#the poor gaul can almost never catch a break

[fluffypigeonsandowls]

GORGEOUS AS ALWAYS!!!!! AAAAAHUKHLUKHDBGLFIUHHLOUFGHHLOIFGUHLOIFT

💖💖💖

Inspired by @multifandom-nerds-blog post about Obelix usually having a better time than poor little Asterix. 😂

But at the end of the day, it’s just fun for them to hang out together 💗

[perlelune]

Training Wheels | Coriolanus Snow | i.

Your mother's macabre work never appealed to you as you always preferred the comfort of your books, but when her apprentice takes a special interest in you, your safe, quiet world is flipped upside down.

Warnings: DUB-CON, NON-CON, Gaul!Reader, Shy Reader, Manipulation, Parental Neglect, Drinking, Peer Pressure, Hazing, University set, Loss of Virginity, Dumbification, Insecurities, Abusive Relationship, Degradation, Suicide Attempt

This is a dark story. Heed warnings before reading under the cut.

𝖘𝖊𝖗𝖎𝖊𝖘 𝖒𝖆𝖘𝖙𝖊𝖗𝖑𝖎𝖘𝖙

Your hands quake around the bucket of mice as you stand above the terrarium. The bright-skinned creatures inside writhe around, in anticipation of their next meal. You peer inside the metal bucket at the little mice with their cute whiskers and beady eyes. Your heart twinges. They will soon meet their end, courtesy of you. But what else can be done? The snakes need to eat. Because if they were not fed, the colorful reptiles would break through the glass in search of the food they were denied. You used to have nightmares of it as a child. The lab crawling with snakes, their neon scales filling every corner.

Natural order restored as every warm-blooded creature in their vicinity turns into prey. 

You suppress a shudder. While that never happened, you can’t erase the slight chill dancing through your bones whenever you approach the terrarium. 

Other lab assistants have offered to take on the task, noting your discomfort. You’ve turned each of them down. Mother has given you this job ten years ago. A gift, she called it. More of a challenge quite frankly. A way to test your nerves, that she always deemed too delicate. She never expected you to go through with it. “Hippity, hoppity, little one,” she mockingly sang that day as you fidgeted before the ceiling-high glass case filled with snakes to the brim. Their scales were a deep green back then. Nothing like the pink, yellow and blue shades they don today. A plethora of mutations throughout the years has made them what they are now.

You tip the bucket against the edge of the glass case, abandoning the poor rodents to their fates. The reptiles are quick to dive upon them in a heap. The mice’s helpless squeaks reach a peak, piercing your ears until they’re silenced quickly. You watch, stomach tight while the snakes open their maws and swallow the furred animals whole. The spectacle will never sit well with you.

Still, you school your features and steady your heart. Mother’s voice echoes through your head.

Emotions are a weakness. They must be harnessed, contained.

Harnessing your emotions. A feat you could never achieve. One that makes you a failed experiment in Mother’s eyes. A waste of space. A disappointment.

You start climbing down the ladder to gather more mice from their cages. Your insides clutch at the prospect of gently picking them up only to escort them to a sorrowful fate.

The train of your thoughts is interrupted when voices erupt from the other end of the long hall. 

Recognizing them, you freeze. Panic floods your veins. You haste down the ladder, the bucket clattering as you discard it on the floor. 

You scurry inside the nearest office and duck beneath a table.

The voices grow in the lab. You eavesdrop, allowing you to catch snippets of the conversation. They’re discussing Mother’s latest experiments with the Avox subjects. One succumbed to a chromosome translocation with a wolf mutt. The finer details of replacing the subject and what can be learned from the results are discussed in cold, clinical fashion. No regard for what was a human life, now lost, is granted. The Avox was nothing more than a slab of meat meant for slaughter. The slow, barbaric kind.

Ice seeps through your veins. You loathe visiting that room, the one displaying Mother’s human experiments on unfortunate Avoxes. Their beseeching gazes. Their warped pleas parroted by the jabberjays above them. You almost passed out every time you were tasked with monitoring their electrolyte status or switching their intravenous tubes.

Head rising from under the desk, you allow yourself a peek. 

Mother’s here, of course. You recognized her voice right away. Then, there’s…him.

You let your gaze rest on him, never having the chance to observe him like that. Steal a glance from the back of the lecture hall. Get a glimpse of him amidst his crowd of friends, always in his element of course, owning every room he’s in.

Never before did you get to just look at him.

The first thing that strikes you is how beautiful he is. Handsome in that dazzling way the pretty boys in the sappy books smuggled from the Districts your mother berates you for reading are.

She calls them stupid. For you however, they are your only escape from the dismal humdrum of the Capitol. Fictional worlds that shield you from the harshness of reality. Your saving grace.

Platinum locks combed back from his face. Eyes as blue as the sky. Sharp, angular features.

Coriolanus Snow.

Behind the safety of the glass panel, openly admiring him is easier. In fact, you find it almost hard to peel your eyes away.

No wonder half the girls in your cohort can’t stop gushing about him, how there’s an irresistible, slight air of danger hovering around him since his brief time as a peacekeeper. Even Io Jasper noticed it. And Io never notices anything that she can’t wedge between two glass slides and examine under a microscope.

Awe mingles with envy in your chest. This is who your mother chose as her unofficial successor. The worthy, cool-headed apprentice she has yearned for years. She’s been through so many people, each more eager to please and impress than the last. None ever fit. Not even you. Especially not you. Nobody except for him.

No one had ever passed your mother’s crooked tests before Coriolanus Snow came along.

Blue eyes travel upward, the Snow heir seeming to sense the scrutiny upon him.

“Is someone here?” he says, pushing forward.

Your pulse quickens at the sound of Coriolanus Snow’s deep voice, disturbingly close. You crouch to hide from view.

Mother’s exasperated breath reaches you from behind the glass panel.

“Don’t worry. It’s probably my daughter. I’m afraid she’s quite useless,” she says matter-of-factly.

Your heart sinks. Face warm with embarrassment, you shrink beneath the desk. You bring your knees to your chest. Hearing such words shouldn’t affect you. Not after all these years. Yet it does. A pointed reminder that you can never measure up. That you’re a glaring mistake, lucky to even be allowed to wander the halls of the Citadel and be given a semblance of responsibility, however small.

That you’re not enough, will never be enough.

That you should never have been brought into the world.

After getting caught, you file away your embarrassment and make yourself small. Even smaller than usual. It's not too hard. When you aren’t working at the lab, your schedule consists of attending lectures and studying for long hours at the library. It keeps you busy enough to find excuses to skip a few hours at the lab. After all, midterms are only a few weeks away. They require your entire focus. You can’t fail and add more of a shameful stain to Mother’s name.

It’s why you ramped up your studying since the Academy. You were painfully average then, tragically unremarkable, not even ranking high enough to get your own tribute to mentor in the tenth Hunger Games. The shriveling stare she cast upon you the day of the reaping after Dean Highbottom failed to speak your name is burned into your mind forever. That day, you failed Mother again. You swore to yourself to never let it happen again afterwards.

This year, you will study harder, until your eyes fall off if necessary. If you can pass every class with flying colors and perhaps even aim for the valedictorian spot, you can prove Mother that your existence isn’t a complete and utter waste. It might be a lofty goal for you, but you’ve been ranking higher with every test these last few weeks.

For days, your path does not cross Coriolanus Snow’s again. Your peace is maintained. You get to almost forget how piercing his blue eyes were that day, even from behind the glass panel.

Today, you don’t expect things to veer away from your usual routine. You sit in the back of the lecture hall as is your habit. Students pour inside at a sluggish pace while you peruse your notes from the previous class. They barely make sense, even to you. Defense economics has never been your favorite subject, possibly your most hated in fact, and paying attention during Professor Cloudsbane’s class is even more of a challenge. More than once, you dozed off, the complicated concepts struggling to fully sink into your mind.

Keeping up with this class is twice as much work than all the other ones. Even Mother’s bioengineering and military strategy courses do not give you so much grief. Concepts she’s drilled into you since childhood are easier to digest.

Which is why you’re flabbergasted when the results of last week’s test are passed around and you receive yours. In disbelief, you blink at the paper multiple times.

It’s the highest grade you’ve gotten the entire semester. Possibly the highest one in the class. You bask in the private, secret victory. You’re always so behind. You plan on enjoying that tiny moment. You hug the test to your chest, a smile creeping upon your lips.

“So what score did you get?”

Your head whips up, the sudden voice startling you out of your thoughts.

Bright cobalt orbs fill your sight.

You gape in disbelief. Coriolanus Snow.

Lost in your thoughts, you didn’t realize he and his group of friends have elected to occupy the seats in the row before yours today. You’re stunned. They’re usually sitting somewhere in the middle of the hall, not quite at the front but close enough so that Clemensia can comfortably harass the professor with a ceaseless string of questions as she’s known to do.

“So?” he asks again. His eyes dart down. “Your grade?”

Your throat knots as you gawk at him. When you don’t reply, he huffs out a laugh and swipes the piece of paper from your hand. You’re too flabbergasted by his actions to even react.

Empty hands hanging before you, you watch him purse his lips as he inspects your paper.

“Hm, top grade. Figured.” His eyes twinkle. “Expected from Dr. Gaul’s daughter, I suppose.”

“You almost had it, Coryo. But she beat you,” Clemensia teases, wiggling her eyebrows. Meanwhile, Ivy Briarose, Clemensia’s close friend, giggles at her comment. 

You steal a glance at his test; he’s holding it next to yours. Surprise surges through you. There’s only half a point between your grade and his. Just half a point…but still. Coriolanus always aces Professor Cloudsbane’s tests. Him getting the top grade is often expected. But this time, the Snow heir falls behind…you. 

You can hardly believe it. A sliver of pride flutters through you. The fruits of your labor are beginning to show.

“If you don’t watch out, she’ll steal the top student spot from you,” Livia chimes in. You can tell the blonde is reveling in this, that strange animosity between her and Coriolanus on full display.

Coriolanus’ jaw ticks, his tight-lipped smile unfaltering as he studies you.

“I suppose she could,” he utters softly. Despite his tranquil expression and the smile pulling his lips, a peculiar unease settles in your bones. You shift in your chair, goosebumps blooming across your flesh.

He hands you your test back without a word. You’re relieved when he turns and the class starts. 

Still, even with his back turned, the weight of his sizzling scrutiny doesn’t part from your skin. 

The class proceeds, the words pouring from your professor’s lips a befuddling heap in your ears as usual. You jot everything down, acutely aware you’ll need several hours if not more than that to decipher everything he said. Your mind already throbs at the prospect. 

You sneak a glance at the row in front of you. It’s mostly filled with the top students, most of them mentors that last year at the Academy. Some of them aren’t even taking notes. Only Coriolanus sporadically does. He appears to have no issue keeping up with this class, unlike you who drowned in the first few minutes.

You’re relieved when the lecture reaches its end. Your mind is on the cusp of overflow. You desperately need a break. 

You pick up your things and rush to the exit. In the hallway, some guy bumps into you from behind, sending the books in your arms flying across the floor. He doesn’t say anything to you and you bend to pick up your books. Tears press behind your eyes. This is nothing. It shouldn’t make you blink back tears. It’s not the first time someone’s treated you like you were invisible. 

“Hey, apologize.” 

Your eyes drift skyward. Stumped, you watch Coriolanus grip the boy who bumped into you by his shoulder. 

“What?” the guy replies, confusion scrunching his features. 

“You bumped into her. I said ‘apologize’,” Coriolanus articulates, as if he were addressing a particularly slow child. When the guy tries to leave, rolling his eyes, the blond squeezes him tighter. Tension flickers in the air. They trade looks and doubts creep on the guy’s face, his face blanching. 

He clears his throat and whirls to you.

“Sorry,” he blurts out.

You shake your head. “It’s fine.”

He turns, likely hoping to leave again, but Coriolanus tuts him, pointing at your books, still scattered across the floor.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” he says, arching his brow.

The guy unleashes a sigh but hunkers down to collect all of your books. He gives them to you in a neat pile as you stare at the spectacle, mouth agape.

“Thank you,” you mumble.

He nods and saunters off, avoiding Coriolanus’ eyes.

Coriolanus grabs your hand, helping you to your feet. The pads of his fingers are rougher than you expect, calluses pressing against your soft skin. Heat rushes to your cheeks as you rise. 

You’re not sure what to say, your nerves flaring beneath his stare. But you suppose you should thank him. While you struggle standing up for yourself, he just did it for you. So you mumble the words under your breath and begin heading in the opposite direction.

With his long legs, Coriolanus easily keeps up with your hasty strides. Your heart skips a beat as he falls in step with you.

“I feel strange asking this but…” He leans above your shoulder to whisper, “Are you avoiding me?”

“I-I’m not,” you stammer, your pulse racing with the lie.

The blond chuckles.

“You’re walking awfully fast for someone who’s not avoiding me.”

“I’m just running late to my next class.”

“What about your mom’s lab?” he challenges. “You were hiding from me, weren’t you?”

Your lips tighten. If only he’d drop it. You don’t want to revisit that awkward moment. Everything about it makes your stomach ache.

“I…wasn’t,” you lie, your voice barely above a breath. Your face warms as a smile plays upon Coriolanus’ lips. You halt in your tracks, hugging your books against your chest as you pivot to him. You bashfully meet his gaze. “I was just a little spooked.”

He tilts his head, mirth swimming in his cobalt orbs.

“Spooked? By me? Do I scare you, angel?”

The pet name, uttered like a caress, sets your heart aflutter.

“No,” you mutter. Another lie. And it’s like he’s picked up on it, his soft, pink lips stretching even more.

“It wasn’t nice what she said,” he says abruptly.

You blink in confusion.

“I’m sorry?”

“Dr. Gaul, about you. It wasn’t nice.”

You shrug. “I’m used to it. It’s fine.”

He approaches you. The scent of his pricey cologne engulfs your senses. It’s masculine but the faint scent of roses lingers underneath, as if stubbornly clinging to him.

His voice lowers, his gaze entrapping yours. 

“It’s not fine. You work so hard to make her see you. You’re a good daughter.” You don’t realize his hand’s moved to your face until one of his fingers traces the curve of your cheek. Your heart races at the sudden touch. Coriolanus’ thumb drags down to your chin, his attention landing on your bottom lip. He smiles. “Hard work should be praised, rewarded even.”

Disarmed by his closeness and the strange words rolling off his tongue, you retreat.

You readjust the books between your arms.

“I s-should go. My next class is about to start.”

His words interrupt you.

“Hey, why don’t you have lunch with me and the others today?”

Your stomach clutches. You think about Coriolanus’ usual crowd, a bunch of kids from wealthy, influential families, popular and revered. Clemensia Dovecote. Livia Cardew. Ivy Briarose. Hilarius Heavensbee. Festus Creed. Most of them now hold the admiration of their peers for having survived the chaos the Tenth Hunger Games were.

You’d never fit in with them. In fact, you never did. Coriolanus must know that. Is he trying to punish you for eavesdropping on his conversation with your mother the other day? 

“I-I never talked to any of them,” you answer, panic swelling in your gut.

His brows crumple. “If you don’t talk to anyone, you’ll never make friends.”

“That’s okay. I don’t need friends,” you retaliate.

“It’s always useful, having friends,” he rasps. “The right connections, they can get you far.”

You anxiously roll your bottom lip between your teeth.

“I’m not good at…making conversation.”

“We’re having a conversation now,” he says, laughing.

As you mull over what he just said, a small smile tugs your lips.

“I guess we are.”

His gaze sharpens. “That’s a pretty smile. I’d love to see it more often.”

His low, soft voice sends chills through your spine.

Coriolanus’ long lashes droop as he gauges your expression.

“I’d be disappointed if I didn't see your face, angel.”

You fidget, your eyes sinking to the floor before rising to meet his again.

“I don’t know if that’s okay… for me to show up like that.”

“I’m inviting you, so of course it’s okay.”

He speaks like it’s a given, like whatever he says goes. His confidence unsettles you. 

You fall quiet, weighing your options. There’s something in Coriolanus’ silky voice that makes it hard to say no, but you’d hate being the unwanted guest at the popular kids’ table. 

Still, the expectation on his face makes you not want to let him down. 

“I’m not hearing a yes.”

“Y-Yes,” you stutter belatedly. 

A broad smile spreads on his handsome face.

“Perfect. See you at lunch then, angel.”

As he strolls away, your feet remain glued to the floor, your mind lingering in disbelief of what just occurred.