Chapter Four | Part Two
Ma Plinth damn near shouts as she examines the apartment, commenting sweetly on every little thing she possibly can, acting as though it's the grandest home she's stepped foot in.
Seeing Dyess Crane drink up her kindness makes Coriolanus sick.
Tigris helps Tawny finish up the table before announcing, "Okay, everyone, dinner is served!"
Moments later, the sound of scraping silver across the dinner plates is all that's heard along with the sound of Tiberius and Strabo's laughter as Mrs. Plinth smiles warmly at Tawny.
"Mrs. Crane, you truly do have a lovely home. It's beautiful." She says after swallowing a bite of roast.
Dyess cautiously keeps an eye on the exchange, paranoid Tawny will lose her manners and lash out rudely to their guest based off the fact she simply doesn't like that the Plinths are district.
But he's been nice to Coriolanus, so if he can tolerate Snow, she can tolerate the Plinths.
"Thank you, Mrs. Plinth." She maintains her best behavior, grinning at the woman adorned in a floral printed dress.
"Please tell her it would be even more beautiful with the sound of little feet pitter-pattering down the halls." Minerva adds, sipping the wine she's clearly had too much of already.
The focus quickly becomes Tawny as everyone absentmindedly looks at her.
"Mini." Tiberius says, raising his brows.
"I'm just saying." She replies, motioning to Dyess. "Dyess agrees with me."
Tawny snaps her head to her left to look at her husband who grins at his wife.
This is quickly becoming a conversation their guests feel should not be heard by them, Tigris coming to the rescue to say, "This weather has been horrific," referring to the downcast of rain that's been hounding the Capitol endlessly. "We passed by three different vehicle accidents on the way over."
"I know it. My hair was ruined this morning before we even got inside for breakfast." Minerva states, rolling her eyes.
"That reminds me, we need to get a new set of tires, Sweetie. The tread's damn near gone." Dyess says to Tawny, to which she mutters, "Language, Dear," while he continues, "We've probably worn it out with our back and forths to work lately."
"Do you two both still work at the Citadel?" Strabo asks, cutting into a carrot.
"Yes." Tawny says to him.
"Oh, they are very accomplished scientists, aren't you, Dear?" Tiberius asks his daughter, the pride radiating off of him.
"If you say so, Dad." She humbly retorts, earning a small wink from him as Dyess finishes off his drink and pipes, "Mr. Snow, that reminds me…"
Coriolanus stops his eating, looking across from himself to stare at Dyess while Tawny's breathing stops as the two men look at one another.
"...I heard from a little birdy ," He deliberately puts emphasis on "birdy", Snow's lip nearly curling, but he keeps himself together, "That Ravenstill is going to be honoring those whose cases are chosen to be presented in the Hunger Games with medals of Resilience."
"What?" Tawny's now looking at Coriolanus, along with Livia, the two of them just as confused.
Snow takes a sip of his drink after swallowing his food.
"Your birdy is full of it." He refutes the rumor – though it's not a rumor in the slightest.
But it is confidential information.
"Hmm." Dyess hums flatly, wearing a smug smirk.
"That would be a handsome incentive, though." Tawny's mother states, earning a, "Oh, yes," from Mrs. Plinth before the woman adds, "Do you all work together in a group?"
"No." The four of them all quickly state, everyone's eyes looking to them as Ma says, "Oh…"
"Ma, Dyess, Tawny, and Livia create the different mutations of animals and plants in the arena you see. It's my job to sort through those and incorporate them into the Games." Snow adds sweetly to the woman who is practically his adoptive mother. "Each Gamemaker is paired with at least one scientist to collaborate with each year the last few months leading up to the Games to examine their work and pick out what they would be interested in incorporating."
"If they have something worth incorporating." Livia adds, eyes flickering to Tawny before Snow's nudging his wife's leg with his own, silently telling her to knock it off.
"Oh, I see." Ma nods.
"And to think I tried to get her into finance." Minerva chuckles, running a fingertip along a strand of her light brown hair to push it back in place.
"Tawny's gotten the pick of the litter, right, Snow?" Dyess asks next, Coriolanus raising his brows.
"If you say so." He doesn't entertain whatever it is Dyess is trying to get at, feeling that he doesn't mean it genuinely in any way, shape, or form.
"He's too humble, really. Everyone knows he's the best Gamemaker we've got aside from Dr. Gaul." Dyess goes on. "And Tawny gets him all to herself."
The way it's worded sends a tick up the spines of both Snow and Tawny.
"Isn't that right, Dear?" He nudges his wife with his elbow while she takes a long drink of wine.
"I'm very fortunate, yes." She mutters.
"What do you do with the creatures or plants you don't use?" Tigris is quick to once more change the subject.
"Put them down, file them away as a success so we can go back to it if we need to have the notes and instructions there to do it." Dyess interrupts when Livia goes to speak.
"That seems like a waste." Minerva adds in.
" It is ." Tawny states, almost bitterly, recalling Snow tearing into her for wasting their time, money, and resources. "Is it not, Mr. Snow?"
"Yes, Dr. Crane, it certainly is." He doesn't miss a beat before replying, and she immediately avoids talking about it further when she looks to Tigris and asks, "What about work for you, Tigris, do you have any ideas yet?"
"I've always gotten ideas, Tawny. It's getting the idea to translate in physical form the way I'd like it to that's the difficult part." She responds, lighting up when asked about her work.
Tawny can heavily vouch for that frustration, but she doesn't say a word more about her own work.
"Dad, Tigris was the young girl who helped with my wedding gown, remember?" Tawny asks her father, realization coming to his face.
"That was you?!" He asks, a wide smile on his features.
"Yes, sir." Tigris replies. "That was what got me the job working with Fabricia."
"I still won't wear the suit she did for me. I'm scared to mess it up, it's so fine." Strabo jumps in, Tigris grinning as she replies, "I'm glad you like it, Mr. Plinth."
"So, you do fashion?" Minerva questions, trying to get a tipsy grasp of the conversation.
"Tigris is the best designer we have in the Capitol, Mrs. Gaul. I can't ever get myself put together for an event without her." Coriolanus explains, giving his cousin a soft smile.
"How much money do you make doing that, Miss Snow, if you don't mind me asking?" Minerva questions, Tawny's face falling in horror at her mother's question, Tiberius going to speak but Tawny beats him to it.
"Mother, don't start badgering our guests about what their checks look like." She doesn't even try to hide the hiss in her tone, irritated beyond measure at this point.
"It is a reasonable question as fashion is not as stable of a job as what the other four of you do." She motions to Tawny, Dyess, Livia, and Coriolanus. "I hear that most designers struggled to make ends meet up until the last couple years. A lot of them had to sell themselves — "
Tawny's clattering fork against her plate as she drops it and interrupts her mother's words that are slowly starting to slur.
Awkward silence falls over the whole table, the air so thick and uncomfortable that Snow contemplates grabbing Livia and Tigris and getting out as soon as he can.
"…Let's change the subject, Mini, alright?" Tiberius patiently suggests to her, seeing the way she's glaring at their daughter who is glaring right back at her.
Mrs. Plinth looks at Coriolanus with worry in her eyes.
"My wife meant no offense, Miss Snow." Tawny's father says politely to Tigris.
"No offense is taken, Mr. Gaul, I assure you." Tigris says gently, trying to help ease the tension.
"My daughter is just easy to get spun up." Minerva says, next. "It could be remedied with children as they make one's heart more patient and kinder but she refuses."
Coriolanus keeps his mouth shut despite his confusion.
Did Dr. Crane have a child or not?
She said it's the only reason they got married, but there is no kid between them, apparently.
"Why would I want to create more targets for rebels to hit?" Her composure has left her, sighing out the words with her brown eyes closed, dark eye makeup illuminating in the soft glow of the dining room light.
"Tawny —" Dyess mutters only for her to cut him short.
"—I did have daughter. A damn good one. And she was blown to smithereens. Though people can't seem to remember that because they can't quite place their finger on which Games it was exactly that she died before. Nor do they recall I didn't want her to go anywhere near that arena in the first place but you insisted." Tawny now looks at Dyess, her voice shaking with the threat of tears.
Livia digs her nails into Snow's leg as if begging him for them to please go home, but he can't move out of his chair, memories flooding his mind.
The tenth Hunger Games, the arena blowing up with him and his classmates, and tributes, in it.
The scarring on his back from the burns that he'd told Tawny came from a terrible accident with the fireplace.
It slowly trickles in that, yes, he does recall hearing something about one of Dr. Gaul's family members getting fatally injured in the explosion, outside the arena looking around when it happened.
He flinches.
Tawny's daughter had to have only been about four years old.
"Tawny," Dyess starts, Snow's eyes finally looking at them instead of the table as everyone else has appeared to stop breathing, "It was a very horrible situation, an accident…can you please stop hanging it over my hea—"
"—Your stupidity got our daughter murdered !" She outbursts, she herself having too much to drink, clearly.
She doesn't give him time to get up before she's forcing her chair back, screeching against the floor, as she hoarses out, "Excuse me," to her guests, leaving the dining room and going to the guest bathroom off the hallway by the front door — the furthest place from her husband at the moment.
Tawny takes in heaps of fresh air, the tip-toes of her heels standing on the solid back of the toilet, elbows resting on the high window sill that almost touches her collar bone as smokes blows past her lips and into the Capitol night life.
The rain has somewhat subsided for now, leaving a heavy haze of fog and humidity.
Her hair is probably ruined with frizz but she doesn't care.
She looked like a raccoon when she got in here, the tears that fell as soon as she left the prying eyes of guests smeared her makeup.
Her goal is to stay in here until everyone leaves, anyway, so it's not like anyone will be seeing her like the way she now does.
Mortified doesn't even begin to describe how she feels for her outburst.
Apology cards will definitely have to go out.
She doesn't think herself mad or mentally unwell, truth be told she's been doing much better than what she was when it first happened — or even better than she was a few years ago…or months ago.
Refusing to acknowledge that working with Snow had helped her, she shakes her head and takes another drag of her cigarette.
Smoking was reserved strictly for emergencies — she hadn't smoked one in over a year.
This was an emergency.
A faint knock at the door pulls her attention, more than likely Dyess or her mother.
She'd throw herself from the window before opening it for either of them.
"Dr. Crane." She hears Coriolanus lowly, not bothering replying, but she does move from the toilet to tip-toe to the door.
A moment passes and she thinks perhaps he's decided to leave her be, until he says, " Tawny ," in a rather stern whisper.
Shit, she thinks to herself, unlocking the door and opening it as quietly as she can.
They look at one another through the small silver of the open door, and he looks at her as it to say, "Really?" Unamused with her.
She opens it enough for him to fit in, closing and locking it behind him before moving right back where she was, standing on the toilet, smoking out of the window.
"You're ridiculous." He whispers it, trying not to laugh at the sight of her acting like a teenager trying not to get caught by her parents.
She turns to look at him, plucking the cigarette from her mouth, extending it to him.
She's sure everyone in the apartment needs one right now.
Snow declines her offer.
"I don't smoke." He says, the smell of it wafting to his nose as smoke curls in the air.
It reminds him of his father.
"Have you read over the case I gave you?" He questions, seeing the muscles under the skin of her back tense for a moment.
"Yes, I did." She whispers back, blowing more smoke, looking at him. "It's not going to work. Everything I touch goes to pot." She reminds him.
Everything you touch your husband fucks up , he wants to correct her but he can't.
"You won't be doing it by yourself. I'll personally keep an eye on it, so will Dr. Gaul. We really want you to be a part of these Games this year."
She finishes her cigarette, Snow extending his hand to help her down, and she glares at him.
"I'm not doing anything." He defends himself, honestly. "I'm just trying to be a gentleman and help you down."
She sighs and grabs his hand, getting down, and leaning against the counter beside him.
"I'm sorry about all this, Snow." Tawny apologizes for tonight, humiliated with herself. "It was unwelcoming and embarrassing."
"Things happen when people have a little too much to drink." He shrugs, glancing at her when she scoffs.
"Don't we know it?" She mumbles, staring off for a moment before Coriolanus is saying, "I'm sorry to hear about your daughter."
"My mother and my husband keep pressing me to have another." She admits. "'Your biological clock is just ticking away'," she mimics her mother and he smiles just a little bit at how accurate she sounds. "Dyess just wants to screw me without a condom. He doesn't care if I have another baby or not."
Snow just looks at her, letting out a soft, "Hmm," the corners of his mouth twitching to smile but he won't.
He can't say he blames her husband for scouring for any excuse to have her fully.
His expression practically shows what he's thinking, eyes roaming over her as the wine she'd drank tonight starts to send her thoughts into a bad place to be.
The last thing either of them need is Dyess or Livia trying to come in here and find the two of them together.
"They're all on the roof." He tells her, as if reading her mind. "Everyone decided they needed fresh air so they're having their after dinner drinks up there since the rain eased up."
"Oh."
She has to get out of this close space with him, they both have to, his hands staying to himself by his sheer willpower not to grab her.
"Let me show you something." She offers, walking to the door.
They leave the bathroom, and he follows her to the hallway on the other side of the apartment that holds the bedrooms.
Down the hall, the very last door that's shut, she opens it and flicks on the light.
The walls are a soft pink, shining gold accents scattered throughout the room in the form of knickknacks and picture frames.
Toys scatter the floor that's covered with a fluffy cream-colored rug, the bed looks as if someone had rolled out of it without making it, the cream bedding appearing a very slight shade of yellow.
He follows Tawny completely inside, glancing at the pictures on the rich wooden chest of drawers by the door.
All of which contain pictures of Tawny —one of which has a younger Tawny holding a newborn baby, then another she's got a toddler that's seated in her lap, in front of a cake with two candles on top of it.
Another shows where the same child is older, holding a rainbow colored snake with Tawny assisting her, crouched down beside her in her lab coat, a big smile on both of their faces.
No, not just smiles.
The picture had captured their laughter.
He has to pull his eyes from the photo, recognizing the snakes all too well.
Snow looks at her, studying her expression as she looks at the photos.
"She died a couple days after that photo." Tawny states. "Dyess had wanted to take her to look around the arena. It's treated like a tourist attraction more times than not, as you know. I begged him not to, I didn't want her to be around all of that…I didn't particularly enjoy the Games themselves. I thought them to be cruel, but still necessary…" She trails off, taking in a breath. "He was off that day and had told me he wouldn't take her, but I felt like he was going to, anyway, so I just ignored it as best as I could." She continues. "Next thing I know I have a Peacekeeper telling me that my child, Tullia, has been identified as one of the casualties of a rebel bombing at the arena."
He looks at the floor.
"If he would've been there when I first found out…" She adds, referring to Dyess, "…I probably would've killed him, Snow. I was so angry with him."
"Rebels killed my father, out in Twelve." He states to try to ease the rage slowly starting to bubble in her.
She looks at him and nods, saying, "I know. My dad lost half his leg trying to save him."
He hadn't realized Tiberius served with his father, though he supposes it doesn't come as a surprise.
Dr. Gaul was so heavily interwoven with Crassus Snow, of course Tiberius knew him, too.
"I thought he walked that way due to his age." He adds, earning a smile from her.
He liked seeing her smile.
She was pretty to look at.
"No, no, there's a chunk of prosthetic under those pleats." She informs him. "He's too proud to admit to himself, still, though."
"He seems like a good man." He admits, taking a liking to the old man.
He carried himself well.
"He is." Tawny is fast to confirm it. "A very good man. A very, very, good man. He's wonderful. He truly is." She adds before saying, "I hope my mother didn't make you uncomfortable."
His eyes bulge and he scoffs.
"She's…" He trails off, recalling those sharp green eyes staring at him hungrily.
"She really likes men." She outright says it, no other way to put it than that.
"Yeah." He agrees, able to tell it without her confirming it to him.
"She sold herself when dad was off fighting to make ends meet." She confesses, swallowing the lump in her throat.
Coriolanus thinks of Tigris…
"I didn't judge her when I realized what she was doing. I couldn't. Everyone was starving and scared and she did what she felt she had to do to keep me alive while dad and my brothers were away." She explains. "Dad didn't know about it, but then the war ended shortly after he got injured, and he got home, and she didn't stop seeing other men — although by that point they didn't pay for her anymore. She just wanted to be anywhere else but home with anyone else but my father." Tawny rolls her jaw. "She'd stay gone for days at a time and we would go look for her."
"Why didn't he leave?" Snow questions, furrowing his brows. "They would have granted him a Dissolution of Marriage on grounds of infidelity."
"He didn't want to leave." She shakes her head. "He told me, 'War changes people…and it rarely changes them in ways we like. That's just the order of things'." She says. "I think he felt guilty that my brothers were killed, and he couldn't be home to support her in her mourning. So he couldn't leave her for being desperate to get her mind off of things."
He can't imagine loving someone so much that he'd tolerate them embarrassing him in that way.
He doesn't know if it makes Tiberius a good man, or a fool.
"My mother used to sleep with inappropriate men when she was stressed." She says it as a realization, looking at him and he picks up on what she's saying.
"They do say the older women get, the more they turn into their mothers." He states humorously.
"Promise me you'll kill me before that happens, please." She says it in a half-laugh, half-serious tone.
"I promise." He assures her casually, not saying anything else as she looks up at him and expects him to keep speaking.
She needs him to say something and fill the silent void because the longer they stare at one another, the heavier her breaths get, the more her chest heaves and catches his eyes, the more he wants to rip her top off of her…
"I, um, I need to clean up." She tells him, "They'll probably be coming back inside soon."
She moves to leave the room, and he follows her, waiting patiently for her to shut the door and step in front of him to the dining room to help collect plates and clean off the table.
"Thank you," she says as he takes the last of the wine glasses to the sink.
She wipes the table off and replaces the cloth on it, before she turns to head back to the kitchen only to be stopped when she sees him leaning against the door frame, staring at her.
Perhaps it's the little bit of wine that he had himself, or the sight of her leaning over the table as she smoothed out its cloth, or the sob stories she had confided in him earlier that makes him somewhat pity her more than he already had, but when she backs up to the table while he slowly steps to her, he has to fight against the urge to unbuckle his belt, undo his pants and have her.
Instead he settles for her tongue mixing with his, her legs wrapped around her waist, grinding against the bulge in his pants as soft breaths sigh out in his ear, his lips leaving her own to trail along her neck.
He wants to taste her, fumbling with the top of her silkie pants but she pushes his hand away, stopping him.
"We can't they're—" she can't speak, mouth falling open at the feeling of him between her legs, the two of them moving against each other desperately.
She wants him inside of her, tired of picturing him when Dyess touches her, exhausted with trying to touch herself the way he does and being completely unsuccessful.
She wants his hand around her throat, or in her hair, his spit in her mouth, his bite marks along her skin, his cock taking what he wants from her.
His hand goes between her thighs, feeling the fabric is slick with her, the feeling making her hips buck into him, her head falling back as she relents,"Okay."
He rips at her pants, the button that had been secured with a small string falling to the floor but neither of them care.
She has to bite her wrist when two of his fingers push past her skimpy panties and go into her, his jaw going slack with the way she tightens around the digits, his pants painfully strained.
He has to be quick with this, so he is.
She damn near crawls away from him when he sucks her clit into his mouth, fingers continuously hitting against that spot inside of her that has her wrist falling from her mouth, hand threading in his hair.
"Fuck," she whispers in a squeak, " Coriolanus ."
He grins at the sound, no more professional "Mr. Snow," or casual, "Snow."
Not when they do this.
She grinds against his face, heels kicked off her feet as her back arches, tears at the corner of her eyes.
Her mother was right.
She is so easy to get spun up.
She fists the lace table cloth in her hands to avoid messing up his hair, the less evidence of this atrocity the better.
Her stomach knots up, painted toes curling as Snow twirls his tongue around her, pistoning his fingers in and out harshly, making her nearly see stars.
"I —" she goes to speak but can't, unable to breathe when he groans into her, more of her slick coating his tongue, making his own eyes roll back.
Her legs shake, tensing up, her abdomen tightening along with her cunt.
She hits her peak, nearly trying to push him off of her, it's too much at one time, and it's messy when she cums.
Perhaps it is the thrill of the risk of being caught, perhaps it's the fact her husband is just above them, but he keeps his fingers moving in her, allowing her to ride out her high on them as he captures her lips with his own, her tongue licking her own spend off of his tongue.
"It feels so good," She whispers to him in a whimper, his fingers still curling inside of her.
"Does it?" He asks huskily, heaving out a breath when she palms at his cock through his pants.
"I want more," she begs, wanting to shove him on the floor and sink down onto him.
"Not here." He doesn't want to go that far.
He digs his fingers against her walls once more, her eyes fluttering shut, forehead falling to his shoulder as she allows him to pull another orgasm from her.
She clings to his shoulders, shaking and trying to control her noise level when she cums again.
"We're going to keep doing this ." He tells her, grabbing her chin, forcing her to look at him as blue eyes stare down into brown. "Because I want to. And I'm going to keep looking at you because I like looking at you." He adds.
It doesn't affect work, it doesn't affect their marriages. It's just them using one another to feel good.
"Okay." She nods, his lips pressing to hers before his teeth sink into her bottom lip, her gloved hands holding either side of his face gently.
He pulls away after a moment, letting out a heavy breath as he calms down, noticing movement in the corner of his eye.
Tigris's blue eyes widen to the size of saucers at the sight of them tangled together, and all she can muster is a very quick and stuttery, "Th-They're coming back inside."