It's About Holding and Being Held [Closed]

[whatisay]

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.

Comments

[whatisay]

It feels like ecstasy and it hurts, too, in the way that scratching an itch too hard does where it's still hard to say that you don't want it. He sucks a deep breath and shudders in prediction for the climax that comes next, that draws his body taut and then releases it. Inside her mouth still he starts to slack. He sees stars, feels his mouth go dry, wheezes out something that could be gratitude and could just be primitive pleasure.

[cigne]

All of her pressure eases until it's gone, her hand gently sliding away to his thigh while she swallows and holds him in her mouth until he makes that noise. She pulls away then, licking along his length one final time, then smiles up at him like a proud pet might as it gives its master a gift. Her hands fall into her lap, the mass of crinoline, while she waits, and she cocks her head a little bit to the side.

[whatisay]

Jason relaxes and stares, dazed, out the window for a few moments before he looks down at her and sees those need-to-please dark eyes. He sighs, relieved, less angry now than he was, and not thinking for the moment of returning the favor.

"How are you going to get out of there?"

[cigne]

"Well, you can't drive with me down here," she teases, "but I bet I can get out easier than I got in."

Holding his thighs, she slithers out from under the steering wheel, towards him, until she's in his lap instead of on the floor. It does take her a bit of creative contorting, but she wriggles out and rests on her heels, straddling him with her arms around his neck.

"See?"

[whatisay]

"Must be all that yoga," he says, as much into her hair as into her. He wraps his arms around her waist, squirming a bit as he works his fly back up. "Can you get out of handcuffs that easily too?"

He pauses, then blushes a bit when he realizes how that sounded. "I didn't mean that like that."

[cigne]

Swann laughs a little and smiles wider when he blushes, then leans in to press her forehead to his, their noses touching as she rubs along his spine with her fingers, just under the collar of his shirt.

"Depends on how tight they are, I suppose. I've only ever slid out of handcuffs once before, and it was an accident."

She has never been arrested.

[whatisay]

He exhales, his lips just a bit away from hers, nose meeting hers at the bridge, and some of that tension that seems to coil up in his back like an animal of its own dissipates. The anger, the rage he felt at Leo isn't dead, but it's somewhere behind them on the road, and they'll pick it up again later.

He just closes his eyes for a moment and enjoys holding her.

"I wish the resorts weren't in the Districts. I wish they were even further away than that, so we could go there."

[cigne]

She watches him when he closes his eyes, shifts just enough to rub the tip of her nose against his -- she remembers once being told that Eskimo kissing came from ancient people who lived in the cold, so that they could kiss without their mouths freezing together, and she's always thought that's lovely.

Idly stroking the back of his neck, she makes a small noise. "An island in the ocean, far away from Panem. Where no one else is."

[whatisay]

"Sure." He breathes deep again, deep enough that she can sink a little more into him, and he feels that devastating hollowness in him that he's never been able to fill, that what's the point? raging in his body that he tries to stubbornly ignore because he has no good answer and knows it. She's the closest he's come to stopping up that emptiness. "Just you and me. No one else. You and me."

It may be the closest Swann ever gets to romance from him, because really, there's very little difference between romance and escapism.

[cigne]

"And Pascal and Marcel." Swann sighs and closes her eyes, melts against him before moving her head to rest on his shoulder, forehead pressed in the crook of his neck. Everything feels nice and warm and right at this moment, like they've finished a puzzle together. Maybe not a big puzzle, but one of the moment, at least.

"You can go fishing and I'll make us those flower necklaces."

[whatisay]

"Fine. And Pascal and Marcel." He cradles her head in his hand, there against his shoulder. "Do I have to wear one?"

They could drive. It hits him like lightning, that they could drive and just not stop, go anywhere, this fantasy that wouldn't sustain reality. He wants to just hit the gas and go, never thinking of where their destination would be.

[cigne]

She giggles a little, nuzzles the side of his neck. "Uh-huh. Yours will be yellow and red and white. That's what you wear on islands, flower necklaces. We'll all have one."

It's never entered Swann's mind, to just go, because it seems so impossible that she might as well not think about it. She doesn't even know what's outside of Panem, if there's anything at all, and yet if Jason started the car and started driving, she would never leave his side.

[whatisay]

Reality begins to soak back in, and Jason sighs. They wouldn't make it outside the city without being asked for a pass to show that they have the right to travel to whatever District border they cross first. Then there are obligations here, they'll need to eat, someone has to clear up their affairs, and by the time they get everything negotiated the spontaneity will be gone and their lives will have caught them again.

He hates feeling like a fugitive from his own life.

"We have to get back."

[cigne]

Jason speaks and she pulls back a little to look at him, taking the sides of his face in her hands first. "Okay," she murmurs, then leans in and kisses him. She stays that way for a minute, holding his face and keeping her lips pressed to his, then touches their foreheads together once more before climb back to the passenger seat.

"We'll take a bath when we get home. To relax." It doesn't occur to her that she says it like they're one, like he lives with her permanently instead of just overnight for half the week. Part of it is simple convenience in speaking, but part of it is that she thinks of him as a static piece of her home now, and it feels empty when he doesn't stay with her.

She pulls her shirt back on when she takes her seat again, then flips down the sun visor to look in the mirror and use one finger to wipe away the lipstick smudges on the sides of her lips.

[whatisay]

She takes a little of his breath with her when she finally pulls away and presses her forehead to his head. "Alright."

It sounds nice, and ever since they developed this routine he's found himself actually looking forward to the end of the workday for more than just for a chance to get away from his coworkers and Tributes. He actually does relax.

He straightens his clothes a bit and starts to drive them back.

[cigne]

She watches him lazily, smiling as she pushes the visor back up and relaxes into her seat, her legs curled under her. She's comfortable and happy, content even to go back to work for those five or six hours they have left before the end of the day.

"Are you looking forward to this weekend?" she asks softly, reaching for his hand.

[whatisay]

"Dinner with your father?" He can't say he's looking forward to that, but he isn't dreading it. It's something he's willing to do for her, and it'll probably be better than dinner with his family, if only because no one will be dribbling their food on their adult-sized bib or coming down with some new ache or pain to complain about.

He takes the long route back.

[cigne]

"Uh-huh." She seems so pleased, her smile wide and excited. She loves her father, and that means she wants him to love Jason too, as much as she does, because she can't bear to go against his wishes and see a man he doesn't approve of. "It's going to be really fun. Usually he does a five course for dinner -- is there anything in particular you do or don't want? So I can call his kitchen and let them know."

[whatisay]

"I'm fine with anything. Whatever you want." Maybe someone who hadn't grown up in the Capitol would find serving a five course dinner to a woman who survives on half a salad a day to be wasteful, but Jason doesn't think anything of it.

He reaches over and takes her hand, winding his fingers around hers. Sometimes, when he's home now, he'll look at his hands and the shapes his knuckles make in his fingers and the negative space feels wrong, like her fingers should be filling the gaps, like his own hand is morphing and giving way to become familiar to her like a chair might once you break it in.

"I think the last time I saw him was at my father's funeral, actually. Does he still look the same?"

[cigne]

She reaches with her free hand to stroke his arm as he holds her hand, her fingers tight around his as she keeps smiling in his direction. Everything feels wrong when he isn't with her, when they aren't holding hands, when he isn't taking up space under her in her bed. She finds that when he isn't there, it's just a gap of time in her life, like she's just waiting for him to come back instead of living on her own.

"Pretty much. A bit bigger, a little less hair. Normal aging. Daddy doesn't go much in for surgeries, he always jokes and says that he doesn't want to be prettier than his wife and daughter. He even stopped doing botox. I think he's just gotten to the age where his accomplishments speak loud enough, you know? Like President Snow."

Men in the Capitol are lucky to have an age they can reach where they can let go and just be 'distinguished', Swann thinks. Eventually she'll have to turn to surgery to stay beautiful, too, just like her mother and everyone else.

[whatisay]

Jason makes a thoughtful sound, one without condemnation but just sort of idly considerate. "That's the one good thing about my mother being a homebody. She can't really justify draining our accounts for plastic surgery all the time. She whines about it, but a little Botox and injections are good enough for her."

Of course, if she really pushed it, Jason would fund whatever ridiculous procedure she wanted, because he can never really say no to his mother. He can fight her and snap at her and go behind her back, but actually denying her seems beyond his capacity, like she's installed a failsafe switch in him when he was young.

"You still have that Honeymead empire, that's true."

[cigne]

"It's not that much," she demurs, frowning a little, because it always feels odd to her when people specifically point out just how much her family controls. She supposes that she just doesn't like the idea of eventually having to take it all on, to be the most powerful person in Capitol media -- it feels like too much, like her footprint is too big for her. The Honeymeads have always had their hands in everything, and Swann's the last of them, expected to wear that crown, and it's just overwhelming for her.

She supposes she's never thought about Caroline and how she keeps up with herself, if she does at all. "Does she have the doctors come to her?"

[whatisay]

"Maybe you can sell it all away when it comes down to it, if you don't want it." Jason tries not to sound envious and fails. He can't shake the feeling that his family left him nothing but an ill-fitting name, one which is smaller than what they molded him into.

He changes the setting on his sunglasses to handle the glare of the sun as they turn a corner and face the light.

"Sometimes. Sometimes I drive her, when her appointments are on the weekend."

[cigne]

"Maybe." It's an odd weight, an albatross around her neck forever, because as little as she wants the Honeymead empire, she's sure she could never give it to anyone else, would feel like she's betraying her father and grandfather and great-grandfather, everything they worked for.

The feeling is familiar to her, something that's been there since she was old enough to hear speech after speech about Honeymead blood and their contributions to the Capitol and how important it was for her to carry on their name.

"I didn't know she left the house at all anymore." It's a casual comment, said innocently, because it really is a bit surprising to hear that Caroline goes outside. Swann wonders why she bothers at all, if her sons and servants are the only ones who ever see her.

[whatisay]

"She won't at all, soon enough." There's a sort of grim determination to that, because it's easier for Jason to have her stay home and he can eventually get that if he weans her off those weekend visits enough. At the very least being isolated and cooped up in the house will limit the amount of gossip she has access to. Because that's not a fucked up way to treat your mother.

At a stoplight, he leans over and kisses her mouth.