Still Coming Out of Your Mother Upside Down [Closed]

[whatisay]

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He's wearing the one suit he owns that didn't come from Swann and still looks respectable, a little outdated, but Swann told him over text message that Ilar wouldn't mind, that he would just be happy for company.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.

Comments

[whatisay]

"Don't even joke about that," Jason says, at first joking, then repeating more seriously, "really, don't joke about that."

His mother may be many things that Jason hates, but he can never shake a certain possessive attitude about her. As much as he is wholly hers she's also his, under his thumb, trapped in that house and reliant on him, the two of them in a sick symbiosis to prop up their malformed, undergrown senses of worth.

[cigne]

She rolls her eyes a little, because while she understands that reaction if she had named anyone else, to be that serious about Jolie? It's ridiculous, and she has to call it out.

"Jason, you have to loosen up a little. Of everyone in the Capitol, Jolie is probably the last one you need to be serious about in this conversation. Well, second last. Cassian's the last one."

[whatisay]

He frowns at her, not glaring, not snapping, not shutting down in his usual manner of turning his anger on her, but clearly not pleased. "A man's allowed to defend his mother's name. You know that."

And then, to top off the mixed messages, he adds, "besides, Stig's the last one."

[cigne]

"No one is threatening your mother's name, and you know that," she presses gently, so that he can start to learn that he can't let every tiny thing light his fuse. "I was making a joke about Jolie."

She snorts and takes a sip of her coffee. "Really, you think Cassian ranks higher than Stig?"

[whatisay]

Jason scowls out the window, but he doesn't turn it on Swann, not so soon after they've mended fences. He does take a turn a bit hard, though.

"I didn't say he ranked much higher."

[cigne]

She decides the best way to deal with his pouting is to not acknowledge it at all, like one might ignore a child's temper tantrum. Surely he'll stop if he figures out it doesn't get a response, right?

"No no, I get that, I just want to know your reasoning."

[whatisay]

Maybe that would work if he were still a child and hadn't developed this behavior through constant repetition, with the habits worn into him like a well-trodden footpath.

"Stig reminds her too much of Ben, I think."

[cigne]

Well, she figures she'll know within a month, which is supposedly how long it takes to break a bad habit and establish a new one. Swann has read many self-help books, you know.

"Ahhh." She nods, looking thoughtful, never having considered this angle before. It makes sense now -- personally, Swann would take Stig over a lot of people, because he is, at the very least, quite kind and cute. "Well, at least your house will never be plastered in plaid. Just neon dolphins."

[whatisay]

First you have to want to help yourself!

"Honestly, it might look better with neon dolphins. We've got a bit of au de mold going on right now." And likely will continue to, with Jason avoiding responsibility for it and Caroline complaining that it's making her sick and no one willing to actually pay for the materials or labor to fix it.

[cigne]

It's subconscious! He won't pout at her because she doesn't reward it! This is going to last exactly two days.

"I'm sure Cassian would be happy to give you some, maybe palm trees too. Turn the whole of your front parlor into an 'indoor beach' with sand all over the place." She takes another sip and wonders what she can do, how she can have it fixed, the mold. Even if Jason doesn't want her help, it's not healthy, and Swann does worry for Ben, doomed to just be pushed around with his family's whims. He can't even say if he's getting ill from mold.

"Party music on a loop 24/7."

[whatisay]

"God. I think I'd just finally snap and burn the place down if he did that. I used to like music, you know, when I was a teenager, but that's all changed. I can barely listen to the crap in the elevators now." Maybe it's just a premature progression towards curmudgeonliness, or his headaches, or just his perpetual bad mood.

"If I ever beat a Tribute to death, it's going to be with that damn boombox of Cassian's. That'll be the murder weapon."

[cigne]

"I'll keep that in mind when they're dusting for fingerprints. 'Wipe down the blood-spattered boombox', got it."

She squints at him for a moment. "You have to like some kind of music. Everyone likes something, it's like science, or something. Has to do with the brain, humans like music. So come on, tell me what music you like to listen to."

[whatisay]

"You mean you won't help me cover it up? What if it's Joel I kill with a boombox?"

Jason shrugs. "I don't. Most of it just gives me a headache or makes me feel distracted. Go on, you can play with the radio if you want, you'll see I never even set it to a station."

[cigne]

"I was assuming this was a scenario where the Peacekeepers got to you first, but yes, I'll help you cover up your boombox murders. That's what they'll call you in the news, the Boombox Brutalizer. Anyway, I don't think anyone would miss Joel enough to investigate it." She smiles and squeezes his hand.

Her mouth twists and she shakes her head a little. "No, it's all right. There's just so much music out there, I don't know how you can't like any of it."

[whatisay]

"The Musical Murderer. And for all we know Cyrus will investigate it, since he loves Tributes so much."

He squeezes hers back. "It just feels like a waste of time to me. I don't see what everyone else gets out of it. It's just noise."

[cigne]

"Nah, musical implies that you maybe played them a tune on the piano or something. But like I said, no one will investigate Joel. Not even Cyrus."

She bites her lip, worries it with her teeth, like he's given her an idea she just can't fathom. "Don't you have any memories though, with music? Like..." She fishes her phone from her purse and scrolls through it, and suddenly there's soft saxophone playing lowly from the tinny speakers.

"When I was little, maybe seven or eight, my mom was in town and my parents were throwing a big party, but they fought all day and all night. And I was scared and upset, so I went and hid in a cabinet in one of the parlors. It was someone in the band who found me, and I only came out because they played this song for me and said it was mine. I mean, I was a kid, I didn't know that it wasn't written for me, but... like, ever since then, it was special. Sometimes Eta puts it on a loop when I can't sleep."

[whatisay]

Jason listens to the little song, lips pursed slightly as he turns it over as if trying to find what it is about the melody that Swann links up so much to comforting memories, and coming up blank. He can't relate.

"The song's nice, I guess." The story is better, if sad.

"Not any good ones, no. I used to like a lot of loud rock music, because it would annoy Mother and Father, but I think that was the extent of it." Because nothing is ever his, it always ties back to the family twined around his ankles.

[cigne]

Swann switches the music off and knits her brow as she stares down at her phone, the frozen screen where she's pressed pause. She doesn't understand how he can't have good memories with music, surely there was something good in his life at some point that happened to have music.

"Eta used to sing me to sleep." Well, hum is probably a better word, but Swann doesn't think of it that way. "Did anyone ever do that for you? Your mother or your grandmother?"

Her money is on his grandmother, if anyone. She can't imagine Caroline doing much besides bitching that a child being awake is making her ill or something.

[whatisay]

Jason thinks of that, one corner of his mouth pinched slightly, before he responds a bit quietly.

"My grandmother used to. But I don't really remember her." Her presence is a void in his mind, a hole patched together with other people's stories about how he was a brat for years afterwards, that it took him far too long to get over it, and not images or memories but just this idea of someone warm and comforting who no longer even has a face he would recognize. Loss without a script.

"I didn't realize Eta still had her vocal cords. I thought she was from the generation where they took those too." It's obvious that Swann's closeness to Eta is beyond abnormal; it'd be outright illegal if someone reported if, if she weren't a Honeymead. But somehow Jason doesn't necessarily see it as bad, even as relationships with Avoxes usually make him feel ill.

[cigne]

"I'm sorry. I wish you could." Swann doesn't really remember her grandmother either, and her grandfather had been loving and pleasant but distant, much like her father. She's had almost no contact with her mother's side of the family in her entire life.

"I don't know, really. There's a lot I don't know about Eta, since she could never tell me. But I know she can hum." Even as a Honeymead, it's something that's required her father's influence to keep her safe from repercussion, mostly when she was much younger. But Ilar had never been able to stop it, couldn't take away genuine love from a child who was abandoned by her mother and used essentially as a prop for her most of her life. She'd had a full staff by four, a whole team of nannies, and Eta was supposed to simply be her personal Avox. But small children seek to bond, and Eta was always there, Eta was tasked with all of the basic care, and soon, Swann had attached completely to her, was often inconsolable without her.

And Ilar was afraid to take it away, to end it. And so he had to protect them both. It meant Eta didn't go for Avox 'tune-ups', didn't suffer much of the indignity of other Avoxes. It was terribly illegal, but harmless as far as he could see, and who was he to force his daughter to give up the only constant in her life? To sacrifice when she was already so fragile, even before her age was in the double digits?

So Eta became an open secret, with everyone of influence turning the other way for the sake of a delicate little girl who grew up to be an even more delicate woman.

Swann rubs her thumb over Jason's hand and sighs, leaning her head back against the headrest.

[whatisay]

"Maybe it's better I don't. Mother says I was never the same after Damuddy died. You can't miss someone you don't remember, right?" He shrugs again, giving her hand a squeeze, then pulling it over so that their linked hands rest on his thigh. Even her hands are small, every part of her in miniature.

"It's weird to think of them having lives worth talking about before they were Avoxed. All we know about most of them is that they were traitors, but if that were the case for Eta your father never would have let her be your nanny, would he?"

[cigne]

"Of course you can. You can remember the feelings they gave you, like how you felt warm or safe or happy. I can remember being really little and feeling sad or happy." Her thumb slides over and she rubs it against his thigh, the small space she can cover. Her expression is soft, though. "But like you said, maybe it's better."

Swann's brows knit a little when Jason brings that up, and she shakes her head. "No, I know this. It was her brother, and this was back close enough to the war that they were still taking whole families. I don't know what he did or anything else, just that she didn't do anything herself. She was young, maybe still even a teenager. I know that because Grandpa Honeymead once showed me a picture that she was in the background of, close to when she first came to us. And he was kind of paranoid, so he always read the Avox files when he needed a new one, that's how I know about her brother. Most of the other Avoxes from back then are dead now, I think she's one of the last ones from that time."

Not that she's ever verified any of these facts herself, but Swann trusts everything her father and grandfather told her. What reason did she have to doubt them?

[whatisay]

"Right. Maybe." He looks bothered, some tension that isn't just his usual irritability and apathy playing across his face. That whole in his memory is filled with something that hurts to access. "I just remember I got whipped with the belt when I cried when she died. That's the only thing I remember about her."

He takes the turn that brings them onto the main street.

"They don't make Avoxes like they used to, I say. Now you know they're all traitors, and they might end up in the Arena and get their tongues put back. I wonder what she'd tell you, Eta, if she had that back." He suspects Swann already knows.

[cigne]

"That's stupid, you're supposed to cry when people pass away. Your mother's never stopped crying over Quentin. I wish you had a better memory of her."

She rests her head against the window and watches cars pass, watches the street get busier, though it's still early and there aren't many people out. "A lot of things, I think," she says softly, and doesn't elaborate.

[whatisay]

"Try telling that to my father. I'm sure he'd have been more pleased if I'd downed a fifth of whiskey to get over it." It's one of Jason's first memories, from that time period where his brain was just getting old enough to store things permanently. "Five's old enough to know when to hush up."

He waits for her to expound, and when she doesn't just raises his eyebrows. "Yeah? Like?"