#this does not bide well for my odds of becoming a mom does it

[thatscarletflycatcher]

Reasons why people want me to sympathize with Mrs Bennet: she was scared, she was doing her best!

Me, after my niece has been coughing all day non-stop (I'm not even exaggerating, a cough every 3 minutes or so): NOBODY HAS ANY COMPASSION ON MY POOR NERVES

[rorykillmore]

alright and here’s a birthday fic for @transrobro who wanted something with felix & camille!! it struck me while i was tossing around ideas for this that no one on denny has like. done anything with a post-denny au in a CRIMINALLY long time so this is sort of?? an idea for their’s??  combined with the idle passing thought that it’d be fun to write something with the two of them texting since we’ve headcanoned they do that.  think of this as like... an au happy (?) ending for them i guess....

happy birthday jay!!! i can’t put into words how happy i am to be able to mark down another year of being friends with you. i don’t tell you enough how often you make me feel better about whatevers going on in my life just by being around and making me laugh so hopefully in return i can at least brighten up your birthday a little bit with this fic!! camille and felix are another one of those “where the fuck did this come from” panfandom dynamics but i have enjoyed writing them with you SO much and i hope this pays tribute to that in some way. can’t wait to send them spiraling into disaster!,

(also as an added bonus, my mom wanted to tell you happy birthday too. she’s still grateful for the groot ornament.)

she likes the idea of a world where she doesn’t have to say goodbye to him.

To get back to normal, Camille figures she would have had to understand what ‘normal’ looked like to begin with.

But she has to admit, her life in this world has become more or less as stable as it’s ever been. She has a good, steady job and good, steady friends. Or, well. Maybe describing them that way is being generous, but she’s kind of glad it the real truth anyway. She can’t imagine many things more lonely than a world where all her friends have their shit together.

That doesn’t cancel out the important things, though. The little differences that become big, in the long run. On one of her darker days back home, Camille might have curled in on herself, might have disappeared out of sight, into herself, her skin itching as she pretends she’s not craving a drink or six.

Here, on her darker days, she finds that she usually texts Felix.

And he doesn’t ask a lot of questions. Sometimes he invites her out (he’s distinctly more of a partier than she is) and sometimes he just talks to her for a while, but he doesn’t hover, and he doesn’t ask if something’s wrong.  And it usually makes her feel a little... lighter.

Maybe there’s also something to be said for someone who you can also send random, passing thoughts to, day or night, without much fear of judgement. 

camille: [ Do you think everyone goes home eventually? ]

She hits ‘send’ and then lays back against her bedspread, tapping her fingers idly against the edge of her phone. It’s just a minute or two before Felix replies.

felix: [ I mean, everyone goes SOMEWHERE eventually? ]

felix: [ They don’t stay here ]

There’s no debating that, Camille supposes.

camille:  [ Yeah. I just meant, you think maybe some people don’t go back to the world they started out in? You think that’s possible? ]

Another short pause.

felix:  [ Why? ]

felix:   [ Thinkin you wanna go somewhere else? ]

She’d be lying if she said it wasn’t tempting. There’s not much left for Camille in her own world except painful memories, but she’s not sure she’d ever be able to forgive herself for never going back to Curry and Eileen.

And Amma.

As much as she can go back to Amma.

camille:  [ Actually I was thinking of you. ]

It catches Felix off guard. At least, that’s what Camille guesses, because there’s more than just a brief pause on his end this time. Momentarily, she wonders whether she should have brought it up at all. There aren’t many subjects between them that qualify as ‘too grim’, but... maybe the fact that Felix has even less to go home to than she does is one of them.

But then his reply comes.

felix: [ Maybe I should start looking into that ]

Camille fails to fight off a smile. Of course he’d turn it into a joke. She doesn’t call him on it, though, just rolls with it.

camille:  [ Where would you wanna end up? ]

felix:  [ You know ]

felix:  [ Someplace warm ]

felix: [ Maybe perpetually warm. But not like that global warming bullshit ]

Camille manages a laugh this time. It fills the empty space of her bedroom in a way that’s strangely comforting.

camille: [ Well if the opportunity presents itself, you can always come home with me. ] 

Maybe it’s a strange thing to say. At the very least, it suggests a kind of permanency that has always been beyond reach of the friendship they’ve formed here. Something in her chest twinges painfully at the thought of never seeing him again.

camille:  [ Sorry, I’ve had a little bit to drink. ]

Just a glass of wine, actually, but she uses the excuse all the same.

camille: [ My world’s pretty shitty anyway. ]

She doesn’t get the chance to ramble on much further before Felix’s reply pops up on her screen.

felix: [ Hey, can’t be worse than this one right? ]

felix: [ What with the truth compulsion, the body swaps, the.. whatever the fuck happened to us the other week ]

felix: [ Course I’d be down to go with you back to your batshit world! ]

Camille snorts, but some strange sense of fondness warms her chest all the same.

They don’t really talk about it again after that. They don’t need to -- it’s just a hypothetical, after all. Even still, she doesn’t think she’s imagining that it almost feels like they’ve admitted something to each other.

**

And then one day it is real. 

Camille’s actually having trouble processing the realness of it. The open rift in front of them. The hazy, pleasant, sickening image of Wind Gap’s neat little rows of houses swimming on the other side.

If coincidence still exists in a world like this, she’d say it’s coincidence that Felix is with her when it happens. They’re hanging out in her office at the Daily Planet - Felix is there on supposed MLD chief business (clearly, since he brought her coffee and a bagel) - and it just... opens. So casually, so deliberately.

Camille feels immobilized.

“Hey,” Felix’s voice stirs her, gentler than the tone he usually uses, shattering the heavy silence that’s fallen between them. “You should -- uh, do something. Before it closes. You do want to go back, right?”

Does she?

She looks up at him, feeling that odd pain in her chest again. It doesn’t matter what she wants. She should. 

It’s just that she only just now realized that she’s closer to Felix than she’s let herself get to anyone in a very long time.

So it’s a selfish question, admittedly, when she asks, “Do you still want to come?”  And she regrets it a heartbeat later. Stupid thing to ask. Terrible position to put him in. He has a job here, an important one, he’s the only person in who’s been in charge of the MLD in the past three years that’s given a damn about it being halfway decent, and what would happen if he just suddenly disappeared?

For her sake. For her world. Where mothers turn their children into monsters.

“...Well, I’ve never been one to pass up an opportunity.”

His answer jars her out of her guilty thoughts. She frowns.  “Jesus, Felix, I wasn’t thinking about the MLD. Your job. Everything you have here.”

She thinks she can see conflict brewing in Felix’s eyes. Even still, he doesn’t really hesitate. “Good things don’t last forever, y’know?”  

What does that mean?

He shrugs, seemingly answering her unspoken question as he continues, “One of these days, my rift’s gonna come to take me back. And it might not be like this. I might not get a warning.”

It’s a fair point, Camille supposes. If everyone got a warning, if everyone got a choice -- she supposes this would probably be a very different world. Still, she can’t stop feeling like her proposition is selfish. “But --”

“Camille. If it’s a choice between biding my time and waiting for something I can’t control and choosing to go with you, I...”  He furrows his brow, seeming to trip uncharacteristically over his words.  “...I mean. Your world has a police force too, right?”

Camille lets out a small hiccup of laughter. “Yeah, but. I’m pretty sure you don’t wanna work in Wind Gap.”

“Then I won’t work in Wind Gap.” Felix shrugs.  “I’ll check out whatever big city you’re working in, or... I dunno. Guess I could go just about anywhere.”

Maybe it’s dreaming big, but Camille thinks of all the possibilities Felix would have in front of him, and she likes to think it would help him. That maybe he really could be a better person. That they both could.

Besides, she likes the idea of a world where she doesn’t have to say goodbye to him.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” she jokes a bit weakly, steeling herself up to face the rift again.

Felix only winks at her.  “...So how does this work, do you think? Should we like, hold hands, or...”

She rolls her eyes and grabs his, suddenly instilled with newfound courage (or maybe it’s just recklessness), and steps through the rift back home.

**

They do get out of Wind Gap as quickly as possible, much to Camille’s relief. She doesn’t want to risk the townspeople asking questions about Felix, or worse, what they might tell him in return.

They do run into Jackie before they go, just briefly. She’s... well, she’s Jackie. She makes an inappropriate joke or two and playfully pinches Felix’s cheeks, telling him he’d better not fuck with ‘her girl’. It’s embarrassing as hell, but Camille finds that despite every complication that now exists in hers and Jackie’s relationship, it’s also one thing she missed.

Maybe, she thinks, maybe people do forgive. Maybe sometimes they even move on.

“So...” Felix smirks as he hops into the passengers seat of Camille’s convertible. “She your wacky vodka aunt, or something?”

Camille rolls her eyes as she turns the ignition. “Something like that.”

“I’m kidding. She seemed cool. Totally batshit, but cool. I think she even liked me.”

“A little too much,” Camille puts in as Felix laughs.

It’s an almost four hour drive to St. Louis from Wind Gap, so she figures they’d better settle in, maybe put on some music to pass the time. But when she opens her mouth to make the suggestion, she finds herself saying instead,  “Jackie’s the only person in that town who was ever nice to me. Or, well. Kind, I guess I mean. A lot of people in Wind Gap do ‘nice’, but they never really mean it.”

It’s strange. She guesses she’s going to have to keep reminding herself for a while that now she has someone to talk to.

“Well, maybe someday we can sit down and actually have dinner with her, or something.” Felix pauses, and Camille sees him make a face out of the corner of her eye. “If you think I’d actually survive that.”

She laughs, inexplicably touched, maybe that Felix would risk having dinner with someone just because Camille said they were important to her.  “Maybe.” She pauses. “I don’t really have a lot of people to introduce you to other than that. It’s really just... Curry and his wife, back in the city.”

Her mother is, of course, out of the question, and Amma... well, that just seems impossibly complicated.

(Is another maybe someday too optimistic? Probably.)

Felix, to her surprise, flashes her a smile that almost looks sad. “It wouldn’t be that different if we were in my world. I mean, I didn’t... really have a lot of people left either.”

Her heart sinks a little at the thought. Like her, Camille knows that Felix is used to being on his own. But she also knows - from experience - that sometimes being used to it doesn’t really matter.

Least we have each other now is what she wants to say, but she worries it’d be too cheesy. Instead, she settles for a simple, “I’m glad you’re here, Felix.”

He seems to get what she means anyway. Like usual, she doesn’t really have to explain herself to him. And there’s something a little easier about his smile when he answers, “Yeah? Me too.”

Camille reaches for her music, and finds that it isn’t even all that tempting to get lost in old memories, this time.

[mixdoyoung]

▸i wrote this for you◂

28 OCTOBER 2017

“Count the candles on your birthday cake, and know that you are brighter and more full of light than every single one of them.”

Happy Birthday, @sichengxmi. From: Kim Doyoung

He cruises through the day with poised indifference; As though it were any other ordinary day. Or at least, as ordinary as things can get with him as a flatmate. But he supposes his unpredictability is to his advantage, since people can never really tell if he's up to something or if he's just being... well, him. 

It's the usual routine:

Wake at 8AM, despite it being a weekend. Clean up. Feed the cat. Fixing breakfast – today's menu is simple – of ground meat patties with scrambled eggs and toasted buttered buns with a side of fruits; His excuse is that he's got to rush off for a last minute meeting with an editor. The morning routine is rounded off by him basically throwing Sicheng off the bed since the man is particularly lazy during weekends. 

They sit and eat breakfast, and by 9AM, Doyoung's out of the door with his messenger bag and stack of folders in hand. It's so very obvious that Doyoung has somewhere to be and work to be done. Except, he doesn't and it's all just for show. He rounds back to the outdoor emergency stairwell at the back of the building where he makes the long trek back up the building. 

There's a little bit of ledge he has to traverse to make it to his bedroom's widow ( which he'd left unlocked and open ). And it's a lack of foresight on his part, to have decided to carry out with him as many folders as he did, but he overcomes that minor hurdle by tucking them under his shirt. He makes quick work of it – having travelled this route over a dozen times by now – shimmering along the sliver of ledge to his widow and hopping into his room.

And now, he waits.

By now, he knows Sicheng's schedule by heart; And he knows that every Saturday, just before noon, Sicheng goes out – study/consultation sessions, he says. So Doyoung's just waiting for him to leave.

He's in no rush, and he merely bides his time, fiddling with his phone till he hears the front door click and beep shut in its telling way, and it's his cue to come out and play. 

❈

Cooking was a skill he'd painstakingly honed over the years since he'd gone solo; So it honestly doesn't take him as long as one would think it would to prepare and lay out an extravagant birthday feast. But he belatedly realises he'd miscalculated, and he's left with an excess of time with nothing much to do except wait for Sicheng's return.

Idling around is not something that Doyoung's particularly fond of though, and eventually he finds something supposedly productive for himself to do while waiting for his flatmate's return.

That being... writing a letter? Of cheery, sentimental birthday wishes? Perhaps?

❈   

It's odd, that Doyoung – who had the emotional intelligence of a 5 year old – would go out of his way to so meticulously plan a conspicuous, and hopefully, somewhat meaningful birthday celebration for a friend. It's something he has never done before in his life. Even he himself thinks this is odd behaviour on his part.

He's not really the sentimental type. His friends know. His family knows. 

He's not used to birthday celebrations for one, both for others, and for himself. But he supposes people can change, and he has. He use to not care. Perhaps because he was young, and caught up with whatever youthful pursuits a teenager might have; He's still young, and more often than not caught up in other youthful, perhaps more dangerous pursuits he had, but he's also matured a bit. Maybe. 

There's quite a bit one can learn from living independently from family, and away from a controlled environment such as High School. Doyoung learns, has learnt, to treasure company his friendships more; Friends are, after all, harder to make and keep once one has entered the working world, he realises. And even the most solitary, and indifferent individual grow lonely over time when starved of human contact that was more than just professional.

Not that he was lonely. Not really.

But he did miss his more social, High School days. And that was saying a lot because he wasn't even that social back then. 

❈   

Sicheng,

How did you like the birthday feast? I hope you liked it! Today is the peak of my culinary career. You'd probably never taste anything better made by me than today's feast. I know you're rich and loaded, and you can probably afford to get yourself some authentic Zhejiang Cuisine anytime, anywhere. But where would you find such variety and heart, except from moi? ( Or maybe your mother. ) You don't show it, but you probably get homesick every once in awhile right? Most people do you know? Maybe more so during their birthdays, which I suppose is usually spent with family right? I hope the food makes you feel like home isn't that far away. You know you can ask me to cook your hometown's food anytime right?

Anyways, how long has it been since the start of our cohabitation? I can't really remember. it's almost been a year right? 

I'm glad to have met you. You're messy. A homewrecker. A kinky pervert. A questionable college student, who I'm certain is going to flunk out if you don't start keeping proper track of your timetable. But you're a nice guy. And a good friend. 

Sure, you keep leaving stuff lying around and all, but hey ho! You've started being more conscious about your mess and I'm proud of you hyung! I'm making an impact on your life! Haha ~ You have stolen away half of Felix's love from me, but I guess having a mom and dad is actually better for Felix than just a single parent eh? You're one kinky bastard, but well, everyone has their dirty secrets and you're cute when you get embarrassed ( thanks for amusing me all this time ). And well, I can't speak for your college life but er, at least you know your stuff? You must be smart to study humanities in another language, and not to mention, get into Sungkyunkwan in the first place. So I'll trust in you not to flunk out. 

You know, I'm not very close with my family. And I like being independent. And living alone is great. Was great. But it does get a little... stifling at times? And boring. Life feels somewhat monotonous when everyday, you come home to an empty apartment – well, save for Felix. It's pretty quiet, I realise, when you're not around. And before you came, it must've been really, really quiet. And empty. 

Your arrival made everything less dull and more lively. And although we haven't known each other that long, I feel like you've become a close friend to me. I know you often give in to me, and let me do as I wish most times. Maybe it's because I'm younger. Maybe not. And although I don't really say anything about it, I notice it and appreciate the silent gesture hyung. Also, I know I treat you really roughly at times, and don't address you formally and all that nonsense but er, I do still respect you. I just do all of it because well, I know you can handle it and because you let me. Heh. 

Ew. I'm being so mushy. 

Ahem. So erm. Anyways, I just want to say that I'm glad you were born. And that I've met you. And that you're the one who called and decided to rent the room I had on the classifieds. You're great. And I love you.

I hope you like the camera I got you. I know you've been somewhat interested in photography for awhile now, and I'd love to teach you. It's no professional grade DSLR, but everybody has to start from somewhere. Also, I don't want to scare you with all the technical stuff too early on hah! Let's just start off with taking pretty photos together!

Love you!  Doyoung

❈

In the end, Doyoung's feeling sentimental. But not that sentimental. 

Glancing down at the meticulously calligraphed letter, he frowns. Grimacing as he roughly scribbles all over the painstakingly inked letter before scrunching up the parchment paper and tossing it aside. He can't bring himself to actually present such a heartfelt letter to Sicheng. 

Emotions – being honest about them, made him feel oh so very vulnerable. He didn't like the feeling.

❈   

There's the telling click and whirr of the front door unlocking, and Doyoung flies up from his seat.

When Sicheng walks through the door, Doyoung is there to greet him with 10 times the usual intensity and the brightest of all his smiles. He practically throws himself at the man, muttering sweet birthday wishes peppered with giggles as he playfully showers the man with kisses. And when he's done playing clingy puppy, he all but drags Sicheng over to the dining table laden with an assortment of dishes. 

And sitting by the corner of the table, is Sicheng's wrapped gift, with a simple card on top with the equally simple message: "To: Sicheng-hyung Happy Birthday ~"

In the end, Doyoung really just isn't that honest of a person. 

And in the end, he chooses to let words be left unsaid. Because he's not ready to be honest with Sicheng. Or himself. And he's not ready to be expose himself, and let himself be vulnerable. And because he's a man of ACTION, not WORDS.

But really, that's just an excuse.