#c; thread

Head thrown back with a groan, Chaeyeong continues forward with her rather sluggish steps and her posture not being so great. "I want to go to beeeeed." It's a funny sight to see a 28 - year old woman whining. It even makes the situation funnier if people are familiar with her stoic attitude.

Two limbs that he hadn’t meant to lose: those prosthetics were custom made, and getting the parts for them were always such a hassle. Not really a hassle for him, but moreso for the engineer who was obligated to repair and replace the missing machinery. Did he feel bad for making the guy work more? There was almost some sense of palpable shame, but it was all but drowned out by the desire to spend a week on the table in the engineer’s basement. 

It was almost like a vacation: instead of palm leaves and martinis, it was welding equipment and health nut drinks from the fridge. A different kind of luxury that Cameron was genuinely enthralled with—the icing on the cake always being the handsome man who spent the whole time invading Cameron’s personal space to fix his prosthetics.

Of course, he was never very happy about Cameron’s inability to stay out of trouble. Cameron offered halfhearted apologies, and in the silence that had permeated between them, he felt the need to reassure his friend once again.

She heard him. Chaeyeong heard him loud and clear. She just didn't know how to respond, which is why she thought for a moment to just ignore him. But she knows it would be brought up in the future. And she knows he's always right. He has always been right. But her partner has her wrapped around their finger. No matter how badly they treat her, how many times she finds herself close to tears and sleeping at her best friend's house, she still crawls back to them. "I heard you." She finally says in a quiet voice, her gaze dropping down to the floor. Her fingers finally loosen from the fist she has held for a few minutes, and she inhales deeply. "You said you would treat me better." She repeats what he said, dark hues moving back to him. "And I know I deserve better. I have always known that. You also know I can't leave them just like that." Though she has never told him why it'd be hard to leave. Until now. "I can't leave them because I'm afraid of how of a mess I will become."

He couldn’t finish the sentence, his voice fading and returning to him as an inner monologue. As one might assume, he was preoccupied: standing hunched over the sink with barely anything on, and just couldn’t muster a creative threat despite resentment building up inside him with every passing moment. 

But others, including the man who resided in the other room of the innocuous bunker, would know that Cameron’s hesitation to finish his sentence came from his good natured temperament. Good-natured, of course, towards those he was fond of, and not of the poor fellow whose blood had gotten on his favorite leather jacket.

Muttering to himself, he shifted on his feet and continued to gently sponge at the stains. So preoccupied, he hadn’t noticed the draft that seeped into the wide open bathroom door. All of his clothes were on the floor—not really salvageable from the scuffle earlier in the night—with only a pair of brightly colored briefs covering his unmentionables. 

Minutes passed, and he only grew more frustrated. Sifting through the drawers and cabinets of the bathroom proved unfruitful, and Cameron had slammed them all shut before steaming out of the bathroom. The sound of bare feet slapping against the concrete was anything but funny, but coupled with the colorful underwear and the look Cameron wore, it was a little bit amusing.

Cameron was struck by how he had left Ashiq’s house in a such a better mood. There was an elation, maybe even a delusion, that followed him to work. The residual feeling of Ashiq in his fingertips and on his clothes. The thought that he was going to see his best friend again after all these years—that someone who knew him and who cared about him was going to be in his life again.

For certain, he had already been wandering down this dark and dismal path. All under the thumb of his maniacal boss—the cunning incubus who was running a business here. so what took you so long, conelly? weren’t gonna pussy out on this one, were ya?

And there it was. The demeaning way they all talked down to him, and him putting on his carefree, affable attitude to deflect it all back. But as much as he pretended to float above the harassment and perilous working relations, all if it cut at him so deep. No wonder he drank so much when he was working so hard with nothing to really show for it—all the money was going go Lisa. He was still living out of his van when he risked his life every night. Frayed nerves didn’t suit him well at all, and he was becoming despondent with the predicament he had wound himself up in.

Work had earned him a black eye and a bloodied nose. Some scuffle with a scavenger they had caught near the warehouse. Cameron, with his psychic senses telling him to investigate a foreign body. Yet Cameron, with his mortal strength only slowing the infiltrator before it escaped. Hit across the face and tossed to the side.

None of them had even offered a hand to help him up.

It really was a shit-show. This whole enterprise. Cameron was beginning to hate it—why had he looked up to Caden anyway? He knew the guy was a total scumbag. An opportunist of plight and chaos. But for a human Cameron always had something to prove, and for an impressionable kid sitting out on the curb with a broken nose and a swollen lip, having an immortal walk by and say good fightin’, kid was some hell of an ego boost.

Here he was, a decade later, still chasing after that affirmation. i work so hard just to please, i’ll do anything you ask me, even pull the trigger.

Cameron sure as hell was paying for some poor choices he had made. In a way, he had convinced himself that he might as well burden his mistakes—where else was he going to run to after Louisiana? Kansas? California? Mexico?

All of this weighed him down as he trudged from his van to the front door of Ashiq’s house. In a dramatic fashion, he was comparing in his mind how light the six-pack was compared to his sins. A bit woozy with already one drink in him—this was a bit too much to take when he was entirely sober.

The only thing he wanted to do was to see Ashiq. Reminisce about old times. Play some games. Eat his food. The pleasant aura that radiated from his very notion gave Cameron hope for the end of his shift, and now, he was standing on the front steps, waiting to knock.

Hesitating, he wondered: is he gonna get mad at me for showing up like this? with the beer and the black eye? Maybe tonight wasn’t the best night—it wasn’t going to go like Cameron had envisioned in his head.

Still, he had promised. With a sigh, he rang the doorbell, and leaned against the wall, waiting for Ashiq.

If he could have it his way—it’d be like old times where Ashiq would fuss over him and Cameron would smile with a mouthful of blood.

These days, that just seemed childish and giving Ashiq a problem that he didn’t deserve. They had gotten older and grown up, hadn’t they?