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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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.

She laughs when he picks her up, holds the basket with one hand and wraps the other arm around his neck, craning her own to look back toward the car. Something stirs in her stomach, flutters, and he sets her down still smiling, reluctant to let go except for the fact that he's agreed to stay with her instead of disappearing back home, where he'll only turn up tomorrow irritable and grumpy.

"If you're not careful, I'll forget how to walk."

"Then you'll be like that little puffball you call a dog." He clicks the fob on his keychain and the car chirps at him, and he opens the door for her. There's enough leg room for her that the basket can fit easily. And he gets in his side, and they're off.

The entire way back to her place, he holds her hand.

"Marcel has some snow boots that can attest to his walking power," Swann chides lightly, getting in the car. She doesn't let go of his hand until they arrive back at her building, until she has to let go so that they can get out of the car and go up in the elevator.

She leaves the basket and her shoes and coat near the door, for Eta to deal with, then turns to Jason, rising on her toes as she wraps her arms around his neck.

"Your turn to choose what we do."

How do you find his feet under all that hair? Jason near asks, but he doesn't. The drive back is long but leisurely, and he hardly even has a headache when they reach her condo. He leaves his coat on the floor near the doorway.

"I haven't seen your bedroom yet."

"Well, you saw one of the closets," she teases, then drops back from her toes to take his hand and lead him toward her bedroom. The furniture seems to be unified throughout the apartment, with the headboard of her bed sharing the same shape as all the sofas and chairs, the same colors and trimmings and light fixtures. The bed is round and massive, which is no doubt enabling of her tendency to sprawl, and centered directly under a chandelier draped with pearls.

Everything is pristine, as if she'd never woken up in that bed or used the makeup table or touched a single thing, even though she leaves the covers rumpled and a fine layer of makeup on the counter and piles of clothes around. Whenever she leaves the room, Eta's right behind to clean it all up.

It's so different than his own room, which he doesn't even allow servants into, much less Avoxes and certainly not his family. His, too, is always neat - he makes the bed before he leaves every morning, launders everything once a week, if only so when he comes home he can not feel disappointed in the home he's left himself. But his is very clearly lived in, while Swann's looks pristine.

They're no sooner in the door than he kisses her again, wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her onto tiptoes to do so.

Her arms loop automatically around his neck, her eyes closing, and she runs one hand through the back of his hair. Wobbling a little before she catches her balance, Swann sighs into his mouth, leaning into him just as much to be close to him as so that she doesn't topple over when her toes get tired.

She's just glad he's not taller.

They stumble together to the bed, Jason half-carrying Swann against, infused again with that hunger that's made twice as potent for being denied earlier. He kisses her mouth hard, enough that his stubble with leave pinkish marks against her chin in the morning, and somewhere between lays and throws her down on the bed, never breaking that kiss. He gets one knee up on the bed but otherwise near lies on her, feeling her breath quickening because it makes her chest move faster under his.

She bounces on the mattress, though he's on top of her before it really matters. Her skirts are pushed up again and her noises muffled against him; she clenches her hand in the back of his shirt and braces the other against his arm where it holds him slightly above her, enough that he's not crushing her with his weight.

Swann whimpers, one leg twining around the one of his that isn't balancing on his knee.

Breaking the kiss feels like coming up for air, but instead of the crisp, slightly floral aroma of her home it's choked with pheromones and sweat and the smell of her makeup, the smell of her so close to him, the heat of her body and the heat of his chasing out all the coolness between them. He takes a breath deeper than he realized he needed, feeling as if it doesn't even go past his head, as if the world is spinning around her and into her.

He doesn't ask and doesn't say anything. He just starts to undo the buttons on his collared shirt, sitting on both knees now above her, clumsily working the clasps one-handed, letting her leg curl up around his thigh. He wants her hands back in his hair, wants that dazed expression on her face again that she had back at the hill, wants to consume her like a tidal wave consumes an ocean shore. He's halfway through the buttons when the need to feel her close to him again strikes, and rather than finishing the job he lunges like a rattlesnake and starts to leave a hickey on her neck.

This is mine, he thinks. Right now she is mine. The rest of the world, calling his mother and his loathsome job and his incompetent Tributes and the headaches and Benjy's screaming, all seem to fall away into a pit from which only indiscernible anger comes and animates him to kiss her harder, to try and pull a bruise from her flesh to this localized region as if her blood cells were pilgrims traveling to holy land. He breaks long enough to breathe again, through both mouth and nose at once, and wheeze "I want you." before returning to marking her skin with teeth and tongue.

She gasps for air when they break apart, her lungs burning in a way that only seems to appear once she can take the breath she needed. Watching him straighten up, she almost follows, but thinks better of it and sheds her cardigan, throwing it to the floor. She pulls her blouse untucked from her skirt, though there's no prayer of getting it off when he comes back at her, attaches himself to her neck.

She grabs at the back of his head with a groan, then moves her hands to keep unbuttoning his shirt, at least as far down as she can reach, her fingers slipping on the buttons one or twice as she becomes distracted. Once she has it open except for the last button, she runs her palms up his chest and back into his hair, fingers curling as her skin starts to ache under his mouth, throbs and draws her focus to such a small spot.

He speaks and she tries to look at him, but he's back at her neck before she can turn her head enough. She whines and bites her lip and squirms under him, eyes screwed shut. Her only response is his name, mewled out with a hint of pain but no inclination to stop it.

Finally, some part of him besides his mouth takes some initiative. He finds where she untucked her shirt runs his hand in there with a strange finesse, as if he were sneaking something out of an envelope. Under his fingertips he can feel her heart pounding, the little bird architecture of her rips and her collarbone, and the swell of her breasts. He cups one, then runs his hand over her side until it's under her, holding her shoulderblade as if it were a tragedian's mask.

He returns to her mouth; a rosette of red has already formed on her neck, bloody but still contained under skin. He gets hard for the third time today, equally bloody, equally contained, and he thinks that if it were possible he would spill into her entirely, not just sexually but his blood and bones and flesh too, and all those secrets about him that she already seems to know as if they were written on the bridge of his nose.

"Swann," he says, moans, not realizing he was about to say her name until he does, and the revelation doesn't hit him easy.

It's at that point that he realizes that while he's the one on top of her on the bed, while he was the one who initiated this, while when he says 'want' she responds only with a plea of his name, she could unravel him entirely. It makes him furious. It makes his blood run even hotter, makes him taste metal in his mouth, and yet he has never wanted her more. Maybe he wants power of this strange puppetmaster with his brain on strings, or maybe he wants to surrender to her. He can't tell and the thoughts swirl, indistinct and smokey, through a head already drunk with lust.

He breaks the kiss (escapes the kiss) again and finishes taking off his shirt, tossing it aside.

She shivers under his hand, her heart threatening to burst through her ribcage with how hard it's beating. There's a cool rush and a sting when he lets go of her neck and it makes her moan, arch her back up a little, and then he's back at her mouth. She puts her hands on the sides of his face, fingers curling against his skin.

The whole world is fading out of existence, narrowing down to just the two of them. She pants and then he rises above her, away from her, and she can only look up at him with fawn-like eyes, big and dark and adoring. She blinks and arches up more, pulling her blouse up and sending it the way of her cardigan, leaving her top bare except for her bra, which is as pink and delicate as everything else in her life.

Jason is the only thing that lacks a pastel, opalescent shine.

Before he can pounce back down on her, she sits up and grabs at his sides, eyes still cast up at him as she moves her mouth along the line of his torso. She waits until she's sure he'll stay before she tugs his belt undone, works to unbuckle it.

He's surprised when she takes any initiative; before this it seemed less lovemaking than a mauling on his part, savage, rough, smelling of violence even while both participants joined willingly. She was like sand coming in to fill his gaps as he dove deeper into her with her roving hands and ankles, but it was reactive.

He near pushes her back down again, but curiosity and the way her mouth draws a line of sensation down his stomach - like a machine gun ripping up terrain - and to the buckle of his belt, which seems ice cold now against his skin. Her painted fingernails against his skin send shudders up his spine and at one point he nearly convulses with the feeling of it.

"I want you," he repeats, and it isn't an entreaty but a command.

He slips the bra straps from her shoulders as she pulls down his pants.

Her mouth is too occupied to answer, but she never stops watching him, even she tugs his jeans down, his boxers, moves her arms to let them slide out of her bra straps. But she doesn't reach back to unfasten the hooks, instead leaving it to cling to her chest only by the band -- she lays her palm flat on his cock and, for just that one moment, ekes out her own sense of possession, less desperate and angry than his.

She blinks once, slowly, comfortably, and then her mouth is on him, further down than she should reasonably be able to go with her small mouth, and yet that doesn't seem to stop or hurt her, one hand strong on his hip as her head moves back and forth.

Really, she seems to be in her element.

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goodnight darlin'!

bites you goodnight

bites you GOOD MORNING writing smut on the train huehue

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