[flood of blood to the heart and the fear slipstreams] [CLOSED]

[currupted]

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.

Comments

[whatisay]

Jason's been living in a different sort of limbo from Cyrus; with the Escorts on furlough, he's not been bogged down with too much to do but not nearly enough of it, aside from fidgeting with the smaller details of his mother's estate. It's enough to make a man paranoid, the yawn of open days begging to be filled with suspicions, and Jason's always had a penchant for persecution. He's replayed his conversation with Sinclair in his head enough times that it's become more conjecture than true recollection in his mind.

He sleeps when he can convince himself it's laid to rest, which is a lot. He spends almost as much time staring at the ceiling going over it, trying to figure out how to turn the tables, to wriggle out from the corner he's trapped himself in. The time he doesn't spend with Swann is mostly spent on this obsessive task, and yet all that he seems to have gotten from it is the fitful urge to stuff a lockbox under his bed and the glove compartment of his car with the bills he withdraws from his dwindling account.

Those small caches of money and these three options, of course. In calling on Cyrus he's invoking the first, and there's something pious about it, almost, in going from person to person for absolution.

They both look like hell. Jason's face is battered, a gouge in his cheekbone that's been stitched up and covered haplessly with makeup, which at least does a marginally better job hiding the black eye. He could probably blame Cyrus for that, if he wanted to - he did earn that and his broken ribs, which he stubbornly and idiotically refuses to take any analgesic for, in a 'terrorist attack' where the Peacekeepers just went crazy and started exploding out in public, in this city that's supposed to be protected. Cyrus is part of the cabinet, and thus guilty by association, and a barb about that is right there on Jason's tongue when he first sees his childhood acquaintance.

He wants to. He wants to preemptively lash out with any power he has before he relinquishes it into servility, until he has to treat Cyrus like the obsequy at which his independence and manhood was served up to the ether. But he doesn't, because he's not an idiot, and because he knows even by coming here to Cyrus' home instead of Cyrus' office he's tread onto thin ice.

They're both wearing suits, and somehow that lends a comical formality to their current appearance. Jason comes in and tucks his thumbs into the loop of his belt (he's lost weight, a lot of it, since his mother died, and the weathered mark of the buckle on the leather is three holes over from the one that's currently fastened). He doesn't bother with pleasantries, figures Cyrus is at least efficient enough, or dislikes him enough, to not mourn that omission.

There's a moment where he feels like he has to regurgitate the words. He feels like his blaspheming, and he has no true concept of religion, never has even by the Capitol's agnostic standards. "I need a favor."

[currupted]

Cyrus observes in himself, as though from afar, his lack of surprise: Emotion existing in negative space. No, he isn't bothered by the lack of pleasantries. He might have been more irritated, even, if Jason had attempted politeness before making demands. Who has the time, these days.

Neither of them is sitting. There's a single Avox in the room, dressed to match the color of the walls, waiting to be told to go fetch food or drink or some other diversion. It's the only observer, which means they're alone. Cyrus almost slides his hands into his pockets, and then doesn't-- it's a gesture he associates too much with Jason.

He lets the silence hang a moment between them. He stands, with no change in his expression, and lets his eyes run over Jason's face, the bruises discoloring the makeup over them, the unevenness of the stitches on his cheekbone, the hunch of his posture. He needs to feel exactly where they stand in relation to each other now; he needs to rest against that normalcy a second, for his own sake.

It's not satisfaction in his expression. They both look like shit (even if Jason looks more like shit). There's solidarity in that, of a kind. They're both bleeding for the Capitol, in their own way.

"Care to sit down, Jason?" is what he says, when he decides to. "Or are you in a hurry?"

[whatisay]

"Alright." Jason could sigh with relief that Cyrus asks him that, because his ribs are killing him. He feels as if a fist is tightened in his side, pulling everything too close together and squeezing whenever he breathes, and it's all the worse to stand - but there's a limit to how much weakness he's willing to show in front of Cyrus, and to even come here has kissed the edge of that line. So she just shrugs his lower lip like it's no big deal.

He wants this to be a hurry. He wants it to be over with, to nurse the bruise afterwards instead of suffer the blow in languorous minutes. But these situations require finesse, patience, so many virtues Jason's short on but can dredge up from the depths of his breeding.

"Get me a water and some lemon," Jason says to the Avox, treating it as the communal property it is. He doesn't ask Cyrus' permission to boss the servant around. He lowers himself into one of the chairs and folds his ankle over his knee, and then releases the first full breath he's been able to since arriving. The Avox returns with water, and Jason takes a ginger sip, then squeezes the lemon into it and wipes his hands on the warm towel the Avox automatically brought with it.

"So. We've been friends since you were in diapers." It's an absolutely laughable statement that neither of them believe, that they both know the other doesn't believe. They aren't friends, and probably never were. But they're bound together by something deeper than that, by Citizenship, by the fact that they're cut from the far edges of the same cloth. Sinclair is, too, but Sinclair's never really believed in that same shared destiny; that's how he can throw Jason to the wolves like this.

"Are we close enough friends that you could help me make a problem disappear?"

[currupted]

[If I miss a contextual detail let me know - I did my best to refresh my memory!]

The use of Avoxes in semi-public spaces is a form of common courtesy, like leaving fresh towels out in a guest bathroom. Cyrus doesn't ask anything of it, but waits, patient, standing still with arms crossed until Jason is taken care of. He notes the gingerness with which Jason sits; wonders just how bad a beating he took.

When finally he's allowed to hear the question, his eyebrows go up.

"...Well," he says, after a moment's consideration, "that depends on the nature of the problem." Which is the obvious answer, the cagiest possible way to phrase a maybe, and he knows it. "And how complete a disappearance we're talking."

He won't say no outright because, laughable as they both know it to be, they are connected. Bonds of obligation, spiderweb-thin and invisible, tie them together, and Cyrus does not take them less seriously for their faintness. He lets the silence hang a moment, in a way that says he isn't done speaking. He gives Jason a pointed once-over and adds, with languid deliberation: "Would it happen to have anything to do with that?"

Meaning: The black eye; the gouged cheek; the too-careful way he sits; the general beat-down look of him, the noticeable difference in intensity between Jason's weariness and his.

[whatisay]

"No, this is from the terrorist attack in the city. The one where all the labrat Peacekeepers went ballistic in the middle of downtown." There are two ways Jason could play this explanation: either he could lay heavy on the unspoken culpability, make it clear that Cyrus, as the Minister of District Affairs, as the official with a purview of the place where the attack originated, holds some responsibility for the cuts and bruises on the sacred blessed children of the Capitol city - or he could treat the two of them, him and Cyrus, as victims equally, all of them trapped in communal fear of events beyond their control, and try and forge some brotherhood there.

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."

[currupted]

Cyrus' jaw tightens briefly. He does feel responsibility, albeit in an indirect way; Districters do what Districters do with or without his direction, but it's supposed to be his job to curtail them. The sheepdog hemming in the sheep. The Peacekeepers' idiocy wasn't his fault, but the fact he hadn't foreseen it was.

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.

[whatisay]

He was expecting the accusation, and that's why his verbal defenses go up smoothly, polished and braced from anticipation. That's why he doesn't flinch or clench his fingers into the embroidered armrests of the chair. "And lie in the House of Livia Reagan? I don't owe the bastard two assi."

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.

[currupted]

Cyrus' eyes flick to a corner of the room. To the camera. It's the only change in his expression, his only acknowledgement that Jason has taken the conversation somewhere that less desperate times would render almost taboo.

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.

[whatisay]

Jason takes too long answering. He wouldn't if the stakes weren't so high - he'd make some flippant remark, or he'd just be honest. But there's a camera in Cyrus' home, microphones hidden in the walls, and Jason's certain that one word wrong, one combination of phrases that trips a logarithm in Peacekeeper Headquarters' system, would be enough to bring the rabble even into a home like this.

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.