tw: slight sexual context
"Coryo, come on. Wake up."
Coriolanus had barely slept a few hours before Sejanus began to wake him up from his hungover, utterly exhausted slumber.
"Hey," Sejanus whispered. This time he felt him lightly shake his body. "Get up, Coryo, your girl is here."
"What?" He barely opened his eyes.
What was he talking about?
Liville was in the room?
"I don't care if you're hungover, you need to get up and go talk to her," Sejanus continued. "She's torn up right now. She sounds like she's crying her eyes out."
Coriolanus sat up in an instant, on his feet and walking out his door before he'd even fully woken up. He walked straight to Liville's room, pushing the door open. "Are you alright-"
"What the hell are you doing?" Sejanus asked, grabbing his shoulders and turning him around. "They're in the living room."
They?
Coriolanus finally came to full consciousness the second he spotted Lucy Gray on the couch. She was distraught, Liville consoling her the best she could.
"The hell is she doing here so early?" Coriolanus spoke out loud.
Both girls quickly turned their attention his way.
Sejanus criticized him, "Don't be rude to her." Sejanus couldn't stand the way Coriolanus spoke to women sometimes. He'd given the same attitude to girls in their class plenty of times in the past, even to Liville when she first arrived here. Sejanus figured it was that attitude that broke Coriolanus and Lucy Gray up the first time.
"They just let her leave the tavern," Liville spoke with a horrified tone of voice. "Since the fight. They've been there the whole time. They kept almost everyone there all night."
Coriolanus frowned. "What?"
"A peacekeeper got stabbed," Lucy Gray blurted out. "They didn't let anyone leave until they found out who did it."
"Everyone had to stay?" Coriolanus asked. His first thought went to the coal miners, and how most of them were supposed to be starting work in the next hour, and how hard his day would be if there was an issue with that.
"Not the officers," Lucy Gray said bitterly. "The other peacekeepers got to leave, it was everyone else who had to stay."
Coriolanus noticed her tone. "Well, it's not like a peacekeeper stabbed another peacekeeper."
Liville recognized his defensive tone. The one he'd use when he was overly patriotic, overly loyal to the Capitol. She tried to quiet him as she began, "We shouldn't-"
Lucy Gray suddenly snapped, "It's ain't like it wasn't a peacekeeper who started the whole fight."
Coriolanus blinked, taking a second to process the comment before spitting back, "Excuse me?"
"They're puttin' all the blame on us," Lucy Gray said. "On the Covey. Because Billy Taupe was Covey." She looked at Liville with devastated eyes. "We're not allowed back to The Hobb for a month."
Coriolanus relaxed, because the first thing to cross his mind was that Liville wouldn't be going to the tavern for a month if Lucy Gray didn't go.
"Maybe that's just what they have to say," Liville tried to tell her. "Maybe they won't enforce it-"
"They're enforcin' it. The officers said they'd permanently ban us if we're caught there before our time is up." Lucy Gray looked utterly distraught. "That's where all of our money comes from. We were supposed to get paid tomorrow, but they refusin' to even give us last week's earnin's."
