Anger and No One Can Heal It [Closed]

[whatisay]

WHO| Jason and Swann
WHAT| Jason finally sees a doctor about those headaches.
WHEN| Forward-dated a bit, after the staff reviews.
WHERE| Swann's place.
WARNINGS| Typical Jason awfulness, painkiller shenanigans.

The day he receives a notice from the human resources department that he'll need a doctor's note about his migraines before he takes any more sick days, Jason proves the second part of the notice (that he needs to enroll in an anger management course) entirely correct. He shoves an Avox over a table and slams a door so hard the lock on it breaks when it bounces back and hits him in the shoulder, and then he calls Swann. At first, he's so angry and upset she has to tell him to slow down and talk to her in person, because she can barely understand him over the phone.

"-bad enough I have to have these headaches in the first place, now I have to get proof, as if I'm faking them, and they want me to see someone for anger when maybe they shouldn't be doing things damn bound to get me worked up-"

A few days later, Swann's got him set up with an appointment with someone (a delicate operation that requires all of her tact and skill that makes her a good Escort), and Jason's demeanor's only barely improved. He's spending the night at her house, although he's anxious and distressed enough that he doesn't sleep. At about four a.m., Swann is sleeping, sprawled across him, while he just sits in her bed smoking and glowering at the wall and fidgeting.

Comments

[whatisay]

"I'm just saying, that money has to come from somewhere."

He looks significantly less put-together than she does. His face has the flat quality of someone still half-asleep, his eyes still glazed over. He finishes dabbing at the blood on his neck and tosses the tissue aside. It falls short of the wastebasket and he just sort of stares at it.

"I hope you're right, about feeling better by tomorrow."

[cigne]

"Yeah, well, the company's managing to survive despite my frivolous use of a single car, so I'm not that worried."

He's driving her crazy, she doesn't know why he can't just let it go and accept that he's not making any kind of actual point by pushing this. He's just pissing her off.

"I know I'm right," she says, coming out of the closet ready to go. She checks her phone. "Car will be here in ten minutes. I'm going to get some coffee, you want any?"

[whatisay]

He stares at the crumpled tissue instead of her, brow knit and eyes still a bit unfocused. It takes him a bit too long to answer, because he's continuing the argument with her in his head, spiraling it downwards until it's nothing but vague feelings of irritation and righteousness at each other.

Finally he rubs his hands over his face and gets up. "Yes, please."

[cigne]

"'Kay."

She leaves the bedroom and fills two travel mugs with coffee from the kitchen, where she lingers longer than necessary just to avoid having to deal with any more of his vitriol than she has to. Eventually, Swann returns and hands him a mug, sipping from her own.

[whatisay]

Jason feels like it takes him forever to finally get over to the tissue and toss it in the wastebasket, like even the most automatic motion requires him to dredge up energy from the very base of his well.

"Thanks." He takes the coffee and takes a tentative sip (it isn't too hot, Eta made it well ahead of time). "Alright, let's go take this car you're so excited about."

[cigne]

There's just a brief second where Swann has to literally bite her tongue to keep from snapping, to inform him that he's welcome to run himself into a pole in his own car if he's going to be such an ass about it all.

Instead, she just turns on her heel and heads toward the elevator to the garage, grabbing her purse and work bag from Eta on the way. "I'll see you tonight. Make pizza tonight, please?" she murmurs to Eta, and she puts emphasis on the fact that she might be alone.

[whatisay]

He just might, Swann. He just might. And then it'll be someone else's fault for putting a pole there.

Jason slouches and slumps his way to the car, taking ginger sips of his coffee as if he's afraid it might bite him, hoping it'll wake him up a bit. Despite still being under the influence of the painkillers, he doesn't miss Swann's tone.

"I have to go home tonight anyway. You know that. So it's not like you're punishing me or anything."

[cigne]

"Yeah, enjoy your not-punishment night with your mother."

It slips out before she can stop it, a mutter filled with irritation and acid, and all she can do to keep the rest of her thoughts in is to take a long drink of coffee as the elevator sails downward and opens into the garage, where a sleek black car waits for them. A chauffeur with a small HMH button on his lapel opens the back door for them.

[whatisay]

Jason waits for Swann to get in the back, and then takes the seat up front, riding shotgun. If she wants to be pissy, he thinks, she can do so alone. He has to continue waking up.

Naturally, he manages to spill coffee on himself, but thankfully it's only enough to leave a small stain on the thigh of his pants. Regardless, he groans and rests his face in his hands.

"I hope you're happy," he shoots back at her.

[cigne]

Swann's not even looking at him, and she doesn't notice that he's spilled on himself. Because he's still being an ass, she stretches her legs out across the backseat and just starts hammering away at the touchscreen of her phone.

"Perfectly," she answers blandly, because she figures he'll at least stop being outright bitchy if he doesn't get enough of a response out of her. Like a child.

[whatisay]

Because that has always worked, Swann.

"Good, because I'm not." He rests his head against the window and sighs. "I'm not doing that again. I'll just have the headaches, alright?"

[cigne]

Well, engaging doesn't work either! She only has the two options here.

"Because this is so much different than the aftermath of the headaches." Her tone is still flat, and there's no other acknowledgment of him. "Whatever. I can't force you to not torture yourself."

[whatisay]

"At least I can drive on those days. And you act like those headaches are something I'm doing to myself on purpose. I'd have thought you, of all people, would be a little more sympathetic."

Sorry your boyfriend sucks, Swann.

[cigne]

"Probably shouldn't be driving then, either." She scans another email quickly, then deletes it purely from spite that's she misdirecting because she can't let it out on Jason. "I never said you're giving yourself headaches. I said you're torturing yourself by refusing an option that at least keeps you from suffering."

[whatisay]

"I can drive perfectly fine then, Mother." Very few people can imbue one word with that much loathing.

He doesn't respond to the second part of her statement, instead glaring at the chauffeur as if daring him to comment.

[cigne]

"Oh, so I'm your mother now? Guess I better go back home and run your life through text messages and whining and guilt." Swann's still not letting emotion creep into her voice, she's forcing it back so she can just sound bored, so he sounds like the extreme one. She's aware that she should stop responding, but goddamn it, she's only had the one cup of coffee this morning and he's being absolutely unbearable for no real reason.

The chauffeur pointedly does not look at Jason, and instead nods when Swann speaks to him. "Angus, you can drop me off at the front, no point in going all the way to the garage. My son over there can do whatever he wants."

[whatisay]

"Oh, go to hell. You don't know the first thing about my relationship with my mother. You know that's not what I meant." Unlike Swann, Jason's voice doesn't sound detached at all. He's letting all the pissiness into his tone, which is sharp and fluid.

"Probably for the best, Angus. Honeymead here's cruising for a breakup at this rate."

[cigne]

"You know what, Compson? Pay for your own car home tonight. And in the morning, too, and every day until I decide that you're allowed anywhere near me or my building again," she snaps as the car pulls to a stop in front of the Tower. She opens the door, and is one foot out before she adds snidely, "I'll have them drape a tarp over your car. Could be a while."

(It will not be a while. It will be half the day at most.)

The car door slams behind her.

omg her yolo face in that icon

[whatisay]

"Fine, but don't tell me when you've rescinded that by phone, because I'll be too busy responding to Lorraine's texts to read yours." But he gets out of the car too, because this argument isn't over. No argument is until one of them is debilitatingly ill or it's otherwise superseded by some intervening force.

ikr i've been saving it for just the right time

[cigne]

"Run back to your filthy little Districter whore, whatever." Swann forces herself to stay calm and cool and collected, thinks about her father in negotiations, thinks about how she used to be at the helm of her show. "You can live in the Districts and she can have your little Districter babies and you can work in the fields and she can work on her back and you can all live on tesserae."

She walks through the front doors, as far ahead of him as her little legs can carry her.

[whatisay]

You know full well that she's from the Capitol and just lives out there, like plenty of other people with family in the Peacekeepers." That gets Jason to see red a bit. He follows her in and slams the doors behind him, breezing past security with a flash of his Escort pass. "You just don't want to admit you might have competition, so you can feel justified in treating me however you like."

[cigne]

"Sure she's from the Capitol. And did you know that I'm not only President Snow, but I also built the whole city all by myself, brick by brick? But if you want to dive back between her dirty District legs right into some other Districter's leftovers, be my guest. Have an absolute ball with that, Jason."

Swann pounds on the button for the elevator, then holds up her phone. "I bet Lorraine won't be too busy fucking anyone with two assi to take care of you when you can't move and when you're throwing up and when you're mad at the whole world. I mean, it's not like she was out there on her Districter knees last night, she was wiping vomit off your face... oh no, wait, that was me. Lorraine was real busy with eight or nine dirt-covered dicks in every hole. Gotta get those ten bucks somehow."

There are no words in the world to properly convey exactly how much Swann hates Lorraine.

shots fired

[whatisay]

"You don't know the first damn thing about it, or about her, or about what she's done for me, so how about you stop talking about things you don't understand and never could understand." He slams his forearm to the corner of the elevator doorframe, pausing it, still tipsy on the medication. "Because if you want to start going after each other for associating with people who're lesser than us, I'll remind you that the only person who ever took care of you was a damn Avox."

[cigne]

Her reaction is immediate and automatic and absolutely involuntary. In fact, retrospectively, she'll be absolutely shocked she even had the capability in her body.

She slaps him across the face, hard enough to send noise echoing through the elevator, hard enough that her hand stings afterward. "It's still one more than ever cared about you, and Eta's ten times the person that anyone who ever carried the Compson name is! And she's a hundred times the person your mother is."

Swann shoves at his arm.

[whatisay]

The slap doesn't stun him from pain so much as the very fact that she did it. His hand comes up to his cheek almost as if to check to see if he imagined that, and then her words sink in, and he finds he preferred the blow. He stares at her, eyes wild and confused, and then the anger dissipates. It sizzles off him like water in a pan. It's gone.

"I'll see you at lunch," he says, atonal, retreated to somewhere away from this conversation but needing a promise of rectification before she leaves. Then he pulls his arm back from the elevator.

(On some horrible, deep, gut level that can't quite make it to his brain, some instinct wed to the knowledge of viscera that can't be tamed with manipulation or loyalty or the hopelessness that he's always confused with love, he knows she's right.)