thecapitol | I Said This Life Ain't No Love Song [Open]

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I Said This Life Ain't No Love Song [Open]

WHO| Jason Compson and you!
WHAT| Jason meets his new Tributes and runs errands.
WHERE| D7 Suites, the elevator and lobby, and out getting groceries.
WHEN| After the broadcast.
WARNINGS| None yet.

LOBBY AND ELEVATOR

Jason Compson's never been the kind to get jitters on the first day of the job, and today's no different. It's not self-confidence so much as a sort of impenetrable aura of indifference, as if even the greatest catastrophe would be entirely dissipated before it impacted his ego. He's like a transient moving through phases in his life, dedicating himself to none. The task of maintaining the Compson name sucks all the concern out of him long before he can commit it to anything else.

Besides, he's done this before, wrangled Tributes for the cameras in District Ten. Seven's no higher up on the totem pole, and even if the Games have changed he doesn't expect the work will have. He's decent enough as an Escort, not particularly sociable but good with the connections he salvaged from his parents' name and quick to seize opportunities.

He has an electronic cigarette in his mouth before he even gets to the elevator, smelling vaguely of camphor and eucalyptus. The headaches have been better since he found vaporizers for those plants, and the white stick can be seen hanging off his lips near-constantly now. It doesn't look proper, but it's better than calling in sick half the time.

He doesn't walk across the lobby with the wonder or fear of one of the Tributes, nor is he dressed like one of the Stylists. He moves as if he has somewhere to get to, and any delay in getting there is a matter of his constitution rather than the importance of the place in question. His clothes are simple but contemporary, expensive enough to be fashionable but not enough to declare wealth.

The last time he was here, the whole place was different, the floors suited to a handful of people instead of a baker's dozen. In the elevator, he reaches for the button that says '10' in embossed text, then pauses, remembering his change in position, and hits '7'.

DISTRICT SEVEN

Figures that they're all sleeping in. That Jason arrived while dawn was still smudging light into the horizon doesn't really occur to him; the point is that he's working and his charges are snoring and drooling on themselves like pigs in a sty. He snaps at an Avox to start brewing some coffee and loosens his collar, resting on a couch with a device telling him about some more hubbub on Panem Nightly. He has no respect for people making fools of themselves on television, but he supposes that's why he's backstage, helping shove people into costumes and telling them to smile while he scowls.

When each waking Tribute comes to the kitchen, he doesn't get up from the couch.

"About time you get up and moving. You'd think we were running a coma ward with how much activity there is around here."

GROCERIES

If Jason had it his way, the Avoxes would be doing this, but the last time he sent them to buy food they got the wrong sort of seafood and he had to listen to his mother act as if she'd been poisoned for the better part of a week. If he really had it his way, he'd be living off of boiled noodles and toast, rather than spending his hard-earned money on fresh produce for his invalid mother. Instead, he's in an upscale market, examining turnips like some old biddy and brushing elbows with Avoxes and Tributes and all sorts of people beneath him. He can only hope that not too many people who recognize his face will see him here.

He makes a list of what items are on sale, what he can tell the District Seven Avoxes to substitute to save money in the Tribute budget for something else. When he's selected everything, he makes sure it'll be shipped home so he doesn't have to carry it through the streets. And when he leaves, it's back to the camphor cigarette, and for as desperate as he was to get out of that crowded and unpleasant store, he finds he's no more excited to go back home. He all but drags his feet on his way to his car.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Look it up." Jason waves a hand, then brings it back into his pocket to fish for a folded-up schedule. He finds one with Ruffnut's name and pulls it out, flattening it against the coffee table to see what notes he's made for her.

The Avox lingering around the corner of the room refills his cup with coffee. He takes a long sip and winces a bit as it goes down, too hot for comfort.

"It's nearly nine. I hope you're rested, because your schedule is booked for the whole day. You'll be on your feet until midnight."

Yeah she'd get right on that. Never.

Her sleepy eyes blinked into confusion listening to his words and finding them hard to process. Clearly she must still be dreaming because it sounded like this guy was giving her chores.

"Huh?" She grunted in her most intelligent rebuttal. Surely Jason must be impressed with her keen grasp of the current situation as she looks half ready to retreat to bed and try to sleep away this situation.

"What are you talking about? What book? I hate reading."

Scoring further respect points with that statement no doubt.

Jason sighs deeply, not bothering to hide his exasperation. He decides not to put his cigarette away quite yet and instead pulls out his glasses. A button on the side flicks them between clear and shades, but he keeps them transparent for now.

"Your schedule is all laid out, and so help me, you're going to follow it. I didn't spend the last week setting up appointments and making phonecalls for you to sleep through my hard work." He gestures to the Avox, who brings Ruffnut a breakfast of eggs, oatmeal and protein drink. "Now swallow that up and get over here so we can go over what you're doing. I don't want to ask twice."

She's about to question him further and possibly protest, as is viking tradition to most things new and confusing. But food appears and she is sidetracked instantly.

Vikings love a feast, in part because food can be hard to come by sometimes and only the strict guidance of the chief ensures they don't go hungry. Being in the Capitol where food is in excess all the time has been part of what allows Ruffnut to live here and follow enough rules not to get killed. Food has made her more complacent and tolerant of the parts of the Capitol she thinks are stupid...which is a lot.

Her first sip of the protein drink makes her pull a face. It was not as sweet and flavorful as most of the drinks in the Capitol so it took her by surprise. But she didn't complain and continued her meal in silence, keeping half an eye on Jason the whole while.

Once she was finished and the Avox took away the empty plates she let out an impressive burp and shuffled over to him flopping down into a chair.

"So...why are we doing what now?" She finally asked looking him up and down again still trying to sort out what new kind of Capitolite she was meeting. He seemed different from the others she'd met already.

"You got a good appetite." Jason starts writing things down on his schedule, cramming smaller words into a margin with a different-colored pen. She could be used in food advertisements, maybe. When he learned he was getting a teenage girl he thought clothing or makeup or hair products, but none of those seem the type of merchandise to go with the messy braids or angular lines or slack jaw on the face in front of him. "We're doing this so I can feed you in the Arena, like I say. And then you can win this thing and I can get a bonus. No point in mincing words."

For his part, Jason mostly survives on coffee in the mornings. He doesn't like to eat until the evening. He takes a few sips of his unsugared coffee as he watches her, feeling vaguely ill at the sound of her smacking and chewing. He flattens the schedule with his palm.

"First, I'm getting to know you. Then, we're getting you fitted and your casual clothes are getting tailored. Then I'm taking you to some focus groups to see how they respond to you."

"Thanks." She shoots back through a mouthful of food before swallowing. A good appetite was an admirable trait even if food sometimes was scarce and had to be rationed.

The idea of having support in the arena appealed to Ruffnut. She hadn't gotten much of it in the past and without Hiccup and Astrid around to make her look better she was pretty much on her own. Or at least she had been till now.

At least he was being straightforward with her. The Capitol was full of people who knew how to say one thing and mean another and Ruffnut wasn't equipped to suss out the meaning behind fake smiles.

"And all of that is gonna make people like me?" She concluded trying to stumble down the path he was laying out in front of her with his explanation. with her long list of bad behavior in the past such as spitting on people at fancy parties, throwing wine at Sigma during Clara Murphy's crowning and of course the fiasco with the prison break that never was, Ruffnut found it hard to believe that the city would forgive and forget so easily.

"No, that's going to tell me what I have to do to get people to like you. My work isn't over after that, and neither is yours." He taps at the schedule with the edge of his pen. "You've got a red flag next to your name in your file, girl. I can't have you acting like that at public events anymore."

She's far from the only one like that in the District, much less out of the Tributes, but it's enough of an issue that Jason wants to stamp it out now.

She snorted at the idea that he had to work hard to make people like her. Why should she care how many of these bubble headed citizens liked her? Aside from the free stuff they gave her it's not like she wanted to spend MORE time with them.

"What's wrong with red flags? I like Red. It's my third favorite color." She protested completely missing the point.

"A red flag. Don't be an idiot. A mark on your file that says I need to keep you on a tighter leash." Jason sneers and leans forward. "Believe me, I got no issues tightening a leash enough to choke you, so you'll want to cooperate with me."

Telling Ruffnut not to be an idiot was really more like a challenge in her mind. But the way he got in her face and threatened her took some of the fun out of it. She sneered back twisting up her face into her best grimace.

"Big deal. You choke me I'll just pass out or die or whatever." It was easy to be tough outside of the arena, she was born and raised to be tough even if a lot of it was bluster and years of practiced responses.

"It's a turn of phrase." Jason doesn't need to append 'moron' to the end of that sentence. "The point is, I'm on your side, but that doesn't mean that I'm going to be a pushover. You follow my rules and you might win one of these Arenas. You don't and you aren't going to be happy."

His sternness, just the hint of a scowl, seems all the crueler than her grimace.

She stares him down for a moment longer, then strangely enough her face relaxes into a smirk. She looks strangely comforted by his attitude. It's been a long while since someone spoke to her like this and it's almost like getting a taste of home life.

"I'm not very good at following rules." She smirked with the dumbest expression of self satisfaction on her face. Like somehow an inability to follow established guidelines was a point of pride for her. "What do you want me to do?"

"Get better at following rules," he shoots back, sounding irate. By now, he's starting to think she's one of the slower Tributes, if not physically than mentally. Which, fine, he can work with, and it might even be better than a brain with a mind of its own, but it's still not fun.

Nothing about being Escort is fun to Jason.

"I'm going to talk to you a bit and come up with a strategy for selling you to the Capitol. Then I'm switching out your whole wardrobe and taking you to the gym so you can show me how competent you are." The way he says 'competent' implies, a little more with each syllable, that he doesn't even think it's applicable for Ruffnut.

Well he's not wrong. If given an IQ test Ruffnut would be hard pressed to get farther then putting her name on the paper. His quickly souring mood amuses her though so she nods while he explains his plans. A quick scowl when he mentions her wardrobe falls into place however.

“Yeah these outfits are stupid. Where’s all the leather and studs? And I want another helmet. A proper one with horns. Not those cheap plastic things they keep having me sign when I’m out in the streets.”  Of course Ruffnut had already been told she wasn’t allowed a helmet with horns. They could too easily be turned into a weapon and considering her past behavior Ruffnut was lucky she was allowed to eat with a fork.

“Everyone looks like…sparkly and those dresses look impossible to move with. And some of them are barely anything at all! How do you people not freeze to death!?” A few months worth of confusion and frustration was coming out here.

"You want leather and studs? You want a helmet?" Jason glances up, then jots some notes on his schedule, images of putting Ruffnut in dark eyeliner and tight pants crossing his mind. Of chokers, spikes, streaks of pink and blue in her blonde hair.

"Rest assured I've got no interest putting you in a dress, even if we did get the Style team to shave your legs some." He actually looks nearly amused. "No sparkles for you. I've got an idea for where to go with this."

She looks unsure at first, but relaxes slowly into a smirk. If this guy means it maybe Capitol life won't be so bad.

The legs comment makes her pull a face. "Every time I get out of the arena they wax me from the neck down. You know how long it takes to get my back hair just the way I like it? I mean the waxing part feels really awesome and hurts like crazy but I feel all weird and smooth after. Like a baby or something." And that just wasn't the viking way of doing things.

"Don't be such a child about it. Waxing doesn't hurt you much and the smooth feeling's the point. Even I get it done some places." He's a Capitol Citizen. It'd be weird if he weren't getting certain treatments and spiffings. If Ruffnut knew to look, and looked very closely, she'd even be able to see the miniscule, tell-tale scars in the crease around each nostril from the nosejob he got as a teenager.

"Can you play any instruments?"

She's so thrown off by his willing confession that he gets things waxed that she almost misses his next question. Seriously why would people WANT to remove body hair?

"Drums." She declares with some amount of confidence. "My brother and I were the best drummers on Berk."

Which is to say they were the most willing to thump sticks on drums as hard and fast as they could. Keeping a rhythm was something that came only when they were forced into it. Honestly she was just in it for the noise and the pounding headaches later.

"Did other people agree with that assessment?" Jason asks, zeroing in on Ruffnut's obliviousness to others, already reading her flaws into her. "Because that makes a difference."

If all Ruffnut's good at is making noise and annoying people, then she's got a much smaller and less lucrative audience than if she has any actual talent. Maybe if he moved her to a different instrument it wouldn't matter; she could fake it and backing tracks could work the magic.

"Have you ever played a guitar?"

"What's an assessment?" No she did not know the word. Yes she could guess but now she was doing it in small part to poke the bear. Some people had short tempers and she needed to know where the line was with Jason.

When he asked the next question though she shook her head and for a moment actually stopped to think about it.

"That's kinda complicated isn't it? I mean...three strings that make different music? How does that even work?" She was almost positive such complex matters were beyond her.

But...she did like the sounds she'd heard in the music store that day with Beth.

"How you describe yourself." Jason wonders for a moment if dealing with dimwitted is even more difficult than dealing with outright retarded. Benjy may scream and cry constantly, but Jason's vocabulary for dealing with him only needs to be as limited. Shut up, shut up. He interacts less with Benjy than with telling other people how to handle him.

"It's six, not three. There's four on a bass." Maybe bass would work. He makes more notes, looking exhausted already. "The strings vibrate and- no, you won't understand it. I'm not marketing you as the brains here."

Well talking about herself was easy she supposed and clearly he wasn't expecting her to be anything but honest.

"Well my brother and I-" She started and had to correct herself. It had been months since she'd seen him. "I mean I've always been kinda wild. Our family is descended from Berserkers on our mom's side. So we just...have fun you know? We like to smash stuff, blow stuff up, fight, and hit our heads together." Even with her original correction she couldn't help but talk more about the "we" of her life then just who she was without Tuffnut.

"We like that feeling you get you know? That rush? When you're hurt or when you're in danger and everything feels so clear and bright and it's like...everything feels more...everything!"

Which was the best way she could come up with describing her love of adrenaline rushes.

"Thinking too much just gets in the way of fun." She concluded agreeing with his initial statement that yes...brains was not the way to go.

Maybe Jason's inclinations to try and cast her as some kind of punk were a good snap judgment. He nods a little as she talks, not looking satisfied but at least not scowling as hard as he had been.

"Alright, well, blowing things up works well for me, but you need to have some sense of self-preservation or you're not going to like what you wake up to." Fear, it turns out, penetrates stupidity more often than not, and threats come easily to Jason. He hopes it'll work here.

"When you feel like that, do you actually act more purposefully or do you just get an adrenalin rush and that's it?"

He wasn't the first person to warn her about taking such foolish risks and if she was lucky he wouldn't be the last. The next question flew right over her head and she needed a moment to track it down and sort it out in her head.

"Wait so you mean like...do I act smarter after I've gotten a rush off of things like nearly dying?"

She'd never actually thought about it before.

"Not smarter I don't think...but I'm happier does that help?"

In her case it did because if she was happy she was more willing to take her time and actually think about her actions before doing them. Unhappy Ruffnut was even more impulsive then usual.

"No. Not really." Jason doesn't really give a sweet damn about how happy Ruffnut is so long as she wins. In fact, most people perform better under some form of stress, although usually just being one of his Tributes would be pressure enough.

"You're going to need to pick your battles with your adrenalin rushes. I don't want to see you getting cut to pieces doing something stupid and flashy without a plan. You do me no good dead."

I Said This Life Ain't No Love Song [Open]

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oh god he's dressing her up as Avril Lavigne

/Instantly adds Avril Lavigne songs to Ruffnut's playlist

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/wrap