SPARK ✩ CORIOLANUS SNOW.¹

𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧.

          Jude awoke with a startle to hands gently touching his ribs, light feathery caresses over his skin.

His first instinct was to scramble backwards on the bed, scaling up the mountainous pillows, kicking out at the hands on him. His second instinct was to pause, considering the fact that he could move so easily at all.

"A salve," Snow said, holding up the fingers he was pressing into his stomach. "Heals wounds in a few hours time. It also..." He paused, waiting for Jude's nod of approval. Jude swallowed thickly, head dipping once. Snow's fingers began working soft strokes over the bruised bones of Jude's ribs again. "Numbs the area, I've heard."

"Heard, but don't know."

Snow's laugh was breathy. "Is the risk too much for you?" Jude hated to admit it, but he was already feeling the cooling effects of the salve unknot the blued skin. "Would you rather be in pain?"

Jude only grunted.

It was weird, he thought only to himself and not out loud, to sink into this casual routine with Snow. Snow, who kissed him all night the night before, their apartment reeking of burnt herbs and spices that Jude was only familiar with by taste, not name. Snow, who was his mentor in a set of Games that was surely to kill him.

Snow, who was the creator of such Games this year around.

The thought sent an icy chill of reality down his spine. His bones were already rigid and cool from the salve, but the realization further cemented the feeling in place.

Jude straightened further, relieved internally with the ease at which he could move. It was the second-to-last day of training with the group, and Jude had only gotten one day of it under his belt. He was at even more of a disadvantage than he already was.

There would be no bullshitting anymore.

Ruby was serious in his extended offer for alliance. Jude was serious now in his acceptance.

There was, truly, no other option.

"Where did you disappear to?" Snow's voice was a soft caress against the curve of Jude's mouth, drawing him back from the inner depths of his mind. His eyes snapped back into focus, locking in on the close proximity of the two of them.

Snow's white locks wisped across his forehead haphazardly, the ends dusting Jude's shoulders. His face was so close that, when he blinked, his strikingly dark eyelashes brushed against Jude's cheekbone.

And, most alarming of all, his lips were upturned in the makings of a smile. A smile.

Jude shoved him back by the shoulder, if only so he could breathe without having to share his breath.

"Just thinking about the rest of the week," he breathed out, and while it was technically a lie, it wasn't really.

Things had changed monumentally from Snow's initially scrawled schedule on that first afternoon.

There were still these next two days of training. They would be days three and four in the seven day week prior to the start of the 13th Games. However, on the fifth day, the Academy needed a day for the mentors to have meetings with their tributes. Jude was the least familiar with this day and what it would entail because his mentor up and left him for dead, so his circumstances were entirely different in this regard. The mentors were doing this for a grade; his mentor was doing this... for a test.

So Jude blocked this day out of the schedule in his mind, and planned to keep it out of mind until he had no choice but to endure it.

Day six was another new thing added to the lineup of pre-Games events. Something that Snow was testing out alongside the other publicity inspired events that came with this set of Games.