thecapitol | Shame Can't Be the Home Where You Live [Open]

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Shame Can't Be the Home Where You Live [Open]

WHO| Jason and semi-open
WHAT| Caroline Compson dies and Jason exists in the aftermath.
WHEN| At least a week prior to reaping for the mini-Arena.
WHERE| Compson Manor
WARNINGS| Death, grief, emotional repression.

Jason stops coming to work on Monday, with no more warning than a text to Swann saying can't drive you today and a text to Peggy home from work. After that he lets his phone battery run down, and the few messages that get in before it dies pile up in his voicemail or inbox. He doesn't contact his coworkers, nor does he cancel the meetings with Sponsors he was supposed to be present for.

The servants are all fired. Jason tells them to vacate the premises but they don't, for two main reasons: the first being that they doubt, validly, that Jason would keep Benjamin and the horses fed and cared for, even for a few days, and the second being that Jason doesn't even seem to notice that they're there. He grabs a whole pack of caps for his vaporizer and takes up a sort of vigil on the couch in the moldy, once-beautiful living room, and smokes, at first with a kind of furious intensity and then out of a mechanical inertia, as if it's easier to just keep refilling the cap and staying where he is than to get up and perform any of the many tasks that have laid themselves out at his feet.

When night falls he doesn't even get up to turn on the light, just sitting there on the couch until sleep ambushes him and then retreats in the morning. Freedom is a ball and chain that keeps him stuck here. A few times he feels something like a fist twisting in his gut and he gets up, paces, runs his hands through his hair (which has gotten greasy and lank), and actually putting his body in motion helps to release that tension. His eyes sting and so he smokes more and tries to sleep again, passing between waking and resting with little acknowledgment for when he crosses each border.

Outside the gate stays closed, accessible only by fingerprint or intercomming to the house. The potholes and rotten belongings in the yard stay where they are, leaving patches of brown, muddy, dead grass underneath them if removed. The whole building sags a bit, as if it were sighing.

Jason's out of work for five days.

-/-

In the news, there's an obituary with ebullient recitations of the virtues no one who knew Caroline would ever say she had. It goes on to say that she's survived by her one son, Jason, as if Benjamin were shuffled out of reality when he was corralled up on the property, excised from the collective memory of the public.

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She wouldn't judge him if he told her, would probably relate to that thought more than the idea of burning it for insurance money. But she won't push him either, even if she suspects that there's not only greed in that thought train.

"The land is probably worth more if it's not burnt up. Sink a couple thousand assi into renovations and this place could sell for a fortune." She says it all distantly, curled up to him, then shifts and straddles his lap facing him, her knees sinking into the moldy velvet sofa. Her arms wrap around his neck and she just hugs him, holds onto him, their chests pressed together.

"Maybe."

He doesn't look at her as she pulls herself on to him, but he does hold her close - tightly, tight enough that she can feel that tremble in his arms and shoulders, the way his heart starts racing as he remembers that time in the past that he cried into her neck, inarticulate and damaged and beyond eloquent expression.

"I'm alright, Swann. I promise." He's telling himself more than her.

Her face presses into the crook of his neck, her head resting on her own bicep, and his tremble shakes both of them, his heart pounding against his ribs so hard that she can feel it over her own. She blinks slowly and her fingertips run along his shoulderblade idly.

"I know. I'm here anyway." It's whispered, and they both know he's not all right, and they both know she won't push it out of him, will let him bottle it up until he explodes if he prefers. "I'm here."

It's what he always tells her when she's upset or sick, because the physical act of being there has always mattered so much to both of them, her with her absent mother and him taking up the mantle of the ghosts in the house. And he finds some comfort in it, in her, her breath against his neck and her hand along his shoulder.

"I'm tired," he says finally, when that tremble has faded and his jackhammer heartbeat with it. "Do you mind, just...? If you have nowhere to be."

There's silence between them, and she can hear every inhale and exhale. Her fingers go back and forth, slowly, mindlessly, and his trembling passes to her even when she tries to fight it and be strong. She feels like she has to hold on for the both of them, like he's done for her in the past.

"I'll stay as long as you want." She sits back a little, so they're face to face, and brushes his hair back again, behind his ear, and finally smiles just the tiniest bit. "When do I ever have plans in the evening without you?"

"Point." He tries to meet her smile back, just the faintest one, but he can't seem to manage it. Everything's left him exhausted, too exhausted to play along even with affection he genuinely feels. That heavy choking feeling inside seems to suck up all the energy it takes to even move. "Just for tonight. My bedroom's down the hall, I promise it's nicer than the rest of this place."

Jason cleans his room because he doesn't allow anyone else in it, and there isn't much to get dirty or require upkeep. He kisses her, but there's no feeling in it, just a dutiful obedience to their relationship. He can't seem to feel anything right now. He doesn't move to get up, either.

She can see him trying, feel it, and it doesn't surprise her that he can't smile or kiss her like it's anything but an obligation. She understands, and she kisses his forehead before standing up and offering him her hands. She pulls him down the hall like she has any idea where she's going, but she trusts he won't let her pass the right door.

All she can do is squeeze his hand tightly as they move along.

He makes sure they get to the right door, which leads to a spartan bedroom with nothing but a closet and a night table and a nearly-empty bookshelf. It's not that the room isn't big enough for more, but that Jason's never bothered to populate it, using it only for sleeping and storage in the closet.

He breaks away from her and lies down on the bed, curling up on his side, facing the wall. He's in a strange bind, wanting the companionship but barely able to interact, finding it hard to even keep up with any words Swann says to him because his mind keeps wandering, not to other locales but to getting lost in that cloying opaque impenetrable mist.

He just knows he can't bear to sleep alone tonight.

Swann glances around, and he was right about it being nicer, in that the scent of mold hasn't completely permeated everything the way it has in the rest of the house. He pulls away and she lets him, watching as he curls in on himself, rolls up the same way she does, like a wounded animal, protecting the softness of their stomachs.

She unties her shoes. Takes the headpiece out of her hair. Slips out of her dress and leaves it on the floor before joining him on the bed, wrapping her arm around his waist and pressing her cheek to his back. She lets her feet touch his, runs her fingers along the nape of his neck.

There's not much else that she can think of, and so she just hums her lullaby, the one she'd played for him, soft and almost under her breath. It's as much for her as it is for him.

For a while, they both stay awake, neither talking. Jason listens to the lullaby and holds her hand over his waist. After an hour, he slips off, the tiredness finally turning into sleepiness.

He doesn't sleep well. Four times during the night he untangled from Swann, then walks down the hall, not a somnambulist but not truly conscious either, and waits at the bottom of the stairs for some sound that doesn't come. He paces for a little while and then returns, crawling back under the covers and catching another handful of hours.

A little bit before dawn he wakes again, then rolls over and clings to Swann, burying his face in her shoulder, saying nothing.

Swann falls asleep only after Jason does, when his breathing and heartbeat slow down and drag her into slumber as well. She wakes each time he does, but she only follows him the first time, watching from the doorway as he waits and paces. She figures he's fine as long as he's not hurting himself or her, and Ben is safe with the servants.

When he rolls over, she wakes and yawns a little, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and stroking the back of his hair, his neck. They stay that way for a while, quiet, until she finally breaks the silence. "Feel any better?"

It's a while before Jason answers. He breathes in the smell of her, listens to her heartbeat, tries to hold on to something he knows certainly is there. He wants to get up and go back to the base of the stairs, because in the space between sleeping and waking he thinks he can hear his mother shuffling around and he knows on that surface logical level that that's impossible.

He knows it'll go away eventually, that a few weeks after his father's death he stopped waking up in the night thinking he heard the clink of the decanter, but he never felt the need to check and make sure back then. Now he does, for the fifth time since they laid down here.

"No."

Her fingers keep combing through his hair, and she nuzzles at his ear in the meantime, waiting for him to let her in, to tell her what he's thinking. He's at least being slightly less distant physically, and she takes that as a good sign.

"I can make you some coffee," she offers quietly, although she doesn't want to leave him and she certainly doesn't know where the Compsons keep their coffee. She doesn't know if her comforting is doing him any good, and it makes her feel like she needs to give more. But she doesn't have much else to give.

"Is there anything I can do?"

"No. I don't want coffee. I don't want anything."

He wants his mother, as much as he won't admit it, as much as his conception of 'mother' is less the woman herself than the idea of motherhood that he feels was denied to him since childhood, the idea of the stable if unhappy life he had just days ago, Caroline standing in as synecdoche for the world before Jason's life's structure came crashing down or for the affection and protection he craved but knows he didn't receive even once since Damuddy died.

He's an adult, and yet the desires that are starting to break through the dull wall are all so infantile, so basic, wrapped around the most heartfelt instincts of the human psyche.

"I don't think there's anything you can do. You go on to work. I'll be alright." He kisses her forehead. "I'll eat breakfast, I promise."

The heartbreaking thing is that, if he would admit it, it's probably one of the few things that Swann could provide, at least for a little bit. That's something she knows, gives freely to some of the younger Tributes she's met.

She looks a bit like she might cry from helplessness, and shakes her head. "I don't want to leave you," she tells him, voice wavering. "You shouldn't be alone."

He might lose it if she begins to cry. Either from anger or frustration or just hopelessness, he doesn't know, but he swears that if she starts crying he'll do something he'll regret. He'll scream at her or cry himself or flip over the bedside table. She'll punch a hole in the dam and Jason doesn't know exactly what's behind it.

He turns away and faces the wall again. "I want to be alone, alright? Just for a while. Go to work. Come by tonight."

She's not crying. She doesn't want to cry. She's not going to cry, or at least she is convinced of that before he turns away from her, leaving her slightly stunned and feeling like he punched her in the stomach. There's a moment where she's not entirely sure he didn't.

"Okay." It's barely a breath escaping her, and she climbs out of bed to put on her same clothes from yesterday, tie up her shoes before she looks back at him. "I'll... I'll see you later," she says, and walks out, wiping away just a little bit of mistiness from her eyes as she walks down the hall to the living room.

Swann cleans up everything from yesterday, takes the rest of the food and packs it in the refrigerator -- it's enough for several full days of meals. There's another stack of plastic containers that she takes out back and leaves next to Benjy's collection of objects, cakes and soft cookies and intricately decorated cupcakes. Sweet buns shaped like little rabbits, little lunch packs with sandwiches cut to resemble bears and cats.

She heads back through the house and then out the front door, down the steps and to her car. She waits until she's sitting behind the wheel before she breaks, pressing her face into her hands. It takes her a few minutes of sitting there under the barely-risen sun before she can sniffle and wipe her cheeks, then drive herself home. She has to shower and change her clothes.

He knows he's loosed some tears, so he doesn't look at her as she leaves, doesn't bother to make sure she locked up. He doesn't get out of bed until well into the afternoon, and then, as promised, he makes himself eat enough of a breakfast as he can stomach (a few bites of the slice of cake Swann left and a swig of orange juice straight from the carton). He fumbles around for his cigarette and returns to the couch, trying for about half an hour to check his email and then realizing barely any words are actually registering in his brain.

Sometimes Benjy goes quiet, and then the house is so quiet Jason thinks it's suffocating him, like the soundlessness is dripping down like some gelatinous replacement for oxygen and shoving its way down his lungs. He checks the base of the stairs again, twice, and when the grandfather clock rings (three bells off from the actual time) he startles hard enough to bite his tongue.

Sometime that afternoon he sends Swann a text. thanks for coming over yesterday. feeling a bit better. ate.

At home, Eta soothes Swann enough to get her cleaned up and shipped off to work, where Swann spends most of her day in the Escort Suite, working on her phone and tablet. She means to work out several schedules, but instead she spends hours looking at floral arrangements, color schemes and display options for memorial diamonds. She jots down caterers in one of her notebooks.

Her phone buzzes and startles her just a little, jolting her out of her focus on venues, since the funeral obviously can't be held at the house. She reads it and rubs her head, pleased but still worried. glad you're feeling better. good that you ate. you're welcome. do you still want me to come over?

i'll come to you. drive would be nice. late tonight though if that's ok.

That'll give him a few hours to steel his energy for the possibility of running into other human beings, doormen, security guards, other drivers on the street. He feels as if he'll need every moment of that.

He goes back to sleep on the couch before she replies, not because he needs the rest but because it's an alternative to the dreary cloud that's hanging over him, the fog he can't seem to even try to banish.

ok. i'll see you then. try and eat some dinner in a few hours too. <3 you.

The message is waiting for him whenever he rouses. Swann works at the funeral plans for a bit more, then lies down in bed for a while, not sleeping, but just resting, trying to let her head empty even when it does the exact opposite and just swirls with more thoughts.

She goes home precisely at five, not bothering with any overtime or even finishing what she's currently working on, because she can't focus on any of it. Eta cares for her again and gets her changed into lounge clothes, trying to make her relax. Swann's plied with sleep-aid tea until she naps for a few hours, waking late for dinner and looking at her phone for any word from Jason.

It's nearly midnight before Jason shows up, but he does make good on his word. Peggy's made sure he's eaten, and he at least managed to shave and dab some typical makeup on to hide the dark circles under his eyes, which takes him a decent step towards looking presentable again.

It's just that even if the outside body looks alright, the way he carries himself and the hollows of his eyes make it clear that he's not back to baseline or anywhere near it.

He rings her intercom and turns off his cigarette. He rode with the window down and so his hair's in some kind of wind-whipped tangle.

It's Eta who buzzes Jason in, after appearing briefly on the screen, and she looks vaguely relieved to see him. Upstairs, she's managed to get Swann comfortable, but not convince her to eat or go to bed -- Swann is tucked uncomfortably in the corner of a sofa with the TV on. She's halfway nodded off, Pascal and Marcel asleep at her feet, the pastel blue of her nightie standing out against the cream of the couch and her hair on her shoulder.

Eta leads Jason to her, and Swann startles back into wakefulness, looking around and then smiling sleepily at him. "Hi," she murmurs. "You feel any better?"

"I feel fine," he says automatically, with as little thought to it as someone would to saying the same to a coffee barista. Maybe if he continues to say it, to continue his way forward, it'll become real.

He strides over to Swann's sofa and takes a seat next to her, then seems to go limp like his tendons have been cut, and he rests his head on her lap.

She sighs and drowsily looks at him in her lap, combing her fingers through his hair, letting her nails drag gently on his scalp. She knows she's supposed to be comforting him, but she feels better just for having him here. Her other hand strokes down his arm as she lets her head rest on the side of the sofa, where it's taller than she is.

"No you don't," she tells him gently. "You want anything to eat or drink?"

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