Cyrus Reagan [OC: Capitol AU] (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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thecapitol2016-01-05 05:30 am
currupted) wrote in thecapitol2016-01-05 05:30 am
Entry tags:
[flood of blood to the heart and the fear slipstreams] [CLOSED]
Who | Cyrus Reagan and Jason Compson.
What | Jason's coming to Cyrus for help. Cyrus is, as usual, doomed to be very disappointed.
Where | The Reagan household in the Capitol.
When | In something resembling a lull in the action in January.
Warnings | Will update as necessary!
He lives on synthetic caffeine and dull anxiety these days. His title, Minister of District Affairs, sounds like a morbid joke spoken aloud. He's considering just having a bed moved into his office, because the nights he spends at home are growing further and further apart. His apartment deep in the city is all but abandoned, still dusted dutifully by the three Avoxes he's paying someone else to keep from starving; his days are divided between the office and the manor. His two duties.
Stephen is safe, at least. Safely out of the way, safely out of any risk of involvement. Those wealthy enough to do it used to send their families deep into the District wilderness when unfavorable winds began to blow, but now-- they have more guards, deeper saferooms, all within the borders of the Capitol.
No enemy will make it here, he believes. The Reagans pull together when crisis looms. Tightening his grip on Stephen and moving back in here were natural actions, nothing anyone asked him to do. His grandmother didn't need to thank him for coming, because she knew he'd be here.
There are small ways Cyrus knows to regain some feeling of control. There's nothing he can do about anything that comes down from above or from outside, and so he has regimented everything below and around him-- turned his piece of the manor into a sanctuary, where the air does not stir except with his permission. The screens come on only when he wants them on, and the broadcasts stop when the buzzing of voices in his ears becomes unbearable. The hours in which he will tolerate interruption have grown smaller and smaller. He has made a habit of watching doorways, turning his communicator restlessly in his hand, the skin under his eyes grown loose and thin in a way even makeup can't conceal, daring anyone to disturb him and feeling dull, pointless satisfaction when they don't.
But when they do--
The communicator makes the cheerful chime of the doorbell, and Cyrus looks down at it with his mouth already hard at the edges. The lines in his face deepen when he sees the name the Avox at the door has sent through.
What the hell does Compson--?
He should have called. He would have called, ordinarily. He'd wonder if Jason was drunk, but-- no, not him. You can count on him for that, if nothing else. Did Livia--? Portia--? No, why would they; their primary communication with the Compsons in the last ten years has been through condolence cards. They wouldn't...
Cyrus stops the chime with a jab of his thumb. Holds the button. Says, calm, "...Admit Mr. Compson. See him to the parlor."
He stands, adjusts his suit jacket (because he could be called away any second, and time spent changing is time wasted), and goes; he knows the number of seconds from the gate to the front door. He knows he'll be there, waiting, when Jason comes in.
What | Jason's coming to Cyrus for help. Cyrus is, as usual, doomed to be very disappointed.
Where | The Reagan household in the Capitol.
When | In something resembling a lull in the action in January.
Warnings | Will update as necessary!
He lives on synthetic caffeine and dull anxiety these days. His title, Minister of District Affairs, sounds like a morbid joke spoken aloud. He's considering just having a bed moved into his office, because the nights he spends at home are growing further and further apart. His apartment deep in the city is all but abandoned, still dusted dutifully by the three Avoxes he's paying someone else to keep from starving; his days are divided between the office and the manor. His two duties.
Stephen is safe, at least. Safely out of the way, safely out of any risk of involvement. Those wealthy enough to do it used to send their families deep into the District wilderness when unfavorable winds began to blow, but now-- they have more guards, deeper saferooms, all within the borders of the Capitol.
No enemy will make it here, he believes. The Reagans pull together when crisis looms. Tightening his grip on Stephen and moving back in here were natural actions, nothing anyone asked him to do. His grandmother didn't need to thank him for coming, because she knew he'd be here.
There are small ways Cyrus knows to regain some feeling of control. There's nothing he can do about anything that comes down from above or from outside, and so he has regimented everything below and around him-- turned his piece of the manor into a sanctuary, where the air does not stir except with his permission. The screens come on only when he wants them on, and the broadcasts stop when the buzzing of voices in his ears becomes unbearable. The hours in which he will tolerate interruption have grown smaller and smaller. He has made a habit of watching doorways, turning his communicator restlessly in his hand, the skin under his eyes grown loose and thin in a way even makeup can't conceal, daring anyone to disturb him and feeling dull, pointless satisfaction when they don't.
But when they do--
The communicator makes the cheerful chime of the doorbell, and Cyrus looks down at it with his mouth already hard at the edges. The lines in his face deepen when he sees the name the Avox at the door has sent through.
What the hell does Compson--?
He should have called. He would have called, ordinarily. He'd wonder if Jason was drunk, but-- no, not him. You can count on him for that, if nothing else. Did Livia--? Portia--? No, why would they; their primary communication with the Compsons in the last ten years has been through condolence cards. They wouldn't...
Cyrus stops the chime with a jab of his thumb. Holds the button. Says, calm, "...Admit Mr. Compson. See him to the parlor."
He stands, adjusts his suit jacket (because he could be called away any second, and time spent changing is time wasted), and goes; he knows the number of seconds from the gate to the front door. He knows he'll be there, waiting, when Jason comes in.
no subject
He knows guilt won't motivate Cyrus, that Cyrus already is feeling the weight of the Capitol seeping into his bones. Jason can see the exhaustion emptying into the minisci of those bags under his eyes and deepening the shadows. So instead they're kin, two rats on a sinking ship.
"A Peacekeeper shoved me out of the way of some "danger" he saw. Whatever it was must have been dangerous enough to be worth breaking my ribs over." He rolls his eyes and quotes his fingers and plays it off like a joke, because only Capitolites of their stature really understand how offensive and detestable it is for a law enforcer of lower breeding to lay hands on them. He looked at me with his little Districter eyes, Cyrus. He touched me with his grubby little Districter hands.
"Anyway, this is a much more minor matter. That's why I came to you." As in, it's something Cyrus might be able to actually do something about, Jason doesn't say. He doesn't have to. Just implying how limited Cyrus' power is now is enough. "It's about Augustus Sinclair. He can't keep his finances straight, and now he's going to try and pin it on me because I had the bad sense to bank with him."
no subject
Guilt about Jason's injury, though-- of course he doesn't feel that. Mutual disgust, sure, a sort of distant, familiar sympathy, his mother gasping Oh, I just can't imagine! at a party. He laughs without smiling, a short huff through his nose, which on Cyrus Reagan looks downright scandalized.
The sympathy vanishes, though, around Augustus Sinclair's name. Not because Cyrus has any quarrel with the man - on the contrary. They're not friends, but their families refer to each other as friends in company, which in the Capitol is its own discrete category of alliance. But because he's trying to see a few steps ahead into this conversation, to curtail this problem before it breaks out on him.
"You're in debt to him," Cyrus says. "Go on and say it, Compson."
Even if it isn't true-- the accusation might bring Jason nearer the truth. Jason Compson has always revealed more on the defensive.
no subject
But the way Jason's cheeks flush answers that more than Cyrus' words could. That's always been his tell, ever since childhood, a fire hydrant rush of blood as undiscerning as a mood ring but inevitably indicative of some sort of upset.
"He thinks I'm in debt to him." Jason skirts around actually admitting it, because it's one of those things Capitolite children excel at -- never naming the truth until they're ready for it to go on the record permanently. "He'll shuffle some numbers around to make it a fact on the papertrail, I'm sure. Anyway, I'm-"
(And this is the point where Jason Compson moves beyond banal criminality, in hinting at the death of another Capitolite, something he knows Cyrus isn't clean of, he just knows the way he knows that gravity drags everything down to the earth eventually, into treason. This is the point where Jason bargains with a life raft neither of them are supposed to admit they need.)
He twitches his fingers, restraining himself from one of those herbal cigarettes only because he's still trying to keep somewhat on Cyrus' good side. To subdue the impulse he turns the glass of water cylindrically in his palm like a turret.
"-willing to give you an out when things go south in the city."
Some Capitolites will be able to hide in their villas and cottages in chic areas of the Districts. But a Reagan? A Minister? There won't be enough distance in Panem for Cyrus to run away or enough wilderness to hide himself in.
no subject
After a considering pause, he sits down in an armchair across from Jason. He sits forward on the cushion, his elbows on his knees, his fingers entwined in front of of him.
"...What do you mean," Cyrus says, "an out?"
The Reagans have always had escape routes in place, tailored to various kinds of disasters. Not every vacation home or mountain getaway is chosen for aesthetic purposes; every child of the Capitol's upper crust understands that, on some level. But these are things spoken of in casual euphemism, when they're spoken of at all.
Jason is suggesting, a little too forthrightly for Cyrus' taste, that, should things go south in the Capitol, Cyrus would run. And the accusation is a dire one, however well both of them know that Cyrus has had his family's route out of here committed to memory since he was twenty years old. That's a promise that requires qualification.
no subject
And that's not even to get into how Cyrus might react -- Cyrus, who has what Jason wants, a way to stay here in this unstable city for just a little longer rather than reckon with the future coming barreling down at them like a train. So Jason hesitates, eyes sliding to the right as he formulates rather than recalls, as he crafts an answer out of all the tools Capitol children are given to talk without being caught doing so.
"I mean, there are some people who actually listen to what I have to say. I know that sounds like a foreign concept to you, but it's true."
What he's saying is that he's going to go to the source of the problem and, if necessary, advocate on Cyrus' behalf - not duck into the shadows like they've been trained to do so since the first time they walked through whatever escape routes their families introduced them to as toddlers.