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

[whatisay]

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.

Comments

[whatisay]

"That's better than nothing." Once upon the time the Compsons had stables before Jason's father sold them to fund his brother's education and his sister's sham marriage. "Never was much for horses myself, but I know some people who could lend us some thoroughbreds for shoots."

He was always too graceless, a clumsy child with no great love of nature or animals. He got kicked by one once, not hard, not enough to hurt him more than to leave bruises and tear-trails, and that was the end of that.

He pulls out a notepad and starts jotting things down. "What are you good at? Your file mentions the undead, so you must have some survival skills. Keep eating."

[schnapp]

He's being serious. He's being 100% serious, talking about photo shoots and stylists when one of the last things she remembers is the feeling of having a rusty pipe sticking out of her stomach. For one crazy moment, Beth almost wants to laugh. She picks up the fork and eats instead.

She could tell him about her singing, but she doesn't want to. That's something Beth clings to as one of her only comforts in a world where everything went wrong. The Capitol would twist it. They'd ruin it. She doesn't want to sing for them.

Instead, she shrugs.

"I bake pretty good chocolate chip cookies," she replies, aiming for glibness instead of honesty.

[whatisay]

Jason pauses on his notes, the skip of his pen coming to a sudden stop with a squeak. He raises an eyebrow; it seems bifurcated by the rim of his glasses. "Alright. That the only recipe you got?"

He jerks his head towards the Avox. "Add materials to the budget. Get a list of what she needs for it, but remember to go to the Seven-A for the flour, it's on discount. Take the funds out of this girl's makeup budget, Stig can do with a more plain-face look for her. If he complains he can take it up with me."

And Stig won't complain to Jason. Some people are appropriately scared. He turns back to Beth, one corner of his tight pulled tight like a purse-string.

"What is it you want? If you could get anything out of the Games..."

[schnapp]

It's actually kind of weird to see him take her seriously. Most people in the Capitol don't seem to care about what the tributes think. The people who interviewed her way back when for that one magazine article certainly hadn't. They'd twisted her words until they printed the opposite of what she'd said. But at the same time...it's chocolate chip cookies and he's approaching it like a battle plan.

"We're gettin' something out of the games? I thought we didn't have a choice. Since we're basically prisoners and all...." to be honest, she probably wouldn't want anything the Capitol gave her anyway.

[whatisay]

"You're feeding the people of District Seven. The children there. Every time someone from this District wins, the people there get food and supplies as a reward."

It's not that Jason really gives a shit about what the barbarians in the lumber District are getting to eat, but Tributes usually do, and some of them don't even know what it is that they're serving for.

"So. Baking." He waves the tip of his pen, as if physically drawing her back to the conversation they'd been having. "These home recipes or something?"

[schnapp]

"Or, you know, the government could just give them the food. Because it seems like they've got plenty to go around," she can just press a button and get a full meal delivered to her in seconds. Those kinds of resources seem ridiculous when it turns out other people don't have enough. Especially coming from a world where there were hardly any resources to share, and witnessing the brutality that inspired in people.

Just fucking give them the food.

Beth doesn't really swear, but this is making her want to.

"They were my mama's. Why, are you gonna put them in a book and sell them too?"

[whatisay]

"Does it look like I'm in charge of the government here?"

Jason nearly throws up his hand. He should be involved in the government here, and to be honest if he were giving food to the Districts would be an incidental concern, but as he isn't he has plausible deniability. A hypothetical, powerful Jason could be the most benevolent and influential politician Panem had ever seen, and no one can say it wouldn't happen that way.

"I was thinking videos, helping teach girls and boys how to cook so the Avoxes don't have to do it. Books don't have the longevity these days, and you have a pretty enough face." He makes another note in the margin of the schedule, handwriting crisp, the product of intensive tutoring he received as a child. "You know, Beth, you seem like the kind of person people should like, so I don't know why you're kicking against that so much when it'll get you food and medicine in the Arena."

[schnapp]

She's afraid of becoming the kind of person who justifies the means with whatever made up end that happens to suit the moment. It would be so easy, and so incredibly convenient. It feels like something that would be difficult to come back from.

But he just sort of called her pretty, and she's not really sure how to react? Because Beth hasn't thought of herself as anything in a long while. And mostly because she's not pretty in the way the Capitol seems to like, all perfect and airbrushed. Especially not with the scars slicing across her cheek and forehead.

They like their beauty standards unattainable and painful. Which would almost be familiar if she'd lived anywhere but the middle of nowhere.

She's still sort of staring at him for a couple seconds more.

"...You're not gonna make me get any weird surgeries, are you?"

Not that she'd go willingly, but they also don't get much of a choice in anything.

[whatisay]

He claps his hands together and slumps back in the seat, legs sprawling in a pose that's more catlike than professional. Something about Jason always makes him seem as if he's trying a little too hard to buck the idea of a servile, pleasant professional. As if this Escort position is a set of clothing that doesn't quite fit him and never has.

"Getting plastic surgery for you costs money from the District budget, and I can think of a hundred things we need before that." He doesn't see the issue with it in principle, though. "I've had surgery before, got my nose fixed. Like I say, it's not that bad. Weird place to put your foot down on."

It's not something that's hidden in the Capitol; if anything, some people flaunt it. That Jason comes from a family that had enough money to straighten his nose (had) is something he'd rather people know than not.

[schnapp]

"I meant more like...purple skin and horns," which is what some of the citizens of the Capitol seem to like. She's seen a lot of weird stuff since she got here. It's been kind of a culture shock the whole way through.

She finishes her breakfast, but everything seems to taste a little less delicious in light of all of this. Jason Compson literally has the ability to ruin the taste of food. It's kind of impressive. Beth looks around for a sink so she can do her dishes. But there isn't any dish soap or a sponge, and there's a tray where she's supposed to put her dishes so someone else can do them for her.

It's kind of funny how she was sort of looking forward to it. It's such a simple, normal thing. A regular part of an old routine. In the end, she ends up letting it get whooshed away by the machine with a sigh.

"So what do you get from all this? If you make me sell mascara for you, and I get supplies...what's in it for you?"

[whatisay]

"No purple skin and horns for you. It's never going to look as natural as it does on the trolls."

He waves a hand and the Avox all but flies over to the kitchen, taking the dishes from the rack and placing them in a cabinet that will whisk them to the Avox workroom downstairs, deep in the guts of the building where the Tributes aren't allowed.

"I get a paycheck. If you win, I might get a bonus, or even promoted to one of the Career Districts. I got a family to support, so believe it or not, I actually like getting paid."

See, Beth. Win an Arena and you can inflict him on District One or something.

[schnapp]

The avoxes don't look at her. She tries to make eye contact, just to say thank you, but they hurry along with their eyes cast downwards and they disappear from sight like they're constantly afraid of punishment.

It makes her angry to see them, and Beth has plenty of anger to spare these days. But it's really the mention of his family that has her expression softening. It serves to humanize him a little - or a lot. He's trying to support his family. In the Capitol way. As terrible as that is when you're looking at it from a tribute's perspective.

"Alright," it's the mention of family that ultimately has her agreeing to literally anything. Even though it's a tentative and delicate thing. "Fine. I'll do your...cooking thing, I guess."

At least it's the least-cringeworthy of the prospects.

[whatisay]

Jason breathes the first honest sigh of relief of the morning, and he doesn't realize how tense he had been until he does. The Tributes have been ratcheting up his blood pressure all morning and he didn't quite realize the moment he expected to have to drag them, kicking and screaming, into every single thing he's had planned.

He realizes, dully, that it was probably him mentioning family that got to her, and that sits uneasily with him.

"It's not a settled deal. For all I know you get horrible stagefright and are as photogenic as roadkill. But it'll be a start." He passes the schedule over to her, rolls the pen. "Write down a list of things you'll need to make a few recipes. I'll have the Avoxes do a shopping run today and make some phone calls."

[schnapp]

She doesn't know how photogenic she is. She's never had to think about that, to be honest. But Beth takes the pen and stares at the paper he's just passed her. She doesn't know if she ought to actually write down her mama's recipes. They're precious to her, and they contain cherished memories that she can't quite let go of.

After a moment, she writes: APPLE PIE in neat handwriting and underlines it. Then she writes down the basic ingredients - everything she can remember by heart before putting the pen down.

"Okay. Can I go now?"

[whatisay]

"Apple pie? That's it?" Jason presses his palm to his forehead and sighs, getting up off the couch as he does and then folding the schedule again and putting it in his pocket. "You can go, but the only direction you're going is down the hall to the Styling quarters. They got instructions for a refit for you."

He tugs at his jacket to straighten it. "Me, I got eight more of you to handle. I'll see you at noon. Don't be late."

And he disappears down the hallway to pound on the door of whichever Tribute hasn't woken up yet.