thecapitol | Still Coming Out of Your Mother Upside Down [Closed]

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Still Coming Out of Your Mother Upside Down [Closed]

WHO| JSwann Derulo
WHAT| Jason and Swann plot Joel's demise; Swann brings Jason home to daddy
WHEN| After IC inbox thread; later in the week.
WHERE| D8 Suite; Swann's place
WARNINGS| Typical Jason Compson awfulness. About forty tags after CakeGate, smut happens.

I.

He can feel his pulse in his neck. One as acquainted with rage as Jason comes to appreciate the different gradients of it, the difference between the blinding, maddened and desperate fury that drove him up here after the argument with Leo to the territorial concern that brings him up now. He takes the stairs instead of the elevator, since it's only one floor, and when he gets up to the eighth he tucks his phone into his workbag.

"Swann?" He takes a step into the Suite, finds her about as upset and fuming from the encounter with Joel as he figured. "Let's take a drive and figure out what to do."

It isn't the barked order he gave last time, just a steady, stern, reasonable voice.

II.

It's not that Jason's nervous about meeting Swann's father because he anticipates any great blow to his esteem; he's simply chainsmoking his way over to her place because he knows that anything less than a success will send her into another of her self-indulgent spirals of candy-bingeing and weeping. She never reminds him more of his mother than then, and it tends to kill any chemistry between them, make Jason spend more nights just going straight home after dropping her off, and that in turns fuels the decline. It's only when she decides to get peppy again that they return to normal, because God knows Jason is never the one to proactively try to improve things.

He's wearing the one suit he owns that didn't come from Swann and still looks respectable, a little outdated, but Swann told him over text message that Ilar wouldn't mind, that he would just be happy for company. He's had his car cleaned and detailed even though he knows Ilar won't see it, but it's a sort of psychological preen that turns his usual strident attitude into one more closely approaching confidence. He waits outside, smoking his camphor and leaning against the hood of the car.

waiting in lot. come on down, he texts.

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It's rare that Swann is ever angry, and thus she doesn't really know how to cope with it. Rage is something she generally pushes down and internalizes as a failing, and that means she can be sad and pitiful instead of angry.

But Joel, over the time she's known him, has managed to find whatever button is inside her and push it. Over and over, until she can't stifle the fury at him anymore, can only feel it bubble up and boil inside her.

She hasn't really moved from the sofa where she'd been when she and Joel locked horns again, and when Jason speaks, she looks over her shoulder, all pouting and vengeful glares not meant for him.

"Okay," she says, rising and heading over to him, stomping as hard as her tiny feet and frame will let her.

The two of them mull over and compound their hatred for Joel in the elevator, silently, fuming, Jason's thumb working over Swann's wrist. All he can think of is getting Swann away from this place, and then as they drive away maybe it'll all spontaneously combust behind them, as it should.

He opens the door for her, as always, to the car. In a way he's enjoying watching Swann angry, watching someone else finally respond to the offworlders' guff with the contempt it deserves. It feels like validation. It feels righteous.

He starts the car. "Tell me everything that led up to it. I'm filing a report against him if you don't."

In the passenger seat of his car, Swann curls up and seems to puff up like a disturbed small animal raising its fur to make itself seem bigger. Her hands clutch at her upper arms, elbows tight over her chest, and her feet are hidden in her skirt on the seat, shoes left on the floorboard.

"I was on the couch, and Joel came along, and he was fine for a few minutes. I think maybe he was even trying to be nice. But he was telling me I'm not allowed to be sad, and then as we were talking, I told him that I don't care about his personal life, as long as he keeps everything quiet and doesn't lose Sponsors. He's always whining about privacy, right? So then it was just more "wah wah, I was taken away from home, wah wah", bitching."

She pauses to take a breath, glaring out the window.

"And you know, I have to tell him practically every other day that I didn't bring him here and I can't send him back, and finally I pointed out that the Tributes aren't the only ones affected by all of this! That there are people building the Arenas and working on the footage and running everything connected to the Games. That my dad kills himself making all of this happen year-round now, while keeping it interesting and making sure that not every minute of every day is Games, Games, Games! And then Joel said that I'll appreciate it when I lose it all."

Swann wipes away the small tears that cropped up while she was talking about her father, and looks over at Jason.

"I mean, I know we don't have it so bad, compared to some of those worlds. I know I have it really good, compared to almost everyone. But that doesn't mean I don't have feelings, or that it's okay for Daddy to run himself into the ground, just because of who we are, right?"

Edited 2015-05-31 00:39 (UTC)

"Jesus," Jason says in a harsh whisper, closing his eyes for a moment even while driving so he can imagine shoving Joel down the stairs, against a wall, knuckles to his nose- he takes a deep breath and opens his eyes again and sees that his fists are a shade blotchy against the steering wheel.

"Well they don't have it so bad either, and that sure as hell doesn't stop all of them complaining about it. They're just about as pampered as Marcel and Pascal is, and yet here they are, talking about how badly they want to go home to a world full of zombies or dragons or robot overlords or whatever. It's like they're addicted to self-pity. It's disgusting."

He glances over at her, angry and proud and protective, and wraps an arm over her tiny shoulders, pulling her close to him over the center rest. "He can't take anything from you. I'll see him dead first. That's a promise."

"That's what I keep telling them, that if they think this is bad, they don't know what bad is. That that's why they should try in the Arena, because the Districters do have it hard, and they're counting on their Tributes to win. You know, they may not have liked it the old way, but at least they had a hand in their own chances, right?"

She presses her face into his shoulder, inhales the smell of his cigarette and cologne on his jacket.

"You know, he never treats Jolie like this. She has just as much of her mark on the Games as I do. Maybe more, she's been doing this for a million years. But no, he's like a puppy around her."

"More than a few of the Districts are unhappy having people who don't care about them representing them. I'm going to make mine record apology videos if they lose the next Arena. I'm going to make up starving children in District Seven if I have to." Jason shakes his head, licking the front of his teeth. He feels his heart pound with that familiar, comforting anger.

"Of course. Because he's a pathetic man who only would threaten someone a quarter his size. Jolie's too tall for him to stand up to."

"I told him that I'd put him in cuffs if he died at the Cornucopia again, but mostly I was just mad. He talks down about the Districters too, and whatever people think of them, the people in Eight are hard-working and good, I've been out there! I've met them, they deserve better than that. But most of the Tributes are so selfish, they don't care at all."

She wraps her arms around his waist with a little huff, still pressed to his shoulder. "And Jolie does whatever they want, she treats them like babies she needs to protect. He whined to her about the wax and she came snapping at me, even though that photoshoot got him more interest than he's had since he got here."

Jason snorts a bit at Swann's description of Districters as hardworking, but he doesn't fight her on it. She can have her beliefs about her represented District if it makes her job easier; it doesn't hurt him any. It's not as if Swann has to interact with many Districters in her day-to-day life, just Samuel and Temple Stevens if rumors of her return bear fruit.

"I knew Jolie couldn't be trusted. You know, once you've slept with them you've proven you've got no standards or critical thinking skills at all. Of course she'd side with a Tribute, she's got so much insecurity about her social class that she's bound to lash out at the only well-bred person in a room." He rubs her shoulder a bit.

Swann doesn't care if Jason snorts, because she's been in the factories and seen them at it, seen children barely old enough for school working on looms. Any other District, she doesn't care what people say, but Eight is special, Eight clothes the whole country and more. That every citizen in Panem has at least one thing to wear, didn't that mean they had to be hardworking?

That makes her feel slightly better, to hear him talk shit about Jolie, and she shifts so that she can rest her temple on his arm instead. "Be careful," she says, frowning again. "I know he whined to her about you getting coffee on him, she might try to report you for abuse. Maybe she did already and someone shot her down, I don't know. But she's got it out for you."

"It was before Cyrus' regulations went through-" and Jason's tone of voice shows just how fond he is of those regulations- "so there's nothing they can do to me about it. The coffee was barely even hot. God, what did you do to be stuck with such a whiny Tribute?"

It's not as if Jason's happy for Jolie to move from acquaintance to something closer to an enemy, but it does sate his need to feel like the world's conspiring against him some. It validates him, in a way.

"Maybe you should come down to District Seven more so I can steer clear of Eight."

She makes a huffing noise. "Maybe I should just split myself in two. You know, this would all have been fixed if my petition to trade Joel to another District had just been processed. It'll never get done now."

It drives Swann crazy, to not have something she wants happen easily and without any effort on her own part. It's been pretty much her whole life, want something and magically receive it, and it's hard to cope with the sudden change of having to work for things that might not happen anyway.

"Well, maybe a report will help you there. I'll write it up first thing. I don't want you around someone who threatens you any more than you want to be around him."

Jason knows more than Swann does about having to work for something, having been devoted to the Sisyphean task of keeping his family from total ruin since the day his father died when he wasn't even seventeen, but it still feels like a blade in his sense of justice that a Tribute can get away with maligning a well-bred Capitolite and face no repercussions at all.

"Come on. We'll figure this out." He rubs her shoulder again, keeps her pulled close. "If I have to rip down Reagan's door to get him transferred I'll manage it."

"All right," she says, nuzzling against him like a needy kitten might. She trusts him to resolve the problem so that she can wash her hands of it, stop fighting and feeling like she's not accomplishing anything.

And at the very least, Jason will yell at some people on her behalf, which she always finds some pleasure in.

Jason has no way of knowing it, but Swann can't accept failure in this endeavor for one simple reason: if her father doesn't approve, then she has to end it.

She doubts her own ability to stay away entirely, but she can't defy her father that way, has never been able to. He tends to be almost unwaveringly supportive in whatever she wants, but the wrong showing at dinner is a death sentence for any man she hopes to keep around for a while.

Neither Swann nor Ilar would ever notice his suit, and even as she heads downstairs, she can't imagine why Jason would even worry about such a thing. Her own dress is semi-formal, grand for her father's boisterous sense of grandeur, the skirt knee-length and seemingly made entirely of ruffles held up with every petticoat she owns. Her torso and arms shimmer with crystals.

She exits the elevator into the garage with a smile, holding a cake in a cake dish, from Eta to Ilar. Beaming at Jason, she makes her way to him and rises on her toes to kiss his cheek.

"Ready?"

"Alright."

He bends his neck to kiss her back, then takes the cake from her and sets it in the back of the car after making double-sure that it's well-secured and won't go getting crumbs and frosting on the leather seats. He looks back at her and opens her door for her.

"You look like you should be on top of that cake. Same old place you used to live, right?" Jason thinks he'll remember; he's been to Ilar's before, although he never was the driver, usually was sitting in the back of the car in an uncomfortable suit that made him look older than the pre-teen he was trying not to feel carsick at the whipping of trees past the window.

"Yuh-huh," she tells him, smile widening when he tells her that she should be on the cake. It's always something to strive for, to look like a decoration. It's pretty much what Swann was raised for: to be pretty first and foremost. Be a little doll that can be shown off, and never mind the rest, because if she didn't have the brains to run Honeymead Media Enterprises, she could always use her looks to find a man who could run it in her stead.

She sits down, gathering her skirt to her so that it doesn't get caught in the door. Beaming at Jason as he climbs in, she reaches for his hand, automatically. "How has your day been?"

Equally automatically, he takes her hand and squeezes it, as if it were as routine and vital to driving the car as turning the key and revving the motor. Soon they're pulling out, heading towards a dinner that can't help but make the two of them just a bit nervous, even as they try to deny that truth.

"It's been alright. Mother had an appointment, so I got to spend the morning driving her around and listening to her diagnose herself with new maladies. That's why the car smells like it does." It's a barely discernible difference, but there's even more camphor than there usually is in the air. "Then the doctor says it was all in her head and I says, well, I could have told you that, and she starts crying all the way home and says that she's a burden and her usual schpiel and I says maybe she's right and then she cries harder. But other than that it's been uneventful."

He doesn't mention that his mother has no idea where he's going tonight, because he knows it bothers Swann that he won't tell Caroline about their relationship. He just neglects to mention the lie about going to check on his Tributes late.

There's a moment, just a blink of an eye, where Swann sniffs the air like one of her pets might, but she doesn't notice a difference at all. Maybe she was expecting a different scent, something more feminine; an older woman's perfume or something along those lines.

"Why do they even take her appointments if she's just imagining it? Surely she doesn't have any actual symptoms." Swann watches him with the kind of lazy comfort one gets from being in the presence of the right person, her head resting back on her seat. "I mean, you can say you don't feel good, but you can't force a fever or anything like that. She probably wouldn't be so tired if she didn't cry all the time."

And that's coming from Swann Honeymead, so it must be bad.

"I hope you got to rest at least a little bit."

"Because no one's ever actually going to say no to Caroline Compson. No one can throw a fit like she can." Which is just about where her son learned it, and why he isn't going to stop taking her. There's only so much of her whining he can put up with and the occasional appointment alleviates it some. "But I says to her all the crying makes her sick and she does it anyway. All the worrying and all the crying and half of it's because I'm home late even though I'm thirty-five or because it's her problem if I have to take time off for a headache."

When he gets headaches these days he goes to Swann's. It's quieter, and though a migraine is never pleasant, lasting it out in Swann's arms and her dark bedroom is the closest he can get to comfortable.

"But yes, I got to sleep in some. Ben didn't even start his wailing until past noon. He must have found something shiny before breakfast to keep his attention."

Frankly, Swann is a bit surprised that Caroline has the clout anymore -- Jason, maybe, because people fear his outbursts, but a shut-in with no real money or power of her own? Well, Swann wouldn't think that the respectable doctors would keep dealing with her, but to each their own.

Frowning, she straightens a bit. "You're not going to stop staying with me, are you?"

She's jealous of Caroline in a way that she can't really define, a way that makes her feel inferior and smaller than usual. When she feels jealous of Lorraine or occasionally Peggy, it's an angry possessiveness, like they're touching her belongings, trying to steal them right out of her home. But Caroline... instead, it makes Swann feel like she's in a race that she's always losing, like she's competing with a woman that she can't stand and would never want to be like, but who's somehow better.

Swann can't remember truly hating people before Jason was in her life. It feels worth it.

There are certain circles where the family name still has some pull - mostly descendants of veterans who served with or under General Compson - but over time the circles where that holds true and the enclaves of elites with power have divided like a cell undergoing meiosis. The name crashed and tumbled from grace for a while, but now it just slides down the last of that small, sad hill.

"Of course not. Don't get yourself worked up over that." He runs his thumb over the back of her hand. He doesn't realize how deeply Swann resents his mother and likely would be furious if he knew. The truth is, being able to flout her requests a bit feels like the closest he'll ever taste to freedom, even if when she cries about it later he dutifully sits on the bed next to her, letting her sob into his shoulder until his shirt is soaked clean through (and the truth is, he lives for those moments too, even if he can't explain why).

"She'll get over it or she'll have the last laugh if she's right and it does eventually kill her."

"It's been months," Swann mumbles, frowning at their hands, holding his tightly as if she could bind him to her through their fingers. She doesn't understand how Caroline can be so dense, how not a single person has mentioned the gossip rags to her. It damages Swann and Jason by association, like they're just waiting for the day that Caroline opens her eyes and locks Jason away forever. "And she's not that old. She's not going to just up and die."

Sighing, Swann looks away and out the window. Jason would never tolerate it if she coddled her father this way, if he always came second. Or third or fourth, Swann often has trouble determining where she stands in Jason's line.

"So?"

Time isn't the matter to Jason. He'll keep the relationship a secret forever if it means it can stay the way it is, the two most important women in his life in separate spheres that he can navigate around each other. He looks over at her and frowns before glaring back out at the road (his glasses, catching the sunset, turn to a darker tint).

"Don't sulk. I just told you nothing's going to change and that Mother's just going to have to learn to live with me sneaking out to see you. Isn't that what you want?"

"No no, that's not what I meant," she says, knitting her brow as she glances over at him again. "I mean, it's been months, so how has she not just gotten over it yet? But no, I don't want you sneaking out to see me, I'm not... you make it sound dirty. Like I'm something to be ashamed of, that you have to skulk around with me."

She knows he'll chew her out for taking it 'the wrong way', but surely even Jason can see how his phrasing might sting, might make her feel embarrassed and hurt. Here they are because she wants to present him to her father, have a real blessing, and at the same time, he's describing her in the same way one might describe a mistress.

"You know that's not how I meant it. Now you're just taking it the worst possible way so you can sulk. Don't think I'm not wise to that trick." Jason leans forward and rests his head against his knuckle, elbow on the steering wheel, glowering at the leisurely traffic ahead of them.

"It's not sneaking around because I'm ashamed of you, it's because Mother doesn't want me to date. She says she does, but every time I have she's thrown a fit so bad I had to take weeks off work to care for her and she wouldn't stop until I broke it off. Is that what you want? Because if it is, I can turn the car around and we can go waltzing up to my front door and you can argue with her yourself."

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II

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