Work Text:
Working at the Georgetown Hospital ER meant that Coriolanus Snow had seen a lot of things. Besides everything one would expect, there was also a steady stream of protesters who'd either injured themselves or been injured, eighth graders with strange ailments and injuries, and politicians pleading with them to be discreet about sex related mishaps.
Perhaps the only thing he'd never seen, though this was actually true even outside of his job, was colors. As was the majority of the population, he had been born completely achromatopsic, able to see only in greyscale. It was a strange and still unexplained scientific phenomenon, the way people's color vision only activated when they met the person they would spend the rest of their life with. There were a variety of theories; everything from special endorphins stimulating protein activation to simply an act of divine providence birthed from two halves of the same soul recognizing each other had been considered, but the effect was undeniable.
Did it make his job as a doctor harder, sure, but Coriolanus was used to struggling for the things he wanted. "Snow lands on top" was the family motto for a reason, and he lived by it as much as possible.
As if thinking the phrase had summoned the only other person who used it, his phone screen, sitting on the desk beside him, glowed brightly with a text from his cousin Tigris.
Want me to pick you up some food?
He read it, then picked up his phone and typed quickly back:
Why are you out this late?
His cousin didn't respond with words, but rather a picture.
It was her, standing in the metro tunnel holding a "Stand with Ukraine" sign crookedly and smiling, her blonde hair pulled up into a high bun and her usually impeccable makeup smeared, a couple of takeout boxes on the bench behind her.
Coriolanus suppressed the urge to roll his eyes. When Tigris had decided to move from their home in Cheyenne to join him in Washington DC after their grandmother's death two years ago, he had seen it as a blessing. Instead, she had dove headfirst into the nightlife and protest culture of the city, and he was forever worried that she would become another patient coming in with ailments related to political activity.
"Dr. Snow!" A cool female voice interrupted his thoughts, and he looked up to see Dr. Dovecoat, looking at him with eyes that flickered between concern and exasperation. "We've got a couple of patients coming in from an anti-war protest. One stabbed, one with probable food poisoning. You can take the stabbing." She held out a clipboard to him.
Coriolanus disliked the image, he would tell Tigris his finger had slipped if she asked, then took the clipboard, glancing briefly over the details there, but most of his mind was on the woman. It seemed like she was being nice, giving him the job that didn't involve a patient vomiting all over his shoes, but there had to be a catch somewhere. Maybe she thought getting more time around the x-ray machine would advance her career. "Alright," He said anyway, reaching for the box of disinfected gloves and pulling some on.
They walked through the halls of the ER to the patients rooms, chatting lightly about the weather and summer plans. It was the same conversations they had all the time, neither wanting to get beyond the surface level and deal with what lay below. Graduating first and second in their class at Georgetown Medical School will do that to people. Take a good friendship and leave Dr. Dovecoat (Clemmie, he had called her then) prone in her own hospital bed fighting for her life while Coriolanus accepted his diploma.
They parted ways with hesitant waves, entering their respective patient's rooms. Inside, a young man lay prone on an operating table, wearing khaki shorts and a light colored shirt stained dark with blood and partially covered by a makeshift bandage that looked to be a towel and some twine.
"Dr. Snow," the nurse, who had had her back to him, connecting an IV tube, turned to him. Her eyes went wide over her mask, but her tone didn't change when she continued. "Patient is Sejanus Plinth. He and the other patient came in a couple of minutes ago. Apparently he was stabbed. He passed out, but vitals look ok, so we're giving him fluids. No allergies, so you're good to go.
Coriolanus fought not to let his expression change, to tear his eyes away from hers and focus on the patient, but he couldn't quite. No one else except Lucy Gray Baird did her eye makeup quite like that. Why, of all the nurses in this damned hospital did he have to be paired with his ex-girlfriend? This must have been Dr. Dovecoat's plan all along.
"Thank you," He said, moving to the patient. Coriolanus made short work of cutting away his shirt to reveal his chest, admittedly well toned, before turning to the "bandage. He sliced away the twine, more for the fun of it than actual necessity, then removed the bloodied towel.
It was immediately evident that this was not a stab wound. Instead of a straight in and out, whoever had been holding the knife had slashed with it, leaving a cut that ran from just under his ribs down almost to his hip bone, blood still leaking from the wound. Coriolanus sighed, cursing the general public's lack of medical knowledge, then got down to work.
---
Time bled when he was doing medical work the same way it did when Coriolanus took tests. As soon as all his energy went into something, he lost all awareness of the things around him, completely absorbed first in cleaning the wound, and then in stitching it up. He lamented not becoming a surgeon sometimes because this was the kind of work he loved, the perfection, the repetition
He came back to himself as he filed the paperwork, recording the details of the procedure, the materials used, getting the prescription for antibiotics ready
It was only when he went into their own hospital records to add details to the guy's medical records (it turned out his GP also worked there) that the significance of his name finally clicked. Plinth. Plinth as in Strabo Plinth, owner of one of the largest gun manufacturers in the country, on the board of the NRA. He was an infamous figure, both in American politics and in his personal life, and that meant the man Coriolanus had just spent the last however long with his hands on was his son.
Needing to be sure, Coriolanus opened a new window and googled Sejanus Plinth. Not a lot of hits came up, but there was enough, most notably a tabloid article about Sejanus speaking at a large gun control protest. He stared at the photo header for a long moment. It definitely matched up with the face on his driver's license.
A hot flash of emotion sparked in his chest. Sejanus Plinth owed everything to his father's industry. Regardless of how he felt in private, he had no right to go to protests advocating against everything his father had worked so hard to build. Those conversations should stay firmly behind closed doors if he ever wanted to inherit the family business. He had no idea what a privileged position he had been in. Coriolanus would have given anything to have a father like Strabo Plinth, mainly because he almost had. The Snows had been heavily involved in the government's manufacturing of nuclear weapons during the Cold War, and as it thawed, their generational wealth that went back to the colonial era had disappeared. They had hung on for years, but a string of bad investments just before the 2008 stock market crash, and then his father's death in Afghanistan had plunged them deep into poverty. This trust fund baby had no idea how lucky he was, how easily their positions could have been reversed.
"Dr. Snow," He spun in his chair, frantically closing out windows, to see Lucy Gray peeking around the doorframe at him. "The patient is awake. You should probably go talk with him."
Coriolanus nodded at her and stood up, pushing down his emotions, and returned to Sejanus's room and pasting on the smile he had learned in college was good bedside manner. He only had time to register that his face looked just like in the pictures before his vision fractured into blinding whiteness.
Coriolanus blinked hard, fighting both the urge to panic and to rub his eyes, and slowly his vision returned to normal. No, that wasn't right. His vision didn't go back to normal, it simply faded into visibility again, the shapes and textures of the room returning in the same relief as before. What was different was the color.
Gone were the comfortable shades of gray he had known all his life, replaced by sharp, clear colors. The pattern on the hospital gown was in soft blues, the brand label on the prepackaged instruments was a deep purple.
"What," The soft noise made Coriolanus whip his head back toward Sejanus. The other man was staring at him, brown eyes huge in his face, lips slightly parted. "You-you're m-my"
"Soulmate," Coriolanus breathed out, the word feeling strange on his tongue. The moment stretched between them, long and heavy, before Coriolanus broke it. "What the hell," he said aloud, sitting in the visitor's chair to stop his body from swaying. Of all the ways to meet your soulmate, this was probably the worst thing he could have conceived of. Not only was it a patient, it was one he had already decided not to like.
"Who are you," Sejanus asked, and Coriolanus realized then that this man had no idea who he was. He'd just woken up from almost being murdered to meet the person who was supposedly his other half. He probably had no idea what in the world was going on.
"Coriolanus Snow," he said, conscious of how dry his throat was, and the way it roughened his voice as a result. "I'm a doctor."
"I couldn't tell," Sejanus, when he sneaked a glance over at him, had cracked a small smile. "The scrubs are so ambiguous."
How he could even have the wherewithal to tell a joke right now was beyond Coriolanus, but he tried to take it in stride.
Another long moment of silence, but this time Sejanus was the one to break it.
"So where are you from?"
"What?" Coriolanus blinked at him, uncomprehending. The question was simple, but it was so out of nowhere that he didn't know what to say to it.
"Where are you from? You have a bit of an accent, so I was just wondering. Besides, I figure I should know some things about you if we're to be..." He trailed off into silence, neither of them about to touch that question.
"Wyoming," Coriolanus answered, standing and filling a paper cup with water from the sink then downing it like a shot, half wishing it was alcohol.
"Oh, I'm from Colorado, so I guess we grew up not too far apart. Crazy we both ended up in DC, but I suppose that's the nature of this," Sejanus waved a hand awkwardly between them, indicating their soulmate bond.
We couldn't have grown up farther apart, Coriolanus thought privately, but didn't voice it. "So," he took a steadying breath. "I actually came in to give you the rundown on your condition, but given the circumstances, I don't think that would be appropriate." Truthfully, he couldn't care less, he just needed to get out of here and process this information. "I will go, I should be off shift by now anyway, and Dr. Dovecoat will come in and update you about your condition in a few minutes. What would be the best way for me to contact you?"
"Um..." Now it was Sejanus's turn to look confused, probably because that was the most Coriolanus had so far spoken in his presence. "Do you have a pen?"
"Yes," Coriolanus had one attached to his clipboard, and he now held it out to Sejanus, trying to ignore the sparks when their fingers brushed. It was probably just a psychological thing anyway. The brunette took it, uncapped it, then, quick as a flash, reached for Coriolanus. Before he had a chance to do anything, Sejanus had pushed up his scrubs and was pressing the pen into the soft skin on the underside of his arm.
For a split second Coriolanus thought he was going to drive the pen into the vein there and simply kill him, but instead he started to write, the ballpoint biting into his skin with every stroke, until a neat series of ten numbers was emblazoned there. "That's my phone number," Another one of those shy smiles. "I never thought I'd be using a high school trick on my ER doctor, but here we are. Call me tomorrow and we can talk more."
"If you're feeling up to it," The words were out of Coriolanus' mouth before he had a chance to think them through, think about how concerned they made him sound. When the silence made it clear Sejanus wasn't going to say anything more, he added. "We can meet for dinner?"
"Ok," Sejanus nodded, a curl falling loose over his forehead. "How do you feel about Italian? I know a place?"
"Italian is good," Coriolanus answered slowly, biting his cheek against a smile of his own. Maybe, against all odds, they would have something in common after all. Something besides their newly minted color vision, that is.
---
Several minutes later, in the safety of his own car, Coriolanus finally let the smile out, soft and hesitant, but it disappeared into a curse when he unlocked his phone to see a text from Tigris:
I got you kimchi :)