Chapter Text
A round of applause and cheers came from around the bar as Lucy Gray laughed, her fingers toyed a bottle of gin in one hand and her other digging into Maude Ivory’s hand as they both bowed, giggling to themselves. She let herself take a swing of the bottle, biting out a swear into the microphone when some fell onto the stage. “My bad, y’all, you know I don’t drink—hey, hey, I swear to it! Don’t give me that ol' look, Jackie.”
The lighting in the place was shitty, buckets scattered in odd nooks and crannies to catch the rain from the night before that dripped from the cracks in the ceiling, but there was an old charm to it that couldn’t be replaced. Not like the fancy stages that sat on the clean streets down in the city, polished and shining after every performance by silent workers in the shadows. She’d rather die than be paraded like a street animal again—a stage was a stage, and a mic was a mic. That was all there was to it.
“I’ve got one more song for you all tonight,” Lucy Gray yelled out, and the crowd responded with hollers. “Only if you all behave !”
“Sing the song, Lucy!”
“That’s Lucy Gray , for you,” she said, winking. “Get it right when you’re telling your friends about the beautiful girl you spent the night with.”
She started singing as their laughs began to drown into a quiet, murmuring awe—she could get drunk on it, all those eyes on her. She pressed her fingers into the microphone and let her voice carry, the Covey right there behind her. Her feet planted on the ground, she smiled as the spotlight shined on her, blinding and bright.
There was a strange part in the crowd—as if an invisible barricade had begun forming around a person during her performance. No, a man —a very specific man who set himself different from the audience, fitted in a deep red coat and careful, focused eyes. Her smile began to die, her heart rattling against her chest, but she became suddenly determined to keep a straight face. She wouldn’t falter like this, not when he was there. Watching her, gaze never unwavering.
Undeterred, Lucy Gray kept singing, looking right at him. Coriolanus Snow had a bad habit of showing up in places he didn’t belong—he stood out so obviously, so audaciously , and yet no one could say anything otherwise.
Leave, she wanted her eyes to say. Leave, and don’t come back.
He looked unamused. Instead, he tilted his head, looking just as dangerous as he had the day he had the day they had met. On the first day she had set foot in the city, she had been young and stupid, and he had been waiting to eat her alive. Bold aspirations in a place bigger than herself, sharks waiting on the edge to sink their teeth into her, when the biggest monster of them all came to collect his prize. You look lost. Need any help?
When she finished singing, she took a step back—the applause didn’t feel as good as it usually did. Coriolanus watched her, clapping, but his eyes said a different story.
She was ready to run out the back down, already sinking her feet backward when a shout came from a corner of the bar.
She flushed, embarrassed—why the hell had he shown up again ? Now, of all times?
“Lucy Gray,” Billy Taupe said, stumbling towards the stage as sounds of shock came from the audience when he began crawling toward her. She shoved her guitar in his face, scowling. “Just hear me out , okay! Lucy Gray !”
“Get the hell away from me—!” Lucy Gray began, motioning to the Covey to start making their way out.
Coriolanus’s eyes snapped to Billy Taupe, watching as his hand stretched to grab Lucy Gray’s, and she felt a strange feeling crawl into her chest. Calculating, before they darkened completely.
She could’ve stopped it, but her voice died in her throat before she could say a word.
Coriolanus strode forward, grabbed Billy Taupe from his shirt from the back, throwing him backwards before punching him square in his face. Lucy Gray pushed the Covey away backstage as the bar began to scatter, staring at Coriolanus as he threw his fist back, landing another punch that sent Billy Taupe to the ground. She wanted to tell him to stop, but she couldn’t stop staring at him—the only thing she could focus on was how his perfectly brushed hair was mussed now. Eyes wild, he swung so hard that blood scattered across the stage. Billy Taupe began coughing, still trying to reach her. The idiot .
“Lucy—“
“Don’t say her name,” Coriolanus said, out of breath. “Okay? Otherwise I'm going to have to hurt you again.” He pressed his thumb into the wound that began to bruise around his mouth. “Tell me you won’t say it.”
Tell him to stop , she thought. But a deeper part of her knew why she wouldn’t. You like this side of him. You like how this affects him—how you affect him.
His eyes widened to saucers. “I—I won’t! I’ll—“ he choked up blood, tears in his eyes. “I’ll leave!”
Coriolanus kicked him, sending him into a coughing fit on the ground before Billy Taupe began to scramble away, crawling off as someone grabbed him quickly before pushing him into the startled crowd.
Lucy Gray stared at Coriolanus for a long, hard minute, their eyes catching under the blinding spotlight. She saw his face illuminated, his beautiful image ruined by his bloody, bleeding knuckles—before running in the side exit adjacent to the stage.
“Lucy Gray!” he said, following right behind her, footsteps falling heavy and in haste. “I need to speak to you!”
“Oh, I’m sure you do! Plenty of talking with those fists, right?” she said, glancing over once before opening whatever the first open door she found as she stumbled into what seemed like an old office space, with dust settling on the desk that lay empty and vacant. Too late to turn around and leave, she tried to plan for an escape before the door swung open and slammed shut behind her.
They were both panting—Lucy Gray was shaking, trying to hold onto the words to get him to get the hell away from her. Coriolanus stared at her, wiping away at some blood that had caught on his chin, smearing the perfect facade he had come into the bar with. He didn’t look like them anymore—the man that he pretended to be, with all of his tailored suits and fancy watches. He had lowered herself, here, for her .
“Coriolanus,” she let out, croaking out the words, “you shouldn’t have come. Why did you come?”
His brows knitted as he unclenched his jaw, shaking his head as if he was unsettled she had asked the question at all. His gaze unfocused to a cloudy haze, but there was nothing in his eyes he couldn’t hide. Not from her. Not when she had spent hours staring into those eyes of his, his head in her lap as she had brushed her fingers through the curls in his hair in the morning light.
“I didn’t come here to do … that.”
“And what were you trying to do? Are you—are you stalking me?”
Coriolanus pursed his lips, eyes flashing. “It’s not particularly hard. You make your presence known well wherever you go.” He glanced down at the ground, once, before tightening his posture. “Lucy Gray—come back to Pluribus’s club.”
Come back to me, his eyes said.
She shook her head, pressing herself against the wall, wishing she could fall into it. “My life is good here, Coriolanus.”
“Really? Where men like Billy Taupe try to hurt you?” Coriolanus said the name as if it was so beneath him he couldn’t even fathom the fact that he had even said it aloud. The disgust, though—the anger . The usual ever-so formidable Coriolanus Snow, a man set to control the entertainment district with an iron fist, had a crack in his elegant illusion. She could it through the blood that still coated his wrists.
“It is ,” she pushed. “The people in those bars—they’re all waiting to see me fall, and they will clap and cheer when I do.”
“They won’t.”
“How could you possibly know that?”
“Because I own Pluribus’s club now. Those people you talk about, Lucy Gray—just tell me a name, and they’re gone.” When he stepped closer, she didn’t move—couldn’t hide from the sincerity in his face. “I’ll protect you against all of them. They’ll die before they can even try to touch you.”
Lucy Gray laughed, shaking her head, but her mind swirled. It had been months since she had heard those soothing words of his—his violent platitudes that always seemed to come to fruition. “You always said you wanted me to perform in bigger places, right? You can’t protect me everywhere. You can’t protect me in that entire city.”
Coriolanus extended his hand, gently wrapping his fingers around her wrist. Like an idiot, Lucy Gray let him, her heart caught in whatever snare he had laid at her feet the moment he had stepped into the club that night.
“If you give me one more performance at Pluribus,” he whispered, “I swear it, everyone will know your name.”
“And the Covey,” she added, breathless.
“And the Covey,” he said, the afterthought so clear in his words, but a promise nonetheless.
This was where their twisted story began—not in that street outside of the train station where Lucy Gray had gotten lost in a “chance” encounter with Coriolanus—no, it had been far earlier than that. It had been when he had come down to the seedier parts of town, where rich boys like him strayed far, far away. But he had been a man looking for his star, and the glass-like performers that came to his auditions were worth nothing of his time. No, he needed someone real to make it big—he needed a hit to invest his time into.
Then he had stumbled into some bar in some odd corner of a place he had never heard of, about to make his way out before he had heard Lucy Gray sing for the first time. He had told her the story curled in his arms, with his fingers running gentle lines against the bare skin at her thighs. You were like the sun, he had whispered. I wanted you to burn me alive.
It was there he had set his plan into motion—to send her to the city with a strange invitation in the mail with a train ticket straight to a prearranged hotel. Her strange, shadowy benefactor, who had refused to reveal a name other than a stamp of a rose on the letter with no inclination to his identity. But she was desperate, clinging onto a fading dream for so long that any taste of it had her running for the stage.
“Find another star, Coriolanus,” she said, pressing her fingers down on the ruffles of her dress, eyes fixed and avoiding his gaze. “Someone else would be delighted to be in your golden cage.”
At the end of the day, he needed someone to control—songbirds that flew out in the middle of a performance did not bode well for up-and-coming singers in the industry. She remembered that night well, the strength she attempted to maintain in her voice as she felt herself falter against the strict, watchful gazes of the audience. So methodical in their viewing, eyes sharp and postures straight. It was nothing like the synergy of the crowd in the bars and crowds that Coriolanus often turned his nose at—at least the people there were real . Not beige fixtures in their seats, waiting for the next zoo animal to crawl onto the stage.
“Lucy Gray,” he said, and who knew the devil’s voice could be so gentle? “It’s you. There’s never going to be anyone else like you.”
She shook her head, biting down a laugh. “Don’t say that.”
“I am. Do you think I’m joking? Look at me.”
She just kept shaking her head, eyes fixed at the ground. It was so much easier when she couldn’t look at him. His words, ever so taunting, pulled at her, but she stayed put.
When placed a hand on her chin, her composure nearly fell apart. “ Lucy Gray .”
He tilted her head up, more softly than she could have ever anticipated—but then again, he had always been like this with no one else but her. “I spent three months trying to find a replacement after you left. I left you alone, and you can’t say I didn’t do that. But I swear to god—these people are nothing. They’re specks of dust in the grand scheme of things, never to amount to anything in their lives, but you —you’re a spark. You’ll be bigger than they’ll ever be.”
He whispered her name again, so painful it was as if he had waited all this time to say it again and again until he was breathless. “I need you,” he whispered, voice raw. He pushed his thumb into her cheek, caressing it as she leaned into him, bending against his words and his touch. “I need you,” he repeated desperately. “Do you still think this is a joke?”
Lucy Gray trembled, pushing her hands into his face and his hair, overwhelmed by the breath that fanned at her neck, by all of the skin that she let her fingers trail against. Coriolanus sighed, sinking into her touch as if he had been aching for it, his eyes closing as he let out a shaky exhale. When she leaned forward, pressing her lips against his, their hands and skin and breaths mingling in dangerous proximity, she realized how much she had missed him. She kissed him harder, desperate and gasping when he kissed her right back, tilting her head towards him.
Then their actions became more urgent—Coriolanus, a starving man, kept her pushed against the wall as he bit at her lower lip, swallowing her whole before they broke apart, panting. She put her legs around his waist, arching herself against him as he trailed his lips against her neck, teeth sinking into the nape of her neck.
“I saw that girl that you had performed at the holiday dinner a few weeks back,” she let out in a breathless voice, letting his hand press her wrists against her head as he sucked at her skin. She had watched the performance on TV, pressing crescent moons into the palm of her hand as she saw Coriolanus clapping in the corner of the screen. She had been beautiful in the same way everyone in the room was—crystalline, with a sort of boring charm that felt sterile. Lucy Gray had felt a bitterness climb in her throat, but she had watched the performance diligently and patiently as her insides burned. “Did you fuck her, too?”
“You watched?” he said, and she could feel his smile against her collarbone. “I told her she was bland as soon as she stepped off the stage. A bit boring, don’t you think?”
“Answer me,” she said, feeling horribly needy. She pressed against him, feeling his length against the folds of her dress. She shook, biting down a begging plea for him to put his dick inside her as she tried to scramble for any decency she had left.
“You offend me,” he mumbled, his other hand trailing down and up her dress as he palmed at her panties, fingers slipping into the waistband. “How could I fuck her when I dreamed of you every single night?”
“You asshole,” she said, letting out a shaky sigh as his fingers moved to her cunt. “You’re so awful …”
“Did you miss me, Lucy Gray?” he said, and he pressed himself against her until she moaned, unable to hold it back. They always ended up like—tangled together, hopelessly drawn to each other. “Tell me.”
She tried rocking her hips against his fingers, but he refused to sink them any further, merely rubbing them at her entrance, as if taunting her. “Coriolanus, I swear to—“
He slipped in a finger—fucking tease —and she whimpered in the brief relief before realizing he was still, waiting for her to respond.
“I missed you,” she let out, eyes shut closed.
“Again. Tell me again.” It wasn’t enough. She needed him inside of her, immediately —
“I—I missed you. I needed you. I need you. God—!”
“ Lucy Gray ,” he let out, and when he thrust into her, she practically saw stars as she moaned, fighting to keep quiet. “What am I to you?”
“Yours,” she choked out. “I’m yours .”
The sounds that filled the room were filthy, skin slapping against skin as her dress was pushed up to her stomach, with his tie loosened and in the grip of her hand as he buried his cock inside of her again, so deep that she could hardly make out a coherent sound. She knew how much he enjoyed knowing his hold over her, the proof of it in the wetness that trailed against her inner thigh and in the high, breathy noises of her moans echoing against the room. The way he knew how to touch her, careful and methodical as his whispered words drew out whimpered cries from her throat. “You’re my songbird. No one’s. Mine. Tell me you understand.”
“Yes,” she let out, surprised she had managed to be able to let it out. She pushed her fingers into his hair, pulling at it hard. “What did you dream of, Coriolanus, when you dreamed of me?”
He looked up at her, his clouded eyes locked on hers. Wordlessly, he reached up to her, fingers trailing up her thigh as he pressed his lips to her ear.
“Unimaginable things, Lucy Gray,” he murmured.
As he pressed his lips to hers, kissing her hard as he thrust into her so hard she could feel it rupture something inside of her, finally letting loose.
She shuddered, curling against him as he came right after, their pleasure mixing in a fit of moans and sighs that followed. She should have let him go after that, told him whatever would get him to leave, but she decided to be selfish that night. Lucy Gray kissed him, tugging at his bottom with her teeth as she sighed into him, letting him carry her to the chaise lounge chair that sat in the corner of the room. She slid into his lap, fingers pressing into the nape of his neck as he let his fingers brush against the blooming bruises on her neck.
“I’ll give you one last performance. No promises of another,” she whispered, and a dastardly smile tugged at his lips as he kissed her again, slow and gentle. “You’re a lucky man, Coriolanus, getting the attention of a woman like me.”
“I’m honored,” he murmured against her lips, his hand rubbing circles at her side. “The car’s outside. Come with me?”
Even though Lucy Gray would never admit it outside of the heat of the moment, she thrilled in being the exception to all of his well-thought plans, the fixture in his life that wouldn’t go away. He had followed her all the way here, hands dirtied and bloodied, gasping her name like he was in prayer. My little songbird, he’d whisper, his eyes focused on her as if she was the only person left in the world. No one else would see him like that. Not the beautiful girls in Pluribus’s club, not the girl from that horrible holiday performance— her . That was the real reason she couldn’t let him go, why she let him go on with these games of his. Because, at the end of the day, she couldn’t stand seeing him with anyone that wasn’t her by his side. He was hers as much as she was his.
If Lucy Gray followed him, she knew well the disaster of events that would follow in their path. But in his arms, his lips lazily trailing her jawline, she could hardly remember her own name.
“One performance,” she said again, as his other hand began to curl a finger around a strand of her hair. “That’s all I owe you, isn’t it? Then I’m done, alright?”
“Of course,” he said, his devilish smile saying otherwise.
But she wouldn’t let him trap her—not again. She’d cut him down before he had the chance.
“Let’s go home, Lucy Gray.”