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 smiles and bites her lip, obviously pleased with this answer, and she's just selfish enough that she doesn't tell him that it's okay to take out Sponsors, if he needs to. Truth is that she'd be perfectly okay with it, and yet she still doesn't want to say that, enamored with the idea of him avoiding other women because he doesn't want to be in their company, only hers.

Swann follows him and throws on a soft jacket from the closet, just warm enough to defend against the breeze of the evening. "Mm, maybe," she says, thinking about it. "I can handle it as long as it's nothing too rich, I think."

"I'll resist my urge to force-feed you devil's food cake, then." He takes her arm and they head to his car. He opens the door for her and then goes, takes his seat, catches that flash of bandage in the rear-view.

"They hate us, Swann. The Tributes and the Mentors. I say we should hate them right back."

She frowns, looks at him with that sort of tortured look she gets when she disagrees with him. "They don't all hate us," she says softly, but Tributes like Dave and Maxwell are eclipsed in her mind by recent memories of Joel, growling and snapping at her, doubting her motivations and treating her like garbage until she lost her temper, until she had to go sob on the floor in another room.

"Okay." It's more firm, and knowing Swann, he should know that she's unlikely to be able to do it, but in this moment, she can't disagree, not with Joel's face so fresh in her mind.

"The ones that don't would as soon as you stopped being useful to them. You wouldn't have to make them cakes and gift baskets if they gave you the respect and care a woman like you deserves."

He can tell she's agreeing just to please him, and it makes that sense of injustice flare up, and he tells himself it's on her behalf instead of just his.

"You're right." Her voice is more solid now, her face more decisive. Her eyes are big and focused on him, and she nods. "You are. They don't even listen when we say that we didn't bring them here. Joel told me that I'm responsible for the Games and everything else bad in Panem, because I was born here."

She reaches for his hand, and she's shaking, shaking because she's starting to convince herself, letting what he says wrap around her like a cloak as she thinks more and more about how hateful some of them are. Even the ones who aren't, usually, they have their moments where it really comes through, their anger misdirected at an entire group of people whose parents weren't even born when the Games began.

"They don't appreciate anything."

"He didn't." Jason's voice isn't shocked, but almost like a command, as if that sort of lunacy is something he couldn't allow to exist in his world. That fury turns white hot inside him, and he's glad he's at a stoplight because for a moment it blinds him. Some muscle in his jaw tenses and his teeth grind.

He squeezes her hand as if she's the only thing keeping him from exploding, combusting, flying off into the stratosphere.

"You'd think if they thought we had power, they'd respect it. But instead they act like we have power we don't and that we're scraped off their shoes."

"He's so hateful, Jason," she says, and her voice is tinged with tears, because she has to put up with it every day, and it's frustrating and exhausting and miserable. "Even when I just say good morning, he has something nasty to bark at me. He doesn't do anything unless I threaten to bring in Peacekeepers. He called me sick."

Her hand is white from his grip, and still she clutches at him, miserable from having to think about it.

"The first day we met, my very first day, he got right in my face. He's more than a foot taller than I am, I was so scared. And it was because I wanted him to support a children's charity in honor of that little girl he loved or whatever."

She wipes away a few angry tears.

"He scares me, Jason. I think he really might hurt me someday, just for doing my job. Even if the Peacekeepers come, I still can't defend myself against him."

"That's some fine delusion he's got, to claim you're the sick one." The more Swann tells him the angrier he comes, until he realizes for both their sakes he has to pull over for this conversation or risk compromising his driving. He takes to the shoulder and kills the engine, looking at her, livid at someone else terrorizing Swann, thinking of her sad and crumpled up in a way he wants to be the sole person with the power to cause. He's offended and territorial and concerned and so, so full of anger.

"Talk to Jennifer about transferring him. Til then, he scares you, you get the Peacekeepers and then you call me. I'll be right there. It doesn't occur to him that Swann might not want such a situation to go volcanic, may not want to add Jason's volatile chemical.

She's shaking -- Joel tends to make her shake in general, but deep down, even though she's managed to show backbone to him on several occasions, she's terrified of him. He's big and he's vicious and she has no doubt that he would attack her if it wouldn't mean immediate repercussion.

A Panem-born Victor striking out against Jason is one thing. An off-worlder Tribute attacking Swann is totally different, and everyone knows it.

"I've gone to her. She said she'd have to get back to me." Swann hadn't told anyone she was going to Jennifer, had surprised herself by working up the courage, but it was all coming to a breaking point. "I told Joel that if he kept saying things like that, I'd have him put in cuffs."

"And let me guess, he was foul to you after that, too." Jason's hands shake too, but out of rhythm with Swann's the clenched anger and squirm of something trapped and writhing rather than trembling. "Jesus. Give me ten minutes in a locked room with that off-world son of a bitch, just ten minutes..."

He takes a deep breath and leans back in his seat, sucking his teeth as he glares out the window. "Alright, you'll make yourself sick again. Let's have a nice night. Let's just...put all of that to the side for a moment."

He removes his hand from hers but pulls her over, so that his arm's around her shoulders, so even as he drives she can rest against him.

"Well, he's always foul. But I won that day, so. I had him waxed, I told you I was going to."

Her stomach is churning a little, it's true, but even Swann can tell that they need to put it aside for Jason more than for her. She curls against him, as much as she can in the car, her head leaning on him as she watches the lights pass by on the road.

"I have video of it."

"Save that video. You never know when it'll come in handy."

He prefers this, driving with her. Usually he loves the car for the solitude, but he doesn't mind when she's with him. He steers with one hand and strokes her braid with the other.

"Does this look good?" He pulls into a creperie.

"They made me stand on the other side of the curtain during the Brazilian, but I still got audio."

She usually finds being in cars nerve-wracking, even when she has a professional driver, or when it's her father, but Jason drives so smoothly and surely that her worries are banished to a small corner of her mind, where they can be drowned out with a sense of security, the perhaps crazy idea that Jason, in the confines of the car, can keep her safe.

"Oh! This is wonderful!" She smiles at him, looking pleased about food for once. "A lemon crepe, that would be really good right now."

Edited 2015-03-18 03:19 (UTC)

"Maybe you can sell it to Flickerman. They can do a special on our burly male Tributes."

He actually grins that Swann's happy, even though it makes the cut on his face twinge with pain. It's not an expression common to his face, and it seems to morph his features into something softer, less jagged.

"Coffee and strawberry crepes, for me. Decaf, I think. I've had enough excitement today."

"So you mean my whole District?" she says dryly. It would be so nice if she had a woman, one of the nice ones or even one of the little girls. Being around all men, all the time, was just as frustrating as the opposite, since a group of men didn't feel particularly obligated to listen to a tiny woman in pastels.

She touches his face, the uninjured side, and leans in to kiss him. "I love when you smile," she says lightly, then unbuckles and opens the car door. "Come on, let's eat."

"I'll try and smile more for you, I guess." He kisses her back and goes around the car to let her out. "But no one else. They haven't earned my good humor."

Before she gets out of the car, he lifts her and carries her across the parking lot, laughing to himself.

Swann laughs and beams when he picks her up and carries her, arms locking around his neck as her feet kick in the air. "You're so ridiculous!" she cries through laughter. "My legs are going to atrophy and I'm going to have to get a wheelchair!"

"My mother's haven't yet, so I think you'll be fine." He grins and sets her down on the curb in front of the restaurant. "Looks like we're the only customers."

Which Jason will prefer, honestly. He's already feeling calmer than when he got home, but not up to explaining his injury to bystanders without ranting about it.

She grins back at him, taking hold of his hand and squeezing it as she leads him to the door, opening it and walking in. A bell chimes their arrival, and it's warm inside, cozy and sweet-smelling, and she heads for the counter, looking up at the menu for a moment before ordering.

"Can I have a lemon crepe and a glass of water?" she asks the girl at the counter, then glances at Jason, waiting for him to order too.

Something about this place is 'traditional', as opposed to the more cutting-edge restaurants in the Capitol. There are menus, silk flowers in little vases on the tables, and a woman behind a stove who is wearing her hair in a simple bun rather than in an extravagant style. The overhead lamp is dim but warm, and Jason realizes as his eyes seem to relax how his light sensitivity hasn't completely vanished since yesterday.

"Strawberry crepe and decaf coffee, please. Black." He slips his credit card over to the barista. Behind the counter, he squeezes Swann's hand, then twines their fingers. They take a seat near the window.

"Thank God it's nearly our day off." He settles in, glancing out the window to make sure his car's lights are appropriately off. "Maybe if neither of us have any more dire health emergencies, we can try kiting again."

Swann likes that it's not as modern as most other places, likes that it's little and cute and sweet and classic. It makes her comfortable, in a way that she's usually not at fancier places.

She sits across from him and rests her elbow on the table so that she can prop her chin in her hand as she looks at him, and she stretches her leg under the table to bump her toes against his. "As long as we can sleep in first."

He bumps his toes against hers back, then slouches a bit in his seat so he can tap his ankle against hers. He can feel the leather bow from the buckle scratching against him over his sock.

"I'm not opposed to that. But how long do you expect us to sleep? We already spent most of yesterday in bed. That ought to count for something against our debt."

She regrets now her decision to wear shoes that she can't slip off, that she has to actually unfasten. All she can do is rub their ankles together, gently so she doesn't catch his sock and damage it.

"We don't have to be asleep. I just don't want to get out of bed until it feels comfortable. We can go out a little later, too, when it's warmer."

He likes this, planning with her. It's like he's sketching out an alternate life for himself, one away from everything he hates in the one he has. One without family or work or obligation, just the easy pleasure of having her company (of having her).

"Then you're going to need to switch beds, because yours is the most comfortable one I know. I sleep deeper there than any mattress I've owned."

The crepes come and he sips coffee, cuts it with a fork.

She takes a bite of her crepe, closes her eyes and sighs at how good it tastes. She knows that she'll probably only manage a few bites, half of it at most, but at least those bites will be delicious, won't be the blandness of toast and oatmeal that Eta enforces for a few days after a bad episode.

"It had to be special-made in One, you know. Because of the shape of the bed. And if you sleep that well on it, then I can't get rid of it, or you might miss it and go get one yourself."

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