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 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."

"Do you want to?" He wants to just be around her, away from his house, away from having to deal with the few creditors and arrangement-makers who have to talk to him directly, away from knowing that he needs to call Maury sooner rather than later but never being able to force himself to actually pick up the phone.

He cuddles her in his lap, as if his subconscious has finally realized all the affection he was starved of as a kid and is trying to make up for lost time. "We can choose outfits for your pets."

"It's still early," she says, smiling as he offers to help dress up the animals. "We can wait for a bit, let the sun dry up the dew in the grass." She kisses him gently, slowly, strokes his hair and his cheeks as she nuzzles against him. She's tired of dealing with all the people he's not dealing with, the ones who don't need him directly and that she can stop on her own, either with money or her name. But it's still exhausting.

"Is Peggy still staying at your house?" she asks idly, toying with the collar of his shirt. She's irritated about it, but not at Jason, so it doesn't come across in her tone. She just doesn't understand where Peggy gets off or why she's there -- the servants are still caring for Ben, and Swann is caring for Jason, so what's the point, where is the usefulness? Not to mention that it's just not something Capitolites do, and therefore she doesn't even understand why it's happening in the first place.

"Alright." He pulls her down so they're lying next to each other on the bed, resting his face in her ponytail as it loops behind her neck.

"She'll be gone in a few days. She's fixing it up. I think she's wanted to since the first time she saw it." Jason doesn't say much more about that, mostly because he doesn't want to make Swann feel as if he's divided between the two of them by how much Peggy is helping with just making sure Jason stays fed and showered through the day. More than that, he just doesn't want to admit that he can't seem to manage it on his own right now, that without the two of these women in his life at this moment he would probably be retreating into himself until the surface is entirely too far away.

She keeps touching him when they lie down, her fingers grazing over as much skin as she can find, like some part of her needs to keep the contact between, them skin-to-skin.

"I suppose everything she puts back together is one less thing we have to pay for." The way she presses her lips together is the only indication of her feelings, different from the ones she holds for Lorraine -- with the latter, there's anger and disgust at Jason too, and fury, but for Peggy, she seems to have settled solely on distaste and possessiveness. She doesn't worry that Jason would pursue someone he can't slap a fake claim of Capitolite on, which one certainly can't do with any Victor, and she doesn't even think Jason's aware of the extent to which his relationship with Peggy seems to reach into him.

But Peggy is, has to be if she would show up uninvited and decide she's staying there, in a house with a name that she shouldn't be sullying with her presence, in a neighborhood teeming with more prestige and wealth than she could ever imagine, like some kind of invisible barrier should have detected her unwelcome blood and stopped her from entering at all.

"Those giant D10 hands must be good for something, seems right that it's manual labor."

Really, Capitolites don't know about how to fix things. They replace appliances, decorations, people. If something isn't broke, don't fix it, but feel free to swap it up for a new model.

"They do wrangle horses out there," he says. He feels that Swann's right, that there's something inherently wrong about this that he just doesn't have the wherewithal right now to correct, that he should feel guiltier than he does about taking advantage of. But he isn't willing to argue with Swann about it or join in. He sees the way her lips purse and he leans forward to kiss them, as if to take the expression off her face.

"Anyway. After she's gotten the fixing bug out of her system I'll kick her back out. I want to go back to work. I don't want to imagine what's building up back there in my absence, even with you doing your best."

Yeah, honestly, if the real estate evaluations indicated it would be better to fix up the house than demolish it and just sell the land, Swann plans to just throw out everything Jason doesn't want to keep and replace all the appliances with better ones, more valuable ones. Ones that will make people actually want to buy the house.

She makes a soft noise when he kisses her, craning her neck forward to lengthen it, then leans back again and brushes her fingers through his hair, thoughtful. "Mostly a lot of Sponsor meetings, Cassian's taken it on himself to schedule them. Emily's perking back up, Gritta's doing excellent -- I dropped in on a rehearsal and they even said she's getting better at the acting part. Everything else is business as usual. Your Sponsors are a grouchy bunch, did you know that?"

Spoilers Jason's going to burn the house down and dance on the ashes.

"Damn. Here I was thinking they just didn't particularly like me." He brushes at her hair, breathing softly and slowly. "Gritta's turning out to be a bit of a boon. Wouldn't have guessed that when I first saw her. Easily one of the best to work with, besides the Addams girl."

Jason no! Swann is trying to get the most value possible out of your property, she can't do that if you've scorched it all.

"I know, it's a huge surprise!" She smiles at him, blinks and sighs. "I mean, you must be down to... your Tributes are all pretty good now, right? I can't think of any problems with any of them, really."

"They're commercial enough. It's just a matter of getting them to kill people in the Arena. At least I got rid of Dorian." Jason sighs and pulls her close, his arm around her waist. "Well, didn't get him back. I'm sure if anyone thought I actually had any say in Dorian getting retired Maxwell would show up at the District Seven Suite with more goddamn candles and light me up with them."

Their foreheads touch for a moment and then she ducks her head down to tuck it in the crook of his neck, closing her eyes and letting her eyelashes brush his skin. "Maxwell is just... I don't know, I guess he's in love. And then that wasn't his Dorian or something, so he has a hard time dealing with these things. Even since he came back, he's been sad."

While she completely understands Jason's irritation with the situation, it's still the kind of romantic story she's been trained as a Capitolite to have a weak spot for, to want to root for.

"Well, boo hoo for him." Jason has no such ability to root for the love lives of others; that would require a level of empathy he can't reach. All he knows is that Maxwell is a pain in his side, someone who doesn't accept the social restrictions of being a Tribute.

He rubs Swann's shoulder. "I wish they'd sort all these couples and the like into the same District, at least."

Swann also has a soft spot for Maxwell in particular, who had been one of the first Tributes to be kind to her when she arrived, rather than merely tolerant or openly hateful.

"Sometimes I think the Gamemakers are worse at feelings than we are," she says, half-laughing. "They stay all cooped up in there and forget that the Tributes are going to be mad and that they'll be separated from people they care about, and that they have to live with the other Tributes in their District indefinitely. They don't take personalities or anything into account, you know?"

She sighs. "I don't know. I think it's gotten a lot more complex than it used to be, and maybe the Gamemakers have forgotten that, at least on the level of dealing with the Tributes. And they may not be Citizens, but they're still people that we have to deal with. At least before, the Tributes understood the system. I think maybe I would be a little irrational too, if I didn't understand and I came from a totally different world."

"We're perfectly fine at feelings. We have each other, don't we?" He knows he's lying to himself, and to her, and he doesn't even care enough to try and believe it. They're fucked and won't be getting unfucked soon. They've been fucked since they were children too young to realize the insane environment they were growing up in.

"At the very least, it's a pain in the ass for us. I've been trying to discourage them from palling around with the other Districts, because it looks bad for the spirit of the Games, but it's all gone out the window since then." He chews the corner of his tongue. "Is this bedroom blind?"

She smiles and nuzzles against his neck. "We could be worse," she says, and she does at least believe that's true, because there are degrees of honesty and actual love between them that many Capitol couples of their standing can't say they have, even when they're more put-together from the outside.

"Yeah," she says, nodding. "Bedroom and the bathroom, same as at Daddy's house. Anyway, I guess we can't expect them to stop making friends in other Districts if they have to keep going to all the same parties and events and live in the same tower together. It's not like the old days, where they were so busy that they couldn't get friendly, and then it was into the Arena. It's human nature, I guess."

"I say we should cull them all and start over," he says, although he doesn't really mean it. It's just another cruel thing he spits out without thinking through. He pauses for a bit, then pulls her close, and murmurs rather than really says out loud.

"I'm starting to think the Games might be something more to keep us distracted and occupied than for the Districts." He rubs a hand over her shoulder.

"There are a few I'd keep." She's teasing, kisses his skin where she'd had her nose just a moment ago. But then she looks a little confused and turns her face up toward him.

"Distracted from what? The Rebels aren't that strong, we keep catching them."

It feels all wrong, to secondguess the government in earnest, and Jason can't shake the feeling that he's about to have the door kicked in and be shot in the head for it.

"Then why haven't we destroyed them? We have the technology and power to build Arenas that simulate outer space or a candy utopia, but we can't suss out some rebels? There must be a reason we haven't gone scorched earth."

It does feel wrong, wrong and foreign, like she's put her clothes on backward or something. And while she knows they're safe, it does worry her stomach, to even have the ideas.

"Well... they're pretending to still be one of us, right?" she reasons. "Citizens and Tributes, acting like they haven't switched sides. Which means they'd be more careful to never do anything. So the Peacekeepers can't find they until they mess up and do something."

Her brow knits as she thinks. "I don't know. Maybe the Rebels aren't as organized as we think? If it's a bunch of singular terrorists, that's a lot harder to squash than a big group."

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