thecapitol | I Cannot Decipher Conversation in Your Head [Closed]

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I Cannot Decipher Conversation in Your Head [Closed]

WHO| Jason Compson and Swann
WHAT| Yoga, kites and long drives.
WHEN| Sunday.
WHERE| Swann's place.
WARNINGS| Capitolite cluelessness. Shameless shipping and graphic sexual content.

He doesn't go to the cemetery with his mother, and that means that Benjamin gets out of having to go, too. Caroline whimpers and whines her way through the morning, talking about how lonely she'll be standing at the headstones of her husband and her eldest son, acting as if Jason's indifference to ritualized mourning is giving her physical pains. When Jason outright calls them psychosomatic, Caroline retires to her bedroom, making little mewling noises, and he sighs and insists that some Avoxes accompany her to the graves no matter what fight she puts up.

"I'm head of the house," he tells one of the few servants who still has her tongue, "no matter that she's my mother. She tries to shake you off, you follow and make sure she doesn't have a chance to blame me that she didn't get to grieving today."

By the time he gets to Swann's he's got the start of a headache and his mood has dipped below its baseline sullen and into fully cranky. He isn't late, but he would have liked to give himself a cushion of time, and instead he couldn't take the smoother, scenic route and had to near run a red and do his smoking while driving. As he'll supposedly be changing into new clothes as soon as he's here, he's looking relatively simple in dark jeans and his coat and a collared shirt. A flourish of embroidery on the cuffs speaks to opulence; the bad stitching on those same sleeves reveals that luxury to be an affect only. The kite is in a bag covered in tissue paper at his side.

He realizes he doesn't think Swann's seen him in casual clothing. He knows it likely won't matter soon, but he makes sure his hair is nice before he appears. He might as well keep up appearances around her, even if she knows better.

He rings the bell.

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"I don't hate it."

But no, he isn't going to outright spare her feelings and say he likes it. Maybe it's something that takes time and practice, time and practice he isn't committing himself to giving.

He rolls over onto his side and looks bad at her, seeming tired and tense as he always is, any calmness just a sheen over that anger and unhappiness that his flesh and bone are wrapped around.

"How much time did you set aside for this?"

She almost wants to cry, to see that he is still so unhappy, that she was unable to be of any help when he wanted her to be. She wants to just lie on the floor in the sun and hold him until whatever it is that weighs on him abates some.

Instead, she reaches out and takes his hand, letting both of them rest on the carpet between the two mats, and she smiles.

"I didn't know I was supposed to write up a schedule. I figured you'd either walk out after two minutes, or you'd want to do it all day. We can stop."

"Whatever you want." If she's enjoying bringing herself inner peace, he isn't going to stop her; at the very least it gets him out of the house for a while, and it's still many, many hours until the sunset he wants to take her to see.

He lets her take his hand, and then gradually turns his over so that they're palm to palm.

"We can keep doing this, or we can take the kites out. I just don't think I'll be reaching enlightenment any time soon."

"You made them?"

Her smiles widens, lights up her eyes, and she laces her fingers with his out of instinct and so that she can squeeze his hand with excitement. She could have bought a kite at any time, of course, but when everyone else had them as children and Jason wouldn't make her the one she wanted, she had sort of just given up on the idea, and then it fell so far out of her mind that she'd never bothered.

Something about the idea of doing it now, so many years later, is terribly gratifying. Like hitting a missed milestone.

"I want to fly kites."

Edited 2015-02-21 06:52 (UTC)

"Well, I made one. The other I had some servants turn up the basement for. It's old but it should still work." When he talks to Swann there's a tint of optimism in his voice that isn't usually there, as if he's putting effort into not sounding as dour and apathetic as he usually does. As if he's opening up the possibility that occasionally, some things go right.

He sits up, grimacing a little as even the slight amount of stretching and exercise has used parts of his body he's neglected for a long time.

"I'll have to change back out of these pants."

"We have time. If it doesn't work, we'll just make another one."

She sits up too, watching him until she's satisfied he didn't pull something or damage himself. She hadn't thought to do a few minutes of warm-up, simply because the poses they'd done were so easy, but maybe she was wrong.

"I'm shocked," she teases, then rises and stretches, arms pulled behind her arched back. "I'll go change too, meet you in the living room? If you want coffee, there should be some waiting, Eta's bound to have figured out we might want some."

Swann bounces toward the door, smiling over her shoulder, then disappears, heading for her own room to get dressed.

Switching back into his jeans and shirt isn't difficult at all, and by the time Swann returns in her bubbly outfit Jason's at the kitchen counter with his yoga clothes in a folded pile next to him, drinking some black coffee.

He pushes the bag with the folded kites over to her across the rose-quartz countertop. There's a trace of a smile on his face, a sort of expectant look like he's anticipating being able to feel successful and smug in just a moment. The yoga may not have cleared his head but the hot coffee just might, and seeing Swann saunter in in her crinoline and heels doesn't really hurt.

"Tell me if it's not decent enough for you. I'm out of practice with making these."

Embroidered silver deer line the hem of her skirt, shimmering slightly against the navy silk. She has a metallic gray cardigan with sapphire buttons at the cuffs, and there are mink puffballs on the toes of her shoes. Her hair is still in a ponytail, although it's been brushed out and redone, slightly more styled this time. There are rings on her fingers that shine when she reaches for the bag.

"I don't know that I'd know a decent kite from a bad one," she tells him, pulling one kite out and gently unfolding it, as if afraid she might somehow break it. It makes her beam as she runs her fingertips over it, then holds it up, imagining how it might look against the sky.

"I love it."

Paired next to each other, they look like an exercise in minimalism and filigree. She gritters and shines and he becomes something of her elongated shadow, especially when he puts the dark coat on.

"I'm glad." The slightest smile crosses his face, that smirk becoming genuine for a flickering moment. The kite isn't complicated, just fabric and some light piping and ribbon, something he figured out how to slap together quickly as a kid for some spending money. "It should fly. I checked the weather and there'll be enough wind. You got a place in mind?"

She grabs a coat of her own, soft ivory wool with buttons that may or may not actually be carved from real ivory, and reaches for his hand with hers. The other holds her kite as if she fears it might fly away on its own at any given moment.

"I don't know what a good place would be." She looks a little vexed, brows knit together with thought. "What's good for it? Hills? Rooftops?"

"I was talking about taking you to that lookout point earlier. There's a bare hillside that'll probably be good for getting some wind." He glances at her shoes and finishes his coffee, leaving it on the counter for Eta. He takes the bag with his own kite in it.

"If you don't mind riding in my car again. And you might want to put on shoes you won't break your ankle in."

"Of course I don't mind." She looks down at her shoes, then quickly thinks about her shoe closet. "Wait, come with me, tell me what's good to wear."

She doesn't wait for much of an answer, just grabs at his sleeve and heads for her bedroom. She places the kite down gently on her bed, then opens one of the two sets of double doors. Inside are dozens and dozens of lighted cubbies, each holding its own pair of shoes, perfectly positioned as if for a photoshoot. Most of them are stilettos of some variety, and others are high wedges, but pairs of cutesy flats appear every so often (the vast majority seem to look like animals or have saccharine patterns on them). There are no sneakers or shoes that might be for comfort over appearance.

Swann looks at Jason expectantly. "Do any of these work?"

Jason almost worries that if he touches them, the shoes will explode into, he doesn't know, fairy dust or powdered sugar or shards of glass. They all look so delicate, brand new, a far cry from his work shoes that have seen better days. It's as if she replaces each set the instant they get the slightest scuff.

He takes a pair of flats with kittens on the toes and hands them to her. "Probably this. We'll just be walking over some rocks, and I don't want you snapping or spraining anything if I can help it."

It freaks him out when she cries, okay.

She takes the shoes and steps out of her heels, immediately shrinking roughly three inches. She puts on the flats and smiles up at him, then goes to get her kite from her enormous, round bed, where it sits like a precious treasure.

"Are we ready? Should I have Eta pack us lunch? I should have her pack us lunch." She doesn't wait for an answer, heads for an intercom panel on the wall and announces into it, "Eta, can you pack us up a lunch? Thank you!"

It's easy to forget how small she is without her shoes, but since he just saw her barefoot and in yoga clothes, he only peripherally notices that she's now only just to his shoulder.

"I'm ready when you are. I have the whole day off. Unless one of my idiot Tributes gets eaten by a prehistoric ground sloth, I don't have anywhere to be."

"Well now you're just being negative. They could die of good, old-fashioned freezing."

Swann smirks at him, then carries her kite out into the apartment, where Eta's waiting with a basket. It's all nicely packed up leftovers from the past few days, along with fruit and dessert and bottles of soda. Swann takes the basket from Eta (who then offers a few folded up blankets to Jason), and then heads for the door.

"I think that should be everything we need, right?"

He laughs, and it's a strange bark, as if it took him entirely by surprise that she could be that cynical.

"Looks fine." He opens the front door for her, taking the basket with one hand and then clicking the fob on his keychain. His car chirps at him from the garage. "No eating in the car, by the way. Benjy did that once and got yogurt on the front seat. I had to beat the hell out of him."

Once he takes the basket, she takes the blankets and holds them to her chest along with the kite, following behind him even though she stepped out before him. Her tiny legs just can't meet his strides.

"Well... I'm sure he didn't mean it."

Her voice is soft and cautious, as she's no longer willing to directly talk about his family. If 'buy your mom flowers' made him snap at her, she can't imagine what sort of reaction 'maybe don't beat your brother with the intelligence of a toddler' would get.

"Of course he didn't. That doesn't clean it up for me, though." He doesn't seem to pick up on her being so tentative, and when they reach the car he opens the door for her. He's slowed down a little, even, so she doesn't fall behind.

"With any luck, there won't be anyone else out there. They'll all be watching this sabretooth cat nonsense."

Swann refrains from pointing out that beating him also didn't clean it up, and that Jason has Avoxes and servants, so why worry so much about a little yogurt that they'll wipe off the seat? It's a moot point anyway, because he'll get so caught up in telling her she has no business caring that he'll overlook her point entirely.

"Thank you," she murmurs, and takes a seat, her toes grazing the floor mat while she waits for him to walk around the car and get in himself. "I still don't really understand the body recovery mechanics with those. Getting eaten seems like it'd put a wrench in that."

"Last I asked it had something to do with physics, not medicine. But I don't know the mechanics of it either. All I know is that trying to get them to build muscle seems to be s complete waste of time."

He gets in and gently, smoothly pulls the car from the garage, and they embark on the hour-long trip up the mountain. He looks over at Swann and smiles, just a little, as if trying to perk the spirits that he somehow dampened back up.

"Is that just because you can't get them in the gym?" she teases, looking at him. She's lucky though, that most of her Tributes are at least decently built simply of their own accord, and so she doesn't really have to worry about trying to make them diet and exercise for fitness. She mostly just needs Jack to stay halfway dry.

She smiles back at him and leans her head back on the seat, twisting her body somewhat to face him better. "So you found this place just by driving around?"

"Yeah. Sometimes if I get off work on time I just...go. And find a place and sit and think." He imagines leaving, driving or flying off a cliff and into a vast sunset that they don't learn about in Panem. The benefits of ignorance is that you can make the world around you into anything you want it to be - anything you can't have in the moment to stoke your envy. "Kind of like your yoga. It clears my head a little."

And it usually is worth the headache the drive gives him.

"That's good. You just have to find the thing that helps you."

She draws her legs up on the seat, her shoes left empty on the floorboard. Watching him steadily, she blinks slowly, like a contented cat, and places the blankets on her lap.

"Are there usually people there?"

"Not usually. I think most people would rather watch the television than a boring sky and some mountains. Maybe I'm just bored of the Games. Figures my attention for them would fail before everyone else's."

He holds a sort of disdain for people who still get sucked into the Games as if they're anything but political frippery. Maybe he's just been in the business too long.

"If it weren't for having to live in a District, with all that entails, I might think that their sense of entertainment is nicer. There a man actually sees the fruits of your labors at the end of a day, instead of just..." He waves a hand. "Tributes in funny outfits, pretending they don't hate you. If you're lucky and they bother to pretend."

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