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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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."

"Well, it's not as interesting when you work behind the scenes," she points out. "You must like what we do, though. There are other jobs, but you came back to this one, didn't you?"

She sighs and looks out the windshield for a moment, the scenery passing by. "I don't know that I could ever live in a District, but things just seem... calmer, out there. They work harder and longer, but there's not the noise and the lights and everything beating down on your senses. Even in Eight, where there's not much nature, I used to sleep better out there. At night, it's quiet like it never is at home. I can't imagine the Districts that are even more close to nature, like Seven and Eleven and Twelve. I've heard you can see all the stars at night, because there aren't lights everywhere."

He pauses for a while before he answers. "No, I don't like what we do. I needed the money. That's what it comes down to."

And being an Escort means that he has insider knowledge to make wagers, which are enough to keep from having to sell the rest of the manor.

"I've never been to Seven, but there's something to like about Eleven." As awful as a District is by its nature, Jason likes the largess of being a Capitol Citizen visiting, with all the sway that that buys him. He becomes a big fish in a small pond, as opposed to just flotsam in the city. "Besides, no matter what they do to get the food here, it's fresher when it's right off the vine down there."

"Then why did you do it the first time? When you were with Ten, before the Never-Ending Quell?"

It's a sincere question when she looks back at him, stockinged toes curling against each other. This is probably not a safe way to ride in a car, but she trusts Jason's driving, knows how much he loves it and that he's practiced. She doesn't worry, doesn't uncontrollably have flashes of running head-on into another car, the way she does when she drives. Swann only drives to work, her father's house, and home. Driving makes her anxious.

"All their food out there must be delicious." She knows they're among the poorest in all of Panem out in Eleven, that they don't have much food at all, but she imagines that whatever does land on their table must be fantastic, juicy tomatoes and apples so crisp that the juice runs on your chin when you bite it. "Did you ever have a winner, get to go on a District tour? I can't remember if Ten put out a Victor during your years."

"Needed the money then, too. I was going to get one with the Gamemakers, but after the business with my sister..."

The land had been sold for Quentin's education and the unsuccessful cover-up for Caddy's pregnancy. His father had lost his job as a Capitol lawyer due to his alcoholism, and his mother had better things to do than work, like whine and take sick. And so it fell to Jason to take a job, and the scandal had shorn off the best options to the point that it felt like it had taken away all options.

He feels his pulse in his wrist when he thinks about Caddy, tastes something sour on his tongue, and he tries to shove that out of his mind.

"Bucky Barnes, seven years ago or so- but I quit before the District tour, and a good thing, too, because apparently he turned out to be a rebel shill and I only just avoided getting inculpated. So no, I've never been to anywhere but Eleven and One."

She nods, but wonders why he didn't try and find another industry, follow his interests instead of just look for a source of money. Being an Escort pays decently, but not enough to spend your life doing it without a passion for at least one of the aspects. Swann has a hard time with the responsibility involved, but she loves helping the Tributes, teaching them about the show business part of it, and she likes mingling with the Sponsors.

Jason only seems to like the paycheck.

"I went to Four, once, for a few days. It was my mother's birthday, and my father thought we should surprise her at the resort with her present. I think after her birthday dinner, I spent the rest of the time alone on the beach. It's really pretty there, but it's not really the same as being in the District proper."

He elaborates a little. "My mother knew some people who could pull some strings, so I was able to go straight to Escorting at eighteen instead of spending time as an assistant or an intern. That's how I ended up here."

He hadn't had to give up the last of his pride to work entry-level, basically. He exhales deep, through his teeth, as he makes a turn that almost feels like gliding around a hairpin on the mountain.

"Did she appreciate being surprised?" He raises his eyebrows. "I've never actually seen the ocean, you know. I've been to beaches but only the lake in District One."

That helps Swann understand some, but she still questions staying in a career he doesn't like. Even if her popularity had been flagging, she would have stayed in front of a camera until she died, if she'd had the choice.

"She was... polite about it. It was a nice dinner, as nice as it ever is when we're with her. Dad did a lot of working over the phone for the next few days, and I mostly sat on the beach with an umbrella and read. She did... whatever it is she does out there."

Swann knows what her mother does, the sort of odd, shared family secret that no one ever acknowledges -- that Viatrix takes up with younger men from Four, the attractive ones they're known for putting out, and that's why she stays in the District instead of coming to the Capitol for anything but major holidays where she has to be present for appearances.

"It was nice."

Jason's got a good idea what it is Viatrix does out there, and he only just keeps from saying it out loud, with the kind of snarl he reserves for those hypocritical women (and a few men) that the Capitol seems so eager to churn out. It's only because he doesn't want to make Swann cry again that he doesn't air those thoughts out.

"I was always closer to Mother than I was to my father." He rests his elbow on the car door, his head on his knuckle as he drives. "My father was always too busy colluding with my older siblings to have time for me. Turning them against me, my mother says. I don't know how true that is. That or drinking. I'd dare anyone who gives me a hard time about not drinking not to be put off it if they so much as smelled my father's corpse."

At a straight stretch of road he glances over at Swann. "It's refreshing to be around someone who doesn't try to force me into it. Thanks for that."

Swann has never been close enough to her mother to care. Viatrix was gone from the time Swann could walk, and it only ever offended her on her father's behalf, the way his name would be whispered and his feelings hurt. It was simply something that was never addressed, glossed over for everyone's benefit.

"I wouldn't want you to do anything you didn't want to." She smiles at him, still watching him attentively. "Have you ever drank anything? Champagne or anything? Just wondering."

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