Keep Burning Like We're Never Gonna Die [Closed]

[dead_black_eyes]

Who| Linden Lockhearst and Jason Compson
What| Two sick assholes being assholes
Where| The doctor's office
When| Before the blind dating!
Warnings/Notes| Swearing at least, drug and alcohol references, and all that usually comes with Jason and Linden



The doctor stares down the man sitting in front of her. "You're not the first Mentor in Panem to ruin his health, but you take self-destruction to a new level entirely. When I asked you to give me some kind of sign that you were going to turn things around, I didn't mean to come in with a blood alcohol content of .08."

Linden rubs at his forehead. "I'm not even buzzed," he says.

"Your liver is failing."

"I cope with failure by drinking," he sighs. "I know that you're not that kind of doctor, but please try to understand that."

"Lockhearst, please try to understand that it's not a laughing matter. Roll up your sleeves, we need a few more vials of blood."

Linden complies, but after several fruitless attempts, the doctor puts the needles aside. "Your veins are bad anyway, but you're also dehydrated and I can't work with that. I'm going to see my next patient while you sit in the waiting room and do something to help yourself, for once." She hands him a bottle of water, leaving him to stand and shuffle back out to the waiting room like a lost, alcoholic child where he sits and sulks and occasionally takes sips off the top. Every now and then, he glances at the undersides of his arms, which, as a result of all this recent blood work, look a hell of a lot like fresh track marks.

"Mom," a kid whispers across the waiting room, staring at Linden with huge eyes. "Is that a Victor?"

No, I'm sorry, you're mistaken. That's a loser.

Comments

[whatisay]

There's a certain way that people who don't work with Jason respond to him, a sort of wariness that his family's bad luck is contagious, pity that's gone sour over the last two decades. Compsons, for the last twenty years, have taken on the attributes of endangered species sightings, a sort of curiosity that makes the viewer feel that it's serendipitous to have caught one and yet not necessarily pleasurable, not a panda or a tiger but a lamprey or some sort of unsightly beetle; they are as much concoctions of rumors as they are facts, and any Capitolite who looks at Jason now, with his mother's arching cheekbones and his father's heavy brow, those features that look nothing like his siblings' and yet undeniably similar, as if heredity isn't something formed into bone structure and skin tone but a sort of effluvium secreted from a family's scandals and bearing, will see him not just in the flesh before them - wearing a nice suit from Swann but shoes with scuff marks that would be drab and unprofessional on an Avox - but through a kaleidoscope of whispers and tales that are far too tangled to ever be teased fiction from fact: what goes on in that big empty rotting house? is his mother as crazy as they say? are we looking, now, at the last Compson, the period at the send of a heavy sentence served out over two generations?

The pungency of the family name eclipses even his own reputation for short-temperedness, and there's a mood that settles, snow-like, over the waiting room when Jason enters, answering a quick question from a Sponsor on his phone partially for efficiency and partially to put off checking in, which he eventually does with the reluctance and retardation of a cat being given a bubble bath. The child across from Linden looks curiously at the otherwise normal-looking man before him, aware of the hush and speculation that thrums invisibly through the room, but doesn't whisper to his mother, who looks down at her magazine politely.

Jason takes a seat with that same insolent sprawl he always has, perhaps even more exaggerated by how clearly he doesn't want to be here. It's then that he looks over and sees company, first by meeting the mother's eyes with his own pitiless and threatening gaze and then shooting the same glare at the child and the others in the room, to land his view on the skinny, sickly, all-too-familiar Victor in the seat one down from him.

His teeth grit in the back of his mouth. He's fairly certain which review was Linden, and that it probably was a factor in the orders Jason received that led him to this undignified hovel.

"Oh. Funny seeing you here. Glad to know I'm not the only one who got stabbed in the back by my own coworkers and referred to the funny farm."

[dead_black_eyes]

Capitolites and Districters see the Compsons differently. While the former carries with it fascination and respect for old money and all that the Dynasty families stand for, to those with Linden's background, they're nothing but tiresome symbols of a fading world struggling to cling to relevance as their bloodlines weaken with every new generation. It's frailty that's deeper than skin, far less obvious than Linden's failing health but somehow, still known to many and guessed by more. Linden's eyes still dwell on what is visible, gaze lingering especially on those shoes for a couple of seconds longer than could be even generously considered discreet. He's bold and unapologetic like their child companion that way rather than his mother, politely surveying the pages of Celebrus and pretending that the world isn't real for awhile.

Linden's not the only one behaving childishly. Jason makes his spreading, sloppy contribution, and the Mentor's eyes travel from the scuffed-up shoes up a leg, torso, shoulders, jawline. It's slow and controlled, and he happens to arrive at Jason's face around the time that seachlight of a glare finds him.

He quirks a brow, as though Jason's just told him something completely nonsensical and sans context. Equal parts bemused by the content of what's been spoken and surprised that Jason addressed him at all, really. "Psych?" he asks, raising both brows at the implication. "That's a lonely world. I guess you'd be glad for any company at all, wouldn't you?"

He keeps it vague for now. That absolutely might be why he's here himself; the half-finished water bottle in his hands and bruised, many-times pierced arms could mean a lot of things. The only really clear thing is that he's looking worse than usual and jaundiced on top of that.

"I'm not really one to stab backs, though. I've always been good about saying things to people's faces but... oh, right. You know that," Linden jabs, thumb brushing absentmindedly over his own cheekbone.

[whatisay]

A flush runs up Jason's neck and face as he realizes that that's not what Linden's here for, that Jason's unintentionally tipped his hand. Not only the chance of attacking Linden for his own instability vanishes, but also the opportunity to mitigate his own embarrassment and anxiety about being here. His eyes go colder, and he's about to say something about the ceramic mug incident when he actually looks at Linden beyond just seeing him.

Something in Jason's head clicks into place as he sweeps his eyes over that yellowed skin, the tired bulbous eyes with the whites looking coffee-stained or piss-stained, and for an instant it's like staring through time itself and at his father's face in those two waning years towards the end, and Jason's lip curls all the same for a moment like it did two decades ago before he jolts into a triumphant crow of laughter. Now that he's looked at the signs, esoteric maybe to non-medical people who haven't lived with an alcoholic but clear as day to him, as if he were a seer diving animal entrails, beholden to a secret fount of knowledge and expertise.

Because he remembers it clearly, the shame and the stink of booze and his father shaking too hard to pour it himself so getting the servants to, Jason a teenager and thinking that he was the cause of it as his father bemoaned that all his children were gone like he wasn't even there, and he remembers finding his father on the couch one day, unresponsive, and him picking up the phone and pausing for a second thinking maybe it would be better if... before calling an ambulance that arrived in futility. And the funeral they couldn't afford. And the whispers that leaked out of his father's pickled corpse and followed him well into into adulthood, still nip at his ankles now.

"Well, well, well." Jason keeps laughing, and in the waiting room the polite mother tries to distract her child with some images in the magazine. For all Jason's childishness, the glee he displays now is adult in its sadism. "Your liver's failing, isn't it? Might want to pour one out for it, God knows it tried its best and would thank you for the breather."

[dead_black_eyes]

The victory of stripping Jason's privacy away from him, short-lived as it might be, still manages to be satisfying. So, that famous family curse is coming for its due, he thinks, casually studying the other man from the perspective of someone who isn't crazy but is fascinated by the phenomenon of madness. It's more glamorous than the kind of unfortunate affliction that plagues Jason's brother, but also sadder in its way; it represents losing something, as opposed to never having known or experienced it in the first place.

Of course, Jason's a sadistic bully, and like most sadistic bullies (especially those with shaky sanity), he's grasping to turn the heat creeping into his complexion onto the other man. Maybe he wants to reassure himself that even if his situation looks bleak, it could absolutely be worse. He's long since given up on coming in first place, and in this desperate, strange moment, it seems to only matter that he isn't in last. Linden's yellowed eyes narrow; they speak for him, making it pointless to lie about his condition. He bites his tongue on a plea, knowing that asking Jason to keep his voice down will just increase its volume, and next month's Celebrus will probably have a spread speculating about his funeral.

"I guess you'd know what that looks like, wouldn't you?" he asks, mouth twitching in the beginning of a sneer. "Having seen it before, up close and personal, and all."

The mother's really uncomfortable by this point. She looks like she senses a storm coming, and is looking for a way to expedite her appointment so she can take her child out of the waiting room as swiftly as possible.

"We had a good run. At least I don't have anyone to live for. If something goes wrong and my transplant doesn't work out, I'm not leaving behind a wife and children."

[whatisay]

"When it ends with you in the ground, at least you'll be with distinguished company." There's a certain protection Jason has from all the anger and bitterness he has at his father; the landscape there is no longer tender and nurturing to insecurities, but harsh, fostering only cruelty and vituperation. Neither sadness nor injury can grow there anymore, and so he feels as if he's parrying Linden's attack.

(The shame, the abandonment, the sorrow, it's all still down there, somewhere, but remote and inaccessible and explosive like some deep-buried pus-filled cyst under decades of scar tissue and hatred.)

Jason leans forward, voice lowering, a predatory glint in his eye and at the back of his teeth as he smiles through his next words. For the moment anger is a rush, the vitriol soothing, because he can turn it on Linden instead of continuing to swallow it down like he does all the rest of the time. His eyes widen and he looks near-manic, his breath coming fast between his teeth.

"I know all about how it makes you pathetic and incontinent and the kind of scourge on good taste that your coworkers are going to have to work overtime to cover for. Maybe you want to ask for those Avoxes on District Nine back, so you can have Mommy and Daddy there to wipe the vomit off your chin when you go downhill fast."

He starts at a whisper but by the end of his statement his voice is loud enough that the people in the waiting room can't help but hear, and the child tugs at his mother's sleeve, pointing.

[dead_black_eyes]

"I'm not exactly overwhelmed by present company, so. I suppose that's something to look forward to." Linden senses that the soft spot isn't quite as vulnerable as he'd expected it to be; like many of his own, there's a thick callus that's nearly impenetrable. Jason's telling him that he's heard this before, perhaps even thought it himself, and having mastered it, it's not a weapon that can be brandished against him to any significant effect.

Jason's retort does have Linden on-edge, for more reasons than what he's saying. The way it's presented, with vicious glee and mania, is hardly reassuring, and something hunted and primal in the back of his brain warns him that he's on the edge of dealing with someone potentially irrational. Linden is wounded in the water, Jason's tasted blood and the only logical way this could go is for there to be a feeding frenzy. But Linden's got old pains, too, and his blood isn't being filtered very well these days, so any bite he manages to get is likely to be more than a little bitter.

He sets his jaw. "And what would a Compson know about good taste?" he asks, also speaking just loudly enough to be heard. "Not that it's your fault. I mean, when it comes down to it, you were screwed either way; if it's a learned behavior, it would require a competent adult role model, and if it's hereditary... well... there's no way to put this delicately, but maybe your father's an Avox, too. I mean, how could you know for sure, considering your mother?"

[whatisay]

Even though Jason's expression doesn't change, the way his face blanches reveals that Linden's hit home, roping together a net of prejudices and fears and pains and tugging it all at once to rip away Jason's fortitude. His lips go white. There's a pause, and then he lunges forward over the seat, grabbing Linden's collar and dragging him close.

"My mother is a lady."

He knows that Linden doesn't have a damn bit of evidence, that no evidence exists, but given that his sister was a slut and his niece was a slut he knows that everyone wonders about Caroline, if the apple didn't fall far from the tree, and it pulls tight his brow and the corners of his mouth and his lungs deep in his chest, pumping hot angry air through his nose.

It doesn't matter that Linden has nothing on him, that Linden's parents are Avoxes so by the law of balance no one should care if there are rumors that Jason has one parent that could be, that it doesn't matter if the doctor thinks Jason might be crazy because Linden's been shooting proof of his own madness up his arm for at least a decade, because anger doesn't obey the rules of logic. Anger is its own wild beast that can't live only in the parameters of reason; it writhes, it rampages, it destroys.

The woman in the corner gets up and, hunched as she ushers her child with her, goes to the receptionist, who's already calling security.

[dead_black_eyes]

Linden realizes that in this childish, ridiculous, demented game of who can get the bigger rise, he's just landed a catch more formidable than he can actually reel in. And he's not strong or fast enough to avoid the fallout even if he just lets go of the rod. His eyes go wide as he's seized by the collar, which is dangerously close to his scarred neck, and a shrill ringing in his ears obfuscates the man's hissed insistence of his mother's actual nature. His body might be falling apart organ by organ, but it still responds to this. Adrenaline lends him temporary fight-or-flight acuity, much like it did the first time Jason grabbed Linden suddenly and unwittingly put him back in his Arena.

Also like that first time, this promises to end unfortunately.

As the woman starts to move toward the reception desk, Linden's reaction is panicked, swift and violent. His fingers wrap around Jason's wrist and he's burying his teeth into the man's hand, bracing a heel against his ribs and digging it in sharply in an attempt to force distance between them.

[whatisay]

"Jesus!" Jason shoves Linden away with a reaction that could only be credited to instinct and not intent, and he strikes with his other hand to get Linden to open his jaw. He backhands Linden right in that bulging yellowed eye, hitting with the kind of viciousness that comes from not being trained in any sort of fighting and thus not knowing how to prevent injury to yourself or others.

"Gentlemen, gentlemen, calm down!" The epithet seems ironic, given the nature of their quarrel and their injuries, but the security guards separate them, one man on each, one holding each back even though the fight dissipated as soon as they were no longer making physical contact.

"He bit me! What the hell, are you a goddamn animal?" Jason doesn't fight against the security guard, instead pulling his hand close to his face to see the bloody ring of toothmarks with indignant awe. "He fucking bit me!"

"And you grabbed him. Now let's all calm down before you both get kicked off the premises, Compson."

The child scrambles from under his mother's legs to get a better view of the action, exhilarated. He looks as if he doesn't know who to root for, the Capitolite or the Victor, but having grown up on a steady diet of the Games he shoots Linden a winning beam.

[dead_black_eyes]

The shove doesn't immediately dislodge Linden; his teeth are clenched tight on the other man's hand, and it's also instinctive and desperate and blinded to humanity and reason. It's, in short, the kind of thing that Arenas will do to people, and it's only after getting socked in the eye that he's dazedly withdrawing. No... that's wrong, he's being withdrawn, pried away from Jason by a security guard much stronger than he is.

He tastes blood, but it isn't his. As his scrawny, trembling body is held back and away, he catches that child's grin and it's like someone's taken a sledgehammer to his chest. He'd helped kill Tributes not so much older than this kid, who doesn't see the Games as a death sentence, but grand entertainment, and that's how he interprets this scene. In actuality, with the giddy blindfold of youth and naivety lifted away, it's two very sick men in an appalling situation.

Linden no longer wants to fight or even needle Jason with taunts. He wants to go back to the tower and sleep like he's dead, which he might actually be way sooner than he'd thought. The gravity of it sinks in all at once, and he responds to the plea to calm down by going almost totally limp. His eye hurts, and he can already feel it swelling, and shit, Lockhearst, you're finally actually dying.

"I don't want to go back to jail," he mumbles brokenly.

The security guards exchange glances and sighs. "Uh. Well, maybe shake hands. Amicably agree to apologize to each other, and to the establishment for causing a scene."

Linden appears to be genuinely and thoroughly considering whether a night in jail would actually be worse.

Dynasty Privilege in Action

[whatisay]

"I'm not touching him. It's bad enough that I'm probably infected with whatever Districter bacteria he carries in his mouth," Jason says, pacing animalistically behind the wall of a security guard's body. He runs his hands through his hair and licks his lips. Any veneer of society has been ripped away, and the guards and the child and the mother see him for what he is - desperate, unhinged, confirmation of the suspicions people have about the polluted, sludge-like blood of the old families. "I don't care about putting him in jail, obviously that didn't do a damn thing last time, I don't understand why we don't just round up his kind and shoot them-"

"Well, you're going to have to suck it up and at least apologize, if you want to stay here-"

"Why the hell would I want to stay here?" Jason wraps his hand in his suit jacket, not even caring that he's bleeding all over it or in a medical clinic where he could probably ask for a bandage. He keeps looking around frantically, as if for an exit. "I don't want to be here. Do you think I'd be here if I weren't forced? Do you think I want to be here in this cramped little office with District drug addicts talking back to their betters and someone to laugh behind my back while they bleed me dry for mandatory therapy and drugs I don't want to-"

"Compson, calm down or we'll have to take you into custody."

"I'm calm, I'm plenty calm, I just got bitten by a Districter-" Jason's voice keens high and hysterical. The security guards look at each other.

"Compson, go home. You'll get rescheduled. You'll issue an apology this week. Stay here a minute longer or you're looking at an arrest."

Jason pauses, breathing heavy, hands curled like an infant's up in his scalp. "Fine."

He slams the door as he storms out the waiting room.

[dead_black_eyes]

Linden's jaw is slowly dropping as he witnesses what is, very clearly, an aging Dynasty brat going supernova in a waiting room. Why he's here for a psych evaluation is blatantly obvious to everyone, and even though Linden is the one who's largely being supported by the security guard holding him with another human being's blood on his teeth and lips, Jason's the one the entire office is staring at as if he's insane.

He's too stunned to even be offended that he's just demanded that "Linden's kind" is systematically executed (aren't they, already?). He can't process it as quickly as it's happening, with the thrum of toxic blood in his ears finally starting to ebb from the fading adrenaline that had been coursing through his system just moments prior.

As Jason storms out of the office, he reaches for his water bottle. "Um. I need to have some bloodwork done. If I just... sit here, quietly, can I stay? I... want to be here because I want to be well."

The security guard lets him go. "Sounds perfectly sane and reasonable to me. What the hell got into Compson, anyway?"

"I have no idea," Linden says, wincing as he lowers himself into his seat again and uncaps his water bottle. "Anyway, I hope he comes back eventually and gets the help he clearly needs."