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

[cigne]

It's the fidgeting that wakes her.

Swann's tried as hard as she humanly can to settle Jason down, because he's acting like it's the end of the world to have to see a doctor, and by now, even she's finding it a bit trying to deal with his childishness. Plus, her jaw has started to get really sore from coddling him and humoring the temper tantrums.

She stirs with a mumble and looks up at him, her face puffy with sleep and her hair mussed all around her face. The illuminated end of his cigarette nearly burns her eyes with brightness in the dark of the bedroom.

"You need to sleep."

[whatisay]

"You don't say." His voice is dry, annoyed, and he works his fingers over the cigarette with a sort of antsy nervousness. He's closed his eyes a few times, stared at the ceiling, and found no respite there, as if the anger coursing through him is electricity in a light bulb, keeping him up.

"Go back to sleep. I'm fine."

[cigne]

"Jason." To counter his dryness, she's flat with an almost authoritative edge, her brow furrowed with frustration. She reaches up and closes her hand around his on his cigarette -- she's going to take it from him as soon as she can, it's not helping him sleep.

"You cannot go to the doctor without sleeping. You're going to work yourself into an actual migraine before we even get there."

[whatisay]

He jerks his hand away, but fails to rescue the cigarette from her. He huffs out vapor, glaring in the dark at her.

"If I'm not sleeping it's not for lack of trying. You and everyone else act like I like having my head splitting and being too sick to see." He's still bitter that Swann didn't give him a glowing review - he doesn't know which review was hers, but he didn't receive any so full of praise as the one he gave her.

[cigne]

It was a fine line to straddle, a review that was as flattering as possible without also being filled with lies and therefore obviously hers. She thought she'd still been pretty nice about it! And honestly, she'd only known Jason's in her own stack because he'd mentioned her spoiled Tributes -- otherwise, her reviews all looked about the same.

"I know you don't, but this isn't helping." She waves the cigarette at him and clicks it off, setting it on her bedside table, then comes back to him and wraps her arms low around his waist, resting her head on his shoulder. "What do you need to fall asleep?"

[whatisay]

"Blunt force trauma to the head."

He sighs and folds his arms, neither moving her away from him nor accepting her embrace. He cracks his neck, feeling how his teeth have been grinding for the last few hours and made his jaw go tight.

"I don't want to do this. You know I don't want to do this. I should have quit as soon as people starting speculating on my mental health in those reviews. I don't see what business it is of theirs what my health is."

[cigne]

"I know."

She sighs and nuzzles her nose into the side of his neck, gently peppering his skin with feather-light kisses, hoping to at least calm him down a little. Her fingers stroke softly along his side, on his ribs and over his obliques, to his navel and back again. Stretching her leg, she hooks her ankle around his.

"The more you think about it, the worse it'll be. We're just going to go to the office, they'll do a scan and ask you to describe your migraines. And then you'll get a note and it'll be fine, no one can say a thing if you leave early or can't come in. Nothing bad is going to happen. You're fine, you just have headaches, it's not uncommon. They won't tell you anything you don't want to hear."

[whatisay]

"With my luck I'll have some sort of tumor in there, or the dead body of a conjoined twin or something."

He calms almost as a Pavlovian response, not because he wants to but because she draws it out of him. He settles deeper into the bed and half-wraps his arm around her.

"They started when my grandmother died, you know. I've had them nearly all my life."

[cigne]

"You don't have a tumor. Maybe a little clump twin, with hair and teeth and nothing else. We'll get him out and call him Mini-Quentin because he'll be floating in a jar forever." There's humor in her voice, teasing, and she can only try to lighten the mood that tiny bit before kissing his shoulder when he relaxes.

"It's probably just stress. Maybe even something as simple as your sinuses. They wouldn't have fixed that if they only did the tip of your nose, you know. It's nothing bad, you're fine."

[whatisay]

"A clump of hair and teeth? That'll be the best Quentin we've had yet." She does get a laugh out of him, even if it seems a bit high and half-hearted. He holds her closer. Smells her hair, that flowery, sugary shampoo she uses.

How many times did his parents arrive with only two of their children to events, while Jason stayed home with an ice pack? Those were the times he wasn't coaxed into going anyway, and would tend to hide in closets or behind couches, more ill-tempered and cruel than usual. He doesn't know how much Swann remembers.

"What if it is something? We both know my family can't stand on their own feet."

[cigne]

His laugh makes her smile, and she rubs her foot along his calf when he brings her closer. She remembers little of his headaches from when they were children -- Swann was often cloistered off by herself due to her age, excluded by the older children, or else she wasn't seeking Jason out because she was too busy scurrying behind the others, as fast as her tiny legs and feet could take her. Even Stephen, two years younger, would wind up leaving her behind, outpacing her.

"It isn't. But if it is, then we'll take care of it, there's always a solution. I told you before, you don't have to do things all alone anymore. I'm here."

[whatisay]

He doesn't know how to tell her that whether or not she's trying to be reassuring, that sort of support isn't something he wants to admit he needs. It's not a matter of fearing that there's no one beside him at all, it's a matter of the possibility that he needs to utilize them terrifying him.

"I can do things on my own just fine. So long as nothing happens." He sighs again and rubs his hand over her shoulder. "Go back to sleep. No reason you should be awake just because I am. I'll make sure we don't miss the alarm."

[cigne]

She sighs and frowns at the way he's pushing her away again, not wanting her at his side, even when he needs her most. Swann wants to cry from frustration, from exhaustion over it, because what's the point of all this if she's the only one actually in it?

It's like being stuck in a bottomless pit and continuing to climb downward anyway, always wanting the treasure that must lie a few steps further down.

"No. You need to sleep too. Tell me what to do to help."

[whatisay]

"There's nothing you can do to help, alright? I'm upset and I don't want anything to do with this and I won't feel any better about it until it's over. Just go to sleep."

He reaches over her to try and grab the cigarette off the nightstand. He pauses when he sees something glint off the bed's headboard, a familiar aura, and sighs.

"Well, I suppose the doctor might get to see one in the flesh."

[cigne]

"Maybe if you laid the hell down and slept instead of working yourself up over it, he wouldn't."

Swann pulls away and flops on her side, back turned to Jason. She's tired and too frustrated to keep trying right now, to keep giving when he seems entirely intent on rebuffing her at every possible turn. She'd done all the work, she's the one who takes care of him, and still he treats her like she's the problem.

She's crying from irritation, silently, tears sliding over the bridge of her nose to fall to the pillow.

[whatisay]

"Haven't I told you that's what I've been trying to do?"

He gets up out of the bed, grabs his cigarette and throws on a bathrobe that she's gotten for him at some point. After a moment, despite the night chill, he shrugs it off and away and stalks out to the kitchen, deciding that it's not even worth the effort to try and sleep or the energy to try and console her and apologize. There doesn't seem to be much point in anything. He ignores Pascal as the little tiger follows him down the hall.

Having forsaken sleep, he starts making coffee, because why the hell not? He has to be at the doctor's in five hours anyway.

[cigne]

Swann is well aware that he hasn't been trying to sleep so much as sitting there and stewing, but she's given up for the moment -- she's just too damn tired for it all. Marcel jumps up onto the bed, takes Jason's spot and snuggles into the small of Swann's back. She cries herself to sleep in a matter of minutes, and in her sleep, she starts to spread out again, one leg and arm flung halfway off the bed.

[whatisay]

As expected, Jason doesn't sleep, and instead sits there chainsmoking in the kitchen, only moving with his inhale and exhale and to occasionally nudge Pascal aside as the tamed cat rubs affection into his ankles. The coffee goes cold, and he absentmindedly drinks it only a few moments before Swann's alarm goes off.

"Swann?" He raps on her doorframe, squinting a bit in the morning light. He has the expected circles under his eyes.

[cigne]

Marcel lets out a quiet, protective little growl, sleepy more than anything, and Swann stirs a bit but doesn't wake up until her alarm actually sounds. She reaches out and turns it off, opening her eyes halfway and contemplating telling Jason to just fuck off and go to the doctor alone. Instead, she rubs her face and then presses it back to the pillow, muffling herself when she calls back to him.

"Yeah. I'm up."

[whatisay]

"You don't have to come if you don't want to," he says, practically reading her mind. He finds a shirt and pants for himself and heads to the sink to shave, switching into the fresh clothes behind the bathroom door with that same unusual shyness he tends to have around her when they aren't in the throes of passion or bathing.

[cigne]

"I'm coming, it's fine."

She gets up after a moment and yawns, then heads to the closet to change. She comes back out fully dressed, petticoats and everything, then heads for her dressing table to brush her hair and do her makeup. It's so normal to her, so everyday, to transform into a doll that she can do it in a matter of minutes, a fraction of the time it takes most people. It helps that her eyeliner is tattooed on, so she doesn't have to sit around perfecting it.

Before she puts on lipstick, she follows him to the bathroom so that she can brush her teeth, standing next to him at the sink.

[whatisay]

If Jason were at home, he would use some concealer for the bags under his eyes, but everything Swann owns is several shades lighter than his skin. Instead he just throws some hair product in and brushes his teeth, drooling rather than spitting into the sink due to fatigue.

"I'll take you out to lunch afterwards, if you want."

They take about the same amount of time to get ready for the day, but Swann looks significantly more done-up.

[cigne]

Despite being completely made up and dressed, Swann yawns again and stretches as she nods, agreeing with his suggestion. She pops her back and then reaches to rub his shoulder.

"That'll be nice. What haven't we had in a while?"

She heads back into the bedroom and picks up a pair of earrings to put on, looking in a mirror at him over her shoulder.

[whatisay]

Jason doesn't know if that thunderclap of a headache is going to hit him before then, but he thinks he still has a few hours yet. He hopes he does. For the instant she rubs his shoulder he rubs her lower back, that strange physical truce they make. That lack of apology that he hopes suffices.

He grabs his jacket so they can head out. "I'm feeling soup? There's a nice place for that near the office."

[cigne]

"That's good, I know where you're talking about. I like their food."

She picks out some shoes and slides them on, then trots out behind him. Eta's waiting at the door with their bags and travel mugs of coffee, the kind that can't tip over or be spilled, which Swann bought specifically because she was tired of not drinking coffee until she got to work. Jason's rules are insane, considering that she got an entire cake all over the car and it was fine, spotless by morning -- she feels like she can drink some coffee without making a mess.

"Okay, ready."