thecapitol | If you ever get to the place where the sun is shining everyday

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If you ever get to the place where the sun is shining everyday

Who| Swann and maybe you???
What| Gotta shape up these Tributes. And maybe have a drink.
Where| D8 Suites and also the bar in the lobby
When| TODAY

a. District 8 Suites
Swann enters the Suite with her heels clicking on the floor, peering around for any sign of life in here. She carries in her shopping bags, each labeled with the name of her Tributes. The bags overwhelm her tiny frame, the sheer amount of them and their size. Even her sky-high stilettos can't balance it all out.

She approaches the sitting room and carefully arranges the bags on the coffee table, placing them just so, very intent on the appearance. She wants everything to look just right when the Tributes come in, wants to see their eyes light up at how pretty the bags are, with their pristine edges and rich black shine and ribbons on the handles.

They have to show up first, though.

b. Lobby bar

All she needed was a single lemon drop martini, and she has it. Sitting on the high barstool, Swann looks out over the lobby, watching people come and go, watching the crowds ebb and flow as the Tributes enter and leave the building. It's interesting enough, made nicer by the drink, and the screens replay all the best scenes from the past Arena.

She occasionally fiddles with her communicators, checking emails and messages and the tabloids, making sure everything's in order while she dares to lounge for just a few moments.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Jolie may be a woman half-time but I don't think there's any actual drop in testosterone going on." Jason takes a drink of his water, slipping an ice cube into his mouth and sucking it in his cheek.

"I'll lend you Ruffnut. I actually got plans for Beth, she's stubborn but she'll be easy enough to market." There's no fondness in Jason's voice, just a sort of lack of animosity. Being in Jason's good graces is really just the absence of malice. "I'll trade you for Brock Samson."

Edited 2015-01-15 07:52 (UTC)

"No!" Swann is actually just a little indignant. "I need Brock, he's the most cooperative one I have."

And the only one who's actually somewhat nice to her. In just one afternoon, she's already feeling pretty beaten down up on the eighth floor.

"If I thought we were actually allowed to trade, I'd trade you Joel for any of yours." It's said with a pout and obvious hurt, like she doesn't even particularly want to mention Joel. Because he made her cry. And after she tried so hard! "I think I can actually work with the rest of them. But Joel... well, he's not very nice."

Which is just Swann-speak for I absolutely detest him and wish he was dead.

"We don't need our Tributes to be nice. We need them to be deadly." Jason clucks as if he were a wise Escort bringing his years of service into play, imparting wisdom on Swann. "Fine, I could take Joel. He'd be easy enough to fit into District Seven's aesthetic. Lumber, it's a step lateral from cattle, and here I am still having to deal with my charges being smart as cows anyway."

Whine whine bitch moan, Jason takes another drink and continues to commiserate with his old acquaintance. Escort life.

"But you have to take Dorian. The sooner that one dies in the Arena and gets out of my hair, the better."

"Deadly in the Arena!" she protests lightly, gesturing vaguely in the air. "He was so mean to me, and besides, he's not even that good in Arena, based on his track record. And he won't let anyone help him, how can I get a Victor from someone who... who's so obstinate?"

Swann sips at her drink and leans her head on one hand, elbow propped on the bar as she watches Jason. "Who is Dorian? What's wrong with him that you'd trade him for my worst?"

"Well, neither of us have great Districts for the Arena. You seen mine? Most of them call it quits two weeks in, and that's not even counting the ones who don't want to win." Jason's voice, thick with the water he's just swallowed, drips disdain, the same way it does when he discusses Avoxes. He couldn't fit more disgust into his tone if he tried.

"Dorian's determined to undermine me at every turn because he doesn't like the way I run a District. Maybe he'd be more fond of a lighter touch. You know I wouldn't spare Joel the rod."

She shrugs.

"Who's to say they can't win, though? Six almost never won before the Never-Ending Quell, and now look at them. They're practically the new One!" Her airy, cheerful tone is a direct contrast, and she doesn't even seem to notice the hatred in his tone. "Maybe they'll surprise us."

Her communicator pings and she briefly glances at it before tucking it back in her purse, deeming the notification less important than an old acquaintance.

"Unfortunately, I don't think we're allowed to trade them like phone numbers, because I actually think I'd take you up on it."

"True, and half of Six's Victors weren't anything to get excited over. Maybe we can even polish up some turds if we dump enough gifts on them in the crucial weeks."

He sends his glass back.

"Oh, can't we, though?" Jason sighs and pulls out the electronic cigarette he carries with him everywhere, swapping out the eucalyptus vapor cap inside for a cinnamon one. "I imagine it'd make it so much more interesting if Escorts were allowed to handpick their teams. Think of the competition."

Swann winces ever so slightly at his word choice, but takes the final drink from her glass anyway and sends it off. Her mouth quirks up and she taps her index finger against her cheekbone.

"It'd be a bloodbath worthy of the Cornucopia and you know it, Jason," she says, teasingly. "And if I had to place a bet between you and Lady Cerise in a fight for Bucky Barnes, my money's on her."

She watches him work with his cigarette -- she's never been a smoker, so it's marginally interesting. "You're going to shorten your life with that thing, you know."

"She can have Bucky Barnes, I'll take Molotov Cocktease. Do you know the things I could do with that woman and a few interested sponsors?"

He clicks it on - the little blue light at the tip glows - and takes a deep, scented drag.

"I already have one mother, Honeymead. When she dies maybe you can audition for the part, but until then I'll do what I want to my body." He raises his eyebrows and rolls his eyes at her, then holds it out to her. "It's a vaporizer. Carries medicine, soothing smells, no nicotine. Means I can avoid going to the doctor more often than not."

"She already has half the Capitol wrapped around her finger, I don't know that you could even find her more sponsors."

She holds her hand up in surrender, not particularly up to be snapped at over such a silly thing on a day like today. He always was so short with people, she never knew why. But Swann looks at the vaporizer with mild interest, simply as someone seeing how something works for the first time.

"I don't recall you being sickly. Are you all right?"

It's said with such sincerity, for no reason other than she doesn't know how to react except with sympathy.

"Oh, believe me, I still have some old Compson connections."

Jason looks surprised, as if he's waiting for her to append something to turn it into a guilt trip, the same way his mother does. "I'm fine. I just get headaches. Worse when the Tributes stress me out."

And out of some nearly-neurotic effort to not appear weak, to not fall into the same category of simpering and helpless and sick in the head as his siblings, he refuses to go to a doctor about the migraines that incapacitate him on a too-frequent basis. He places the vaporizer in her hand.

"Here, it's cinnamon. Press that button and you can take a drag."

There's a moment where Swann just sort of blinks at her hand, unprepared to take a foray into smoking a sort-of cigarette, or whatever it is. But... well, Jason wants her to, and if she doesn't do it, then he'll probably be angry and leave, and weren't they having a fairly nice conversation?

She holds the vaporizer delicately between her fingers, her pink fingernails clicking against each other as she adjusts it to put the end between her lips. When the vapor is released, she breathes it in the way she thinks she's supposed to, and it's not terrible -- it has a nice enough scent and flavor.

But she can't help coughing when she tries to breathe the smoke out, the back of her throat scratchy and irritated from the new sensation.

Jason reaches over and takes the cigarette from her, wiping it on a kerchief from his pocket before putting it back into his mouth. He has the slightest smirk, although whether he's amused at her difficulty or just glad she played along is up to interpretation.

"Just a calming scent. You get used to it after long enough." He pushes his glass over water over to her. "Here, that'll sort you out."

Swann is still coughing into her hand when he gives her the water, and she immediately takes it up to drink like a beached fish. Only when half the glass is gone does she put it down and take a gasp for air.

She leaves a lipstick ring on the edge of the glass.

"That hurts," she says, her voice thick, looking at him like she's a bit wounded he didn't warn her.

"Didn't mean to hurt you. I'm so used to it I don't even notice." And as if to prove the point, he takes a deep long breath of it, exhaling the vaguely brick-colored smoke out through his nose.

He glances at the lipstick ring, then back at her. "You can keep the glass now. I make it a point never to get a woman's lipstick anywhere near me."

She pulls a hanky from her purse, pink and embroidered with a pair of white swans, kissing so their necks form a heart. She wipes delicately at her mouth, arching her eyebrow high when he says that.

"You only like boys now, Jason?"

It's said without any air of judgement or even feeling -- the only real tone is mild surprise, perhaps. If the Compsons are known for anything, it's hardly their devotion to celibacy.

This time, it's him who coughs on the cigarette vapor. He raises his eyebrows at her.

"No, that's not what I meant. It's just- I don't want to be tied down. Same as any man." He coughs into his fist again and knocks on the bar for more water.

"I couldn't date anyway. My mother would claim I was trying to kill her from the stress of paying attention to anyone more than her."

She only looks at him in return, like she doesn't really understand how lipstick marks on a glass he offered ties him down to anyone.

"Well, don't you think you're missing out on something?" She sips at the water. "I know you have some family troubles, but surely you'd like to have someone around. In fact, I don't really remember you ever being linked to anyone."

Swann's last boyfriend left a few years back, when she became a persona non grata. It hadn't helped with her spiral into depression, which only exacerbated her need for approval and love. She didn't need it to be romantic love, but it was nice enough anyway, and she'd been glad to have it at the time.

"Of course I'm missing out on something. That just doesn't mean the old bitch is going to loosen her hold." He shrugs. "Whatever, she'll be dead soon. Then maybe I'll see what I've been missing out on."

It's always difficult to tell if Jason means it when he speaks ill of his mother. On one hand, the hatred is palpable; on the other, a few years back when the Compsons were audited, the records showed that every cent Jason made went right to Caroline's personal account. It had been such a surprise it had made the blotters for a half-second.

"What about you? Last I heard you were with Whatsisface, the guy with the big teeth." He contorts his mouth, pulls his lip back to sneer and make buck teeth.

"We broke up a while ago. Nothing important. It just ended."

She finally looks away from him, to frown at the glass of water he left her, her hands folded in her lap. He shouldn't talk about her ex that way. He's so mean, but he's not mean to her, at least not directly, and she doesn't know how to feel about that.

"You shouldn't talk about your mother like that," she says quietly, still not looking at him. "Your mother loves you."

Everyone knows that Jason is his mother's whole world. Hell, Swann remembers it even from childhood, at the parties her mother never attended because she was always at the beach for sun, or breathing fresh mountain air for her head. Wherever it was that Swann wasn't.

There is a brief moment when she says it that she doesn't care if Jason gets mad at her or leaves, because no matter how bad he has it in other ways, he will never know what it's like to have a mother who chose the world over him.

"Yeah? Look at my competition. She couldn't well give all that loving to my brothers and sister." Jason juts out his lower lip and then takes another long lungful of smoke. "She loves me to death."

Then he looks at Swann as he sucks in again, exhaling the smoke across the rings on her finger, across the perfectly-manicured nails when she brings her hands back up. He tries to see through her, analyze her, read everything about what she's saying and the girly makeup as if it were a checklist of all her secrets.

"Mrs. Honeymead wasn't a very good mommy, was she, Swann?" There's a smirk there, a little basking in someone else's unhappiness. "No worries. Grass is always greener. I would have expected you to be her little angel, though."

She takes her hands away when the smoke crosses them, balls them into fists that she presses into her skirt. The crinoline underneath the brocade silk crinkles from the pressure, folds and makes room in the dip where one thigh crosses over the other.

"Well you must love her just as much back, or else you wouldn't stay." It's still quiet, like she's intimidated to say anything but compliments loudly, and even the pitch of her voice has lowered, from the docile, sweet highness it usually bears. "The only thing keeping you there is you. So why complain? You could leave them to fend for themselves, if you're really so unhappy."

The whole time, Swann has kept her gaze fixed on the counter, as if there's a spot there that hypnotizes her.

"Viatrix is a fine mother," and it's a lie that comes easily, after all these years of telling it. "I couldn't ask for anything more."

Edited 2015-01-21 05:50 (UTC)

"Oh yeah, that's just what the Compsons need. Abandonment. It'd really complete the picture, wouldn't it?" But no, Jason thinks, Swann doesn't understand it. Jason himself doesn't understand it most days, when he gets up out of bed disappointed that the house didn't burn down in his sleep. "There's a lot of things that motivate people besides love. You know that. You reported on it plenty."

He makes a sound that's almost like a laugh, but dryer, and kind of sad. Like the remains of life in a pressed flower. He watches Swann, not lustful, not hungry, but maybe some echo of amused by the way she stripped out all that syrup from her voice.

"Okay. You always call her by her first name?"

"And you think you'll save your family's reputation?"

She finally flags down the bartender for another drink, her hand steady when she reaches for it.

"I did report on those things, a lot. Helps you learn about people and the way they tick, you know? And you're not staying for money, or because you have some dark secret lurking around, or because you're legally obligated. So all that you have left are love and pride, Jason, keeping you around. But maybe it's just that you secretly like it. Because you know that if you leave and go make some kind of life away from them, that you can't blame them if you're still angry and mean."

There's a long sip, and she finally turns her gaze back to him, blinking slowly over an intense look, her lashes long and dark but not fake like so many other peoples'. It takes a fair amount to make Swann drop her sweet little girl act, and she hates doing it, but she didn't become a television power player without a layer of shrewdness and cutthroat cunning behind it all.

"Sound about right? And my mother prefers hearing her name. Makes her feel young."

For a good solid moment, he considers putting a hand around her throat. He never would, of course. He couldn't. But for a moment he considers what it would be like to watch that pale throat tense up, to flush red and mottled white, and that's what keeps him from getting up and walking away. That fantasy of a world very different than this one, where no one could sink their fingers under his flesh like that and walk away protected by the trappings of society or decency.

Because she may be right, on some level, and it's not like he walked into this conversation hoping for her to psychoanalyze him. Hoping for her to ghost her fingers over his brain until the static electricity made some of the sinewy little nerves perk up.

"Seltzer, bartender." His hand is steady too, but artificially so, almost stiff and rigid. Then he finally looks back at Swann, and her neck is still pale, her lashes low. "I must have hit a nerve to get you to retaliate like that."

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