stay awake with me, you know i can't just let you be
Title: to the darkness, i say not today
Fandom: harry potter rpg
Characters: cameron caddock, oliver greenwood (minor lor, rhea, casper)
Pairing: cameron x oliverWarnings: some slightly smutty stuff, nothing actually explicit.
Summary: Cameron deals with distance and depression and learning to live this thing called life.
She puts her foot down after six weeks. SIX WEEKS. The length of time makes her skin crawl and she can't bear to think of what this dry spell means. Are they growing apart? Is that what this is coming down to?
She gets the kids to a sitters place, puts on the really dirty lingerie, lights every god damn candle and makes dinner in a old quidditch jersey that smells so much like Oliver it only makes the craving worse.
By 11pm, she's gotten an owl. Emergency. She chews her nails down to the flesh until he comes home in the early hours of the morning and she doesn't say anything, bites her tongue like she's never done before and hugs him. He mumbles something about how often their friends seem to have crises that are only solvable by liquor and she pushes him into their bedroom and lets him sleep it off.
And it continues in a sort of slightly disconnected fashion. There are discussions about Poppy's behaviour and 'did you feed the dog?' and she begins to feel it. The creeping sensation of sadness. It starts to tinge everything with its lack of lustre and Cameron knows whats happened, can feel her irrational snipping and nagging and general bad mood colouring the household. It annoys her that she's being like this and yet.. and yet..
Conversations devolve into tired arguments about the same damn thing.
'I'm sorry' begins to take on a tired, chuck and see if they'll catch paradigm that she can't escape. Apologies for what? Apologies for everything.
Oliver catches her just before she's walking out of the house to drop the kids to Rhea's for a playdate. Casper holding Poppy's hand in a divine moment of calm in their house, Oliver stops before her, wraps both hands around her wrists and brings them to his chest.
'I miss you,' and it's just. Merlin. Every bone in her body splinters a little but her head is clouded and everything feels just that bit further away. When he pulls her into a hug, she sighs just a little. Because she is the worst. She is the absolute worst. Because when things get tough, Cameron likes to make them tougher.
And she hates herself for this. For the messiness, for the emotions, for the incapability to pull herself out of these funks.
But at this moment, there is a person willing to alternate between patience and perseverance and she curls her fingers into his teeshirt and bids the fog away.
On the whole, Cameron is nothing like she was before. She knows that inactivity drives her to distraction and that the only thing worse for her soul is her head. She is better at it.
So when the inner monologue turns more wretched than usual, she will drag herself to Lori's, or meet Rhea or chat to Poppy about her day because sometimes, sometimes, it's not a week of feeling like she's hanging on by a thread but a day or even, when it's good, it's only an hour.
But life is life. And they don't call it a roller coaster because it doles out twists kindly but because they yank you up from the navel and leave you feeling slightly sick.
Which, is probably the most apt way to describe being fired from a job. It's all so unceremonious without any pretence of well-wishes and she finds herself standing outside the Daily Prophet holding a box and a cactus from Rhea (the irony was not lost on her). It's all sort of overwhelming. The street is busy and that makes it even worse.
She does a lot of panicking, a lot of nail biting before she owls Lori.
By the time she gets home, slightly drunker, a little less depressed and yet a lot more pathetic, she feels the full weight of it all slump down on her. Home is not comforting. Home reminds her that she has nowhere to be tomorrow. Home is a large house and a mortgage and now no second income and ugh, she has never really been a huge crier but her eyes get glassy and she sits on her front door stoop for a really long time.
'Mummy?'
Cameron finds herself in a bear hug as Casper crawls into her lap and sits with her. She plays with his hair until he falls asleep and then carries him up to his bed, all seven years and too much heart. He wakes up just as she's putting him down and pulls her towards him. She falls asleep beside him, his tiny hands prised tight around her finger.
'Lor told me.'
No coffee and a crick in her neck, she doesn't have any ammunition for a fight at this time of the morning and so just nods, leans against the counter and shrugs.
'You should be angry I didn't tell you.' Maybe she's learnt to preface conversations with apologies like this too so there is nowhere to go, nowhere for the anger to escalate, just more frustrated placations.
'Why didn't you tell me?'
And she aches for him. She feels every centimetre of distance she puts between them but she can't, doesn't know how to, won't do anything to help.
'I'm sorry,' she says but it means nothing. It is truly tired and haggard, nothing but a bunch of sorry consonants framing a vowel. Pathetic.
'I couldn't.. I was standing there on the street and all the people were just walking by and I wanted to call or owl but I just felt so small and it was so stupid but at least with Lor.. there's less time for pity and I couldn't handle feeling like shit on top of people telling me it was okay to feel like shit' and she wonders if this is the most she's said to him in a week and her skins crawls with shame.
'I, uh, look Oliver.. it's such a balance,' she whispers to him, uncomfortably. Everything that happens to her sticks, a syrupy disgust that spends its life seeping into her skin in the pockets of hatred she's carved over time. 'I was fine, or busy, but fine and then nothing will trigger a slip and I'll be right where I started. I'm so tired,' she says, her voice cracking over the last word. 'I'm so tired of not feeling like I can feel.'
And what do you do with a tirade like that except start to cry.
But this time, sitting on the floor of their kitchen, she slips her hand into his and squeezes tight.
The thing Cameron has never really gotten about herself is how much she can love. Her propensity for love, the strength with which she can love is her greatest weapon. She is a jealous lover. A ruthless and loyal and challenging and devoted lover but that is it. Love. She loves.
And maybe, one day, when the days are darker than the nights, it will dawn upon her that no matter what her head says, the broken record of anger, she will have this.
She protests when Oliver gets up to make breakfast, pulls him to her.
'I love you,' he mumbles, sleepily.
She doesn't believe it but she kisses him. Hard.
They say a Mother's love is healing but it is really the other way round.
It can curb the dizzy numbing and bid the ghosts adieu another day.
That afternoon she tells him about date night, feeling so self conscious it feels like she's sixteen all over again and they're standing on that stupid lake trying to tell each other they liked each other.
It devolves from her plan to watching Return of the Jedi (because you can't be in a relationship with Oliver and not be a Star Wars purist). Watching is the loose term here, but it's not like Oliver isn't muttering the lines under his breath before she rolls her eyes and diverts his attention to a much receptive pass time.
And maybe it's one of those times where she's too quiet because she's trying so hard to apologise like this, trying so hard to articulate what she will never be able to say and maybe Oliver can tell but maybe he can't. And it's slow and achingly earnest and in the end, only one of them feels any sense of satisfaction but when she says 'mine' to the sharp bones at his hips, she thinks she might have found an answer.
They try. Or rather, Cameron tries a lot more. But sometimes its impossible to schedule in time to be an Cameron and Oliver without any extra child-like appendages which more often than not are not even their children.
But sometimes, sometimes he'll catch her before she gets up to make coffee or see to Poppy. He'll kiss her. Hard.
And sometimes, he'll tell her he loves her.
Sometimes, she'll believe him.
Fandom: harry potter rpg
Characters: cameron caddock, oliver greenwood (minor lor, rhea, casper)
Pairing: cameron x oliverWarnings: some slightly smutty stuff, nothing actually explicit.
Summary: Cameron deals with distance and depression and learning to live this thing called life.
She puts her foot down after six weeks. SIX WEEKS. The length of time makes her skin crawl and she can't bear to think of what this dry spell means. Are they growing apart? Is that what this is coming down to?
She gets the kids to a sitters place, puts on the really dirty lingerie, lights every god damn candle and makes dinner in a old quidditch jersey that smells so much like Oliver it only makes the craving worse.
By 11pm, she's gotten an owl. Emergency. She chews her nails down to the flesh until he comes home in the early hours of the morning and she doesn't say anything, bites her tongue like she's never done before and hugs him. He mumbles something about how often their friends seem to have crises that are only solvable by liquor and she pushes him into their bedroom and lets him sleep it off.
And it continues in a sort of slightly disconnected fashion. There are discussions about Poppy's behaviour and 'did you feed the dog?' and she begins to feel it. The creeping sensation of sadness. It starts to tinge everything with its lack of lustre and Cameron knows whats happened, can feel her irrational snipping and nagging and general bad mood colouring the household. It annoys her that she's being like this and yet.. and yet..
Conversations devolve into tired arguments about the same damn thing.
'I'm sorry' begins to take on a tired, chuck and see if they'll catch paradigm that she can't escape. Apologies for what? Apologies for everything.
Oliver catches her just before she's walking out of the house to drop the kids to Rhea's for a playdate. Casper holding Poppy's hand in a divine moment of calm in their house, Oliver stops before her, wraps both hands around her wrists and brings them to his chest.
'I miss you,' and it's just. Merlin. Every bone in her body splinters a little but her head is clouded and everything feels just that bit further away. When he pulls her into a hug, she sighs just a little. Because she is the worst. She is the absolute worst. Because when things get tough, Cameron likes to make them tougher.
And she hates herself for this. For the messiness, for the emotions, for the incapability to pull herself out of these funks.
But at this moment, there is a person willing to alternate between patience and perseverance and she curls her fingers into his teeshirt and bids the fog away.
On the whole, Cameron is nothing like she was before. She knows that inactivity drives her to distraction and that the only thing worse for her soul is her head. She is better at it.
So when the inner monologue turns more wretched than usual, she will drag herself to Lori's, or meet Rhea or chat to Poppy about her day because sometimes, sometimes, it's not a week of feeling like she's hanging on by a thread but a day or even, when it's good, it's only an hour.
But life is life. And they don't call it a roller coaster because it doles out twists kindly but because they yank you up from the navel and leave you feeling slightly sick.
Which, is probably the most apt way to describe being fired from a job. It's all so unceremonious without any pretence of well-wishes and she finds herself standing outside the Daily Prophet holding a box and a cactus from Rhea (the irony was not lost on her). It's all sort of overwhelming. The street is busy and that makes it even worse.
She does a lot of panicking, a lot of nail biting before she owls Lori.
By the time she gets home, slightly drunker, a little less depressed and yet a lot more pathetic, she feels the full weight of it all slump down on her. Home is not comforting. Home reminds her that she has nowhere to be tomorrow. Home is a large house and a mortgage and now no second income and ugh, she has never really been a huge crier but her eyes get glassy and she sits on her front door stoop for a really long time.
'Mummy?'
Cameron finds herself in a bear hug as Casper crawls into her lap and sits with her. She plays with his hair until he falls asleep and then carries him up to his bed, all seven years and too much heart. He wakes up just as she's putting him down and pulls her towards him. She falls asleep beside him, his tiny hands prised tight around her finger.
'Lor told me.'
No coffee and a crick in her neck, she doesn't have any ammunition for a fight at this time of the morning and so just nods, leans against the counter and shrugs.
'You should be angry I didn't tell you.' Maybe she's learnt to preface conversations with apologies like this too so there is nowhere to go, nowhere for the anger to escalate, just more frustrated placations.
'Why didn't you tell me?'
And she aches for him. She feels every centimetre of distance she puts between them but she can't, doesn't know how to, won't do anything to help.
'I'm sorry,' she says but it means nothing. It is truly tired and haggard, nothing but a bunch of sorry consonants framing a vowel. Pathetic.
'I couldn't.. I was standing there on the street and all the people were just walking by and I wanted to call or owl but I just felt so small and it was so stupid but at least with Lor.. there's less time for pity and I couldn't handle feeling like shit on top of people telling me it was okay to feel like shit' and she wonders if this is the most she's said to him in a week and her skins crawls with shame.
'I, uh, look Oliver.. it's such a balance,' she whispers to him, uncomfortably. Everything that happens to her sticks, a syrupy disgust that spends its life seeping into her skin in the pockets of hatred she's carved over time. 'I was fine, or busy, but fine and then nothing will trigger a slip and I'll be right where I started. I'm so tired,' she says, her voice cracking over the last word. 'I'm so tired of not feeling like I can feel.'
And what do you do with a tirade like that except start to cry.
But this time, sitting on the floor of their kitchen, she slips her hand into his and squeezes tight.
The thing Cameron has never really gotten about herself is how much she can love. Her propensity for love, the strength with which she can love is her greatest weapon. She is a jealous lover. A ruthless and loyal and challenging and devoted lover but that is it. Love. She loves.
And maybe, one day, when the days are darker than the nights, it will dawn upon her that no matter what her head says, the broken record of anger, she will have this.
She protests when Oliver gets up to make breakfast, pulls him to her.
'I love you,' he mumbles, sleepily.
She doesn't believe it but she kisses him. Hard.
They say a Mother's love is healing but it is really the other way round.
It can curb the dizzy numbing and bid the ghosts adieu another day.
That afternoon she tells him about date night, feeling so self conscious it feels like she's sixteen all over again and they're standing on that stupid lake trying to tell each other they liked each other.
It devolves from her plan to watching Return of the Jedi (because you can't be in a relationship with Oliver and not be a Star Wars purist). Watching is the loose term here, but it's not like Oliver isn't muttering the lines under his breath before she rolls her eyes and diverts his attention to a much receptive pass time.
And maybe it's one of those times where she's too quiet because she's trying so hard to apologise like this, trying so hard to articulate what she will never be able to say and maybe Oliver can tell but maybe he can't. And it's slow and achingly earnest and in the end, only one of them feels any sense of satisfaction but when she says 'mine' to the sharp bones at his hips, she thinks she might have found an answer.
They try. Or rather, Cameron tries a lot more. But sometimes its impossible to schedule in time to be an Cameron and Oliver without any extra child-like appendages which more often than not are not even their children.
But sometimes, sometimes he'll catch her before she gets up to make coffee or see to Poppy. He'll kiss her. Hard.
And sometimes, he'll tell her he loves her.
Sometimes, she'll believe him.