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.

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She handles his clothing as briefly and sparingly as possible -- by the time he gets out of the shower, all of the garbage he has on will be gone (burned, hopefully), and replaced with nicer, more luxurious, clean versions. Only his hat will survive, and he won't have a chance to wash it himself, because Swann knows an Avox or two who would love to rid their work environment of that level of filth.

Swann's gotten so used to him just letting her go at it that she starts a little when he takes her hands, blinking up at him with big, doelike eyes and an equally in-the-headlights expression. There's a moment where she's too focused on his teeth to answer, and then she yanks her hands away to wring them before reaching for the knobs.

"Okay, um, well -- you might want to move -- you just turn this one." The water sprays on, whether he's moved or not. "And this one, and just sort of adjust them until you find a temperature you like! All the water will just go down the drain on its own."

She turns the water off, then clicks through the draining water to the bath products. "And this is shampoo, you clean your hair with it. Just put some on your hands and then, you know, you work it into your hair and rinse it out. And conditioner, you do the same, that makes your hair soft. The face wash and body wash are labeled, so you know which is which. And then you just grab the towel from that bar when you're done and dry off!"

Her smile has reappeared, seemingly unable to stray from her face for very long. "Got it?"

He doesn't make it away fast enough, and the cool water sprays him for a couple good seconds before the pirate is able to properly dart out of the way -- and it manages to partially soak the back of his linen shirt, either way, giving him a short jolt of cold. That wasn't particularly the outcome the pirate had aimed for with that comment, but all the same.

The smirk on his face softens and fades to something more mild as Swann continues to explain it all in detail, and at the end of it the pirate folds both hands together and grins.

"Aye aye. Clear as a bright, cloudless day, luv. You've been a monumental help."

Whether the pirate actually follows her instructions would remain to be seen. At least he's aware of his options at this point.

"Wonderful," she says, beaming at him, then takes a step backwards, out of the shower, and closes the door, trapping him.

She leans her weight against the frosted glass of the door so that he can't get out without pushing her away, and calls to him. "Now take a shower, Jack. Right now! Just turn on the water and throw your other clothes over the glass!"

She's out before Jack can get a word in edgewise, using herself as a barricade against the door. Of course, it'd be easy enough with his strength to push his way back out and escape from this absurd situation. But, in all honesty, the pirate was intrigued by the shower; back in his time, after a few rough months at sea, generally a quick scrub in local river or lake with freshwater would be sufficient enough to be called clean for the next few weeks. So being able to control not only when the water came out but its temperature, at will, was amazing.

It doesn't stop the nearly inaudible sigh in his throat and slight eye roll, however, because of how apparently and utterly preoccupied the Capitol natives seem to be with his hygiene -- so much so that Swann had to resort to this.

Jack slings off the shirt from his torso, pulls his breeches off, then tosses both over the top for her to deal with. His hand flits across both shower knobs, briefly, then he switches on the hot water. The first couple seconds douse him in a cool splash of water, then it starts to leisurely warm itself up. As it does, the pirate reaches for the collection of bottles that Swann had pointed out to him, popping open the top to the body wash and pouring an overly large amount onto his hand. The consistency of it is ... weird, to say the least, and initially Jack merely uses a finger from his other hand to rub at it and then takes a short sniff of it.

"Oh! Fruity."

Which is about the time the shower decides to finish heating up and turns hot -- causing him to let out a high-pitched yelp -- and a loud, short string of curses -- then yank the cold knob on.

"By all that's great and good, bloody hell."

His clothes fall to the floor, and Swann already has an Avox at the door, one who swoops in to take those clothes away. Far, far away. To the incinerator, maybe.

Once the shower starts up, she gently moves away from the door, taking a seat on a small decorative bench near the door, waiting to ensure that he's not about to run out naked and shrieking from a desire to avoid bathing. The Avox returns with a new set of clothes on a hanger, a silk shirt reminiscent of the one he's discarded, and a pair of tight, brocade trousers, black on black.

"Are you all right, Jack?" she calls, looking at her nails.

A muffled noise comes from somewhere inside the shower, then Jack calls out from it, "Aye, fine as can be. Don't worry yourself about it." Well. Relatively fine. He'd rather not be in this situation to begin with, being essentially babysat and humiliated like this by a Capitolite, but such is his life now. Apparently.

None of which will stop him from adding, "As it happens to be, were you to fancy it, there's more than enough room for two in here." He's already figured it's gonna get him next to nowhere by this point, but Jack will never resist a chance to take a jab.

It'll be a couple minutes later when the water switches off. "D'you have me effects at hand?"

"Jack," she answers, and her tone indicates amused scolding more than anything else. "I'm staff, you're a Tribute. You have to remember that."

When the water turns off, she takes the new outfit provided by the Avox, and cracks the shower door to hand it through, still on the hanger.

"Be sure to dry your hair well, I doubt that style can easily be blow-dried."

And there's a quieter underpinning of sarcasm that shades his response to her. "Oh, o' course, luv, how foolish. I'd nearly forgotten that."

He takes the clothes that are offered through the partially opened door, and wrinkles his brow.

"What's all this, then?" Definitely not his old clothes.

"Your clothes!"

Swann, honestly, doesn't know why Jack would have thought she'd give the old, disgusting ones back. He clearly needed a new set of clothing, and so she got him one.

"They're nice, right?"

His clothes.

That. What. No. Swann no.

She can't see it but Jack makes a face at that, indignant. "Nice or not at all, where are my old ones?" He definitely expected his old clothes back, because they were rightly his.

She sort of blinks at the door, then tells a lie that comes extremely easy, simply because his old clothes were so disgusting that it doesn't even matter.

"I sent them to be cleaned. You'll get them back in a day or two."

Or never.

Sure, they'd discussed getting him new clothes earlier, but Jack hadn't thought that meant his old ones would be disappearing right now. Damn it all.

He takes a moment to lean his forehead against the damp wall of the shower and close his eyes, muttering under his breath. Then, finally, "My hat?"

"Um, hat... hat, hat, hat, hat..."

Right on cue, an Avox appears with the hat, which has been cleaned until it looks like new, and Swann sighs with relief.

"I have your hat, Jack. Get dressed and you can have it back."

He dries himself off with a towel, patting at his hair a little longer for her sake, then eyes the clothes on the hanger. He slips the silk shirt on easily, then rubs a patch of the brocade trousers between his fingers. It wasn't a material that the pirate was horribly used to, as it was usually reserved more for those graced with money and privilege.

That isn't quite the problem, however, when Jack puts it on. He eventually emerges from the shower, dreadlocks still mostly soaked, and tugs uncomfortably at the tight material with a grimace. "Quite a bit snug, these pants." He's definitely used to the more breezy, loose, and comfortable cotton breeches that he'd come with.

He takes the offered hat from the Avox as well, giving it a once over and realizing it'd been thoroughly cleaned. "And I coulda taken care of that, luv."

"Oh, but you look nice!" she counters, looking pleased, hands clasped excitedly in front of her chest. "And isn't it nice to have clean clothes and a shower and everything? I bet you feel so refreshed."

It does not concern her that he's uncomfortable in his new clothes. He's suddenly sprayed with cologne, and then she's fluttering out of the bathroom, still talking.

"And see, now, I can send you on camera to talk to people yourself! That's the best way to get Sponsorship, is to let your personality be seen by the viewers."

She breezes past his last comment and continues on with that perpetual perkiness of hers to Jack's exasperation. He's still trying to readjust the pants when the pirate flashes quick but mild smile at her. "Aye, sure, fresh as the first blush of morning sun."

In all truth, the shower hadn't been bad at all. He hadn't felt this clean in ... well, ever, honestly, since bathing options in the 18th century were pretty limited. And the peculiar products she'd had him use had not only helped to wash the months (and months) old grime from his body, but smelled somewhat pleasant.

Not that being summarily stripped and shoved into the shower -- or losing his clothes -- had been his favorite way of going about it, and it'd definitely take a more conscious effort to break the old habit of not bothering to bathe himself regularly.

As Jack places the tricorne back atop his head, she flitters by to spritz him with some sort of strong perfume that immediately has him gagging and scrunching up his face. "Oi! Bloody hell, woman, warn me first." A couple waves of his hand to dissipate the stink, and Jack swaggers his way behind her and out of the bathroom.

"On camera?" By the tone, it's not a 'do I have to' at all, but more of a 'what the hell is that'.

She again ignores his unhappiness, this time at the cologne, and just keeps going.

"Uh-huh! You'll be on with Caesar before the next Arena, everyone is, and I'll get you a spot on Panem Nightly, too, at least a little featurette or something. Maybe I can book you for something on the Yesteryear Channel, you can be a talking head on a pirate-themed special."

Swann maybe doesn't pick up on the idea that someone wouldn't know what a camera is.

She's going about a mile a minute with everything, while Jack is still trying to figure out what any of this means, particularly the camera part. He tries his best to catch up with her and cut off her walking, a hand held up. "-- Hold up and slow it down, luv."

His other hand quickly joins the first one. "What are you on about, exactly? What is any of that? What's a camera?" By the context, it sounds like he's going to be up on some theater stage talking to people about himself.

Stopping in her tracks, brow knit deeply, Swann peers up at him, then starts ticking things off on her fingers. She really needs him to start picking this all up quicker if they're going to get anything done before the Arena starts.

"Um, okay. You need to build up a fan base, you do that mostly with interviews. Caesar is Caesar Flickerman, he's like, the most important talk show host in Panem. The Yesteryear Channel is a channel all about stuff that happened in the past. And a camera is... like, okay, so a camera can record everything you and I are saying so that it can be replayed later. So say you wanted to watch a play, but the show was already done? If a camera had been around, you could just watch what it recorded. That's basically a movie."

The last bit doesn't help because what even is a movie, but the rest paints a nice little picture. Well. Sort of. Recording picture and the like all sounds a lot like completely absurd nonsense to him, but after poking around the Tribute Center for awhile, Jack is sure the Capitol has found a way to make it possible.

"Right then." One hand drops, but on his other hand his fingers fold so that he's only lifting his index to make his next point. "What's this about a 'pirate-themed special', exactly?" Because while Jack hadn't yet corrected her on it, there was still hesitation on his part on acknowledging it in full. Call it old habit and self-preservation fueled paranoia, because even associating one's self with a known pirate, in his time, could end in a hanging.

"Oh, well, it would be a special show created to tell the history of the pirates! And their adventures and all the interesting things that they -- you -- did!"

If Jack has learned anything about the Capitolites, he should not be surprised to learn that they have entirely romanticized many aspects of history, including pirates. Everything is a soap opera for them.

"It would be so fascinating to have perspective from someone who was really there, everyone would love to hear your stories."

Oh, it's no surprise to him. Swann has already casually thrown around the word pirate enough times like it was nothing, and the cheerful way she continued to talk about it cemented, to him, how little it must mean here.

Couple that all with the fact that he's slated to most likely die anyways in this stupid Arena of theirs, what was the harm. Particularly because Jack liked to talk about himself and tell his stories. And particularly because these Capitolites probably weren't expecting to hear the more unsavory, raunchy, and gory bits to a pirate's daily life.

"As it would be. I wouldn't mind doing it, luv."

She beams at him and reaches for his forearms, grabbing them happily.

"Thank you, Jack. We're going to make a really good team, and you're going to do really well in the Arena, I just know you are! People are going to be rooting for you!"

He lets her grab at him with no complaint, and merely returns the excitement with a smile.

"I'm sure of it. And that's the hope, luv."

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

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