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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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."

"A glass of wine here or there as a kid at parties, at my father's encouragement. But as an adult, no. The sight of it honestly makes me nauseous. And the smell."

Sometimes the sound, too, not just of alcohol but of liquid moving in glasses, and Jason remembers his father in his nightshirt, hands shaking too bad to pour his own alcohol, the stink of spilled gin in the shag carpeting in the morning before the Avoxes found it and got it cleaned. Even though his father was an alcoholic all Jason's life, it takes him back to a very specific time, the year Quentin died and Caddy got exiled and Jason's planned future collapsed like a bridge he hadn't even been allowed to set foot on yet.

He watches the road more than her, safe in spite of his reckless nature, more because he wants to preserve the car than for any reasons of self-preservation.

"You'd be surprised how many Sponsors try to get me to drink before they'll write off the Tributes. It's like a game to them." And humiliating. Jason's walked away from more than one table over it, over Sponsors lording their wallets.

"I'm sorry," she says, and she actually looks apologetic. "I'm sorry for drinking around you before. I'm sorry for that night at the retreat. I just thought... I wanted to be around you."

She finally looks away, pink rising on her cheekbones under the rouge, her brow furrowed. It was true. She knew Jason would be sober, of course, but she only ever took into consideration that she just wanted to be in his presence then, that her intoxicated mind found comfort being close to him, for whatever reason.

"And I'm sorry for the Sponsors. Not because of anything in particular, but just because that's awful of them. I'm sorry you have to go through that."

"It's fine. You got me to sleep in, didn't you? Besides, better you were with me than being compromised around someone like Sergius."

There's something protective, possessive, vengeful about the way he says Sergius' name. A little bit of his brother's whiteknight syndrome, maybe, or maybe just hatred for the man in general, for no good reason other than the fact that Sergius has a more prestigious District.

He switches what hand he's driving with and rests his free one on Swann's, reassuring with words.

"It's part of the job, I guess."

She turns her hand like he did earlier, until their palms touch and she can lace her fingers between his, looking back at him with the faintest traces of blush still on her skin.

"I'm glad, for both things. You should relax more. I wish we had had more free time on the retreat."

Swann doesn't tell him that that morning, sleeping curled up together under the same blanket, that it was probably the best time she had the whole damn weekend. Everything else had been rote or difficult or stressful, at least for her, and those few stupid hours where she didn't have to be perky through it, that was all she'd wanted.

It takes her a moment to keep speaking. "What do you think about, when you drive all the way up here?"

He won't tell her, either, but he feels the same way. He slept deeper and more comfortably at her side than he has at home in years.

"Usually when I'm driving up here, I'm angry. I'm thinking about Tributes and Sponsors and work and finances and sometimes politics and home and just-" he snorts deep from his nose. "My head's racing when I drive up. But when I drive back it's usually a bit quieter, like I've burned myself out like a match. Way I see it."

Or maybe just relaxed, left those petty concerns that seem to be such injuries to him along the side of this winding road.

He gives her hand a bit of a squeeze.

She looks at their hands, where her nails (light this week, a barely-there white feather pattern on delicately glittering nude polish) stand out against his skin, then smiles at him.

"This is your yoga," she says. "It gives you that peace. That's all you're ever trying to find on the mat, the thing that lets all the bad get out. If you don't get it out, it poisons you."

She fears that he doesn't go out driving enough.

"You could call it that, maybe." She has a point, but all he can think about with poison is that the wound never really seems to have the venom sucked out entirely. There's no length of road long enough that he could drive to freedom. Half the chains that he can't even express are in his head and he can't quite leave that behind.

"But I don't take it it's your yoga. You always look stressed when you get to work, like you've just dodged death." And yes, he does take notice of her on the way into the Tribute Center.

She flushes again.

"I don't like driving. It scares me. I can already only barely reach the pedals even with the seat all the way forward, and I... I don't know. Every time I have to drive, I just feel like something terrible will happen. Something bad, and it'll be all my fault. But it's stupid to have a driver if I only go to work and my father's house and back home. Before everything, when I went out more, I had a driver."

Even talking about it, her hand is getting tighter around his, like she's filling with stress at the very idea of driving.

"Now I just stay home with Marcel. Sometimes I go to clubs still, but usually I call a car for that."

"Do you feel like something terrible's going to happen now?"

He imagines her coming up with reasons to be scared of herself, the same way he finds reasons to hate others, to live sheathed in rage. Maybe she'll imagine she's distracting him, or that she'll make him so angry that he'll crash the car out of spite.

"We could carpool, you know. The two of us. It would save me money and save you the anxiety of having to drive."

"No. You're driving. I trust you."

And her anxiety doesn't extend to Jason. In fact, it's rather the opposite, and even when they upset each other and she breaks down, she doesn't worry that he hates her forever or that he'll never forgive her. Somewhere in its recesses, her mind reasons that he won't send her away, for whatever reason, no matter how much she comes around or tags along or clings to him.

"Wouldn't that inconvenience you?"

He doesn't use words to respond to that. He just smiles, that slight easy smile only she seems able to get out of him.

"Only if you're chronically late. And if you are I'd call the deal off." He turns back to the road, slowing as they approach another turn. "But I could use help with the gas money."

There's a pause before he adds, the shame heavy in his voice, "don't tell anyone."

"Usually I'm early. I don't like being late, if I can help it." She leaves it unsaid that it's because she fears angering people by being late, being a burden on them.

"Why would I tell anyone?" she asks, brows knit. "I would never tell anyone. Do you need help? I can help you."

There isn't pity or obligation in her voice, and she doesn't want to do it out of a misguided sense of charity. The way she looks at him is with only pure concern for him and only him, like she wants to take him in and save him the way one might save a stray kitten.

"No," he says, too quickly, too insecurely, like a dog straining at a leash before he calms. "No, I'm fine. I can stand on my own two feet, thanks. I just meant- I just meant we could have a mutually-beneficial deal. That's all."

He feels that rushing in his blood, the kind that reminds him of the road zipping by under his wheels.

"You don't have to if you don't want to. It was just an idea. Maybe you're less scared of driving than you say. I don't know."

"I want to."

Swann is always too eager to help, almost pushy about it, but she's not stupid, and she knows when to let go, when it's too personal. It just means she has to do it in ways he can't turn away, gifts under the guise of thoughtfulness, taking care of whatever he complains about without letting him know, feed him meals so he has less food to buy at home. The same way she takes care of everyone else.

"I like it when you drive."

"Alright. I can start picking you up at 5:45 every morning." He's usually at the Tribute Center well before dawn, but then, most Escorts who actually put effort in are.

The soft smile comes back, the one that seems like it's there because he hasn't thought better of it and gotten rid of it yet. "I don't mind driving you, for what it's worth."

"That's fine." Swann barely sleeps from stress anyway, so it hardly bothers her to be ready by then. It's not that much earlier than she goes in anyway.

She squeezes his hand again when he says that, and curls up tighter in her seat, contented, smiling back. "I'll bring coffee and breakfast that we won't eat in your car."

"Screwtop thermoses only."

They drive for a while, sometimes in silence and sometimes in idle chatter, until he comes to a stop at a valley between some of the peaks. In spite of some sparse patches of winter snow, it's still beautiful, filled with green and purple shrubbery and a pond that's partially frozen over. The hill on which Jason plans on flying the kites is on display almost as if it were placed there.

He looks pleased that there's no one else around.

She looks a little amazed, actually, to see someplace so naturally pretty in a fairly close proximity to the Capitol. All the nature in the city and its suburbs is manufactured and perfectly manicured, and here it is just as created by the earth.

"Wow."

"No one else usually comes here. No one around to mess it up, do fuck-all with the land." The grabs the bag with his kite and goes over, opening her door. "We're just going to walk up to that hillside. That's where the best wind will be."

Clutching her kite and the blankets, absently, she steps out of the car and looks around, her hair blowing in the wind. She still seems a little dazed to see this place at all, but she starts to head up the hill, looking over her shoulder to make sure he's following her.

He follows, hands in his pockets as they so often are, taking care not to trip over the rocks given his general gracelessness. He watches her bounce ahead of him, meeting her glance back with a sort of mild encouragement. When they get to the base of the hill, he sets the bag down and pulls the kite out.

"You get the concept of flying the kite, right? You have to let it catch the breeze and then back up, so the string keeps it tense and perpendicular to the wind."

She sets the blankets in the bag, then looks first at her kite, then at the sky. The second part she understands well enough, but she can't figure out in her head how catching the breeze works. She only ever remembers seeing kites already in the sky, as if they'd just taken off on their own.

"How do you catch it? The wind?"

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