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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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?"

"No. I already ate." He sighs and settles more into her, and for a moment it looks like they're just relaxing after a tiring day, rather than clinging to each other amidst a storm neither of them were prepared for, no matter how much warning they had or how much time to garner experience life gave them. "Ben did too. Like I said, better than yesterday."

He tries to find that happiness, that place that seems to exist as a bubble in tangent to the rest of his life, that he knows he can have in those fleeting moments just resting with Swann. If he has to feel something, it can at least be that, he hopes.

"How was work?"

She keeps running her fingers through his hair, nods a little. "Good. Let me know if the food runs out, I can always bring more." She doesn't question any further about Ben, doesn't want to shine light on the fact that she's paid off the servants for a few more weeks to take care of him, though she has to wonder who Jason does think has been assuming that responsibility.

"It was fine, nothing really special. I worked on some contracts, for the most part." She's not lying -- the actual work she did do was contract fine-tuning. "Cassian and Emily are holding the fort downstairs, and anything they need help with is being routed to me, so it's all under control."

So far, Swann's mostly been taking Sponsor phone calls and arranging meetings, the bigger money names, the ones who expect to (or will only) deal with a Capitolite. One who actually knows things, which would, of course, toss Cassian out of the running.

Eventually it'll go way, Jason has to tell himself. Eventually when he eats he won't think of the last meal he and his mother had and his stomach won't do that nauseated clenching thing and his throat won't screw up and his breath won't scoop in shallowly. "We'll be fine on food. Maybe my appetite will pick up in a few days."

Jason's just not thinking about it at all. Ben continued existence and care exists to him as a phenomenon not worth exploring, at this point, the same way you don't wonder which direction a storm front's come in from when it's already raining. In a few days he'll come to and have some opinions about it, surely.

"Good. I was afraid I'd be coming back tomorrow to a charred husk covered in pastels."

They both know that's an optimistic dream at best, a lie at worst.

Edited 2015-08-07 06:10 (UTC)

"As long as you get a little bit in until then."

Eta comes in with tea and toast, under the belief that Jason's presence will entice Swann to actually eat instead of being so preoccupied that she won't shift any focus to her own maintenance. She does, indeed, take one of the triangles of toast, delicately spread with jam, and eat one of the corners as she keeps petting Jason's head.

"You'll just have to keep your job instead of being a bum," she teases with a snort. "The Mentors have all been acting like pouty children, though. From those TV specials they're doing. So don't be surprised if Emily's in a huff."

Jason, more in some puppyish attempt to please Swann than because he's hungry, takes a a slice of toast as well. He nibbles at it, only interested in its presence in the absolute vaguest sense.

"I've always wanted to be a worthless layabout. I'm finally living the dream." Some of his humor's back, and not at his family's expense, which is something, at least. "God, that's just what I need, though. It's bad enough that she has bidders hounding her and throwing her off her game. Now I'll need to play wetnurse to her guilt about killing her competitor."

She hums happily when he joins her in eating, and she's not really any more interested in the toast than he is, so she doesn't pay much attention beyond that.

"You'll be joining a prestigious group of assholes we know from high school, then." She takes a sip of tea and shifts slightly underneath him. "You should put in a petition for a moratorium on bidders for her, especially with how much she's been hurt lately. She's been back in the Capitol for a while, she needs a break or she's going to lose her mind."

He would eat the softer inside of the toast and leave the crust, the way many Capitolites would - there's no reason to suffer through anything but the best part of a meal when you can always have the best - but he's not really paying attention and so he ends up eating the entire half of a slice.

"Believe me, I have. I do my best to keep that kind of fetish out of the workplace." Because, you see, Jason's coworkers' trauma is really inconvenient for him. "The last moratorium just ended, so there's another fourteen days before they review the new petition."

Swann actually likes bread crust, at least when Eta's made the bread, and so she tends to eat it most of the time anyway, and soon her slice is gone as well, leaving her with teacup that she nurses.

"Is there anything you can attach her to that would take precedence?" Swann asks but she already sounds a bit defeated, sorry for Emily; the list of things that rank higher than bidding is short indeed. "I'm so glad that Temple married Gowan. She's already bad enough, I don't know how I'd ever handle it if bidding got thrown into that crazy mess too."

Bidders will disregard a Districter spouse in a heartbeat, but not a Capitolite one.

"What, marry her off? Just because that drunken imbecile has standards low enough to take a Mentor doesn't mean that people without self-respect are thick on the ground. Do you think your father might have anything I could set her up with, perhaps?"

The odd bidder will occasionally test their largesse with Temple, less because of her than to flex their muscles, usually as retaliation for Gowan's company encroaching on their own, but Capitolites just call that the cost of business.

"I'd probably smother Temple Drake with a pillow." Jason refuses to use her married name. That's for Capitolites. "I'm already close to throttling Cassian. I can see it now."

Jason gestures with his hand like a marquee. "Sorry for your loss in glittery balloon letters and candy coffins."

"Probably, if I tell him she's getting beaten up. You know how old-fashioned Daddy is, he doesn't even like to hear that a District woman's being hurt." There is, of course, a difference between Arena violence and bidders hurting Victors just because they want to, and Ilar takes even more offense to that abuse than most people do because of his nature and because he's cleaned up the mess it makes too, when Swann was younger and willing to put up with anything if it meant she could feel loved. It offends him on multiple levels. "What do you have in mind?"

"She's sweet," Swann sighs, "but about as bright as cardboard. The drinking I can handle, I just want her to stop trying to screw everything that moves. What's Cassian doing now? I thought you'd build up a tolerance after a while."

"Well, she is. Bruises and all." Jason rubs his hand over his face. "I'll try and think of something."

Bitching about work is good. It's easy; Jason has enough material for weeks. But actually thinking creatively drives him back into that awful morass, and he sighs and dims, unable to come up with anything even though he's normally pretty good at figuring an angle.

"She can barely help that, I guess. All Districters are the same, like dogs in heat without a half-pound of brains between them. Tell her you'll rat her out to her husband. If she can't have any respect for herself maybe she will for him." He notices there are some toast crumbs on his shirt, but he doesn't have the will to brush them off. "I don't know if I'm building up a tolerance or being worn down by Cassian. Every day it's loud music, bright colors, and stupid ideas."

"We'll get her something, don't worry." Swann goes back to absently stroking Jason's hair. "She doesn't deserve that, and you don't deserve the stress." It won't be that hard to formulate an idea, and if Swann and Jason can't do it, then she's sure her father will be able to.

"I'm not sure she'd care if he knew. Hell, for all I know, he already does, everyone knows he's always too sloshed to remember what you told him fifteen minutes ago." Swann finishes her tea and sets her cup back down with another sigh. "Well, his work isn't too bad. I mean, he's really into trends, the whole floral thing, but your Tributes look pretty good. Maybe tell him that you'll half his budget if he doesn't stop with the music?"

"Nah, Gowan quit drinking years ago. He'd be dead if he didn't, he could keep up with my father by the time he was thirteen. I don't think you remember much of him, he was Quentin's age." Jason sighs. "Makes all my father's excuses about drinking look like the lies they were, but I guess Gowan had something to live for."

It's been nearly twenty years and that bitterness just seems to get more potent with age. It was bad enough that Quentin decided life wasn't worth it, but Father had had obligations, and he's absconded from them entirely. He'd left them for Jason to pick up.

"I just might. He already needs my approval for any expenditure over five assi, and thank God for that."

Swann has to think about that, and she supposes that her mental image of Gowan is stuck in time, many many years ago, him stumbling around at a large Christmas party that her parents threw, inviting a wider range of families than just the regular old names. She remembers watching the party from upstairs, between the banister poles, when she was supposed to be asleep.

She hadn't kept up with his reputation until Temple came back.

Scratching gently at Jason's scalp, she smirks. "At least he hasn't put neon lighting on any of your Tributes yet. Can you imagine if he'd been around for Tony's Crowning?"

In Swann's defense, Gowan's drunken teenage escapades were near legendary.

"Oh, god. We all would have gone blind." He rests his hand on her knee. "First time in my life I'm ever grateful for Stig."

He sighs again, less relaxed than preoccupied.

"Poor Stig. I hope he didn't immediately fall down and crack his head open. At least Seven's getting away from his lazy obsession with plaid. Cassian's all about the florals right now, I'm a bit surprised he hasn't re-wallpapered the Suite out of his own pocket." Her fingers run along the hair behind his ear, the line where his bare skin begins, and she snorts. "Toxic sludge-colored leaves with hot pink flowers. Everywhere."

With her free hand, she rubs his shoulder a little. "And he loves you sooooo much, he might sneak into your house and redecorate there too," she teases. "Dress Ben up in painted leaves."

"I'm fairly certain Cassian won't dress anyone up like a marijuana leaf. He's more into ecstasy, so far as I can tell, anyway."

Jason laughs a little bit, quiet, half-hearted, trying to find that happy banter they usually have and cling onto it and feeling so exhausted with the effort.

"Maybe he could take inspiration from the mold and sell a brand new perfume scent."

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