Facades
Dearest @stitching-in. Happy Stitchmas in July! I took a fewprompts from your promt blog (oh MAN was it difficult to choose. My brain was just like “!!!! I WANT ALL OF THEM”), changed them around a little and combined them into this. Specifically, I mucked around with this, this and this.
I’m so sorry. I genuinely tried to resist adding my own usual flavours of trash. But they both just snuck in and became obvious-as-all-hell elements to the fic. It’s like my signature, except it’s just an awful, repetitive element in every single thing I write. I will now go and put myself in the cone of shame. I hope that you can overlook my predictability and enjoy the fic anyway? Another big happy Stitchmas in July, and thanks so much for what you do for the fandom!
Kirsten had never been much of a walking-on-eggshells kind of woman. For most of her life, it was because her Temporal Dysplasia blinkered her to the desire for such caution around certain people and situations, and in turn also made her either oblivious or simply dismissive when people tried to use the kid gloves around her. The sudden return of her emotions, first in stitch-sized helpings and then in a tidal wave that had risen up from the utter depths of Cameron’s eyes as he’d died for her in her arms, made her suddenly aware when people were being overly cautious around her. And she found she did not like the eggshell walking in the slightest.
It was true that when Cameron had managed to yank her out of her own head she’d sobbed so hard it was only him holding her that kept her from inhaling the water in the fishtank. It was also true that she still wasn’t sleeping properly; that she had nightmares she was sure Camille could hear. It was true that she’d stonewalled any attempts anybody had made to talk to her about it, saying that if she was ready and wanted to share more than the facts they already knew – she’d been happy, she’d been with her mother, she’d wanted more than anything to stay but had not – she would tell them. And it was true that she’d done the opposite of what they expected her to do, and instead of relentlessly hunting Stinger or her supposedly very alive mother she instead wiped the walls to her bedroom clean and refused to engage with any leads. That last one made her friends as thrown and confused as the rest of her behaviour, and she could practically see it written on their faces every time they looked at her that they were standing ready for what they saw was her inevitable shattering into a thousand pieces.
Along with the looks came the other little tells, like they were bad extras who couldn’t quite act to the plot of the Everything Is Normal And Okay show she was determinedly and steadfastly playing the lead in. Camille didn’t call her out on her nightmares or push her to open up, but she often placed herself beside Kristen in quiet moments, perched and waiting for something like she had the time she’d crawled into Kirsten’s bed after Marta. Linus didn’t tell her his dad had come closer to dying than even she had until almost two weeks after the event, and even then he’d sounded apologetic when he realised it had been brought to her attention that things at home for him were a slowly healing, easily reopened scab. And Cameron, usually as open and as unashamed of his worry about her as he was with every other of his emotions, swallowed every protest and suffered his anxieties in a silence that was as obvious and as painful to her as if he was yelling directly in her ear. There had been the hundreds of extra medical tests run before she stepped into the fishtank again for the first time since It, and the look on his face that had made her seriously consider the possibility he was going to fling himself bodily across the stairs to stop her getting in. But he’d run the stitch as normal, and nobody had made any mention of how much his voice had trembled in fear. It was as though the more she walled herself off, the more he did the same, terrified he’d say or do something to cause the breaking they all thought was bound to occur. She had still yet to hear directly from him in so many words that he and Nina had broken up, and that it had been because he’d come clean about cheating on her by kissing Kirsten.
Kirsten didn’t believe in the crack they were all waiting for, but instead threw herself into the logic that the more she pretended she was fine and could deal with everything the sooner the pretence would become a reality. What she did think to be inevitable was another difficult stitch looming on the horizon and coming in to shake up – and possibly shake apart – the already teetering lab. Her prediction came true in the form of another multi-victim stitch, and although this time there were only two their manner of death made their stitch preparation and the stitches themselves long and arduous. After only a few hours of sleep, smattered with the nightmares that were usual occurrences for Kirsten since It happened, the team was pouring back into the stitch lab for another long day to follow the nineteen hour one they’d just finished crawling through.
Kirsten, tired and cranky and still chasing the ghosts of nightmares, finally snapped at Cameron when he once again redlighted something as being too risky to try. She felt guilty as soon as the words left her lips, and even more so when his mouth went thin and his eyebrows furrowed. And she was still in that slump of tired-anxious-frustrated-guilty when Camille and her bumped into each other and her roommate decided to try and mix her usual upfront nature with the kid-glove-caution she’d tried to pull over it all since It.
“Stop,” Kirsten groaned at her. “Just stop. I’m not fragile. I’m not going to suddenly fall apart. Okay? I’m fine. But I’m going to explode if you all just don’t stop…” She made a gesture with her hands, something she realised she’d picked up from Camille, and hoped that it was enough to return things to the normal – the before – she was chasing so desperately.
Camille’s eyebrows both raised high very slowly, and despite their height difference she still made it look like she was looking down on Kirsten. “I’m sorry,” she said, and the note of her usual sharpness was almost a relief. “I must have missed the handbook on how to deal with situations like this.”
Kirsten closed her eyes and held her hands up in a mollifying gesture. “Sorry. I just… I can handle it, okay? I can handle all of…” She indicated the fishtank, ready and waiting for her to drag her tired body back into it. “This. And I can handle you being normal with me.”
Camille opened her mouth but then paused and turned a critical eye on Kirsten instead. Recognising the sight of being sized up, Kirsten squared her shoulders and stared right back. After a moment Camille’s intensity dropped, and she looked satisfied and, if Kirsten’s emotion detection was correct, a little relieved.
“You need to go home and sleep. I’m not done talking,” she added, when Kirsten started to protest. “There is nothing to do here except walk around and fret. Linus is working on getting another filter to make Farway’s brain make more sense. And even if he cracks it right now, the refractory period is still dragging around like a bad school day. You need to go home and sleep. And.” She paused until Kirsten made a show of quietening her second round of protests. “And you need to take Cameron with you.”
Kirsten frowned, instinctively glancing to her right where Cameron and Alex were hunkered down beside the corpse cassette, deep in a discussion. “Cameron? Why?” She fixed Camille with an even deeper frown. “I told you I can handle it.”
“And I’m trusting you and letting you in on something to handle,” Camille shot right back, an intensity in her eyes Kirsten didn’t understand. “Cameron lied – he told us he was going home to sleep, stayed here and told the others that came in just before us that he’d gone home earlier than us and had just arrived. He’s running on no sleep, no food and hell only knows how many cups of coffee.”
She looked at Kirsten expectantly after the last bit, as though the declaration – delivered slower as though it carried an especially heavy weight – would ring something in Kirsten’s head. But Kirsten had seen Cameron go without sleep before; they all had sleepless nights doing what they did, and he’d never failed to cope before. Even as Camille’s words prompted her to think back on his actions so far, she couldn’t see anything that was unusually out of place for Cameron’s actions or speeches or even the way he addressed her except the eggshell walking that had to do with It and not lack of sleep. She wasn’t denying that him lying about getting sleep was a bad thing, only that it wasn’t any worse than anything he’d done and she wasn’t sure why it was affecting Camille badly enough that her roommate was treating it as something she had to be able to handle instead of just something unfortunate and a little exasperating that was part of the job.
“He… always has coffee…” she said, unsure.
Camille sighed. “Yeah. One, two, three cups max. This is definitely more than three cups.” She stepped closer to Kirsten, still with that look on her face. “Kirsten. How much caffeine is bad for a normal person?”
“Anything over four hundred milligrams,” Kirsten answered slowly, trying to work out where she was being led. “Which is about four standard cups.”
“Uh-huh. And how much caffeine is bad for people with heart issues?” A wrecking ball slammed into Kirsten’s chest, knocking out the air from her lungs and making her insides disappear. Horror clawed through her and made her fingertips tingle, like they were remembering being splayed across Cameron’s chest and feeling only silence where there should have been a pulse. Camille was still looking intently at her. “Get him home.”
Kirsten stood at once and walked toward where Cameron and Alex still hunkered, hovering until Alex hurried off so she could insert herself in his space beside Cameron. “Hey, Cupcake.” He was distracted, staring at a graph she didn’t even try to understand, but as soon as she reached out to grab his elbow his full attention was on her. She hadn’t reached to touch him much since It and, as he had back in the beginning when she’d put up clear no touching boundaries, he had stopped himself for reaching for her, too. “What’s wrong?” he asked at once, eyes searching her face and hands reaching for her arm and her shoulder now that she’d bridged the forbidden space between them and he was allowed to comfort her with physical connection again. “Stretch? Kirsten.”
Instead of answering, Kirsten moved her hand from his elbow to his wrist, firmly placing her index and middle fingers over his pulse point. The beat was erratic and too fast; a hyperactive child on a drumset who kept changing the rhythm until it was barely holding together in any pattern at all. He glanced down to her fingers and some of the tension in his shoulders that had appeared at her distress melted away. One hand squeezed her shoulder while the other drew soothing everything is okay circles on her forearm.
“What’s… how… are…?” Kirsten didn’t even know the right question to ask, her eyes wide and her own heart picking up speed at the alarming feel of how off his pulse was beneath her fingers.
“It’s okay,” he said, voice soothing. “It’s just heart palpitations. It’s – ”
“Just heart palpitations? Cameron – ”
“I’m not in any danger. Kirsten.” He ducked his head a little so he could be sure she was looking him straight on. “It happens to a lot of people. It’s nothing to worry about at all.” She gave him an incredulous look and he pulled a face. “Okay. So they could potentially lead to heart attacks. In some cases. Which is not my case,” he added hurriedly as he saw her expression. “I’m the other end of things. The practically safe side. Been getting them for years. As I said; a lot of people get them. Like pregnant ladies.” He paused. “That was not the greatest comparison to use but – ”
“And people who stress too much and drink too much caffeine,” Kirsten added pointedly.
Cameron blinked at her. “How did…?” His expression changed. “Camille.” He shot a comically dark look at the brunette, but Camille was talking to Linus and didn’t catch it. “Now that’s just fighting dirty,” he muttered at Camille’s back, and Kirsten was suddenly struck by the suspicion that it wasn’t the first time Cameron had pushed himself that far, and not the first time Camille had noticed.
She wondered how much Camille saw of this side of things that the rest of the lab missed, and a little part of her twisted as she realised that Camille and not her had noticed this about him and had kept it to herself. But, then again, Kirsten reasoned, Camille and Cameron were the sort of close that nobody ever really talked about or even really noticed because it was so firmly cemented it was taken for granted, like the fact that inhaling would bring oxygen.
“We can’t do anything here for a while,” Kirsten started, but Cameron immediately turned back to her and began to shake his head.
“There’s so much still to do here,” he argued, tone serious. “Just because the victim –”
“And you have to be here to do all of it?” she asked pointedly. Even as he said yes – because this was Cameron and this was his lab and in his mind his responsibility down to the very last overfull trashcan – she changed tactics and spoke over him: “I want to go home.” It wasn’t even a lie. “Would you take me?”
He paused with his mouth open, staring at her and looking half suspicious that she was lying just to get him to leave the lab against his will and half pained at her final admission that she wasn’t as okay as she’d been pretending to be. She stayed quiet as he wrestled, knowing him well enough to know that even if he did suspect she was manipulating him he would take her home and try and care for her in every way possible anyway. She was proved right a few tense moments later, when Cameron’s shoulders sagged as his hands went to rub at his face in defeat. It didn’t stop him grumbling the whole time it took them to gather their things and find his car keys, nor did it stop him sending Camille looks that she answered with one raised eyebrow and an I don’t give a shit expression on her face.
The ride was mostly silent, Kirsten feeling the exhaustion creep even further into her bones as soon as she nestled into the plush seat of his car and Cameron focussing even more than usual on driving because he knew he wasn’t at his best, either.
The first time either of them spoke was when he switched on the flicker to take the route to her house, and she said, “No – your place.”
He looked at her as best he could without turning his head completely away from the road. “What?”
“Just…” She could have explained that his place was a lot closer to the lab and therefore the most logical option. She could even have tried to put a name to the twisting snake of something in her chest and belly at the thought of going back to the empty, dark house both Stinger and her mother had both lived in. Slept in. Laughed in. Instead she just repeated herself. “Please. Just take me to your place.”
The indicator was flipped to the opposite side immediately, and Cameron navigated his way back into the stream of traffic going straight. He’d always been ready to follow her directions, she realised as stupid amounts of affection and relief welled up in her at his unquestioning compliance. Even back in the beginning he’d driven her to places he didn’t think they should go to but, more than that, he’d always let her set the boundaries of their relationship, following her directions with grumbling and complaining and exclamations of caution but with a tread so steady and true it was hard to remember why there had been a time she hadn’t trusted him.
When he shut off the engine they sat in silence in the dark parking area, staring at the wall in front of them as though it was the cause of the something that was looming between them. Kirsten took a breath to explain why she’d asked to come there three times, but all of her attempts ended in a shaky, wordless exhale a few moments later. She could tell Cameron was watching her, even though he was staring straight in front of him with that look of intensity he only got when a problem before him was proving difficult and frustrating to untangle. As much as the silence was loaded and awkward, however, it was also not as bad as it could have been – it was still Cameron in the seat beside her. Still one of the main reasons she was still in that world at all.
Eventually, without a word, Cameron got out of the car and then opened her door for her. Her hair was still damp from the fishtank and the cold air hitting her and swirling down her exposed neck made her start shivering and prevented her from stopping even when she crossed the threshold into Cameron’s much warmer loft. He went straight to his bedroom, still wordlessly, flipping lights as he went and leaving her to close the door. When he returned a moment later it was with a clean towel, some of his never-worn clothes and a soft expression, and she took both gratefully and headed to his shower. Somehow, she still felt the need to scrub herself as though lying around in water all day had made her soiled with something that refused to let go of her skin. She was pink and feeling a little raw by the time she forced herself to step out, and pulled the soft, worn fabric of Cameron’s old sweat pants and hoodie over her with half relief and half trepidation.
Padding out to find him felt somehow awkward, and she went quietly and slowly, hair still dripping slightly despite her best attempts to dry it with the towel. He was still in the kitchen area, both hands braced against the counter and his head hanging low. Before she could comprehend more than the little jump her heart did at how off his posture was he suddenly retched and she realised he was braced over the trash can, and that once again she’d fallen for his well-practiced ability to function normally even when things weren’t quite right.
He caught her staring, just as he had the first time she’d seen his scar, and this time there was more shame on his face as he tried to make sure there wasn’t any vomit on his mouth. As she had back then, Kirsten remained unflustered at her having gotten caught staring. One hesitant step forward led to another, surer stride and before long she was right in front of him, eyebrows furrowed in worry and one hand rising to rest against his chest when he shifted to face her. Maybe it was just her alarm at finding him so obviously vulnerable, but she could have sworn the beating beneath her fingers was more erratic than it had been in the lab, like it had worsened since she’d started the attempt to take him home. In any case he hadn’t been shaking back in the lab, and he certainly was trembling before her in his kitchen.
He searched her eyes for a long, long moment and then covered her hand with his and squeezed before backing up and heading toward his bathroom. Left stranded in the middle of his quiet loft, Kirsten followed her instincts and padded after him. He’d left the bathroom door open, so she leaned against the frame and, this time with his wordless permission, watched him. He was scratching around in the cabinet that was worryingly full of medication, pulling out a combination that made no sense to her but that his hands seemed to do almost out of muscle memory. When she was done watching him swallow them, his eyes on her in the now-closed cabinet mirror, she gave him a small smile and closed the bathroom door.
But she didn’t leave. The thought of going too far away, where she couldn’t hear if something else happened, was too horrifying to let her move. And when there was a disconcerting sound from within and she said his name in a voice tinged obviously with panic and he tried to sooth her through the wood she half wished wasn’t there the heavy silence between them broke. She ended up sitting on the floor with her back to the bathroom door, carrying out a completely stupid, frivolous conversation about soap and shampoo scents with him as he showered, as though the action were completely normal.
They continued with the carefully casual speech as he made his way, now also sweatpants clad, to his kitchen and fixed them some food. Kirsten was now on full alert, though, and despite the aching tiredness she noticed the things she’d missed before; the way he leaned against things instead of stood completely in his own strength, the way he kept crossing one hand across his chest as though instinctively trying to keep it together, the way his lips went tight with either discomfort or actual pain every few moments. When they sat to eat she sat right beside him, almost on top of him, and although he sighed he didn’t stop her from holding his wrist in one hand, fingers firmly checking that he wasn’t going to really try and leave her again.
“You’re tired,” he finally murmured to her, when their plates were empty and her head had fallen to rest on the back of his couch.
“Mmm.” She rolled her neck so she was looking right at him. Their noses were almost touching he was so close. “So are you.”
“Bed for you,” he said gently.
“And for you.” She didn’t have the strength to make it as firm as she’d wanted it to be.
Cameron’s forehead puckered. “Couch?” They’d regressed to monosyllabic answers, and that more than anything proved to her just how destroyed both of them actually were.
She shook her head. “The bed is big enough.”
She wondered, when his expression changed and he started searching her eyes for answers, if he knew about her nightmares. Camille could have told him – they had had secret meetings about her even before It. But he also could just have known, in that uncanny way of getting under her skin and armour and into her head that he’d always had with her. Something made her remember the warm, slightly humming undertone his mind had had when she’d slipped into it; the way he looked at everything around him with openness she’d been unable to begin to comprehend back then and still struggled with even now. Eventually he nodded and it seemed natural for him to keep hold of her hand once he’d helped her to her feet. Her hair was still damp and he sat her on his bed and then braided it for her, going so quickly and deftly that it shocked her.
“How’d you learn…?” Her fingers trailed over the neat French braid in wonder.
“Trade secret,” he said with a grin.
She wanted to remind him of “No more secrets”, but knew that if she did she’d wander straight into the fact that he’d hid heart palpitations from her and she needed to be completely awake and functioning for that conversation so she could make absolutely sure he never did it again. And so that she could track down Camille and get more information on exactly what her roommate was monitoring and how Kirsten could help her do so without triggering Cameron’s inner panic at being treated like glass in any way.
Them getting into bed together was a slow, painfully awkward, emotionally charged moment, and even when he switched off the light Kirsten couldn’t get herself to relax, then he looked at her in the gloomy light and snorted with laughter, and something in her relaxed.
“We haven’t been awkward with each other for a while,” she murmured at him, and got a grin in response. “I guess we were due.”
He didn’t stop looking at her – his gaze got more intense and less sleepy when her hand once again groped for and found his wrist, fingers sliding around it so she could feel his pulse. For yet another time that evening they lapsed into silence, but this one was a lot more like the ones she remembered; soothing, undemanding, comfortable. She’d meant it when she’d told him he felt like home to her, and she knew that the feeling in her chest – the spreading warmth – meant that she was not as afraid to close her eyes as she had been since It. There with him was safe. He’d pull her back to herself – back to him – no matter where she went.
“I’ll wake you up if…” he murmured softly, and she realised he did know about the nightmares.
“I don’t think… I don’t think I’ll have any, here,” she whispered, unable to say that bold confession out loud. But she didn’t look away from his eyes, even as they widened at her words. Beneath her fingers, his pulse picked up even more. “I mean… I…” She had to explain. She had to make it clear to him why she was in his bed with her face so close his breath flittered like a butterfly’s wing across her forehead. “I just…”
“One step at a time, Cupcake,” he told her softly, and he twisted the hand in her grip so he could squeeze her fingers once, gently. “Just one step at a time. This could mean something. But it doesn’t need to.”
And just for that – just because she knew he meant it – she rolled over and fit herself into his side, feeling him freeze in surprise and then thaw with a little sigh as she wrapped her arms around him and held still so he could put his around her. She shifted her head so his heart was just under her ear and finally let her eyes close.
“I might need to come back here again. But if it… If you… if this…”
“This side of the bed is yours for as long as you need it. And just for the sole reason that you’re my best friend. Nothing more. No hidden agenda.”
She nodded, squeezed her eyes shut tighter, counted to twenty and took a deep breath. Her heart was pounding almost as fast as his, if steadier. “What if I don’t stay that way? Just your best friend?”
His only reply was to take her hand and hold it tight like a promise.
