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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"You're going to make me work for it." He moans that as if it were a complaint, but the upwards twist to his lips gives it away. It's an even deal, then. He plants a kiss behind her ear and settles deeper into the pillow, letting her go free but not taking his eyes from her.

Maybe he'll get her a scarf to hide that hickey, although he's sure she already has fifty.

He makes a little groaning sound and finally sits up, finds that his phone has miraculously stayed in his pants pocket through all the roughhousing, and skips without reading past several texts from his mother to send a brief one. He chooses a lie that will be difficult for her to suss out as one.

going in to work at sponsor request. will probably stay there. do not have servants make supper for me.

"I have to make you work for something," she answers, and lazily gets up to walk into one of the closets. She returns a few moments later in a wispy chemise, white and mostly sheer against her skin, with a shopping bag from a department store in her hand. It holds everything she bought, a full matching set of pajamas, with a robe and slippers, even.

"Here." She gives it to him, then starts collecting clothes from the floor. Setting the pile on the edge of the bed, she leans over to tug at the ankles of his jeans, until they come down and she can add them to the laundry heap, which she then deposits outside the door before returning to bed, sinking into the mattress next to him.

"We can nap for now. We won't miss dinner."

He changes into it, suddenly somewhat shy, as if the lust being satiated has made him aware of the awkwardness of the nude human body. He puts the clothes on almost dutifully, quickly so that they're almost all the way on before she comes back and lies down next to him.

"More comfortable than what I wear at home." He pulls the robe over them like a blanket, covering her sheer outfit like he's keeping her to himself. He wonders how often she wears that. "You'll wake me up?"

Her arms wind back around his neck when he covers her, breaking only to grab at the remote next to the bed. She touches one part of the screen on it, and the windows go dark, blocking out the light from outside. Another touch and the chandeliers dim out, too. Her last touch sets an alarm for two hours away, and she shows it to him before setting the remote aside again.

"There," she says, nuzzling her face into the crook of his neck. "We'll wake up together."

For the second time in a while, he sleeps completely soundly, not just from exhaustion but from a sense of peace that throughout his life he's found so fleeting as to assume it was imaginary. She sprawls over him, and he lies mostly still, his chin protectively embracing the crown of her head, one arm draped over her chest as the rise and fall of her breathing acts as a metronome to their two hours.

He doesn't dream, and since his phone is on silent its buzzing away on Swann's carpet doesn't wake them. It's only when her alarm goes off, gentle and crescendoing, that he stirs again.

"I still don't want to go anywhere," he murmurs against her pillow.

She's like lead atop him, so deeply and comfortably asleep (she still snores like a chainsaw, albeit slightly muted into his neck). When the alarm goes off, she yawns and curls closer to him, fingers tracing the line of his pajama collar, up his neck and over his adam's apple.

"I can have Eta bring dinner to us. We don't have to move until morning."

"That sounds perfect."

Either Swann or sleepiness has unlocked something in him. If not necessarily happy, it's at least not afraid to like thibgs, doesn't spurn expressing happiness out of some spiteful, stubborn principle. He murmurs a bit and strokes her hair, wraps his arms around her tiny shoulders for a moment before sitting up.

"That felt like hibernation."

"Isn't it terrible? I can't remember if good sleep should feel like that."

He sits up and she follows, hooking her chin over his shoulder, pressing herself to his back and looping her arms low around his waist, one hand running slow, idle strokes along his stomach.

"Any dinner requests?"

"Awful. Just awful." He breathes heavy, closing his eyes again and resting in the warmth of her arms, feeling her against his back. He strokes her wrist and yawns.

"Something you can share with me."

She moves her hand to his back, gently rakes her nails up and down over the silk, thinking. Finally she makes a soft noise and nuzzles behind his ear for a moment.

"Okay. I'll be back in a few, let me go find Eta and let her know."

She kisses his cheek and then makes to stand up.

He doesn't stop her. When she's out the door - and yes, he watches her intently as she goes, less irate about the sheer pajamas than he was when he first saw them - he lays back down, rubbing his face slightly into the pillow again, where it's still warm from her body.

He should leave, he thinks. If he walks out now it'll break her heart, make that pretty face crumple like paper in a fist, wreck her, and because there are parts of him that are cruel he lingers on that fantasy longer than he would if it repulsed him. But he doesn't, because it's warm here, and because he's hungry and because, god forbid, he likes being around her. He missed her when she was avoiding him.

He waits for her, drifting slightly.

Swann finds Eta, tells her that they want dinner and to please bring it to the bedroom. She goes to give Marcel a treat as well, feeling a bit guilty for leaving him alone all day, but then goes back to the bedroom. She pads back in quietly, crawls up from the foot of the bed, then drapes herself over his back, resting her cheek in the hollow between his shoulderblades.

"Hi."

"Hi." For a little while he just breathes, absorbing the coolness of her cheek into his back, eyes half-open, seeing and yet not-seeing the pink-trimmed room around him. And then it rolls out inside him, a strange unsettled feeling that starts in his gut and unfurls like a carpet, blanketing what was moments ago so comfortable.

It's not as if he feels any guilt here for what they've done, but somewhere along the line affection seems to have tipped over into too much, into cloying, into something that reminds him less of the occasional whore and more of his mother. Suddenly her cheekbone against his back feels too hard, her body against his too hot - he feels sweat on the soles of his feet, and pricking up the back of his scalp like a dribble of water.

He could cut her to ribbons with a word now, with a gesture. Somehow, that makes it okay. He could inflict actual pain, not the mock agony he's so accustomed to being subjected to but honest to God devastation. And knowing he could do that, that he has that power, settles the feeling, the inexplicable discomfort.

He moves her off him, neither gentle nor harsh, and sits up. "Shit, my cigarette's in my jacket." And he left that to Eta outside.

For those first few moments, she just lies there, moving one hand against his back, rubbing lightly where she can feel tension. She listens to his heart through his back, his breathing, closes her eyes.

But Swann has always been too attuned to body language, to little changes, things that prick up her senses and make her too aware, like a rabbit watching for predators.

He stiffens, just that little bit. His touch becomes detached, a shade or two more clinical than it had been before. She can feel the difference, and she watches him sit up, pushing up on her elbows. She makes herself stay calm, makes a mantra of the flashing thought that she doesn't know what he's thinking.

But her gaze on his back is timid.

"She won't wash it, she'll find it. We'll have her bring it when she comes with dinner."

"Alright. I'll smoke outside. I don't want to make your home smell like it."

It's not that he doesn't want her touching him now, but the affection seems gone, and his eyes a bit vacant, as if he's reading something printed on the inside of them rather than anything in front of him.

"What's she making?"

She can see it, see how he seems to look past her, like maybe he's talking to himself or the air. It's such a stark contrast that it upsets purely from suddenness, rather even than his demeanor.

Swann sits up more, draws her legs up and wraps her arms around them, resting her cheek on her knees. She's abruptly aware of every movement she makes, every inch of skin and nerve ending.

"Um, pasta, I wasn't very specific about it, probably she'll make it with tomatoes and pesto and mozzarella. She usually does."

"That sounds fine."

And though he doesn't put two and two together enough to realize that her own sudden cower is the result of his own closed-off change, he does notice that she draws herself inwards, sad and tentative. He turns his head to look at her, still locked in an argument with himself, one that doesn't speak through words but instead a stray array of moods, all clustered together at once. For a moment, he regrets saying he wasn't going home. For another, he's relieved.

"You alright?"

She looks back at him, expression as blank as she can keep it, even when she stays curled in on herself like a newborn fawn. It's so hard to gauge how to react to him, when now he's acting as if they happen to be sitting at the same train station, instead instead of two people who just woke up next to each other.

"Are you?"

"I'm fine."

He feels animated not by any actual volition or energy, but by the need to do something, to break the strange awkward silence between them which he now can only blame her for.

"I need to shower." He gets up, pausing for a moment. "It's not you, it's just- I need to shower."

A moment alone to resist hitting a wall.

The awkward silence is only extended by the fact that she thinks he's lying or hiding something, because why else would he suddenly change so much? But she blinks, not having been expecting that answer, the sudden need for a shower. She's not really sure how she could have expected it, given the way it sort of comes out of nowhere.

"Um... okay," she says, gesturing toward the bathroom. "There's towels on the table next to the tub. Let me know if you need anything."

"I'm fine," he reiterates, almost too quickly. It won't help her with thinking he's hiding anything, but he isn't, really. That would require awareness enough of a thing to hide.

When he gets to the bathroom he near throws the robe to the floor, turning the water on hot enough to scour him red. For a few moments he just sits on the toilet seat, head in his hands, mind racing as the bathroom fills up with steam. He thinks about his phone out there, if he trusts Swann not to read the messages. He thinks about what he's going to do if this strange tryst goes south. He thinks about the clothing on the floor and how Swann comes over him like a bird with protective wings, trying to fix, to gift, to shower with affection as if he were her little pink dog.

He can't explain the anger he feels right now, not just as her but at everyone for making this complicated, as if they set up the machinery in his head to backfire. He smacks his hand, once, twice against the wall he's sure is furthest from the bedroom, so she won't hear it, and rests his head against that same wall while water runs down his face and in wet clumps of hair.

He showers and scrubs his shoulders with a loofah. All the soaps in here smell like Swann, florals and baked goods and bubblegum. The towel is predictably soft and fluffy.

He gets back into the pajamas and comes back out, hair mussed from being quickly and messily dried with the towel.

She watches him until the door closes, barely holding back the tears that come because she knows something's wrong but she doesn't know what, only that it has to be her fault because she was the only one who could have caused it. She lies back down on her side, curled up tight, and counts her breaths, in and out and in and out, and things are coming in flashes, blinking in front of her eyes instead of the wall she's staring at.

A kite diving in the air. Her tights, the knees ruined from the rocks and grass. Hands linked together for an entire car ride. His hand tight in her hair, fingers against her scalp. Their foreheads touching while they looked at each other.

Swann sniffles, bites the back of her hand, and spends a moment hating herself for finding validation in all of this, in the way he looks at her when she hasn't somehow stuffed it up. Wishes she could go backward and stop herself from going to ask for dinner, because that was when whatever happened, happened.

She squeezes her eyes shut and pushes that all away, gets stuck on the memory of him pushing up all her skirts and his voice all thick with tones she hasn't heard in years because she's too scared of the rejection.

I want you.

She doesn't hear the shower turn off because the sentence is repeating in her ears like a chant, and she's still facing the wall and curled up except for one hand finishing what he started hours ago while tears drip quietly down into the pillow because she's never been good at separating sex from emotions.

Biting her hand again, she knits her brow and breathes out hard through her nose, only to be startled by a sudden awareness that the door is opening and she can't hear any ambient noise from the bathroom. It makes her freeze and curl up tighter.

When he comes back into the room she looks like a scared rabbit, huddled up, oval-shaped, white still in her nightgown that doesn't really cover anything. She's facing the wall, but even without seeing her face, he can tell by the shake of her shoulders and the phlegmy gurgle of her nose that she's weeping.

"Great. I suppose I made you cry again, too." He doesn't sound angry. Just tired, deeply, deeply tired. This, he thinks, is his lot in life, to never have some happy thing that isn't netted with guilt or tears or secrecy or god knows what else dragging it down. He may as well resign himself to it and let acceptance of the inevitable bend his back into the stooped stature of an old man, curl his hands up like claws, make permanent those dark circles under his eyes.

He picks at the buttons of his new pajamas, fondling them between his fingers, staring at the heart-shape of her lower back. He stands there, looking at her as if she were a lunar eclipse, squinting and anticipatory of some movement that doesn't come from her. Maybe he expects her to lash out. Maybe he expects her to cringe and apologize. When she doesn't, he comes and sits next to her on the bed, not looking directly at her but resting a hand on her hip.

It takes her a minute to decide what to do, and she lies under his hand, still and contemplative. There are tears on her face, but her expression is one of determination when she sits up and then moves atop him, raised up on her knees, nightie pushed up on her hips as she grabs his face and leans in.

"No. I want you to fuck me," she says, unsure if he even has the desire or the energy for it, but sex had made him warm and happy before, and she wants to go back to that, undo whatever it is she did, and so she's sure she needs to recreate that feeling for him. Plus, at this point, she's sort of hoping to maybe relieve some of her own anxiety.

She leans in and kisses him, desperate and needy, the tears on her face drying up against her skin. She stays like that a moment, hands tight where they're on his cheeks and neck and behind his ears, and she pulls back just for a second to whisper.

"Please, Jason."

Edited 2015-02-28 16:34 (UTC)

He knows full well that she isn't crying out of a burning desire to have him fuck her again. He hasn't been with that many women - probably well below average for a man his age - but he knows enough that sex would be a bandage for her, a way to assure herself that he didn't mean it when he stalked out, that he doesn't mean whatever harshness has come between them, whatever retreat he's undertaken inside his head.

It makes him want to recoil or storm out. He wants to withdraw from her and continue to grind her, like sand under the heel of a shoe against stone. And so he doesn't return her kiss, only lets her mouth play over his with hunger that's actually neediness.

"Eta's going to come back any minute with the food."

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and then mommy issues

jason >:

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