Sunshine On My Brain is a Lonely Kind of Pain [Closed]

[whatisay]

WHO| Jason and Linden
WHAT| Jason torments Linden's parents to make a point.
WHEN| After the crowning.
WHERE| D7 Living Room
WARNINGS| Typical Jason being a dick to the Avoxes.

Jason's toxicity doesn't just motivate his grander actions, but trickles down to each interaction, poisoning each syllable he spreads to others, each look he exchanges with strangers. He's petty. He doesn't have the luxury of a sense of scope and so his bad attitude is all-encompassing. So it is here, with the Avoxes he's requested.

He has Linden's parents assigned to District Seven, and from there he treats them with the same angry indifference that he would any other servant. They're the recipients of occasional blows for working too slowly, of commands expected to be followed to the letter at the minute. They become the ghosts in the corner of the room, silent and watching and unnoticed, and Jason likes it that way because when he looks at them he feels funny underneath that petty satisfaction. He feels not remorse (nothing near remorse) but a sort of envy that he shouldn't give name to.

He wonders how much better his life might have been had he had parents so reticent with their opinions as Avoxes are. Had he memories of his parents that weren't of the cloying, smothering 'love' his mother ladles onto him in the name of her martyrdom or the beatings he got at his father's hand in the name of discipline, the drunkenness that follows Jason around like a shadow at the corner of his eye. In an awful way, he envies Linden his disposable parents.

He doesn't particularly like Avoxes - unlike other Capitolites, he never got good at pretending that they didn't exist at all, probably because he thinks of his sister half the time he sees them. He doesn't like them touching him, and feels the compulsion to wash his hand when he picks up things that they've handled. While ordering the new Avoxes around, he keeps waiting for that rush of satisfaction, that temporary reprieve from the roaring of anger all around him, that comes with tormenting others, and it doesn't come.

Eventually he just sits in the District Seven living room, cracking walnuts and tossing the shells over the coffee table to that they have to pick up the pieces from the carpet. His face is crumpled into an expression of vague frustration. One of his hands is bandaged and splinted. His glasses ride high on his nose.

Comments

[dead_black_eyes]

Linden's existence has gotten weirder by the day since he snapped at Jason and sliced him across the face. There's been a shift in the way he's treated by Capitolites, pity and condescension edged with apprehension and vague fear. What he'd thought at first were efforts on the part of his stylists to help him blend in are cast in a more sinister light as his outfits have gone from black, funeralesque attire to plain, loose-fitting, shift-like garments that swallow him, obscure his form and make him look even frailer. Though he'd technically issued a public apology to Jason, there had been a crude coded message in it that had seemed both brave and funny at the time. Though it had been noticed by a few amused and appreciative detractors of the Escort, he had been feeling for quite some time that the other shoe was on its way to dropping.

He takes the stairs to District 7's floor. Though his skin crawls at the thought of it, he has to talk to Jason and reach some kind of agreement with the man. Linden is skating on thin ice as it is, and with the new rule changes, he's concerned. For himself, even though his "fraternization" with Nill is actually quite chaste, but also for Stephen, who's possibly in an even more precarious all-around situation than Linden's ever been. He might not be able to extend an olive branch, but he figures he can at least spare some sort of fragrant pine clipping if it means even half-burying this hatchet.

He lets himself into the suite; for better or worse, it looks like he won't have to wait for the other man, but it doesn't give him time to rehearse his carefully composed, prepared dialogue. Jason seems to be in the process of shelling walnuts, tossing them on the floor as two late middle-aged Avoxes shuffle dutifully after them. They're a matching set, slender and dressed in identical smock-like uniforms and slacks, a male and female. Despite being around 50 years of age, their hair is still ink-black. They have pale, porcelain skin, and Linden's breath is already catching in his throat as the female glances up from picking bits of walnut shell out of the carpet.

She's not just familiar, her eyes are his eyes.

The male, her husband and Linden's father, also glances up, but he has no reaction, going back to combing the carpet for bits of shell, but his mother continues to gaze his direction, daring to steal a few extra seconds to watch her adult child whose hue is swiftly fading from white to grey. He's lightheaded. Dizzy. He's been trying to track down this pair of Avoxes for years, now, and 7 was able to procure them this easily?

Despite being stone cold sober, Linden could black out or be sick. There's a cold spear buried deep in his chest. This must be the other shoe.

He needs to get a closer look. He deliberately reaches for a nearby table as if to steady himself; it wobbles on uneven legs and a vase sitting on it topples and smashes on the entryway's tile. He drops to his knees, and as he expected, the female Avox has rushed over, scurrying to pick up the broken pieces before he can touch them. He tries to meet her dark District 6 eyes again, and her hand reaches out to cup his gaunt cheek.

There isn't just a cold spear in his chest, now. It's serrated, and it's twisting.

[whatisay]

"I didn't tell you to stop cleaning up," Jason says to the Avoxes from the couch, watching this all, seeing this strange tableau not in the garish plaid District Seven Suite but as if it were taking place in his own home, playing out some shadowpuppetry against the Compson manor's living room rugs and hardwood.

Looking at Linden's mother reaching to cup Linden's pale, sunken face makes Jason feel ill, thinking of the way his mother touches his own face, her fingers like vacuums, pulling him back to the home he hates, tethering him to this life that he can never leave because who else can care for the family? Who else's shoulders are broad enough to carry and invalid and an idiot and twenty year of scandal and degradation wrapped up in a family name? His mother would never touch him again if he had the chance. No one would. He'd wrap himself in a cloak of non-existence and pass through the human population unscathed and unburdened.

There's a crack that sounds all the louder for having happened in the crisp silence following the shattering glass, and then Jason tosses another walnut shell over onto the carpet.

"Thanks for making more work for the Avoxes, Linden. Good thing no one really is going to miss that vase." He talks about the broken furniture with the exact same tone as he says the word 'Avoxes'. It's just a garish decorating choice made by people over his head. If Jason had his way Avoxes would be in a mass grave by now.

He shells another walnut and pulls out his cigarette, turning it on and taking a deep drag.

[dead_black_eyes]

Everything that Linden has ever drugged himself to numb and dull is coming home to roost, prying him apart from the inside. This situation is as hideous and cruel as it is shocking, and for a few moments, his devastation is written all over his blanched face. His Avox mother's hand is hastily withdrawn at Jason's words, and she's scooping up the rest of the vase and retreating. She resumes the pointless task of picking pieces of walnuts shells out of the carpet, leaving Linden to... what?

I can't fall apart in front of them.

He straightens, standing slowly, squaring his shoulders. His fury is a tempest in his thin chest but he'll have to silence it for now. If this is a gesture designed to get a rise out of him, attacking Compson or drawing further attention to the identity of the Avoxes will do nothing to help him and certainly nothing to help his parents. He braces himself mentally, considers the quiet dignity of the Districters Jason makes a point of hating so much. They know pain, and loss, and hardship, and they survive. For the rest of his time here, he has to embody that spirit, or collapse in flames.

Linden Lockhearst won the goddamn Hunger Games. He can't go down this easily.

"You have a guest," he says clearly, voice and gaze steady. "I came to see you. You should offer me a drink and a place to sit down, before I get lightheaded again."

[whatisay]

Jason never really feels happiness, or at least not anything he'd assign that name to. As such there's no joy when he looks at Linden's heartache, but there's a sort of satisfaction like things being put in their right place, a that'll show you, a sense of tension loosening for just a moment. If Jason's spent his whole life running from every emotion but anger, then he's just gained a few yards on the fear and sorrow that nip at his heels, and all at Linden's expense.

He exhales a smoke ring. He watches it dissipate, ephemeral, meaningless. He sees no beauty or metaphor in it.

"You can ask them for one. I don't need to offer it to you." After all, Linden works here too, and presumably understands how Avoxes work, Jason all but says. "But fine. There's a couch. Do you need me to show you how to use it?"

[dead_black_eyes]

The room is in a state of distracting unbalance. Linden has spent so much time and energy inquiring after this specific pair of Avoxes to no avail, attempting to be both thorough and discreet. It's a difficult combination and he's sure that Snow has deliberately meddled with keeping distance between them... until, of course, their presence near Linden has the potential to unravel all of his progress. For as much of a headache as Linden can be for his District, those in charge prefer Linden drugged and compliant. The sharp, precise and intense man lying restless under all that fog has a lot of reasons to be angry, and for years, ensuring that he trips consistently over needles has been well worth the trainwreck.

Whiskey sounds good. Whiskey sounds great, in fact, but Linden needs his already badly-scattered wits about him right now as much as possible. "Water," he requests, and in less than a second the female Avox is on her feet, hurrying briskly toward the kitchen. The male remains dutifully picking shells out of the carpet as Linden makes his way to the couch, taking a seat and remaining perched and attentive at the very edge of the cushion. He's not here to get comfortable. He's not here to make friends, and he's not here to get drunk or emotional. He watches the other man's leisurely smoking for several moments until his water is set in front of him.

"I need you to acknowledge that in spite of our disagreements, we live a floor apart and are colleagues, which warrants a standard of professional conduct. I've breached this in the past, but I meant what I said in that apology about cleaning up my act. For all the bad choices I've made since the 63rd Games, I can control what substances I indulge in. Just as you can control what you say." He sets his jaw, hollow eyes burning into the man sitting across from him.

"The rumors you're spreading around the Capitol border on slander. Some might consider them attempted sabotage, given your influence in this city. Of anyone, I can appreciate a mean-spirited grudge, but hurting Six is not going to help Seven."

Hurting or humiliating my parents won't help you.

[whatisay]

Jason doesn't laugh, although he wants to at the gall of it, of Linden asking him for something after that sham of an apology. He doesn't laugh or crack a smile because the veneer of etiquette is the surface of a lake under which he swims like a shark, with his snide comments as the dorsal fin signaling his true intent.

And then Linden goes on to lay blame for something at Jason's feet that he can't take credit to, and Jason fumes not with indignation but with powerlessness, because he would certainly have resorted to slander if not for the fact that not pressing charges is a red flag that he's broke. And that's all he needs as a breaking story, more Compson financial drama.

He meets Linden with an equal sort of intensity, although not one of fire but of air. He maintains that casual pose while only letting his face, his voice carry the edges and focus them, hone them. Where Linden's anger has been muffled and near-smothered over the past few years, Jason's has been allowed to flourish in the garden of his mind, a weed that chokes out every other plant. It's never exhausted itself, just grown in size and reach.

"What are you accusing me of? I haven't said a damn thing I wasn't asked directly and that wasn't true." It's all he's been able to do, and for that he's livid, seething, a coiled and squirming serpent trapped between his ribs and his spine.

"I've kept this under wraps as much as you have, even more because I didn't post a public apology for everyone to see. If your District's having trouble with its reputation, maybe you should consider looking inwards first."

[dead_black_eyes]

If there's one thing Linden's never been short on, it's gall. This has bitten him already, and someday it will probably kill him, but the cultivated confidence he speaks with is a tendency that a lot of Victors have to develop to get by in the Capitol. Strength is just one of many facades that people wear here, and Linden's trying to take advantage of it now as he attempts to regain his bearings.

Bide time. Redirect. Nothing proven, but nevertheless, j'accuse, because it keeps my eyes on you and not the creatures that were my parents once, flesh of my flesh...

His father straightens, having removed as many of the walnut shells as he can see. He is precisely Linden's height.

Keep it together.

"I'm accusing you of being a vindictive man," he says, bluntly and steadily. "You don't do forgiveness. Even if you chose not to press charges, I refuse to believe that you're not looking for ways to make me and my District pay for your marked-up face."

Linden's father's eyes are dark grey, and his fingers are long and spindly. Linden knows that he was an engineer once. Now he putters around 7's living area looking for picture frames to straighten and bits of Compson's messes to quietly clean up.

"Since when has a Compson hesitated to press charges, anyway?" he asks idly, reaching for his glass of water. Every bone in his hands are visible as he grasps and raises it, taking a careful sip.

[whatisay]

"You flatter yourself." Jason knows exactly what Linden's implying, the bear trap he's rested a light-footed step onto, and it's all he can do not to let the teeth snap. It would be premature. It would gain him nothing.

"I'd say call it my father's ghost, since he was the sort of spineless that would feel sorry for you, but the real answer's simple."

Jason gestures to the male Avox - Linden's father, although all Jason can see is the ghost of his own, pathetic and swaying and bleating out drunken eulogies for people who weren't even dead yet - and summons him to bring him a seltzer water. Jason crosses one ankle over his knee and leans back, staring at the ceiling as much as Linden.

"Since when do you think I have time to wring you for what little you're worth? I have a family to support. I have obligations to fulfill. I'm not going to take time out of the few hours I have to rest to meet with lawyers and officers. Besides, why would I spend my time plotting how to make your District look more wretched when you are Stephen are already doing a bang-up job of that?"

He sneers, Capitol-white teeth like fangs at that instant. "I'm not going to waste my time slashing the tires on a car with cut brakelines."

[dead_black_eyes]

The diversion tactic worked, at the very least for its sad purpose of keeping Linden's mind occupied on matters that aren't his mess of an immediate family. He really is playing with fire by engaging a man he's already very publicly fought this way, and at this time it's nothing more than a delicate balancing act to both retain his pride and avoid angering the other man to a truly damaging extent.

Deliberately, his eyes do not follow Jason when he gestures toward Linden's father. Strangely, the Avox seems to have opened something up regarding Jason's own family; Linden has heard rumors about the Capitol dynasty, of course, but he opts not to interject. Anything the other man wants to say is potential cannon fodder, or a glimpse of a soft underbelly Linden can exploit later. Any pity he might have felt for the man has melted away under the grievous personal slight of putting Linden's parents here, where he can't touch or take or protect them.

"We all have obligations, and the whole point of Victors is to be bathed in riches and the generosity of the Capitol," Linden points out. "You could garnish some of the monthly winnings I still receive, with good enough representation. Doubtless it could help that family you're supporting, whether or not it's worth your time to try to make 6 look worse."

He pauses, chewing his bloodless lip for a few moments.

"Winnings are handsome, and since getting off Morphling I do have more disposable income than I know what to do with, in all honesty. What do you think of just quietly taking a month's worth off my hands, sans all that legal hassle? Surely your mother could find some use for it."

[whatisay]

What obligations? Jason almost snaps at Linden, thinking, your family doesn't even exist anymore, they sleep in a warehouse and are maintained not cared for anymore, but he doesn't say it. He just settles deeper into the couch, blowing a smoke ring towards the ceiling, framing the light above like a halo and thinking it looks like when he starts getting a migraine, an aura.

"I'm sure she could." The corner of Jason's lip tightens and curls, an expression trying to escape his musculature, a certain acidity that can't be aired in public but that simmers between bone and air. He truly hates his mother, more than a live-at-home bachelor could reasonably lay claim to, something deep and vitriolic and fermented from so many years - he resents her parasitism, the chain she has around his neck, the way she's butchered up the concept of 'love' into a bloody rotten cloying pulp even though he doesn't understand it that way because he's always pawing for her approval like a cat at a door.

His eyes are hard and cruel and glinting with some internal fire that sparks up at the idea of an advantage, of a way to settle this satisfactorily. He knows that while he has his thumbs at the necks of Linden's parents and more importantly, at the information of how he got them, he can afford to press a bit further.

"Three months and we have a deal. I'll promise not to press charges and I'll send the two Avoxes down to District Six. And I'll even put in a nice word for Stephen next time someone asks me how I feel about my coworkers."

[dead_black_eyes]

Linden watches impassively as Jason lets himself sink back into the cushions and smokes stylishly. His eyes travel neither toward the ceiling of toward the Avoxes, even though the female has returned and remains nearby, appearing very busy but sneaking glances at a son she hasn't seen since he was a child when she can get away with them or thinks that Jason isn't paying attention.

The proposal isn't monetarily unreasonable. Linden is from District 6, and only one month of winnings is still extremely lavish in his eyes. That being said... to cave and buckle under Jason's demands would, he thinks, be really unwise, along with several other parts of this. To jump at the chance to have both Avoxes in 6 would be setting himself up for trouble later on. No one would just fail to notice the change, the fact that both of them resemble Linden very strongly.

"Two months," he says. "6 is set for Avoxes, but I heard that 9 is understaffed. Send them there instead."

Nill is in 9. She'll treat them kindly and encourage others to do the same.

"Also, I'll want that 'promise' in writing."

[whatisay]

"Too low."

He clicks off his cigarette and tucks it into his breastpocket, then pulls out his pen and twirls it in his fingers the way he does when he's formulating something, barely even aware of the motion of his own hand, except to wince when he moves it too hard and remembers that it's bandaged and splinted.

"Two and a half months, with a mutual agreement not to discuss the incident with media or influential people, a nice word for Stephen, and we both sign it. And those go to Nine."

He sits forward and jabs with the pen at the Avoxes, lurking silently around the corners of the room, obedient, silent. Jason never developed the habit most Capitolites have of being able to tune out when an Avox is there. If they're furniture, that doesn't mean they aren't bugged. He doesn't even allow them in his house, despite actual servants being more costly and constantly keeping him just at the line above bankruptcy. He meets Linden's mother's eyes, and a conversation passes silently between them - I know what you are, I know that you aren't merely a machine, and you disgust me for it.

He looks back at Linden. "Do we have a deal?"

[dead_black_eyes]

Capitolites, so accustomed to treating large amounts of money as trifles... It only serves as a sour reminder that even the princely sums that seem unmanageable for a Districter are considered (at least outwardly) "too little." It's a little bit insulting, but Linden recognizes when it's a poor idea to push his luck. He's already stood his ground, and now it's his turn to compromise.

"I find those terms acceptable," he replies. "In my District, we shake hands when a deal is made, but given your injury, perhaps it's better if we move directly to drafting and signing."

[whatisay]

Jason glances at his hand like he's forgotten in between twinges of pain that he accidentally slammed it in a door earlier in the week. Some people might call it karma, Jason calls it predictably poor luck.

"Fine by me. I don't want to get my bandage wet when I wash my hand afterwards." There are certain Districters whom, for no measure of fondness so much as practicality, Jason would restrain that snide remark for. Linden's far from that small and select league.

He scrawls out those terms on a notepad, borrowing some language he remembers from his father's old files as a lawyer, here the undersigned, until dissolved by mutual agreement, so on, and then signs it with the sort of artful scrawl that a certain type of Capitol child learns in their calligraphy class, one that makes the last name (the root of all the power and prestige) legible while everything else melts into stylish scribble: Jason Compson, IV. He hands it over to Linden.

"If you need me to read it out loud to you, I could do that." Plenty of Districters arrive in the Capitol illiterate.

[dead_black_eyes]

It's not even the implication that his hands are dirty, is it? Jason sees Districters as inherently dirty, in a way that no amount of scrubbing or Capitol living can remedy. Linden tries very, very hard to make his sneer resemble a anything else.

Just a little longer. Just a few more formalities and this can be over with.

It might look a little frozen or pasted in place, but it technically counts as a smile.

Linden looks over the contract, glancing up and making brief eye contact with Jason before returning his eyes to the paper. "They built a library for me in 6 after I won, you know. Believe it or not, it isn't because I happen to have a fondness for bespectacled women telling me 'shh.'"

[whatisay]

Jason doesn't mind the sneer, revels in it, in fact. He's glad he can drag someone else into suffering, siphon off a little of that restless hatred pent up in him onto another party. It replaces the roiling clouds in him with a sort of placid satisfaction, just for a moment.

"Hey, I never know with your kind." He rolls the pen across the table to Linden. "Go ahead. I have things to do, places to be."

[dead_black_eyes]

If Jason likes secondhand suffering, he'd find no shortage of it spending time with a man who brought it frequently and copiously on himself. Withdrawal is painful, and even after the physical symptoms have ebbed away, the worst kind of mental anguish remains. But it's the kind of pain that is worth it in the long run; Linden clings to that like a prayer, because Morphling had been killing him, and if he goes back, it'll have no trouble finishing the job.

He takes the paper, setting it on the table in front of them and hunching over it to write his name. Though he is a voracious reader, his handwriting looks like a clumsy child's.

"Things to be, places to do..." he says in a half sing-song tone, pushing the paper across the table toward Jason.

"You'll copy it and forward me a copy, along with word that the Avoxes have been moved to 9 no later than three days from now? I'll transfer the funds as soon as I've received confirmation."

[whatisay]

Jason looks over it, smirking slightly at Linden's signature like it's confirmed some suspicion he has, not just about Linden but about Districters in general. Like he's building up a wall of disdain for them and Linden's kindly agreed to add some bricks and caulk.

He folds the contract in half and gestures at the male Avox with a crook of his finger. "You heard the man. Two copies, one to each of us, and I'll let Atlas know to reassign them to Nine immediately."

He doesn't take his eyes from Linden's face as he says all this, as Linden's father takes the contract from Jason's hand (wisely avoiding making skin contact). It's as if he's drinking in the pain Linden's going through, using the taste of it to drown out his own bitter misery.

[dead_black_eyes]

The Avox shuffles over, indifferently taking the paper and following the order. The man is dead-eyed and was likely resensitized recently, given his rigid and perfect obedience. There are flickers of humanity left in Linden's mother, but the father is a perfect beast of burden, as if he has no memory remaining of his life as an engineer, or the young man sitting in this suite who resembles him so strongly.

It's hard not to watch the Avox, knowing what he does about him, and maybe unwisely, he examines the dark-haired man more closely as he takes the contract.

Do you regret dissenting? If you had it all to do over again...

Regret is human, and Linden is not sure whether this Avox could still be considered one, even in very loose terms.

"I'll get everything straightened out on my end, as well. I'm pleased we could reach an arrangement that benefits us both."

[whatisay]

Jason makes a noise of agreement, but doesn't dignify Linden's pleasantry with actual words. He's no longer paying attention to Linden, having opened his notepad and returned to whatever work he was doing before he decided to make life harder for the Lockhearst Avoxes.

"You can show yourself out any time now."

[dead_black_eyes]

"If it's all the same to you, then, I'll stay and finish my water," Linden says; though he's anxious to leave, standing immediately at Jason's noncommittal, indifferent dismissal feels wrong and demeaning. "In my District, we don't waste it. Force of habit."