand retracts to his side slowly, sliding across the table, and Sejanus tracks the movement. He taps a finger one, two, three times and turns his back on the jabberjays, clutching the table so hard his already-pale knuckles turn stark white.
“Please say something,” he begs.
“You’re sure?”
Sejanus shakes his head. “Not sure,” he croaks, “but all the signs are there. I’m emotional, my skin is sensitive, I feel like all my senses are heightened, and I’ve been nauseated every day for the past two weeks.”
“And it’s—?” He makes a weak gesture at his own chest.
“You’re the only person who’s ever touched me, Coryo.”
With that, Coriolanus drops to the ground. He sits down like a shell-shocked soldier, staring into the middle distance. Other grunts pass them by with cages in their hands, only some of them sparing them any attention. Shaky pale hands come up the rub at the prickly hair on Coriolanus’ head, forward and back and forward and back, once, twice, three times.
Sejanus sits quietly beside him.
“Are you angry with me?”
Coryo blinks slowly, like a cat, and the deep groove between his eyebrows returns, the one Sejanus wants to smooth away with his thumb like he’d seen Ma do for Old Strabo Plinth a million times — but he keeps facing forward.
“Why would I be angry with you?”
Sejanus shrugs. The fabric of Coryo’s jumpsuit drags against his own. “I would understand if you were. I know that this,” his hand finds his stomach, warm through the thin fabric of his military-issued t-shirt, “wasn’t exactly part of your plan for your life.”
“None of this was part of the plan,” Coryo admits, still sounding numb. Distant. Cold, like his namesake.
And Sejanus knows what he means: the Games. Lucy Gray. Cheating both. Exile, life as a peacekeeping grunt in the coal dust of District Twelve. Sejanus and this baby.
Coryo was meant for more than this.
“I know.” A pregnant pause, no pun intended. “And I want you to know I don’t expect anything from you. I’m not — I’m not holding you to anything, Coryo.” He swallows. “I can figure it out on my own.”
That gets his attention, finally. Draws him back into his body. That fire, the one that kept Sejanus warm and content in the cold halls of the Academy, lights in his eyes. “What do you mean, you’ll figure it out on your own? Are you — have you decided to — to terminate?”
He can hear the way he stops himself from saying kill it.
“No,” Sejanus curls around his stomach, like he can protect the life inside of him from even the suggestion of it. “No, I’m not.”
The twitch of muscle beside Coryo’s nose, the sneer without a sneer. “So, what then? You think I’ve fallen so far from grace I don’t have any honor or decency left?”
“I think,” Sejanus insists, “that you have Lucy Gray, the girl you risked absolutely everything for, who wouldn’t take too kindly to what we did behind her back. I think that you have a future and a plan for your life that you shouldn’t push to the wayside just because military birth control is shit.”
Either his words are echoing in his ears or the jabberjays are mocking him, because it feels like his voice reverberates in the hot, empty air. His heart is beating fast in his chest, in his throat. Tears have started welling involuntarily in his eyes and he blinks them away. Hormones, he thinks.
After a long moment, Coryo nods likes he’s making up his mind about something. The jut of his sharp, strong chin is combative, a challenge.
“And you’re going to tell people what? That you let some dirty miner have his way with you?”
“Maybe I will. Why wouldn’t they believe it? Peacekeepers fool around with locals all the time and we’re all interchangeable bodies in matching jumpsuits here. And back home, I’m just District scum pretending to be something I’m not. Who would hear that story and not believe it?”
“I wouldn’t. And your Ma wouldn’t. We know you would never. We know you’re better than that.”
“Why wouldn’t I? What makes me better than that?”
“Because you’re mine.”
It lights a fire in Sejanus. Maybe it shouldn’t. It’s possessive and dangerous, the way Coriolanus says it, like Sejanus is a thing, something to be owned.
He might not mind being a thing to owned, he thinks, if he belonged to Coryo.
But he shouldn’t like it, because he may be Coryo’s but Coryo is not his. There’s a Lucy Gray-shaped shadow over them, and every lesson his Ma taught him about respecting himself humming in the back of his head.
“I’m going to see the Matron about it after our shift is done today,” he mumbles, rather than saying anything that’s circling through his mind. “So we’ll know for sure by lights out.”
“Why haven’t you gone before now?”
“Because it’s real once I do. And I’m scared. This wasn’t part of my plan, either, Coryo.”
“Do you want me to come with you?”
He quirks an eyebrow of his own, tries to sound lighthearted. “You want to watch me get my blood taken? Kinky.”
“I don’t want you to be alone, if you’re scared. I got you into this mess. I’m the whole reason you’re here. It’s my job to take care of you.”
“I don’t need you to take care of me, Coryo.”
Coryo’s lips quirk into a sardonic smile. “Historically, that’s proven to be false.”
The exam table is cold under his thighs.
When he’d haltingly explained his concerns to the Matron, they’d been quickly hustled into the private exam room in the back of the infirmary. She’s a harsh-looking woman, grey hair in a strict bun at the base of her neck, military uniform pressed and ironed neatly.
“And when was your last heat?” She’s speaking softly but her voice booms through the room. He worries, for a moment, that everyone outside can hear.
Sejanus shrugs. “I’ve been on suppressants and birth control since I was fourteen. My first heat was my last heat.”
“Well, that’s just not possible.”
“Why not?”
“Because this test is positive,” she wiggles it in the air, “and you can only conceive during a heat.”
He folds his arms across his chest. “Well, I haven’t had one.”
“That night—“ Coryo clears his throat, like he doesn’t want to say it: the night we fucked. “You did say you weren’t feeling quite right. I’ve never seen you act like that before.”
“But that wasn’t heat! I was fine. I wasn’t out of my mind or anything. Hell, we went to the Hob! If I was in heat, I wouldn’t have made it out of bed.” He rubs his hands over his head. “I was just a little more worked up than normal.”
“But if military suppressants are less effective than the ones your father was getting you,” Coryo looks to the Matron, “could the change in dosage be enough to induce a very mild heat, just enough to lower inhibitions?”
She considers it. “If the dose we supply is significantly lower, yes, absolutely it’s possible. But that would mean you were on quite a hefty dose. A dosage large enough to stop heats completely for years at a time isn’t exactly medically recommended, especially for someone so young.”
He frowns. “What do you mean?”
The Matron sits down on the free chair at the end of his exam table. Her face is open, kind despite the frown lines. “Doses that large are for emergencies. Children who present too early. An omega too ill to survive a heat. Those mentally unable to consent to what can happen during heat. Not continual daily use for a healthy young man.”
“Oh.”
“Your parents couldn’t have known,” Coryo’s hand finds its way into his. “Your Ma would’ve never allowed it if she knew.”
“What matters now,” the Matron says, “is that you stop taking them. They’re not good for the baby.”
“Okay.”
“And you can’t be on patrol or lineup anymore. You won’t be carrying a gun.”
He thinks that Commander Hoff won’t like that and he goes to say as much. But Coryo is already shaking his head and voicing it for him: “The commander won’t like that. Sejanus is the best shot in the company.”
“Hoff doesn’t have to like it. He just has to live with it. I will talk to the commander about having you transferred onto my rotation, where I can keep an eye on your progress.”
“Is that protocol for all the pregnant peacekeepers?” Coryo asks.
“We don’t get many of those,” her eyes track the way Coryo has put his body between the two of them. “For most of you, our suppressants work just right.”
“What kind of complications are you looking for as the result of long-term use of high dosage suppressants?” Coryo looks about one question away from asking for pen and paper to take notes. “Blood clots? Anemia? Hypertension? Birth defects?”
“Coryo,” Sejanus scolds as softly as he can. “You’re stressing me out.”
“Sorry.”
Sejanus squeezes his hand. “It’s okay. Just take a breath for me.” He gives the Matron a smile. “Complications in childbirth is a sensitive topic.”
“I see. It’s a little early to be worrying about any of that.” She stands and does away with her exam gloves. “I’ll be adding a note about your condition to your record. Should I be putting one in Private Snow’s as well or is he simply a particularly supportive friend?”
Coryo looks like a trapped animal, his expression blank but eyes wide and panicked. It’s an expression from the arena, from Highbottom making slights about his home life in front of others. His grip on Sejanus’ hand tightens hard enough to hurt. There’s a war in his eyes: honor against reputation, not to mention the Lucy Gray of it all.
“Uh,” Sejanus says intelligently.
“A note,” Coryo blurts. “In my record, yes, please. But — discreetly, if you could?”
“Of course. Records are confidential. No one will see them except me and the commander.” She gives them a solemn nod. “I’ll give you two a moment to gather yourselves.”
Sejanus holds Coryo’s hand as long as he allows it, listening to him breathe in the sterile silence. The room is sparse, just the cold metal exam table, two chairs, and a small rolling cabinet, all far enough away from the rest of the infirmary that they feel like the only people in the world.
“Are you okay?” Sejanus whispers. Anything more than that feels too loud.
Coryo drops his hand. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”
“Maybe,” he hops down from the table and starts on pulling his jumpsuit back up, “but you won’t.” He re-dresses in silence, rolling his sleeves back down his arms. It takes until he boots are tied for Coriolanus to say anything at all.
“I want you to write your father and get yourself a discharge.”
“Coryo—“
“It’s too dangerous for you here. If — if something happened to the baby, I don’t know if I could handle it.”
“Nothing is going to happen to us,” Sejanus takes Coryo’s hand, presses it firm to the space right under his belly button, where he wildly imagines it’s already starting to curve, to swell. “You wouldn’t let anything happen to us.”
“Sejanus, for once in your life, listen to reason, please.”
“You always take such good care of me,” Sejanus flatters — and if he widens his eyes and pouts his lower lip a bit, who could blame him when, for possibly the first time in his life, he has Coriolanus Snow’s full attention? “And I hear your concerns but I don’t know if I could bear to be away from you right now. You’re the only thing in the world that makes me feel safe.”
“You’d be safer with your Ma in the Capitol. With actual doctors. Not whatever this is.”
“No, I’m right where I need to be. Here in Twelve. With you.” He smiles, feels the stretch of it in his cheeks. “I’m being moved off patrol duty. I’ll work in the infirmary while I’m still on my feet. The Matron will make sure we’re healthy and I will be surrounded by medics whenever I’m not with you.”
That seems to placate any irritation Coryo is feeling, because he nods sharply. “I will walk you to and from every shift in the infirmary. If you’re not with the Matron, I want you with me. I want someone with you every single second of every single day.”
“Okay.”
“No consorting with rebels, Sejanus. Full stop. Don’t look at them. Don’t talk to them. Don’t pass notes. Don’t even think about them. Not even the ones you think are harmless. Not even Billy Taupe. They’ll only put you and the baby in danger.”
“Deal.”
“No alcohol. No coffee.”
“I did take the same health class you did, Coryo. I know what I can and can’t have.”
“Take this seriously.”
“I am.” He softens his tone, takes a step closer, both their hands still pressed firmly to his stomach. “I am,” he whispers. “I’m so serious about this.”
“Good.” A pause. “Snows don’t have bastards.”
“And peacekeepers can’t marry.” Sejanus nods. “Not that you would marry me anyway. I wouldn’t marry me either.”
“Sejanus—“
“So that settles it. Snows don’t have bastards. The baby will be a Plinth.” He asks possibly the one question he’s been dreading most: “Are you going to tell Lucy Gray?”
Coryo swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing. “I suppose I’ll have to.”
“I can come with you.” Coryo snorts, rolling his eyes. “No, really. She should hear it from you because she deserves your honesty and your apology. But she should hear it from me, too, because I consider her a friend, Coryo, and she should know that it was just—“
“Just?”
“A mistake. Something we did, not something we’re doing.” He sighs, runs a hand over his short-shorn hair. “That I don’t any intentions or expectations of anything more from you.”
“None at all?”
That gives him pause. “Do you want me to have expectations of you? That you’ll drop Lucy Gray and love me out of some misguided sense of duty? Give up all your plans and your future on the basis of some antiquated chivalry?”
Coryo drops his hand, takes a large step back. “I want you to want something for yourself! You have had the entire world at your fingertips your whole life and you’ve reached for nothing! The rest of us are scrambling to pick up crumbs and you’re pushing a full plate away. The only thing you’ve ever sought out is your stupid, unreachable, unrealistic, amorphous justice. Take something for yourself for once! Demand something for yourself. If you had any fucking self respect, you would have expectations of me!”
“I’m so sorry I’m not greedy enough for you, Coryo.”
“You should be! Be greedy! Be selfish! Come on, Sejanus. You have to want something. Everyone wants something. Strop trying to martyr yourself. Stop being so goddamn self-sacrificing and take what you want! What do you want? Come on, take what you want!”
“I want you!” He tries to blink his tears away. “I want to not do this alone. I want someone to tell me it’s going to be okay. I want to not be a disappointment to every single person in my life. I want to go back to three weeks ago, before you ever touched me. I want to go back to three weeks ago, so I can feel you touch me again. I want — I want to be a better person.” He covers his face with his hands. “Why can’t I be a better person?”
“Sejanus—“ He can hear the pity in Coryo’s voice. Poor Sejanus. Poor stupid, sad, lovesick Sejanus. “It’s going to be okay.”
“I’m sorry,” he wipes at his face, takes a step back when Coryo takes one forward. “That was a lot. I — um, I didn’t mean to put all of that on you. We should — we should go. It’ll be curfew soon.”
The walk back to their barracks is silent.
The air by the lake is different from the air in town, the air on base. There’s a breeze, soft and slow like a summer day, just enough to cool the sweat on their skin and turn it into something pleasant.
Sejanus sits on the dock with his feet in the water while everyone else swims around him, worried taking his shirt off will give him away even if he’s barely able to notice any change in the mirror. Maude Ivory, who is somewhat infatuated with him in a childish sort of way, splashes lake water up at him with a musical laugh.
Lucy Gray and Coryo collapse on either side of him, the wet of their bodies soaking into the seat of his pants. They lay on their backs, allowing the sun to dry them off as the others scatter into the reeds at the edge of the lake and up into the cabin for fishing rods and musical instruments.
“Lucy Gray?” His voice is weaker than he’d hoped it be. She hums softly, lyrically, her gentle fingers catching his bare elbow and dragging down the skin of his arm. “I have something I need to tell you.”
“Sejanus,” Coryo says. It sounds like a warning.
But Lucy Gray waves him off. “Go on, sugar.”
His hands shake. Coryo’s wide palm settles at the base of his spine, just under the hem of his shirt, tapping once, twice, three times.
“It’s okay,” Coryo whispers.
“Honey,” she says, sitting up. The lake water adds a salt air layer to her scent of lemongrass and sleep, “are you in some kind of trouble?”
“Kind of. I’m pregnant.”
“Oh. Oh, honey.” She frowns. “It’s not Billy Taupe, is it? I know he’s a handsome face and you two talked a few times and he may be alright with little ones, but you can’t trust him as far as you can throw him. Trust me, I’d know.”
“No,” he shakes his head. “It’s not Billy Taupe.”
“Then who—?” She looks across him at Coriolanus and stops, her jaw working in a slow circle before her teeth click together. She turns her gaze out towards the lake. “I see.”
He ducks his head like a scolded child. He feels worse than when his father used to lock him in his room without dinner for acting out at school. “It was a mistake. Neither of us were in our right mind. Neither of us would ever want to hurt you, Lucy Gray. I’m so sorry.”
“And you?” Her head whips sharply to look at Coryo, eyes hard. “What do you have to say for yourself, Coriolanus?”
“I don’t know what I could say that won’t sound like a lie.”
“How ‘bout the truth?”
“The truth is that I’ve given up everything for you. But I won’t give up him, too, because you’re both mine.”
“You said I could trust you.”
“You can.”
“Clearly not.” She shakes her head. “You’re just like Billy Taupe, thinking you can have your cake and eat it, too. You can’t have us both.”
“And why not? Why can’t I have you both, if I want you both? Why can’t you both belong to me? Why do I have to choose?”
“You don’t,” Sejanus interrupts. “You don’t have to choose, Coryo, because there isn’t a choice. You two have given up everything to be together. I’m not trying to get between you.” He turns his whole body towards her. “I’m not asking him to choose, Lucy Gray. I’m not asking for him anything at all. And I’m not asking you for forgiveness, either, no matter how sorry I am.”
Her big watchful eyes consider the two of them, flicking between their bodies. Coryo’s skin is starting to grow red in the sun. There is only the sound of the water lapping softly at the legs of the dock, the birds chirping overhead. The world around them is going on, even if it feels like it’s stopped.
“So what are you askin’ for, then? What’s your plan?” Coryo opens his mouth and she holds up a hand. “I wasn’t talkin’ to you. Sejanus, what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to have this baby.”
“By yourself.”
“The Matron will be there, I assume.”
“And then what?”
“I raise it.”
“By yourself.”
He very pointedly does not look at Coryo. “I guess so. Yeah.”
“Okay. Here in Twelve?” At his nod, she raises a perfect eyebrow. “Really? Have you thought about that at all? Every child in Twelve goes to the Reaping. Peacekeepers, the mayor, it don’t matter who your parents are. You’re gonna let your child get Reaped?”
He’s ashamed to say it hadn’t crossed his mind. The Hunger Games — well, he knows they moved to the Capitol before the games were put in place. It wasn’t safe for them in District Two anymore, not labeled as traitors as they were, but if they had stayed, his name would’ve gone into the pool. He could’ve been Marcus or Bobbin or Lucy Gray. Sometimes, on Reaping Day, he could hear his Ma thanking his father for saving him, for getting them out.
“You’re gonna let your child live with that fear? No, if you’re havin’ this baby, you gotta go back to the Capitol.”
And he wants to ask her what makes his baby so special, that every other child born in the districts are subjected to this life she wants to spare his from. But therein lies the answer: it’s his baby and he is privileged enough to have the choice, the money, the resources, the name, all of it backing him and allowing him to save his child’s life.
Just like his father.
“Your father would pay for a discharge,” Coryo reminds him, mouth against his shoulder.
“Will he? When I’m coming back to him like this?”
Lucy Gray puts her hand back on his arm. He slept with her boyfriend and she’s comforting him. She’s a better person than he’ll ever be. “Your old man would turn you away?”
“No,” Sejanus shakes his head. “No, Ma wouldn’t allow it. But I’m a pregnant omega with no mate, no marriage contract. He’ll marry me off to first alpha who’ll have me to save himself the public shame.”
Coryo stiffens. “Who would have you?”
Sejanus knows he doesn’t mean it the way it sounds. It’s not that he’s not worth wanting, but that Coryo doesn’t want anyone else to have him. “Felix, maybe? They managed to resuscitate him after the bombing, but he was mildly disfigured and the Vickers cancelled their marriage contract.”
“How do you know that? I didn’t know that.”
“Ma knows everything. People tell her things they wouldn’t admit to anyone else, especially when they’re emotional, and she tells me. She loves gossip.”
“Hm.”
“Well,” Lucy Gray cuts in, “you don’t have to marry anyone you don’t want to.”
“That’s not how it works in the Capitol,” Coriolanus tells her. “You marry who your parents pick for you. And — a baby out of wedlock is one of the greatest shames you can bring on your family. Even more so for Sejanus.”
“I’d be a District whore,” he sighs, “just like Livia Cardew always said I was.”
“You’re not a whore,” she argues.
He laughs. “I’m pregnant with your boyfriend’s baby. I think you can get away with calling me a whore.”
“Fine. You’re a whore. What’s wrong with that? I know plenty of whores and they’re all lovely people. Stop worryin’ about what people are going to say about you and start worryin’ about keeping your baby alive long enough to grow up.” She stands up, looming above them on the dock. “You might have gotten yourself into this mess, but you’re not the only one in it now.”
With that, she jumps back into the lake and disappears under the water.
“You don’t have to raise it yourself, you know,” Coryo murmurs, his fingers tracing patterns on Sejanus’ lower back. “Lucy Gray will calm down and we’ll figure something out.”
“Snows don’t have bastards.” Sejanus whispers. “And Lucy Gray’s right. We can’t stay here. At least I can’t. I have to go back.”
The Covey start singing on the banks.
“Okay.”
“Okay?” It’s low enough that it comes out in a hiss. He wants to cry, but that’s never earned him points with anyone.
“Write your father. Tell him you have to come home.”
“And I raise the baby by myself?”
“No. I passed the officer exam. I’ll do the training in Two,” Coryo says in the space between their bodies. “I’ll be back before the baby is born. With my father’s legacy backing me and the scores I’ll get, they’ll place me in the Capitol. Your father can get you a discharge and we can go home.”
“How long is training?”
“Six months.”
So long. “Will you write me? And call?”
“Of course.” The vulnerable curve of his big, pale ear and strong shoulder turn his slender frame into mountains and valleys in the summer sun. “My father — he was gone for so much of my life, handling the family business and then fighting in the war. A looming, absent presence. And then, one day, he was just . . . gone. Forever. I don’t want to be that for our baby.”
“My father,” Sejanus croaks, clears his throat. “Well, you’ve met him. He’s always been ashamed of me. I’ve always been too soft, too angry, too District, not District enough. Ungrateful. He always reminded me that my safety was the reason we left Two. That I was the reason Ma could never go home. A burden.”
“Our baby isnt going to grow up like we did,” Coryo swears darkly. “They’ll never know hunger or pain or fear. They’ll never know the taste of paste or the sound of bombs. They won’t be afraid of their classmates or their teachers or their father. They’ll only know love and comfort and safety.”
“They’ll never have to go into that arena,” Sejanus adds, seeing flashes of the club coming down, down, down on Bobbin’s head until his skull was crushed and brain matter spattered the floor under Coriolanus’ feet. His knee twinges. “Promise me.”
“Never.”
“And I meant what I said, Coryo. I’m not making you choose.”
“Good,” he lays back on the dock, his hands behind his head, all his body laid out like a feast. He smirks, Sejanus’ favorite smirk, the self-satisfied one, and traces his glacier eyes down Sejanus’ body. “Because I really do love to have cake, but I’d like to eat it, too.”
Sejanus reaches down into the water and splashes him as hard as he can.
The night before Coriolanus boards the train to Officer training in District Two, the Hob is packed tightly with peacekeepers and locals alike. It’s rowdier than usual, the peacekeepers celebrating a goodbye to a friend, the locals drunk on the contagious good mood and the free-flowing liquor.
Up on stage, Lucy Gray is singing:
This world it’s dark,
This world it’s scary,
I’ve taken some hits
So no wonder I’m wary
It’s why
I need you
You’re as pure as the driven snow
The wide, involuntary smile that slinks its way across Coryo’s mouth is a new one, one Sejanus has never seen before. His eyes are glued to the stage despite the well-wishers who keep approaching him for handshakes and backslaps. Coryo has always been a being of obsession, of intense focus — and right now all of that fervent attention is focused exclusively on his songbird.
This world goes blind
When children are dyin’
I’d turn into dust
But you’d never stop tryin’
It’s why
I love you
You’re as pure as the driven snow
From the corner of his eye, he can see Billy Taupe approaching, the mayor’s redheaded daughter trailing sourly behind him. He’s lost his hat at some point during the night and his hair is a mess, flopping forlornly into his dark eyes. His beard is growing in thicker these days, less patchy, like he’s been working at grooming it.
“Plinth,” he insists with a slur in his voice like he’s had a bit too much to drink tonight, “I need to talk to you.”
With Coryo standing at his elbow — because Coryo allowed him the last chair at the table, a deference to his delicate condition, a gentleman in a crowd of boys — and a cup of water in his hand, it’s hard to ignore his situation and the new rules that come with it: No consorting with rebels.
Bad news these days, Barb Azure had turned her nose up when Clerk Carmine brought him up by the lake.
Can’t trust him as far as you can throw him, Lucy Gray had said.
Don’t look at them. Don’t talk to them. Don’t even think about them, Coryo had begged. They’ll only put you and the baby in danger.
Sejanus had never considered himself the type to put his life above anybody else’s, the type to sacrifice the good of the many for his own needs, the type to turn his back on someone in need just to benefit himself. But it’s not himself he’s thinking of anymore. It’s not just him in this body. It’s not just him that he needs to take care of.
His morals, his principles, thrown to the side for the life inside him, for the boy beside him.
So he keeps his gaze forward and watches the stage. Even when Billy Taupe gets so close he can almost taste the booze on his breath.
Cold and clean,
Swirling over my skin,
You cloak me,
You soak right in,
Down to my heart
“I’m talkin’ to you,” Billy Taupe has squeezed himself between peacekeepers, his palm flat on the table in front of Sejanus, holding himself upright. His knobby, knotted knuckles are bruised, but that doesn’t stop him from slamming his fist down hard enough to make the bottles jump. “Don’t ignore me.”
The others around him protest Billy Taupe’s tone, the lack of respect for a peacekeeper and an omega at that. He wonders what puzzle pieces they think they’re putting together, with his condition and Billy Taupe’s desperate determination to get his attention tonight. Are they assuming him a scorned lover?
Either way, he keeps his eyes front.
“You think you’re better than me all of a sudden?”
Sejanus flicks his eyes to the side and tries on an expression he usually saved for the likes of Arachne Crane and Livia Cardew: a practiced, calculated indifference in the four-way flit of his eyes to face, shirt, shoes, and away, then a gentle pull of his eyebrows together just enough to invoke the impression of pity. It had never failed to leave the girls back in the Capitol quietly furious and insecure, that this District omega could look at them and find them wanting.
“That’s how it is, huh?” Mayfair has a hand twisted in the back of Billy Taupe’s vest, pulling hard, but he’s not budging. “Thought we wanted the same things, but I guess you’re just a pig like the rest of them.”
Hot, wet spit hits his cheek. Shame bubbles up his throat. Sejanus has had a lot spat at him in his time — insults, accusations, threats of violence — but he’s never been spat on.
In the commotion of Smiley and Bug dragging Billy Taupe away from the table, shoving him back, the glob slides slickly down the curve of his jaw before a soft, silky piece of cloth is there wiping it away. The cloth passes over his skin once, twice, three times before being discarded on the table, hand-stitched initials now wet and soaking up Billy Taupe’s spit: C.X.S.
And there is Coryo’s hot breath against his ear, free of any taste of liquor, all roses and sweetness and the newfound scent of pride he’s been carrying with him everywhere. His hand cups the back of Sejanus’ neck for just long enough to squeeze. “Good boy.”
It makes him shiver.
You asked for a reason
I’ve got three and twenty
For why
I trust you
You’re as pure as the driven snow
It’s why
I trust you
You’re as pure as the driven snow
The crowd erupts into applause and his hand finds Coryo’s thigh under the table, massaging the lean, corded muscle. “Coryo?” he turns his gaze from the stage and the crowd to stare up at the halo of light around his blonde head. “When you’re done here tonight, after you’ve seen Lucy Gray, there’s something I want you to do.”
His pale eyebrow lifts in bemusement, dragging the corner of his mouth up with it. “And that is?”
“I want you to fuck me again.”
A quick glance around, to the crowd and the stage and then back to Sejanus. “What about Lucy Gray? You said—“
“And you said you wanted us both,” Sejanus interrupts. “Or was that just to spare my feelings?”
“I’ve never spared anyone’s feelings.”
Sejanus grins. “I know.” He squeezes Coryo’s thigh and forces himself to let go.
“By the time I get back to the barracks, everyone else will be there, too.”
“I don’t care. They’ll sleep like the dead.” His mouth is dry, like he’s been panting without noticing it. He drags his fingers through the minuscule gathering of condensation on his glass of water. “Even if you don’t touch me, I want to touch you. I’ll do whatever you want, if she hasn’t worn you out by then.”
Coryo’s clever eyes track the movement of his fingers intently, fixated. Who needs liquor to get drunk when you have Coriolanus Snow’s undivided attention? Who needs morphling when he has that pleased look on his face? “I don’t know why I find myself surprised when you’re bold, Sejanus. You’ve always made a point of subverting expectations. You’ve never been quiet about what you want. Now look at you taking it.”
“You like it,” it’s something like playing with fire. “You don’t want to and you try not to, because it’s not the proper way of things, but you do.”
“God help me.”
The crowd around the stage is thicker now, full of stomping and sobbing dancers as the fiddle kicks up a jaunty tune. Lucy Gray has disappeared from the stage like smoke, her melodic laugh trailing backstage after her on the wind.
“Go get your girl, solider,” he kicks Coryo’s gently in the shin, the way you would kick a horse to get it moving. “Then come find me when you’re done with her.”
It’s hours later, in the dark of the barracks, when the scent of roses slides into his bunk with him. The drunken snores of their bunk mates cover the groan of the mattress as Coryo eases into place behind him, sweat-sticky fingers gripping confidently at his bare sides.
“I found you,” Coryo breathes.
“You did,” he praises. Hands slip beneath the blankets and find him bare there, too. Coryo’s sweet mouth curses quietly against his neck. “What are you going to do about it?”