#I saw the one of kirsten but i genuinely can’t recall ever seeing that one of brad in front of the pointe du lac mausoleum

[covenofthearticulate]

Me, making my entire vacation about vampires when i’m supposed to be shopping for real books at a historic nyc book store?? More likely than you think!

[dee-brief]

AN: Just when you think I’ve given up on being trash. Surprise! I haven’t. 

Warning: Brief mention of unwanted sexual advances. 

Pairing: Cameron and Camille from Freeform’s Stitchers as platonic bffs who grew up as adopted siblings. Very brief mentions of Camsten and barest hints of Camus.

Camille had been convinced, up until she stepped into the quiet, dark loft, that she’d been right in telling everybody she just wanted to be alone that night. She’d been convinced when she said it, convinced when she’d put down the phone, convinced when she’d crawled into bed and made herself lie awake and listen to Kirsten pacing around the house, imagining anger and betrayal in every noise her housemate made. She’d even been convinced when she’d gotten in her car at around midnight, convinced when she’d made a beeline for Cameron’s house, convinced even as she put her spare key in the lock and let herself in.

But as soon as she found herself, in her pyjamas in the house that was almost as familiar as the one she actually lived in, the conviction melted away and left an acid taste in her mouth, like rancid butter on a hot day. Because she could find her way around this kitchen with sleep-slitted eyes for a two am glass of water. But this was not the kitchen she’d had Liam pressed up against her just hours before, advancing and not stopping, not stopping, reaching and pushing and touching and closer and –

Camille shut her eyes and took a deep breath and repeated the words she’d been so convinced of a few hours ago. She was fine; she just didn’t want to be around anybody right then. They rang false even before she made them sound in her own head. Because while she didn’t want Liam’s hands on her ever again, and didn’t want Maggie’s subtle disapproval that she’d let Kirsten find out, and didn’t want Linus’ hurt and assumptions, and didn’t want Kirsten’s betrayal and rage and judgement, she did just want to be held. Camille stared at the lights of the city and made herself admit it: she wanted somebody to hold her. And maybe that meant she wasn’t so fine after all.

She kicked off her shoes as she went, leaving car keys and house keys on the counter as she passed. Cameron was still in his bed, the room dark, but she knew that floor and the position of that furniture like some ingrained muscle memory, and before long she was buried in his ridiculous silk sheets right against him. Camille planned to just lie there and soak up his presence while he slept, but as soon as she’d settled there was a hand curling into her hair, soothingly scratching against her scalp.

“Sorry,” she said, whispering out of habit. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

“I was awake,” he dismissed, pulling her closer. After the night air, he was almost uncomfortably warm. “You okay, Darling?”

She pressed her lips to his shoulder, the soft cotton of his shirt rubbing against her face, and forced herself not to say anything. Cameron sighed, and she knew her good-as-brother well enough to hear his heartbreak for her in the noise. But he didn’t press, and instead just kept stroking her hair and her cheek and her collarbone until the motions put her into a sort of sleepy stupor.

“Go to sleep,” she murmured to him, hoping the words were coming out as she drifted more and more into oblivion. “I’m okay. A little messed up, but okay.” His fingers stayed clenched in her hair, no longer stroking a steady rhythm but instead curling tight in a half-hearted scratching before releasing in intermitted intervals. “Cameron.”

Camille buried closer, tired, worn out, more asleep than awake and wanting him to follow her into dreams. It took her long moments to piece the clues together, but eventually her brain connected the heat and sweat of his skin with how quiet he’d been and the small shivers she could now feel zinging down his body and as soon as the link was made she forced her eyes open and sat up, swearing. His forehead under her palm was clammy and far too warm, and she swore again.

“Don’t swit-” The sentence tapered off into a groan as she flicked on the bedside light, and Cameron shoved his face into a pillow, eyes screwed shut against the light.

Camille threw the jacket she’d discarded on his floor over the lampshade, muting the light so that she could still see without it continuing to drive pickaxes through Cameron’s skull as she suspected it was doing. Even in the dim lighting he looked like shit.

“What’s wrong? When did you get sick? What have you taken?” She pushed back his sweaty hair and watched his hands as they continued to clench and unclench in the way she’d assumed was him fighting sleep to continue scratching her head but what was, in reality, an instinctive attempt to ride out some kind of pain. “Cameron? Cam.” The franticness building inside of her was leaking into her voice. “So fever. And it hurts,” she prompted gently but firmly.

“Headache,” he finally admitted, eyes still screwed shut. “Whole body just… hurts. Off and on. Linus’ niece was sick – I went over with him to her house to look after her. Probably caught it.” He grimaced deeply. “Took ibuprofen. Probably wore off a little.”

“Do you have a thermometer somewhere? I wanna take your temp.”

His fingers curled around her wrist. “Just sleep,” he mumbled. “Both of us. It’ll be better in the morning. Just the flu. Come on, Pumpkin.”

But despite his protests, Camille got up, found some more pills and made him drink a glass and a half of water and take off the sweat-slicked shirt he’d gone to bed in in an effort to bring down his body temperature. There was a half-hearted joke about her taking his clothes off, but although she played along it was mostly so she could tuck just the sheet around him and return to his side. He sighed in relief when she flipped off the light.

“Go to sleep,” he mumbled. “Just the flu. Caught from Tammy.”

“You must have picked it up somewhere else,” she insisted, fingers tracing worried patterns against his clammy skin. “Linus told me they found out Tammy had chickenpox.” Horror hit her like a ten-tonne truck, her heart clenching and sinking further and further as she could not recall any mention of the disease while they’d been growing up. “Cameron.” Her voice was forced calm. “You have had chickenpox before, right? Before your parents adopted me?”

He looked at her, face blank with surprise, and then he laughed warily. “No, I only got the special medical stuff. I guess the universe thought I was too good for the usual children ailments.”

Camille swore, loudly, and sat up to reach for her phone. He talked her down by reminding her Ayo had a life; a family she was spending time with and didn’t need to be called away from at three in the morning. He talked her down with logic that it could just be the flu.

But when, in the light of dawn she woke from a fitful sleep for the nth time and saw the unmistakable blotches all over him, nothing he could say would keep her from waking Ayo up with a phonecall full of barely contained panic.

***

Cameron’s longsuffering look was not diminished by the fever-bright tinge of his eyes, or the fact that he looked like somebody had spit red ink at him.

“You keep trying to scratch,” she told his frustrated look, continuing to secure the socks over his hands. “And when your fever spikes you don’t listen to us telling you to stop.” She didn’t add that it was a little scary, seeing him awake but not really aware, going for his skin even as he made himself bleed. Instead, she added a joke to try and lighten the mood. “I can Wingwoman From Heaven to help find people to help with some of your itches, Cammy Cam, but this isn’t one of them.”

He snorted weakly, a smile tugging on the corner of his mouth. “That was awful,” he rasped, and then wouldn’t let her kiss him on the forehead.

“I’m immune,” she reminded him.

“Some people get it twice,” he countered, before weakly batting at her with sock-covered hands, doing a terrible sock puppet show to try and distract her.

“How’s the leper?” Linus asked mock cheerfully as he entered, stopping short any retort Camille could have had. “Dude. You look like shit.”

She was tired enough and worried enough that she had to forcefully swallow the rude snarling she wanted to send Linus’ way, more aware than ever that they were in the lab where everybody could hear her and judge her more than they already had. Pointed jabs about her only being employed because she was Cameron’s legal sister tended to raise their heads at the most surprising of times, striking without warning so viciously they usually took her breath away. But she knew they would come this time; her ploy with Liam coming to light so soon after Theo had run raucous would make others question her actions and how much of her affections for Cameron were genuine and platonic. They were usually careful to toe the line in public, high school and college rumours and whispers making them realise that just because they knew the touches and cuddles and kisses were all innocent didn’t mean the world would understand. And she was already jumping over that usually carefully maintained line by holding his hand near constantly and not leaving his temporary infirmary bedside.

“Dots are in this season,” Cameron rasped back before wincing.

“So are delicious smoothies,” Camille tried, pointing to the one on his bedside. Cameron sighed and she mirrored the action while Linus hovered anxiously. “I know you’re not hungry, but you can’t not eat.”

He’d tried for them, in the beginning, bending to their coaxing eventually. But the past two days had seen him immune to even pleading and threats and Kirsten’s puppy eyes. He looked at her, half delirious and pale and spotted and drained and squeezed his eyes shut in a look she knew to be him signalling defeat against some private battle he’d been waging.

“I think,” he whispered, “it’s in my throat. It hurts to swallow.”

Linus and Camille swore almost simultaneously, and she didn’t even have to tell him to go and fetch Ayo.

***

Camille was stupid with lack of sleep, and that was why she found herself rooted in the doorway, watching the scene with numbness that barely contained the emotions that wanted to come out as a scream. Kirsten was seated beside a mostly zoned-out Cameron, patiently feeding him little chips of ice.

She had no right to feel jealous. She had no right to feel frustrated that he hadn’t forced himself to swallow the ice for her. She had no right to think of the chair Kirsten was sitting on as hers. She had no right to feel betrayed and aching and lost. They were siblings, yes, but she did not own him and could not hope that the way they’d always been with each other would survive into adulthood. She’d known from the beginning he loved Kirsten and probably always would.

You are, she told herself sternly as she marched away before anybody could see her staring, so royally messed up inside.

***

Even if they removed the socks from his hands, they shook too much for him to write or type properly. Sometimes it became necessary; sometimes he was the only one in the lab who knew how to fix the crisis suddenly happening and despite the slowly – so slowly – fading splotches and the off-and-on fever and the newborn-kitten weakness they had to come to him for answers.

But, mostly, they left the socks on so he wouldn’t subconsciously scratch and cause another infection, and they made do with a weird form of charades while the scabs in his throat were still too raw for him to be able to speak at all. It wasn’t as hard as Camille had first feared – Cameron was expressive and patient and they rarely got stuck in their communication.

“You had the banana mush for breakfast. Was it okay?” Cameron wrinkled his nose and Camille tried not to smile as she rolled her eyes. “I meant did it go down well, not did his majesty’s refined palette enjoy it or not.” He flicked one eyebrow skyward for an instant. “Okay, so passable. Want to see if a smoothie for lunch is passable, too?” Cameron looked meaningfully to the IV in his arm. “No, Ayo wants you on that until you’ve been consuming food for a few days.” His eyes narrowed. “You haven’t eaten a proper meal in a week. You were skinny as shit to begin with. That is giving you nutrients and – Don’t give me that shit, Goodkin.” His look turned into a scowl. “You’ll keel over without it. Especially since you’re nowhere close to being able to swallow pills yet. And I think you screwed up the defib the last time.”

His look turned contrite and he reached out to squeeze her hand gently. She squeezed back.

And then noticed that Linus and Kirsten were gaping at her. “What?” she asked, automatically moving to stop Cameron rubbing at the point the IV entered into his arm to try and get rid of the irritating sensation of a needle in his vein.

“You just had a full on conversation with him,” Linus said, slowly.

“Yeah?” Camille frowned.

“It took me fifteen minutes to decipher he wanted something to drink this morning. When the hell did you get fluent in Cameron?”

There was a tinge of surprised hurt to Linus’ words, and Kirsten’s gaze burned the side of Camille’s head. It hit her only then that he was right; that even though they did not live together any more and even though she insisted to herself over and over that Cameron and Camille Vs The World was a childhood necessity that would be unhealthy in adulthood they knew each other. She could tell when he was lying, when he needed to sit but was too stubborn to, when he needed to switch to tea, the differences in his frowns.

Cameron’s hand subtly touched the base of her spine; a soothing, automatic gesture he knew would make her relax. She wasn’t just fluent in Cameron; they were fluent in each other.

“You two got Klingon, don’t you?” she brushed it off, trying not to sound relieved at the revelation that he was still there or guilty at how much she’d failed at trying to disentangle her mess from her brother’s life so he’d remain unharmed by her. “Besides; I’ve known him for forever.” Since her real birth; since the day she’d really started living. He’d been there for that moment.

But despite the guilt and the memories of the promise she’d made herself at the sight of his tortured face when they’d been torn apart to go to different universities, she found herself stopping in to say goodbye before she left, waiting until Ayo gave him the grilling on what to do and how to contact her immediately should something happen overnight.

“Behave, Cameron, and I’ll see about letting you go back to your own place in a few days.”

His theatrical look of relief had both Ayo and Camille snorting.

“Heading home for the night. Try not to develop small pox or dragon pox or the black death while we’re out.”

“You okay?” he mouthed at her, not bothering with the IV line still attached to him as he sat up and reached for her. His face was concerned.

She told herself she should resist, but it was Cameron, and he was looking more alarmed by the second, and he was warm, and her bed was empty, and he was solid and understanding… She curled close to him, tracing light patterns against the fading blisters and he skin he’d rubbed raw around the IV site.

He was stroking and kissing her all over, and she could sense his anxiety as she remained silent. It took a while of just breathing him in to remember he’d asked a question.

“I’m…” Messed up. “I’m fine.” He curled her closer and she laughed a little. “No, really. I’m going to be fine. Both of us will.”

He squeezed her hand tight, and she tried not to remember how many years they’d done just this. And she tried just as hard to not whisper to the universe that not even his love for Kirsten would make him leave her; he was the one who would always stay. She failed on both accounts, and grit her teeth until it hurt while he held her and stroked her hair.