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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She moves across the bed to where he indicated, resting her head on his shoulder as she looks at the tray. She reaches for bread first, her way of trying to make sure her stomach is calm enough to take real food, too.

"It's a big bowl." There are two forks, and Swann's not sure if Eta was trying to facilitate romance or if there just wasn't enough room on the tray for two bowls. "I don't think it should be cold."

He leans into her a little bit, closing the last of the distance between them until it seems like they're both the same figure, a lump of human-colored clay. He takes a drink of water and they're close enough that Swann should be able to feel him swallow it.

From this position, he can't see the bruise he left on her neck, the red mark on the inside of her nose from his thumb.

"Would it cheer you up if we fed each other?"

That makes her smile, nuzzle against his neck for a moment as she nods. "That would be nice," she tells him, "but I'm fine. I want you to be happy."

She doesn't say it with any particular emphasis of him, but rather the way that she puts everyone's happiness above her own. It's second nature to her, and she reaches out with some of the bread for him.

He takes the bread, making a small sound of approval as he chews on it, and then wraps some pasta around the fork and pushes it towards her mouth.

"Just a little. I won't fit you to bursting."

Swann takes the bite, leaning back against him as she chews and swallows it, and it's probably good he wants to feed her, or else she's likely to not eat anything besides a slice of bread. The pasta is delicious, like everything Eta makes, even if it's cooled a little from sitting in the hall.

"Mm, try it."

"Make me." He exhales over her neck, letting his breath play like incense over her, and squeezes her waist to pull her a little closer.

She shivers, involuntarily, eyes closing, and shifts to wrap her leg around his, at the knee, pressing her chest to his side. Reaching for the fork, she arches her neck up toward his face, smirking.

"Are you challenging me?"

"Maybe. Are you scared of a challenge?" He meets her eyes, bats his lashes with more exaggerated effect than is attractive, and then leans in, kissing her, tasting the pasta still on her mouth.

"Oh please, I rep Joel," she jokes, right before he kisses her and she closes her eyes, holding his face again with her free hand. She's starkly aware again that they're not wearing clothes, and somewhere in the back of her mind, regrets that their last round didn't last longer, that he's probably done for the night and she definitely doesn't have it in her to bring it up or instigate anything further.

"Then prove it. Make me."

There's something awkward about the way Jason flirts, as if he's planning every sentence ahead, or worse, like he's only baring so much as he can never show vulnerability. It's something he didn't have much interest in as a teenager and then as an adult, other factors stunted his limited time on the dating scene. As such it might strike Swann as not fresh but disused, something made special by the puff of dust that comes with it.

"And Jack. You really won the Tribute lottery this round."

"Jack's not bad. He's got a sellable persona."

She doesn't seem to notice his awkwardness, seems more caught up in the charm and novelty of him actually even attempting to flirt. He doesn't necessarily need to, given that Swann is used to not getting that effort from people, so she only thinks it's sort of cute.

"Don't make me wrestle you for the fork."

"Could you? You have such little arms and hands. I don't think you could wrestle Marcel into a Christmas sweater." He laughs and grins, then moves the fork handle to her hands.

"You're going to regret underestimating me so much, Jason!"

She laughs too, taking the fork and winding up another bite of pasta that she offers to him, wriggling closer until she's practically in his lap, biting her lower lip a little.

He pouts his lips almost like a child would when confronted with vegetables, challenging her to try and get him to eat it, except that he's laughing with his mouth closed and it causes him to make a strange huffing sound through his nose.

She sucks at her teeth with a thoughtful smirk, barely able to contain her own laughter, then nods, letting her face get serious. "Oh, okay," she says, letting the fork get close enough to him for the scent to waft up toward his nose, then takes it away again and eats it herself. She leans in close, a speck of pesto still intentionally left on her lip so that she can lick it away, and idly winds up another fork of pasta.

"I have had," she tells him, letting her voice get husky (or as husky as it ever does get), "so many things in my mouth today, and I'd love your opinion on which you think I liked best. But you'd have to open your own mouth to tell me, wouldn't you?"

She's so close, almost like she's going to try and kiss him, but then she sits back and eats the pasta she has on the fork again.

"Mm, I'm pretty sure this dinner is definitely edging your cock out of the running."

It's strange to hear the dirty talk out of her, the kind he usually only expects from Lorraine. It sounds affected on her bubbly voice, and he isn't sure he likes it, in combination with the food play they've been having that's so suddenly reminded him of his servants feeding Benjy.

He laughs again, shaking his head at her. "You're not going to try and shove it in my mouth while I'm trying to talk, are you? You might chip my perfect teeth."

Getting braces off was the last cosmetic procedure he had before the family went to hell.

He takes the fork from her.

Well, she can't help her voice, and she's not going to use weird, cutesy euphemisms, either. But either way, her plan worked. She smiles at him, waits until he takes the bite.

"Don't have to. I got you to eat it on your own."

She sticks her tongue out at him.

"Is mindgames how you get all your favorite people to eat their dinner?"

He quickly swipes a finger across the sauce and presses it to the tip of the offending tongue, giving her a splash of pesto and a grin for her insolence.

"If you don't mind me assuming I'm one of your favorite people." He realizes that if he isn't, he may just kick over the dinner and storm out.

"I don't know about you, but I usually wear clothes around my non-favorites."

She smiles and puts her tongue back in her mouth, reaching for the second fork so they can both actually eat, then hooks her ankle around his, their feet lined up -- hers tiny and pedicured and more pale than his.

"I could stand to put clothes back on," he says, suddenly aware of his body, of the way the sudden flush of blood up his chest and neck is so evident when there's no shirt and tie to hide it. But he doesn't move to do so, instead eating with her, keeping their ankles linked.

When they're done he shoves the platter aside with his other foot and then pushes her shoulder, laying her down on the bed and laying his head down on her chest. He sighs, and it's both contented and sad, like the relief of taking off your shoes in the middle of a journey you know will go on and on.

Lying back, she just wraps her arms around him, soaking up his weight on top of her, her eyes closed. She can hear that element of sadness, and she doesn't understand it beyond knowing that Jason is sort of perpetually sad, in a way.

She wishes he wouldn't be.

Swann strokes his hair, so absently that she barely seems to notice she's doing it, and lets her breathing even out under his head.

"Anything else we need to do tonight?"

"Not that I know of. Why, you have anything in mind?"

He closes his eyes and listens to her internal organs, to the squirm of her guts and the gentle thump of her heart, sounding like someone knocking on a door many rooms away. He knows tomorrow they have to go back to work, that the nature of time is that hours die and leave and fade away, that you can't stay in one moment like this, like he wants to. Like he wants to shore up in right now as if it's a fortress against anything else in the world, in life.

As absently as she strokes his hair, he skims his fingers over her side.

"Not a thing," she answers with a deep, satisfied exhale, and tightens her arms around him for a moment.

Her skin raises up in tiny goosebumps under his fingertips, but it seems to be more an automatic reaction to his touch than any kind of tension, because she's relaxed beneath him. She thinks that maybe they can get away with being just a little late to work tomorrow, that they don't have to get there before the sun rises. Maybe they'll save time by being in the same place to start with.

"Promise me you won't run away while I sleep."

Something about the way she says it suggests less that she suspects him and more that it's happened before, men disappearing as soon as they could.

He feels a surge of anger at the men who've taken her and walked out, out of possessiveness more than protectiveness - it's beyond him to realize that their loss was his gain, that the oft-broken heart thumping away under his ear was led here by its setbacks. All he sees is those other men like shadowy figures, defiling something he wants to keep as his, immune by the fact that they're safely in the past, away from where he can stop them.

But it's not that protectiveness isn't there. It's not that there isn't some part of him that wants to seal up the cracks in her.

He opens his eyes and turns his head over, so he can meet her eyes. "What kind of man do you take me for?"

He hasn't been the kind to shirk away from confrontation, to disappear in the middle of the night. The women (and men) he was with when he was younger knew full well when he was leaving, because he was vocal and cruel about it. And the last decade, nearly, has been spent with prostitutes, whom he has more respect for, oddly. Or maybe he just likes to make sure a contract is squared away before he leaves.

She blinks at him, frowning like she's confused.

"I don't know. I don't take you for any kind of man in particular. I just... I was just asking."

She doesn't want to explicitly say that it's happened before, far more than once, and that she's afraid to fall for it again. She doesn't explain that she worries about Jason leaving because of his mood swings, the way he's fine one moment and raging the next. That she fears she's not good enough and he'll realize it when her snoring wakes him up in the night.

"Just... I like it when you're here."

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