thecapitol | It's About Holding and Being Held [Closed]

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It's About Holding and Being Held [Closed]

WHO| Jason and Peggy Carter; Jason and Swann
WHAT| Jason is Peggy's support system, sad as that is; Swann gives Jason 'I'm sorry Leo called you crazy' cuddles
WHEN| After the Binding Plot and Jason's network post.
WHERE| D7 Suite; D8 Suite
WARNINGS| Shit might get deep in either thread. References to bidding, child abuse, alcoholism, suicide and mental illness may abound.

I. Peggy

Jason works late more often than most Escorts, not from any sort of work ethic so much as because he often prefers the workplace to home - since he's started regularly dating Swann and carpooling with her, the overnights have decreased some because he has a more pleasant third option. But sometimes he can still be found late at night, camped out in the District Seven Suite like an ill-tempered gargoyle, feet on the coffee table and suit jacket flung over the back of the couch. He's managed to secure a week of food for each of his Tributes come the next Arena, well before the theme is even announced, and that small victory has soothed his frazzled nerves.

It's about two in the morning, and given that he's imposed a strict schedule for all his Tributes that involves morning exercises and primping, it's dead quiet. Jason's decided it's not worth the hour's drive home just to get two hours of sleep and then come back, so he's drifting off on the couch, his notepad on his lap, his glasses fallen so far down his nose that he can't possibly looking through them, his head tilting back and then jerking forward again in a vain attempt to stave off sleep.

II. Swann

Jason expected pushback from his network post; he craved it, almost. He's not quite aware enough of his own behavior to realize that instigating fights is his way of shoring up his victimhood's fortress, of refilling his tank of martyrdom which gets him out of bed in the morning, but he did know he was looking to pick a fight. And he got a few of them - but also took some injury from one, from a comment which slipped past his defenses and lit up the inside of his head like dynamite. He finishes the conversation and shoves his communicator into his pants even before forgetting to turn it off (it will shut down automatically in thirty seconds).

He's so angry that for a moment he can't see, that even after his vision returns he feels uncoordinated, like his neurological impulses aren't moving muscles so much as setting off tiny explosions. After pacing around the Suite living room for a moment, he heads to the elevator, accidentally hits the button for the wrong floor before he manages to hit the right one, and resents that an elevator door can't slam. Instead he rests his forehead against the wall and waits to arrive at the District Eight floor.

He just hopes, for their sakes, that it's not Joel or Jack he runs into first, that he finds Swann almost immediately upon arriving.

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Her fingers slowly turn white in his grasp, but she doesn't pull away, just sips at her own bottle of water.

When he starts ranting, she watches him, not entirely sure what he's talking about, and she has to take a moment before she catches the actual catalyst to his rage, what Leonidas said to him that set him off so badly. It actually makes her angry too, although Swann's anger is perpetually buried under all the sweetness inside of her, and she has a more pressing desire to take care of Jason than express her unhappiness.

"It's all right, Jason," she murmurs, reaching to catch him, wrapping her arms around his waist even though it puts her at risk of accidentally getting whacked in the head. "He's just a Districter, don't even listen to him. Everyone knows he's only here because the people in charge of Two begged on his behalf. He doesn't know anything and no one takes him seriously."

"It's not all right," he huffs, but he relaxes a little bit into her arms, just enough to stop vibrating with abject fury. "He brought my family into it. He shouldn't even have permission to speak about anyone's family, much less mine, and you know, if we were back in the Districts I could slit his throat and no one would look sideways at it but here I'd lose my job for backhanding him-"

He makes a gesture like backhanding someone, wishes for it to be at Leo and instead just clips his fingers on the edge of the wall painfully.

"Jesus. There's no justice in the world."

"There isn't," she agrees, resting her cheek on his sternum, and running her thumb over the small of his back. It's easier to hold him and just agree than it is to do anything else, and she's really on his side, because it was wrong of Leonidas to bring the Compsons into it. Even the Capitolites who mock them have the decency to do it behind Jason's back.

The elevator carries them to the parking garage, and she only shifts to walk with one arm wrapped around him from the side, refusing to let him go.

"Do you want me to have Daddy call in favors and get him deported? I don't know who's in charge of that now, or I'd let you go them yourself."

She'll be able to feel his heart hammering, his blood pulsing, him nearly feverish with anger. He rubs his hand over his pained fingernails and then they head towards the car, him barely thinking to shorten his strides so she can keep up.

"No. No, I don't need your father to manage it for me, I'll find a way to handle it myself." Probably by burning through his anger until it's nothing more than a scorchmark inside him in the shape of a grudge. He flicks his car key and opens the door for her. "I just- where does he get off?"

She scurries along next to him, three little paces for every one of his. "I was just offering," she says softly, because she understands his desire to be independent, but she can't see how it's bad to let someone help you with trickier things like this. And it was all the better because it wasn't so directly linked to Jason if her father dropped a hint that he was dissatisfied with an unqualified Districter in the same building as his daughter.

"He thinks he's a big-shot because they let him come here. That's why he needs to be put back in his place." Swann takes her seat and buckles up, waiting for Jason to round the car and get in the other side.

"He does. I'll find a way. I'll get that District scum cleaned up." He's starting to pack it away, shove it off into one of those grudges where he will fantasize about taking vengeance but never actually follow through with it. The daydream will become more satisfying than action. So it is when Jason's rage is stymied.

He gets in the car and grips the wheel, pulls them out of the lot with that precision he never seems to have anywhere else. He hipchecks tables and chairs regularly but has never even clipped anything with the car.

"'Screwed up in the head'. I'm not the District cripple pretending to be a Mentor. I'm not screwed up in the head and everyone knows it."

Swann curls in her seat to watch him, twisted so that her whole upper body is faced towards him. She puts her hand on the center console, but it's habit more than anything else, built up by weeks now of constantly holding hands.

"You're not anything in the head. You're perfectly normal." She agrees in that calm, supportive tone, letting him get it out while she bolsters his ideas and statements. "Only a delusional person would devote their lives to pretending they're anything special when they're such a public failure."

He's not shaking anymore, and breathing less ferociously as they get to the freeway, where he can just go and not feel encumbered by traffic. ~~Road rage can be a real problem.~~

He breathes deep, reaching over and taking her hand, holding it tight. "How many other people are out there thinking that I'm the one that's crazy?"

She patiently strokes the side of his hand with her thumb, shaking her head. "No one, Jason. No one thinks you're crazy. I promise." Sociopathic, maybe. Or depressed with severe anger management issues. But not crazy.

There's not much else she can say, so she just squeezes his hand and watches him. She has no idea where he's taking her, but she's not worried. She feels relaxed, even, with him behind the wheel.

Jason's not heading anywhere in particular, driving for the sheer sake of feeling like he's not stuck in one place, milling and stalling and flailing away in a vacuum. Movement, any movement at all, slakes the anger. It gives him the illusion that he's getting away, far away from all this.

"They suspect it. Anyone who knows about my family suspects it. They're just waiting for the day I have a meltdown." He sighs, seeing nothing but the road and feeling nothing but her thumb on the back of his hand. He keeps rambling, as much to himself as to her. "Then they'll all pat themselves on the back that they saw it coming. Well, I won't give them that satisfaction."

"No!" She says it emphatically, with a deep sort of certainty, because her own belief is so rock solid. "No one thinks that! You're not crazy, you're not like the rest of them. They just don't understand you."

Her gaze is locked on him, her face lined with concern and the need to make him believe her, trust her. She squeezes his hand again, raises it up to kiss his knuckles, one by one. "Your family isn't even crazy," she says, looking at his hand. "Benjy was born that way, and Caddy made mistakes she has to pay for, and your father isn't the only alcoholic the Capitol's ever known. He's not even the worst of them." Her eyes are welling up as she holds his hand to her face, feels his skin on hers. "And Quentin was just sad. I've been that sad. Am I crazy?"

Edited 2015-04-26 04:17 (UTC)

"No. You know I didn't mean that." He twines his fingers with hers, still watching the road rather than her, ever the attentive driver. He's got far less sympathy for his relatives than Swann does. Quentin wasn't sad, so far as he's concerted - Quentin was a deserter.

"It's the concentration of madness that makes it an issue. Every family's got one lunatic they keep in the basement or shuttle off to a District. We just have a whole madhouse going back to my damn grandfather getting punted into a ward."

"It doesn't matter, you're fine. Every family in this stupid city is just as bad, you know that. The Reagans and the Blackwoods and the Sorrows and my family and everyone else. Hiding it better doesn't make it go away. Please don't be upset."

She's looking at him through tears now, though she's not letting them spill down her cheeks. She wants to badly to take his unhappiness away, and she doesn't know what to say to make it happen.

Somehow, that makes it worse. Jason's voice raises, cracking through the enclosed space of the car. "If I knew how to not be upset, don't you think I'd have done whatever that was already?"

Swann inadvertently touched on the truth, and Jason can't handle that - that misery is comforting to him in its familiarity, because he knows he can cope with unhappiness when he doesn't know if he could manage with anything else. He doesn't know what he'd even do with peace of mind, and doesn't even know that he doesn't know.

She lets go of him, so taken aback by the outburst that she recoils and cowers a bit, as if he had threatened to hit her instead of just snapping at her. Tears roll down her face, blinked out when she looks away from.

"I'm sorry," she whispers. "I just... want to help."

"Don't start crying. Don't you start." Jason feels disgusted at this moment, with her and one some deeper level with himself for striking out at her. He pulls his hand away from her.

"There's no helping it."

Swann stops talking entirely, sniffles and wipes her face, then turns the other way in the seat to face the window, resting her forehead on the glass. She doesn't understand why he's so mad at her -- he dragged her out here, and all she wants is to alleviate his anger, but he's so angry and mean to her, and she doesn't know what to do.

She doesn't have any answers for him.

"Don't do this to me, Swann," he grouses, feeling like of all the times for her to get small and weepy when he's already upset isn't the ideal moment. He takes a loop so they can stay on the highway longer, and then rests his head against his knuckle, elbow against the door.

"You wanted me here," she tells him, wiping her face again, but she's not sobbing or even doing much more than letting tears run down her face. It's frustration and hurt, mostly, and feeling like she's somehow failed him, even if he doesn't really seem like he ever wanted her to succeed in the first place. "Why did you get me if you don't want me to help you?"

"I wanted company. That's all. I thought you'd be happy that I came to you first."

He doesn't look at her, knows that if he does the sight of tears will curl his lip into a sneer.

Her tears are drying up, and she wipes at her face a final time, still resting against the window and not looking at him either. "I didn't think you'd be mean and mad at me. I just want you to feel better."

She doesn't even know what that means herself, how she planned to make it any better, but she knows it's true.

"Then don't guilt trip me for venting. Christ. I'm not mad at you."

He glares at the road, thinking that he sure will be if this keeps up, this stalemate they have going.

"Fine. Sorry," she murmurs, and stays curled in her little ball, because she doesn't know what he wants her to do or say anymore. She'd tried to be reassuring and he was angry, so she doesn't have much else to go on now. She just watches the cars pass by on the other side of highway.

He knows he'll pay for this later, that she'll still be withdrawn and sad until they talk it out, and right now that's the last thing he wants to do. With typical heartless pragmatism he pulls off the highway and towards a pet store. He stops at the parking lot.

"Go on. Go buy something for Pascal. I'll pay for it." It's not even subtle that he's trying to smooth over what's just happened by buying something for her.

Swann sits there for a moment, looks ahead out the windshield, but doesn't speak before she unbuckles herself and opens the door. She's used to this -- "Pick out new shoes, new earrings, a new phone, a new car", anything to try and make her forget whatever wrong that boyfriend had done her. Forget that her father hadn't come home in time for dinner for a month. Forget that her mother treated her like she didn't exist. Gifts are love, gifts are apologies.

Jason's just quicker than most of them at making them.

The last thing in the world that Pascal needs is more stuff, and she doesn't really feel like digging around the shop anyway. She grabs the first thing that catches her eye, a heart-shaped box filled with animal treats, and silently pays for it.

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