#tom blyth fanic

[pennyserenade]

the devil hath power

pairing: coriolanus snow x f!reader, coriolanus snow x you, coriolanus snow x nameless reader (no use of y/n) rating: e (explicit, 18+) tags/warnings: talk of sex work (sometimes negatively), sex work, dubious consent, illusions of sex, talk of previous sexual acts, class differences, classism. word count: 4.4k summary: Coriolanus Snow catches up with an old acquaintance. Neither of them really recognizes the other, not in any way that matters, but that's just as well for the scion of the Plinth family fortune. Well, until the meeting takes a turn he hadn't expected it to. a/n: well. fiction is such a slippery slope sometimes. i in no way condone the actions of coriolanus snow, nor am i romanticizing him or what he would come to do later. i think he's a vile person. having said that, i wouldn't consider this a scathing, well-crafted critique of him, either. i wanted to explore this character, to see what made him tick by putting him in a situation where he has to confront issues he merely bumped into in the book/movie. there is a high possibility of a part 2.

part two | part three

She had not asked for Coriolanus’ name because she had not needed to. Tonight, when she had turned to look at him, she knew. His white locks had been made iridescent under the shine of the club lights and he had pressed an orderly hand to the crease of her elbow before leaning in and asking her about her services, but even beneath the cool facade of his professionalism, she knew. Even despite the fact that she hadn’t seen him since they were children, she knew. 

Illuminated in a soft hue now, Coriolanus looked sharp. He was not only angular, having retained the features of his youth, but honed in, acutely attuned to the surroundings in which she had taken him. Dressed in his Capital attire, he achieved the effect of looking both handsome and ever-important, even merely standing at the end of her bed, arms bowed behind him. His eyes, seas of piercing blue typically, were darker now, covered by the veil of orange thrown from her bedside lamp. He looked impossibly grown, so much older than even herself, the way adults had when she was a child. 

She would describe him as a statuesque beauty, with hair so blond it faired white--like stony marble under a wash of sunlight. He had bow lips, long lashes, but they were paired with a generous nose and hard, serious eyes, masculine twists meant to overrule how pretty he indeed was. He reminded her of the paintings of kings, standing ramrod straight, noble in essence as much as material. Beneath her gaze, he attempted to wear a face of careful neutrality, and it worked—aside from the occasional tic of his jaw.

The backsplash of her bedroom, which had smelled vaguely of mildew for a long time, and which was void of any real material excess, seemed to embarrass them both. She was not used to men like him—men who had a sense of themselves within these four walls. Seduction was easier when men were rendered stupid by their desire, but Coriolanus seemed neither possessed nor particularly interested in his. If he was aroused, the sleek design of his suit did much to conceal it. Given, she had not so much as taken off a single layer of clothing but then, most men were stumbling at the door frame of her apartment building, swelling from the mere anticipation of what she offered. But not Coriolanus. He studied her with a surgeon’s precision, clinical and measured.

His throat bopped and their lapse of silence, which had begun after she had escorted him out of the club, continued on, steady. She’d been with men like him before, many of them. They all had the designs of fortune and wealth written into their fates, had since they were born, but eventually it ran deeper, weaving into their accents, their dress, their stance, their occupations, their beliefs. Rumor had it that Coriolanus Snow had his sights on the presidency. She could see it to be true. Word of mouth had it that he was already what they called a Gamemaker’s assistant, and young one. Brilliant, tenacious, and perfectly angry. It was odd to see him as such, having remembered him as something of a precocious fawn—a white haired boy who sat quietly and absorbed the world through azure eyes when they were children. But then this was life. 

If wanted her to she'd praise him for the Games, tell him about the brilliance of his young mind for contriving such a sinister punishment for the little ruts of the Districts. She’d done it before. At first it had felt like selling a part of herself she had not been prepared to auction off, but it came to mean next to nothing, just another act. Like the men that entered her ruined home and laid her down despite the noxious fumes of an expired dream wafting around them, she felt as if this interaction did not count. As if it wasn’t real. They grunted and huffed and used her, but she used them, too. For money. For power. Sometimes even for pleasure—but very rarely. 

“Do you want me to undress?” she spoke demurely. 

His face contorted with a flash of distaste before it went back to cool indifference. She made a note of this. Vulgarity, directness—it was not his flavor. Maybe he liked Avox silence; men had such proclivities. The rich and powerful typically had wives who could play the part of the beautifully silent, but some of them still wanted it. 

He wetted the bottom of his lip. “I remember you.” 

“Yes. I studied with you,” she confessed. There was no point in lying.“As children. Not so much when we got older.”

“Right,” he nodded, “I knew you looked familiar.” 

He began to inspect the meager contents of her room. Everything felt anachronistic when he stood next to it, ugly and decrepit in comparison to his modern look. He picked up a music box she had been gifted as a child, his lips twitching into a grin as the ballerina began to twirl mechanically. For a moment he watched it, filling the entire room with the melodic sounds of her childhood. It was dream-like and bitter.

Did he remember what she had looked like back then? How the sleek red uniform fit her, or how the shiny Mary Janes on her feet were always polished, or how the ruffles of her white socks were perfect, never out of place? They’d all been so grandiose before the Dark Days, so conceited and pleasantly happy. And now—well. This. 

The lid of the box snapped shut. Over his shoulder Coriolanus said, “As I grow older, I’ve begun to find music terribly frivolous. I’m sure you can agree.” 

He continued to look, fingers poking around in trays of old jewelry, picking up compacts of makeup and smiling softly as he turned the items in his hands. “It’s like a museum,” he whispered. His eyes searched out for her. Something infinitely softer took hold of him for a moment. “This is what I remember from before…Incredible.” Then, almost instantly, a perceptible change: “Why, if you sell yourself to clients as rich as you do, do you live in squalor? Surely you don’t do what you do for fun?” 

The criticism latent in his tone made her defenses rise, but her resignation made her stronger; she sat up, stock straight, and looked at him through a narrowed gaze. This wasn’t the first time a man of his stature had done something like this. It was common at first. They snapped at her like she was the one who had guided them here, but eventually they accepted it for what it was, or they pretended it wasn’t anything at all. 

“Why are you here, Coriolanus?” she asked evenly. 

The compact was replaced on her table as he turned to face her fully. He smiled and somehow it was cruel because it belonged to him. “Because I want to know,” he answered, “how the other half lives.” 

Her lips twisted up. “The other half?” 

“Those who didn’t make it out of the Dark Days. Those who have resorted to—“ he swung his hand, motioning to the room, to her “—to this and other acts like it.” 

She turned to look out the window. Outside the Capital sparkled in the night; it was a city once again bustling with life, beautiful and ornate, no doubt at the bloom of its productivity. This view made everything seem worth it at times. “And your estimate?” she asked. 

“Not finished,” he answered plainly. 

Out of the corner of her eye she watched him shrug off his overcoat. He slung it over a wooden chair that sat by the door. 

“Sorry there’s no coat check; I’ve seemed to have left it in the past,” she taunted. 

He answered her sharpness with a look of haughty disdain.

“Bad customer service,” was the remark that carried over to her — a verbal tsk tsk. There was an impishness to it, too. Her inability to read him from moment to moment — or rather, the fact that she was constantly having to reanalyze him — was confounding. It discontented her. 

“Mr. Snow,” she began, but he interfered almost immediately. 

“Please — Coriolanus.” 

Her eyebrow rose. “Is that what you prefer?” 

He read between the lines, smirking. “It’s what you said before —it’s what you prefer.” A laugh, less wicked than the smile but not entirely void of it, sounded through the room. It was so goddamn rich, not velvet and warmth, but cold, calculated. Like the cool of gold on warm skin. “Believe it or not, I’m not here for the sake of illicit pleasure. I can’t say this particular occupation feels me with—“ He waved an absent hand “—joy, for lack of a better word.”

She breathed out through her nose. “Do let us not pretend that you don’t know the word lust. Arousal. Horny. You’re brilliant, aren’t you? Shouldn’t you know about these things?” 

His angular jaw ticked once more. “Whores are all so crass, aren’t they? The ignominy of being a body that someone can buy–doesn’t it make you sick?”

She scoffed. “You’re terribly repressed, given that you sought me out.” 

He shook his head, as if steadying himself. “I want to be President one day and I’m not so naive as to think what you do isn’t in demand—or that it will ever cease to be. Especially here.” His anger began to ebb as he continued. “People are crass; it’s human nature. We are all brutes, primal, ugly when it comes down to it. You watch the Games–you see” His took up his rigidity once more. “I want to learn about it, what you do. The ins, the outs.” 

She stared unblinkingly at him.“That information will cost–a good deal,” she said. 

A flicker of a smile twitched at his lips. “Everything does eventually. That is one thing I do admire about your occupation: it is purely transactional. Perhaps if love was half as simple as this, you wouldn’t have a job.”

“Perhaps not. But it isn’t.” 

“No,” he shook his head, “It’s certainly not.”

She smoothed out the fabric of her dress. “Why me? There’s many women who do what I do.”

The question incited him. She was beginning to pick up on the patterns of his erratic behavior; there was a flare in his eyes, a perceptible twinkle, and his eyebrows lifted slightly. And his lips—they twitched whenever he felt something strongly. “I watched you for a few weeks and I noticed that you were more clever than the other women. They were tactless, too obvious. But you—you played the game beautifully, like it was an art.” He seemed to smile to himself. “You dress Capital, you talk Capital. If you’re hungry, you don’t make it too obvious. You’ve gone into painstaking detail to ensure that you’re undetectable and people want you more for it.”

“So you picked me because I have manners?” 

She wanted to guffaw, to tell him no, but something told her not to. It was not fear as much as the slow drip of anticipation. He hovered near her like a predator getting ready to pounce, a glimmer of unnerving honesty shining in his darkened eyes, and she could see him now for all he was. But she could not understand him. This incited her. 

With the unwavering confidence of a young God, he lifted his chin up and said, “I picked you because I think you know better than most what it is to hunger. You remind me of myself in that way.”

Maybe this should’ve repulsed her most of all, to be put in a box so narrow, so utterly against how she viewed herself. But it didn’t; it made her comfortable, not pilant to wishes but more certain of her own. He’d done a fine job nitpicking her up until this point, but now she had the upper hand again. This was her domain, her game. 

The smug smile that grew on her lips was a mirror of his own. Without taking her eyes off of his, she rose to her knees on the bed and crawled to the end, the blue velvet of her dress pillowing around her knees, her waist. He was an avid watcher, seemingly holding his breath as her arms reached behind her and unzipped the dress. The fabric slipped down her arms, unveiling a creamy silk bra, so thin as to be transparent. 

“It’s new,” he spoke softly, surprised. He seemed to be questioning this. His eyes looked to hers for answers—or maybe they were trying not to look elsewhere, lest they find something they liked. 

“My home may be out of fashion but I am not,” she cooed. Charm. He wanted charm. She could see that plainly now. Coriolanus was a man who needed to be in control but he wanted to be seduced. He was just like the rest of them. 

Peeling off the rest of the cocktail dress, she bared to him the matching cream bottoms, which were just as sheer as the top. She knew what he could see: her mons pubis, the seductive patch of hair that promised more. And he looked, too. Of course he did. They all said they wouldn’t and then they did and this man, however brilliant he may be, however cool and calculated, was just like the rest of them. This simple fact thrilled her more than anything had in a long while. 

To think if life had gone the way it was supposed to, she might’ve married someone like him. Maybe it might have even been him. His family had come from what her mother would’ve referred to as “good stock” and his father Crassus had been a close acquaintance of her father’s. It seemed, however, that Crassus had prepared more adequately for his own children than her father had his. If she hadn’t contended with the fact so long ago, she might’ve hated Coriolanus based on the simple fact that he’d remained intact after the war and she hadn’t. 

“I won’t sleep with you for money,” he spoke up. His voice did not quiver but she could sense the weakness settling in.  

Her fingers tucked beneath the collar of his dress shirt. “And I won’t sleep with you for free,” she said in response. She leaned close to him, so close she could feel his breath on her face. “And moreover, to answer your question from earlier: there’s no ignominy to being a body for sale because it sells for an awful lot, Coriolanus. I’m wise with my money. I’m headed towards a staggering amount of wealth, and I’ve got good sense. You pegged me right, but you also got me terribly wrong.”

“This place—“ he began but she cut him off. 

“Is hollowed out and pathetic, I agree. But one day it won’t be, and when that day comes I won’t take people like you to it.” 

Another lip twitch. “How much?”

“For what?” She smoothed out the fabric, running her hands down his arms. 

“What you do—your services.” 

“It depends.”

He stiffened. “On what?”

“What they ask me to do. How long. Where. Who they are.”

His head hung before he came out with his next sentence.  “And for me, what would it cost?”

“What do you want?” 

“This is hypothetical,” he reminded her coolly. Placing his hands over hers and moving them, he attempted to sway them back to their uneven dynamic. She could feel the tremble in his hand as he did. 

“Hypothetically, what would you want?” she corrected. She sat her hands in her lap.  

“Tell me what you do.” 

“That’ll cost,” she reminded. 

Though he smiled, she could tell his patience with her was wearing. “I’ll pay anything,” he repeated. For  effect or perhaps for power he added, “And I do mean anything. If you want to once again take your rightful place amongst the people in the Capital, I’ll see to it.”

She licked her lips and considered him. “For a man who hates people like me, you’re sure forgiving.”

“Like I said, you remind me of myself.” He gripped her chin between his fingers and she gasped from the unexpected coldness of his flesh on hers, but did not flinch. His hold was not rough or commanding, but oddly familiar, almost affectionate. 

“When I was younger, there was this girl,” he began, staring down at her lips, “She was just someone in a dark alleyway that my friends had gotten me as a dare. We kissed and kissed, but it felt like nothing. It was just kissing—and that’s what I thought it was for a long time. It wasn’t particularly exciting, nothing to ruin yourself for. Then there was another girl.” His jaw set. “I’m sorry to say I loved this girl, to the point of destruction, to the point of foolishness. After her I understood why a man might seek girls like you out. I find it distasteful, but that’s what we are as a people. Stupid, primal. We want it all and we always have. That’s why the Districts came to be, and why they always will be.”

He let her go. She watched carefully as he stepped back and began his searching pace around her room once more. His movements carried more deliberation, and none of the objects kept his attention this time. She let him speak, let him run himself into whatever dark, myopic hole he was headed towards. 

“They like their cocks sucked,” he spoke with open vulgarity, almost as if delighting in the freedom of the word. He was like a school boy who tries out a naughty word for the first time and finds it fits in his youthful mouth too well; he’ll go his whole youth trying not to say it again around the adults. “I imagine rough too, and in impersonal positions, except for those few unexceptional men who have wives that don’t particularly like them or want them. Maybe they don’t even have wives, your men.” He laughed through his nose at the idea, and let himself get carried away in the broken world he made of these men. “Yes. You’ve got insecure men at your door, ones who are ashamed and pleading and they fuck you like you mean everything to them. They hate themselves and what they’ve done. Weak men who can’t cope with their power or their riches. I knew a man like that. He would’ve paid you billions. Would’ve asked you to marry him before you even touched him out of some imagined indenture he had to people like you.” 

Coriolanus smiled ruefully, but his voice was hard and bitter. “He was a goddamn fool. Not all are like that, though.” 

She caught his eyes in her old vanity. His eyebrows rose in question. She nodded, though not necessarily in agreement with anything he said. She wanted him to continue. 

“Sometimes you get men like me. Of course not exactly like me, but they aren’t the weaker of us. They’re strange, exotic, and think that whatever takes hold of them will ruin them one day so they’ve got to go to you. They can’t ask a Capital girl to do what they want. It depends on the upbringing, but I imagine these men have a wide selection of desires, some decidedly repulsive and some so wholesome, so mundane, you find them endearingly, or even irritatingly, prudish. For example, a man who likes to get on his knees and taste you.” 

Her mouth opened as if to speak, and he seemed to sense this imperceptible movement, turning around. She looked at him and he, back at her. “It’s not repulsive,” she said softly. “Nothing I let them do to me is ever repulsive. I have my boundaries.”

This seemed to excite him most of all. “Of course. Where’s the line, then?” 

“When they ask me to pretend to be a District girl. That one…your tribute—“

“Lucy Gray,” he whispered. If she didn’t know better, she’d think she heard reverence in his voice. Anguish. 

“Her. I got a lot of requests for a while.” 

She could not tell what went over him in that moment, only that it was overwhelming. He ran his hand through his hair and swallowed hard. “And you never did that?” he asked her, his tone almost accusatory. 

She was happy to answer honestly: “Never.”

He nodded, pacing the floor again. He was more manic, as if set off by this information. “Do they tell you secrets, these men?”

“Yes,” she answered simply. 

“Do you tell their secrets?” 

She shook her head once in answer. He was made of stone, total nothingness. “Not once. It’s why I’m so popular,” she added. He nodded. 

“Your favorite clients, what are they like?” This question seemed like a throwaway, one he asked because he couldn’t think straight. 

She frowned watching him. “They’re somewhere between the men you call weak and the ones you think are most like you. Some of them are young, about our age. There’s nothing wrong with them, not even what they ask for.”

He continued his pace. “And what do they ask for?”

“For normal sex, sometimes slow, sometimes fast. Sometimes they just want to kiss me. One of my favorites asked me about my life, this room, the hallway, the pictures no one ever seemed to notice. In turn told me about himself. He wanted normal conversation, a man and a woman speaking as if nothing in the world had ever gone wrong. He wanted to pretend, I guess.” She shrugged. She didn't remember his name, only that he was important in an insignificant way—at least that’s how he described it. She never saw him again. 

“What else?” Coriolanus began to slow. He chewed at his fingernails and remained vaguely distracted. 

“Another came in his pants, tasting of me, like you called it.” He wasn’t one of her favorites, but the vividness of it did what she wanted it to: Coriolanus appeared interested. He titled his head to the side, as if approving of the story. She was putting on a show for him. If he was more transparent she could imagine him asking for more like that. So she gave more. “And another wanted me to rub against him, clothed. He wanted me to sit in his lap and make myself orgasm. And another, he wanted to watch. Some men are like that. He stood where you are now and he touched himself as I spoke. And another touched himself while I touched myself. Though I guess you figure that might be crass.” 

His sleek suit did little to conceal what the last image inspired in him. A red tint gathered on his cheeks and he raised his hand. “That’ll be enough.” 

She stopped speaking. A seed had been planted, and this victory was hers even if she did nothing with it. How terrible this was for a composed Coriolanus Snow. His hand clutched at the bedpost and he looked at her then with unflinching distaste. And then it came: a wave of astounding want when the band of her thin bra slid down her arm. She reached out for him but he did not go. 

“Why?” he whispered. 

She looked up at him earnestly. “Why not?” she returned. 

Cupping her cheeks in the hollow of his hands, he leaned in and kissed her with a bruising intensity. No affection, no illusion. He kissed much like he did business: straight to the narrow point. It was the shortest minute of her life and yet also the longest. When he released her, he looked as he had before. Strong. Unwaveringly cool. His blue eyes shut her out and his freshly kissed lips did not even so much as twitch. But something had changed. 

“That’ll be enough,” he echoed again. He was trying to find strength in his convictions, but not doing very well with it. It was not often he found himself in the position of relenting his control, but where there was hunger, there was a divine need to quelch it, no matter the cost. And he did hunger: for knowledge, for desire, for her. How he despised the pang of it in his chest, no foreign object but an unwelcome visitor. 

His finger trailed down her neck to her shoulder. He took the strap of her bra between his hands and drew it down. She let him. The anticipation came back to her. He was like a game, something she would contend with later. It was like her job, like her position in life: things she dealt with one incremental step at the time until what was big felt little. This would not make her a bad person. 

She shimmed the fabric beneath her breast and he looked apathetic, almost as if she had driven him past the point of even frustration. But the bulge in his slacks grew. Pride swelled in her chest but she remained stoic, pliant, hoping against hope that he’d give in, do what a thousand men before him had done, if only she could convince him it was his doing. What a better way to learn what the Capital wanted than to experience it for yourself? She wanted to ravage him, to take from him his stubborn distaste, to make him into one of those pathetic, warbling men in his imaginings. One day you’ll be ruined by this. 

But sense came to him, bit by bit. He heaved a sigh, as if disappointed by some external factor that had forced his hand, and returned a silky strap to her shoulders. She watched, both surprised and confused. He smiled, but it was void of anything substantial as joy. Maybe there was defeat, but she wasn’t sure.

“I’ll be seeing you,” he said, stepping towards the door and towards his coat on the chair. She watched the muscles of his back ripple beneath his shirt as he slipped the red fabric back on, quietly astounded by the abrupt way he had changed track. 

“My money,” the words found her. 

He nodded his head, but did not turn. “You’ll get it,” he promised. His voice bounced off the door, hollow and thin. 

She eyed him carefully, waiting for him to open the door and escape out of it. She wanted him to. There was a certain cowardice to this action, too, something that she could cope with and he wouldn’t be able to. His hand went to the door, white on gold, and he clinched it. “Next time, the game will be different,” he said. 

And with those parting words, he was gone.