Staffer's Retreat

[whatisay]

WHO| Every Escort, Stylist and Mentor. Any Capitolites or Peacekeepers who might have reason to oversee or visit.
WHAT| A professional retreat for the overworked, underpaid, and super underappreciated Tribute Care Teams.
WHERE| A chalet in District One, easily accessible by train.
WHEN| Before the next death roll.
WARNINGS| Typical Capitolites being entitled asshats.
NOTES| I've put up some subthreads for various activities, if you want to add more just do so under the appropriate day subheader!

Staffer's Retreat. Mandatory. The teams for each District are given a handful of days to prepare for the weekend, which, they're told, is going to be scheduled for a weekend with no big shake-ups in the Arena and perfect weather for outdoor activities. On Friday morning, they're taken by train to a small chalet tucked into a mountainside. A few inches of snow covers the ground but the sky is clear, reflected in the beautiful lake at the base of the mountain.

Until Sunday evening, their days will be packed with "professional development". The schedule looks something like this:

Friday:
Icebreakers
Trust Falls
Hypothetical Scenarios: How to Be the First Person Chosen for a Bomb Shelter
Three-Legged Race
Self-Care Hour: Mandatory Yoga
Dinner
Breaking Down Stereotypes Workshop

Saturday:
Mandatory Mentor Group Therapy: PTSD is Not An Excuse
Mandatory Escort/Stylist Workshop: Building Trust with Your Tributes
Mandatory Sexual Harassment Training: Focus on Tribute/Mentor and Tribute/Escort Relationships
Lunch
Capture-the-Flag
Group Lego-Building
Dinner
12am Karaoke

Sunday:
5:30am Continental Breakfast
Compliment Circle
Journal Hour
Farewells

Comments

[cigne]

Swann knows he doesn't really want to carry her, but her knees feel wobbly, and she's sure she'd be on the floor if he wasn't behind her. She kind of wants to sink to the floor anyway, where she's sure it's nice and cool.

"Not if you don't want to."

[whatisay]

"Doesn't make much of a difference to me." He doesn't really have the patience to walk her slowly, like a little old grandma across the room. He bends over and, with an arm to her knees, lifts her up again.

He pauses by the footboard of his bed, caught in a decision. He can't very well set her on the floor. His mother didn't raise him that way. There's selfishness and then there's being low-class. Finally, he sets her down on the bed, rolling her on her side and against the wall so that she'll stay there. He doesn't leave her with much of a pillow, but he does bunch up a blanket to keep her neck crooked at a comfortable angle.

He goes to the restroom, uses the toilet, washes his hands and the last splatters of vomit from the counter, and returns with a glass of water. The alarm clock next to the bed shines some unholy number in red at him. He sets the water on the nightstand and climbs into the bed, taking care not to touch Swann any more than necessary, placing a pillow between their backs.

"You feel sick, you wake me up immediately." He doesn't know if she's still awake, but he hopes that either she's expelled everything or that she hears him.

[cigne]

There is an immediate, visible relaxation when he sets her on the bed, like she might actually melt into a puddle at any moment. She doesn't care about a pillow versus a blanket, and just slides her arm under the blanket to support her head, her breathing slowing down already.

By the time he comes back, she is very nearly asleep, and just mumbles something incoherent at him, probably an agreement to not throw up in bed. The pillow on her back only relaxes her more, and she falls into a hard sleep for the first time since she got this job, a sleep that feels more like death than anything.

She is definitely not dead, though. It only takes her about twenty minutes to roll in her sleep and stretch out, flinging one arm over the pillow and then Jason, all her hair tangling around her face and neck from turning.

The loud snoring will come later.

[whatisay]

Out of stubbornness more than anything, Jason refuses to relinquish the bed. He flings her arm back at her (not hard enough to wake her, it seems) and all but digs into the bed, nestling his face into the blanket and dimly thinking of how he hopes she stays on her side.

Not for lack of wealth, but perhaps out of some misguided attempt to bond the children, his parents had their kids sleep in the same beds together throughout most of their childhood. It was only after Jason reached puberty that he and Quentin stopped sleeping back-to-back, tucked under separate blankets, in the same room as Caddy and Benjy strangely spooned. Oddly, Swann's weight in the bed relaxes Jason a little, and he exhales deeper than he has for the last few weeks. For a few hours, they sleep, both of them snoring, him gently and hers almost vengefully loud.

Still, it seems like no time at all has passed when Jason's phone goes off with the plain, pre-set alarm. He groans and rummages across the nightstand to turn it off. The dawn is just barely lighting the sky up with its fleeting lavender.

[cigne]

By the time the alarm goes off, Swann most likely has managed to throw her limbs over him again, in a way that indicates just how unused to sharing a bed she is. It has been nearly three years since anyone dared to get close enough to her tainted name to actually sleep in the same bed, and her arm and leg seem determined to sprawl, regardless of what's in the way.

The alarm makes her stir, though, rolling back to the wall and curling into a ball before covering her head with the blanket and returning to sleep. It's not late enough to be awake, the noise must have been a mistake, and it's gone now anyway.

[whatisay]

For a split second, he thinks the arm wrapped around his waist is Lorraine. When, a moment later, reality sinks in, he tells himself it's because of the strange chalet that doesn't feel like his bedroom and the fact that he so rarely sleeps next to someone. He picks her arm off of him and slides his legs out from under hers, standing and feeling the exhaustion and the kinks of sharing a bed settle into his spine.

He pulls the blanket off her head.

"Up, Swann. It's mandatory." He sounds about as pleased about it as she looks. For the two-odd hours of sleep, the rings under his eyes are darker. He slips on his glasses and they only seem to magnify it. "You want food, you're going to have to get up and come to the table, hangover or not."

He doesn't turn on the light. The rising sun is enough, making the entire room feel like the inside of a clamshell or a thunderhead. He dips his fingertips into the unused glass and spritzes some lukewarm water on his face, getting droplets on his lenses.

[cigne]

"'m not hungry," she whines, curling into a tighter ball and then burrowing her upper body under the blanket that had served as her pillow, until everything from her ribcage up is covered again. Without Jason's weight on the bed too, the mattress lacks the heavy feeling that had made it so comfortable all night, and the cold has doubled since he took the blanket away too.

"No one can make us eat, come back." She's mumbling, wanting only to extend how everything had been for another hour or two. Wanting to go back to the place where she could sleep, even if she had to be sick and share a bed with someone who didn't want her there anyway.

But it was sleep, and not dropping from exhaustion halfway through writing a thank you note to a Sponsor. Jason won't be willing to let her sleep curled in the corner of his bed if he's not here, and so he has to come back and sleep with her.

[whatisay]

"You don't have anything in your stomach, I know that for a fact." He prods her shoulder. "Get up, Swann. I don't want to have to drag you out of the bed, and don't think I won't."

He has to admit that he wants to lay down beside her, let her body heat keep the bed warm rather than face the cool morning air. They could rest a little longer - who would miss them? Is anyone really going to come looking for him if he doesn't show up for powdered eggs and concentrated orange juice?

He sits down on the bed next to her. He looks at the number dripping by in red digital readout on the alarm clock.

And he lays back down. "One more hour," he murmurs. No one will miss them.

He's asleep again before he even has a chance to pull the blanket up - or set the alarm.

[cigne]

Underneath her blanket, Swann smiles, because it is so, so very rare that she gets what she wants, particularly from people like Jason, the people who usually want things from her, even if it's only to do what they say.

He's out before she can even fully uncover herself, and since he has thrown away the blanket covering her, she takes the thinner one from behind her head to cover them, moving over to share the pillow and wrap herself around his warmth, arms wound around his neck. She clings to him like one might a stuffed animal, rather than another human, and soon she is just as sound asleep as he is, snoring against his shoulder, less deafeningly this time.

She doesn't really care if they make it to the next activity.

[whatisay]

They miss breakfast entirely. In his sleep, Jason is mostly still, allowing Swann move her octopus-like arms around him and grow over his body as if she were a particularly humanoid ivy. His muted snoring and the way one of his hands closes subconsciously over the nearest thing (her hand) is the only sign that he's not entirely comatose.