Chapter Text
Clemensia wishes that she had been paying attention from the beginning, but the truth is, she wasn’t.
It had been a tiring day at the Academy, with two tests and essays to finish so that they are ready for the next day and as the second best student on her year Clemmie has a reputation to maintain and grades to carefully cultivate so that she can always be the best version of herself. That means carefully arranging her papers so that they don’t get all wrinkled or crumpled or out of order in her bag at the end of the day, a task initially so much more important than to paying attention to the argument between Felix and Sejanus, both of their materials forgotten as they argue about something she didn’t care enough to pay attention to.
But from the corner of her eyes she can see Coryo, as he still sits at the chair besides her, all tense posture, like he is two seconds away from snapping, a poor pencil on his tight grip, that gets her attention enough that Clemensia abandons her own bag to turn her head to the two arguing boys, almost convinced they would be trying to swing at each other.
That is the only reason for Coryo’s tenseness after all, it’s hardly the first time Sejanus has gotten in arguments with their classmates and surely it wouldn’t be the last and while she knows the blonde cares about him way more than he will ever admit even to himself, he has never once reacted like this.
But no, Felix and Sejanus aren’t that close at all and Sejanus has his arms crossed arching an eyebrow at Felix who is gesturing, but without a hint of violence or even true anger in his face, in fact if she looks hard enough it almost looks like both of their eyes are crinkled at the corners, a signal of repressed smiles. Sometimes, she privately thinks with half amusement and half annoyance, she feels like they just like to argue for the sake of arguing.
It’s only when she begins to pay attention to the direction the argument is taking, which baffles her a little because honestly how did it even get there, or worse how could it have started there, does Coryo’s reaction make sense.
“Well of course you wouldn’t understand.” Felix sneers, all bold bravery and cocky smile “Anyone would be lucky to catch a glimpse of all of this Plinth. Don’t lie, I know you would love to taste it too.”
Coryo sucks a deep breath, his knuckles white around the pencil and the other hand is gripping his own shirt so hard Clemensia is almost afraid he will rip the fabric.
“Anyone desperate.” Sejanus replies, unimpressed, as Felix gestures to his own body with a lewd expression on his face “Your looks don’t make up for the personality Felix and I wouldn’t want it in a million years you can rest assured of it.”
“Oh like you have room to talk.” Felix pouts, and despiste the insult there is still mirth in his eyes, hidden but for someone who knows him from childhood, very present “Your personality isn’t exactly charming you know?”
“As a matter of fact, Felix, yes I do have room to talk. Since, you know, I have a boyfriend.” Sejanus replies easily, smiling bright and sharp “Do you have a problem with that? You do know that sometimes people like each other for more than their body or money, don’t you?”
It’s like a silent bomb dropped into the classroom and Felix just… stares at him, unable to think of a comeback because he wasn’t expecting that admission. Sejanus just gives him another long look, lips clearly fighting against a smile, before grabbing his bag and without any other word turns his back to them.
“Good for you!” Festus finally unfreezes enough to shout, blinking slowly at Sejanus retracting back, the other boy raising his hand in acknowledgment but not stopping
The pencil Coriolanus was holding breaks but he ignores it, continuing to glare in the general direction of the window as if it personally offended him, mouth pressed into a thin line and doing such a big effort to not look into the direction of the door that it actually just calls even more attention to his reaction than the open staring of everyone else around them.
Clemensia hides a grimace, muttering under her breath.
“ Oh boy ”
It’s one week later that the situation reaches its boiling point.
“We have to do something!” Livia bites out slamming her food on the table with enough strength that some fries fly out of it “It's getting out of hand!”
“What did he do now?” Clemmie asks, long suffering like just someone who works in close contact with Coriolanus Snow can sound
“The new sub? The one standing for Miss Pleya? Yeah she's not coming back, she left the classroom in tears.”
“Damn.” Pup whistle “That's twice a day then, a new record. He made a first year cry early today for the crime of bumping into him.”
“Three” Arachne corrects drily, stabbing her apple slices viciously, probably picturing high cheekbones and blue eyes “He made that pink haired girl from the other class cry in the library.”
“We gotta give it to him, that has to be a skill.” Festus says, snorting a laughter that dies with the strength of Livia’s glare “What is his problem today, anyway? Did something new happen?”
“Hickeys.” Arachne deadpans, still stabbing at the apple slices “Plinth has hickeys on his neck and lover boy is losing his shit.”
“Oh boy.” Lysistrata winces, a grimace on her delicate face
“He can't be this oblivious.” Pup shakes his head “He has to know he likes Sejanus right? There is no fucking way he is literally green with jealousy and he doesn't realize the obvious.”
“He can and he is” Clemmie humfs unimpressed, looking at the far corner where Sejanus is sitting alone engrossed with a book, but only two tables away Coryo is sitting alone as well and even from the distance and the bad angle she knows that the blonde has that pinched expression on his face that has hardly left since that fateful revelation “It's kind of sad “
“It's pathetic, that's what it is” Arachne bites out with a scowl “What do he even see on that guy? There are plenty of more suitable people for him in our class alone. But no, he has to be pining for the District trash.”
“I mean…. he’s kinda hot.” Festus shrugs, and when Arachne turns to give him an incredulous look he raises his hands in a defensive gesture “Oh don't give me that look, you know I'm right, you can’t deny the appeal of those eyes and the curls ”
“The curls are really nice.” Lyssie agrees, giving a quick glance to where said boy is “‘They look like they would be soft if you touched them. And the smile! The smile is really good”
“I mean….” Clemmie trails off, with a shrug “There are worse options, that's for sure.”
“I saw him changing for sports class once.” Pup nods seriously and Arachne sighs deep suffering and resignate “Wouldn't mind seeing it again, or even seeing more .”
“What he sees or doesn't see in Plinth doesn't matter” Lívia dismisses the topic, angrily biting a french fry “What matters is that Coriolanus is getting more unhinged and it's driving me nuts. He is my partner for rhetoric this semester, do you think I want to work with him in this state? He is a pompous bastard in his natural state, now I will have to spend the whole class stopping myself from stabbing him with a pen! My grades will suffer with this bullshit.”
Livia does have a very good point. Coryo is, well, Coryo .
A acquired taste as Clemensia will kindly put it, or a thorn stuck under your skin as Lívia would bluntly put it, he is arrogant, obnoxiously pretentious about most subjects and they are all half sure he would sell them for half a corn chip if offered the deal, but he is clever, sharp, good company to study or pass the time, always with a plan in motion, always seems to know exactly what he wants and how to get it and his cousin is really nice.
They like him, for some godforsaken reason, the way you like that annoying bug that you always see in your room in some cases ( Arachne ), perhaps just too familiar with his presence to be comfortable in his absence but at the end of the day Coryo is theirs , lying, pretentious motherfucker that he can be, and while they are familiar with the urge to deck him in the face from time to time it’s usually not this bad.
And they are really good at holding back from actually acting on those intrusive thoughts even if there was one or two times that Lysistrata had to put a calming hand on Livia’s shoulder to remind her of the fact that they actually like Coryo.
Unfortunately there is no Lysistrata in that rhetoric class and they can’t trust Felix to have the same calming effect on her. They can’t have the heiress to the major bank of the Capitol to go around stabbing a Snow with a pen during class, it would look bad on them and they would have to hear Coryo bitch about it for months .
(And maybe, just maybe , they actually, you know, want him to be happy and it’s kinda of sad watching his pathetic pining for a boy who weeks before they are all so sure was pining just as bad.
Not that any of them is ever, even with a gun pointed to their heads, going to admit it. They have reputations to maintain dammit.)
“But what can we do?” Pup asks, trying and failing to take a piece of ham from his braces much to Livia’s growing annoyance “Coryo likes Sejanus. Sejanus has a boyfriend, that is not Coryo. It’s not like we can go up to him and tell him to go make out with Coryo so that he stops acting like an asshole.”
“He always acts like an asshole” Festus rolls his eyes “We just want him to be a subtle asshole instead of making people cry in the corridors. There has to be a way to fix this mess, like I was so convinced Plinth was in love with him, what the fuck is this boyfriend thing.”
“To be honest I thought that too.” Clemensia nods, still looking at the tables of the two boys, Coryo angrily eating like the world wronged him and Sejanus too engrossed in his book to actually touch much of the little food he had taken in the first place “I mean it was obvious right? That he looked at Coryo like he hung the moon or something? I’m almost certain that Coriolanus himself was aware of those feelings.”
“If he knew, the fuck was he doing then?” Pup frowns, finally picking a toothpick to clean his braces “Could have got all of that years before.”
“Oh, yeah. Like Coriolanus Snow will admit he, heaven forbid, like someone.” Livia rolls her eyes “He doesn't even admit Arachne is his friend and they are childhood friends.”
“Like I want him to do that!” The said girl exclaims, visibly offended by the idea “Disgusting.”
They ignore her protest, as they always do, because at the end of the day they all know the two bitchiest people in the Academy (with Livia being a close second) will always end up orbitating towards each other, heads bend close together, almost giggling as they probably tear down someone they don’t like in hushed whispers. Pup has not forgotten that one time they teamed up against one of their professors.
“Do we even know who this boyfriend is?” Lyssie asks, a frown on her face as she scoops the last bit of her yogurt “Or where they meet? It does seem a bit abrupt to be fair.”
“No idea.” Festus shakes his head, curly hair too long falling on his forehead even as he pushes it away “He just dropped the bomb in class and refused to elaborate.”
“The guy could probably be a vampire by the way Sejanus’ neck is marked. Can’t believe he would go all out like that on a school night.” Pup snorts a laugh “Do you think garlic would help us?”
“It’s not like we can just go to him and ask.” Arachne rolls her eyes, and Lyssie cannot help but hear her mom’s voice warning her that one day her eyes would be stuck on the back of her head if she kept the bad habit, clearly no one had given the same advice to Arachne “Hello, District boy, care to share all the sordid details about your new boytoy? Yeah that would go great.”
“Maybe not calling him ‘District boy’ would be a good start.” Lysistrata points out
“I’m trying to be nice about it.”
“We know Arach, we know.” Lyssie sighs, patting the girl on the shoulder “It’s true we can just go to him and ask directly without weirding him out, but there has to be someone who knows or can ask him.”
“That someone would be Coriolanus himself, but I think he would implode if we asked him to do that.” Clemensia points out and can’t help but laugh at the mental image “Can you imagine his face if Sejanus starts talking about his boyfriend directly to him? He would pop a blood vessel and somehow blame it on something completely unrelated.”
“It would be funny. Maybe we should try it, just to see.” Pup proposes
“No.” Livia shots the idea down, unamused “As much as I would love to see Corionalus losing his composture it would just make him lash out towards Plinth, who would end up with those stupid sad eyes and ‘giving Coryo space’, what in turn would just make Coriolanus worse . You do remember the last time don’t you?”
“Last time” was honestly the tipping point for all the skeptics about Coryo’s feelings about Sejanus, there was no fucking way anyone who knew the bare minimum of the blonde wouldn’t be able to see how affected he was by the fact that Sejanus was genuinely upset about something they argued about and just walked around with those stupid big brown eyes of his all sad and downcast looking like a kicked puppy. Coriolanus had fought demons that week as he tried to pretend he wasn’t bothered by the fact that he was being ignored, while also being honestly creepily obsessed with watching “the guy he merely tolerated”, and as a result they had to deal with his demons as well.
Felix was two seconds away from trying to bribe Sejanus into forgiving Coryo when the two ended up making up, although not in the way that would avoid their current bullshit. Maybe they should have tried Urban’s idea and just locked them into a closet until they solved their issues.
Honestly, their lives would be so much easier if Coryo didn’t make his problems, the world’s problems too.
(And also. They aren’t going to ever admit it out loud either, not with a gun to their heads, not with the threat of torture or anything similar but, maybe, just maybe, there was some small parts of them that didn’t feel good watching Sejanus mop around the corridors.
They are the ones who act like assholes to him, and he bites back to them, never stepping too low but with a sharpness to match them. That is how things go, they act like assholes, he thinks they are assholes and they all keep to their corners, all of them keeping their heads high and proud.
That is the natural order of things, not that quiet hurt on those stupid expressive eyes or the way the dark haired boy started to avoid them rather than engage in their usual arguments, it had thrown the whole balance of their group off.
And that was the problem of course, the disturbance in their routine, and Coryo’s increased bitchiness. It just hadn’t been right, had messed up the way things are and if there is one thing they all enjoy is order and routine.
It had nothing to do with the fact that in a way or another, most of them do consider Sejanus as theirs too and his hurt didn’t sit well.)
“Good point.” Clemensia nods, grimacing as only the person closest to Coryo and as such closer to his bullshit could do “But it’s harder to plan what to do if we don’t even know who our enemy is.”
“But we agree, right?” Livia asks, arching a perfect eyebrow “That the boyfriend has to go if we ever want to have our peace back. The boyfriend needs to go and we have to get those two together even if that means beating the realization on Coriolanus. Sejanus has rhetoric with us, I will not deal with that soap opera the whole year.”
“No, you aren’t thinking long term.” Arachne shakes her head, dismissing the idea with a gesture “We need the boyfriend in the picture for a little longer. We need Snow to realize he has feelings for Plinth, so we must drive him to the brink of whatever sanity he has left so that there is no way he can continue denying it.”
“Arachne is right, but I think we are focusing on the wrong thing.” There is something sparkling in Lyssie’s eyes as she speaks, lower like sharing a secret and honestly it makes them all shiver “The boyfriend is just an idea, he isn’t seeing them together and so Coryo can ignore it if he tries hard enough, and we know he can, can just pretend he doesn’t exist. We need him to be face to face with the reality of Sejanus being with someone else, the boyfriend can stay for now because he doesn’t really matter, I think that once Coryo gets his head out his ass and does some dumb shit like exploding at Sejanus and revealing his feelings the problem will take care of itself. Those two are meant for each other, they just have to see it.”
“Fair enough.” Clemensia nods “But I feel like you have a plan Lyssie.”
Lysistrata smiles again, brighter and full of mischief and again they all shiver, because Lyssie is the nicest girl in the world, all precise and careful words, soft smiles and laughing eyes, never joining in their meanness, so that seeing her like this is a stark reminder that she chooses to be nice.
“Of course I do. Arachne is right that we need to make Coryo even more jealous, but we have to do it to his face .”
“Wait.” Festus stops her, laughter bubbling in his chest and eyes shining “I think I know exactly where you are going with this, and I’m so down for it. Holy fuck Lyssie you are a evil genius.”
“Oh this you deduce on the first try.” Lysistrata rolls her eyes at him, good naturedly, still smiling “Where is that energy in class?”
“Does class offer me the opportunity to both mess with Coryo AND get close to a pretty boy?” He arches his eyebrows at her “No I don’t think so.”
“Wait, go back.” Arachne calls them “What is the plan?”
“We are going to make Coryo jealous.” Lysistrata explains, easily “Lover boy is too used to having Sejanus all to himself and he will not realize his feelings if he can bullshit himself into thinking that he still has him here in the Academy, that the boyfriend is something for Sejanus to do when they are away.”
“So I’m putting on my best charm and flirting my way into giving Coriolanus Snow an ulcer.” Festus complements, sounding far too excited about the idea “I don’t think girls are Sejanus’ thing so maybe you girls can hog his time in other ways.”
“Absolutely not.” Arachne frowns, again sounding like they just offended her deeply “I will not get close to District trash.”
“I’m down.” Pup offers at the same time, again sounding far too eager about the whole thing “And I’m pretty sure we can get Felix and at least Apollo on it too.”
“He has a nice enough taste in books.” Clemmie mentions looking at Livia with an arched brow, already seeing the denial bubbling on her face “And you did say he is in your rhetoric class too, think about how you can piss Coryo off and at the same time study for the class.”
“That sound….. acceptable I suppose.” Livia nods, but there is a faint grimace on her face
“Arachne….” Lyssie turns to her friend, eyes pleading
“No.”
“But….”
“ No .”
“Fine, I understand it, we wouldn’t push.” Clemensia interrupts the argument, putting a hand on Lysistrata shoulder and nodding solemnly, fake whispering at her “Arach knows she wouldn’t be able to resist actually enjoying the District boy’s company once she starts and we have to respect that she doesn’t want that for herself, she can help in other ways.”
It’s manipulation. They all know it’s manipulation, but as anything that has to do with Arachne’s ego it works like a charm and she turns to look at her friend with her mouth open in indignation.
“I absolutely have no problems with not enjoying the company of that sort of person!”
“It’s not what it’s looking like.” Pup shrugs, barely repressing a smile “Why else can’t you pretend so we can get this mess fixed and Coriolanus back at his usual level of assholeness?”
“I hate all of you.” Arachne says
“Don’t worry Arach, we hate you too.” Clemensia says, and it would sound far more genuine if she didn’t give said girl the kindest smile in the world
That is how “Operation Landing Snow a Top” begins.
(The name comes from Festus of course and it makes them all groan in disgust when he presents it to then with far too much glee.
Later, when they present their plan to the rest of their classmates Felix will start a heated debate about how the right name should be "Operation Landing Snow on Top", Festus taking it as personal attack on his inteligence and the detabe will last for an frankly ridiculous amount of time before they realize Arachne is clutching a butter knife with far too much hatred in her eyes and tactically decide to continue their argument on a later date.)