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mostremote · 14 hours ago

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Happy one year anniversary to The Shivering Season🎉

It is one year ago today (4th Nov 23) that I posted chapter one of The Shivering Season and only a little longer that I completely lost my mind over eversnow.

Thank you as ever to all of you who joined me on that journey of insanity. It has meant so, so much to me and I regularly reread my comments to relive the gleeful madness.

In celebration of the anniversary here is a scene I cut where Snow consensually(?) chokes Katniss out from around chapter 14, "Family". It doesn't fit the final continuity but. it's still hot.

In District 12, Snow and Katniss spend a violent night at a hotel. 18+

Snow takes her to a hotel, The Golden Hart. She has heard of it before. It stands in the center of District 12, one of the finest buildings, walls of white concrete set in heavy, diminishing layers, so that the walls all look like horizontal steps. Katniss tilts her head to the side and wonders what it would be like to walk the side of the building, if you could defy gravity like a bird, like a spider. Snow watches her head-tilted curiosity with obvious lack of understanding and she corrects her posture.

This used to be a nice hotel. It’s not that it has degraded in reality, only in her mind. This establishment was once a fine, expensive, mysterious, exotic locale to her, one of the most beautiful and inaccessible places in District 12. It caters mainly for important visiting people, dignitaries from other Districts or Capitol politicians or even Effie Trinket. Now, however, Katniss can see how cheap and pretentious it is. Inside, the carpets are worn and stained. The wallpaper is decades old, faded and outdated. Everything is chipped or dirtied or mismatched or otherwise infected with the disease of not being rich. It’s not poverty; no, there is at least a kind of dignity in the bare ruin of the Seam. This place is desperate and grasping. It makes her skin itch.

Snow doesn’t seem to care. There is nobody there when they enter except the staff and Katniss wonders if this is because Snow had the whole place shut down to accommodate them, or if perhaps the hotel is so unused and unpopular that they are the only guests. She trails in her husband’s wake. Everything red looks like blood. Everything soft and unformed (the horrible couches, the faded fake flowers, the face of the receptionist) looks like Gale’s brains. She thinks she might not be very well.

Snow says nothing to the receptionist, who babbles on about what an honor it is to host them, how he hopes everything will be to their satisfaction, blah blah. As soon as Snow has the room key he turns away from the desk and, almost (but not quite) thoughtlessly, takes Katniss’ arm in his own. Her body ripples. Curious, despairing pleasure paws at her insides. He is her lifeline and her anchor, pulling her deeply and firmly into hot, drowning waves.

The room itself is the best in the hotel, and it is miserable. It stinks of furniture polish and there is a vase of fresh flowers, the obvious evidence of a desperate, last-minute attempt to make this place habitable for the President and his wife. There is even a gift basket and it has little cakes. Katniss wonders if Peeta made any of these.

Snow removes his scarf and gloves and surveys the room with frank displeasure. ‘Dreadful place. Still, we won’t be here for long. I thought you might like to rest.’

Katniss sits on the bed. It has too much bounce to it, or perhaps she is becoming untethered from the earth. ‘I could have rested in the hovercraft.’

Snow looks at her with that same soft, condescending concern. ‘I thought you might like to lie down.’

Katniss rubs her fingers over the sheets. Some stranger’s blonde hair curls over the white cotton. ‘Do you want to lie down?’ Do you want to lie down with me? she does not say.

Snow pretends that he doesn’t understand her question. ‘No, thank you. I just have a few final matters to put in order.’

He sits at the desk, which has coffee-cup stains, and Katniss sits on the bed and watches him. How funny for them to be alone together with a bed, just like their honeymoon, just like the night before when he washed Gale’s blood from her breasts. She had been too unwell at the time to consider the experience as it happened, but now she wonders what he thought of her body. Her breasts are small; does that bother him? Does he dislike her soft, clumsy, only-just-ripened body? Or is she like a stupid child to him? But he liked kissing her, so he must like something about her physicality. She likes his lips, too. They are the softest things about him, and when he presses their wet, tender touch to hers she feels one of the many chaotic notes of madness reverberating in her skull go still, just for a little while.

She sits on the bed and she watches him work and she thinks about kissing him, and she starts to feel aroused. She always feels a little aroused these days, seasick with the currents of her own body, but she is learning to distinguish between its different natures. As she watches him sat at the desk, typing one-handedly on his tablet, eyes absorbed, face strange and familiar and handsome, she feels her body pulse with inquisitive hunger. It’s a nice feeling, big and glimmering inside her, and as she chews her lip and watches him she thinks how pleasant it might be if he came and lay down on the bed with her and they could touch each other a little bit. Not sexually, not that; that is some terrible maw into which she is not ready to throw herself. But his shoulders look good and firm, and she would like to press her face against them. She would like to nestle inside the strong, certain, sane realness of his body and this, perhaps, might make her feel more like a person.

Snow finishes doing whatever he’s doing on his tablet and then his eyes meet hers decisively. ‘Katniss, you are staring at me.’

She drops her gaze. ‘Sorry. I was just thinking.’

‘About?’

Now she is embarrassed. A hot blush stains her cheeks and she looks away. ‘Just… I don’t know.’ She toys with her dress like a child. ‘I thought you might like to rest. We could…’ She sees the two of them encased in entirely different worlds with so little way to reach between them. Her voice comes very small. ‘Maybe we could lie down for a little while. Together.’

Snow’s strange gaze passes over the bed. He shakes his head. ‘I do not think that is a good idea, Katniss.’

‘I didn’t mean…’ she begins, but she does not know what she meant or didn’t mean. Sex, and any whisper of it, is something he desires to keep as far at bay as he possibly can. Lying down in bed in a hotel room is definitely out. But, oh, she wants to feel the sure, solid heat of him against her. Her world is dissolving like sugar and yet he remains. She doesn’t even dare to think about actual sex with him, whatever that sordid act might look like. She just wants to hold onto something real. To be held.

Snow can sense something of her intense need for him, even if he won’t give her what she wants. ‘Is there something else I can do for you?’ His eyes drop to her legs and Katniss suddenly feels the wound on her thigh burn, a call-and-response reaction. ‘How is your thigh?’

‘It’s good,’ she says in that faux, forced light tone she has started using to pretend the horrible new things in her life are actually okay. ‘It’s nice.’ Then she adds: ‘Thank you.’

He inclines his head in acknowledgement. Something ineffable crackles between them. He is thinking about her, she is thinking about him. They are not thinking the same things, of course, but Katniss thinks there must be some way to make their worlds overlap, just for a little while. His horrible lightless universe must have some way to speak to the sparkling chaos swirling inside her.

Snow is studying her with his clever intimacy. ‘Do you want me to hurt you again?’

The terrible, shameful urge to cry grips her and she pushes it back down. ‘Okay,’ she says in that too-bright voice. ‘Yes, that would be… I’d like that.’

Snow has turned all his attention away from the tablet now and is staring at her, hungry, the polite predator waiting for the gazelle to lie down so obligingly for him.

‘How shall I hurt you?’ His voice is suddenly deeper, darker, fertile and thick with his own excitement.

‘I don’t know.’ She sounds like a schoolgirl who doesn’t know which dress to wear. Her mind tries out a variety of images. More cutting? A knife? There is a tea-kettle here, perhaps he could burn her. No, the thought of intense heat spikes her anxiety too much. Being hit might be nice. Then she could feel his skin against her. He can’t bruise her face, but he could hit her elsewhere. Would he smack his heavy, strong palms against her soft and bleeding thigh?

‘If…’ She tries out the words in her mouth like some small insect feeling out an unfamiliar texture. ‘If you hit me… where would you do that?’

It is almost imperceptible, but Katniss sees Snow take a deep, big breath and release it. His gaze skitters and roams over her shaking body.

‘Well,’ he says, his voice immaculate, businesslike. ‘I have already bruised your arm, so that is a possibility.’

‘Where else?’ She loathes the timidity in her voice. She is not so naïve to be ignorant of concepts like spanking, but she doubts he will grant her something so overtly erotic. She wets her lips. ‘My thigh?’

His gaze falls like a round, weighty stone to her thighs, clad in grey wool, and he stares openly but without lasciviousness. He is simply evaluating her, as he so often likes to do.

‘No,’ he says at last. ‘I would need to touch you too much. It is not appropriate.’

Her heart sinks a little. It would have been nice to feel those fingers around her wound, around the hole in her thigh and near her horrible wet cunt. It might have cooled her sexual need, yes, but it also simply would have felt nice. Soothing. Warm. The opposite of loneliness. He lets her feel so little of his body, after all, but his hands are like old friends to her now. How pleasant it would be to feel them on her skin.

Then another horrible little idea occurs to her. She considers it, tossing it back and forth in her mind, and she is aware of how keenly Snow, too, is considering her. He wants to know what she’ll ask for. What delicious, awful treat will she select from the menu?

‘What about choking me?’ she whispers.

Snow’s eyes grow wide and excited. They glow. The black pupil seems to shrink into nothing and all she can see is blue.

‘I would love to choke you,’ he murmurs, and then he stands abruptly. She is instantly frightened.

‘Wait,’ she says, and he pauses. ‘I want… Can we do it on the bed?’

He considers briefly and then shakes his head. ‘No.’

She trembles her leg with anxiety and excitement. ‘I want to be comfortable for it.’

‘Being choked is not meant to be comfortable,’ he informs her, his teeth showing in a big, greedy smile. He speaks, she knows, from experience. Who has he choked before? Who has choked him?

‘I know, but… I want to be comfortable when it happens. I can’t explain it. I just want to feel…’ Warm, safe, good, happy, not alone, not like I’m dissolving, not like I’m dying. ‘…nice,’ she finishes lamely.

Snow looks around the room, his tongue working at something in his mouth, considering the place. There isn’t much in the way of furniture: the bed, the desk, a vanity, a wardrobe. Nowhere that she can be soft and comfortable for her choking other than the forbidden bed.

Snow suddenly brightens, the way he always does when he has found the solution to some little problem. ‘I shall lay my sable on the floor and you can put down one of the pillows.’

‘What about the duvet?’

‘No,’ he says shortly.

Katniss doesn’t quite understand his rules. No sex, no bed, nothing that might recall a bed. She watches with pathetic confusion as Snow unhooks the fur he wears about his shoulders and lays it out neatly on the dirty carpet. He takes such care to straighten the edges, making it nice for her, making it perfect. As if in a dream, Katniss rises and takes one of the pillows from the bed and joins him. He takes it from her, smiling like they are a couple laying the table, and then he adds the pillow to the fur.

‘There,’ he says, surveying his work. ‘You shall be comfortable.’

Katniss nods and smiles and wants to cry but doesn’t. She smooths back her hair and sniffs, then steps out of her shoes. She cannot help but notice the curious hunger with which Snow regards her bare feet. He would probably like to cut those. Easily hidden with boots.

She lies down tidily, smoothing her dress, placing her head on the pillow. The sable is thick and feathery beneath her, tickling her skin, and it smells of Snow. Slowly, with an old man’s care, Snow lowers himself to sit beside her on the floor. She is such a stupid sacrificial lamb, and he does not bother to hide his open excitement.

He reaches for her.

‘Wait,’ she says again, still terrified, and he pauses. ‘I want… I want you to be close to me when you do it. I want… to feel…’ I want you to hold me. ‘I will like it more if I can touch you a little.’

Snow quirks his head at this. ‘Alright,’ he says slowly. ‘You can touch my arms. Is that alright?’

‘And your shoulders?’

He nods, conceding. ‘That’s alright.’

As with the terrible incident a few hours earlier when he cut her, they arrange themselves awkwardly for this new affront. He lies down beside her, propped on one elbow, careful to maintain distance between them, so clever to ensure air and propriety keep them separate. Katniss puts her hands carefully, uncertainly on Snow’s shoulders. This will be okay. Does being choked hurt much? She will find out, she supposes. And he will be holding her the whole while, holding her neck, like an embrace but not quite. He will look after her.

‘Okay,’ she says, and she is absolutely terrified.

Snow dips his face to hers. Her fingernails grip his shoulders, then his back, holding him like he’s about to make love to her. His hand, which is so huge against her body, rests its neat heft upon her throat. She feels molten inside. She is hot and electric, feeling him touch her, wanting more, wanting his body pressed against her own. She slides her arms around him as tightly as she can in their awkward half-embrace, smiling as his fingers seek out the soft hollows of her throat, and as she looks at him smiling and hopeful she sees nothing but oceanic emptiness in his blue eyes.

The choke doesn’t feel nice. She thought it might be only like not being able to breathe, but there is another gritty, crunchy sensation that somehow hurts her eyes as he applies pressure. Then the air is gone and she feels horrible inside her throat, scared and uncomfortable, like she’s a tiny creature trapped inside her body and she is only getting smaller and smaller.

But his hand is nice. Warm, big, sure, heavy, the clutch of some huge clever owl that has her in its talons. She shuts her eyes against the slavering pleasure he takes in her pain and tries not to think about how she can’t breathe, only about his skin on her skin, and she pulls his body as close to hers as she can and she arcs her body up as he chokes her, and as she starts to feel really, truly awful in her throat and her lungs she starts to get hot inside, really hot in her cunt and her belly, and she tries to pull him against her as she thinks she might pass out…

The choking stops. Katniss gasps and sputters and has to turn her face away to let a racking coughing fit convulse her body. She loses her sense of the room for a moment as she recovers. When she can breathe again and her eyes are open, she looks back to Snow. One of her arms is still around him. He is smiling.

‘How do you feel?’

She wants to weep but does not. She wants to throw up but does not.

‘I don’t know.’ Her voice is ragged. She thinks he might have crushed something important inside her. Her fingers dig into the fabric of his jacket, feeling the heat of him beneath the material, wanting so many things she cannot have. ‘Will you hold me?’ Before he has a chance to shake his head she presses on: ‘Please? Just a little? It helps. It helps a lot if you hold me a little after you hurt me.’

She thinks he might be irritated with her. Is she too clingy? Will the issue of sex not be the thing that destroys them but instead her own pathetic, childish needs?

‘I can hold your hand,’ he allows.

Katniss nods and smiles and lets her hand drop from his shoulder. He offers her his hand, the same one that choked her throat, and she winds her own fingers, her arms, and then her whole upper body around it. Her lifeline. This is the same hand that first smacked her after that auction. It’s a small part of him he allows her to have: his hand, his sadism, his cruel affection. But she will take what she can get. She rocks herself around his hand and she breathes her hot, sticky breaths against it, never letting her lips touch the rough skin, but smelling him all the same and tasting the scent on her tongue.

After a long time, very gently, Snow disentangles himself. She struggles to release him and has to really force herself to separate their bodies. Their fun is over. His hand lingers briefly on her face, running his fingertips over her cheek, and Katniss’ eyes flutter closed. She wishes he would kiss her, that he would scoop her up in his arms. She despises this man so much. But to be held and kissed by him, this smiling monster who makes her feel so disgusting and excited inside, well, it might just stop her mind sliding away from her.

‘There,’ murmurs Snow, like they’ve both done something good and nice. ‘Was that alright for you?’

Katniss nods and suppresses tears and vomit. Her voice, when it comes, is wet. ‘I preferred being cut.’

‘Perhaps I can cut you again later,’ he says cheerfully. He stands and offers her again his hand. She takes it thoughtlessly and then, quickly and without consideration, she presses a brief kiss against the hot, familiar, whorled, lovely knuckles. Snow yanks it away like she’s a venomous insect.

‘Sorry,’ she says. Her smile is weak. ‘Thank you for…’ But she cannot finish that sentence. There is nothing to thank him for. She is shaky on her feet, her throat hurts, she is scared and confused, she is trembling with grief and an indecipherable pleasure.

‘That’s alright,’ says Snow, once again in that bright tone. ‘You should go and wash up. You look a little untidy.’ His smile grows bigger, brighter, like everything is okay and will be happy and good forever. ‘There’s some saliva on your dress. You should clean that up before we go to meet your mother.’

#remote writes

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