#Manipulation Consolation | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

yinyuedijun · 2 months

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Aventurine doesn't like being understood, but he does like understanding other people. It is essential for manipulation, for scheming, for control. And he likes controlling you especially—for keeping you close but your heart a comfortable distance away, for opening your legs when he wants the pleasure of your body, for playing your emotions however he needs. And the day will come when that skill will be invaluable—the day when he must die without shattering you. (Or: You are the only person in the universe who understands Aventurine in his mother tongue. He often regrets teaching it to you.)

5k words. gender neutral reader, established relationship, angst, non-graphic sex (reader bottoms, anatomy neutral), themes of cultural loss, references to slavery, aventurine’s canonically implied desire to die. MDNI.

Aventurine cannot lie in Avgin.

Deception does not come easily to him in his mother tongue. His command of it is too weak—and too kind. The universe was a different place in the days when his life was coloured by the warble of Avgin dialect. It felt simpler, partly because he was a child and partly because Sigonia was yet untouched by outsiders. There were no corporations, no casinos, no commodity codes. His entire world was sand, desert, mother, sister, father (or more often—ghost), goddess, tent, wagon, luck, sin, rain, blessing, Avgin.

Katican.

Aventurine is sure that he knew more than just those words. He was fluent as a child. He had conversations with his sister that were complex enough to make his heart hurt, though perhaps his heart was just constantly aching anyway. But the rest of his early words escapes him. He could maybe dredge them up if he thinks long enough, but he also isn't sure if his tongue and lips could form the shape of them anymore. Sometimes he still counts in Avgin, memorises phone numbers in it, but he doesn’t remember the last time he actually strung together a full sentence in the language.

When Aventurine was first stolen into slavery (a word that he had not known as a child, and still doesn't know in Avgin), he wasn’t given a Synesthesia Beacon. He had to rely on his ears and his wits, deciphering the harsh edges of the Katican dialect and then the strange garble of Interastral Standard Language. By the time he had a Beacon installed, it was already translating all speech into Standard—his dominant language.

Sometimes he feels a little aggrieved by it, but at least it wasn't Katican. He'd have blown out his brains if it were.

But it is easy to console himself: Avgin is not a useful language anyway. Dead languages have no value, and the Avgin dialect was killed along with its people. You can’t perform commerce in a dead language, can't negotiate contracts, can't enter a gambling den and use your silver tongue to rob people blind. You can't use a dead language to fell governments and extract resources; you can't use a dead language to bring an entire planet to its knees. You can’t use a dead language to gamble your life; you can't use it to save yourself from the gallows.

You cannot deceive people in a language that is defined by sand, sister, goddess, ghost.

Aventurine cannot lie in Avgin. His command of it is too weak, and there is no one left to which he can lie, anyway.

When you ask Aventurine to teach you his first language, he gives you an amused look.

“Why Avgin?” he asks. “No one speaks it anymore. I can teach you Common Sigonian if you’d like. Or we could learn Xianzhounese together. Maybe Intellitron code? I know a little.”

“You speak Avgin,” you argue.

“Not often,” he says. “And badly when I do.”

“But it's still your language. And I want to understand you.”

Aventurine has to stop himself from laughing. Understand him? He hates being understood. When people understand him, it makes him predictable. And unlikeable. Hardly a position from which he can manipulate people in.

You understand him well enough to know that.

“You'll have to give me a better reason than that,” he says neatly. “Make it worth my while. Reward me.”

You look at him as you ponder, your eyes lingering on his. Perhaps trying to read him, though he prefers to think you're just enjoying the sight of them.

“I’ll teach you my language as well?”

“You mean—you'll reward my hard labour with more work?” he says, lighthearted.

You frown at him despite the joke. “You don't want to understand me better than what a Synesthesia Beacon would allow?” He blinks, pausing. “It’ll be convenient too. We can talk shit about other people in public and no one will understand us.”

Aventurine considers you. He doesn't like being understood, but he does like understanding other people. It is essential for manipulation, for scheming, for control. And he likes controlling you especially—for keeping you close but your heart a comfortable distance away, for opening your legs when he wants the pleasure of your body, for playing your emotions however he needs. And the day will come when that skill will be invaluable—the day when he must die without shattering you.

He also likes the idea of talking shit in public.

“I'm listening,” he says, voice lilting. You lean in, smiling. Sweet. It makes his heart feel something he isn't used to. Something addictive. Something disgusting. He scrambles to cover it with one of the usual tools: humour or distraction or maybe just plain old lying—his most reliable weapon.

“I'll throw in a kiss?” you try.

He hums. “Just one?”

“One per day.”

“Three.”

“You drive a hard bargain.”

“Well, I am a businessman.”

You snort, but he knows you're endeared. You have very noticeable tells when you’re flustered.

“Okay,” you say. “Three kisses on days you teach me.”

“Deal.”

Aventurine remembers more Avgin than he thought he would.

It comes to him slowly, painstakingly. You aren't interested in structured lessons, and he wouldn't be able to provide them anyway. He has a nonexistent grasp of grammar aside from this sounds right and that sounds strange, and Avgin dialect is both so niche and so dead that no textbooks are available. The scholars have abandoned the language as much as the politicians abandoned its people. Aventurine only has you, his fragmented memory, and whatever questions come to mind as you live out your days with him.

Mostly, you ask him about basic vocabulary. Sometimes you ask him to repeat sentences from your conversations in Avgin, like he’s some kind of multilingual parrot. Each prompt forces him to wade through the fog in his mind, the one that’s been shrouding his childhood memories until now. He's startled at how naturally the old words roll off his tongue: One, two, three, four. Good morning. Good evening. Good night. Sweet dreams. Five, six, seven, eight. You're lying to me. Why do you always lie to me? I don't know what you're talking about. Nine, ten, eleven, twelve. Welcome home. Have you eaten? Have some bread. I made you stew. Twenty, thirty, forty, fifty. That was dangerous. I thought you wouldn't make it back to me. Sometimes I think you want to die. One hundred, one thousand, one million, one billion. I'm sorry. Come here. Let me kiss you. Don't cry. Don't cry. Don't cry.

When you say, How do I ask you to let me hold you, he answers easily. He'd heard the words so often as a child: Let me hold you, Kakavasha. Let Mama hold you. His mouth forms the sounds without conscious thought.

He regrets it almost immediately.

When Aventurine hears it from you—stilted, halting, but no less gentle—he stops breathing. Let me hold you. You say it all the time in Standard, but it feels different in Avgin. More painful. A strange sense of panic closes in on him when he's wrapped up in you, thinking in Avgin, thinking sand, sister, goddess, ghost. He holds you tightly, like the rags cut from his father’s shirt, or his mother’s locket won back from the shell-slashers, or a bag of poker chips beneath a card table, clutched within his trembling grip.

“Aventurine, is something wrong?” you ask in Avgin, and he replies in Standard with his usual smile.

“Hm? No. What could be wrong if I have you here?”

Lying is one of his greatest tools. Sex is another one. So he says, “I think I'd like my reward now,” and he runs his lips along your jaw, your pulse, the spot over your heart (there's a word for that in Avgin but not Standard, he tells you), until you're laughing. I thought you wanted three kisses, you tease, and he replies, Who said I wanted to kiss you on the mouth?

But he coaxes open your thighs, and once he's inside you, he collects his payment properly. He kisses you, and kisses you, and kisses you—and you swallow his lies whole.

There are some things that Aventurine doesn't teach you. Mostly, they’re things that he can’t teach you.

There are countless gaps in his Avgin. His speech is painfully childish—probably more childish than it was when he actually stopped speaking it. He doesn't know how to swear (something that disappoints you) and he doesn't know how to flirt (something that devastates you). He doesn’t know any words that would be useful for work either: commercialization, governance, stakes, winnings, profit. When you ask him what his job title is in Avgin (“Was senior management even a thing in Avgin society?”), he laughs and gives you the word for gambler.

Then there are the words that he remembers—has remembered his whole life—but never says. Not to you, and not to himself. He doesn't teach you any prayers. He doesn't teach you any blessings. He doesn't teach you about Mama Fenge, or the Kakava Festival, or how the rain fell when he was born. When you ask him, What holidays did you celebrate when you were little? he shrugs and says, We didn't have any. Sigonia’s too bleak to do any partying.

Then you ask him one day, while your bodies are spent in the afterglow of sex, sticky with sweat and sweetness, how to say I love you. And he goes quiet.

Love is a cheap word in Interastral Standard. In the language of globalisation and trade, love has been commercialised, commodified, capitalised for power. You say it to him in many contexts: I love this, I love that, I love you. He hardly ever reacts, and he's never said it back. It would feel unnecessary and also cruel if he did: Aventurine has only ever said the words himself as either a joke or a manipulation.

But love feels different in Avgin than in Interastral Standard, doesn't sound like a thing that can be traded or bought. Kakavasha only ever said the word love to his mother, to his sister, to his father's grave. Love in his mother tongue feels priceless.

When Aventurine thinks about you saying it—I love you, Kakavasha, in clumsy, earnest Avgin—something so painful swells in his throat that he can hardly breathe.

“There is no word for love in my language,” he tells you.

You blink. “Okay, then what's an idiom for it?”

“There is none. There’s no word or phrase expressing love.”

You raise a brow. “That’s hard to believe.”

“Is it?” He smiles. “There’s no Avgin in the known universe who cares about love. Only scheming, thieving, and treachery—and you can't do those things when love is involved.”

You look at him in alarm. “Why are you saying that?” You're practically squirming in your discomfort. “I don't know why you think I'd believe such a racist stereotype.”

“It’s not a stereotype,” he says. “I'm not talking about the Avgin culture. I'm talking about myself.”

After all, he is the only Avgin left.

It is an unfair thing to say. A cruel thing to say. After all the laughing and kissing and crying and fucking, after all the tender eyes and gentle words from you—it is probably the worst pain imaginable: I don't give a shit about you. He waits for you to cry.

But you only stare at him calmly, studying him. You brush the hair out of his eyes, seeing them clearly.

“If you lie to me all the time,” you say in Avgin, “eventually I'll stop believing anything you say.”

Aventurine is speechless. His heart does that addictive, disgusting thing again. He thinks about leaving, but then you say, Let me hold you, and he can't do anything other than obey.

Avgin dialect was once included in the Synesthesia Beacon list of functions. The Intelligentsia Guild added it before the Second Katica-Avgin Extinction Event, when the IPC was trying to get a political foothold on Sigonia via the Avgin people. The language was alive then, with enough value to be included into the Synesthesia LLM by the linguists.

But since the Extinction Event—since Kakavasha ran away from home—the Synesthesia data on Avgin has been stagnant, a fossil. Aventurine knows because he's subscribed to software updates for certain languages (Avgin Sigonian, Common Sigonian, Interastral Standard, and now your mother tongue). He gets pinged every time there's a new addition for slang, for neologisms—but there hasn't been a ping for the Avgin dialect since he had the Beacon installed. The live translation function hasn't even been available since the previous Amber Era. When he checks its page on his Synesthesia app, it's very clear why—

SIGONIAN, AVGIN DIALECT SPEAKERS: 0 STATUS: Extinct END OF SERVICE: 2156 AE

The complete death of the language has led to an irritating dilemma for you and Aventurine. You keep running into words that he doesn't know—this time not because of his childlike speech, but because they never existed in his language to begin with. Ocean, tropical, rainforest. Starskiff, accelerator, space fleet. Stock market, shortselling, mutual funds. Black hole, event horizon, spaghettification. All things that never came up for Kakavasha, but now come up for Aventurine, and the language has not evolved to include it.

He always wants to switch to Standard to discuss these things, but you're insistent on speaking in Avgin as much as possible. He doesn't know why, but he doesn't mind humouring you—partly because he likes to indulge you, and partly because he’s grown used to hearing the honeyed timbre of Avgin dialect in your household. The place would feel strange without it.

So you start filling the gaps with other languages, filtering them through the lyricism of Avgin. Loanwords, he thinks they’re called. You take ocean, tropical, rainforest from Amazian; starskiff, accelerator, space fleet from Xianzhounese; stock market, shortselling, mutual funds from Interastral Standard. For the astrophysics terms, you try directly translating them—with limited success.

“Can't I literally just say ‘black hole’?” you ask in Avgin, and he nearly spits out his coffee.

“Please don't. That's a dirty word.” He can't bring himself to say what it means, but from the way you’re laughing, you can clearly guess.

“I thought you said you didn't know how to swear.”

“You've just reminded me how.”

“You're welcome.” You look on the verge of cackling. Aventurine finishes his coffee and wonders when you're going to surprise him with your newfound vulgarity.

“Let's just do the space terms based on Standard,” he says. Begs.

“No, that's so boring.”

“Then let's do your language.”

You open your mouth. Close it. Give him a blank look.

“You don't know how to say those words in your mother tongue either, do you,” he intuits.

“Well, ‘spaghettification’ doesn't really come up in everyday conversation, does it?”

“Then maybe we don't need it.” He smiles, senses an opportunity. Smells blood. “How about ‘love’? I'd much rather know how you say that. I bet it sounds beautiful.”

You give him a long look. Your eyes are vulnerable when you share it: Love. I love you. He’s fascinated by the sound of it. Your voice is never that fragile when you say it in Standard. It's never so earnest. He repeats it, staring at you, and your gaze falls to the ground. His mouth curls.

“I like it,” he says. “Let's use that. It'll sound nice in Avgin.”

You try to recover. “Sure. That works. But back to ‘black hole’—”

And the two of you continue like that for days, weeks, months. It feels like a complete bastardization of his mother tongue on some days, in some conversations. Almost unrecognisable. But it doesn't feel bad. It’s all he has, it's all you have, and when he walks into your home, he starts speaking it without thinking: your bastard, patchwork language. The Avgin dialect that exists only in your house. A tongue that can only be understood by a liar.

And then, one lazy Sunday morning, he gets a familiar ping. He expects it to be Interastral Standard, as usual. The language balloons with each planet that the IPC colonises.

But instead, he opens his screen and freezes.

SIGONIAN, AVGIN DIALECT SPEAKERS: 2 STATUS: Endangered. SERVICE RESUMED: 2157 AE NEW UPDATES: 103 loanwords and 5 neologisms added.

He can't stop looking at the status. Endangered. Endangered, which means dying, but alive. The Avgin dialect is alive again. The Intelligentsia Guild determined it, so it must be true. But Aventurine can't agree: there are no Avgin speakers in the known universe other than the two of you, and what you speak isn't real Avgin. The Avgin spoken by his mother and father and sister is dead; the Avgin spoken by Kakavasha is dead. The festivals are gone; the deserts have been terraformed. There are no wagons; there are no dances; there are no prayers. There are no blessings, and he has no home—

As long as you are alive, the blood of the Avgin will never run dry.

His throat locks up.

“Aventurine?” you ask. Your voice is drowsy, but concerned. “Is something wrong?”

He looks at you from his phone, a polished smile on his face.

“No.” His syllables are plain and efficient in the noise of Interastral Standard: “Just looking at details for a new assignment. It’ll be a long one.”

“Oh.” You frown. “Will you be away from home for a long time, then?”

He stops himself from swallowing. “Yes, I'll be away from the house. For several months, probably.”

“Okay.” Your voice is small. “Take care of yourself, okay? I'll miss you.”

Each word you speak resonates with heartbreak. It always does in these conversations, even in Standard—but the sorrow is amplified in Avgin. His mother tongue has an inherently sad quality to it, he's noticed. His people have lost so much over their history—their language is one of loss. It's his language of loss. Kakavasha did all his grieving in Avgin; Aventurine has never felt sorrow in Standard. When the language died, so did Kakavasha—and all his regrets with it.

“You'll come home to me, right?” you ask. It's a beautiful sentence in Avgin. A heartrending one. He feels something that he hasn't known since he was a child.

It's a feeling he has to kill.

“Yes,” he says in Standard. “Of course I'll come back.”

This is not the first time that Aventurine has been mistaken for dead, but this is the longest time.

The latest world to join the IPC network was a tough acquisition. It had been ruled by a despot who wreaked havoc on both the people and the planet, and who was too stupid and reckless to resolve conflicts with his trade partners. He probably would have blown up the whole star system had he been left to his own devices. Aventurine had no qualms about bringing him to ruin, nor did he have qualms about nearly dying in the process.

If things had gone his way, he'd either be dead or missing. This would have been the perfect opportunity to do the latter, actually—to be freed from the IPC. Free to drift alone, speaking with strangers in strange, unfamiliar tongues. No connection to his past, to the cruel history of his luck, to his commodity code. No tether to his inherently unjust destiny. But instead he's back in your house, pockets heavy with his borrowed wealth, speaking to you in his bastardised, childish Avgin. I'm sorry. Come here. Let me kiss you. Don't cry. Don't cry. Don't cry.

Your Avgin is—shockingly fluent. He doesn't know how. He can't think about it right now. All he can process is the wounded animal noise of your speech as you yell at him, as you cry. Like an injured songbird, or a weeping child. Why did you leave, why did you lie, why do you always lie to me, why don't you give a shit about me, you spit. Why do you want to die, why do you want to die, why do you want to die, you keep saying. Sand, sister, goddess, ghost, he keeps hearing. Sand, sister, goddess, ghost. Don't leave me, big sister. People will die. Why do you have to go?

“I’m sorry,” he tries again, this time in your language. “I'm so sorry. Come here. Let me hold you.”

You collapse into your mother tongue. Aventurine is both relieved and horrified. Relieved that he doesn't need to hear the language of his grief—horrified that he needs to hear yours. He's never heard you cry like this. He's never heard you break like this. These must have been the words you used when the soldiers found you hiding in your closet, when they dragged you out of your home. You were just a child.

Aventurine doesn't know the words you are using—you've never taught them—but he still understands them.

You're very malleable when you’re sad; even more so when you're hysterical. Aventurine understands this about you, and he understands how to calm you—this time in your native tongue—and he understands how to kiss you. He understands that you need to feel close to him. He understands that there are ways to accomplish this other than sex. A normal person would talk it out, have an honest conversation, come to a mutual understanding, and maybe even stop trying to kill himself. They wouldn't fuck you into the mattress while your face is still wet with tears.

But Aventurine is not a normal person. He doesn't know how to have an honest conversation, and he doesn't want to be understood. Lying is his greatest weapon, and sex is a close second. So he kisses you until you’re too breathless to cry, fucks you until you can't think, and makes you come so hard that you’re in too much bliss to grieve. And maybe it's horrible of him, but he enjoys it. He enjoys the way your body takes him in so easily, the way your nails dig into his back, the way you tighten around him when you climax, so wet and needy for him. The way you beg for him in your language for liars as he spends himself inside you: I love you, Aventurine, I love you, I love you, I love you—

Only because it feels good. This is all only because he enjoys fucking you. This is all only because you enjoy fucking him. This is all it'll ever be, and it'll be this way until he gets to meet his end.

(Some months ago, Aventurine started dreaming in Avgin.

It surprised him when he first noticed it. The last time he remembers having a dream in his native tongue, he was twelve years old and still in chains. And even then, it had become a sporadic, strange thing. Awful to wake up from. One minute he was with his mother and sister on a cool, rainy day, speaking fluently in Avgin as he laughed and played—and the next minute, he was being shaken awake in his cage, hearing the cruel lash of Katican.

But ever since he's started speaking Avgin with you, he's been dreaming in it. Vividly. Sometimes he's a child in these dreams, and sometimes he's grown. He's always back in the Sigonian desert, among the tents and the campfires and his family wagons. His mother and sister are alive. Sometimes his father is too. The skies roar with thunder and the stellar winds are always harsh, but they always keep him cocooned up in their arms. He's always warm.

Sometimes Aventurine dreams of nicer days. Clear skies, warm sun, cool breeze—all blessings from the Mother Goddess. On these days, he tends to be an adult, and you tend to be there with him. Your Avgin is fluent but strange, filled with funny loanwords and peculiar slang. His father likes the neologisms and starts using them—but only in wrong ways. His sister finds it embarrassing and keeps apologising to you.

His mother loves you. She loves you so much it hurts. This is how I know you're blessed, Kakavasha, she says, glowing. You’re so lucky to have found such a kind person.

Kakavasha knows this. He knows he's lucky, and in his dreams, that isn't a bad thing. In his dreams, his luck means that his home is not violently excised from his heart: his father never dies; his mother never dies; his sister never dies. The tents are not burned; the wagons are not destroyed. He is never forced to forget his people's dishes, their songs, their language, their joy. And in his dreams, his luck means that he meets you anyway, without all the loss and the chains and the lying.

In his dreams, he is able to bring you to the desert. He is able to teach you the Avgin he spoke as a child, to cook all the meals his mother used to make, to share with you their coffee and their tea. He teaches you prayers. He teaches you blessings. He tells you about Mama Fenge, about how the rain fell when he was born. He takes you to the Kakava Festival, shows you how to dance, sings to you all the Avgin songs until you're singing back. He presses his palm to yours in prayer; he kisses you in devotion, not avoidance.

Sometimes the two of you still fight, the same fights that you have in real life, but he handles them with honesty. He listens to you. He apologises to you. He tells you that he’ll change, and he means it—because this world is a kind one, and he has no need to be so cruel to you.

In this kind world, when you lay in bed with his arms tight around you, you smile at him and say, I love you, Kakavasha. You say it in Avgin—real Avgin, not the dialect born from genocide and deceit—and when he responds, there's not even a little bit of insincerity in his voice. Because Kakavasha never became Aventurine in these dreams, so he has no Interastral Standard in which he can lie to you, no silver tongue with which he can manipulate you, no commodity code that inspires his fear of being controlled by you. Kakavasha only knows Avgin, and he only has his sand, his family, his goddess, his home.

And he has you. Finally, he has you.

He kisses you, and kisses you, and kisses you—and then he tells you the truth.)

Aventurine cannot lie in Avgin.

You noticed this very early on: whenever he lies to you, he always switches to Interastral Standard. Probably he wouldn't be able to do it in his mother tongue. His command of it is too weak, and the words he knows are all too kind. He speaks with the innocence of a child, and children cannot deceive people in the way that adults can. Children cannot perform commerce or negotiate contracts. They cannot use a silver tongue to rob people blind. They cannot save themselves from the gallows.

So Aventurine’s Avgin is defenceless. Vulnerable. So vulnerable it hurts. You are not so vulnerable in your first language because your captors spoke it on occasion, and you learned to lie in it to gain their pity. You told Aventurine that knowing it would help him understand you, but this was a deception. Aventurine’s mother tongue was a language of trust, but yours is a dialect of abuse.

The Avgin language died before Aventurine could be gutted by it; this is why it disarms him so completely. This is why he’s so indulgent and so warm when you use it with him, why he yields to all your requests. Not requests for money or gifts—you’re certain those are meaningless to him—but for affection. Let me hold you. Let me touch you. Let me kiss you. He can never say no.

This is also why he loves hearing you speak his mother tongue, you think—it makes him feel at home, it makes him feel safe. Maybe it even makes him feel loved. He never seems so at peace speaking any other language, so you try to use Avgin as much as possible. You like seeing him happy. You like it even if it means you need to teach him your own native language in exchange, even when it means you need to hear him say all the things your captors used to say. You don't mind it if it's him. You never mind the harm he inflicts on you, especially not when it brings you closer to him.

It is convenient that he cannot lie in Avgin. You only wanted to learn it in the first place because he talks in his sleep—mostly in Standard, but sometimes in his native tongue. And now that you know he cannot lie in Avgin, you also know he's always being honest in his dreams. Honest when he throws his arms around you in his sleep. Honest when he grabs you so tightly that you bruise. Honest when he buries his face into your neck and whispers prayers into your skin.

Most of the words he says are common ones, the earliest vocabulary that he taught you. But there are some things he's withheld from you—and to learn those things, you had to track down linguists from the Intelligentsia Guild, bribe them with your dirty money, have them give you all their deprecated, extinct data. It felt two-faced, and it was violating, but it was the only way. You already know that Aventurine would rather die than translate his feelings for you, would never want this part of himself understood.

I'm sorry for always leaving you.

I'm sorry for making you cry.

I can't bear the thought of losing you.

Freedom would be too lonely without you.

I don't want to hurt you anymore.

I don't want to lie to you anymore.

I missed you.

I want you.

I need you.

I love you.

end

afterword

#aventurine x reader #hsr x reader #honkai star rail x reader #x reader #hsr smut #aventurine smut #lol it isnt really smut but it is nsft i suppose #nsft #yueshuo.fics

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treasure-mimic · 9 months

Text

So, let me try and put everything together here, because I really do think it needs to be talked about.

Today, Unity announced that it intends to apply a fee to use its software. Then it got worse.

For those not in the know, Unity is the most popular free to use video game development tool, offering a basic version for individuals who want to learn how to create games or create independently alongside paid versions for corporations or people who want more features. It's decent enough at this job, has issues but for the price point I can't complain, and is the idea entry point into creating in this medium, it's a very important piece of software.

But speaking of tools, the CEO is a massive one. When he was the COO of EA, he advocated for using, what out and out sounds like emotional manipulation to coerce players into microtransactions.

"A consumer gets engaged in a property, they might spend 10, 20, 30, 50 hours on the game and then when they're deep into the game they're well invested in it. We're not gouging, but we're charging and at that point in time the commitment can be pretty high."

He also called game developers who don't discuss monetization early in the planning stages of development, quote, "fucking idiots".

So that sets the stage for what might be one of the most bald-faced greediest moves I've seen from a corporation in a minute. Most at least have the sense of self-preservation to hide it.

A few hours ago, Unity posted this announcement on the official blog.

Effective January 1, 2024, we will introduce a new Unity Runtime Fee that’s based on game installs. We will also add cloud-based asset storage, Unity DevOps tools, and AI at runtime at no extra cost to Unity subscription plans this November. We are introducing a Unity Runtime Fee that is based upon each time a qualifying game is downloaded by an end user. We chose this because each time a game is downloaded, the Unity Runtime is also installed. Also we believe that an initial install-based fee allows creators to keep the ongoing financial gains from player engagement, unlike a revenue share.

Now there are a few red flags to note in this pitch immediately.

Unity is planning on charging a fee on all games which use its engine.

This is a flat fee per number of installs.

They are using an always online runtime function to determine whether a game is downloaded.

There is just so many things wrong with this that it's hard to know where to start, not helped by this FAQ which doubled down on a lot of the major issues people had.

I guess let's start with what people noticed first. Because it's using a system baked into the software itself, Unity would not be differentiating between a "purchase" and a "download". If someone uninstalls and reinstalls a game, that's two downloads. If someone gets a new computer or a new console and downloads a game already purchased from their account, that's two download. If someone pirates the game, the studio will be asked to pay for that download.

Q: How are you going to collect installs? A: We leverage our own proprietary data model. We believe it gives an accurate determination of the number of times the runtime is distributed for a given project. Q: Is software made in unity going to be calling home to unity whenever it's ran, even for enterprice licenses? A: We use a composite model for counting runtime installs that collects data from numerous sources. The Unity Runtime Fee will use data in compliance with GDPR and CCPA. The data being requested is aggregated and is being used for billing purposes. Q: If a user reinstalls/redownloads a game / changes their hardware, will that count as multiple installs? A: Yes. The creator will need to pay for all future installs. The reason is that Unity doesn’t receive end-player information, just aggregate data. Q: What's going to stop us being charged for pirated copies of our games? A: We do already have fraud detection practices in our Ads technology which is solving a similar problem, so we will leverage that know-how as a starting point. We recognize that users will have concerns about this and we will make available a process for them to submit their concerns to our fraud compliance team.

This is potentially related to a new system that will require Unity Personal developers to go online at least once every three days.

Starting in November, Unity Personal users will get a new sign-in and online user experience. Users will need to be signed into the Hub with their Unity ID and connect to the internet to use Unity. If the internet connection is lost, users can continue using Unity for up to 3 days while offline. More details to come, when this change takes effect.

It's unclear whether this requirement will be attached to any and all Unity games, though it would explain how they're theoretically able to track "the number of installs", and why the methodology for tracking these installs is so shit, as we'll discuss later.

Unity claims that it will only leverage this fee to games which surpass a certain threshold of downloads and yearly revenue.

Only games that meet the following thresholds qualify for the Unity Runtime Fee: Unity Personal and Unity Plus: Those that have made $200,000 USD or more in the last 12 months AND have at least 200,000 lifetime game installs. Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise: Those that have made $1,000,000 USD or more in the last 12 months AND have at least 1,000,000 lifetime game installs.

They don't say how they're going to collect information on a game's revenue, likely this is just to say that they're only interested in squeezing larger products (games like Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail, Fate Grand Order, Among Us, and Fall Guys) and not every 2 dollar puzzle platformer that drops on Steam. But also, these larger products have the easiest time porting off of Unity and the most incentives to, meaning realistically those heaviest impacted are going to be the ones who just barely meet this threshold, most of them indie developers.

Aggro Crab Games, one of the first to properly break this story, points out that systems like the Xbox Game Pass, which is already pretty predatory towards smaller developers, will quickly inflate their "lifetime game installs" meaning even skimming the threshold of that 200k revenue, will be asked to pay a fee per install, not a percentage on said revenue.

[IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Hey Gamers!

Today, Unity (the engine we use to make our games) announced that they'll soon be taking a fee from developers for every copy of the game installed over a certain threshold - regardless of how that copy was obtained.

Guess who has a somewhat highly anticipated game coming to Xbox Game Pass in 2024? That's right, it's us and a lot of other developers.

That means Another Crab's Treasure will be free to install for the 25 million Game Pass subscribers. If a fraction of those users download our game, Unity could take a fee that puts an enormous dent in our income and threatens the sustainability of our business.

And that's before we even think about sales on other platforms, or pirated installs of our game, or even multiple installs by the same user!!!

This decision puts us and countless other studios in a position where we might not be able to justify using Unity for our future titles. If these changes aren't rolled back, we'll be heavily considering abandoning our wealth of Unity expertise we've accumulated over the years and starting from scratch in a new engine. Which is really something we'd rather not do.

On behalf of the dev community, we're calling on Unity to reverse the latest in a string of shortsighted decisions that seem to prioritize shareholders over their product's actual users.

I fucking hate it here.

-Aggro Crab - END DESCRIPTION]

That fee, by the way, is a flat fee. Not a percentage, not a royalty. This means that any games made in Unity expecting any kind of success are heavily incentivized to cost as much as possible.

[IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A table listing the various fees by number of Installs over the Install Threshold vs. version of Unity used, ranging from $0.01 to $0.20 per install. END DESCRIPTION]

Basic elementary school math tells us that if a game comes out for $1.99, they will be paying, at maximum, 10% of their revenue to Unity, whereas jacking the price up to $59.99 lowers that percentage to something closer to 0.3%. Obviously any company, especially any company in financial desperation, which a sudden anchor on all your revenue is going to create, is going to choose the latter.

Furthermore, and following the trend of "fuck anyone who doesn't ask for money", Unity helpfully defines what an install is on their main site.

While I'm looking at this page as it exists now, it currently says

The installation and initialization of a game or app on an end user’s device as well as distribution via streaming is considered an “install.” Games or apps with substantially similar content may be counted as one project, with installs then aggregated to calculate the Unity Runtime Fee.

However, I saw a screenshot saying something different, and utilizing the Wayback Machine we can see that this phrasing was changed at some point in the few hours since this announcement went up. Instead, it reads:

The installation and initialization of a game or app on an end user’s device as well as distribution via streaming or web browser is considered an “install.” Games or apps with substantially similar content may be counted as one project, with installs then aggregated to calculate the Unity Runtime Fee.

Screenshot for posterity:

That would mean web browser games made in Unity would count towards this install threshold. You could legitimately drive the count up simply by continuously refreshing the page. The FAQ, again, doubles down.

Q: Does this affect WebGL and streamed games? A: Games on all platforms are eligible for the fee but will only incur costs if both the install and revenue thresholds are crossed. Installs - which involves initialization of the runtime on a client device - are counted on all platforms the same way (WebGL and streaming included).

And, what I personally consider to be the most suspect claim in this entire debacle, they claim that "lifetime installs" includes installs prior to this change going into effect.

Will this fee apply to games using Unity Runtime that are already on the market on January 1, 2024? Yes, the fee applies to eligible games currently in market that continue to distribute the runtime. We look at a game's lifetime installs to determine eligibility for the runtime fee. Then we bill the runtime fee based on all new installs that occur after January 1, 2024.

Again, again, doubled down in the FAQ.

Q: Are these fees going to apply to games which have been out for years already? If you met the threshold 2 years ago, you'll start owing for any installs monthly from January, no? (in theory). It says they'll use previous installs to determine threshold eligibility & then you'll start owing them for the new ones. A: Yes, assuming the game is eligible and distributing the Unity Runtime then runtime fees will apply. We look at a game's lifetime installs to determine eligibility for the runtime fee. Then we bill the runtime fee based on all new installs that occur after January 1, 2024.

That would involve billing companies for using their software before telling them of the existence of a bill. Holding their actions to a contract that they performed before the contract existed!

Okay. I think that's everything. So far.

There is one thing that I want to mention before ending this post, unfortunately it's a little conspiratorial, but it's so hard to believe that anyone genuinely thought this was a good idea that it's stuck in my brain as a significant possibility.

A few days ago it was reported that Unity's CEO sold 2,000 shares of his own company.

On September 6, 2023, John Riccitiello, President and CEO of Unity Software Inc (NYSE:U), sold 2,000 shares of the company. This move is part of a larger trend for the insider, who over the past year has sold a total of 50,610 shares and purchased none.

I would not be surprised if this decision gets reversed tomorrow, that it was literally only made for the CEO to short his own goddamn company, because I would sooner believe that this whole thing is some idiotic attempt at committing fraud than a real monetization strategy, even knowing how unfathomably greedy these people can be.

So, with all that said, what do we do now?

Well, in all likelihood you won't need to do anything. As I said, some of the biggest names in the industry would be directly affected by this change, and you can bet your bottom dollar that they're not just going to take it lying down. After all, the only way to stop a greedy CEO is with a greedier CEO, right?

(I fucking hate it here.)

And that's not mentioning the indie devs who are already talking about abandoning the engine.

[Links display tweets from the lead developer of Among Us saying it'd be less costly to hire people to move the game off of Unity and Cult of the Lamb's official twitter saying the game won't be available after January 1st in response to the news.]

That being said, I'm still shaken by all this. The fact that Unity is openly willing to go back and punish its developers for ever having used the engine in the past makes me question my relationship to it.

The news has given rise to the visibility of free, open source alternative Godot, which, if you're interested, is likely a better option than Unity at this point. Mostly, though, I just hope we can get out of this whole, fucking, environment where creatives are treated as an endless mill of free profits that's going to be continuously ratcheted up and up to drive unsustainable infinite corporate growth that our entire economy is based on for some fuckin reason.

Anyways, that's that, I find having these big posts that break everything down to be helpful.

#Unity #Unity3D #Video Games #Game Development #Game Developers #fuckshit #I don't know what to tag news like this

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marvelsswansong · 6 months

Text

perfectly poisonous pair

summary: the three times Coriolanus realizes you're his perfect match, his eternal soulmate: darkness and all.

tags: coriolanus snow x fem!reader, possessive and dark soft!Corio with equally unhinged reader (an anon previously said morticia x gomez addams vibes), fluff, violence, non-canon compliant, CW for graphic descriptions of violence, kidnapping, murder, possessive/dark thoughts - please take care of yourself first!

☆ word count: 6K+ words ☆

⚠️ 𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠: 𝐈 𝐝𝐨 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐠𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐲𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐜𝐨𝐩𝐲, 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐨𝐫 𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐮𝐫𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐨𝐟 𝐦𝐲 𝐰𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐧 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐦𝐞.⚠️

Marriage is, at first instance to Coriolanus, an institution and an act that he doesn't quite see the point of.

The legal and financial benefits, sure. But committing himself to one person, to be bound to them body, heart and soul for the rest of his life? That level of vulnerability and permanence feels too foreign. Too abstract, even, that thinking about it quickly makes his stomach churn with sickness.

Coriolanus spends the majority of his upbringing, consoling himself that he doesn't have the time to worry about such things as romance. After all, there was always the next bill to pay and the next threat of eviction to dread.

Not to mention, he thinks, no one will truly ever get him. Not even grandma'am or Tigris understands his inner being. The man deep within his guts, the cunning voyeur who enjoys violence and manipulation. And if they only knew, he believes, they'd be horrified.

No one really knows Coriolanus for who he is. And no one will truly be able to understand what it's like to feel and think like him.

So marriage is completely out of the question for him.

At least for a long time.

Until he meets you.

------------------------------

the beginning: "must be a coincidence."

You're the first person (other than the wide-eyed idealist, Sejanus) to treat Coriolanus with kindness at the academy.

You come in as a transfer student mid-way through the semester and he comes to notice the small ways with which you show your appreciation for him. Slyly backing up his answers in class discussions. Smiling at him in the hallways. Sticking up for him in conversations, not caring if the others give you odd looks for defending a 'clear outsider' amongst them.

"If you ever need anything, you can always count on me." you'd once told him after school, his knees barely brushing against yours in the car you've invited him into so that he wouldn't have to walk home in the freezing cold.

Suppressing the urge to interrogate the reasoning behind your kindness, his numb fingers felt sudden warmth when you delicately placed a crumbled up note into his fist with your address in it.

"Stop by whenever you need something. Don't suffer alone, okay?"

He never takes you up on your offer.

At least, not until a few months later, when he finds himself knocking on your door late at night. Three in the morning to be precise, with a busted lip and dark red stains blossoming across his white shirt.

And when you open the door, you don't react to his disheveled state in the same way he'd expect from his family. No pity and shock like grandma'am, nor is there a trace of light apprehension and fear like there would be from Tigris.

Instead, your eyes crinkle with kindness as you invite him inside your home and sit him down on a nearby chair in the living room.

"How bad is it?" you ask, cutting him off with a stern glare before he can lie. "And don't lie to me, Snow. I need to know if you're going to need a drive to the hospital instead of my attempts at first aid."

Sighing, the blonde gives in, his bones aching too much to put up a fight.

"Not that bad, I promise." he grumbles, trying to keep his breathing normal as you lean in closely to examine his injuries. At this proximity, he can see the reflection of the overhanging yellow lights in your irises, your eyebrows furrowing in concentration before you leave the room and return with a soft towel and warm bowl of water.

"Could you look up for me?" you question, your cold fingers steadying his neck to carefully crane it upwards.

The warm, wet fabric in your hands then trace the edges of his jaw, picking up the droplets of blood scattered across his face.

Keeping his eyes forward at the line of bookshelves by the fireplace, time seems to slow down. His senses are overwhelmed by your hairwash - rosemary and vanilla, he thinks - and the room is awfully quiet. All he can hear is the muted sounds of your soft breaths and the rustling of leaves outside, the pale moonlight creeping in through the gaps of the floral curtains in the dead of December.

"Do you mind me asking what happened?" you ask, now switching your attention to the trail of blood buried into the crevice of his neck. You cringe right afterwards, almost wincing at your audacity. "Sorry, you don't have to say if you don't want to."

If anything, it just makes him smile. He likes seeing you embarrassed, he thinks.

"No, it's fine. I'll say. It was just... a party gone awry. Felix managed to convince everyone to go downtown."

You frown at the mention of the downtown area - it was common knowledge that it wasn't safe to wonder the south of the Capitol this late at night, especially if you were obviously from central.

"And then?"

"Got jumped. Felix and his friends ran away quickly. Sejanus got caught up in the mix and I couldn't just... leave him."

Coriolanus hates admitting the slightest sign of weakness, that perhaps he had a friend he cares for, so he's eternally glad that you don't dwell on it. Humming in response, you squeeze the towel in your hands, the water below now a murky shade of brown.

"And how much of this blood is your own? Do I need to get the sewing needles out?"

"I-"

His response is staggered by brief flashes of the fight playing in his mind. He recalls there being a lot of heavy breathing and fast movements. A slash there. A broken nose there. His feet driving down onto the man's chest repeatedly, down, down, down - he hears bones cracking at some point and Sejanus is suddenly pulling him backwards, begging him to stop but Coriolanus can't-

"Coriolanus."

Your voice snaps him out from his dazed state. He then swallows nervously, not knowing how much is safe to disclose.

"I'm fine. Really. Just some bruises and a split lip. The blood is from dodging a few knife attacks and the criminals stabbing one another."

It's a half-truth, really. Coriolanus had dodged a few stabs his way, but only because he tripped the man charging him and grabbed the knife instead to drive it into the man's sides. Enough to severely wound, but not kill. He feels the soles of his left shoe drag on the floor, the fabric nearly coming off from the repeated force with which he'd stepped on the other accomplice's ribs. It makes his jaw clench with embarrassment.

If you notice it's a lie, you don't say anything.

You ask him if he can undress, so that you can wash his clothes for him. After all, you tease in a lighthearted manner in an attempt to lift the mood, you still have school tomorrow at eight.

"You can leave the dirty clothes hanging by the chair outside the bathroom. I think you're overdue for a long, hot shower."

All arguments die in Coriolanus' mouth when he realizes how nice this feels. The foreign comfort of being cared for by someone else, of having his guard down and following someone else's lead for once. So he wordlessly follows you to the bathroom in the back and discards of his dirtied clothes outside.

The hot water is a nice luxury, the scalding temperature starting to erase his memories of the fight. He rubs his scalp raw and watches the water beneath his feet fade into the drain, the steady dripping of water droplets calming his mind.

When the blonde finishes, he comes out and sees that you've folded a set of new, clean clothes for him by the door of the bathroom (your father's old clothes, he learns). Once changed, he wanders outside and finds you hanging the freshly washed clothes outside on your front lawn.

"You should go home, Corio." you say quietly. "Your cousin and grandmother must be worried sick." you look back at him, a reassuring smile on your face.

"How... how can I ever repay you for all this?" he finds himself asking, desperate for an answer. Surely, you'll want something back for this. Certainly, this was all to get something back from him-

You shake your head sideways, waving your hand in dismissal.

"There's no need to repay me. I like to think you help me out every day at school, so think of this as more of... a much delayed gift."

Once you're both back inside the house, no longer shivering from the cold, he finds the silence to be oddly tense. You're in your sleepwear, after all, a silky night dress stopping right above your knees with a gray knit cardigan on top.

He swallows, nervously. He hopes you can't tell how fast his heart is beating.

"Uh, thank you. Seriously. I owe you."

"You really don't."

"I really do."

You roll your eyes playfully.

"The only person who owes me anything is Felix. He shouldn't have suggested you all go to downtown when it's dangerous, and he especially shouldn't have left you and Sejanus to nearly get stabbed to death." you spit, and your angry expression makes him chuckle.

"Ah, well, but he is the president's son. What can we do." he jokes. A small grin flickers onto your lips for half a second at that comment.

"So he is. Good night, Corio. I'll see you tomorrow."

It's initially an uneventful day for Coriolanus the next morning when he walks into the academy, naturally catching your eyes from across the room. You give him a reassuring nod from behind the door of your locker, where the majority of your attention is being held up by an overeager Felix - your assigned partner for the week.

Due to his schedule, Coriolanus doesn't see you again until lunch time. By which the newest rumor sweeping the academy has been the sudden violent illness which has fallen upon the president's son.

"I heard he was puking blood." he hears Clemensia whisper to Arachne, who nods furiously.

"Sejanus had to carry him to the medic's office - Felix looked like a half-dead ghost."

He's itching to speak to you as he quickly rounds the corner and runs up the flights of stairs leading to the library, where he's shared many lunches with you before. He knows your favorite sport by heart, that being the cozy seat under the large arched windows overlooking the front lawn.

As expected, he finds you there, sitting cross legged and gazing out towards the lawn. Upon closer inspection, he sees that you're watching Felix get escorted into a dark vehicle, an unreadable expression on your face.

"Have you heard that Felix is sick?" Coriolanus carefully asks, sitting down from across from you. You turn to him, your face scrunching up in sadness.

"Yes I have. Terrible news, really. Something about nasty nausea and uncontrollable vomiting."

Your tone is sympathetic and your face has all the features of genuine worry, but there's a small twinkle in your eyes that indicates a secret.

It makes Coriolanus delirious with want.

"And would his illness have anything to do with you being close to him as his project partner?" he questions, sliding in closer towards you to keep his voice down.

He looks down at your lips then back up at you, smirking.

"Just seems strange, don't you think? Given that he seemed just fine last night?"

A half-second smile, you shrug.

"Must be a coincidence."

He kisses you right then and there.

---------------------------------------

the point of no return: "you're quite a messy lover, Coriolanus Snow."

Finding you is a miracle to him.

And now that you two are officially dating, he sees the glimmer of hope for something permanent like marriage in the future.

But Coriolanus is still unsure of the publicity of that kind of arrangement, which leads him to request that you two keep the relationship under wraps. At least until graduation, he justifies, to keep the romance hidden away from the judging eyes of the faculty and fellow classmates.

You don't seem the least bit bothered by the news, your lips only quirking up into a warning smile as you tease that you may then have to bring other men as dates to public events to save face.

At the time, he'd just shrugged at that, playing it cool. "I don't get jealous easily." he'd said confidently.

Oh, how he was wrong.

It's only after he becomes your boyfriend that he becomes acutely aware of and sensitive to how desirable you are to others. Visitors to the academy flirt with you openly, not knowing that Coriolanus is watching from the background, fuming with anger. Your male classmates are too eager to carry your books for you, their body leaning ever too close towards yours when you ask them to pass on the papers in class.

But this, right now, seeing you with another man at the spring gala... It feels different.

Those people, the strangers and classmates, you let down firmly but gently. Those people, you wouldn't even let their hands hover above your skin, always placing a firm distance between you and them. Those people-

Fuck.

You didn't smile at those people like you're smiling at this date of yours. The tall, dark haired man's arm is lingering just above your waist, too close for Coriolanus' comfort, and his thoughts turn lethal when the man leans down to whisper something in your ear that seemingly makes you laugh.

It takes everything within him to not lose control then, when Sejanus speaks up.

"You alright?"

His friend's voice cuts into the tirade of violent thoughts playing in Coriolanus' mind, the whiskey starting to taste sour in his mouth. Forcing another sip of alcohol, he meticulously coaches himself to nod along, feigning disinterest in you and the mystery man.

"Just fine, Plinth." he grits out, but with his steely blue orbs not deviating from where you and your date are standing, it's obvious to any bystander that he's lying. So Sejanus chuckles, nudging the blonde playfully.

"Yeah right. Though, I'm not surprised that (Y/n) brought him along." Sejanus takes a sip of his wine, before pausing at seeing the blonde's expression remain hardened. "You do know who he is, right?"

"Am I supposed to?" Coriolanus scowls.

"That's Harrison Bramford. His grandfather was one of the main generals back in the days of the war and his family single-handedly leads the weapons manufacturing industry in Panem."

"Hm." is all Coriolanus says in response, the revelation doing little to appease his anger. His left arm rises in a reflex to force more alcohol down his throat, only to find the glass half empty.

"I need another drink." he announces, not caring to hear his friend's response.

Sliding into the bar, he hears your soft laugh and whisper before you disappear into a nearby hallway, leaving your 'date' alone. Out of the corner of Coriolanus' eyes, whilst he leans forwards and pretends to watch the bartender grabbing him another glass of whiskey, he sees the tall dark haired man also beelining towards the bar.

"Vodka on the rocks." Harrison growls, nearly slamming his glass down onto the counter. It's only then that Coriolanus lets himself look into the man's light green eyes, taking care to keep his expression fairly neutral and his voice calm.

"Rough night?" Coriolanus asks, deciding to play the unassuming role of a concerned stranger. Harrison chuckles, wiping his hands on his thighs whilst shaking his head.

"You have no fucking idea. Women are such pieces of work."

The blonde tastes blood with how hard he bites his cheek in an effort to stay silent.

"Your whiskey, sir."

He's grateful for the interruption of the bartender sliding his drink down towards him, as with every word leaving your date's mouth, Coriolanus is feeling his rage boiling and threatening to spill over like toxic waste.

"This chick asked me to come here tonight, you know? Me. A Bramford. I put up with her annoying stories and stupid questions all night, I even held her fucking bag for her to go to the bathroom." the man rants, his skin starting to twinge red with how fast he was speaking. "But will she even let me kiss her? Nooooo. Apparently it's too quick. Wouldn't even let me grab her ass."

It's then that your boyfriend finally loses it, and there's a muted sound of something shattering and the feeling of something sticky and hot running down his right hand. There's a few gasps of shock, the bartender hurrying over with a spare napkin as Coriolanus' blue eyes adjust to the blurry scene in front of him.

He's shattered the glass in his hand.

"Shit, you alright?" Harrison asks, leaning over to see and then pulling back with a disgusted expression after seeing the bloody sight. Remaining calm whilst pulling out the chunks of glass, Coriolanus chooses to play nonchalant, shrugging his shoulders.

"Yep. Sorry, not used to..." he pauses, trying to find the right excuse. Instead, he finds a brilliant plan. "Not used to going so long without smoking."

The dark haired man nods in agreement, seemingly sympathizing.

"Ah, I get you. Nasty withdrawal symptoms, huh? Seen a lot of my buddies get them whenever they try to quit smoking."

Securing the makeshift tablecloth wrap around his injured hand, Coriolanus pushes his chair in with his legs, his uninjured hand strategically reaching into his pockets.

"I think I need a cigarette. Care to join?" he asks, already knowing the answer from the overwhelming scent of cigarettes spayed over the man's clothes.

"Why not."

Suppressing a smile, the blonde leads the drunken man out the door and far away from the venue, down a few shady alleyways and into narrow dirty streets crowded by graffiti and trash bags.

"Uh... you sure this is the right way?" the man behind nervously asks, and Coriolanus almost wants to roll his eyes at how pathetic he finds the man's fear.

"Don't worry, Bramford. Just avoiding the 'no smoking' signs and security guards by the venue."

Once the blonde is sure that they're both sufficiently far away from the venue, at a dead end alleyway sandwiched between a run down bike shed and abandoned dumpsters, he stops in his tracks. Coriolanus then uses the split second of confusion felt by the other man to strike him directly in the chest, forcing the taller man's entire body down.

Grabbing the nearest object next to him - a wooden crate- Coriolanus smashes it into bits on the man's head, whose face is now pressed up against the dirty cement.

"You absolute piece of shit." Coriolanus swears, adrenaline pumping through his veins in irregular rhythm as his boot kicks into the pained man's ribs repeatedly. "You disgusting, vile, privileged piece of shit."

Each insult is compounded by a stronger kick, the three glasses of whiskey and pure rage emboldening his thoughts and strengthening his attacks. Coriolanus thinks he may have heard a bone or two cracking, but he isn't sure. He can't even bring himself to care, not when his mind's fixation switches to the enticing sight of a broken glass bottle laying to his right, the jagged scars glistening under the moonlight. Coriolanus snatches it up in half a second, before pressing the edges of the makeshift blade against the whimpering man's throat.

"W-why are you doing this?" Harrison barely gets out, mouth already filled with blood, his gasps stuttered in pain.

The blonde only chuckles, his left knee coming down to press the man further into the ground, right hand beginning to trace the edge of the glass down the man's neck.

"Because, Bramford. You denigrated the love of my life. You dare try and place your filthy hands on her. Hell, for the crimes of your family and your disgusting behavior tonight, I should do the Capitol a favor and ki-"

"That's enough, Corio."

Your boyfriend nearly drops the bottle in his hand out of shock at hearing your voice ring out from behind him, the development so unexpected that for a second he almost wonders if he's hallucinating. But no, when he tilts his head backwards, he sees as clear as day you standing there with an amused grin on your face.

"Darling, I-" Coriolanus begins, stepping back up carefully and setting the glass bottle aside (but far away from Harrison's reach).

You just shush him, that ever-so-understanding twinkle in your eyes, your heels clicking on the uneven cobblestone as you stand with your body right up against his.

"I warned you about this, you know." you sigh. Coriolanus frowns, confused.

"What?"

"That you'd be jealous. He's just a toy, love. Nothing happened nor was ever going to happen tonight." you assure him, taking his uninjured hand in yours and squeezing it in comfort. You frown at the sight of his other bloodied hand, but he waves it off as an explanation for a later time.

"It's not that I don't trust you, petal. It was just... this scumbag was speaking about you in a revolting manner. I just couldn't contain myself." he slowly explains, a mix of guilt for being caught and anger for not being able to finish his actions creeping in. "He deserved it."

"Not denying that, love." you assure him again, smiling. "But goodness... What a mess you've made. You're quite the messy lover, Coriolanus Snow."

Coriolanus then can only watch, mesmerized, as you walk up next to Harrison's squirming body on the floor. Crouching down next to the man, you tut, as if you're saddened by the sight in front of you.

"Here's what's going to happen. We'll do you the favor of making it looking like you had too many drinks and got robbed. We'll take your wallet and expensive jacket. You'll survive, only a few major injuries but nothing life-threatening, and that's the story you'll tell your father and his friends." you pause, letting out another sigh, as if explaining this whole ordeal is tiring you. "In return, I will keep quiet about your nasty drug addiction to your father. One more strike and you're out, as your daddy said, so let's not aggravate him further. Deal?" you ask, smiling sweetly.

When the man stays silent, only letting out pained breaths in response, your right hand snaps out to press his face further into the concrete.

"I said, do we have a fucking deal, Bramford?"

Coriolanus finds himself completely transfixed by the attractive sight playing out in front of him: your pretty face scrunched up in fury, your delicate fingers dipped in blood as the man beneath you pathetically sobs and agrees. You then smirk, harshly dropping the man's head back down. Your boyfriend is by your side immediately, taking off the man's jacket as you pocket the wallet, your eyes finding Coriolanus' once more.

"I think I'm in love with you." the blonde confesses, the words coming out faster than he'd anticipated. It's a mix of things that causes the sudden confession, the adrenaline from having beaten a man nearly to death, the way your hair is being caressed by the harsh winds, the smell of your sweet perfume mixing with the harsh stench of copper in the air...

It's all making him dizzy and lovesick.

But all you do is roll your shoulders back and chuckle, kissing him quickly on the lips.

"I know."

But, Coriolanus thinks, you can't know - the real depths of his love, the unbridled fire now lapping at his skin, the overwhelming desire to claim you as only his.

And when he finally comes back home, he digs through his cabinets and finds the family ring. Swallowing thickly, he stores it in a small jewelry box and tucks it right underneath his bedroom's windowsill.

One day, he knows. He'll marry you.

----------------------------------------

the final act: "sorry for worrying you."

He'd meant to propose sooner.

He really did.

But then the games happened, his victory came with the assistant position to Dr Gaul and a full ride scholarship to university from the Plinths, and you'd be called away to District 2 to assist on your family's business operations.

Coriolanus missed you, fiercely. No amount of blurry phone calls and monthly visits lasting no more than the short weekend could satisfy his ache for you. Your melodic laugh. Your soft touch. Your witty observations and jokes, your soft breathing on his chest when he'd hold you at night.

But it's necessary, you'd remind him, lips trailing across his cold skin. It was how you and him were going to conquer the Capitol. Together.

On an assuming Tuesday in April, on the day you were due to arrive in time for Tigris' birthday, the phone rang in the mansion. The housekeeper, mid-way through dusting the library in preparation for your arrival, had come running into Coriolanus' room without even knocking. He'd woken up bleary eyed, a few swear words of annoyance on the tip of his tongue, all of which dissipated upon seeing the alarmed look on the housekeeper's face.

"It's for you, sir. Says it's urgent."

Brows furrowing, but not thinking anything much, Coriolanus answers the phone.

"Coriolanus Snow speaking." he mutters into the receiver, eyes still foggy from the remnants of sleep. The voice on the other end chuckles, a dark and pompous sound which makes him scowl in annoyance.

"Mr.Snow... when was Miss (L/n) set to arrive in the Capitol?"

The sinister question jolts the blonde awake immediately, a quick glance at the clock hanging by the door confirming his worst fears. It was four am, at least three hours past the time you were set to arrive.

"Is this a ransom call?" Coriolanus growls into the phone, his fingers clutching the receiver so tight his knuckles were beginning to redden. Teeth aching with how tensely he's clenching his law, his frantic eyes find the housekeeper's worried ones, before he urgently signals for the older woman to fetch the guards roaming the front of the property.

The stranger on the other side only chuckles in response, clearly gleeful at the distressed sound of Coriolanus' voice.

"I'm not sure, Mr. Snow. Would you like to perhaps ask her instead?"

The string of curses and violent threats bubbling under his throat never get spoken when he hears the sudden shuffling of feet and muffled arguing on the other side of the phone, before your voice fills his anxious ears.

"Hi, Corio."

Huh.

You seem awfully relaxed for someone taken as hostage.

Yes, he recalled having numerous discussions with you about such a scenario occurring once Coriolanus' status was elevated in the Capitol and you'd agreed to take on some share of the family business. And your boyfriend also knew that you'd grown up training in archery and fencing, so it wasn't as if you were wholly unprepared to defend yourself.

But still, it shocks him how your voice is completely aloof and calm, with even a hint of a smile at the end of your sentences.

"Hi, darling. Are you alright?" he carefully responds, pondering if you are perhaps being held at gunpoint and forced to speak in an unnatural manner. But you just hum in response, the same noise you'd make if he'd asked you something simple like what you wanted on your toast, nonchalant as ever.

"Yes, I'm perfectly fine. Just don't forget to water the lilies, they get very temperamental this time of the year. Wouldn't want a repeat of last April, now would we?" you joke, and Coriolanus feels himself slightly relaxing into the conversation.

"Of course not."

"And don't forget you promised me pancakes the moment I came back to the house. I've been missing your banana pancakes dearly."

He can almost picture your smile at that comment.

"Well then... you should hurry back soon." he calmly responds, only for the phone to then be ripped away from you and the stranger's voice returns - grating and aggravated. Coriolanus can tell that your kidnapper is frustrated and dumbfounded by your seemingly calm disposition and mundane conversation with your boyfriend, a revelation which fills him with great satisfaction.

"If you still want her alive, leave a suitcase of $20,000 by the coordinates sent to you. You have two hours."

As if on cue, the housekeeper rushes back in with a note - tied to a bird sent over to the house, she says - and the security team behind. Unravelling the coordinates written onto the piece of paper, and looking back at the clock, Coriolanus' mind whirls with endless possibilities.

Explaining the situation in brief, he directs three of the guards to go out into the location with a briefcase loaded with fake cash - one to drop off the bag, the other two to keep extensive watch to see who picks it up. The other two, he commands to stay by watch at the house.

Sitting in an unmarked van whilst staring at the spot where his security guard had placed the suitcase, Coriolanus' leg won't stop bouncing up and down.

He's riddled with anxiety and doubt, hating himself for being unable to protect you, worrying about your whereabouts. As even if you sounded awfully calm and capable on the phone, a part of him can't help but wonder if that was all for show, to prevent him from worrying too much.

A torturous hour passes before Coriolanus gets a call from the housekeeper.

"Sir, she's home."

He nearly drops the phone.

"What?"

"Miss (Y/n) is home. She is sitting in the kitchen, having a cup of tea as we speak."

It's a blur as Coriolanus commands the car to race back towards the house, his heart nearly pounding out of his chest as he bursts through the doors of the main hallway.

And there, calm as ever with a light grin on your face, is you.

You're sitting in his favorite velvet cushioned chair by the dining table. Your face smeared with blood, your clothes are torn and hanging in loose threads, and your hair is wet, red crimson droplets falling onto the floor in steady drips. And as the sun rises over the estate, the golden light illuminates your hairline and Coriolanus swears he sees a halo above your bloodied form.

"Hi, love. Sorry for worrying you."

Without a single word, he rushes over to you and nearly yanks you up to a standing position, backing you up against the wall to kiss you fiercely. Your knees almost buckle from the force with which he grabs your neck, his shaky breaths so desperate, his hooded eyes still looking into yours as his left hand suddenly shows a ring box in his hand.

"Marry me, darling."

You blink twice, surprised at the sudden action, as he chuckles and laces his fingers with yours - blood on blood.

"We're perfect for each other. You are my soulmate, my perfect pair: body, heart and soul. Truthfully, I've had the ring with me for almost two years now, but it never felt... quite right." he pauses, taking in your shaky, happy smile. Your cold hands warming in his embrace. "Not until now. You're the one for me."

"Even if I bleed all over your kitchen?" you croak, as he slides the cool metal onto your ring finger, before kissing your bruised knuckles.

"Especially if you bleed over my kitchen. As long as it's not your own blood, of course."

It's you who closes the gap this time, nearly tackling him with the force with which you kiss him, arms encircling around his back. Smiling into the kiss, he tastes the mix of your strawberry lipgloss and the metallic hint of blood on your lips, an intoxicating combination.

When you two finally part for air, the silver band now glistening on your ring finger, Coriolanus chuckles.

"Now, would you like those banana pancakes?"

------------------------------------------

epilogue: "nonsense, darling. I'd clean blood off of you forever."

"I think I'm starting to see a gray hair. on you, Corio."

Your husband scowls at the playful joke in the bedroom mirror, standing up to straighten his tie as you get changed in the walk-in closet.

"Please, I'm barely 30. Are you sure you're not hallucinating, darling?" he fights back, and you peek out half-dressed from the closet, pouting.

"You're questioning my eyesight now? How could you be so cruel."

Your faux sour expression is quickly kissed away by two cold hands cupping your cheeks, and you would've lost the balance in your heels had he not steadied you immediately, his hands dropping to your waist.

"Aw, I'm sorry, petal. Will you ever forgive me?"

You pretend to think about it, cocking your head sideways.

"That would depend."

"On what?"

"Mom! Dad!"

Your snarky response is cut off by the sound of small feet pattering on the marble floor, the front doors swinging open as a small figure runs straight to you and crashes into your legs. A spitting image of you and Coriolanus, your daughter, looks up from your knees before grasping onto her father's hand.

"Up, please."

Clearly amused by the sudden burst of energy in the room and his daughter's politeness even in moments of silliness, he crouches down and picks up the squealing child who comfortably settles into his arms.

"Guess what."

"What is it, honey?" you ask, brushing the stray hair out of her eyes.

"I got the highest score in my entire class on my math test."

"Wow, that's incredible, sweetheart." Coriolanus practically melts on the spot, bouncing the child up and down as she giggles into his neck. "You are the smartest person ever, Belle."

"Not as smart as mommy." she sasses in response, looking up at you for approval. You coo, ruffling her hair affectionately before looking up at your husband with raised eyebrows.

"See, Corio? Even our daughter is kinder to me than you are."

He rolls his eyes in response, left hand sneaking out to pull you in close as his lips kiss the top of your head.

"Nonsense. I love both my girls equally." he says, only for the picture perfect moment to be interrupted by another figure rushing into the room.

"Mrs Snow, the car's just arrived for you by the fr-" the intern freezes in his steps, having clearly caught the Snow family at a private time. You of course don't mind, just being amused by the situation, and your daughter is just curious at the new person who just walked in. All the while, Coriolanus' reaction couldn't be more different, his glare sharp and mean.

"I thought I made it clear, I don't want to ever be disturbed when I'm with my family. Unless it's an absolute emergency." Coriolanus states, his tone icy and unforgiving.

By the furrowing of his eyebrows and the cold stare in his eyes, you can already anticipate the flurry of murderous thoughts filling his head before you cut in. After all, the interrupting intern, a 17 year old boy by the name of Elijah, is only trying his best. And you find him oddly endearing and sweet, particularly with how badly he tries to impress your husband.

"It's fine, Elijah. Please ignore my husband's rude comment. I'll be right out."

Setting your daughter down, Coriolanus leans forward and growls into your ear, watching the young boy scatter away quickly.

"You're too nice to him, darling. Don't you think we should dispose of him and get a new intern...."

You slap his shoulder.

"What do I always tell you? No need to create unnecessary messes. Besides, he's really good with Belle and easy to control."

He smirks at that, irises filled pink.

"You're probably right. Can't have another bloody mess on your hands to clean up."

"Or vice versa."

He leans in close, cold lips touching your forehead.

"Nonsense, darling. I'd clean blood off of you forever."

And he truly means it.

a/n: andddd that's another major Corio fic down! thank you to everyone who showed me love on my last Corio oneshot ("melting snow") and for those who answered my poll - dark soft! and possessive Corio won out but girldad!Corio also got a TON of love so I included it a bit here and will probably write a whole standalone fic with girldad!Corio as the concept. thank you again to everyone for remaining patient, I had writer's block for a bit and I've just had the most awful few weeks ever (mental health wise and life wise) so it was difficult to find moments to write.

as always, please leave a like/comment/reblog/ask if you enjoyed. the interactions is what motivates me to write! I hope you liked it hehe x

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