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

Entry tags:

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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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."

"So just glowsticks and pacifiers then," Swann jokes, leaning down to press her lips to his forehead. She smiles and laughs when he keeps attempting humor, then sighs and lets her head rest on the sofa again. "Come on, we can go lie down. I'll rub your back if you want."

"Alright. I'm sleeping back home, though." He can't explain why, why he isn't running from that house as quickly as he can, why he feels the need to stay as if holding some sort of vigil, but he can't sleep here. He sits up and cracks his neck.

"I don't think that's go amiss. My back's killing me."

"Okay."

She's disappointed but doesn't push it, aware that something is going on and wondering if maybe it has something to do with the way he keeps going to stairs while half-asleep.

Swann stands and stretches, then reaches back for his hand to hold it as they go.

He takes her hand, linking their fingers.

"I feel like I just crawled out of a coffin. Jesus." He cracks his neck again, shuffling towards her bedroom. His steps are shorter than they usually are. He has that posture he does when he has a migraine, the old-man walk like footsteps themselves are bullets through his head.

"I'm going to burn that couch."

"Well, you should be sleeping in your bed," she chides lightly, guiding him toward the bed so that he'll lay out. "That kind of couch isn't meant to be slept on, you know that. You're going to end up with the spine of a fifty year old District 11 bean picker if you keep it up."

She grabs a pot of lotion, thick and soothing, scented like lavender because there's nothing that hasn't been tried to break Swann's incessant insomnia. "Come on, shirt off."

"I will. I'll sleep in the bed tonight. I promise." He pauses for a moment, then pulls off his shirt with the same shy sort of trust he gives to her and very few others. He lies facedown on her bed, turning his head on the pillow, taking in the smell of it.

"I'm going to smell like a greenhouse." He's teasing, but the weakness of his smile makes it hard to tell.

"You already smell like an herbal supplement store, so greenhouse is a step up." She smiles as she follows him on her knees, perching just over his thighs as she opens the lotion and rubs it on her hands. "Seriously, I get so many complaints about the smell when you come up to my Suite. They've stopped even trying."

She runs her hands firmly down his spine and then starts working into his muscles, where it's tense and knotted and she has to lean her meager weight into it. She bites her lip with focus, working downward from his shoulders.

"What? Eucalyptus and camphor smell fine. Maybe they should get their noses checked."

He's surprised at the strength she can put into it, as well as how much it hurts - not in a terrible way, but in a way that makes him realize that he's been tensing up for months and months, maybe years, with no reprieve. The muscles are knotted and stiff and swollen, and he exhales deeper than he has a long time when Swann gets up to his shoulders.

"I think it's the intensity of the smell. Your clothes all absorb that vapor, you know."

Swann uses her knuckles and the heels of her palms to dig into the hardest spots, kneading until they start loosening, relaxing. Each muscle gets worked on until it gives, even after her hands start to ache and her arms get tired, and she only stops to occasionally put some more lotion on her hands.

"Well, I can't help that. They should get over it."

He feels less like a body than like a skeleton wearing a puddle of flesh. He sighs and it seems to travel all the way through him, from his lungs to his fingertips and toes, and when he opens his eyes he realizes they're wet and teary, not from pain but some sort of release that came along with the relaxation.

"That's good. I don't think I have any muscles left to tend." He swallows and his throat is thick again, tight, painful.

She just snorts and keeps going, finishes at the small of his back and then gently slides off to lie on her side next to him, looking at him. Reaching out, she runs her fingers through his hair, nodding a little.

"Good. You needed it even more than I thought. You're not just going to go and knot yourself back up for another six months, are you?" She's underestimating how long it's been since he's had a professional massage and she knows it, because as standard as it is for the majority of Capitolites, Jason neglects himself more than most people she knows.

It takes him a moment to answer, during which he tries to swallow the tightness in his gorge down again, to clear his throat of that uncomfortable feeling. "I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't." He reaches up and wipes at his eyes as if it's nothing more than just sleep dust, then places a hand on her shoulder.

"Do you want me to give you one?"

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