thecapitol | Flecks of the Heavens' Spat Out Spit [OPEN]

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Flecks of the Heavens' Spat Out Spit [OPEN]

WHO| Jason Compson and Open; Jason and Swann; Jason, Rick and Daryl
WHAT| Jason gets a migraine and is helpless; Jason beats an Avox; Jason gives Swann a gift; Rick and Daryl get the shotguns.
WHEN| Week 6
WHERE| D7 Suites; Swann's place
WARNINGS/NOTES| Avox abuse, migraines, general Jason awfulness. If you're going to tag the second prompt, please PP or PM me first so we can figure out where it's going and how far to take it, because Jason won't hesitate to put someone in jail.

I. Open

He knew he was going to have one of his headaches from the beginning of the morning, when every light seemed to have a ring radiating off of it and everything seemed to smell like rainwater. The one upside to the curse of these migraines is that he usually gets a few hours head start on them, with the feeling of deadly premonition, and so he spends most of the day trying to finish up everything as quickly as he can and clock out early. The calls to Sponsors and thank you cards to donors becomes a race against time, one which he sees himself losing too late to actually prevent disaster.

First he can't see, and then he can't move. Even breathing seems to put too much strain on him, and the throbbing, tightening hammering in his head gets worse with every exhale. The inside of his body feels like a live wire, sparking away inside his skull at camera-shutter speed. Nausea roils inside his throat and stomach, furling and unfurling like the tide.

When he opens his eyes the light is too bright, speckled with floating spots and halos, and he feels like the universe itself is trying to cram itself through his eyesockets and that his bones have made the opening too small to fit. So he keeps them shut and rolls over on the District Seven couch until he's facedown in a pillow, sweating slightly, trying not to whimper.

He has no hope of driving himself home, and even the idea of getting up seems a cruel joke. He tries twice, and both times a surge of nausea and a thunderclap of pain force him back down. So he lies there, hoping to whatever powers that be that his Tributes stick to their schedules and don't come bother him.

II. Open (please read note)

What started off as a strong Arena quickly loses those good odds as the District Seven Tributes die in the field and the District Suite gets repopulated. The worse it looks, the worse Jason's temper gets, until he's liable to throw something at the slightest provocation, which the Games video updates seem eager to supply him with. At least twice this week he's broken a glass, and yesterday smacked a table so hard that he has a ring of bruising around his finger like a wedding band.

With only Nick left in the Arena, Jason and Emily's chances are getting desperate, and the worst blow comes to Jason's ego when he realizes that no amount of fawning and flattery and networking seems to be enough to get Nick more supplies in the Arena. It stings to feel powerlessness, and to make it worse the only person willing to spot Nick a fire-starting kit's funds will only do it on condition that Jason go drinking with him - no sobriety allowed. Jason turns it down, but doesn't leave with his head held high so much as rankled and humiliated, and every ungrateful glance from his Tributes reminds him of how his family used to practically own this damn country and yet here he is, exposing his belly to anyone with money, helpless and inept and so, so frustrated with his life. Dressed in a suit he got from someone else's charity and supporting a home full of ingrates and lonely and with a fury as endless as the sky.

Whatever it is that set Jason off this time, it isn't sated just by smashing a piece of kitchenware. This time he backhands the Avox who rushes in to try and clean up the coffee mug he throws against the floor, sending them into the couch.

III. Swann

For someone who usually agonizes over every half-assi that goes to a necessary cause, Jason doesn't seem to mind spending money on Swann. He complains about it, at times, but it's more to go through the motions of complaining than because it actually bothers him. He buys her coffee when he can and tells her to save her money when they get lunch, getting sulky and defensive when she insists on splitting the tab. Sometimes he buys her a pastry on his way to pick her up for carpooling, although he doesn't let her eat it in the vehicle, and he has yet to ask her to help pay for fuel.

Today he shows up at her place with a large carrier in the back of his car, covered by a blanket, with a towel underneath it to protect the seats. Something inside is making scratching sounds. Jason looks a little frazzled, and shows up a few minutes late from a different route than he usually takes. He presses a button inside the car and the door opens for Swann.

"You coming, Honeymead?"

IV. Daryl and Rick

The rumors spread quickly after the Crowning, and all of them rub Jason the wrong way. A few photographs of him and Beth at the Crowning, him whispering into her ear, have made the rounds on tabloids, some of them even frontpage for the publications hungry enough to fabricate a scandal for readership. Jason's certain that he wouldn't ever touch a Tribute like that, but the fact that people are so eager to believe it of him leaves his pride feeling excoriated.

For his part, Jason doesn't treat Beth any differently, except for being a bit more stiff and cranky with her than he might have been before. But whispers swarm around them like a plague of mosquitoes, making a to-do out of something as simple as him Escorting her to a photoshoot with horses (A PONY FOR A PRICE?, a headline questions; another goes even more outrageous and wonders if Beth will say 'neigh' to marriage). He can only imagine the explanations she's making to the passel of Southerners who seem so eager to protect her.

Right now he's in the District Seven kitchen, glasses parked precariously on the tip of his nose as he writes by hand some math for the District budget. He's taken to putting most of his notes on his phone lately; he used to be able to leave writing around, but that was when most Tributes were entirely illiterate. His suit jacket hangs over the back of a chair and his shirt sleeves are pushed up to his elbows. A cup of coffee, long-cooled, sits beside him, and he occasionally asks his phone to answer some percentages questions for him.

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She curls in on herself, reflexively, rolling onto her side and wrapping her arms around herself. Her nails dig into her upper arms and she flinches when he slams the door, nails leaving deep half-moons in her skin, red and angry. She knows from experience that they'll bruise and take days to go away.

She keeps breathing, but shakily, like her body's forgotten how to do it automatically. She blinks unseeingly at the other pillow on the bed and doesn't have the will or the strength to push it away, because she both wants him to never touch her and to never let her go, all at the same time, and she doesn't know what to do with that feeling.

He walks back over to the bed, and for a while, he hesitates, torn between walking out and crawling into bed with her. His hands are shaking again, his own breath taut in his chest.

He imagines taking a hundred-assi note from his wallet and throwing it at her and storming away, knows how that would annihilate her from the inside out. It's tempting not because he hates her but because it would be so easy to cause so much damage. Because hurting people is something you do when you have power, and he's spent the day powerless.

He imagines curling up next to her and saying nothing, arms wrapped around her, face in her hair. It's tempting not because he loves her but because he doesn't know how to explain his feelings in words, only in the language of his body, of holding her close.

He oscillates between the two warring desires until he knows that he can't be the one to make the decision.

"Do you want me to leave?"

Her mind is so blank while he just stands there, while she lies there, that when he speaks, it takes a moment to process in her brain, to actually understand what he's asking. She doesn't know what to say for a moment, and she isn't even sure that sound will come out if she opens in her mouth.

Tears pool on the side of her nose and slip down.

"No."

Her voice sounds so meek, so miserable, that it makes him livid. He thinks she must be exaggerating it to punish him for one of the few things in his life he truly cares for. Out of spite he nearly indulges that fantasy of walking out, but instead he grabs his phone (the screen has long since blacked out into sleep mode) and sets it on the nightstand.

He settles into bed next to her, not touching her, back to back like they were that first night they shared a bed.

It gives him a satisfactory thrill of joy, even if it is a cruel sort of joy - but for Jason he doesn't mind being a little cruel.

He'd give the man so much more, if he could.

He sat down on the arm of the couch, a little too heavily, and didn't lower his voice. "I wanted to talk about my newest outfit," He said, making something up on the spot. "I really don't think the sequins on the left sleeve are necessary - actually, I really don't think the left sleeve is necessary at all --"

She can't stop crying. There are no sobs or gasps -- it's just tears, seemingly endless, streaming down her face and into the pillow. Somehow it hurts all the more after tonight, after she took care of him and he cried into her neck and asked her to go with him to the doctor. Her whole body aches, like he's somehow sapped every bit of energy she's had in the past week, all at once.

They lie in silence for what seems like ages before she can speak. "Is it that I'm not good enough?"

"No."

His voice is firm, decisive. Every sob builds on the anger inside his chest like a tower. He doesn't know how to tell her what Lorraine means to him because he can't say what Swann means to him, and here she is acting like he was unfaithful when all he's done is receive some text messages.

"My friendship with her has nothing to do with you. It never did. I met her nearly ten years ago."

"But you aren't friends with her. You're..." She struggles for a word, brow knit. "Well, it's not just friends. And you didn't tell her to stop sending you those messages, even after all of this, us. So it does have something to do with me."

She can't stop thinking about how the situation would go in the reverse, that he would lose his mind, would go after any man that addressed her the way Lorraine spoke to him. Swann thinks he might hit her, if he found pictures like that on her phone.

"I just want to know why."

"Because I haven't even spoken to her since we started seeing each other. I talk to her in person." He says it like the rules he's set for himself and Lorraine originated from some external source, not his own will. "You want to snoop through the rest of my phone, you won't find any other pictures, because I delete them. I let her send me things because it makes her feel better about being all lonely in the District."

On the bed, he folds his arms, clutches his own biceps, glaring a furrow into the wall.

"You want me not to fuck her, that's fine, I wasn't planning on it. Like I said. It's been just you since we started."

"That's terrible common sense, Compson, and not just because you'd cause a mess and we all know how adverse you are to Avoxes touching your body. Do you want them to do the clean-up?" Dark, almost pitch black humor aside, "Someone has to keep the District 7 tributes in check and you're it. Strangely enough, there are people that will mourn you, particularly Honeymead. She actually does give a shit about you, so for her sake and maybe someone else's, I don't particularly care, do stick around."

This is as close as the Trainer will ever get to showing support and counsel to Jason, even if it's laden with enough sarcasm to burn a hole through the cement floor.

She's not lonely, she's a prostitute!

I shouldn't have to ask specifically.

Swann's mind, the small part of it that she always squashes down because it gets her in trouble, screams things at him, begs for answers. She doesn't let any of it come out of her mouth, too scared that it will make him leave forever and hate her.

"I wasn't snooping," she says instead, weakly defending herself. "It all just popped up when I texted your mother."

She falls quiet for another moment. "I thought you hate Districters."

"Sure." But he still believes she was snooping.

"She was born in the Capitol."

But the truth is it wouldn't make a difference. In a decade of malcontent the only good dreams he has are the ones where he climbs up inside Lorraine and she listens to him with that strangely-cocked head of hers, the one that always seems like her head wasn't aligned straight with her neck. It was Lorraine who first expressed disgust at the things his mother said, who encouraged the cotton investing, who opened him up because he was lonely too and didn't even know he was.

"Like I say. I won't fuck her, I won't kiss her or even touch her, but I'm not cutting her out completely."

"She's still a Districter." It pops out of her mouth unbidden, before she can stop it, her voice tinged with hate and jealousy because she doesn't for a moment believe that a whore wants anything but compensated time and gifts and to take away the little that Jason has, because he's attached himself to her for whatever reason. It's business.

"You don't even talk to her."

He said it himself, so Swann isn't sure what there is to cling to. Lecherous texts and unattractive pictures? A woman that's no doubt just as bad in person? She cries silently into the pillow for a moment about it, and it's in that moment that she knows her eagerness to love, to feel that connection, has gotten the better of her, because even with his refusal to give up a whore he barely speaks to, Swann won't make Jason leave, won't tell him off, won't get angry.

She just feels broken.

"She isn't," he snaps, rolling over to face the back of her head. His breath feels hot in his throat, his head tight, and he tastes again the vomit from earlier. "And I won't let you talk about her like that."

For a little while, he glares at the back of her head, entertains again the idea of leaving. Of getting up and getting on a plane right now to District Eleven. Of deciding between two people he more than just wants, but possibly needs.

"She's my only friend."

"Like what? Like the Districter she is? Or worse, a Capitol girl who fucks them for money?" Swann rolls over too, and sits up, her face flushing hot and her eyes watery, but she's stopped the stream of tears. She looks shocked at herself, at the hateful things she finds herself capable of saying about this woman, things she would never say about even an Avox, and she's scared by how easily it all comes out. How angry the thought of this particular person makes her.

"If she's your only friend, then where is she, Jason? Where is she when your head aches and you're throwing up on the side of the road and when your mother is driving you crazy and you want to eat dinner in peace? If she's your friend, then why don't you talk to her? Why are all her messages to you about sex? Could it be that she's just milking you for every little red cent she can get before you stop running back to her and her... her dirty little District street corner?! Because that's her job, Jason! To take your money!"

"I told you not to talk about her like that!" Jason pushes himself up and out of the bed, getting to his feet with his trademark clumsiness, made all the more uncoordinated by the fact that he's hurting and angry. There's something violent in him, something barely contained, and it fills his mouth with spit and ties up his throat into something harsh and low.

"She's in the District staying out of my Capitol business like I asked her to, because unlike every other woman I know, she actually respects a man's boundaries."

Swann rises up on her knees, staying on the bed, because standing up would actually diminish her presence by about four inches, just as hurt and angry as Jason is, and maybe more because what right does he even have to be angry?

"She was in the District before you and she'll be there after you because she lives there, Jason, because she is a Districter! And maybe she "respects your boundaries" --" she even makes air quotes to emphasize this "-- because you're her customer. She's a whore and you're probably the wealthiest person she's ever met, can't you put two and two together? She'll do whatever you want and agree with whatever you say because you're paying her to!"

She swipes roughly at her face, where angry tears are spilling over onto her cheeks. "She's never even seen you at your worst. You only see her when you're furthest away from all of your problems. I'm the one who's here every day, I'm the only one who ever sticks up for you, but she's your only friend. Guess all it takes is some shitty selfies and calling you daddy like a little girl. Wish I would have known earlier, probably would have made my life easier than trying to teach you yoga and listening to you and washing your hair and everything else."

"You don't know anything about her but a handful of text messages, so stop talking about her that way, Swann, or I swear to God you will never see me again." He knows what she's saying, knows there's an element to truth in it, but none of that has ever struck him as a downside to his relationship with Lorraine - that he has the control of his wallet over her has been something he looked for.

As opposed to what he found with Swann, which he stumbled into, blindly, stupidly, which he should have walked out of and kept his life all the simpler for it.

He wants to throw and slam things, but instead he paces, and even that gesture makes him woozy and stirs the latent headache.

"I didn't mean that you didn't matter to me, but if that's how you want to take it then maybe I'm not going to fight it. Maybe you can just think that. Knock yourself out on it. If all you're going to do is act a martyr and call in what you've done for me like a debt then you're more like my mother than I thought."

"Have Stig rip it off. I don't-" Jason pauses as a wave of nausea rolls up his throat, as his whole body tenses in anticipation of a retch that doesn't come. He manages to keep from groaning in front of Dorian but only just. He takes a deep breath. "I don't care."

At this moment, Jason wishes that the building itself would all catch fire, with himself and everyone in it, to save him from the twin pains of the physical and the psychological, the humiliation and insult of having Dorian toy with him and the storm of fraught nerves netted through his head.

"Go away, Dorian, or so help me, I'll call the Peacekeepers right now." Provided he could find his phone and actually dial something into it, which he isn't sure he could actually manage in his current state.

"You think I don't know that? You think I'm not aware that some people around here get a little flighty when people's tempers rise?" He flicks on his cigarette and takes a long drag, then gets up, walks over to Cyrus with that insolent swagger, exhaling a plume of smoke that spreads like a cloud over his lips and breastbone.

"Lucky for me I'm not selling myself, and I'm not about to call one of my allies in this world 'stupid'. That's something I let politicians do."

He knows it's a gamble, but he also stands on a different axis from Cyrus. He doesn't believe that the position Cyrus has carefully cultivated and protected stands on stone so much as sand, the same loose terrain that fell out from under the Compsons. Maybe - probably - Cyrus doesn't feel that the chain of Capitolite children, the ones who grew into angry and flighty and resentful adults, are going to be the only ones he can find common ground with. But Jason does. Jason sees the end coming like a storm, or like one of his migraines, with inexplicable and yet incontrovertible certainty.

"But I appreciate knowing who isn't going to be subtle about treating me like a child. That's real helpful." Jason raises an eyebrow and blows a smoke ring, not at Cyrus but at a glancing angle.

"What else do I need to know? What's so special about her? I've never asked you for anything, Jason, how can you say I'm trying to call it a debt?! All I do is try to make you happy, that's all I ever want!"

Her knees give out under her and she kneels, burying her face in her hands because the hurt is starting to outweigh the anger, and she can feel acid high in her throat, burning the tissue and making her want to retch onto the carpet.

If Jason were in any less pain, he would laugh at that, because the pitch black humor is appropriately up his alley. Instead his lips just twitch slightly, although it's difficult to see if it's a smile or a paroxysm.

"If you don't care, why are you in my District Suite evangelizing painkillers and general practitioners at me?"

He sidesteps why Lorraine's important to him, not because it's sexual but because he's ashamed, somehow, like a child, of the fact that he's vulnerable and Lorraine makes him feel like that's okay, like it doesn't make him less of a man to be unhappy and scared all the time.

"Then why are you doing this? Throwing a fit over the fact that I have a friend I haven't bothered to vet by you yet when I haven't even talked to her in months, then as soon as I say something about the fact that she's important to me you throw it in my face?"

"Because she's not your friend, she's a prostitute, and if I wasn't doing this, you'd be fucking her the second you set foot in Eleven next time, because apparently she's more important to you than I am! Because she's your only friend but you're my only real friend!"

She sobs and then abruptly leans over the side of the bed, reaches around frantically until she manages to grab a silver trash can, then promptly vomits up a huge amount of pure acid into it, clear and painful and tearing at her throat as it comes up.

Even though she's vomiting, even though it's very clear from the emphatic retching that the conversation is over, Jason can't help but throw in the last word, discarding it like litter out of a moving car, edges of every word sharp. "I don't even know where to begin with what's wrong with everything you've just said."

But he goes over to the bed and sits down beside her, resting a hand between her skinny shoulderblades. The sound of the gagging makes his own stomach tighten up, suddenly aware again of the pain in his head and the anger in his guts and the fact that he's digesting nothing but water and breathmints. "Alright, alright, calm down. You're making yourself sick."

Obviously.

He pulls her hair from beside her face and looks at her without pity but with actual concern.

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Flecks of the Heavens' Spat Out Spit [OPEN]

I HAVE TO SLEEP, I DON'T WANT TO

I WILL BE HERE FOR YOU TOMORROW MY SWEET

siiiiiiiigh good night then

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