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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Right."

With his glasses on, he can bear to open his eyes just enough to see. He doesn't move without Swann, though, simultaneously cursing and blessing each moment she's gone - cursing because she's a comfort, blessing because the sooner she returns the sooner he has to face the elevator and the ride to her place.

Sometime during this shallow rumination, he realizes he hasn't clocked out yet, and fumbles with his phone to do so. Looking at the screen at all makes his head hurt more, and by the time he's managed the relatively simple process he's almost given up on getting up and moving. He leans against the backrest of the couch, waiting for her return.

It takes her maybe five minutes to catch the elevator upstairs, gather her things and then return to the sofa. When she gets back to him, she gathers up his papers and his work bag and gives everything to an Avox that she tells to follow them to the car, so that she can support Jason without having to clutch so many things in her hands.

"Are you ready?" she asks gently, reaching for his hands, ready to take him to the elevator.

"I don't think I'm getting any more ready," he says, corner of his mouth twitching into a grimace and back.

He takes her hands (his palms are sweating but he feels cold) and gets up, holding tight to her and letting her lead. He'd be keeping his eyes closed as much as possible, but he's well aware that he's not on the more graceful side of the spectrum. He flinches when the elevator dings for their floor, and puts his face in his hands once they're in.

The Avox dutifully following them into the elevator with their things, Swann presses the button for the parking garage and then keeps attempting to soothe Jason, reaching to keep stroking his hair, making soft little hushing noises, her face worried. She knows that this has been happening forever, but she's never seen his headaches firsthand, and it's upsetting.

They make it to the garage and she guides him out with her arm around his back. "Where's your keys?" she asks quietly, thumb rubbing at the small of his back.

He fishes through his pants pocket, feeling as if his fingers are uncoordinated and clumsy, but he manages to get them out and place them in Swann's hand. Every motion seems to hurt, adjusting the passenger seat for his height feels like violence, but the touch of her hands is something soothing that he can try to focus on.

He hates letting other people drive his car. He can count the people who have on one hand. It's a show of trust that he's going to let Swann, even by necessity.

He adjusts the seat all the way back so he's reclined, but reaches his hand over the center console so she can hold it, so he can keep that touch going.

She has to make much more of an adjustment to the seat than he does, mostly because his car is bigger than hers, which is a sporty little thing her father bought her and replaces every few years with a newer model. She's not used to these proportions, and it makes her anxious, but that's buried underneath her determination to get him away from the Tribute Center.

Holding his hand a little tighter than she means to, she waits for the Avox to load up their things, then pulls out and starts to drive them to her building, slow both for his head and for her own innate sense of impending doom, spurred by driving and made worse by an unfamiliar car.

She doesn't drive as smoothly as he does, and each jolt sends both agony and a snap of anxiety through him that feels sharp as the cracking of trees in winter. But he doesn't complain, staying where he is, perspiring a little, swallowing to try and stave off the nausea that the chaos in his head is causing. He breathes lightly, through his nose and out his mouth, trying to think only of the way it feels to inhale and exhale rather than how loud it seems to be.

For a while he feels as if he's floating in a sort of limbo, that time and space around him are aqueous, that the only thing that really exists is the feeling of her hand and the barbed wire constricting around his brain.

They're nearly to her place when he gives her hand a sharp squeeze. "Pull over. I'm going to be sick."

She's trying. She's not as good of a driver as he is to start with, and on top of that, she's never handled a car of this size in her life, so all she can do is her best. There's a few moments where her own anxiety takes her away from his pain, makes her focus entirely on the road, and then he squeezes her hand.

"Okay, just hold on."

She pulls into the parking lot of a restaurant, empty due to the fact that it's before dinner hours. It's the best she can do on short notice, and besides, she doesn't particularly like this place's food to begin with.

Jason shoves open the door and undoes his buckle before she's even come to a complete stop. He wrenches himself out of the car and stands there for a moment, doubled over, letting the night air send a chill through him, and for a split second he thinks he might be alright, that it was a false alarm, and then he's retching. The process of vomiting is all the more unpleasant for the way every gag makes his already pulverized temples seem to constrict, for the noise ringing in his ears and drowning out anything Swann tries to say. He wishes he hadn't had so much coffee this morning, had eaten yogurt instead of sausage, had gotten home more quickly so he didn't have to be puking onto a restaurant parking lot curb.

He's shivering and swaying by the time he's done, spitting, coughing, sniffling. Tears that sorrow could never bring to his face run down the side of his nose. He leans back and tries to catch himself on the car.

She can only scramble out of the car and rush around it once she's stopped, heels furiously skittering over the pavement until she reaches him and can rub his back again, hold his tie back, stroke his hair. He leans back on the car and she produces a handkerchief from a pocket in her skirt, gently wiping his face clean of the tears and everything else.

"It's okay," she repeats for what feels like the millionth time tonight, still in that same sweet, tender voice, content to stand there for however long he needs.

He slumps against her and the car, quiet and meek as she wipes at his face. He's not used to this sort of tenderness - the nanny that raised him and his siblings never made any bones about the fact that she hated him, likely for good reason, and his mother, for all her fussing, mostly did it for show rather than effect. He could never return it to another person, either, never emulate Swann's nurture.

But rather than shy away from the unknown, he lurches into it, greedily lapping up the affection, the tenderness, the care. It snaps something inside him, something brittle and small. He rests his face in her shoulder and more tears follow, from pain or anger or shame or sadness or just because it seems to siphon off pressure from his head. He sobs, ragged and quiet, a disused sound.

And there's the difference between them -- where the Compson nanny had been hateful, Swann's had been kind, and then there was always Eta, perfect Eta, devoted to Swann since the day of her birth and even before, loyal to the Honeymeads for decades on end. Swann's parents aren't mean or cold people (they were distant, more than anything), but it was Eta who'd taught Swann to love, with her every silent move.

She holds Jason tightly, whispering every little comfort she can give him, if only because there's nothing else she can do. Resting back against the car, she pulls him to her, to crush her skirts to her legs while he soaks her neck.

(Well, let's be real, Jason probably deserved it. And she raised the other kids with love and care!)

Soon Jason seems to drift off, not sleeping but forgetting that he was crying, his thoughts in achey kaleidoscope in his head. He feels the water against her neck and doesn't realize that it's tears, or him. He breathes deep and the pain lances through his head like a javelin, and he pulls away from her and fumbles with the car door.

"Now we're even," he whispers, quiet and with eyes rheumy from tears, trying to smile and finding that moving his face at all hurts. He only then notices that his glasses must have fallen off onto the asphalt while he was sick. "Let's get me to a dark room and a bed."

Her hands on him don't let go until he pulls away, and she's the one who scoops his glasses from the ground, makes sure they aren't broken before she passes them over to him.

"We're only a few blocks away," she says, then crosses back around the car to get back in and turn it on again, letting him settle down before she actually pulls out of the parking lot. The final leg of the journey is calmer, less choked with traffic, and Swann parks them in her spot before reaching to gently run her thumb over his cheek. "We're here."

"Good." Vomiting seems to have at least tamped down the nausea for now, which leaves him with only his head to focus on, spasming with each little jolt in the car. He wishes for the oblivion of sleep but know that that won't come. "Christ."

He moves like an old man does, or as if he's trying to avoid some sort of motion sensor, every step deliberate and slow and light. It's a far difference from his usual purposeful, full-bodied strides. He keeps a tight grip on her hand.

"It's not quite as bad as it was. Think it's peaked."

"That's good."

She leaves their bags for now, taking only Marcel and Jason's hand, and walks slowly with him, into the elevator that takes them to her apartment. The lights are dimmed, an order she sent to Eta before they even left the Tower, and she gives the dog over to her waiting Avox before guiding Jason toward the bedroom.

It's dark in there, only ambient light from outside illuminating the room enough to get him to the bed. She's wordless except for a small hum of happiness to be useful; once he's sitting down, she sets about undressing him, taking his jacket and tie first, then kneeling for his shoes, every move delicate to not disturb him.

For continuing to be in the throes of the headache, it's as easy to get to the bed as it can be, Swann brushing aside anything that could be an obstacle or nuisance like curtains in a doorway. He barely notices that she's undressed him, or, after a moment, that he's started lying down. He makes a little noise as he gingerly squirms his way up the bed and rests his head on a cool pillow. His glasses sit awkwardly against his face, and after a moment he pushes them off.

"Stay with me," he murmurs, deciding that he'll trade the silence of solitude for her quiet, gentle care.

She takes his glasses away and puts them on the bedside table, and strokes his hair for another moment. "Okay," she says, and slips out of her shoes, walking away for just a moment to trade her dress for a short cotton robe, to further avoid making noise by crinkling her crinoline with every move. She climbs into bed next to him, slightly higher up on the pillow, and gently holds his head to her chest, nose buried in his hair, pressed to his crown.

For a good while he just lays there, totally still next to her, letting her curls up next to him and still feeling as if every individual nerve is bruised under his skin. As that fades, as the pain in his head lowers from blinding to barely tolerable, he reaches an arm around her and pulls her close, tightly.

It's the only sign he gives that things are improving, but if she reads the language of his body then she'll find encouraging signs. His breathing becomes more relaxed, since he's no longer afraid to hear the sound of air filling and leaving his lungs. His heartbeat slows to a normal thump instead of the racing of pressure, of the fear that this time his head might actually explode or an aneurysm might come and kill him where he lies.

Eventually he lowers his head to kiss the top of her head slowly, half-heartedly.

When she feels his body calm down, his heart stop beating like a drum machine, his arm holding her to him, she sighs, and rests there until he kisses her head. That's when she feels safe to move and speak again, shifting to look at him and take his face in her hands.

"A little better?" she murmurs, watching the outline of his face -- the detail is mostly lost in the dark, in the dim navy glow of the room.

"Not entirely." It'll be a few hours yet before he'll be able to stand light or anything louder than a whisper, but at least he can no longer describe his current situation as agony so much as just painful. "But some."

If he were a better person, he would probably thank her. Instead, he just assumes that she knows, that she can interpret the way he holds her as gratitude or at least a desire to keep what was given to him, that kindness, that concern. Somehow hours have passed since they left work.

"It's been a few times a month since I was a kid."

She doesn't need thanks, would never think to ask for it -- the way he holds on to her is enough, like she's what tethers him to the ground, and it makes her feel as valuable as she possibly can.

"I wish you'd see a specialist." Her voice is soft and filled with real concern, even though she knows why he doesn't, how he prefers the pain to the fear. She reaches up to stroke his cheek. "Do you want anything? Water?"

"And what, get swindled out of a month's pay so they can insist I need at least five more tests to find out what it is? No thank you." It hasn't gotten any worse in the last decade or so, so why bother? It only got worse when he learned to drive and started using the car so much and he doesn't want that taken away from him either. "You sound like my mother when you say that."

It's as if in those words alone he paints her with the same cold brush, but he leans his head into her touch, her warm fingers.

"Water. Breath mints. My breath smells like a Districter's."

She flinches when he says that, tamps down the urge to offer to pay for it or point out that maybe, just this once, his mother has a point, and just caresses his face instead, because nothing else she can say will be of any more help. She's not capable of fixing his headaches the way an actual doctor would be.

"All right," she murmurs, pressing her mouth against his gently (closed, of course, since he went straight from vomiting to the bed), then pulls away to go find mints -- she's sure she has a tin in one of her purses. Returning from the closet, she pours him water from a carafe on the bedside table, then offers the glass and the tin over.

He props himself up on one elbow, which still seems to take herculean effort. The tension and anxiety of the headache, which is still persisting at a dull roar, has sapped the energy out of each of his muscles like a root sucks from earth. He's trembling slightly, arm quaking beneath him.

"Thank you." He takes a few small mouthfuls of water, wincing with each swallow, flinching at the sound the tin makes as he pops it open. "Don't have Eta make me anything tonight."

He holds the mint in his mouth like he's forgotten how it is that people chew, then finally crunches it between his teeth. Then he slumps back into the bed.

"You didn't have to take time off work for me."

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