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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"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."

Swann pulls back for a moment, mouth slightly agape, and doesn't say anything. Tears prickle in her eyes again, but this time they're hot and angry and she hasn't felt what's bubbling up inside her enough to know that it's fury. All she knows is that she's seconds away from hitting him, or would if she felt capable of it, and her hands grow tight around his face.

She's been told what to do and say her whole life, enjoys it, but she has never been turned down for sex before, and for some reason, that's what ignites the fuse inside her.

"What do you want from me?" she demands, grip hard on his cheeks. "What do I have to do? Just tell me, Jason! I'll do it! But you're going to kill me with this game, this whole 'one minute it's fine and the next it's not'! You don't want to talk, you don't want to fuck, you all of a sudden treat me like I'm vermin even when you were the one who wanted to lie here with me!"

She stops to take a breath, not having realized how her lungs sting from not inhaling.

"Tell me!"

He wants to smack her upside the head, and it's not restraint so much as the fact that he's stunned with her sudden anger that he doesn't. He wrenches his head away from her, and her fingernails leave pink marks on his cheekbones. He takes a step back from the bed, looking at her, how unthreatening she is even in the peak of anger, with her face bright red sand tears dribbling down with makeup in them.

"I haven't done anything, much less treat you like vermin. All I wanted was a damn shower." His voice is low but barely controlled, almost like sound through an overcompressed speaker, harsh and cracking. "I didn't know I was supposed to be sharing dinner and putting my hands on vermin. I didn't know that getting fucked is the only different between a woman and a rat."

She sits on the bed, looking up at him, and swipes at her face. There's a harsh, awkward silence as she shrinks back into herself, unable to keep the anger up, especially given how much stronger in his feelings he is.

"I'm sorry," she mumbles, starting to shake. "I just wanted you to be happy again, I don't know what happened. You... you can eat and sleep in here, I'll go."

She stands and heads for the door, shivering so badly that she can barely stay upright.

"I'm not kicking you out of your own bedroom." Now Jason sounds, rather than just angry, as snapping as a dog at the end of a chain.

He makes a move for the door, for her, and he takes both her arms in his hands and holds her there so she can't keep walking away. He's been guilted this way before a hundred times, not by Swann but by his mother, getting the last word in by sacrificing the most and claiming it's a step up from whatever she's suffering from his words.

His face is ruddy with temper, his eyebrows pulled low over his eyes, his hands tight around her small upper arms. "Go and get back down on the bed. You want me to fuck you, I'll fuck you alright."

She's taken aback, because she wasn't trying to guilt him, she was trying to just go away and leave him alone and curl in on herself, and she usually does that in her craft closet anyway. She quakes in his hands for a few seconds, but his orders trigger whatever part of her mind likes being told what to do, likes having choices and responsibility taken away from her, and she obediently returns to the bed, sitting on the edge of it and looking up at him.

It's anger again, all that anger that animates him morning through night, that's taken the place in his soul that most people fill with life and love and energy. It's fuel all his own. It translates easily to lust now that it's been set ablaze by her arguments.

He artlessly undoes the buttons on his pajamas and tosses them aside before approaching her like someone might in a wrestling ring, not before a bed. He shoves her down, a hand on her face, pulling away at that slutty sheer nightie she's wearing until the strap at the shoulder breaks. It isn't the clumsy passion of before, but something violent inside him, something that wants not to have sex but to fuck her, hard, with all the ugliness the word entails. It's sex because he can't actually set the bed on fire is what it is.

Swann catches herself on her arms when he pushes her down, looks shocked but not hurt or upset, and doesn't fight him when he rips at her clothing, She frees her arm before the other strap breaks, and the nightie comes down over her hips easily -- it doesn't bother her that he's ripped her nightdress, she has a million others.

She doesn't say anything, just looks up at him, waiting.

He doesn't give her long to wait, and he's barely looking at her face, there beneath his hand, her mascara tears smeared across her cheeks. His hand trails down to her throat, and he holds down, not enough to choke her but enough to make it hard for her to breathe, to talk.

He shoves his pants down, finishes ripping her nightgown clear of her chest and bites one of her nipples.

"Where's the protection?"

She whines, arches up when he bites her, her eyes fluttering with his hand around her neck. She has flashes of other lovers, years back, holding her down and throwing her around and leaving bruises all over her, and it's almost a comfort to be back in a space where she at least has some idea of what to expect, where it's not all just a giant question mark for her.

"There," she squeaks out, pointing toward one of the bedside tables, a drawer where she's almost positive there's a few condoms among the loose jewelry, the phone chargers, scribbled notes on paper that have been balled up. "In there."

For a few moments he just stays there, watching her fight for breath, before he gets up with clumsy suddenness and goes where she's directed him. He nearly pulls the drawer out of the table as he rifles through it, made wild and angular by a fury beyond him. He breathes heavy, hot, making his beard feel humid and his head feel too small for everything inside it. He throws one of the condoms over to her.

"I want you to put it on," he says, advancing again, crawling up on the bed over her.

Wheezing, her eyes get a little watery, and she gasps when he lets go of her, inhaling deeply. She sits up to grab the condom, shifting onto her knees and tearing it open, and then she ducks down, because Swann learned to put condoms on with her mouth at some point or another. It's sort of a party trick, except that only a handful of people know about it.

"Okay," she says, popping back up, bizarrely attentive, like she's just waiting to hear what comes next.

He pushes her back down on the bed so she bounces a bit, then crawls up over her, surveying her face like he doesn't recognize her as Swann or maybe, even, as a person so much as a collection of shapes made from nose and cheekbones and chin and lips.

He spreads her legs fast enough he hears a benign pop in her hip, and with that he drives into her.

and then mommy issues

jason >:

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