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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"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.

"How much was it?" he asks, standing by the front door of the shop, looking at her face with scrutiny to try and figure out if she's forgiven him. He doesn't feel that he has anything to apologize for (he rarely, if ever, does) and so he's expecting some sort of acknowledgement that things are okay between them again.

She still looks blank, and just shifts the shopping bag in her hand, the thick cream-colored paper with the shop's logo. "Twenty," she answers quietly, knowing full well that it was twice that, because if you can afford a pet in the Capitol, you can afford to spend stupid amounts on things like fancy boxes of pet cookies.

It feels as empty as all the other gifts did, maybe more, because she doesn't really want material things from Jason, not like this. Soon enough, she'll internalize it as love, but right now, it feels very hollow, because she's hurt.

The number is the only thing she says before going back to the car.

"For God's sake," he mutters, not at the cost but because it's clear she's still holding it against him, still hurt, and he doesn't want this. He isn't in the mood to apologize, doesn't want to put that effort in to bring things back to the way they were moments ago, and for a moment he heavily considers just leaving her here and letting her take a cab back to work.

Instead he walks back to the car, not opening her door for her, and sits in the driver's seat with his cigarette and a scowl settled on his face.

At the same time, Swann doesn't want it either, but at the same time, she feels like he only wanted her to be with him to be a convenient punching bag, someone he can abuse in place of Leonidas Cora. And while that's not foreign to her, being the recipient of people's anger at others, it hurts all the same that Jason went through the effort of seeking her out to do it.

In the car, she sets the bag at her feet and scrolls through her phone, face still blank and empty while she thinks to herself, filing everything into place in her head, trying to fix it all by rationalizing.

He does it because he can trust me. He wouldn't spend the money if he wasn't sorry. He's just upset right now. It's all Leo's fault. Jason must love me if he went through the trouble, right?

It takes a while, and she's silent the whole time, resting her head back on the seat when she's run out of things to check on her phone.

"What is it you want, Swann?" he asks eventually, after the silence between has grown impossible and the cigarette in his mouth is no longer puffing out vapor but just hot air, the cap depleted. He still isn't looking at her, just glaring out the window at a sun that seems happy to lance into his eyes, straight through his glasses lenses and pupils like a blade.

"You tell me not to be upset, like it's that easy, like you think I can just wish my way into it? I would if I could." He finally looks at her. "Do you think I like being like this?"

"I just want you to feel better." Her voice is soft, and she's starting to wring her hands out of habit, even as she keeps looking out the window, at the cars passing by. "I don't have anything else to say, I didn't mean for you to take it so literally."

She goes silent for a moment, looking at her hands, her fingernails and their delicate pink nail polish. "Just... I wish being with me made things better for you. That's why I try. Never mind. I'm sorry. Thank you for the gift."

She doesn't answer his question, and he doesn't push it.

"You do make things better. I wouldn't have gone and found you if you didn't." But it remains unspoken - better, by Jason's standards, still isn't happy or healthy. Better is cracks in the overcast sky, not a sunny day.

He finds another cap for his cigarette, camphor, the kind he uses for headaches, and starts on that.

She glances at him before looking back down at her lap. Swann isn't stupid -- she knows his better isn't what other people's is, that actual happiness is something that seems to only grace him with its presence at rare moments, usually when they're alone in her bed. But it's cruel to say "please be slightly less miserable", like he's completely incapable of even better.

"I'm sorry," she says again, just because she doesn't know what to say, and her stomach is starting burn from this whole thing. She doesn't want to feel this tension anymore.

"It's fine." Now he just wants her to stop apologizing, just wants them to be alright again. He rests his head on his hand, elbow on the steering wheel, slumped over the dashboard like a drunk without his keys as he takes a few more drags.

After a few moments he sits back up and reaches over and kisses her cheek.

It's her default to apologize, to assume responsibility for pretty much any kind of problem that arises around her. It always has been, since she was a child, and so it's really all she knows how to do now. Asserting herself in any way feels uncomfortable.

She smiles when he kisses her, weakly but a smile nonetheless, and reaches for his hand.

He takes her hand, eager to reestablish that relationship they had when they carpooled to work this morning. And he kisses her again, harder. It isn't sexual but it is needy, demanding she return it.

Swann takes his cheek in her free hand, letting her eyes close and obediently kissing back, though she's a bit stymied by the console between them, keeping them apart when she wants to be pressed to him instead.

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