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

She can only laugh again and run her thumb over those lines, trying to impress upon him how ridiculous the idea is. For the record, she still doesn't think the parrot is a terrible idea.

"Uh-huh." She nods and touches his arm, putting away the handheld sprayer for the moment. "Usually only when it lasts more than a day or two, when it gets so bad that I can't eat at all for days. It used to happen a lot more, now it's only once in a while."

"I wish it didn't happen at all." The idea of her being in such a state scares him, because he wouldn't know what to do. He's not capable of the gentleness she shows him, he knows it, and he imagines that the woman he's bedding with having such curse is some kind of universal injury against him, personally. He draws her closer and kisses the crown of her head again. Then he finds conditioner and splots some in his hand, working it into her long tresses.

"Let me know if it does."

"I will."

She looks at him for a moment, like she's reading him, thinking about how she's not sure if he's ever said anything that directly caring before. He's not like other paramours (is he her boyfriend? She's not even entirely sure of that), who would call her pet names and tell her she's pretty and sweet and wonderful, especially when they were in apologetics over hitting her or mistreating her or whatever. Jason never gives her compliments like that, and it doesn't particularly bother her, just marks him as different in her mind, and makes what he says all the more meaningful.

She tilts her head back a little, to better let the water flow through it, holding his biceps where all his strength seems to be anyway. "It's not as bad as it sounds, you know. I throw up, but mostly I just sleep through it."

Swann doesn't want him to worry, be plagued the way she is.

He doesn't know why he told her to tell him. It's not like he's going to be able to do anything, to dredge up compassion out of the dry well of positivity in him. Maybe it'll be so he can fabricate an excuse to avoid her, and then in the absence of failure concoct a hypothetical Jason who could care for her, who would not be so damn helpless in the face of the unchangeable.

Regardless, he understands that he's made a promise.

He works the conditioner through her hair and the soap over her body, rubbing it into her creases and nooks with the sort of chasteness that comes not from disinterest but from exhaustion. He lets her wash his hair and rinse his body, and by the time they're out of the shower and drying he feels fit to pass out. The light from the candles still make him wince and so, as he gets dressed and crawls into the bed, he knows he can't look at his phone.

"I'm going to need you to text my mother. Make something up. If she knows I've had a headache she'll nag me for a month."

She dries herself off, wraps her hair in a towel and follows him after blowing out the candles, stopping at the closet for a pair of pajamas, shorts and a camisole in dusty pink with little white swiss dots. He's already in bed by the time she dresses, and she strokes his side before nodding. Swann gets up to find his phone, thinking about what lie she can fabricate that will make any sense and still excuse him for a full night.

Swann backtracks to the bathroom, finds his pants and the phone in his pocket. She opens it up, her face suddenly illuminated by the glow, and she's greeted with a list of texts he's received in the time he's been out of commission. Several from his mother, which doesn't surprise her, but there's a picture message, and her brow knits as she taps the alert.

She could ostensibly be clearing it. His messages screen had popped up unbidden, with the picture there for anyone to see. She wasn't snooping, she tells herself.

Everything inside her drops to the floor when the picture opens, and she's surprised she doesn't fall over, just collapse, knees suddenly weak. This is her. This is the girl from Eleven, the one Swann never directly addressed after her fight with Jason over text.

I'm so stupid, is her only thought.

She manages to gather herself enough to text his mother -- sponsor meeting running late. vip, can't leave. will be home tomorrow -- then slowly walks out of the bathroom, still holding his phone, back in the other girl's screen, all of her desperate messages now showing. She notices that he never responds.

"Jason," she says, still looking down at the phone, her voice shaky and thick and already miserable, "who is Lorraine?"

Edited 2015-03-15 04:58 (UTC)

Jason, for his part, is already curled up in the bed, waiting for her, resting his face on the cool pillow and feeling the residual thrum of warmth moving through the soles of his feet, through his palms. He breathes slowly again, this time because he's relaxed rather than because breathing hurts. The migraine, having retreated, still lurks around the corners of his mind, still makes him wince and twitch, but it isn't the maelstrom it was earlier in the day.

When she speaks, for a moment he doesn't realize they're words, a question, his name and someone else's name. They're just warm syllables floating in the air, something he has to reorganize in his head to make any sense of, and when it clicks it's as if the headache has come back with a splash of ice cold water in his ears and neck.

He doesn't want this. He doesn't want to fight right now, doesn't want to have to decide between the only two people in this whole world whom he actually likes. He doesn't know how to explain what Swann is to him, but he can't explain Lorraine any more easily, except that in her bed is one of the few places he doesn't envy the dead, that she's the only person who knows things about him that he would never tell another living soul or even himself, if he could.

"A whore I know. I haven't seen her since I started seeing you." He doesn't sit up, but he shifts on the bed so he can see her in the doorway, her small, frail little body with the flowing nightgown.

Swann's whole body suddenly feels like it might fall apart, and her head is light, and worst of all is her stomach, roiling up with horrible acid that already burns her throat and makes her woozy from nausea.

"Oh. Well, um, she wants you to know that she, ah... 'misses your big dick' and that she's not wearing any underwear, which she can't spell, apparently." Her hands are shaking violently and she doesn't want to fight either but she feels so stupid and so used and she'd promised herself she wasn't going to let these things happen to her anymore, but here she is. "Oh, and she sent a picture."

She tosses the phone on the bed at his feet, photo open on it, then takes a sharp turn into her closet, the door of which she closes behind herself before collapsing on the ground and gasping for air, clutching her knees to her chest.

"Son of a bitch..." He doesn't look at the phone. He doesn't need to, because Swann's given him more than enough of a picture to go off of and he doesn't want to look at the burn of pixelated light. He just kicks the phone off the bed and gets up.

Maybe, if he weren't still in the throes of a headache, he would just kick the door open, maybe even drag her out. Maybe he would let his temper override his better judgment and his feelings for her. But his head hurts and he feels tired, so tired, and he doesn't want this. He just wants her to come back to bed.

He rests his head against the closet door. "Swann, come out of there."

She can't breathe. Every desperate bid for air just makes her feel like her lungs are constricting more, and she rocks back and forth, forehead on her knees, trying to count her breaths like she's been taught.

But Lorraine's face, her poorly applied eyelashes, those stupid toy handcuffs, it's all burned behind Swann's eyelids and she can't escape it because she was dumb enough to fall for this all over again.

"Why?" she calls, face screwing up as she struggles to get any oxygen into herself.

He isn't sure what she's asking, for a moment, whether it's an explanation for why Lorraine still has his number, for why he still hasn't broken it off and why he doesn't plan to break it off, why walking away from the first person he could talk to at all isn't something he's prepared to or capable of doing. Or if she's just asking why she should open the door.

He keeps his head against the door and rests his hand against the slats of the closet, letting his finger hook over one of the niches. He can hear each sound of her breath like a hammer in his head and finds it has nothing to do with the migraine.

"Because I don't want you to be fighting for your breath alone in there."

She can tolerate so many things, can take so much abuse and not bat an eye at it, but she can't handle this, can't take the idea that she'll always be competing with some District prostitute for attention. That she'll never know where she stands. That she can't trust Jason on even a basic level, because he can't resist doing the one thing that would hurt her most.

"Jason," she manages to wheeze out, then chokes and her vision goes black, and she's not breathing at all anymore because she can't, her entire body feels like a toothpaste tube that's been crumpled until it's empty.

Her heart palpates and she trembles and there's a terrible moment where she's sure this is how she dies, and then she gets air back in and it feels like a wrecking ball slamming into her chest.

He hears the choke more than he hears her answer, and then his temper returns, not at Swann but at the door between them, as if God himself placed it there to punish him for something, for the curse of being born a damn Compson. And so he grabs the doorknob and he wrenches it open, hard enough to drag the door a bit off its hinges, and in one graceless motion he kneels down and picks her up.

"Breathe!"

It's only a few steps to get her to the bed and he covers the distance quickly, setting her down on it before she even has a chance to protest being moved. He places a hand on each shoulder, looking over her, meeting her terrified and sightless eyes.

"Breathe. God damn it. Breathe, Swann."

She doesn't even see him until her lungs refill with air, isn't aware that he's moved her until that moment. It feels less like inhaling than it feels like being pumped up with a bicycle pump, and she blinks out tears as she comes back into her head. They're not tears of sadness, or anything other than maybe shock and physical pain.

"I'm breathing," she mumbles hoarsely, eyes darting back and forth across his face.

"Good."

He releases a breath of his own, only just now noticing how tense he is, how she managed to draw all his muscles taut again when he's only just relaxed. His hands loosen on her shoulders.

"Keep- keep doing that." He gets up and walks back to the closet door, slamming it closed and instantly regretting the volume of the sound it makes.

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.

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."

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.

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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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