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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She wraps herself more fully around him, as much as she can, cocooning him like a blanket. His sobs wrack through her, shake her a bit, and she doesn't mind, only holds him tighter because it's all she has to offer him. She whispers to him, vague comforts, that it'll be okay, that she's here.

"Of course I will," she murmurs, and her hand shoots through with pins and needles as he squeezes it. "I'll stay with you forever if you want me to."

He lets her hand go and cries himself out. Soon enough there are no tears, only sound and jerking motions rolling from his throat and lungs. They hold each other tight enough that they may as well be wend together skin and skin. He feels like a puppet being animated by a force he doesn't know or understand, forced into this sorrow, body bending to an emotion too large and thick to fit inside him.

Then he's quiet for a while, letting her tend to the wounds (he is one gaping wound) with her words. He catches his breath.

"Yes. Yes," he murmurs. Yes, he wants her to stay with him forever. He needs her to. He resettles his head onto her chest. "I feel a little better."

It's not much. Maybe he's just exhausted. Maybe a crying fit like that is like vomiting up something bad, not enough to cure the body but enough to expel the immediate poison. Maybe now that he isn't full to the brim with it he can take in some of Swann's love.

Swann never lets go, just holds him as tightly as she can and never loosens her grip. She has little to give him or say that can fix the immediate pain, can only let him spill it out onto her through his tears and cries, like a child who's finally grown too tired and grumpy to hold himself together anymore.

In a selfish way, one that she tries to push from her mind, it makes her feel good. Needed. She's the only person in the whole world who can provide this for him. Who can be trusted.

"Shhh," she says, and nods, strokes his hair again. "I know, you'll feel better a little bit at a time." She sighs and leans her head against the back of the sofa. "I love you," she says softly, tenderly, her voice as gentle as a blanket.

She doesn't love him like Caroline loved him. He's not a possession or a life preserver meant to serve her. Jason is Swann's other half.

He goes loose, limp, completely without tension in his muscles anymore.

"I love you too," he says, for the second time this month because he can't even feel the fear necessary to hold him back from saying it. He just lets it flow out of him. He feels barely there anymore, just a conduit for moods stronger than him that come from on high and use his body like a marionette.

"I need to go home. I can't sleep here, I keep hearing her upstairs and I don't..." He doesn't want to miss it, to sleep in silence. Maybe he should be bothered and afraid of sounds he knows aren't real, but they're the closest he has to having her (and that life before she died) back.

It worries Swann, that he wants to torture himself by going back to the sounds -- it doesn't seem odd to her that his mind is playing those tricks, trying to adjust, but she doesn't want him to get addicted to that, something that isn't real and never will be. But she can't make herself say it out loud, bring it up at all.

"Okay," she whispers, and kisses the top of his head. "If you're sure."

Until he's ready to leave, she's ready to just lie here, holding him.

"I'm not sure of anything." But he's not willing to take advice, either. It's that stubborn Compson streak, winding its way back through his bloodline to time immemorial.

He lies there with her for a while, then finally gets up and gives her a kiss on the cheek. He's wearing the last hour on his face, in the redness and puffiness around his eyes, the glazed expression, the vulnerability he isn't bothering to try and hide for her. He looks into her eyes for a while like he's looking for something, but doesn't give any indication either that he's given up or that he's found it.

"I'll be back to work on Monday. I'll lose my mind if I'm not," he says, more certain than when he said it earlier today.

She holds his face until he pulls away, stops looking for whatever he's trying to find in her eyes, her hands soft on his face as she looks back. Her thumbs run gently over his cheeks, grazing some of the puffiness under his eyes.

"I'll make sure everything's ready for you." She smiles weakly, kisses his closed lips. "Is there anything else I can do for you? Anything you need?" There's no end to what she's willing to give to him.

"No. You've already come up with and finished more than I realized needed to be done."

He could keep asking. Probably the men she dated before would have. It would be so easy to suck her dry and leave her nothing but a shell when she is so eager to bare meat and pearlstone to him. But he won't, because by now even what he wants from her he'll earn.

He gets up and takes a last few bites of chicken and dumpling from the bowl.

"Let me know, okay?"

She sits up, watches him eat, and worries more. Worries that he's trying to be strong than he is, less fragile, more put together. That he'll fall apart again in the night, when he thinks he hears Caroline and there's nothing at the top of the stairs. About a million other things because that's how her mind works, seeks refuge in fretting and fear instead of hope.

Swann reaches for his hand.

"Alright. Sure. Do you want me to come look at any of the, um." He rubs the back of his head, trying to clear the clouds enough to come up with words. "Any of the cases or flowers or whatever for the arrangements. I mean, I trust your judgment. It doesn't matter. Forget it."

He sighs and sets the bowl down.

"Talk to me through the weekend, alright? I don't want to lose track of the days again."

"Only if you want to." Really, it's all been done, chosen and paid for, so he wouldn't even really be giving approval. But if it makes him feel better, then she's happy to show him her choices, let him feel like he's having a say in it all.

"Are you not going to come back then?"

"Do you want me to?"

He should come back tomorrow. Tomorrow and the day after. At the very least having one task to do during the day, when he can't even guarantee that he'll feed himself, will give him some sort of routine.

He grabs his coat and wipes his face again.

"I always want you to."

She follows him toward the door, hopes that he'll keep coming back. Maybe he'll start to feel better, spending more time away from the oppressive air of his house, from lingering memories and whispering voices swirling all around his head. Maybe she'll come up with something more to give, some kind of cream to slap on the wound.

"I'm not all that pleasant to be around right now," he says, giving her a kiss before he leaves.

He doesn't fall apart when he gets home. He goes to sleep, and then he gets up at some ungodly hour and goes to the dining room, which has no surveillance, and calls Lorraine. He talks to her for a while, or rather, they sit in silence on other ends of the phone while Jason takes eternities to string together sentences to explain what's happened, and she suggests he visit, and he tells her that he won't be anymore, that he has a girlfriend now. And so they keep talking, for a few hours, and then he hangs up and she goes back to sleep, and they don't know when or if they'll speak again.

On Saturday he shows up at Swann's in the morning, underslept but at least a bit more lively than he was. He grabs coffee from Eta and waits for Swann to wake up at the kitchen table. He even goes so far as to eat a fresh-baked pastry that Eta's prepared. When Swann emerges he looks up at her.

"Let's go somewhere. I don't care where."

"That doesn't matter." She touches his face when he kisses her and watches him go.

Swann spends the night restless, never getting more than an hour of light sleep in before waking back up. She sits up and stares into the darkness through some of it, wanders the apartment for others, finds herself sitting on the floor in the foyer with Marcel for a while. It's not until daybreak that she actually falls asleep, to the dim blue glow seeping under curtains as it gets lighter and lighter, lulling her until she snores into her pillow.

It's probably a good forty-five minutes before she blearily walks into the kitchen, grabbing coffee of her own and a croissant spread with butter. "Hi," she mutters, leaning to kiss his cheek, and sits next to him. "Any ideas you had in mind?"

Despite not having slept longer than two hours, Jason isn't tired. He feels clear, as if for the moment he's cut through the clouds, or Swann's light has sliced through them and he wants to suckle up the sun before the sky closes again. He takes a sip of coffee and gives her a kiss on her cheek after taking his own.

He does. That fantasy they've both entertained is still there, of driving and driving until time stops existing, of going without a destination, the oblivion of leaving all their real world obligations behind. He nearly says that. Instead he's more practical.

"I have a kite in the back of the car."

Swann, on the other hand, is groggy, and definitely needs the coffee she's sucking down black, chased with bites of food because she's hungry too. Honestly, she's so sick of working that she'd agree to go wherever, nearly suggests that they take off for their vacation right now, but she too knows it's not possible right now, that they have to wait until after the funeral, the arrangements, everything.

"Sounds good. I'll get dressed as soon as I finish eating." She smiles at him and then glances over to Eta. "Pack us up some breakfast to go?"

"Take your time." He knows that if there's any obligation rushing her, it's because she's covering for him, and for a moment his sky darkens again, not because of any fault of hers but merely because he feels inadequate again, overwhelmed, exhausted at the mere prospect of surviving the next few weeks. But he forces his way through it, drinking more coffee.

"We don't have to go out for long. It would just - god, I feel like I haven't seen the sun in a week."

She doesn't feel rushed so much as relieved to have the opportunity to go do something, anything that isn't work, because Swann knows herself well enough to know that even if she sat around and tried to relax, she'd just drift back into emails and ordering things, unable to actually let herself have nothing to do.

Swann shakes her head a little, smiling still, and reaches over to put her hand on his leg. "We can go all day if you want. I'll go anywhere that isn't the Tower, or anywhere near it. Marcel and Pascal could probably use the exercise anyway." She squeezes his knee before finishing her coffee and taking his hand so she can go get dressed.

"Can we afford to go all day. I could go all day. I need to- I need to stay out of the house for a while." Because she's right, as comforting as it is it's also a trap of guilt. Moreso than it was when his mother was alive.

He waits while she gets rest, and smokes a cap down on his cigarette while she gets dressed. It's scented like cinnamon, not ginger for nausea or camphor for pain relief or eucalyptus to stave off migraines. It's a break, one that's scented merely for pleasure.

For a moment he's free, and hopes to feel it.

"We'll go all day, we won't come back until dark," she tells him, squeezing his hand as they walk, smiling at him. She leaves him to sit on the edge of the bed and wait while she's in the closet, but she can smell his cigarette and it's her favorite, the only one that didn't require getting used to the scent and taste of, that isn't overwhelmingly medicinal-smelling and doesn't cling to everything it gets near, including her.

Swann comes back out, naked except for pink panties that seem to somehow be constructed of only ribbons and sequined lace, and climbs onto the bed, kneeling over Jason's lap to first take his cigarette away (clicking it off as she tosses it to the side) and then hold his face, pressing her mouth against his, her hair falling over his shoulder.

"I'm glad you came back," she says softly, lips brushing against his when she speaks.

He doesn't tell her that he has nowhere else to go, now, that he's gone and burned all his bridges except the one that leads to her, that if he hadn't waited so long to do it she might even be glad to hear it. And he kisses her back, but even at the sight of her in such skimpy and sexual clothing he can't seem to feel anything lustful. Sex seems like a sad place he doesn't want to visit right now.

"That sounds nice." He pulls her close, intimate and yet distant all at once, pantomiming happiness with a sort of desperation because he wants to drain this moment for all the peace it gives him. They rest cheek to cheek, heartbeat to heartbeat. "I have some ideas for when I get back to work on Monday. I want your input. You're the only one I trust to give it."

Jason having nowhere else isn't anything she's given thought to, mostly because she never really believed he had anywhere else in the first place. Despite his threats and their fights over it, he was never going to stay in District 11, wasn't going to run away with Lorraine or anyone else, because outside of Swann, Jason only seems to be able to garner the attention of Districters.

His house is empty, his mother gone.

Who would he run to except Swann?

"Okay," she says, wrapped around him, and nods. Sex is her bandage, how she knows to put things back together, and he doesn't want it, so she's sort of at a loss. She kisses him again and goes back to getting dressed, pulling away from him slowly until they aren't touching at all anymore.

The next time she comes out, she's fully clothed and in the process of pulling her hair up into a ponytail.

Who else would he even want to run to, really? The co-workers he detests, the Capitolites who either look down on him for his name or fraternize with the enemy? In the whole world she is the only one he sees himself loving, the only one who has made that consumptive, terrifying feeling a possibility instead of a hypothetical for someone else to experience.

He feels her pull away and he doesn't know how to respond to her about it. He can't manage right now, so he clings a bit as she goes, like an infant that doesn't want to be put down. When she goes to get changed, Marcel hops up on his lap and he pets the dog, idly, as if it's somehow a temporary substitute for Swann.

"You look nice."

He's trying too hard, and that makes it all the more obvious how awkward at it he is, trying to make someone else feel good.

She can feel him hang on, cling, and so when she returns, she crawls back into his lap, gently pushing Marcel out of the way first. She wraps her arms around him again, sighing and kissing his forehead, just warm and affectionate this time.

"Thank you," she murmurs, holding him as the dog curls up next to them, pressed to Jason's leg. "We don't have to leave just yet, if you don't want to. We can hang out for a little while."

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