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

Entry tags:

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"For what?" he says, automatically, even though he's well aware that when she says such things she doesn't need a reason for it. He rests his head atop hers and strokes her hair, curious and mechanical rather than gentle, as if he's not entirely sure how it is that they ended up here.

He kisses the crown of her head.

"I did this," she answers, closing her eyes against the tear that well up in them because she feels guilty. "I made it all confusing and I shouldn't have."

Her arms tighten around him and she breathes in roughly, trying not to let her feelings get the better of her, not to give in to the way her stomach is curling in on itself.

"Don't go taking all the credit. I kissed you back." He sounds as grumpy as she sounds nervous, and his arms tighten around her like she's a siren trying to escape a sailor's clutches. Someone looking for afar might imagine he's trying to comfort her, rather than control the raging insecurity that slops over the brim of her.

"We can continue with what we have. All of this. It doesn't need a term but it's more than friends."

It makes her laugh a little, thick and still full of the tears in the back of her throat, and when she sniffles and looks up at him, it's clear she's just got the leftover tears waiting to dissapate.

She thinks it's strange that he knows without being told what she needs when she feels like this. That she needs him to nearly crush away all the pressure inside her, with his arms or his hands. She never told him that.

"Okay."

There's another beat before she says another else, like she's hesitant to ask, but does anyway. "Do you have to go home tonight?" She only wants him at her side, warm next to her so she can sleep instead of blowing the afternoon up in her head, nitpicking every word and movement until it's altogether different than what actually happened.

He exhales deep from his nose again, steam pooling over his upper lip and over the whorl of her hair like a cartoon bull's. He's aware of his age, suddenly, knows she was right when she told him he's thirty-five and shouldn't be beholden to his mother's whims.

She knows he's not working, knows which of the Tributes are his and none of them are dead yet. He knows that when he eventually does get home it'll be another round of that guilt that doesn't actually make him feel remorse so much as rage at the impunity of it all. He wraps his arms a little tighter around Swann.

"I can try and come up with an excuse."

"Thank you," she murmurs, closing her eyes again and holding tight to him, cheek pressed to the soft wool of his coat. She imagines them in her big bed, comfortable together, actually sleeping, and sighs. Then another thought hits her, and she smirks a little, her voice coy and teasing when she asks.

"Does this mean you're my Valentine now?"

He goes back to winding up the ream of kite. The blue-fabric diamond skips and jerks across the base of the hill up to him, and when he's done retrieving his he starts on hers.

"No. Because it's past Valentine's Day," he says, but he's smiling, as if amused by his own inability to admit fault to her.

She snorts and presses her face to his shoulder before perching her chin on it to watch his face while he takes care of the kites, her eyelids low with contentment. "You're my Valentine anyway."

Swann waits until he's done before moving one hand to his face, fingers soft on his skin as she cranes up to kiss him, lazily now that she's more relaxed.

"Well. You can think that." He's still teasing, but with a sort of warmth that only his mockery towards Swann holds. It's not the cruel indifference he shows others.

He kisses her back, comfortable with her mouth, her easy breath, the body language that's both doll-like and womanly all at once. The softness of her fingers makes his stubble feel more pronounced.

"Do you want to keep flying the kites?"

Her thumb runs over his cheekbone, and the smell of his cigarettes encircles her more intensely, fills her nostrils with its odd, herbal scent. "I'm getting hungry," she answers, resting her chin on his shoulder again. "Lunch?"

At the very least, she's starting to want the blankets, although she's loathe to untangle herself and get them.

He's surprised that she's the first between them to suggest food, but he finds that as he left the house before breakfast to be served, he's ready for something besides coffee and smoke too.

"Alright. I won't say no. You don't suppose Eta's made that winter cake again, has she?"

"Did you already eat all the cake she sent home with you?"

Swann smiles and touches his cheek again, then gently unwinds herself from around him and goes to retrieve the basket from the car. She honestly doesn't know what Eta's packed up for them, although she supposes winter cake is just as likely as anything else. Grabbing up the blankets too, Swann returns to Jason and spreads one of them out, so that they don't have to sit on the cold ground.

"Ben got it. One of the servants stole it out from under my nose."

Jason sounds much angrier about that than he has a right to over stolen cake, either because it was fed to his brother or because it was from Swann and that was something he wanted his family to have no claim to at all. Even the new winter cake that Eta has packed, having observed how much Jason liked it, doesn't heal the wound so much as patch it.

Still, this may be the lunch he's been most excited for in a long time.

"Make sure you get some too. I might take it all if given half a chance."

She can't find it in herself to be the least bit upset that Ben got the cake. Perhaps their mother, perhaps the servants stealing it and eating it amongst themselves, but not over Ben. Kneeling on the blanket, she takes some grapes out of the basket, and a bottle of soda, then curls up next to Jason.

"I can have it any time I want. You can have the cake. I'll make sure you get more."

Swann makes a note to send enough for Ben, too. She knows that he causes Jason just as much stress as anyone else, but she can never let go of the fact that it isn't his fault, that he shouldn't be punished for it. Maybe she'll have Eta pack up leftover cupcakes, too.

"I'll keep it at the Tribute Center next time. At least it'll be safe until some of mine come back."

It's as if he knows what Swann's up to and planning to thwart her out of some stubborn attempt to keep her out of his family's business. He doesn't have much, but he feels like he has that, at least, the little shell of privacy he's cultivated.

He takes some of the leftovers - a tupperware of meat in a rich, spicy sauce - and takes a bite with a fork. As with most of Eta's cooking, it's delicious. After a moment he holds a piece of it out on the fork for Swann to eat.

Swann almost wants to roll her eyes and sigh, but she knows better, knows that it isn't how you manage to get the small things you want in life. The Compsons at large, she can give up on, but not Ben, not someone who never did anything wrong except be born with a broken mind.

Ben is going to get some cupcakes, at some point.

Instead, she smiles and leans over, bites off his fork and nods a little, pressing her fingertips to her lips as she chews. She hadn't eaten any of this when Eta made it, she remembers that her stomach had been nervous and she went to bed with only antacid and a slice of bread for nourishment. But she can take the spices now, hot enough to even warm her up a little, and she chases it with a sip from the bottle.

"That's good, I didn't have any the first time around."

"Worried about your stomach?"

He understands, in a way. He spends enough time making plans around not exacerbating his headaches that he knows what it's like to not want to risk it, and as such he doesn't press any more of the meat on her. He can't wrap his arm around her while eating, but he does link her ankle around his, staring off with her at the mountains and his car, sitting like a gargoyle at the edge of the valley.

"It doesn't get worse with stress, does it?"

"I'm okay today."

Not enough that she should eat much more spicy food, probably, but enough that she doesn't have to fret or feel the burns and pain that accompany the wreckage in her stomach. She places her head back on his shoulder as she eats grapes, and cold chicken from another piece of tupperware. She picks the chicken off the bone and removes the skin, almost ritualistically, if without much thought to it.

"Stress is worst. Sometimes not even the medicine can help when it's stress, there's too much acid."

He takes the skin that she places back in the tupperware with the same sort of automated behavior - the skin was always his favorite part as a child.

"And yet you go out of your way to do things that stress you out. Don't they say that's the definition of madness?" Any chiding is in good faith, but it's true. She befriended him, after all.

She shrugs, takes another sip from the bottle.

"There's not very much out there that doesn't stress me out. I'd rather help and be sick than lie in bed by myself for the rest of my life."

Swann knows that she's... fragile. That she can't handle confrontation or disappointment or anything that makes her the tiniest bit uncomfortable. But she refuses to live her life around that, because otherwise she'd be a recluse, doing nothing but sitting alone and knitting every day forever.

"I like what I do. My stomach will hurt either way, so I might as well do it."

He's never considered that, that unhappiness could just attach to a person rather than being the product of their circumstances. Maybe it's been easier to avoid looking inward by focusing on shooting blame outward. He finds he doesn't want to contemplate it. He banishes it to some dark corner of his mind that doesn't get swept much, where dust and truths accumulate.

He wonders if his mother could be more like Swann.

"For what it's worth."

He nearly kisses her again then, but finds that too saccharine, and so he just takes another bite of food. "I'm glad you don't stay in bed sick all day."

"So am I."

She smiles at him and then rests her head back on his shoulder, falling back into comfortable silence as they eat. She still doesn't eat much, couldn't ever hope to compare to the average amount that others eat, but it's markedly more than she usually manages, enough that she even takes some cake and digs into it.

For a while they eat in silence, and Jason feels a sudden pang of what it's supposed to be like to eat in company, rather than the strange forced ritual he insists on at home. After a while he closes up the tupperware, not moving Swann from his shoulder at all, he lights up his cigarette again. This time he hasn't put camphor in it. It's from habit, not for his head, and it smells floral.

"Do you want to keep flying the kites or do you want to head home?"

Swann is used to silence, always has it unless she's at the Tribute Center or with Jason, but it's nice that it's chosen silence rather than the silence of being alone. She reaches for his hand, then one not holding his cigarette, and shifts her foot slightly where it's hooked with his, stretching her toes inside her shoes.

"Let's go home."

"Alright."

He packs up the food in her basket. He could just get up and walk, but after tucking the cigarette away in his jacket pocket, he wraps an arm under Swann's leg and picks her up. It's an apology, maybe, for being as bad at yoga as he was.

He carries her back to the car, the basket on her stomach, straining only slightly because she really is quite light, and finally sets her down on her feet outside the passenger door.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject