Chapter Text
When Coryo grabs Sejanus’ arm and pulls him into an empty storehouse on the short walk from the mess to their bunks, he doesn’t bother fighting it.
After the jarring clang of the closing door, silence stretches, broken only by the hum of electricity as it struggles its way through old, coal-dusted wires. Sejanus glances around at their surroundings — the dim illumination from the tiny window sitting high in the door, the tarps draped over hulking piles of forgotten junk, the dust motes that dance through faint shafts of light — before returning his attention to Coryo, mouth barely parting to ask if everything’s alright when his friend speaks.
“I couldn’t do it.”
“Couldn’t do what?”
Sejanus wracks his brain, unable to imagine anything Coryo couldn’t do. After all, he’s the one holding himself together, following orders that make Sejanus sick to his stomach while he continually steers Sejanus from trouble of his own making. He’s the one who shot Mayfair to keep her quiet, beat Bobbin to death…
…And he’s been silent a moment too long. “Couldn’t do what, Coryo?”
Coryo’s eyes are wide, his oft-stoic expression edging into something wilder that sets Sejanus’ hair on end. His throat bobs as he swallows. “I recorded you, preserved your entire confession in one of the Jabberjays but I— I couldn’t send it in. I deleted it.”
Sejanus is reeling, stumbling back from Coriolanus as ice-cold dread pools in his chest.
Why is all he can think. Why why why? He doesn’t know if he says it aloud or if the betrayal is just clear on his face, but Coriolanus steps forward with a beseeching expression, reaching for Sejanus like he has so many times. He jerks his head away from the offending touch, eyes already welling with angry tears that he just can’t seem to stop. “No, no. Get away!”
“Sejanus, you have to believe me! I erased it before it ever reached Gaul’s ears.”
Incensed by the desperation, the pleading in his voice, Sejanus gets both hands on Coriolanus’ chest and shoves with all the strength he can muster. He doesn’t want to hurt him or start a brawl, he just wants as much distance between them as possible: to his delight, Coriolanus actually staggers back a couple steps. “I’m serious! Stay the fuck away from me!”
The ground Coriolanus just lost is regained quickly, two long strides taking him right back into Sejanus’s space where he cups his jaw with both hands and brings their faces close. “Sejanus, hear me. I erased the recording.” One large thumb, newly roughened from weeks of scrubbing pans and floors, swipes away already-drying tears and Sejanus shivers with what he would like to call disgust. “I protected you.”
They’ve been here before. Coriolanus cradling Sejanus’s face; Coriolanus close enough to share air; Coriolanus holding all of Sejanus’s broken pieces in some semblance of their original shape, saving his life, saving him from himself. They’ve been here before but something feels different this time, and Sejanus can’t fight the realization that perhaps it’s only because his eyes are finally open.
“Why?”
Why record in the first place, he’s asking, not Why delete it, except he knows he doesn’t want the truth about the first question so he lets Coriolanus answer the second.
“I couldn’t let you suffer the consequences.” Coriolanus’s voice bleeds sincerity but Sejanus finds himself searching his face, mapping the furrows between his brow, the tense set of his lips. It’s only because he’s looking right into his eyes that he sees it, the moment Coriolanus adds, “I need you here” and something in the fiery blue of his gaze gutters. Sejanus’s heart drops from his chest.
“You’re lying.”
You’re my friend, he doesn’t need to pay me to help you.
Whatever you’ve done, I swear I will keep you safe.
Was it all lies? Every conversation, every shared smile, every act of kindness?
Sejanus starts to pull away but Coriolanus holds fast, one hand slipping around to the back of his neck to keep him in place. “I’m not lying. I’m not!” His denial ends in a frustrated shout as Sejanus makes another halfhearted struggle to escape. “I couldn’t stand to watch you swing from that tree.”
That, at least, is the truth, or as near as Coriolanus gets to telling it.
“Why record it in the first place, Coriolanus?” Sejanus tries again, hating the way his voice breaks. “What did you hope would happen to me?”
Nothing .
Sejanus sees the word forming on Coriolanus’s lips and already knows it’s a lie. How would a man as intelligent as him ever think nothing could come of rebel efforts? It’s unbearable, standing here shaking with rage at his own naiveté while the only person he ever trusted feeds him more untruths. As the first breath of that word passes over Coriolanus’s tongue, Sejanus decides he’s done listening to lies and lifts his hands to his chest.
He really means to push him away. He’s stronger than Coriolanus, broader, and it’d be an easy thing to wrap his hands around his collar and haul him off.
Instead, he yanks Coriolanus to him and kisses the deceit from his lips.
Coriolanus, still as marble though twice as soft, doesn’t respond for long enough that Sejanus’s grip on his shirt loosens, freeing him from the unwanted kiss with apologies already falling into the air between them…Except the moment Sejanus is no longer keeping him close, Coriolanus presses in with a hunger that takes him aback, curling his fingers against the nape of Sejanus’s neck.
If Coriolanus is hungry, Sejanus is starved. He tilts his head to deepen the kiss, remembers his anger, sinks his teeth into Coriolanus’s lower lip just to hear him hiss then swiftly buries the contrition that threatens to rise in his chest. He drinks down the poison on Coriolanus’s forked tongue and relishes in it, wondering briefly if Lucy Gray ever noticed the taste.
Lucy Gray!
Sejanus retreats, breaking the kiss as quickly as it’d started. They stare at each other for a long moment, breathing heavily, Coriolanus’s pale eyes gleaming in the window’s watery light like a predator’s. Beautiful. Even here, wearing rough blue fatigues and standard-issue boots with his curls buzzed down to nothing, he’s beautiful, and Sejanus hates it. He wants to hit him, yell until his voice grows hoarse, kiss him again and again until he begs for more then leave him wanting just so he can have a taste of his own bitter medicine.
Rather than do any of that he only says, “Thank you. For doing the right thing.”
Predictably, Coriolanus’s expression darkens. “It wasn’t the right thing, it was treason.”
One and the same to Sejanus, but he suspects there’s no reason to say so aloud. “And yet you did it anyway. So thank you.” Brushing past Coriolanus, he waits for an order to stop, a hand on his arm, any reason to stay.
“Sejanus.”
There it is. A voice so authoritative it’d make old General Crassus proud. “I could hang for what I’ve done. Do anything stupid and you doom us both.”
Around and around and around they go, always beholden to each other. Sejanus’s life and Coriolanus’s future.
“One of these days you’ll have to stop rescuing me,” he says, risking a glance over his shoulder. Coriolanus stands directly in the weak square of light on the floor, illuminated from above. He’s standing with military-perfect posture, shoulders straight, hands clasped behind his back, feet planted like he’s braced for a fight — yet even as Sejanus watches, the hard set of his features melts into something almost fond.
“Can’t do it,” he says, kiss-swollen lips curling into a smile so gorgeous it cracks Sejanus’s heart in two.
Manipulator, liar, betrayer.
He wants to trust him, wants to once again be the boy placing his heart in his hands and proffering it to Coryo, firm in the belief he would never harm it. The days of blind trust are gone but that little boy isn’t, clinging to the knowledge that in the end, Coriolanus had made the right choice.
In the end, Coryo had chosen him .
Swinging the front door wide at his insistent knock, Barb Azure’s brows rise halfway to her hairline when she sees Sejanus on her porch, alone and a little bit worse for the wear. It’s just past dawn.
“Is Lucy Gray here?” he asks the moment he can see who it is. Then he remembers his manners, imagines the scolding he’d get from his Ma, and backtracks. “Hey Barb Azure.”
“Hey yourself, Peacekeeper. Lucy Gray’s out in the woods with CC and Maude Ivory, but I reckon she’ll be back soon.”
“Oh, okay.” Glancing awkwardly around the rickety front porch, he clasps his hands in front of himself and tries to act casual. The deep circles under his eyes aren’t reassuring and he’s almost certain he has a caged-animal look about him, but Barb Azure still invites him in with a tilt of her head and a barely-concealed smile.
“Never seen you alone here, handsome. Where’s Lover Boy?” When Sejanus doesn’t answer right away, his tongue knotted behind his teeth, she turns from the cabinet she’s been rummaging through with a frown. “He’s alright, yeah?”
“Yeah.” It comes out as no more than a strangled whisper. Sejanus clears his throat and tries again. “Yeah. He’s okay.”
Barb Azure doesn’t look convinced. Settling into her usual seat at the table, she pats the chair next to her. “Well, since you’re here, might as well make yourself useful. No Billy Taupe to distract you.”
Her pointed look has Sejanus shuffling over to the table, sheepish, where she presents him with a little knife and a modest pile of potatoes and instructs him to cut out the eyes. Having a task is comforting, at least, and Sejanus can focus on carefully removing the eyes and sorting them out to be planted later.
“Can I ask why you’re looking for Lucy Gray?” Barb Azure prods. Evidently satisfied with the work he’s doing, she’s finally moved her attention from his pile of potatoes to her own.
“No,” Sejanus replies, feeling the corners of his mouth lift at Barb Azure’s affronted expression. He does know he owes her some kind of explanation, if only for the simple fact that she’s allowed him into her home, however he manages to buy himself time with a particularly eye-filled potato while he decides what might be too dangerous to even allude to. She’s not involved with rebel plans or murder and too much talk of treason might bring up questions he doesn’t want to answer, but there’s one little part of the truth that he can offer up.
“I kissed Coryo.”
A loud thump from the loft makes Sejanus realize, too little too late, that he hadn’t bothered to ask if anyone else is home. He looks up to see Tam Amber’s wild mane of hair pop into view. “I ain’t telling anyone,” the young man says, miming zipping his mouth shut before he scrambles down from the loft and out the back door. Barb Azure watches him go before fixing her dark eyes back on Sejanus. “He really won’t tell, you know, he’s not much of a gossip. Not much of a talker in general.”
So he’d noticed.
“Besides,” Barb Azure continues, appearing torn between pity and amusement, “I don't think anyone can blame you. If I was inclined that way, he’d sure have me looking twice.”
In spite of himself, Sejanus snorts. “Only twice?”
Tilting her head at the distant sound of Maude Ivory’s singing, she sweeps the potato eyes into her apron and heads for the back door. “There’s no sin in wanting what we can’t have,” she shoots over her shoulder before disappearing from view.
Wise words, but Sejanus is left with no time to ponder them. He intercepts Lucy Gray on the porch and notes the way she smiles distractedly at him, eyes already roaming over his shoulder for a glimpse of Coryo.
“He’s not here today. I was— I was hoping to talk to you alone for a little bit.”
Her smile dips at the edges as she quickly ushers the younger kids inside. She hands Maude Ivory a metal pail full of berries and tells her, “Go on now, you and CC sort through these while I talk to our friend here.”
“Everything alright?” Maude Ivory asks, hands on her hips, and Sejanus knows her well enough to realize she’s not leaving Lucy Gray with him if she thinks there’s trouble.
“Just fine. Right, Sejanus?” The look Lucy Gray shoots him lies somewhere between worry and conviction, so he turns his softest smile onto Maude Ivory and agrees. His Ma had always said his smile could melt a heart of ice, and while he’d mostly attributed that to the kinds of things mothers just say, it seems Maude Ivory isn’t immune. She goes inside, and Lucy Gray leads Sejanus off the porch and down the street.
They walk in silence for a few minutes, the scuff of shoes on packed dirt and the distant baying of a poor old hound the only sounds. Lucy Gray, bless her, is the one to break the fragile quiet.
“Just tell me nothing horrible’s happened.”
Sejanus kicks a rock, watches it bounce into a rut on the side of the road just so he doesn’t have to look her way as he says, “No, not yet. I suppose I just came to warn you.” It’s still early and the street around them is abandoned, dilapidated shutters closed against the hot morning. Sejanus isn’t worried about being overheard. “You know how I got myself in with Spruce and Billy Taupe.”
Lucy Gray winces, her brows drawing together in worry and something worse. As much as she’d had reason to hate Mayfair and Billy Taupe, watching them get shot in front of her can’t have been pleasant. She’s a tough girl, after all, but she’s not cruel.
“I told Coryo everything. The plan to break Lil out, buying the guns… everything . He’d said we were brothers.” Sejanus feels the hurt welling up again, smooths it down with the reminder he chose me before he’s able to continue. “He recorded it all on a jabberjay, every traitorous word. Told me himself last night.”
Lucy Gray pulls up short, halting him with a hand around his wrist. “Sejanus—” Her dark eyes are wide, fearful, her mouth parted in shock. “Are you—”
She doesn’t seem capable of forming her question, but Sejanus thinks he understands. “He erased it before Dr. Gaul ever laid her hands on the bird. If he hadn’t, I doubt I’d be here now talking to you.”
Her entire body deflates, air leaving her lungs in a great, relieved whoosh before the implications of Sejanus’s words set in. She grabs for his other hand, tugging him around to fully face her, and for the first time Sejanus is struck by just how slight she is. Her hands fit snug in his softer ones, strong and calloused and yet so delicate compared to his own, her neck craned enough that she can actually meet his eyes. This wiry, underfed slip of a girl who treats wild animals like friends and thrives on color and music and all things beautiful — she survived the arena, and she’s stronger than Sejanus, he’s sure of it.
She’s strong enough to survive Coryo, not just weather him, and it’s because of this that Sejanus ducks his head closer and whispers, “You have to run.”
Whatever Lucy Gray had been expecting to hear, that was not it. She cocks her head in that questioning way she has and lets out a short, breathy laugh. “Run?”
“He thought about betraying me, Lucy Gray, nearly got me killed. Do you really trust he’ll never do the same to you?”
The amusement on her face twists into something rueful and Sejanus almost regrets his harsh words. Almost, but not quite, because if anyone deserves to be free of the Capitol it’s her; if freedom from the Capitol means freedom from Coryo, then so be it.
“I’ve always thought I was drawn to things I can’t trust,” Lucy Gray muses, her grip on Sejanus tightening for just a moment, “But I’m beginning to wonder if it’s the other way around, if I attract the snakes to me.”
Her little pet from the Reaping, Gaul’s rainbow mutts, District boys who sell her out to certain death and Capitol boys who hide their venom behind sickly sweet charm — snakes, all of them. And yet…
“You’re a bit of a snake yourself,” Sejanus says, a smile softening his words. “All poison and rainbow scales.”
Lucy Gray relinquishes her hold on him just to grasp her colorful skirts, giving them a playful twirl about her legs before she grows serious again. “I won’t run, but you’re right about one thing: I’m among my own kind here in more ways than one.” She purses her lips, studying him like he’s a puzzle she hasn’t quite figured out how to solve. “What about you?”
Sejanus tugs his lower lip into his mouth, teeth working at the sensitive skin for a long moment before he asks, “What about me?”
“What’s keeping you from running?” she asks. “You might be District but you’re not Twelve, the one you followed out here isn’t who he seems, and on top of that, you’re a lousy Peacekeeper… no offense intended. The lousy ones are always my favorites.
Sejanus, not offended in the least by her scathing professional review, frowns. “I’m not running because I already did. Coming here was my escape.” His old Academy classmates might call that pathetic: Sejanus calls it ‘Better Than The Capitol.’
Besides, it wasn’t really about District Twelve, was it? Coriolanus chased Lucy Gray here, then Sejanus chased after Coryo because he does nothing if not follow his heart. No amount of betrayal could or would change that.
Something like realization dawns on Lucy Gray’s face, but before Sejanus can pry, she’s looping her arm in his and steering him the way they came. They must make a strange tableau, the Covey girl and the off-duty Peacekeeper, arm-in-arm like old friends.
“So,” Lucy Gray begins conversationally, so casual that Sejanus only gives her half an ear, “how long have you been in love with Coriolanus?”
Sejanus’s steps stutter, though Lucy Gray doesn’t let up on his arm so he’s forced to either keep moving or faceplant. He knows his blush is obvious, his mouth agape, but still he tries to save face. Lucy Gray doesn’t look angry, but she’s not really looking at him either, and he’s not sure of her intentions in bringing it up.
“I don’t—”
“Oh, come on now. Nobody willingly signs up for twenty years in the poorest District for a friend .”
She has a point.
“Years,” he admits, the humid summer air suddenly so choking it’s hard to get the word out. He knows he hasn’t made a total secret of it (once, catching him staring, Smiley had reached out to tap his jaw shut and cracked a joke about “catching flies, Bull’s-Eye?” that he’s sure he’ll never live down), but until last night, he’d always chosen to believe Coryo was remaining purposely obtuse about the matter. That, or he simply—
Until last night.
Unbidden, one of Sejanus’s hands flies up to brush his lips, Lucy Gray tracking the movement with a curious expression. “I have to tell you something,” he says, hating how reedy his voice gets when nerves creep in. “I—” He stops walking, actually digs his heels into the packed earth this time and forces Lucy Gray to stop with him. He has to look her in the eyes when he says this, even if she hates him for it. “I kissed Coriolanus.” Encouraged by the surprise on her face (it’s better than the outrage he’d expected) he adds in a rush, “I didn’t mean to, not at first, but I was just so overwhelmed and so angry and—”
“Sejanus.” Her voice is firm, unyielding.
His jaw snaps shut like a jabberjay trap. He casts his eyes about, looking everywhere except Lucy Gray, his gaze landing on the Covey house just a short distance down the street. So close to escape, to distraction, and yet in the sleepy Seam street, there’s nothing to redirect Lucy Gray’s attention from him, from —
A warm hand on his cheek brings Sejanus’s focus back to Lucy Gray. To his surprise, she looks like she’s suppressing a smile, her eyes alight with warm amusement and just a hint of something sadder. “I ain’t mad, sweetheart, just wondering why you kissed a man who admitted to almost gettin’ you killed.”
A laugh slips out of his mouth before he can stop it. That’s the crux of the matter, isn’t it? What he’d spent all night sorting out?
Sejanus hadn’t slept a wink. He’d gotten into bed early, long since tucked under the covers by the time his bunkmates stumbled back from the Hob, but from the moment he laid down until he dragged his sleepless, heavy limbs out of bed and down to the Seam the next morning, his eyes never shut once. He’d stared at the metal slats under Smiley’s mattress and reconstructed ten years of friendship, piece by piece, in his mind.
Coryo’s unwillingness to join in his classmates’ torments — kindness or merely ambivalence? When he’d come after Sejanus in the arena, what had he been promised for his efforts? What had he been threatened with? And the gun deal, Spruce… He’ll cover for me when we run, Sejanus had said. Would he?
No, he clearly wouldn’t. Yet despite all of that, Coryo had seemed genuinely distressed at the idea of Sejanus hanging for his crimes.
At one point in the interminable haze between midnight and dawn, Sejanus remembers rolling onto his side to watch Coryo. He was sleeping with his back to the room, the curve of his spine prominent through his thin white shirt, the gentle rise and fall of his breathing never stuttering once. To sleep so peacefully after everything he’s seen and done…
“He may not be the man I always thought he was,” Sejanus finally says, feeling the truth in his own words, “But there’s good in him. I know it. I have to believe it.”
Lucy Gray hums noncommittally and loops her arm back through his to keep walking. Neither of them says a word, even as she separates from him and steps up onto her rickety porch, but Sejanus has barely made to continue on down the street when she calls after him, “It seems we both don’t know what’s good for us. I hope for your sake as much as mine that you’re right, Sejanus Plinth.”
It’s the acknowledgement of their shared predicament that makes Sejanus smile. Two fools who fell in love with the man, now forced to reckon with the monster.
But misery does love company.
Sejanus encounters no problems sneaking back to his bunk. The old hole in the fence is just as void of people as always, and it’s early enough that most of the base is still sleeping off last night’s white liquor.
The only one awake anywhere, it seems, is Coryo, sitting up in bed with an open book on his lap.
“Where were you?”
Sejanus stops next to the bunk, tilting his head up to meet Coryo’s eyes. “Out conspiring with rebels,” he says, his voice dripping sarcasm only because they’re not alone. Receiving nothing more than a blank stare, he adds, “I was with Lucy Gray.” The flash of ire on Coryo’s face is vindicating, as is the critical gaze he rakes down Sejanus’s body. Sejanus doesn’t elaborate. Let him wonder whether the flush on his cheeks is from heat or other causes.
Turning to gather a towel and toiletries, he adds over his shoulder, “I’m going to bathe. If I miss breakfast, don’t wait up.”
“Trouble in paradise?” Beanpole mutters groggily from the bottom bunk, but that’s the last thing he hears before the door shuts behind him. If Coryo has a response, he can’t make it out.
Sejanus is barely divested of his shirt when the shower room door swings open, hinges squealing loudly. Nothing in this base is properly maintained.
“Sejanus.”
He pokes his head around the metal divider between showers, entirely unsurprised to see Coryo. Fully stepping out to face his friend, Sejanus barely spares a thought for his half-dressed state. Coryo’s eyes flit imperceptibly across his bare chest but there’s no lust, no desire, just a discomfiting, analytical coldness that leaves Sejanus with the creeping sensation he’s being sized up as a meal.
“I need to know you’re not going to do anything foolish.”
Sejanus’s mouth twitches in a humorless smile. “Like what?”
Coriolanus takes a step closer, a hunter stalking prey. “You know exactly what.”
Is this all they would be from here on out? Spitting accusations through barely-hidden sneers?
No, he thinks, remembering the bite of humor in Coryo’s “Can’t do it,” the glimmer in his eyes. There’s still something here.
“If telling Lucy Gray to run and never look back is stupid, then I’m afraid your warning comes an hour too late.”
“What?” Coryo’s voice is sharp enough that if Sejanus didn’t know better, he might call it fearful.
He wants to wait, wants to let Coryo stew in the thought of losing his tribute, his girl, his songbird, but finds he can’t. “Don’t worry, she refused.”
Satisfaction bleeds into Coryo’s face. “Of course she did. And you?”
“Me?”
“What about all your grand plans of running?”
Indeed, the very plans he’d almost died for. “I still might,” he says, feeling the lie roll off his tongue. For all his keen observation, Coryo never seems to catch Sejanus’s lies the way he catches everyone else’s, and Sejanus’s words put a furrow between his brow.
“Run now and you implicate yourself — both of us.” He moves closer, leans in so his lips nearly touch the shell of his ear. “If they search for those guns a second time, they just might find them.”
Sejanus knows what Coryo’s doing, but he can’t quite bring himself to care as he turns his face into his friend’s: there’s a moment where their cheeks brush, then their noses, and then they’re kissing. It’s slower than the night before, less heated, but it still makes Sejanus’s blood thrum with something dangerously alive. It takes all his willpower to draw back, especially when one of Coryo’s hands finds its way to his bare side.
“Will you ever kiss me as anything other than a distraction?” he murmurs, trying and failing to slow the rabbit-fast beat of his heart.
Coryo’s smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “Does it matter?”
As much as those three words hurt, the raw honesty in the question is refreshing. The Coryo of two days ago would have run careful fingertips across his cheek and fed him a sweet-tongued lie, but now, with this complicated mix of betrayal, love, and mutual need brewing between them, there’s not nearly as much space for such pretenses. His beautiful liar, finally made honest.
“It might matter,” Sejanus says with a shrug, figuring he owes the same measure of truth. Let Coryo think him weak for it, he doesn’t care.
To his surprise, Coryo captures Sejanus’s lips again, lingering just a few seconds too long to call it chaste before he retreats back into his space. “That wasn’t,” he says on an exhale, then just as abruptly turns on his heel and leaves.
Sejanus stares at the space Coryo vacated for several long seconds before it hits him.
That wasn’t a distraction.
“If you had taken the exam, I’m sure you would have passed. You could be on your way home by tomorrow morning.”
The words ring hollow but Sejanus appreciates the sentiment nonetheless. He knows the fact that Two is still “home” to him irks Coryo to no end, but it’s the one argument that could ever get Sejanus to follow him.
“I don’t want to be an officer,” Sejanus replies, another step in this weeks-old argument. “Maybe being a medic isn’t an option right now, but I know I don’t have the stomach for leadership.” Coryo’s subsequent sigh is almost inaudible over the sound of their footsteps, but he has nothing further to say.
The Seam is eerie this late at night. Kerosene (and even candles) are a luxury many residents can’t afford, and the rare houses with any light spilling out their windows are probably burning coal. The Covey’s house is as dark as their neighbors’ but even in the gloom, Sejanus can pick out Lucy Gray’s hunched form. Her head shoots up at Coryo’s quiet whistle, relaxing the moment she recognizes them. She skips off the porch with a blanket wrapped about her shoulders, greeting Coryo with a quick kiss and Sejanus with a grin. If she’s surprised to see him, she doesn’t show it.
Sejanus feels odd tagging along on an outing that seems suspiciously romantic, but it’s Coryo’s last night before he ships off to Two for training and Coryo had insisted Sejanus come with him and Lucy Gray. Or rather, he’d lightly suggested it, which for him was nearly the same thing.
What was Sejanus going to do, refuse him?
It’s not far to the meadow. Once there, Lucy Gray shakes out the blanket and sits while Sejanus unpacks Ma’s sweets. He doles them out evenly before taking a seat on the other side of the blanket, Coryo sandwiched in the middle.
They talk about nothing in particular. Lucy Gray points out some constellations and Sejanus offers up what they call them in Two — the same stars under different names. Coryo plucks a few long strands of grass and idly braids them together with surprising skill, explaining that Tigris taught him how to braid her hair during the long, dull hours of lockdown in the war. The night ticks inexorably by but none of them are willing to succumb to sleep, and despite Sejanus’s earlier reservations, it’s comfortable out here with the two of them.
He’s drowsing, so lulled by the hum of nearby insects and the comfortably cool night air that he almost misses the distinct sound of them kissing. He doubts his own ears for a moment, unwilling to open his eyes and see, but…yes. Should he feign sleep, give them space, make a noise so they know he’s awake and aware? Paralyzed by a horrible mix of jealousy and discomfort, he does none of those things.
Almost against his own volition, his head dips to the side, eyes drifting just wide enough to make out Coryo laying back, Lucy Gray atop him. They’re only kissing, thankfully, still fully clothed as far as Sejanus can tell, but the need with which Coryo’s mouth parts under Lucy Gray’s tells him it may not stay that way.
He needs to move, get up, close his eyes — do anything except dumbly watch, his breath going shallow at the way Coryo’s thumb brushes Lucy Gray’s jaw.
“You uncomfortable, sweetheart?” Lucy Gray asks into the dark, and Sejanus thinks she’s talking to Coryo until the man’s foot nudges at Sejanus’s calf.
His eyes go wide and he shoots up in an instant, already muttering apologies and making to stand when Coryo tells him, “Stay.” It’s not a request so much as a demand, but there’s no universe in which Sejanus denies him anyways. Not with his voice so low and rough, not with the sweat that shines enticingly on the column of his throat, not with the teasing smile gracing Lucy Gray’s full lips.
So Sejanus stays. He sits back down, closer to Coryo than before, and lets Lucy Gray slide over from Coryo’s lap to his. He kisses her as gently as he knows how because she deserves nothing less, and he doesn’t startle when Coryo’s hand finds his thigh, and when Lucy Gray grasps the neck of Coryo’s shirt and tugs him in, Sejanus swallows down his familiar taste of poison with glee.
Time becomes a slow, syrupy thing. Somebody’s hands find the hem of his shirt and tug impatiently, so Sejanus does the most efficient thing he can and pulls it over his own head. He doesn’t miss the way Coryo’s gaze turns heady at the sight, though he isn’t sure whether it’s because of him or the way Lucy Gray’s hands look sliding down his bare chest. Her dress turns out to be a blouse tucked into long, colorful skirts, as Sejanus learns when Coryo presses against her back and reaches around to unfasten the buttons and untuck the extra fabric. The sight of his strong hands so deftly undressing his girl makes Sejanus’s mouth go dry.
Sejanus wants to lay Coryo out, give over every single piece of himself, wants to fuck him and watch him come apart until his is the only name Sejanus knows. Because that would take time and supplies they don’t have, he settles for getting his mouth on him, enthusiasm compensating for what he lacks in experience. Lucy Gray’s hand smooths over his scalp, her fingers occasionally tightening hard enough to hurt as Coryo’s move against her, inside her.
There’s another awkward tangle of limbs, a flurry of desperate movement, and then Lucy Gray is on her back, legs hitched around Coryo’s hips while Sejanus watches the flex of muscle in his thighs and back and tries not to come.
Coryo’s making sounds Sejanus knows will haunt his sleep for weeks, but somewhere in the mess of choked off noises is a word — mine.
“Mine,” Lucy Gray echoes, meeting his gaze as she says it, but then her head lolls sideways and her lips silently form the word while her dark eyes swallow Sejanus whole. She could be talking to Coryo, to Sejanus, to both or neither or simply echoing Coryo because she has no words of her own.
Coryo comes first, spilling over Lucy Gray’s stomach before filling her with two fingers and working her to her own release, but the moment her thighs stop shaking, two hungry sets of eyes turn to Sejanus. Coryo barely looks sated, his eyes burning with a brilliant, horrible light as he wraps his damp hand around Sejanus’s length. It’s filthy and messy and a little too rough, and it’s not long before Sejanus is coming, muffling a whimper in the crook of Coryo’s neck.
The rest of the night is foggy. He knows they clean up as best they can, gathering their things and trek back to the Seam. Coryo leaves Lucy Gray at her home with one last drawn-out kiss, then gives Sejanus the same right before they duck under the damaged fence. They shower quickly, separated by cold metal dividers that hide all but the shoulders and head, and collapse into bed with hardly a word exchanged between them. By the time Sejanus manages to rouse himself the next morning, Coryo is gone.
The only sign he'd ever been there was a beautiful orange scarf, folded with care and placed on top of Coryo's empty box of belongings.