thecapitol | Pull the Nail Out With Your Teeth [Closed]

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Pull the Nail Out With Your Teeth [Closed]

WHO| Jason, Swann and maybe Sinclair
WHAT| Jason got arrested for smacking Cassian around. He's spending a night in jail.
WHERE| Peacekeeper HQ Fancy Jail Annex
WHEN| After the Caesar Show
WARNINGS| Eh, just Jason being an asshole.

There are two jails that one can go to when arrested by the Peacekeepers, and the difference between them is like night and day. One is for persons suspected of treason, and the other is for incidents like the one Jason's found himself in: petty crimes, provoked assault, violence against anyone besides the government. Cassian, thankfully, doesn't count as a government, although Jason might argue at this point that they're just about as intelligent as each other.

Jason won't even be in this one fourteen hours. He'll be out by eight a.m. tomorrow. He's in a cush little cell for dynasty kids that he's sure half his childhood acquaintances ended up in at least once or twice in their teenage years as a drunk tank. Jacques is sitting on his lap and Jason's allowed to smoke, which he's been doing non-stop since he got here. The food is typical Capitol fair, a roast quail and some fish-egg soup with bread. He lets Jacques pick at it and stuff it in his ghoulish little face.

That doesn't make this any less humiliating, especially since there's no way in hell Jason's going to be able to afford the fine he'll have to pay to the Peacekeepers for their trouble. He's fairly sure if he tries to put it on credit his whole line will get canceled.

"You're allowed visitors, you know. They're here. You're not like one of those poor bastards down in Treason getting their skin whipped off right now," the custodian here says, before going to let the visitor in.

He hopes it's Swann, and than he feels guilty that his first thought is whether or not her father can make sure this doesn't make too big a dent in the news cycle.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

There is a lot to be said about this situation and more so the fact that it's been under the Capitol's noses all this time. Sinclair is abnormally quiet himself as he watches Eta be more of a mother than Viatrix ever was. She is here while the former pop diva is off on a retreat...what the hell is Ilar doing with all this?!

The more worrying question is what can he do with this? Any other Capitolite, Gus would have thrown under the bus. Keeping this a secret took him back to his days with his grandfather, when they served the older families. Gus long suspected Marcus died because he knew too much about someone...But as he takes the glass, Sinclair does something he'd never do: thank an Avox.

"Thank ya," he said before taking a long drink from this, "Keep the rest on standby." He then ran a hand over Swann's head, "She takes real good care of you." It's not a judgmental view, merely an observation.

Ilar's been complicit in this since before Swann was even born -- it's not uncommon for the old, secretive families to find a useful talent in a particular Avox and then let their tune-ups slide a bit, to keep that little bit for themselves. Eta's gift was cooking, and no Honeymead man was about to give up an amazing cook when they'd already proven themselves a trustworthy Avox. Then Swann came along and, while there were nannies, Eta turned out to be the person she needed. Ilar didn't have it in him to hurt his daughter for the sake of propriety, not when there was nothing to gain and everything to lose.

Gus's hand feels warm and heavy and solid on her head, and Swann doesn't open her eyes. When she speaks, her voice is slurred, like she's been woken from a nap and hasn't gotten her bearings back yet. "I love her. Don't... don't tell. I need her," she mumbles, consciousness floating in and out of her grasp. "'m tired. Stay."

"For you, I won't tell a soul about Eta."

It's a weird place to be in when the Avox in the room is regarded as a person rather than a functional ornament. It messed with something fundamental inside Sinclair as he tried to make the connections necessary to not ask if the Honeymeads were insane or seditious. Well, at least one connection has been made without much issue: they would never be seditious, they were proper Capitolites. This was simply a snag that the family had.

It's not like I have higher ground when it boils down to the man thought as he ran his hand over the long platinum locks of hair. Grandpa Marcus would've been at home with someone like Eta.

This strange avox managed to pry a memory from Gus, watching his grandfather raise children that were not his. He couldn't fault Swann's attachment to the old girl: childhood was so fleeting for the socialites-to-be.

"I'll stay here, sweetheart."

Eta moves around silently, and within minutes, the only evidence of what happened is the two of them on the couch, the glass in Gus's hand and Swann's state of semi-unconsciousness. Like any good Avox, she disappears from the room, down one of the hallways, though she's always just an intercom call away.

Swann will have to be carried to bed in a little while, the one thing Eta can no longer do for her, but for the time being, she just breathes heavily, eyelashes occasionally fluttering as he strokes her hair. It's always been her favorite thing to have done, has been since she was a little girl.

"Is everything going to be okay, Gus?" she murmurs, her fingers curling because her arms are too heavy to wrap around the pillow beneath her head. It's a broad question, and she doesn't say what she means.

That was a question Sinclair had no real answer but bluffed it as best he could. Swann wouldn't remember what he said then, but that didn't mean he had to destroy her world before it melted away in nightmares. So he gave her the only thing he could think of: assurance.

"Things will be all right, sweetheart," Augustus whispered and smiled a little at those slowly closing eyes: this wasn't the first time he comfort the stressed and overworked Honeymead daughter to sleep. He allowed himself to wonder if Jason gave Swann the same warm embrace to lull her away. And just as quickly, he remembered why he didn't let those insidious thoughts in his brain.

Shit, this is bad.

When did this stop being about business? About winning over one of the nation's most desirable heiresses? He was a ruthless machinist in the great contraption that was Panem's financial district, he wasn't allowed this except for the possibility of political marriage.

But for now, Gus merely reinforced the words he said to Swann: things will be all right.

Edited (wrong icon sorry!) 2015-11-10 17:43 (UTC)

She's asleep before he answers, though thankfully she hasn't started snoring yet, and her meager weight seems to sink down like lead without her consciousness to hold it up. But the sedative keeps her from sprawling out, rolling off the sofa and cracking her head on the marble coffee table.

Come morning, the come-down will hit like a hurricane, leaving her nearly hungover, and she won't remember anything past being escorted out of the jail. She'll be late to work if she goes in at all, which is largely dependent on what time Jason is released and when he can get to her. Gus will get a thank you gift basket, and all will be as it was, an entire group of people pretending the entire thing didn't happen rather than address any of the underlying, gnarled root problems.

But now, she has the darkness of medically-induced sleep.

Jason doesn't sleep well that night, and while in the morning he'll blame it on Jacques chattering and picking at him or the prison bed being too hard and the sheets not worthy of a Districter, even he knows it's nerves. He tosses and turns and barks insults at the custodian and acts like he's doing everyone a favor when he's finally released and leaves, which he practically is, if only to deny them continued exposure to his presence.

It's early in the morning, early enough that if he comes and gets Swann they'll still be earlier to work than the other Escorts, and he drives straight over. Twin anxieties knot around each other in his stomach, about Swann's well-being when the last he saw of her was blind panic, and of Sinclair having spent the night. One of those is quelled at least some when he finds that Sinclair's car isn't there.

He's let in and he takes off his coat and gives it to Eta, neither greeting her nor ignoring her. He walks right past her and to the warm, sleeping lump of a person on the couch. He sits down next to her.

"Are you too asleep to hear me?"

One of his anxieties is clearly unfounded, as even if Sinclair had spent the night, Swann is obviously far too out of it to have even noticed. Eta's even pushed out the coffee table and put down a layer of pillows, just in case she were to roll off the sofa. Swann doesn't even stir until Jason's practically on top of her, and even then, it's just a whimper and a little twitch, the corners of her mouth turned down.

She'll wake after another prompt or two, though it's the kind of waking that's tenuous at best, unwilling and uncomfortable. "Nnnn," she whines, curling in on herself, and it's clear that she passed out before she could even be put into pajamas, though Eta did manage to get off the shoes and jewelry. Swann's hair is a rat's nest of yesterday's style, her face still in smeared makeup.

Really, she doesn't look particularly ready to go anywhere, let alone work.

It's not that he doesn't trust Swann. It's that he doesn't trust Sinclair.

He pets Swann's rumpled, tangled hair, then pulls her head onto his lap. It's not as if he particularly wants to go to work, but he's too listless to want to curl up next to her and sleep. His body hurts from the strange mattress of the jail bed anyway.

"Do you need to stay home today? I can't hang around forever, but I can come in late if you want to take some time to get ready."

Look, Swann knows about many of the questionable things Sinclair does, but she does not think he'd try to take advantage of her while she's unconscious.

She presses her face into his leg, knotting her fingers in the fabric of his trousers. Her body aches too, but in a deeper way, one that comes from her bones, heavy and leaden, pumping through her veins with her blood. Shaking her head as best she can, she tugs on him weakly, brow knit.

"Don't go."

He knows he can't afford to stay, especially with peacekeeper fines to pay, but one way or another he has to subsume himself to that inadequacy, either tell her now or ask her for help later. He sighs and twines his fingertips in the hair by her temple.

"I want to stay," he says. "If you really can't make it to work, I will."

Somewhere, deep in the recesses of her mind, Swann remembers paying the fines with Sinclair, but she can't recall if they told Jason, if anyone bothered. But it doesn't occur to her anyway, that Jason might need to work to pay that off, because she's only barely awake, only clinging to that cliff with her fingertips and his voice.

"Wanna sleep," she mutters, still holding to him, yesterday's eye makeup smearing further on her face as she rubs it on his leg. She sighs. "Love you."

"Yeah." Jason teases his fingers through her hair, trying to undo some knots as gently as he can. "I love you too."

It's only been since that night on his mother's bed that that word has fallen so easily from his lips. Now he says it almost every day, only to her, only in private, but often.

"But if I'm staying we need to move to the bed. I already spent one night on a cot not fit for a Districter. I'm not sleeping on a couch."

"Okay."

It's a bit dead-sounding, like she's already asleep, and of course he'll have to carry her because she can hardly lift her arms, let alone walk. But she's soothed by his presence and the rumble of his voice and what he says, and his trousers are soft against her face, even if they've absorbed the scent of the detention center.

Jason doesn't mind carrying her. He doesn't even extricate her from the blankets, instead wrapping them around her so he can carry a cocoon of her towards the bedroom.

"Shoo," he says to Pascal, who reluctantly hops off the bed, leaving a warm imprint on the covers. He lays Swann down and curls up next to her, taking some of the spare blanket for himself.

She sighs heavily when he picks her up, letting her head roll so that she's facing him. He puts her down and she manages to shift just enough to lie curled against him, her head on his shoulder. Swann breathes deeply, mouth a bit open, her eyes shut.

"You'll stay?" she mumbles, needing him to reassure her again.

"I'll stay if you are," Jason says, smoothing her hair (in vain) with a palm to the back of her head. It always terrifies him, just a bit, to see her like this, so zoned out from the sedatives as opposed to her usual flittish alert demeanor. "I'll just do overtime on the weekend."

His body aches from the unfamiliar jail cot, and he doesn't hide the wincing as he gets comfortable. He figures she can't see it anyway.

"Sinclair didn't give you any trouble?"

"No, he took care of me."

She's burrowed against him, only barely clinging to wakefulness because he's still talking, and she can't bring herself to fall asleep on him while he's holding conversation. "I love you," she says again, and tries to remember that she'll need to tell him to not worry about overtime when she wakes up.

Somehow, there's just about no answer that would satisfy Jason. Obviously Sinclair being a gentleman about it is the better of two options, but it doesn't change that it should have been Jason there, would have been if not for the jail.

The world's falling apart, their entire way of life starting to split at the seams to reveal not stuffing but rotten moth eggs and blood. He needs to protect what's his. With everything else in his life gone, that's just Swann and the house and the car, and he could probably do without the house, at least. Swann and the car and the last name that he's been carrying as a weapon and cross both for his whole adulthood.

"I know. I love you too." He kisses the top of her head and settles down. "Go back to sleep. We'll wake up for lunch."

She's out as soon as he gives permission, falling deep into the bottomless lake of morphling still coursing through her. There's no time for her to listen to his heart, to feel that he's warm and solid, and she breathes hard against his shoulder, snoring quietly.

But the medicine is only a bandage on the gaping wound of everything that's starting to come undone, raw and festering, and it's all still left to cope with when she wakes up sober. She can't protect anything, not even herself.

This new, slowly rising change holds no place for her.

He slides into sleep too, not artificially relaxed like she is but tense, anxious, his stomach feeling like it's churning at the base of his throat and his ears ringing. He holds her for a good half hour before he nods off.

When he wakes up around lunchtime, he's no calmer. The nerves about the arrest, about overtime, about the fact that they're sending Capitolites into the Arena, Reaping them at random, starts to compound with the fear that he'll be caught with the sketchy footage of taking Peggy and Linden over the border.

He rustles her shoulder. "Swann. Swann, this room is blind, isn't it?"

Swann is still disoriented when he wakes her, though it's less from medicine than it is simply being roughly and suddenly woken. She makes a vague, whiny noise and swipes at her face, rubs her eyes.

"Yeah," she mumbles, yawning, and nods a little. "Here and the bathroom. What time is it, I feel sick to my stomach." Probably because she hasn't eaten in nearly a full twenty-four hours, despite Jacques's attempts to feed her.

"Half past noon."

To Jason's credit, he doesn't load on nerves to her already tempestuous stomach.

"Do you need medicine?" He smooths her hair down. "Or for me to take you to the bathroom."

He's doting on her in a way that's different than the way he's ever treated anyone else, even when kowtowing to his mother. In Caroline's absence, Swann's become his whole world; as the Capitol crumbles, she's become the only foundation on which he stands.

"Nuh-uh." She shakes her head and presses it to his shoulder, reveling in his attention without even really noticing the difference, simply because it fits so much better into the rest of her life interactions. It'll click when she's more awake, aware. "Probably just lunch. I don't know. What's wrong?"

"What isn't wrong?" Jason snorts, then calls for Eta to make them some lunch. She doesn't answer (naturally) but he can hear moving around and assumes she's obeying. He certainly doesn't want to get up out of bed where he and Swann are entwined. "Has Sinclair said anything about me to you?"

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