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He's wearing the one suit he owns that didn't come from Swann and still looks respectable, a little outdated, but Swann told him over text message that Ilar wouldn't mind, that he would just be happy for company.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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Somehow, Swann's father manages to calm her down, until she's only hiccuping and nodding and rubbing at her eyes. He asks to speak to Jason, and she peers out of the window for a moment at Jason's still form before she acquiescing to what her father wants.

She unlocks the door and gets out, slowly walking over to where he is, cautious like he might suddenly strike out at her like a snake. "Daddy wants to talk to you," she says quietly, hoarsely, and holds her phone out to him. The screen is smudged with tears and makeup. "Please?"

The last thing he wants to do is talk to Ilar Honeymead about all this, but the fight's gone out of him. All of it has. The rage and bitterness he protects himself with, that screen through which he sees the world and it seems him, has been depleted and ripped to shreds and he has nothing but a dull sense of unhappiness and dread left. He looks up at her, eyes as vacant as hers are puffy, and dumbly takes the phone.

The two of them stand and sit there for a moment, uncertain with each other, pitiable and wretched, as the last of the twilight vanishes around them.

He pauses for a moment to brush the cake away from his ear, then speaks in a quiet, miserable voice. "This is Jason."

Swann sits on another nearby rock, as there isn't enough room next to him for her dress. Also, he's covered in cake.

Ilar's voice is rich and warm through the phone, and it's easy to imagine him in a dimly-lit office, in an overstuffed leather chair -- he practically projects it.

"Good evening, son," he says, and there's the sound of lighter clinking as he lights a cigar. "Little thing's more of handful than you'd think she can be, isn't she? Said she threw a cake at you, but she's thrown worse at worse men, so. Don't worry, I'll have someone out to clean it up from your car as soon as you two get back wherever you're going, it'll be spotless come morning. I'm sure she wrecked whatever you're wearing, that'll get cleaned or replaced, whatever you need."

There's a pause, an exhale and ice cubes clinking in a glass.

"Now look, I know you're mad, and I'm sure whatever she said deserves it, let alone smashing a cake into your face. But I want you to think about something. You make my little girl happy, and she hasn't been happy in a long time. There's always going to be fights, because Swann doesn't have many settings besides 'crying' and 'shrieking' when she's hurt. This isn't the first time I've gotten this call. But she's never talked about anyone the way she talks about you, son. And you must like her a bit too, or you wouldn't be sitting there."

Another pause, another puff of smoke blown out.

"So you two just calm down and you take her back on home. Eta'll take care of her. You can go on back to your place if you like, but I think you should stay with her a while, because you know as well as I do that she'll get back to normal quicker if you don't leave her alone to dwell on it, and if I know the Compsons, you all are pretty good at dwelling too. Your choice though, son. Either way, I'll get you taken care, from that cake, and then you two have to work it out."

Swann is watching Jason, though she looks away every time he glances in her direction.

"Tell Swannie to get in the car, and you take it from there. She'll listen now. You have a good night, son."

Well, he nearly says, I'm actually sitting here because I tossed my keys in a ditch and I can't find them.

But instead he stays quiet, occasionally glancing up at her but otherwise silent, eyes trained on a smear of frosting on his pants that he tries to wipe away with his thumb and only succeeds in rubbing more into the fabric.

"She told me I wanted to fuck my mother, sir."

When he says it aloud, he's sure it sounds pathetic, to be so worked up over such a ridiculous idea, and yet each word feels like a drop of acid from his tongue. He knows Swann hates it, he hates it himself, the relationship he shares with his mother, but he can never leave and he can't even put words to why he can't. If he tries to tease it out in his mind suddenly his head is full of memories of crying after his father whipped him with a belt, of his siblings excluding him, of a certain unwantedness that followed him like a cloud and only dissipated when his mother would gather him into her arms and her voluminous nightrobe and tell him he was the only child she loved. It's unpleasant and chaotic down that road, and yet this isn't the first time Swann has expected a sort of answer that might lie at the end of it.

He glances up at Swann again, waiting to hear what Ilar says and whether Swann shows the slightest bit of recognition for the minefield she's stepped into.

"And you've never said something you didn't mean in the heat of the moment, son? It's not my place to apologize for her, but does that sound even the least bit like something Swannie would actually say outside of a fight? You can't hold onto those things. People are always going to say things just to hurt you, you should save the anger for people who really mean it."

Ilat sighs, and ice cubes clink again. A heavy glass is set on wood. A fire crackles in the background.

"It's your business whether you want to leave her over something so small. But from what I've gathered over the past few months, she's stuck with you through some much more serious indiscretions. She sure is a forgiving little creature, isn't she?"

Swann is looking at her hands in her lap, her nails where black eyeliner and mascara have caked under while she rubbed her face. Her face is a blank, unreadable.

"I suppose it's up to you whether actions speak louder than words."

Jason can hear that same threat in Ilar's voice that Swann used not too long ago, but this time he has no hackles to raise, even at the condescension. He just lowers his head more, staring at the dirt, wanting to say that of course Swann meant it, of course she would throw in his face the easiest way to get under his skin.

Of course Swann would talk about his 'indiscretions', things he doesn't even feel he ought to apologize for, things that wouldn't even be problems if she weren't so hellbent on taking them personally. Right now he wants nothing more than to book a train ticket out to District Eleven and stay indefinitely.

"I'll make sure she gets home safe," he says. "She'll call you in the morning."

He doesn't turn the phone off. He just hands it back to Swann, nudging it at her nails.

Swann hadn't actually ever spoken to anyone except Jason himself about the indiscretions -- it's hard to keep that kind of thing a secret when one's whore likes to pop up in the network from time to time. But nothing Swann ever says or does actually matters to Jason, it's always just what he wants the truth to be.

She's not allowed to breathe in a way that vaguely irritates him, but she's expected to immediately forgive every nasty thing he says and does like he's trying to break her heart.

Taking her phone, she taps it off and then just sits there, occasionally sniffling as she looks at her feet.

"I can't find the key," he says. He pulls out his own phone, not to call anyone, but to turn on the flashlight setting. He casts it over the ground, looking for that familiar silver fob.

It's not that all he wants to do is go home. Home is no haven for him. He doesn't want to go back to Swann's bed, either, because he knows they'll just fight again and if they don't, he'll feel like he's admitting her arguments have merits. He just wants to drive and never stop and blow clean past the border guard until they shoot the car to pieces.

His suit's already ruined, so he gets down on his knees and starts feeling around for it.

She flicks on her own flashlight setting and rises to start looking too, bent at the waist as she takes tiny steps forward. After a few minutes, there's a glint and she grabs the keys out of the grass, halfway anticipating him being angry just for having happened to be closer to them.

"Here." Swann holds her arm out to him, keys dangling from her fingers, flashlight casting light on her feet, her glittering shoes that match the top of her dress.

She doesn't know where he plans to go. She doesn't want to fight anymore, and so she doesn't mind if he comes home with her, considering that she thinks she'll just go to sleep anyway. If he doesn't come up, maybe she'll find the sleeping pills she has hidden from Eta and take some, enough to sleep through tomorrow too.

He takes them from her, gentle not from tenderness but simply because whatever feelings he has have been completely exhausted. With the keys in hand, he reaches out again, this time to take her hand and help her up from the ditch.

"Do you want me to stay the night?" For tonight, at least, it's the closest either of them will get to an apology.

Swann has to take his hand so that she doesn't slide on the slope, or else get her heels stuck, and she almost instinctively squeezes his hand. The reflex is automatic at this point.

When she's on level ground, next to him, she turns the flashlight off and looks at him from the corner of her eye. "Only if you want to," she answers, unable to resist reaching up and brushing some stray crumbs and bits of frosting from his temple.

"Alright." He opens the car door for her and then goes around the other side, not even looking at the mess of the interior. He sits down and and keys the ignition and turns on the lights, brightening up the outside but leaving them sitting inside in two despondent silhouettes.

He drives in silence back to her place.

She can't bring herself to care that she's sitting in cake, a lot of it. She'll peel her dress off at the door when she gets home, and Eta will either clean it or have it replaced, and Swann will never have to think of it again. Jason's car will magically be cleaned by morning, and a new suit will have appeared, courtesy of her father.

A world of magic and never having to try. That's Swann's reality.

Jason's side of the car is actually mostly cake-free, thanks to her position when she'd thrown it, with a few exceptions of frosting smears from her scramble into the backseat. She leans her head against the window and doesn't speak either, just watches the streetlights and the other cars.

Jason's getting enough cake on his side of the car by himself, thank you, Swann.

They go through the same routine when they get back to Swann's place: Jason opens the door for her and then they both head up. He leaves his keys in her front hallway in case someone needs them for the car cleaning.

She can shower first. He stands, making sure not to get more frosting on anything, and hands his jacket to Eta. The look Eta gives him is one that he would slap off the face of any other Avox.

Swann literally leaves her clothes at the door in a pile, stripping down as soon as it closes, and walks naked the rest of the way, straight through to her bathroom. A mumbled "Thank you, Eta" is the only thing she says along the way. She expects Jason to follow her, if only for the sake of not having to be alone with Eta and covered in frosting -- at least he can change in her room.

The water roars and rains down, steaming hot, enough to turn Swann pink and then red where she scrubs at her skin. She has to take a bit to scrub some frosting out of the ends of her hair, but she's out quick enough, drying off and then wandering back into the bedroom with damp hair and no clothes, her diamond implant glinting in the low light.

Jason means to glance only impassively at Swann when she returns, but he wasn't expecting her naked, and he can feel the flush of blood running up his chest and face when she walks out. He slips off his shirt and pants and heads to the steamed-up bathroom, and it's then that he turns in the doorway and looks back at her.

He's so angry at her still. He can feel her words rapping out a tattoo against the back of his head, and he wants to throw her against a wall or run away or just set the whole building on fire, but he never will. She's more powerful than he'll ever be by virtue of her family name, and so any retaliation is left to the realm of fantasy. But, as much as he hates to admit it, it's more than just her influence that keeps him from backhanding her.

"I know you just finished, but..." He tilts his head, inviting her to come back in.

For her part, Swann is numb, emptied by the fighting and screaming and many emotions in such a short time. The overstimulation has left her tired, too tired to question or argue. She doesn't even really look at him until he speaks, so she has to look over her shoulder toward the bathroom door where he stands.

"Okay," she says, and it's dull, agreement because she can't bring herself to disagree. The one thing she does pause for are slippers beneath her dressing table; the stone floor of the bathroom is chilly with the in-floor heating turned off for the summer.

She follows him.

There's none of the passion there usually is when they shower together; instead, it's not unlike how they treat each other after she's been sick or he's had a migraine. Both of them are numb, tired, robotic, but he pulls her to him and holds her under the hot water against his chest.

"What's wrong with us?" he asks, more rhetorically than anything else.

She closes her eyes, wraps her arms around his waist. He speaks and she's quiet for a moment, then snorts, just a little, suddenly struck with just how bad it is for them, individually and together.

"What isn't?" she answers. "What does it matter? Neither of us was meant for... for those pretty relationships where everything is all perfect and sweet. It isn't who we are."

"I don't understand why it can't be easy." Why can't it ever be easy? Jason was raised knowing he was a Compson, that that meant something, and then sometime in his teenage years he realized how much of a lie that was and that he was never meant for the leisurely life that his parents promised for him. And in the years following that he's started to believe it might be less circumstance and something inherently wrong with-

-he refuses to believe it's something wrong with him, so the answer is that that easy life never really existed, that he was lied to.

He holds her close, brings her head to his shoulder, inhales and exhales the steam around them. He's not really going to apologize, and he doubts she is either. But this, he feels, is closer than that.

There are tears on her nose, mixed in with the water, and she blinks at the wall while her fingers dig into his back, his side. Clutching him, letting her hair get plastered down to his skin by the shower.

Because we're fucked up. We were fucked up kids and now we're fucked up adults, all of us, thanks to our parents, and who knows if it'll ever get any better.

"I don't know."

For a moment he pulls her tight enough to cling, as if he'll never let her go, like he's trapping a bird in his hands. The spasm moves through his muscles, arms and hands, and he shakes slightly, gripping her hair.

His brain barely knows it, but his body and soul do, that they're doomed, that their entire generation is mired neck-deep in the sins of their parents and none of them know what to do about it. That it goes deeper than politics, that it's the poison in every card signed by Viatrix' assistant Swann got instead of a visit from her mother, in every time Jason was told to shut up or get beaten rather than keep crying for Damuddy, in the smell of alcohol and prescription pills and dripping, swollen, diseased opulence that permeated their childhoods.

"We should take a vacation."

They were born just enough generations down the line for everything to be wrong, all of them, born into families who'd spent endless lifetimes breeding only amongst themselves, dominating the whole world with their iron fists, since before Snow was president, since before Panem was Panem. Families that stayed on their personal Olympus for so long that they'd forgotten what made them gods in the first place, until it was all blood and virtue, not luck as to whose name you were born with.

Selfishness bred in by two centuries of wealth, of inability to be demolished. Children plagued by family trees with branches crossed over each other a dozen times -- Swann is among the luckiest, to have one parent of fresh blood, brought into the cycle by marriage only. It didn't help much, but she'd escaped some of the most unlucky traits, the ones that required extensive plastic surgery, diseases that needed medical management and were inescapable when everyone in your family had carried the gene for three generations.

All of it, swept under rugs that cost more than cars, hidden in boxes studded with jewels, and safes built into walls and floors.

Swann quivers in his grasp, presses her face to his skin before looking up.

"Where?"

"I don't know. Anywhere. Somewhere that isn't here." He looks back down at her, and it's as if his eyes, now empty of anger, are completely hollow in their darkness. There's no soul inside them, unless 'soul' is the term used for the putty that holds together the tangle of neuroses and dysfunctions and anxieties that make up a Capitolite.

He finally pulls away from her and picks up some soap, rubbing it between his palms, one over the other, like he's petting something soft and warm. When he has a lather he reaches over and wipes her cheeks, the remains of her mascara and the scaliness where she cried.

His eyes are hollow and hers are distant, like somewhere the awareness got lost inside her head and never made it to her face. She doesn't say anything for a while, at least not until he comes back and cleans her face, and then she gently clutches his wrists, the spark dimly returning to her irises for just a moment.

"Let's go to Seven," she murmurs. "They have cabins, built high up in the mountains, and no one can bother you. You can see everything from up there, I saw it on TV. We'll take the animals, Eta can send food with us."

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[cw: this thread is probably going to turn into another violent smut thread]

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