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'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."

"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.

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.

The sheer amount of acid she retches up makes her feel like her insides have liquified and she'll shrivel up when it's done, and she barely seems to notice Jason's presence next to her at all, she's in so much pain. The heaving finally abates and she reaches out to slam her palm on the intercom button of the remote at her bedside.

"Eta," she says, meaning to yell but her throat too damaged. "Medicine. Now."

That done, she puts the trash can on the floor and collapses miserably to the bed, curling up and crying into the pillow.

"Alright, alright," he repeats again and again, more to himself than to her. He brushes her hair from her forehead (it's sweaty from the exertion of vomiting) and pets her head, trying to make her comfortable in the bed, wrapping a blanket over her shoulders.

When Eta comes in with medicine, Jason, wincing in the light from the hall, takes the trash can out and leaves it for the Avox to clean, then gets Swann a glass of water and a few minutes from the tin. While Eta administers he sits by Swann's side, wringing his hands with a sort of resentful concern, angry at no one in particular, filled with dread, wanting to pace like an animal.

The medication comes in the form of an injection, due to her inability to keep pills down long enough for them to be effective while in this state. Eta administers the shot with an alarming air of practice, then follows it with another shot, a low dose of morphling to keep her from continuing to vomit from the pain of all the acid burning at her throat and the ulcers in her stomach.

Swann shivers until just after the second shot, at which point her whole body seems to relax. She doesn't take the mints, knows she can't put them down her throat, but she sips at the glass of water, held by Eta like a mother would help her child drink. When Swann pushes it away, Eta strokes her hair and then leaves, used to this routine, closing the door behind herself.

There's a small groan and then Swann resettles under the blanket, her limbs heavy and her body weak.

Jason watches her with an air of curiosity, as if he's watching where Swann inherited the kindness she showed him earlier, a cat in front of a window until Eta leaves.

And Jason folds over her, wrapping his arms around her, like glaze over hot pastry, filling in the gaps and becoming warm through contact with her own heat. He rests his head on her shoulder.

"Do you feel better?"

She can barely move, the morphling setting in like lead in her veins. She's just shades away from comatose, although she knows from experience that it's better than the pain, the fire that would otherwise settle into her internal wounds and smolder until she goes light-headed and passes out.

Words don't come easy in this state, and she blinks dully, her eyelids low. "Doesn't... hurt," she mumbles, sounding very dazed and tired. "Jason."

"I won't go anywhere." He breathes a sigh of relief that their fight will either be buried in her illness or postponed. He lets his lips rest next to her ear. "I'll be right here when you wake up."

"Good."

The word comes out of her like a breath, like she didn't mean for it to at all. She can't keep her eyelids up anymore and her eyes close as she starts to shut down, gives into a drug that almost killed her but that she needs to survive everything that's wrong with her.

She doesn't sprawl, doesn't even twitch from the way she's been lying since Eta put her arm back down, and everything fades out to a warm, pleasant darkness that grows in her until it's all that's there, until there's only a glimmer of consciousness left.

"Love," she mutters, and she can't string together any more words to be specific about what she means, whether she's trying to somehow thank him or whether she loves him or whether she even meant to say that at all, because then she's dead to the world, like a boulder in the bed.

He doesn't say anything else in response to that word. He doesn't leave her, either. He lies there beside her, breathing in the smell of her shampoo and sweat and the smell of medicine he knows is all in his head, is under her skin. He closes his eyes and let the rest of his headache play out like a battle between nerve and blood.

He lets that word hang in the air like a glob of sound, one he can't take in, one he doesn't want to engage with because he might get sucked into it or it might fly away from him or any manner of disasters could occur. He hopes that when she sleeps she takes the word with her.

He doesn't know if he loves her. People have told him he loves his family but he doesn't believe it. He doesn't know what he's supposed to feel with love, if something like that can come with the feelings he had today: helplessness so deep he could drown in it, anger so strong it could strike him blind.

He eventually falls asleep, several hours after her, when his arms have gone numb and his leg's cramped and his headache has resurged and then faded again. He wakes up a few minutes before her and props himself on his elbow, blinking in the still-dim light of her room, stroking her hair.

"Swann."

When he calls her name, she's still sleeping like the dead, and it's the movement of his hand on her hair that wakes her more than anything else. She makes a confused noise, like maybe she's not entirely sure of where she is, and it's so difficult to open her eyelids that she doesn't for several long moments, feeling like there are weights on her face.

"Jason?"

Her mouth and throat are painfully dry, and it makes her voice hoarse, crackly. She longs for the water on the bedside table, but it seems so far away.

"Sure. Who else would it be?"

His headaches leave him with aftershocks for days afterwards, less thunderclaps and more the staticky humidity that precedes rain. His nerves feel crinkled and delicate under his skin, which seems to him thinner than normal and arranged badly over his flesh. When he moves to get her the water, he's slow about it, tentative as he reaches over her, but he brings it to her hand.

He settles back in beside her, face to the back of her hair, one arm still half under him and the other over her waist and ending with a palm over her heartbeat.

"Do you need me to call you out of work?"

When she can grab the water, she angles herself to drink as much as she can, almost desperately, and in her numb state, she doesn't notice some of it runs down her chin to the pillow. She can only barely feel it anyway.

She lets the empty glass fall harmlessly to the carpet, just drops it, and her body seems to give out under her, the small bit that was lifted up to drink, anyway.

"Stay with me," she mutters, and she feels too heavy to roll over and nestle against him, even though she wants to.

He's almost surprised by that answer, given that somehow he angered her to sickness last night (and he refuses to believe it's because of anything he actually did so much as the way she insisted on seeing it, as if she enjoyed being that upset, as if she interpreted everything he said in the worst light on purpose to make herself a martyr the same way his mother does). He nestles in closer to her, wrapping a leg around hers, feeling her ankle with his foot.

"I can't call out of work today, or I would." At that instant he hates his brother and mother more than anything, because it's for them that he has to go to work, for them that the budget is so tight. "But that's not for another two hours."

The thick, leaden feeling slowly starts to wear away, to the point that she can at least shift her leg a little under his and move her hand to weakly hold his wrist.

She whimpers at the idea of him leaving her, and she almost cries because she feels terrible, hungover on morphling and still sore from violently vomiting, and she just wants him to stay, so they can remain like this.

"I don't want you to go."

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