#daryafics

“Tell me something about yourself,” you say, turning your neck against the cool barrel of the copper bathtub. Over its rim, Zeke raises his eyebrows and folds the newspaper slipping between his fingers. “Something I don’t know about you.”

“What would you like to know?” he asks in return. He stretches his legs along the floor and drums the thin paper idly. “Something about my terribly boring childhood? Something about the Titans? You want a war story?”

You shrug. The warm water spills over your shoulders.

“Do you like being… a Titan?” you say after a moment’s contemplation of the phrasing.

He reaches to the small linen cart you had snuck from the laundry into his bathroom chambers, placing his paper down and picking up instead the small glass of wine balanced on the shelf. “Like,” he snorts. “Do you like not being a Titan? Do you like being just a person? Shall we survey Porco and Reiner and Pieck – see if they like it?”

It’s cold. But then Zeke laughs, and you laugh, too.

“As far as it goes, or -” he says, and interrupts himself by taking a sip, “by it, I suppose life itself, it’s certainly never perfect. I think at least we’d all agree on that.”

You wait for him to continue.

He takes another sip.

“Well,” you say into the pause, “how does it feel to be a Titan?”

“Feel?”

You look away, to the back of his head reflected in the mirror. His voice is evasive, not with the coyness you’ve gotten accustomed to, but some sort of real communication barrier. Cultural barrier. “Do you feel more natural like this or… like that?”

“I see,” Zeke says. He sets the wine glass down on the floor with a faint clink on the tile. His response sounds relieved, as if he had shared the same hesitation. “Something that you should ask Pieck in particular.”

He stretches his arms in front of him, strong forearms dusted with ginger hair.

“To me, ‘natural’ isn’t a word that describes either shape. Is it natural that we tie trousers around our waists? Is it natural that we groom the length of our hair and fingernails? It’s a condition of my life the same as any other. A condition that’s shaped me – same as preferring colder weather, same as liking tomatoes and disliking celery. No – more like being a subject of Ymir. Not what it means politically in this country or in this city; but I mean what is in your blood, in the tongue shaped in childhood to speak the language of your people, in what your father’s mother’s parents instilled in your lineage. You don’t ask for any of those roles in life, you just have them when you are born.”

He lets out something under his breath that almost sounds like Reiner, but he doesn’t repeat himself. He turns his hands into fists and circles them through the air. The bone cracks and you wince.

“So you were born a Titan?” You reach for the bar of soap and inhale it a moment – lavender, and perhaps, a faint tobacco leaf – and roll it between your hands. The lather begins to foam.

“No, that’s not how it works,” Zeke says, and he doesn’t elaborate further.

“Well. But,” you say as the muscle of his forearm weaves in his stretching, “you have power. More than I, but you’re their commander. Reiner, Porco. You do have some freedom that we don’t.”

You spread the lather across your skin absently.

Zeke makes a sound like a snort. He relaxes his arms into a wide shrug. “What freedom is there, what power, if someone’s holding onto the other end of the leash? You think that turning into – that – makes me free? In that form, I’m more bound to them than even like this.”

His hands fall, slapping sharply against his thigh.

You sink lower in the deep tub. The water laps at your chin.

“But you can do something,” you mutter, staring at the ripples shifting through the water as you draw your knees to your chest.

He picks up the wine again. “Believe me, I am. But let’s turn this around. Tell me something about yourself.”

You inhale slowly, shifting against the edge of the tub. “You know,” you say, letting your tone turn light, “I don’t think you’ve ever asked me that question before.”

“I haven’t?”

“No.”

Zeke smiles. His eyes remain steady on you. He leans forward, turning the wine in his hand for another sip before placing it down. “Alright. Then start telling me. Why are you here?”

You run your fingers along the lip of the tub, watching the water bead on your skin.

“It’s a good job,” you say. “I mean, the pay is really, really good. It’s enough to send home and still live off. Lodging is included for us, too.”

“You barely get weekends and holidays off.”

“Well,” you say, and lift your foot from the water to examine the pruned texture prickling at your toes. “Where would I even go?”

Not like we ever go anywhere…

He offers nothing. You lower your foot.

“So all of that is worth being right in their line of sight?” Zeke lifts two fingers in mock crosshairs and narrows his gaze as if taking aim at you.

“Well, you should know,” you say, and smile at the gesture, “isn’t it easier to get away with things right under their nose?”

“Oh, you little rascal, you,” Zeke laughs. His teeth shine. “Have I been such a terrible influence?”

He moves now. His arms rest on the copper rim of the tub, his faces inches from yours. His hand moves, and you lean your face towards him. He reaches past to tug at the handle, and hot water comes gurgling once more from the faucet.

“Scoot up.”

“What?”

“You’re hogging all the hot water,” Zeke says. An eyebrow quirks up as if daring you to object.

“Are you serious?”

“Have I ever struck you as someone who’s not serious?”

“I don’t know if there’s room” you say, but he’s already unbuttoning his shirt in a casual fluidity. The lean, muscular lines of his torso come revealed. The faint smattering of hair across his chest weaves a pattern in the soft light.

“There is,” he says in a tone so matter-of-fact that it ever-so-slightly stirs that low instinct of jealousy below your belly.

You sink into the water, either to make room, or to hide.

“Well?”

He discards his clothing and runs his hand along the side of the tub. You push your knees forward and feel him step into the tub behind you, hear the water slosh with the weight of his limbs displacing lazy splashes over the side.

“Come on, lean back.”

The water laps against your arms as his legs bracket yours. He catches your wrist beneath the water and runs his thumb against the back of your hand.

“Are you trying to swim away? You’re quiet.”

You hesitate, and his thumb traces a slow line against your wrist.

“I have another question.”

“You do?”

His tone is mockingly sweet. Heat rises to your face. Zeke’s hand slides in the water, pressing gently against the curve of your waist. His cock twitches at your flank, and your body aches in response.

“Another query about my Titan blood?”

“No,” you say, and you’re glad that he can’t see your face. “It’s a silly question.”

His hands lock at your waist. “Then it’ll have a silly answer.”

The heat pooling in your chest betrays the tone of your voice. “You’re impossible.”

“Am I?” Zeke asks, his voice soft now, his fingers brushing idly at your side. He’s testing the waters – literally. “Or am I just honest?”

You don’t have a chance to respond before his arms draw your body into him through the bathwater, the motion less like a trap and more like a silent plea to surrender. The warmth of his chest envelopes your back, his steady breathing slowing you. He kisses your neck, right at the nape, right where your spine crawls south.

“It’s silly,” you say again. “But I just – have you ever shared this tub with another woman?”

His arms tighten, a conspiracy between himself, the water, the tub, to keep you close.

“And I mean – more than that. Have you been close like this – have you shared yourself like this, with another?”

“You think I warmed my bed with mindless Titans on the island?”

He’s trying to make you laugh and you refuse to fall for the distraction. You scoff louder than you intended.

“You know what I’m asking,” you say plainly, refusing to engage with the riddles.

Zeke keeps his grip on your waist firm as he adjusts himself to better fit the confines of the bathtub. “I do know. I didn’t know it mattered to you.”

You stay silent. He stays silent a moment longer.

“I was blessed to enjoy more of my teenage years as a human than others could. Did you know that Reiner took on the mantle when he was twelve?”

You will not ask after the breadcrumbs left in those sentences. Zeke sighs, as if he had hoped you to. His chest swells and collapses at your back with the breath.

“So, I had what some – what I – would consider to be the typical teenage experience. Dates at the pier after training at the gymnasium. Passing notes and promises in class. Snuck a few dates into the basements of taverns with no means to pay for our drinks.” He pauses. “Spent a few nights in rooms I also had no means to pay for.”

You fidget. He kisses the back of your neck again.

“But that was a lifetime ago. It truly feels that way. You know I’ve been a little occupied.”

“Yes, with being a giant monkey.”

“And,” he says, tightening his arms, “with someone else.”

It makes you smile and you’re glad he can’t see it.

“Come on,” Zeke wheedles, and his hands begin to slowly ride up, thick through the water. “You can’t think I’ve had much of a chance to climb out of the monkey suit and into someone’s skirts.”

“I can’t, but I also can’t think you’ve been celibate that whole time as well.”

“I’ve heard,” Zeke muses, “that there are actually those that prefer seeing me as a giant monkey.”

You have to turn at that, and the corners of your cheeks are plump with a smile. “You’re ridiculous.”

Zeke kisses your cheek, and then, with a deliberate slowness, your mouth. “But you’re still here.”

His thumbs rise and first he traces around your chest. He drips over your collarbones, watching your shoulders move concave with each breath, before moving back to your breasts. He goes in slow circles, slippery in the water against the texture of your nipples. It brings a hot rush between your legs almost instantly.

His cock is stiff against your back again.

“You,” you pant, your neck beginning to ache, “are trying to distract me.”

“I’m not,” Zeke says innocently. “That’s the end of it all. I swear.”

You sigh. The distraction is working. His thumbs wash water over your skin, and your nipples ripen to peaks. You fidget back.

“Then tell me – Zeke, Zeke. Why do we have to hide so much?”

Zeke’s hands stiffen. He hides it with a pinch that makes your next words break into a high squeal, something so loud you clap a wet hand over your mouth in reflex.

“Isn’t it just easier like this? We each have work to do. And Pieck knows, Porco knows, Reiner knows. That’s all that matters. You want to, what, report to Magath?”

“No, I guess…”

You let your voice trail off as his fingers flatten, arch again.

“And did you really fear,” Zeke whispers, “that you were sharing this space with another?”

“N-no -”

“I thought you knew better than that. I’ve never taken your head to be one filed with silly fluff and candy floss.”

All you can do is keen, your voice high, when he slips a hand down between your legs. He’s quickly ridding your head of any thoughts at all. You try to force your knees apart, but the muscular band of his thighs separating you from the tub in the narrow space has left no room for more movement.

“I thought you trusted me.”

“I – do – oh – ”

Your head is tipped back, resting on his shoulder. Your hand falls, limp. His thick fingers sweep in measured caress through the water and over your skin. He cups a hand between the plump of your thighs and you tighten automatically at it. He chuckles hot at your face and kisses your cheek again.

“I was a good little boy,” Zeke says, as your hips move between his hand, the smooth metal of the tub. “I took care of my toys. I even shared my toys. But now I think I only want to play with this one. And she’s mine alone, now.”

You arch your back, squirming into his frame. He lifts his hand He nips his teeth at your earlobe and his breath is quickening to the same pace as the clumsy circles he draws over your clit. The water laps at the back of his hand, the valleys between your crowded knees.

“Right?”

You close your eyes and let out the yielding, “Mmhmm.”

Water slides over your soaped body like silk. His touch doesn’t bring the usual friction of skin on skin, but the slickness has its own seduction. The coiled spring that rests heavy below your hips tightens, weighs you down in its steady, impatient pressure. It feels as though you could leak into the bath.

“I’m…”

“You’re so wet,” Zeke whispers. “I can feel it on you.”

With that his fingers slip between your folds, teasing without entering. You turn your head into the crook of his neck, and your arm is up, reaching desperately to rake fingers through the back of his head.

“Zeke…”

“Can’t fuck you here, can I? Just too narrow,” he croons. “I don’t think the tub was made for two after all, but I’m not complaining.”

He traces his hand back down your body to find your other, take it, and bring it back to your chest. He guides your fingers to your breast and slides wet fingers into a V, into a pinch, to show the pressure he likes to apply.

“I like playing with my toy,” Zeke says, and the words growl through his teeth and rumble at your back. You open your eyes to guide your lips to his neck, where you miss the kiss you intend and instead land at the border of his beard curling under his chin.

He’s dancing his fingers along the slick between your legs and drawing it out of you like some magician’s never-ending display of magic. Playing indeed, toying with you right on that line as each touch slides over your body.

It won’t take long like this, and he knows it. He knows your body well by now, speaks the same nonverbal language as the impatient grind of your hips. So this is how he strings you out moments longer, moments that feel like hours, until at last, you let it burst from your lips:

“Please, please, more.”

“More,” Zeke says in a voice bordering on mocking, but then his fingers are in you and all is well. You lean forward, almost choking on your inhale. His arm keeps you down and tucked against him.

“More, more, for my girl,” he says thickly. With the grunt of his words, he forces two fingers higher, bends them, and crooks them.

“Oh – ”

“Mmhmm.”

It’s as if the ecstasy you feel is contagious. Zeke begins to fuck you with furious fingers, as if it were enough for him to feel. His breath is coming from his mouth, and you close your eyes for a dizzying moment, wishing that your forehead could be against his, your mouth on his, his body over yours instead of the unforgiving air waiting outside of the shallow cradle of the tub. Water cascades furiously. You can hear the splashes and puddles gathering on the floor.

Neither of you remotely care.

You toss your head against his chest and whine, clutching at his arms as if to bring him closer, to throw him off.

“I’m – I’m gonna – it’s –”

“Fast,” Zeke murmurs. “Come on then, come on, come. I want you to come.”

He wants you to come, and those words are the anchor to bring you through. His fingers almost tense in you and you prepare to give an outburst of protest, but the slowing is just a moment to re-angle before his fingers turn furious. Zeke brings his other hand down to your clit again and you strain, a foot pushing against the edge of the tub, a wave going over the edge.

“Fuck!”

The sound echoes and dances along the tiles.

It ripples out of you as that coiled spring of tension releases in orgasm. Something about the surrounding basin of water makes each internal clench feel as though it leeches out of you in pulse. You almost expect to look down to milky white rivulets, as if it had been that strong.

You don’t even realize when his hands have come away from you. You’re sitting up, your stomach muscles aching and knees cramped.

“Oh my… god.”

“Fuck,” Zeke mutters low in agreement behind you.

You raise your hands to your face and slowly press into your palms, breathing heavily. The lights spin around you when you raise your eyes again.

Zeke’s arms languish back in the water. You reach over him to clutch at the sides of the tub.

“Are – d’you need help getting out?”

“No,” you manage, the foggy heat still rising in your head.

When you get yourself turned, kneeling now to face him with the water up to your elbows, Zeke looks as flushed as you feel. He’d taken his glasses off at some point and they lie half-folded and fogged up on the tiled floor in a shallow puddle. His cheekbones are pink, and his smile is fat and lazy.

You inhale, exhale, steady yourself.

“You want to play a little more?”

“I do,” you say softly, reverently, and half-crawl closer, a hand sliding along the copper floor between his legs. You reach up and trace the lines of his muscle, higher to his chest. Zeke’s hands are firmly braced along the tub as he leans forward and kisses you. The mist and humidity of the room melts your lips together with ease.

The kiss is soft and short.

Your hand wraps delicately around his erection, the water guiding the ease of your motion before skin meets. Zeke hisses as you begin to pump, awkward, in the water, but as the flush reddens on his cheeks your grip tightens and you work up. Down.

“Oh,” he says – he moans.

The sound of it almost makes you melt anew. You can feel your lip draw back in a half-smile, and you lower yourself slightly, your knees tight between his and the curve of your waist sloping to create a heart in your hips. Zeke sucks in his breath.

Down, down, firm and up.

You cannot lower your mouth to him, and you understand his frustration with the limits of this tub; but while you are knelt down between his thighs, you can still let your thumb work as his have. You swirl around his tip, teasing the slit when you find it, coaxing each slippery bead out.

“Oh – fuck – ”

What you touch is soft. What your movements of skin dance over is a hardness beneath. Zeke is clutching at the lip of the tub with pruned fingers. You watch the whiteness seep into his knuckles and think, in a fresh flashback of memory more than words, of what made his touch wrinkle so. You pull back for a moment and move your hand between your legs again.

Slick of your orgasm still remains webbed at your thigh. Some had not been washed into the water. Zeke sees your reach and makes that delicious, raw, moaning sound again, knowing the thought before it even formed in your mind.

You want to hear it again, and so you gather your fingers and stuff your hand between your legs to swollen, dripping folds where you can bring it back to Zeke. You have the urge to taste it, or to draw it across his lips, if there were any more.

Zeke moans again.

His eyes almost roll back in his head. He lifts a hand, clutches it to his mouth and groans when your hand glides round him again. His abdomen muscles contract so slightly. His cock firms in your hand.

“Come – up here,” Zeke says, ragged. “Give me a kiss.”

You push yourself up on your elbow, and he watches your hips sway and settle in position. The pace of your pumping slows as you balance yourself, but Zeke extends that hand to you, almost crushing with a strength at the back of your head, and hunches forward to have his lips meet yours again. His fingers trace the outline of your cheekbones as he kisses you harder, deeper.

Your own fingers tighten, and a sound like no other tears from his throat into your lungs.

“Come on,” you whisper, and the sound of it is his own undoing. His hand tightens on you as his hips jerk upward. You tear away from him with regret, but watching him ride this wave is almost fascinating. Zeke is thrusting into your fist, fucking your hand as you have fucked yourself on his touch, as the water sways and lurches in currents around your bodies.

“Come on, come on,” you say again and again in soft command.

“Oh – ”

Zeke’s climax claims him. His cock jumps in your hand and your gaze is adoring as the pulsing swells. He has his head back in a delicious agony, blonde hair spilling over the rim of copper, his mouth just barely open. His collarbones take shape with each sucking breath. Droplets of water shine in his beard like individual diamonds.

He shoots on his chest, your fingertips rolling along him.

Zeke groans, something animalistic and beastly that makes your spine roll.

“Oh,” he says again, and he grabs for your wrist. His neck snaps forward, and it takes a moment for his eyes to find yours.

“That – fuck,” he says – groans – and then droops his chin, as if the battle to find words exhausts him. But then he groans again with more coherence. “Oh, fuck. I’m going to have to wash up, huh.”

“I didn’t even finish my bath,” you say, but the words are delighted and lack any trace of sourness.

“I am sorry about that,” Zeke says in a tone that implies he will not be leaving you to return to it.

You sigh and haul yourself from the tub. Your legs, though cramped, have regained some strength that orgasm saps from you; but between your thighs is still a heavy weight, a physical memory of his touch. Zeke remains immobile in the tub. Perhaps he simply cannot move yet, and, with a slightly haughty triumph, you would believe that.

You reach for a thick white towel neatly folded at the bottom of the laundry cart, and wrap yourself in it like a cloud.

“The truth is,” Zeke says suddenly – and it isn’t the words, but the somber tone, that startles you – “that it isn’t safe.”

Your feet turn back to the tub, where Zeke is sitting forward now in the cloudy water. His elbows are outstretched on his knees, and he cracks his finger joints now in hesitant, uncomfortable motions.

“If we were to be more. If we were to be seen as more,” he says. His voice is faint, somehow. Distant. But grounded, with none of the usual slyness or song.

Playtime is over.

You clutch at the towel and step closer to him.

“What do you mean?”

“I…” Zeke stops, rubs the back of his head. The hair streaks dark where the wet hand touched the strands. You almost reach out for him, prepared to tuck the towel under your armpits and sink to the wet floor, but he hasn’t even tilted his head back to look at you.

The wall is back up.

“I will tell you one day,” he says. “I will explain.”

You wait, but he offers no more.

“Well,” you say, slowly. “Then, we can talk about it later.”

Zeke makes no sign that he’s heard you. He fidgets with his hands again and says nothing. You wait a moment longer.

“There’s a washcloth and towel on the bottom rack,” you say at last. You nudge the cart a little closer to the tub, and Zeke nods at that.

“Thanks. I won’t be long,” he says. Some strength has returned to his sounds, but he still has not turned to you.

You hesitate, as if hoping for something more, some form of guidance or next clue. And when it does not come from Zeke, you turn and walk back to the bedroom, closing that dividing door behind you. You shimmy out of the towel, and slip a dress shirt of his off the hanger to button up to your throat. Easy to add to the laundry cart when you slide it out in the morning as your cover, with any other dirty clothes. Your fingers freeze in a fist for a moment on the buttons, a motion that shocks you.

You climb into his bed and turn down the covers, staring up, up, the black expanse out the window beyond. You refuse to look at the light seeping under that door. You try to organize your thoughts, to think of what to say when he gets out. But sleep steals over your bones with a devious speed, and drags you easily into the realm of dreams before Zeke comes to bed.

Sleep tosses you violently upon its banks.

The first dream that takes form consists of shadows layering upon shadows, with some form in the middle you can’t quite make out. You’re reaching forward and only parting fog between your fingers which turn to mist at the hint of contact. The disorientation feels like a nightmare. You wake for a moment, Zeke’s back to you in the darkness, before you turn over and you fall back into that river of sleep. A second dream teases you, filled with sugar and foam and peaks of sweet whipped cream. Then it, too, slips away into the waters before you can let it take shape. The current of half-darkness brings you further and the night is dreamless for a while.

But a third dream emerges from the rippling waters. From the mud you come to shore. You’re walking, your hands visible at your sides when you look down, your feet now treading on dry sand. You look up and a silver aurora shreds the sky above you.

You look ahead, and the sands continue.

The dunes roll into each other as the soles of your feet pad across the texture. The grains of sand are cool. Your pace treads quickly with ease, your calves not begging to sink into the ground like with each step along a beach. No, not like a beach. The sand feels more like blades of soft grass that press gently to the soles of your feet and kiss your heels in stride. You could run.

So, you do, giving into the wild urge. You run along this grassless ocean towards a tree in the distance. Silk skirts billow across your knees with each leap closer to this tree. Silver, with forked branches so brilliantly woven they almost seem to stretch into the comet-streaked sky like veins. The desire to run burns in your bones, and you run onwards towards this majesty.

As your sprint continues, you feel as though you are being watched with ghostly eyes.

You only see her when you’re nearly there. In fact, you run past the girl, and your head turns to her. She, too, walks towards the tree, with laden arms. She follows you with that heaviness of watching. Her eyes are glass, and you shiver when her gaze turns away without further attention to you. She continues her lonesome pad across the dreamscape.

You slow, then, below the silver tree. Not quite a tree, but you can’t think of anything else to describe it. Your lungs heave with the physical discipline of needing to catch your breath before you realize that you aren’t tired. You circle what must be the trunk of the tree, looking up to the aurora beyond.

This feels less like a dream and more like a premonition; a vision that has yet to happen.

“But I’ve seen nothing like this is in Marley,” you say aloud.

“No. There is nothing like this in Marley.”

You make your way around the tree, and there he is. It’s Zeke, or it looks like Zeke. But this is a dream, and this is a dream Zeke, and he is almost aged to your eyes, by time, exhaustion, or distortion of the dream itself. His hair is shaggy, creeping over his ears and out of any disciplined cut from the military. Ragged silver threads into the gold of his beard, from his scalp. He sits cross-legged in the sand.

“Come, sit,” he says, and you walk to him.

He does not greet you with either affection or coldness. You kneel to face him in the sand, and follow his focused gaze. Between his knees, he forms sand between his fingers, his eyes staring down. He isn’t wearing glasses.

“What is this?” you say. “What are you doing?”

“Waiting,” Zeke says.

You raise your eyebrows and run your fingers along the sand. You gather it, almost mirroring his motions.

“I’ve been waiting,” Zeke sighs. “For the end to finally come. It isn’t what I wanted, how I thought it would be, but the end is surely coming.”

“The end?”

“The world’s end. It will come.”

You frown, but he says nothing more. He presses his hands around and around sand mounds.

“This is a strange dream,” you say, half-opening your palm to let the fistful of sand slide to your other hand.

Zeke shrugs. “A dream to you. To me, it’s already happened. To me, this is a memory.”

He circles his hands and pats down the tower of sand to firm shape.

“You’re going to wake up and tell me about your dream where we built sandcastles together. I remember you telling me about it. So, to me, this dream has already happened. Now, this is a memory.”

You frown in confusion, but he only raises his eyebrows placidly. Oh, how irritating. He’s a smug know-it-all in your dreams, too.

“Have I been in your dreams before?” Zeke asks.

“I don’t know. I don’t remember. I don’t always remember dreams.”

“You haven’t told me about any of your dreams before this one. You’re not going to remember most of this one, too. Just that we were sitting in the sand. And something about it is going to make you disagreeable.”

You plunge your hands into the sand. “You’re making me disagreeable right now,” you say without bite.

Zeke shakes his finger, as if admonishing a child. “Well, that’s why you’re going to wake up so sour,” he says squarely. “You’ll leave me no choice. I’m going to poke your ribs and make you laugh until you stop being so cross.”

“Don’t tickle me,” you say with familiarity, your shoulders immediately hunching into your spine as if to fend off an immediate attack.

“But I will. Because I did already.”

You exhale and glare at him, at an exasperated loss for words dangerously close to a giggle. He smiles that crooked grin, and that’s all you need to see him as your Zeke.

“Other things have already happened, too,” he says. “And things still to happen. I will continue to age here and wait for my brother, continue to sift the sand and wait for it to take shape.”

“Your brother?”

Zeke closes his eyes, and sighs, tired.

“You will see him, soon.”

You shake your head. “I didn’t know you had a brother.”

“Forgive me,” Zeke says, and his voice goes thin for a moment. He has to clear his throat. “It isn’t personal that you haven’t met. He doesn’t live here.”

He smiles then, and you understand the joke after a moment. It breaks through your confusion for a moment.

“Well, I assume he doesn’t live in Marley, either.”

“No,” Zeke says simply, and the droll touch fades with a sigh. He loses his smile. He turns his eyes down to the sand again. Then he looks up, and it aches, the way he looks at you. “I’ve missed you. I’ve really, really missed you.”

You laugh humorlessly and tilt your head, still perplexed. “Oh, yes? When is the last time you’ve seen me?”

Zeke opens his mouth, closes it, looks away. “I can’t tell you that. But it’s soon.”

The riddles are dizzying.

“Why can’t you tell me?” you insist. You tilt your head again. “You just said I won’t remember it.”

“I can’t do that to you, too.”

You grind your teeth. “You keep saying that. You won’t tell me anything. I- even today. You just won’t explain anything.”

“I can’t tell you,” Zeke says simply.

Can’t tell me what? You can only think of the only secret he’d told you he had. When he went to the Mid-East in the name of Paradis.

You reach for him, sudden, imploring. “You’re going to- leave me, soon?”

The words don’t sound real coming out of your mouth, because they do not make sense.

“But the war in the Mid-East is over,” you whisper. “Where could you go?”

Zeke’s hand turns. He’s hesitant at first, his fingers reaching to stroke against your skin as if you’ll skitter away like a deer at his touch. Your fingers knot in his. “There is always another battle.”

The movement of your bodies shifts the sand. It’s as fine as powdered bone.

“But then what is here?” you say. “What is my dream?”

Zeke leans to you. “Never mind it. If you must still believe this is a dream, then let me make it a sweet dream for us.”

He brings your joined hands to his mouth and kisses your knuckles. One by one, tender and lingering, like it’s the last he’ll taste of you. His lips are warm. Real. Firm. His beard brushes your skin.

It is the most tender you have ever seen him. Your chest aches with an unknown grief at his warmth.

“You feel real,” you whisper.

“I am. But not to you.”

His forehead presses to yours.

“I want to remember this,” you say. “I don’t want to forget any of you.”

“I will,” Zeke murmurs. “You won’t.”

Your throat hurts. You kiss him anyway.

It doesn’t start desperate. His lips part slowly, naturally. He’s done this before, and this is the kiss of your Zeke. But when he kisses again, and again, his reverence grows into something feverish. Your hands cup his face, the heels of your palms scraped by his beard. He sighs into you in gratitude for your touch.

Your knees crawl, and you’re over him. He lets you push him back into the sand, and you follow to straddle him as he lies beneath you.

His breath shudders through your name.

“I’m tired,” he whispers in a confession.

You trace your thumb along his lip, down to his chest, to silence and soothe him. His chest is bare; you cannot remember if he has always been bare here, or if his clothes have dissipated into the world of your dream. It doesn’t matter. Every bit of him is the truth beneath you. His chest is warm beneath your palms. His breath is hot where it ghosts on you.

“You can take my strength,” you say, and he nods with the gratitude of a parched man.

You lean down, and your mouths find each other again.

Zeke’s hands brace your hips, and skate upward. The silk skirts crossing your waist have melted away, his skin hot on your skin. He settles a moment between your breasts and rests his hand under your sternum. His thumb presses against the rock of your own heartbeat before continuing in restless motion to return to your waist, your hips. He moves his palms across your thighs, back up, across your back. He presses you lower down, as if pushing your breath into him. You follow the angle of his body, fingers threading through that hair with a length foreign to you. Your spine arches slightly to meet him.

He’s there, not inside you, but close.

His breath trembles where it hits your lips.

You raise your face with a moan, leaning up. You lift your hips, slip a hand to your tongue, before drawing it further south to guide him. You look down to Zeke and watch his searching gaze disappear below his heavy, sinking lid when the wetness from your mouth wraps around his cock. It’s a moment’s heavy pause before you guide him into you.

The moan is a shared sound into the starlit sky. You shudder to feel the way he opens you, loosens something like a stream being coaxed to widen into a river. You hold yourself over him and splay your palms on his chest. Zeke’s heartbeat is wild beneath your fingers.

“Ah,” you groan.

He’s so, so warm to the touch, and he gives that touch. He runs his fingers along your sides, locking his hands to your waist as your hips move and shift against the pull of gravity. Again, this hitched moment of pause crescendos slowly, slowly, to something more ravenous.

Zeke firms his grip, and begins to push you into him. You lean down.

“Kiss me,” he says in a rasp.

Your noses brush as you lean down, pushing into that heartbeat and keeping your hips dancing. He grabs his fingers down, a near-yell pushing at the back of your throat when that touch spreads you in a new ache. Zeke kisses your jaw, your cheek, your mouth again, finally. He touches you like he’s afraid he never will again.

And maybe he won’t.

“Please,” you breathe, and you don’t know what you beg for.

His mouth is fervent on yours. Your hands crawl, hunching over him. Your elbows are tucked, your bodies chest to chest. You twist your fingers in his hair and feel your cheeks wet with tears as you bring him close, closer.

He has the strength in his hips to thrust, now, and you are no longer controlling the rhythm but faltering into surrender as he drives it forward. He grunts from between clenched teeth, things that you forget as soon as he speaks them, and it makes your silent, hot tears run faster. The passion is primal, something terrifying and yet, quiet.

Zeke’s arms are locked around you.

You come, and your orgasm rolls deep like a wave. He follows you with a low, shuddering moan, with fingers clutching as he spills into you. He holds you so tightly it almost hurts. It hurts more when he finally lets go.

You lie against him after. The sand is cool beneath your knees, and even though your body is flushed, it does not stick to your skin. He wipes the tears from your eyelids with rough fingers, and then lowers his hand to draw circles on your spine, as if even without his mounds and towers, he must still keep his fingers active.

With your ear pressed on his chest, you can feel his heartbeat begin to slow. Your throat starts to feel tight, and you try to clear it with a humming sound.

“Are you alright?” he asks.

You don’t know what you mean to say. “I think so,” you say with another sniff. “I mean- yes. But this is somehow becoming a very sad dream.”

“Not a dream,” Zeke says, and he kisses the top of your head. “Don’t be sad.”

The sand sifts windlessly beneath you.

“I wanted to see you again,” he says. “I am glad it was like this.”

“You say this is a memory.”

Zeke blinks, a slow nod. “You will tell me very soon that you had this dream, what you remember of it.”

“Then, this is actually the present for you,” you say.

He looks at you with dull eyes. “To the extent that time has no meaning for me, yes. I have lived the past, the future.”

“So, do I see you again?” you say. “Will you see me again?”

Zeke averts his eyes for a moment, but when he speaks, he is sincere. “I don’t know. I don’t know all of where time will go.”

It sends a shiver down you. The sand is cold.

“What do you see?” Your voice is small.

“I hear it, in whispers,” Zeke whispers, and the sound in his voice is terrible. “He will speak to the Subjects of Ymir. You may find yourself back here, in another sort of dream. But I do not know what he will say.”

You find yourself shaking. A feeling has settled in your stomach, sickened with fear.

“But I have to tell you something, something I should have said, always. I l-“

“Wait, Zeke -”

“What?” he says.

His face is over yours.

“What? Are you awake?”

You jerk your chin up, and it’s morning. Zeke’s eyes are bleary, sleep pinching his eyelashes together, but he’s focused on you.

“You were shouting,” he says.

It’s a different man over you than the one who had been below. This Zeke’s hair is cropped shorter- wild from sleep, but a groomed shape below. He is bronze and morning sun. His muscles are lean and warm.

This is still your Zeke. This is your real Zeke. Right?

Was the other not also your real Zeke?

“I think had a dream about you,” you say, and as you try to describe it, you begin to feel it slipping frustratingly from your fingers like sand.

You glance up. A cluster of frostbitten mistletoe dangles, knotted just over your head where someone’s tied it off a lamppost’s iron branch.

Sukuna’s hand is at the small of your back as you lift your fingers to touch the shriveled plant. “Careful,” he says again. “It’s poisonous.”

“Hmm?”

“Mistletoe,” Sukuna says, and you pinch the ribbon instead as you bring it closer for inspection. It’s half-black with rot and frost. The red berries glimmer, weakly reflecting the streetlight around. It’s on its last legs of life as the holiday season peaks, just a dead plant tied together with fraying ribbon.

“Poisonous?”

He lifts his hand as well, cupping the berries in his palm. “Deadly to eat.” His voice is smooth velvet. “Isn’t that funny? Humans saw a parasite that can kill, and decided to call it romantic.”

“Only if you eat it, then,” you say. “Something harmless pretending to be dangerous.”

“Or something dangerous, pretending to be harmless.”

His breath is hot in your ear and the tableau is frozen a moment; a hand at your spine, the turn of your shoulder warm against his chest, your outstretched arms embracing the same plant. You tilt your nose closer to his face.

“A weed,” Sukuna says, and suddenly snaps the ribbon clean from the iron post. "It's also called the thief of the tree."

You turn, your face burning, and can’t watch him fling the mistletoe down the street. But he offers you an elbow as you walk towards the small square at the end of the street. Blinding lights take on proper shape as you approach. Fenced trees, white with snow and dead under a layer of frost, circle the plaza. They sparkle with the same golden and green lights threaded up the trunks and through the branches. The footpath is lined with electric, brilliantly scarlet poinsettias that cast an artificially red glow along the ground. Every few minutes, the colors ripple and change hues, eliciting sounds of delight from the children in the crowd.

“Beautiful,” you hear a woman breathe to another.

And he, Sukuna, he is beautiful too, his chin buried in the cowl of his dark coat, his narrowed eyes shining like the ornaments around you. You duck your face away in a bashful smile. The warmth of his thick coat pushes into you. Streetlamps pepper your way with light, and you shiver, even with Sukuna’s body heat snug and welcome against you.

Chirp!

The winter serenity is broken by the phone beeping in your pocket.

You try to draw your arm away from Sukuna to get to it, but he clamps his elbow closer to yours with a bullish look ahead. You use your other hand to awkwardly reach across.

“Oh,” you say as you read the message. “The girls – they want to meet up a little earlier for drinks.”

“You need to get the train now?”

Sukuna’s looking straight ahead.

“No, not yet,” you say, but frown when you slip your phone away again. “I think I left my headphones at yours, though.”

Sukuna rubs the tip of his nose with his free hand, and slides it back into his pocket. You can’t read the flash in his eyes. “We’re not far.”

“I know,” you say, and give a wistful look to the romantic lights around you. “I’m sorry to leave early…”

He grunts, a response you can’t quite decipher. But he turns and leads you from the square. Slowly, with each new block, the illuminations and lights drape away to bare night streets.

It’s hot in the lobby of his building. Sukuna’s bicep flexes in release when he slides your body from his arm to push the door open and lead you to the elevator.

His boots are off. You’re shimmying free from your shoes in his foyer when he turns. He pulls his hand from his pocket and lifts it over your eyes, backing you against his closed door; the stolen mistletoe and ragged black ribbon threaded between his fingers.

“Now what did that brat say, you have to kiss underneath this?”

Sukuna dangles the mistletoe, lifting his arm. You feel the weight of your head in a nod.

“But what if I want more than a kiss?”

Your eyes skim, up to the pinch of the mistletoe in his hand, before coming back down to meet his gaze. Sukuna smirks.

His lips are on yours before you can even lean into his chest. His mouth is cold to the touch. Your fingers grab the front of his coat and his free hand slides to the small of your back, drawing you closer. His fingers are impatient and they curve to pluck under lengths of fabric, to curve his hold to your body. You breathe shakily through your nose when he breaks the kiss.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Sukuna says with a thin smile. He looks at the mistletoe, back down at you. “What else can I make you do with this?”

Your elbows are resting on his chest, your grip still against the lapels of his coat. Sukuna’s fingers push at you.

“I asked, what if I want more?”

“I’ll give it to you,” you say, your breath coming quick and jagged. Your tongue feels heavy in your mouth without his own.

“Good answer,” Sukuna says. His voice is throaty, his lips spreading in a grin. The next kiss is encompassing, his arms on you, around you, to guide an entwined walk from the foyer. Light spills from the entry to the dark room. Your arms wrestle his coat free. He tosses the mistletoe somewhere down to the couch, and his hands move to his pants as your own jacket slips from your shoulders.

“Come here.”

Sukuna lifts his hips to let his pants kick down. He sits wide on the sofa, and you drop to your knees. He strokes his cock lightly in one hand, unbuttoning his shirt slowly, lazily with the other. His eyes fall down as you sit between his spread thighs.

“I want you to suck on it,” he says.

His hand is on yours to control your motions when you lean forward; back up, down, up again. He stiffens under your touch and the tip glistens as your thumb slides messily in circles. Sukuna lets go with a groan coming from his throat.

You guide him to your lips and he moans again, the sound hitching in response. The taste of him waters your mouth. He hits the back of your throat and you move back up with a slight gag.

“Mmm- ”

“That’s it, that’s it.”

Your mouth adds pressure to the rhythm, your tongue stroking along the underside of his cock until you’re sucking him, harder, harder, before gasping. Sukuna is hard and full when you put him back in your mouth. Saliva gathers, drools out over him.

“Fuck…”

You force your eyes up to see Sukuna’s lids are closed, mouth agape with elbows slung over the back of the couch. His chest rises and falls rapidly, half-bare. Slight groans slip from his lips.

As if he can feel the plead of your stare, Sukuna’s hands drop to the back of your head. His cock is ribbing over you, pushing to the back of your throat with each urge of his hand. He’s fucking your mouth more than you’re sucking him off now, his hips thrusting shallowly upwards with no mind to your struggle. Your hands fumble clumsy and blind to smear your saliva down.

Tears are beading involuntarily, leaking from your eyes as he moves you faster and faster over him. There’s that long, hard vein – and your tongue finds it, runs over it again and again.

“Oh – ”

The sound comes with an anguished force from him. The hands are pushing back now, and you lean away panting for breath. You wipe your lips with the back of your hand.

Sukuna lets out a groan like a growl, fumbling with the last buttons of his shirt. His eyes are wild on you. He tears the sleeves from his arms and he pulls you to his lap with rough hands. His mouth returns to you again, tasting his suggestion with a reverence, and the hands are busy to help you shed the layers from your own skin.

“You didn’t need mistletoe for that,” you whisper, your lip twitching in a half smile between kisses. Your nails card through his hair again, raking lower and lower, and then a hand to balance on his shoulder.

He urges your hips up a moment and your panties are off with the measured patience of someone who restrained himself from ripping the fabric from you. “Careful.”

“Why – oh – ” and as he steadies your knees over his thighs, you curl your fingers into hair with a gasp – “do you keep saying that?”

The question stutters out of you as his hands ride up around your ribs.

“Because you think everything is harmless until it bites you.”

Sukuna kisses your neck, your collarbone, down your breast where your skin pebbles cold.

“A weed… a kiss… a man.”

He bites then, pulling your nipple between his teeth with a pinch that makes you squeal. The words dissolve on your tongue.

There’s nothing slow or gentle to help slow your eager heartbeat. Sukuna dances his tongue until your nipple peaks, one hand coming to brace the small of your back to balance you, really keep you at him this time. He moves to the other with a fervor, saliva sparkling across your skin as you shake over him.

His other hand pushes into you, his finger seeking between your folds and urging your hips into position with each suggestive turn of his wrist. His finger finds your clit and begins to rub.

“Ohh – ”

It lowers you in a relentless rocking to where his cock waits, hard at the back of your thigh. The smoothness of it makes you whimper. Your muscles are tensing, relaxing when you realize you’ve been holding yourself steady for him; but then you tense again in a desperate reach for anything close to friction.

You curl your fingers into his shoulder to keep the balance as you reach with your other hand anxiously, trembling. His cock is still wet with your mouth.

“Impatient,” Sukuna murmurs.

“Maybe I should hang the mistletoe over your head,” you say, trying to angle him to you.

“You want more than a kiss from me?” His hand at your back lowers, and you’re leaning against the strong muscle of his forearm for a moment as he slaps your ass – cheekily, but with enough of a smart to make you yelp. “Didn’t you have somewhere to be soon?”

“Ah- ”

You’d forgotten, with his other hand now running a teasing finger along you to coax out the slick that opens you to him.

Sukuna’s lip curls at that, at the vacancy settled over your eyes, and he slides into you easily. From above like this, he’s pushed up so deep –

“- so d-deep…”

You’re stuttering, clutching to his shoulders with both hands now. Your thighs are clenched as you sink onto him.

“Move your hips.”

There’s an edge of impatience in his voice, choked with something thicker. Sukuna’s hands are there now, and he lets his palms run gentle massaging circles before slapping your ass with both hands now. It stings, and you bark out another cry. You push your hips back in whimpering response and spread your legs as best as you can to let your thighs and knees work and support the movements. But this dropping pushes him further inside you, and you let out another whine.

“Oh…”

“Better.”

He spanks you again as you move. His cock slides out of you a moment, back in, as you build your own unsteady rhythm. It’s unsteady because every deep, hard stroke inside makes you shake. When he thrusts his hips back up into you with a grunt, the force is so strong that your nails bite into his skin to keep you up. Sukuna moves his hands again at that and lock around your wrists.

You look down between the bars of your arms. Below your chest, his tense abdomen, his cock slides up into your body split and stretched against his width. It makes you shake just to see it, as if it defies reality to comprehend what it is you feel. You close your eyes and tilt your head back dizzyingly, shifting your hips.

“Mm… hmm… it feels so good…”

It’s easier, the more he’s in you, to rock your hips back and forth. You need to feed that desperate desire for friction, even if it grinds you raw. You’re able to move faster now, but Sukuna is still stronger, so much stronger that every stroke up into you stutters the rhythm.

He’s picking up the pace again in a way you can’t keep up with, and he’s groaning your name wildly.

“Feels – good?”

“Yes…”

“You’re… going to… leave my cum inside your cunt,” Sukuna says, his voice a low hiss, strained as he thrusts erratically, ecstatically, up inside you. His grip tightens on your wrists. “All night. With your friends. Let it sink … into your panties… all night.”

You whimper, and it makes your body shudder to hear those words rasp from his lips, wet and red with your kisses. Your back arches and you’re riding him with some new fire in you, even as your thighs tremble and your hips begin to ache.

Sukuna’s fingers are digging into your forearms, hard enough to promise a Morse code of bruises for you to read in the morning. His grip seizes; he releases to grab desperately at your hips again.

“Oh – ”

And Sukuna comes, hot and thick and roaring your name. Your inner muscles compress with clenching over his cock; the punching, dull ache behind your belly button fluttering so tantalizingly close to an orgasm as he climaxes in you. It shoots through and you moan, lifting a hand to clutch at yourself at the sensation – at your cheek, at your throat, squirming at the lewd sense of him.

Sukuna pants. His breath is hot and short as he finishes. He lets go of you, his palms giving a few, sweaty pats. His hips push back and dip into the couch and his cock begins to slide out of you with a slickness.

“Oh – “ you say, and you whimper, grabbing at him again. “Please – please not yet – I’m so close – ”

“Please?”

Sukuna looks up at you through his eyelashes, and just barely quirks his brow up. “Greedy,” he says. He makes a tongue clicking sound of mock disappointment, and pushes up and stays inside you, still heavy and still thick and warm. “Then you do the work.”

You’re so close, torturingly close, and his cool, dismissive gaze mixed with the heat of his words is almost enough to push you over the edge. You drag your shaking hands down from Sukuna’s shoulders, with skin marked with the crescent moons of your fingernails, down over his chest where his heartbeat betrays the nonchalance in his eyes.

“I want to see you touch yourself,” Sukuna says.

You push your hands against yourself. His grip has come comfortable on your hips, the strength of his wrists keeping you in balance. One of your hands hovers down, the heat of your joined bodies still radiating, the other right below your stomach. You push, gingerly, and a moan slips from you at where his cock sits within you.

When you start to force your thighs back to strength, there’s a sense of pure cream coming from you. You look down and could freeze at the sight – his cum is beginning to practically drool out of your spread folds. You rock your hips, slowly at first, and clumsy. Your body is aching for more and you begin to touch yourself, watching the grace of your fingers and feeling your clit slide beneath your touch. You look back up at Sukuna.

He’s watching beneath heavily lidded eyes, and he’s holding his jaw tight and your hips loose. True to his word – you do the work.

But how long will his stubborn pride win over his desire? His breath is coming faster and faster. You press your hand over your belly and let out a louder whimper for effect.

“Oh… Sukuna…”

No, he can’t let you keep control for long. His left hand moves back and he gives another spanking, a sharp one that makes your leg muscles clench across his body, and you yelp again. “Oh!”

“Yes,” he says.

You whine and press your finger flat against yourself. He’s moving his hips now, this time in a frenzy that makes your blood spin at how you can feel him beneath your belly. You have to drop that hand, to brace yourself for support on the couch, and then you cry out even louder when a hand shoves onto yours between your bodies. Sukuna uses your finger, manipulated under his, to push on your clit, dancing a firm pressure on and off your body.

“Come for me,” he says, his voice raspy. “Come on my cock.”

You groan, turning your head with a fevered madness next to his. “Say it again,” you breathe. “Please, say it again.”

The aching place that he pushes at is tightening.

“Please, Sukuna.”

“Do – what you’re told – and – come.”

His voice is dark and rough, as probing and insistent as his fingers. You let out a shuddering cry as it finally takes you to climax. Your orgasm pulses, throbbing and ebbing as it washes over you. He groans, fat and full within you.

“Oh,” you moan, your face in the crook of his neck.

He lets go of you, his hands sliding away.

With his grip released and offering no resistance, you lean back, bracing your arms against the couch as you climb off his lap.

Chirp! Chirp! Chirp!

Either perfectly timed, or simply within your awareness for the first time, your phone begins to sing.

“Oh,” you say again, and press your hand to your forehead. “Oh, shit. I’m going to be so late now.”

You feel sore and weak, your skin hot and sticky between your thighs. Sukuna has gleams of silver across his legs in the darkness.

“Oops,” Sukuna says in a nasty voice that offers no true apology.

He sits up, and his large fingers encircle your hand as you lean forward to fish for your phone amongst the litter of clothes.

“I meant it,” he says evenly.

“What?”

“Go see your friends. Have fun. Get all dolled up. But I want you to put those panties back on. I want you to feel that, rubbing against you and staining you the rest of the evening. I want you to smell me under your clothes. I want you filthy and mine before the whole city.”

You turn your knees towards him, your breath coming from your mouth. Sukuna reaches next to him, and lifts the mistletoe from the couch over your head once more. His eyes shine in the darkness.

“Give me another kiss.”

See header "Caveat Emptor" link for table of contents/ chapter 1.

“You locked the door,” Coriolanus said.

“I did.”

His hand was warm and strong at your cheek. His fingers were curling, spreading under your ear. The alcohol in his veins made it easy for unbridled courage to pour through yours, and your hand came back around his waist to join your other at his lapel. You twined the fabric between your fingers, ready to tug.

“You can unlock it,” you said, offering him a chance to step back.

Coriolanus didn’t take it. “I will when I’m ready to walk back out.”

“You’ve done the job you came for, you should walk out now. You’re almost a married man,” you said, and let the weight of the responsibility sit on your tongue.

There was no reason to tell him how sickened the interview had made you feel. Worse, that you had spent the last five minutes staring with blind eyes at the feeds, trying to understand why seeing Coriolanus Snow and Livia Cardew snuggled into a loveseat made you feel so nauseated. You’d seen them across the campus courtyard countless times. You saw Coriolanus every day now, turning hallways or leaning over balconies, always ahead and beyond. Nothing prickled your stomach like that. Nothing soothed it like his touch.

“Not married yet,” Coriolanus said. His thumb rubbed rough, raw, at your earlobe. The spit was beginning to gather between his teeth, and your heart pounded. “But you’re right. I’m spoken for.”

Coriolanus’s hand slid below to spread along your jaw. He tensed, shook you slightly.

“And you, hmm? You know I’m spoken for. You know you’re right.”

“Yeah. All of Panem knows it,” you said between your teeth.

“Yet your hands are on me,” Coriolanus breathed.

“And yours are on me.”

He laughed, finished with the verbal jousts, and kissed you then. His mouth tasted of wine. His fingers still pushed your lips together, but when your return movements were weak, he freed your mouth and instead placed his hand firm at the back of your neck. It guided you, tilted you, as he stepped fully to you. Hip to hip. Your hands were trapped between your chests.

Coriolanus’s hands were on you with intent. He was determined, but not as rushed and frantic as you had been in your last encounters. There was time now to taste each other instead of rapid consumption. A hand was sliding, near the back of your thigh, and as he kissed you, he walked you backwards. Your feet moved automatically with legs and knees bending in obedience.

It was familiar by now, the cadence of how Coriolanus kissed; or, how he liked to kiss. He didn’t waste energy in frantic motion in times like these. He was only sloppy or breathless when the desperation overwhelmed. But if there was time to afford it, like he had now, despite Lucky Flickerman’s voice booming over the intercom that the reaping was now beginning, he liked a languid, warm, pressed-together kiss. His mouth was hot and open. His lips were soft and slotted perfectly against your face. You drank him deeply and tasted the wine and warmth on his tongue. You let him press a thigh between yours, and he let you break your lips away to moan at it. He intoxicated you in turn.

He stopped as the back of your calves hit some low, overstuffed thing. Coriolanus tossed his head back with a groan, and you stumbled onto the padded pallet, too wide to be a bench, too tall to be a cushion, without any backing to be a couch. It would fit two comfortably, or at least, one on their back.

The anthem was playing. The cheering and bustle of the studio audience came through the speakers. Coriolanus didn’t speak again, but his fingers worked. You moved with him- pliant, but responsive- as he shed each beautiful layer of your new suit. His finger searched for the edge of your tights and when he found the seam, he rolled your hips up to peel you out of them. He kissed your mouth, your jaw, your neck, your collarbone, with a methodical precision to his progression. He never missed a step.

When he was over you, your hands couldn’t stop moving either. The seal of Panem pinned at his lapel pressed sharp against your thumb as you unfasten a row of gold buttons.

“I’ve – wanted this- ” he admitted. It was maddening how much more breathless you were. He was the one who had the excuse of wine on his lips.

Coriolanus ducked his head to where your blouse unfurled open across your chest. His mouth traced the skin once covered. Every kiss was measured and weighted perfectly, meant to press tiny groans from your mouth. Applause erupted from the speakers.

“Probably won’t be overheard,” you said huskily, the words jerked from you, and his fingers ripped straps from your shoulders.

The reaping began to roll and he rose like the sun over you, glowing gold in the artificial lights as you shed the last layers. His body was lean but fit as he rolled his arms back to shrug out of his sleeves. He whipped his belt buckle from his waist. You barely had time to admire the clean lines of his muscle before he leaned down again to come over you on the pallet. The bulk of his weight was suspended on a single forearm planted beside your head.

His tongue flicked at the hollow of your throat and you moaned.

“Don’t make a mark,” you said, automatic.

“I remember your rules,” Coriolanus said, and nipped the skin above your breast. “I remember how you were before.”

You hissed as his teeth caught a tender edge.

“I remember you crawling to me,” he said, “and look at you now. You talk back,” another, lower kiss, “you’re reckless-”

You had started to respond when his tongue circled your nipple, a cool precursor to the warmth of his lips closing to suck. His other hand was cupping you in a lock, his thumb toying to keep your other nipple from feeling neglected. He was rough with that hand, pinching like bursts of fire. You shrieked, and when Coriolanus didn’t clap his hand over your mouth and when no one came running, you shrieked again.

“Bolder, but look at you now,” Coriolanus groaned again, and he raised his head. Each of his thumbs pulled, tugged, pinched idly. All you could do was jerk your hips against his, feeling the curve of his erection push into your bare thighs. “Beneath me again.”

“And which do you prefer?” you asked.

“You do know how to play any part. Would you do what I ask?” he said, and lowered his mouth to whisper into your skin. He peppered kisses to the other side of your chest. “Like before?”

“You already got what you paid for,” you said without much thought.

“Well,” Coriolanus hissed, and he pinched with a vicious sharpness. You yelped. "You’re milking me for it, are you? How greedy you are.”

“Don’t want gold,” you said, turning your knee up against his hip in a desperate attempt to open for him. It burst from you before you could realize the words were true. “Want you.”

His eyes flicked up, sharp and glassy. “What?”

You reached for him, shaking your head, shaking the weight of the words away. “I don’t – no. Stop thinking.”

Coriolanus’s mouth crashed against yours, and it was sloppy this time. The desperation wasn’t mandated in this room as it had been in the classroom or the elevator, but some spark had just been lit.

“Did you just say that?” he said, full of breath. His kisses made you ache. “You’re telling me to shut up?”

Your leg wrapped around his hip and his hand palmed across your flank in turn.

“I did,” you said into his ear, furiously combing his blonde hair back. “So shut up – and sit up.”

His muscles were strong as your legs braced over his hips. It was almost one motion, the way he rolled beneath you, and you were sitting over him. He looked you, cocking his head as if framing you, closing his eyes and opening them again to search across your face. His hands found your thighs and his pupils bloomed dark with desire.

Coriolanus was the pliant one now, who let your shoulders hunch forward over him as you lifted your hips. He kept a hand on your hip, but the other he raised to your mouth. You took him between your lips and wet his fingers, which he withdrew again shortly to rub against his cock.

He helped guide it in, hot, slick, thick. You gasped, with no filter to shy away from the full stretch of the intrusion. It wasn’t pain, but a pressure against new tenderness. He was deeper like this. So much deeper.

“Fuck,” you gasped, as if you could lose your balance over him.

Coriolanus’s eyes were closed, his brow pinched, his lips rounding in elation.

Your knees tightened on either side of him. Your hands found his chest and you rolled your hips forward in a test, waiting for the ache to level out. His hands rose to cup your hips. He held you there.

You shifted forward, up; then down again.

He inhaled sharply.

You repeated the motion, slower, and his fingers tensed. He exhaled that breath, as if he had to stop himself from gripping harder by focusing on his lungs. So the pace began to build; not fast, but, fluid. The friction was getting fed at last and left you hungrier with its dragging deliberateness.

The sound that came out of him didn’t belong to language.

And then it changed, the way your thighs clenched over him, your spine curved forward. His hands rose with you and then they sank. The pressure of his fingertips into your skin was beginning to dig. The heat was in your stomach, searing through the haze. You had shifted a hand to the wall to give yourself a firmer anchor, and when you looked down again, his eyes were open. Coriolanus’ lids were heavy, but it was unmistakable that his eyes watched you. Watched the way you moved, the tightness in your jaw when you ground against him just right.

One hand still on your hip, he slid the other to your back where his fingers pressed into the dip of your spine.

The crowd cheered from the intercom and as you went to rock forward again, his hips lifted into you at just the right moment. It pierced you. Too in synch, too responsive. You moaned, shoulders hunched forward. In that span of the moment, he seized control again without needing to put you on your back.

A sucking sound, like he inhaled sharp through wet teeth. It somehow sounded smug. His thumbs stroked against your skin, with someone’s sweat tacking the touch. The press of his fingers was hard enough to pin you back.

“Ouch,” you moaned, but the sound was without pain.

“Ouch?” Coriolanus breathed.

“N-no…”

You moved your hips desperately against him, thigh muscles screaming down. “Don’t stop.”

He wouldn’t, couldn’t, and that was expressed wordlessly in a harsh breath that came almost close to a laugh. He grabbed at your skin and it did hurt, the way every nerve within you was drawn taut in some manner that just made you fuck down on him harder.

Coriolanus looked half-wrecked, hair pasted to his temples and his gaze foggy.

You let your elbow bend, falling down closer to him.

A hand came away, with no need to guide you to him, as you came closer to his face, the eyes heavy with sweat and need. The kissing came again, slow and consuming.

You moaned into his mouth. The rhythm faltered again, but not from a lack of control, but the way your bodies drank from each other with hiccupped, desperate thirst. His hands grabbed at your skin in a harsh hold, and you pushed yourself forward to feel the burn below your belly stretch even further.

That was how you came, with the pressure of his cock pushing something into you that the friction didn’t build slow and erupt. It was a burst, ebbing through you into a weakness, a sharp sensitivity, and you cried out his name.

Coriolanus felt it and groaned yours in turn, his hands traversing you to grab, push, hold you as close as he could. You shuddered, the weakness overtaking your bones, and when you hunched over his chest he finally roared forth. He fucked up, high, holding you limp against him as he chased his own release. He thrusted up, more erratic; you, still sensitive, open around him, felt everything. Below your chest, his breath shortened, and his rhythm broke. In a moment he stilled deep inside you and cursed low, the sound wrecked.

There was a surrender, a second pulse beating within you. And his arms did not break their brace around you.

It occurred to you, when he did release his hold and you awkwardly slung a leg back down to curl besides him on the futon, that this might be the closest thing to making love that you’d ever experienced. He breathed, you breathed. You lifted your head, feeling the weight of your skull, to turn your gentle gaze to him.

“You’ve bruised me,” you said in a half-bemoaning way. Coriolanus propped himself up on his elbow, rubbed his face before fixing his eyes on you again.

“Where?”

You twisted your bare hip and raised an eyebrow.

Coriolanus reached forward, spreading the reach of his fingers across your skin. He shifted his wrist to align himself to the pattern of his former grip.

“No one will see them there.”

“No,” you said. “You’re making a habit of that.”

He withdrew his hand for a moment, and then gave a smack across your ass.

You yelped, grinned.

“A habit,” he repeated. “How many times does it take to make something a habit?”

The words were heavy with sobriety.

“And I was under the impression you were enjoying yourself,” Coriolanus said. He swallowed, his neck flexing in motion, and he looked towards the ceiling. He studied the intercom. There was a ghost of lipstick on his jaw. You reached out to thumb the smudge away. His skin was still warm.

“I did,” you said. “But this is turning into a bad habit.”

“Is it?” he asked. “Bad?”

You let your hand trace over his throat, the plane of his chest, before clutching it back to you. “You will be married,” you said. There was no accusation, just the fact.

“I know,” he said. “And I’d consider you a bit of a hypocrite to be morally opposed at this stage.”

“Well.”

“It’s never been a love match,” Coriolanus said. “With me and Livia. And she knows it, too.”

“So what, you don’t consider it infidelity?”

“You can’t betray a trust that was never there.”

 You weren’t amused, but the sound that you let out was close to it. “Bleak.”

“It’s honest,” he said. Coriolanus said. His voice didn’t flinch. “It’s not betrayal if neither of us expected more.”

“And you’re sure she knows those terms?”

Coriolanus tossed his head back. “We’ll draw up a formal prenuptial agreement, naturally.”

You raised your eyebrows. “And so what- you’re going to include me in the fine print?”

He didn’t answer.

“Really?”

Coriolanus ran his hand along you again. “Not in so many words.”

“So, what about me, then? What’s the expectation here?”

Coriolanus was quiet, still. “I can arrange a formal agreement if that would help you, too.”

“Not a prenup,” you said, and let the words be cold.

“No,” he agreed. “This isn’t that.”

“No,” you said. “It’s murkier.”

Coriolanus’ fingertips danced. “Then maybe we should make it clear.”

You blinked. “What does that mean?”

“I can offer protection,” he said. The words were surgical, practical. “I know how quickly someone can get eaten alive here.”

You didn’t respond.

“When I marry,” Coriolanus continued, “That will be public. All of Panem knows I’m taking a wife. There are expectations that you can’t be a part of. But you can be something else.”

Your laugh was sharp, cutting into the sound of applause coming again from the speakers. “Your mistress? A kept woman?”

His mouth curled. “A trusted one,” he said. “A woman I rely on. Discretion is invaluable, and I do feel confident saying that I can rely on you to be discrete.”

You smiled again, but Coriolanus wasn’t giving a good-natured grin. His eyes settled on you with a serious intent. You exhaled slowly. “So then… what more do you get?”

“Loyalty,” he said, abruptly. “Access. The comfort of knowing where you are, what you’re doing.”

“That’s control.”

“That is not mutually exclusive with respect.”

You chewed at your bottom lip.

“You sold it to me when you knew what I was,” Coriolanus added. “I’m only trying to extend the deal. Formally.”

There was an urge now to curl into yourself, to tuck your knees into your chest and hug close.

“Does the concept humiliate you?” he asked, his voice tinged with scorn.

“No,” you said, truthfully. No, it wasn’t a shame at crawling back to a desperate lifestyle left behind. This wouldn’t be that, not at all. This - with him – had never been, not really.

Right?

“Once I’m married,” he said. “It would make certain boundaries clearer.”

“And you’ll have your lawyer draw up a contract?”

“Yes,” he answered with sincerity.

You laughed, short. “Well, sure. I’d need assurances.”

You were still half-joking, but Coriolanus’ eyes were steel. “And I’d need obedience.”

There was no more smile. The truth of it bounced in the silent room, dropped like a coin on the floor.

You tilted your chin to meet him square. “Fine,” you said. “I’ll think about it.”

Coriolanus held your gaze. “So will I.”

But you both already knew negotiations had concluded.

See header "Caveat Emptor" link for table of contents/ chapter 1.

It was the day of the reaping, and Coriolanus was, despite his best efforts, finding himself drunk.

It was because the night previously had finally been when he proposed to Livia Cardew. The ring was finally taken from the box and slid on her finger. He made a bit of an effort, too, reserving a night in The Corinthian’s second-finest penthouse. He hadn’t planned much further, but when Livia started pouting in a manner implying this was a problem, he had bowed to his knees, reached into his pocket, and said something along the lines of, “I want to book the best suite on our wedding night.” When Livia telephoned her parents, she turned over her shoulder to ask him how much the ring had cost. She had then squealed at the amount of Plinth money exchanged for a little rock, and he could hear a muffled approval from Antonia Cardew.

Later, she had shown her thanks by arching her thighs across his in the night. Coriolanus was tired. He contemplated leveraging the reaping in the morning as an excuse to nudge her off. But it was rare enough for her to initiate, and he had just proposed, after all.

Livia had been desperate, pathetic, in her efforts, rolling her eyes to the ceilings and rubbing her hands along her chest with wails for an invisible audience. Beneath her, Coriolanus was less than impressed. He filled his thoughts with the fantasy of another performer, whose lips sang in a perfect rosebud ring, and when he realized who she was, he turned his mind to another, another actress of sorts – a better one than Livia.

When she pretended to come, Coriolanus was still hard and achingly far from release. He told her to get down. He fed their fuck back to her with a tense disgust in his fingers. As she moaned and sucked his cock, he had to admit that the sentiment wasn’t quite directed at her.

He also couldn’t deny that she was good with her tongue. And she swallowed him without his suggestion. Coriolanus watched the lanky aristocratic grace of her limbs as she laced a clean satin nightgown across her chest and slipped into the sheets besides him. He’d nursed an ambivalent suspicion that some nights she went drinking or dancing, she ended up spending the night with a new friend rather than the girls she left with. The image never brought him anger or jealousy but, Coriolanus thought as he turned his shoulder to Livia and closed his eyes, this would have to be discussed. And off the pages of the prenuptial the Cardews were undoubtedly putting together as soon as Livia had called them with the news. 

All of this had churned in Coriolanus’ mind, and he dreamt fitfully, of Livia and his two other performers gripping each other’s arms and shrieking as they danced a fervid ballet.

He woke with one name on his tongue. And the taste of her refused to wash down with toothpaste, with coffee, with tea, so when he and Livia reached the scratchy velvet couches of the newly renovated Gamemaker viewing lounge, he made a rare turn for the bar cart.

“Let me see the ring again!” crowed Antonia Cardew for the third time in the last twenty minutes. Coriolanus stared at the row of decanters neatly tucked into a recessed shelf.

“They’re not working you too hard?” Festus Creed asked, leaning over Coriolanus for a deep mahogany liquor. It shone ruby under the lamplight as he plucked it from the wall.

Festus said it with a clear joviality, but the question still irritated Coriolanus. He forced a laugh regardless. “Not much for me to do but smile and wave today, Festus. It’s just going to be a short segment introducing the engagement before the feeds start. And it’s all supervisory as far as the Games go from that.”

“True, true, Gamemaker. I suppose the game is already made.” Festus said. He uncorked the large diamond stopping the decanter and poured the auburn liquid into a stout glass. “You sure you can’t tell your old pal what to expect?”

“I’m sure I can’t when the old pal’s taken up parimutuel betting during the season,” Coriolanus said.

“Betting! I am merely moonlighting as an accountant.”

“You,” Coriolanus said, “are a bookkeeper.” His cheeks felt tight and hot. Festus grinned at him, taking the shine in his eyes for tipsy humor.

“Anyway,” Festus said, “my circle only takes bets based on the tributes. Anything you wanted to share about the arena would purely be to sate my own curiosity.”

He suddenly wished he hadn’t invited his friend; what he had hoped would be a distraction was turning into an annoyance. “Sorry,” Coriolanus said with no apology. He turned back to the bottles, and grabbed some dark red wine at random.

Festus gave an exaggerated sigh. He was oblivious to the tension. “I suppose I’ll have to wait and see with the rest of them.”

“Yes,” Coriolanus said shortly. He filled his glass to the brim.

The wine was sweet. Taking a chug brought some relief, before Livia’s shrill laugh rang out. Her friends were arriving. They bustled up to her in nauseating shades of pastel, and she a mother hen decked in a white feather jacket to boot. Coriolanus closed his eyes, and drank it all.

“Coryo, darling.”

Antonia Cardew swanned up to the bar, and with a mumble about in-laws, Festus wandered over to the crowd of yellow and pink tulle dresses now mooning over Livia’s ring. “Top me up, won’t you, my son?”

He liked it better when the Plinths said it.

“I’ll have the same as you,” she sang. She was probably a few glasses ahead.

Coriolanus looked at the thin neck of the bottle of wine. He allowed himself to fantasize briefly that his fingers were wrapping around her throat. But he silenced her the more genteel way by refilling first her goblet, and then his. Antonia Cardew raised her glass to press in a toast before he could give into the instinct to throw this back again.

“To you, dear, and Livia. You deserve to celebrate,” she said thickly, and turned past the large window looking down to the television studio stage to stare at Livia instead. Coriolanus had thought that devoting time to her during the reaping would help curry her family’s favor, but to Antonia and Lucio Cardew, it was Livia Day.

Coriolanus sighed without trying to hide it, and, with a fickle irritation, wished that at least Festus would have hung by his shoulder to be a distraction here. He followed Antonia’s gaze to his betrothed. She herself was drinking champagne, her bejeweled hand thrust in the face of one friend while another powdered her cheeks. Festus had his hand dangerously close to the waist of Carina or Sabrina or Marina, or whoever the twin was that had her hair styled similarly to how Persephone Price’s had been at graduation. Coriolanus shot him a nasty look. Festus only raised his glass and winked.

Antonia Cardew hadn’t perceived any of it. “What a thrilling day. The start of the Games, and the engagement – at last – have you started thinking of dates yet? I’m sure Mr. Flickerman will ask you that,  you know. Perhaps in the fall, when the Games are over and when your attention won’t be divided – ”

His attention was already divided. The wine was swimming heavy in his head, bringing a heartbeat to his vision. The Games were starting. It was the dawn of the Fourteenth Hunger Games. His first – and Coriolanus had decided that this year was his first real Hunger Games. The tenth might as well have never happened, he was determined to cement that in history. And anyway, this was the first real year that they were his Games. Even though the University years of internship were his in all but name, now he had the name, too. Head Gamemaker.

The next step. A step closer.

And yet, as he took deep sips of his wine, Coriolanus could not deny the sick sense of familiarity, that he had been exactly here before.

He should be thinking only of the Games.

He was thinking mostly of her.

And was she thinking of him? She too should be thinking of the Games. She was at work also. She should be here, somewhere in the studio, with her mind to the Games. Coriolanus almost hoped it wasn’t. He tipped the glass back and swallowed.

“Hello!” came a bright voice as the gaffer poked his head through the door, draped in rhinestone tool belts. The long wand of a microphone waggled over his shoulder as the audio technician came next. The lounge was growing far too cramped. Coriolanus pressed his thumb to the glass and said a silent thanks that at least Lucky Flickerman was conducting the interview remotely. The man’s ego was puffed up enough these days to take the space of three more people himself. But his camera crew did corral the Cardews away and sever Livia from the simpering coos of her friends. They were cramped in the corner, hovering like gadflies around the bar cart, with Festus Creed a gadfly around the girls.

To her credit, Livia immediately fell in line. She obeyed the makeup technician with professional attention, lifting her chin at the slightest touch and lowering her eyelids so steadily that Coriolanus never heard him ask her not to blink. She even suggested how her legs should cross- at the ankle, not the knee, and leaning in towards Coryo- and he thought silently to himself that indeed he was making the right choice. In this moment, the conclusion was a logical, contented one.

She was a natural in the interview, too. Her face turned to the camera like a sunflower seeking the sun, with a demure blooming still too brilliant to look away from. It was easier for Coriolanus to look at her than pretend to make eye contact with the virtual Lucky leering in from the monitor. Lucky started after his first rounds of congratulations with a few painful cracks at Coriolanus in attempts to breach any confidentiality about what to expect from the Games – “and did Dr. Gaul give any lasting insights into her scientific vision?” -which grated more at his patience than Festus’ questions would have. He understood, in that moment, why people wished for wine. But he gravitated towards Livia, with each bashful turn of her lips commanding attention, and Coriolanus let her take center stage with relief. He watched her with fascination. He hoped he was being portrayed with admiring adoration, or at the very least neutrality. Yes, this was right. This is what Livia was, well, for.

Coriolanus basked in this satisfaction for a moment, and the world seemed to settle under his feet.

“And so, Livia,” Lucky’s disembodied voice said, with a firmness that implied the segment was wrapping up -finally – Coriolanus thought, drumming his fingertips at his thigh just out of sight of the camera, “as a final question, us romantics here just need to know. What was it, exactly, about the brilliant Mr. Snow that made you say yes?”

The crowded room seemed to suck in a simultaneous breath. Coriolanus heard a slight squeal from somewhere behind the bar cart. Livia lowered her lashes, her gaze measured. Her hand settled with a rehearsed weight on his forearm.

“Oh,” she said, pausing either perfectly for effect or because she wasn’t sure what to say; Coriolanus couldn’t tell. “Well, it just feels easy with him. I know who he is, he knows who I am. It just feels so peaceful with Coryo. I don’t have to try.”

Everyone exhaled. The gaffer let out an audible aww. Antonia Cardew made a simpering sound.

Livia turned her face towards him, wrinkling her nose in a pinched grin. Coriolanus felt her words settle over him like dust, and he coughed slightly into the back of his hand to keep from laughing. It was an imperfect moment, but – really-

Try?

His satisfaction collapsed like a snapping twig.

He was trying all the damn time. Trying to keep his teeth together from snapping at Livia, trying to walk that line between deference and demanding long-neglected respect from her parents. Trying to secure his future, whatever it would take. He tried to do everything he could from reminding the country of the boy they saw not too long ago, a boy who had clutched a compact mirror between his fingers and not the fingers of a wealthy, beautiful woman. He well on his way to shed that fear, but he wasn’t bulletproof yet. Yet.

He didn’t need to try around her – the one who saw his canines gleam and still slipped her fingers between his teeth. She who could take what he flung to her and loop it back around his neck to draw him in closer. If she knew of his truest faults, Coriolanus imagined frantically she would drink them from his lips. Of course she would.

He kissed Livia’s mouth when he realized she wasn’t turning her face away, and the room erupted in applause that sounded like guns popping. The camera couldn’t pick up the tension in his jaw.

“Well,” Lucky said, with a showman’s finality, “there you have it! On behalf of the Capitol, and, why, all of Panem, our heartiest congratulations to our Head Gamemaker, Coriolanus Snow, and the future Livia Snow! We’ll be right after this with the reaping, to officially kick off the Fourteenth Hunger Games. Don’t go anywhere.”

Her friends began babbling before the cameras even cut. Coriolanus was already on his feet.

“Coryo -? Darling?”

“I have to check a camera feed,” Coriolanus said, as he made his way to the lounge door. It was a bad lie. If Livia hadn’t been tipsy with alcohol and a freshly delighted smugness, she might have caught him in it. He didn’t stay for a conversation; the last he heard was Antonia speaking loudly to someone- “See, won’t they look lovely in a glossy wedding portrait together?”

He swallowed the rising sense of vomit in the back of his throat with a half-drunk glass of champagne abandoned at the base of the steps.

The few people in the hallway were busy with last-minute adjustments before Lucky started the reaping feeds, and there was barely any notice of Coriolanus storming through the corridor. The clinical lighting hummed. He was rushing without intending to, but the alcohol slickened his limbs.

“Sir,” a Peacekeeper said with a nod as he descended a shallow flight of stairs.

The broadcast floor, where all press would be, was another two levels below. He ducked through the rooms, looking at lanyards before looking at faces, applauding his own ingenious subtlety. When he found her, she would not see him hunting desperately through the crowd to spot her first.

He finished his first turn through the room, where he only had to raise his hand a few times to say, firmly, “No, no questions now. Take your place for the reaping feed. I’m just doing last minute checks, it’s starting soon, thank you.” He slipped to the side, and noticed smaller chambers leading out to the soundstage. One door was ajar. A light was on.

She was inside.

Coriolanus paused outside the door. He smoothed his hand over his jaw, feeling the heat of his blood below the skin. He was warm. His vision was barely fuzzy if he blinked too long. Coriolanus sniffed once, sharp, and exhaled slowly.

He didn’t knock. She looked up when he pushed the door open. It wasn’t bright enough to see what gleamed in her eyes. As it was, there was no reaction he could gauge in her face. No surprise. No irritation.

His chest tightened, making his heart rattle against his ribcage.

“Hello,” Coriolanus said. He leaned against the door frame. “I’m confirming final places. Are you ready?”

His eyes flicked to the screen she had open. There were grids of video feeds, each focused tightly on the faces of the District escorts.

“You’re not watching from in here, are you? Shouldn’t you be with the others at Lucky’s?”

Her own eyes had lowered, past him, to the door. He reached for the knob, and her eyes narrowed until he closed it.

“No,” she said at last. “Are you accusing me of shirking my duties?”

She crossed her legs, high, at the knee. Her thighs peeked at him for a moment.

“I’m accusing you of hiding,” he said. “It’s different.”

She looked for a moment like she would take the bait, but she wasn’t biting yet. Instead, she turned her head back to the screen. Her body still faced him, the slender arch of her neck open. Coriolanus danced his eyes over her, and she tilted her chin slightly, as if she knew he was watching.

The Capitol-blue lanyard cut diagonally across her chest and dipped between her breasts. He tensed. He grew hot.

“And you’re not hiding, Mr. Snow? I didn’t know your duties for the reaping included micromanaging some lowly press members.”

Her breath was tight, and then she added, “I saw your interview.”

“Oh,” Coriolanus said. He ran his thumb along the doorknob. “Yes, she accepted the proposal last night. It was all very touching.”

She closed her eyes a moment, lashes veiling, before she uncrossed her legs and rose. She walked towards Coriolanus. The light from monitors glazed her profile with dull cyan. She closed the distance between them and looked him over. He watched the grasp of her hands on her elbows as she crossed her arms, guarding herself away.

He wanted to pin her hands together and taste her mouth.

“You’re drunk,” she said, but the words were amused rather than cold.

“No,” he said.

“It’s all the champagne, isn’t it? Well, congratulations.”

Her tone was inscrutable, and the air pulsed. His eyes dropped, down the polished buttons of her waistcoat, her tight, tailored suit jacket and trousers, a neat set that wrapped her up like a present. Coriolanus desperately wanted to rip it open. He traced her curves with his eyes, and back up to meet her face, slow enough to let her feel it.

She still refused to bite. “I hope you’ll both be very happy.”

He watched the press and pop of her lips as she spoke.

Maybe his silence made her uncomfortable. She turned her face away again for a moment, her fingers gripping her arms.

“So, why are you here?” she asked, and her voice was almost soft.

He wanted to taste her on his fingers. He was sick with the need for it.

“I told you,” he said, and let rasp envelope his voice. “Last-minute checks.”

“Checks.”

“Making sure everything is just right.”

She watched him with a lidded look. “And is everything just right?”

Coriolanus reached for her now, pressing his thumb to the side of her face. He felt the soft of her cheek. When he felt her tilt, just barely into his palm, he smiled with half his mouth. She bit, at last.

Her fingers caught the lapel of his own suit and smoothed it down.

“I’m very happy right now,” he said.

“And,” she asked, low, “happy enough for the future?”

It wasn’t cruel, and it barely even pricked Coriolanus' skin. He knew what her question was without being asked fully. He knew it was a good question that needed answering eventually. But right now, he didn’t need to try to think of an answer. He didn’t need to try to grab for her, either. She was already in his hands. He didn't need to try to do anything.

His eyes were a haze. He looked at her and said nothing. She reached behind him, slipping her hand past his shoulder, and locked the door.

See header "Caveat Emptor" link for table of contents/ chapter 1.

“The Hunger Games?”

You squinted at the painter’s tape plastered firmly over the screen, right below your name and beaming holographic portrait, covering the previous assignment. Hollisee Tympan shot a glance at you over the shoulder of his stiff plaid suit as he pressed the corner of the tape down and stepped back.

“Lucky,” hissed the mouth-breathing Elysia Byron. Her salivating was practically audible.

“I thought I would be starting off in the markets,” you said to no one in particular. “Down at the banks. In the financial district.”

Harrier Bulla was over your other shoulder. “You say you’d rather have the financial markets than the Hunger Games?”

You were still staring at the black ink saying the same three words that blubbered out of his mouth.

“It’s gotten huge the last few years,” Elysia Byron said. “Mr. Tympan, would the Games benefit from perhaps one more page from the station?”

“Or two?”

Mr. Tympan blinked wide, watery eyes at their slimy wheedling. “Mr. Bulla, CapiTV is lucky to have the presence of one page to represent the station. The administration is still wary of the security threats and this is the first year they’re even doing a trial run with outside network involvement. And we don’t get a stipend for it, either. If you had been listening during orientation, you might have heard that.”

“Aren’t you in fashion and style, anyway?” asked Harrier. “What could a style page do at the Games?”

Elysia made a huffing sound. “Actually, style would be very important to cover at the Games.”

“What exactly shall I be covering, anyway?” you asked Mr. Tympan cautiously.

Mr. Tympan shot another look at Harrier and Elysia behind you, all but sticking their tongues out childishly at each other. “Well, you’ll receive a formal memorandum shortly. But we’d like you to focus on backstage operations. We don’t have the equipment – or the manpower – ” which was said loudly to cut off Harrier’s mouth as it opened again “ – to even negotiate a CapiTV presence up front with the Flickerman production. And of course they’ll be doing the main interviews, telling the tribute story. But they’re outsourcing to CapiTV to create something for the slower moments when Lucky needs a break. You won’t be behind the camera, but you’ll be supplying our broadcasters with the inspiration and information to fill that time. And the audience will need some breaks from Lucky, too, while still remaining engaged in the Games.”

“Capitol Television. The Capitol’s vision, to you,” Harrier recited the station’s motto with a toadyish excitement. Elysia rolled her eyes and you prided yourself on the ability to resist the same.

“So it’s just glamorized B-roll,” Elysia said snottily.

Mr. Tympan only blinked at her before turning to walk away.

The other pages began to come up to the screens, and when Harrier and Elysia turned to whisper the new development to them, you began your hasty steps after.

“Mr. Tympan – sorry. One more question.”

“You’ll get the memorandum,” he said, looking down at the papers he thumbed through a binder.

“Well – I mean, I’m flattered,” you said, and caught yourself twisting your hands. “But I wanted to ask why I was the one transferred over. I don’t think I indicated any interest in working for the Games in my page application.”

“You didn’t, and that’s why,” Mr. Tympan said. “I trusted even with your lack of interest you paid more attention than Ms. Byron did to the security briefings in orientation. Even with the last bomb threat being two years ago, the Capitol’s priority is safety and discretion. Each year has to bring improvement in all areas. And you’ve proven yourself… capable of such discretion.”

Given his pause, you weren’t sure if it was something you’ve done in the last two weeks of orientation, or something further back that’d earned you such esteem. You narrowed your eyes and looked quickly away. Mr. Tympan wasn’t familiar from the days of moonlighting that had put you through school. You had secure faith in your memory. But the network had many officers…

“I can keep my mouth shut,” you said, but Mr. Tympan was already walking away again.

-

The Hunger Games.

It was an anxious thrill that sprang through you, and you raised a soothing hand to circle your belly automatically. But the Peacekeeper at the door turned his helmet towards you at the movement, so you slipped the identification badge between your fingers and raised the card instead.

“I’m from CapiTV,” you said.

He snapped it from your hand with a force that rubbed the lanyard cord hot and painful at the back of your neck. You forced yourself to remain stoic as he investigated the photograph, the same beaming face on the hologram taken as your thoughts were full of financial news dreams.

“How exciting for you,” he grunted.

“Very. Yes, exciting,” you breathed.

Elysia Byron, Harrier Bulla, and then a third page, Kit Crocum, all left calls attempting in some way to convince you to swap posts. “You wanted finance,” Kit had wailed, convinced somehow that being assigned the banks and markets meant that you had stolen the Games from him as the rightful owner.

“I just don’t think it’s up to me to trade,” was how you deflected them all.

When the Peacekeeper held the heavy steel door open with an instruction to go to the sixth floor, you walked past a portrait of Coriolanus Snow. You looked down at your badge again. Yes, you had wanted to work on financial news. You had also wanted to live on the moon as a child.

Moreover, a lot had happened in the time between filling out the interests sheet in the spring and this early summer morning.

You turned your head at the elevator, and it was like his stern blue eyes could follow you all the way down the corridor. You felt the stare prickle on your skin as the elevator rose. The doors opened and you were rubbing the back of your arm subconsciously.

An Avox led you down sea-green steps. They must have been made of some newly engineered glass that didn’t shatter under your sensible heels, but the material dazzled and shone across the floor like an old-fashioned soda bottle you remembered from history classes. Each step made the sound of a diamond falling, and as you approached the small crowd at the buffet table, hundreds of shuffling shoes made the sound echo again and again like an opulent hailstorm. A space opened as two women in high-buttoned suits swept away from the table, where rich brown drapery flowed under platters of canape and thick slices of meat.

Your mouth watered and you thought of the stale crackers in the CapiTV break room.

“Good afternoon. Good afternoon.”

The woman’s voice was icy and clear, cleaving through the dim chatter of colleagues. You snuck a glance towards the front of the room. Backs and elbows blocked your view, and so you discreetly slid a few biscuit cups filled with whipped egg and topped with some green and orange somethings onto a napkin.

“Welcome, media representatives, to the first stages of the Fourteenth Hunger Games,” the woman’s voice continued.

You could see her now, a woman whose golden hair spiraled silver at her temples and shone in two shades of metallic. Her nose was strong, and her gaze somehow pinched. She leaned into the tall iron microphone, her full lips caged behind the netting.

“I am sorry that Dr. Gaul couldn’t come for one last farewell,” she said without further introduction. And from looking at the knowing glances between the crowd, they recognized her without requiring one. You looked down at the eggs nestled in the napkin cupped in your palm.

Well, they each had to have worked their first Games at some point.

You popped one in your mouth and tasted onion and paprika sinking between your teeth.

“Unfortunately, she’s taken ill in the days following retirement, but we wish her the best and a speedy recovery. Fortunately, she completed transitioning our new Head Gamemaker fully into the position, and he’s been hard at work preparing our new Games to start come July. Everything is on schedule, and we’ll have a briefing sheet to bring back to your –” and she sniffed, before smiling tightly “ – little television studios. And he’s taken time out of his busy day to greet you himself.”

The thin crowd swelled around you a moment with a flurry of questions, and you saw the tips of ten perfectly manicured claws rise in the air.

“No, there will be no chances for an exclusive interview. Not today,” she said firmly. Not ever. “Everyone, Mr. Coriolanus Snow.”

You clenched your hand into a fist. The egg burst, creamy white and crumbled biscuit crumbs surging between your fingers, leaking through the thin veil of napkin.

“Thank you, Ms. Trinket.”

He melted out of the crowd, and you snapped your neck back wildly, as if you could recreate where he had come from. You blinked. Blinked again. The egg was tacky against the sweat beading in your palm. There was no reason to be surprised. His portrait had just been in the hall, after all. You should have known; you did know, from the moment you saw that strip of painter’s tape. But you’d never let yourself actually think it so plainly.

“Anastasia Trinket,” Coriolanus said into the microphone. His smile was dazzling, an errant curl artfully falling over his forehead as he turned that smile to her. He had his hands raised in applause. His fingernails were square and clean.

Everyone was applauding now, and you used the excuse of the mess in your hands to turn behind the crimson-suited man in front of you to drop it to the table. You grabbed a napkin and wiped between your fingers, nervously glancing between Coriolanus and the other members of the press.

He looked right at you and the corners of his lips curled.

“Thank you for coming.”

You found it in you at last to clap along, and you gave a few measured, off-beat smacks.

“Let me repeat Ms. Trinket and welcome you again. The Hunger Games this year promise to be our best yet, and we hope that the press will help bring this event to the eyes of all of Panem. Now, you’ll have to see most of it live as the rest of us, but we have prepared a confidential media briefing for your stations, so that you may begin necessary preparations and preview for the citizens of the Capitol what they may expect.”

Coriolanus reached inside his black silk jacket, and the press around you began to pull tablets or recording devices from their pockets and bags. You cleared your throat and unclipped the microphone card attached to your blouse.

“We are very excited to announce that this year, we have at last achieved the goal of hosting the Games in a new arena,” he said, beginning to glance up from a sheet of paper and innocently flitting his gaze to you, to someone on one side, back to you. Your hand was frozen on the blinking recording light. “While the Second Arena has served us well these past few years, the Fourteenth Hunger Games shall move to a new and improved location.”

“Excuse me, will they still be held in the Capitol?”

Ms. Trinket yanked the mic stand to her mouth. “There will be a short time for questions after the briefing,” she snapped.

“For security reasons,” Coriolanus said, in a manner smooth and cold, “we will not be revealing where the new arena is located. However, rest assured that for this same reason, this arena was not built in the Capitol. Nor will any other. For now that we know it is possible to design, engineer, build, and fully synchronize an arena with Capitol control within a year, each Hunger Game will be held in an entirely new and different arena.”

There was a snap of grumbling behind you. Coriolanus’ lips turned in a sneer once more, and you ground your heel into the glass floor.

“So, we have no direct media access to the Games? No cameras and reporters at the arena?” you called out before being able to stop yourself.

Ms. Trinket’s vein threatened to burst out of her forehead, and you almost believed Coriolanus’ face went a shade paler. You raised your eyebrows, waiting for a response, and licked your lip.

“The arena cameras have been enhanced and received a software update,” Coriolanus said almost too quickly. It made your heartbeat a little more even. “Every studio will receive the same feed as always. And the tributes will still train here, and speak to Mr. Flickerman here. That access is the same, which has always been the only real opportunity for first-hand reporting.”

You tapped your foot and said nothing more. And you heard nothing more, too, thankful for the recording card pinned to your shirt. The strength you had pulled out of yourself to move your tongue burned through to your brain, and you were slowly beginning to feel it turn to belligerent epiphany.

He did this. He did this because you had done it, two weeks ago. The longer you stayed silent, the more that steely shine returned to his eye with each haughty glance at you. Once more he was on stage and you captive in the audience; but this time, he was the tiger prowling beyond the bars and locked the human in.

You crossed your arms at the waist and pressed into yourself.

Could it be that he had pulled the strings, all the way to the news studio?

Of course he could.

Coriolanus rolled up the paper at last, and Ms. Trinket moved forward to announce that questions were now welcome. You fidgeted.

There was a flash of memory, of fidgeting and tightening your thigh muscles at the ministrations that silver tongue of his worked between your legs. You tensed again. It did not alleviate.

“Actually,” Coriolanus interjected, “I apologize, but Ms. Trinket will answer your questions. I unfortunately have last minute business to attend to, with the reaping at the week's end. We of course will send invitations to your stations to Lucky Flickerman’s commentary conference. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your time.”

He turned to give her another few claps of applause, and the crowd fell in line. Coriolanus smiled politely and moved into the crowd. A few offered their hands to receive a brief shake; a gentleman attempted to give him a hearty clap on the back, which earned a stiff half-smile in response. His eyes slid over you, triumphantly caged in by the swaying bars of applauding hands all around.

“Excuse me,” you said, nearly turning into the woman on your right as you turned to push to the back of the crowd yourself.

But Coriolanus had taken a different stream, and when you made it to where only Avoxes stood silent at the wall, he was at the foot of those shallow sea-glass stairs. You cast a glance back at the rest of the press and took hurried steps.

“Coryo – ”

It felt wrong to call for him, as soft as it was.

He barely craned his neck back as he pushed the elevator button.

“I’m sorry, perhaps you didn’t hear Anastasia earlier. There won’t be any exclusives through this media program.”

“And did you get me assigned to this program?”

The doors opened and warm orange light spilled out.

“We had to approve the names each studio submitted,” Coriolanus said measuredly. “For security. You understand.”

“I don’t.”

You stepped inside the elevator after him, and held a hand against the frame. Coriolanus looked over your shoulder to the gathering below.

“Though we didn’t review for competence,” he murmured. “You’re missing the questions and answers. It would be a shame for your station to be behind the curve so early in the Games.”

You tilted your head at him and tightened your eyes. “As if she’s going to give away any trade secrets.”

“Trade secrets,” Coriolanus sighed with exaggeration, “are certainly not on the table. Glad to see CapiTV sends their brightest. Well, good day. I really do have things to attend to.”

He moved to reach for the button to urge the doors closed, almost physically puffed up and preening with his own ego. Your fingers curled at the elevator doors and then stepped inside.

“Coriolanus, I don’t know – ”

The doors slid closed, and Coriolanus lunged forward.

“No, you don’t,” he said, seething, and one hand slammed past your head to the wall behind you. The other reached up to your blouse, and before your eyes, ripped the microphone cord clean off the card.

“You certainly don’t,” Coriolanus continued, and now, without any other eyes or ears he could not keep the curl of his lip off his shining teeth. His blue stare was wild. “Clearly you don’t if you’re so stupid to approach me like this today. Again.”

“You invited me here,” you spat.

“Please select a floor,” the elevator’s automatic voice sang.

Coriolanus punched something in the panel, flinging your microphone to the floor. The elevator began to rise.

“Going up.”

“Anyone could have looked up. Any one of those journalists or reporters could have looked back at the elevator just now.”

“I’ll leave,” you said. “Just bring it back down to the lobby.”

Coriolanus huffed. “You know I was trying to do something nice? I saw your plans in the graduation program, and I felt sorry for you. Clearly you aren’t making much of what your degree is worth, taking a job at CapiTV, of all places. Their reporter has been drunk on camera the last two Games, but I thought maybe I’d give you a shot to turn things around, for you, and your career. I thought I’d do you a favor. Maybe the Games would give you a chance to hone some of your, shall we say, more academic talents.”

Bullshit. “Bullshit,” you said, turning your chin up in his face. “It’s because you wanted me to feel how you felt at graduation. That’s why you organized this little briefing for everyone, isn’t it?”

“How I felt?”

“I’m sorry, Coriolanus, if I had the luxury of knowing that I’d be hearing your valedictorian speech. I’m sorry that you hadn’t bothered to recognize your own classmate outside of school. But I thought I apologized for anything I might have done that day.”

And I shouldn’t have.

“How could you know what I felt?” Coriolanus snarled. “You have no idea what I had planned for that day. I had everything planned, this whole summer, and one day – very important day – was enough to throw it all off track.”

“And that’s my fault?” You were almost shrieking with laughter at the absurdity. “I didn’t make you come to the club, and I didn’t make you lick my pussy.”

The words were delicious coming out of your mouth. You grinned, wild, practically spitting in the face of this ringmaster even as you remembered seeing that face so beautifully framed between your thighs.

“You wanted to.”

Coriolanus’s mouth crashed on yours at that, with the familiar taste of anger on his tongue. You could have bitten him. But you kissed him back and chased that taste; clawed at him instead, tugging his neat shirt from his pants to allow your fingernails up his bare back where your touch could rake at his skin. He hissed.

The elevator began to slow.

“Doors,” you gasped, and his arm muscle flexed out to hit another button.

“Services stopped.”

Coriolanus almost slammed you into the wall. He had his fists on your skirt, your neat, smart little black pencil skirt, and he was scrunching it high on your hips. His body was hot against yours, and his wiry strength was a bruising grip on your thigh. Your hands were just as busy, frantically unbuckling his belt, trying to find the space to tug down his zipper.

“Coriolanus,” you gasped.

He was half-mad with rage, with something hungrier and full of desire. Your knee fell open as you were propped on the railing, and you lurched back and clutched wildly at the brass for balance. The careful slick of his hair was breaking free from the gel casing, and Coriolanus breathed heavily, a string of saliva snapping between his parted lips.

“There’s – the – cam-”

“No cameras,” he said in one breath. He leaned forward, and his lips ghosted on the shell of your ear, sending spikes across your skin and down your back. “I turned them off this morning.”

You moaned and felt the threatening rush tremble between your legs again. The pressure in your blood beat faster, harder, with excitement turned anew once more at the stimulus.

“So you knew I would come?” you panted as he stood firm between your bowed knees. “So you thought I would be – what – stupid?”

“Services stopped.”

Coriolanus’s breath was ragged as he snapped back to you. His thumb brushed your jawline, tilting your head up to meet his searing gaze. “No, I shouldn’t have said stupid. I knew you’d be reckless.”

The words hit you sharply, as sharply as the edge of his teeth grazing your throat. You would have laughed if it was still the time for incredulity. And then he was in you, your breath hitching as the weight of his body into your stomach pushed you against the elevator wall with each thrust. You saw the cameras in the corner at last, little black caps carefully snapped over the lens.

The world could be watching, if it had the eyes to look.

“How did you do it?”

Any of it.

His thumb smeared down your cheek, pulling your mouth into the space for a lopsided breath as you gasped out the words.

“Does it matter? I’m Head Gamemaker, aren’t I?”

Coriolanus kissed you again. You let your teeth tug at his lips this time, and the groan from his lungs was intoxicating.

He was tense and throbbing in you, and you had to lean into him, had to use him as a plinth of support in this precarious balance. Your blouse was stuck to your back in an awkward rumple of sweat, and your nipples ached untouched under your bra. His hands had come both to your thighs to pin you there on the railing, keep your hips stilled as he moved in you harder, harder still.

Your ankles have locked together against his against his back. You realized it only when the elevator jolted suddenly, and you gasped sharply, a heel sliding off and slapping to the floor.

“Services stopped.”

It was just the shaking of your bodies, but for a moment, you feared that someone had called for the elevator.

“Oh,” you whispered. You were angry at the thought of someone interrupting, and your teeth chattered at the realization. Chattered more at the stillness of Coriolanus in you that was leaving you full, full, stretched so you could barely manage it. Your hips were just heavy lead under his touch.

Coriolanus sucked his breath in, and you had to meet his eyes that for once matched his in wild fervor. You whimpered a surrender.

“Don’t stop…”

He pushed again and he was fucking you as far as he could go at this curled angle. By now, his hands were all of what kept you to the railing. The desire to squirm away at the weight had left you squirming as best you could. Any last strength you had in your body, nor your brain, had melted away.

It was rough and quick. Your cunt was greedy and you choked on the wail as you felt the desperate convulsing of your inner walls. That was it. Coriolanus was coming too, with each spurt hot and somehow making your legs shake even harder at the delicate sense of it. The elevator creaked faintly.

He was in you still when he lifted his face, those loose blonde curls now plastered to his forehead. With a moan from him and a full shudder from you, he pulled his cock away. Cream spattered onto the carpet. He was still holding you to the railing. Your ankles were still hooked at his thighs. You stayed a few seconds more in this silence with your back pressed to the metal wall.

“Services stopped.”

Coriolanus looked down, and stepped back. His mouth was torn up with your lipstick. He wiped the back of his hand against his face as if he could feel it and looked at the remnants. You slid down and shimmied your skirt back in place.

He swiped at his face a few moments more before sighing loudly and tugging his shirt back into his pants. As you reached down for your abandoned heel, he pushed another button on the elevator panel.

“Going down.”

You saw your microphone, the net of the speaker dented under someone’s errant foot. Coriolanus’s foot, most likely. You clenched it in your palm as you straightened again.

“You didn’t do this to help me,” you said slowly. “You wanted me to come to you. To show me what you can control.”

Coriolanus turned away from you, combing his blonde hair back with his fingers. “I don’t need to control you,” he said.

“But you do, don’t you? You want what you paid for. But the transactions are done.”

He scoffed. A lesser-mannered man would have spit on the ground after that sound. “So you want more money.”

“No. No, I mean it. I don’t want your money, I don’t need it. I never had.”

“That’s a lie,” Coriolanus said haughtily. You ground your teeth.

He was, unfortunately right. You had been too wild in your speech to catch it.

“So tell me,” Coriolanus continued, turning back to you, “what’s going to happen now? Will you quit, now that you see which pockets your salary truly comes from?”

His hands came around your head and locked you where you stood. He pressed his forehead to yours. You could taste his breath on the air as his pupils narrowed.

“What’s more important to you, little CapiTV page? Your career, or keeping your hands clean of me?”

Your thighs shook. You stared at his lips. You remembered every touch of them vividly. As if Coriolanus could feel where your eyes burned, he slipped into a low grin. The canines showed.