#twaunet

and like, the, “la, shipping it all alone” point is fair because it’s a crack ship af, and it can never not be a crack ship af, based entirely on how Camden doesn’t actually exist as a character in canon. he exists as two offhand references — the Sheriff and Stiles in Raving, “did you know that Isaac Lahey had an older brother named Camden” “*looking at the file* died in combat…”

and establishing that he was on the 2005 [“2006”] swim team; and Matt to Scott in Fury, during his big Why The Villain Is Doing These Things backstory speech: “then Camden — Isaac’s jarhead brother—” and establishing that Cam was the particular underage drinking teenager who threw Matt in the pool in the first place—

which, incidentally? is also why I’ve put more work into this ship by default. I’ve had to wholesale make up half of it, based on: two little tiny references in canon; the canon that we see with Isaac, and him and their father; some headcanon that Astrid and I cribbed from Daniel Sharman because we liked it; the process of headcanoning back and forth with Astrid until we have no idea who came up with what thing first; the stuff that she legitimately definitely came up with first

(like, her math on how and why the Laheys are very likely to be rich enough that neither of them would actually need to work… except they would get bored; and rich enough that they can and do give out some kinda jaw dropping tips, like $50-$100 tips on dinner bills that weren’t even that much, and? don’t really notice it??); and working with random stuff that comes up while I’m free-writing or daydreaming or similar

(this money thing is never an issue when Cam dates Derek, since the Hales are similarly loaded… but it kind of becomes an issue when either Lahey dates Scott, who?? is… really not used to this level of wealth or the idea of just having the cash to drop on a new Kindle just because you want one, or to spend on pretty damn extravagant presents for your friends and/or significant other(s) just because you felt like it, or to get a new phone because yours fell out in your ex-boyfriend’s car and Derek maybe kind of beat the Hell out of it in a rage-tantrum that… uh, well, he doesn’t actually really recall most of it, but, uh…

first, he had a fight with Peter, then another one with Laura, then he found your phone in his backseat with his lost wallet and the handful of spare condoms that fell out of your jacket pocket, and he wanted to go through your phone to see if anyone knew or figured out that you two are sneaking around again and if they were trying to give you another Derek Hale-vention until you remember to be broken up with him, but he tried every significant four-digit code he could think of that had anything to do with Isaac, or your mom, or himself, or you — or well, he had a list ready but your phone locked up on him after too many failures and he kind of threw it at the wall in frustration and that’s about where his memory of the incident gets all fuzzy*)

which is all sort of talking around the big point here, which is… while I realize that my crack ship being a crack ship means that I can do basically whatever I want? …there’s at least one thing that I can’t do, and that is have Cam and Derek be anything BUT a total fucking disaster

like… okay, random tag babbling spats where they’re ostensibly functional? …nah. those are wishful thinking, at best, and not actually

even when things are nominally going well with them, they’re still the sort of people who have really screwed up relationships with the boundaries between sex and violence, and telling when any example of either becomes Not Okay because of that interplay — just… they’d be fucked enough between just Peter, Talia, and Edmund Lahey but once you start adding in other factors?

like, for example, Kate (since even in AUs where she and Derek have a wholly consensual relationship without any deception or murdered families or hunters vs. werewolves bullshit, just… like, okay, if Cam and Derek are a hurricane of a relationship, made of bad decisions and self-destructive tendencies that all get turned, then Kate and Derek are the fucking Chernobyl of bad relationships, mkay, even in situations where everything is consensual between both of them? they are Ron Swanson and Tammy 2……… but WORSE.

when they get together, they go from zero to, “hot mess of a black hole that is going to drag everyone down with it” in the space of about three seconds. they are a fucked up relationship where neither party gets that, “we acknowledge that we’re fucked up and both of us like it” does not exempt them from responsibility for anything — especially when they start hurting other people in their lives, which always inevitably happens with them),

or factors like how Cam and Derek both have totally fucked up relationships with ideas of sexuality and masculinity and the interplay thereof,

like the fact that both of them are abuse survivors but manifest it in very different ways, like the fact that the line between sex and violence doesn’t really get wibbly-wobbly with them; it more turns into a semi-permeable membrane with very vague definitions that are basically non-functional because anything can get misconstrued to be near about anything else,

like the fact that they are both slightly craptastic at consent but, again, in very different ways… very different ways that are a perfect storm of, “oh god this can only end BADLY” (meaning: Derek sucks at fucking ASKING about consent beyond the freaking bare minimum and Cam sucks at grasping the concept of, “okay but really? your consent > Derek’s potentially hurt feelings, and you know this in [almost] every other sexual scenario you’ve ever been in, so you should know that you are not in the wrong for holding Derek accountable for it when he fucks up with regard to consent”)…

just… the thing about Cam and Derek’s good times is that it’s peace based on a lie. Derek Hale is the fucking Adrian Veidt of romantic entanglements, in that he helps to cultivate this atmosphere where everything seems okay… but it’s not…

and the big lie he tells sustaining this is that… well, but he’s an abuse survivor, too, and he would never get to be anything like Peter, and Cam’s known Derek since they were kids, he knows that Derek isn’t *really* like that, Cam KNOWS him, they’re just alike really, and for real, like? …if Derek were anyone else, Cam would call this what it is (i.e., “the deeply manipulative bullshit of an abuse survivor who doesn’t see or get that he’s becoming an abuser himself”).

as soon as Derek gets laying into or taking advantage of anyone else but Cam, he’ll call it what it is.

………but as long as Derek’s only laying into or playing head-games with Cam, then Cam has a huge blind-spot shaped just like Derek’s bullshit

and they’re just the sort of people, in the sort relationship where they can’t be anything BUT passionate (this being a very bad thing sometimes) — and where they make each other playlists with “Heart-Shaped Box,” “Give Me Novocaine,” “Maybe This Time” from Cabaret, “How Soon Is Now,” “Sex and Violence,” Saliva’s “Always,” “Samson,” “Don’t Fear The Reaper,” “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Kiss With A Fist,” and “This Love (Will Be Your Downfall)” on them

—and where they end up on post-coital trips to the ER often enough, and they do this often enough, on enough of Melissa’s shifts, that she eventually feels like she has to separate them so she can privately ask Cam if their whole, “we had angry passionate bodice ripper quality rough sex and it went too far but was never anything but totally consensual” story is bullshit (and in fairness to Melissa here? sometimes, is *IS* bullshit. and while it’s usually not bullshit when she’s asked about it, Cam has lied about it to her before.)

(fuck, he usually lies about it *to Derek* because he has a big blind-spot shaped like Derek’s bullshit — at least when it’s only being applied to him — and because he is super vulnerable to Derek saying that he’s sorry and he didn’t mean whatever he did [which has included, “the one time when they accidentally learned that Cam is into breath-play and even Derek was like, 'maybe we should go to the ER instead of fucking’ but then Cam kissed him and he decided that… oh okay, no, they can wait for this ER thing until after they have sex first”],

and/or to Derek pleading about how Cam knows he’s not really like that, and he loves Cam, he swears he didn’t mean it, let him make it up to you okay… and sure, Cam does know that he COULD tell Derek that things got not entirely consensual… but then it’s like? there are always Things that Derek just doesn’t talk about regarding his relationship with Peter — the specifics are up to change based on the AU but it’s always bad, and this has a lot to do with how I do not believe that Peter Hale is above incestuous sexual(ized) abuse, or using it as a way of exerting power and control over Derek — and Cam usually has Suspicions but doesn’t know the whole story?

…but the Suspicions are usually more than enough to make him feel pretty freaking sure that Peter’s probably creeped on Derek in the same way that Peter sexual(ized)ly creeps on Scott and Lydia and Isaac and…… pretty much everyone who Peter gets left alone with (except for Laura and Cam, since they’ve been the ones there for Derek for the longest, and they’re the ones who’ve done the most in going, “NO. Derek, NO. Peter is the fucking WORST, he’s NOT right about you, and you DO deserve better, you CAN be someone other than who he says you are, etc.”)

so, loving Derek as much as he does — not even exclusively in a romantic way, since… I mean. even at points like, “the time not that long after Eleanor Lahey died when Cam broke Derek’s nose… because Cam broke his rule about not using the word, 'bitch’ as a misogynistic slur and called Talia Hale, and I quote, 'an ignorant, willfully oblivious, child neglecting, emotionally manipulative bitch, who obviously doesn’t give a fuck for Derek or Laura, or else she’d let Laura just BE HERSELF, and she’d ACTUALLY take the time to BE DEREK’S MOM'…

“so Derek kinda lashed out with, 'well, at least she didn’t just wake up one morning and decide to fucking GIVE UP, take the coward’s way out, and just fucking ABANDON ME'… and… oh god no, Derek honey, no. the last thing you want to do when shooting off at the mouth about Cam’s mom, and especially not if you feel like bringing up how Eleanor died by suicide, is EVER speak ill of her, or EVER IN YOUR LIFE say that she was weak or that she was a coward… like?

“tbh, even given werewolf healing factor powers, Derek is lucky that Bennett and Tucker were right on-hand to jump in and bodily restrain Cam from going at Derek any more than that one nose punch (not least since… they had good reason for thinking that Cam was well past the point of, “rage where he’s gonna do something that he regrets a lot later”), because Cam probably wouldn’t have stopped hulking out all over Derek for this without someone holding him back or cold-cocking him or chloroforming him or SOMETHING

“……they could not keep him from kinda sorta screaming at Derek to fucking take it back, take it FUCKING BACK RIGHT FUCKING NOW DEREK, and then NEVER talk about Cam’s Mom EVER AGAIN because you have NO IDEA what she had to live with, and you have no idea what kind of horrible pain she was living in EVERY FUCKING DAY, she was the single strongest person in the universe for how long she kept herself alive, and until YOU’VE dealt with the same thing she did, YOU HAVE NO FUCKING RIGHT TO JUDGE HER LIKE THAT YOU IGNORANT FUCK, etc etc.…

“but, uh…… at least THAT part of the situation? well, Cam’s heart was in the more or less right place and he DID love Derek, but he loves his Mom more than Derek and he only rarely feels any sense of guilt about admitting that — as in, he probably won’t be so on the nose about it, but it’s pretty obvious from spending enough time with Cam that Isaac comes first, Eleanor comes second, and everyone else comes third or lower (and more often than not, his significant others are easily outclassed by his platonic friends like…… sorry, guys, but……

“well, in all due fairness here? Braeden was here first, she and Cam just kinda Get each other in a way that’s like magic, that’s all there is to it, and you’ve never gone out with him on Halloween, in matching ‘cute af minidress Kirk and Uhura’ costumes. …I don’t have the link to the fanart that inspired this rn but it’s a reboot!verse Trek piece where Kirk joins Uhura in wearing the minidress-style Starfleet uniform… and while Cam has a history of being the third wheel to whatever Erica and Isaac are doing for Halloween — the Meowth for their Jesse and James, the Renly for their Loras and Margaery, etc. — his newer history is doing cute matching costumes with Braeden)

“and just… breaking Derek’s nose never meant that he didn’t LOVE Derek; it just meant that Derek stepped out of line with how he talked about Eleanor and hit Cam in one of the emotional places where you do not EVER want to hit him”

— so all up, just… Cam is an object lesson in how Love Makes People Do Very Ill-Advised Things, and given how much he loves Derek, and how he has his Suspicions about all the things that Derek hasn’t told him about Peter? things really don’t go well, when it comes to Cam and Derek and talking about things that Cam thinks might upset Derek, even though Derek is in the wrong and kind of needs to be told so

so, in a sexual situation where things started consensual but got to be less so, or where Derek didn’t really do a good job of checking in about consent and it had a negative effect on the whole thing, or where things are murky because Cam doesn’t even really know for himself where the line is between whether or not, they end up not talking about things that they NEED to talk about because Cam doesn’t want to make Derek feel like shit when [Cam assumes that] Derek didn’t mean anything or know what he was doing

[which, to be fair, he usually didn’t, because he usually wasn’t thinking, period, or possessed of any intent beyond the immediate one of really wanting to keep having sex; and Derek… is bad at consent, and he’s really bad at being aware of situations where he needs to be more attentive to it, and a lot of this comes out of how Derek’s understanding of consent has been shaped by years of abuse by an uncle whose attitude about consent is, “lol it’s optional”]

and well, since Derek didn’t mean anything by it or even really know what he was doing, this isn’t really his fault, so… ultimately, he, Cam, [insert self-victim blaming rhetoric about consent that Cam would realize is bullshit if anybody else but him said it about anyone else, including Derek, but since he’s saying it about himself and Derek, it now magically isn’t bullshit. because magic]”)

……and this is the shit happens when things are *GOOD* between them — you don’t even wanna know what shit is like when things with them are BAD.

and… on the other hand? Scisaac… I like them with issues, I can’t help it? ……but they aren’t THIS level of train-wreck (usually) and they can actually be happy together without it being a giant lie based on Cam ignoring (and sometimes being outright lied to about) Derek’s bullshit in the name of, “but that’s not REALLY him, that’s what Peter and Talia put him through, he hides the REAL Derek under layers and layers of swagger and posturing and stubble and black leather because he’s so scared and secretly in pain all the time and he doesn’t want to get hurt anymore…

“but he’s DIFFERENT with ME, no one else really GETS IT okay?? it’s not their fault, because he doesn’t want them to get it, but I swear that he’s not like this normally and I know him, I really know him, he’s in so much pain, he just needs me to love him… yes, he IS SO *TOO* different, okay? this isn’t him, the guy he acts like — that’s just an act okay — he’s actually really sensitive and sweet and a total dork and when I can’t sleep, he stays up and reads me Lord Byron, and Neruda, and Siken, and Auden, Walt Whitman, Gertrude Stein, and Audre Lorde, Richard Bruce Nugent, and Frank O'Hara…

“and he’ll even read from A Streetcar Named Desire, The Importance of Being Earnest, The Vampire Lestat (this is usually Derek’s pick, not Cam’s, but Cam doesn’t care because Derek reads it pretty), and Prisoner of Azkaban (or any of the other ones but Cam and Derek are losers who are super partial to POA), and he does different voices for the characters, and and and but??

“but he’s read me Wilde’s Salomé in the original French at fucking one in the morning because I had a nightmare about my mom and couldn’t get back to sleep, okay, he’s not like you’re making him out to be with all these problems where he’s acting like Peter allegedly, and he’s not hurting me because I said he’s not, I seriously don’t feel hurt, okay?

“I don’t feel hurt

“I don’t feel HURT.

“i do NOT feel fucking *HURT*, okay? I’m fine, he’s fine, we’re fine, it’s all fine, I have no idea what you guys are talking about, Derek loves me and he would never do anything to hurt me, it’s not like that, I don’t even know why you’re all sitting me down like this is an episode of fucking Intervention, why are you all acting like this is serious when it’s not, it isn’t SERIOUS, I don’t feel hurt………”

and for Derek’s part here, it’s just… most of the time, he doesn’t mean to hurt Cam or be a douchebag or anything…… MOST of the time. there are things he does where he just doesn’t know that what he’s doing is wrong, and half the time, Cam doesn’t tell him (this is based on the assumption that Derek does know that what he’s doing is wrong and why and he feels bad enough already). for most of the other half the time, Derek feels like his latest fuck up, whatever it is he’s done, is very likely justified for SOME odd reason or another so he just doesn’t listen… or else he tries to listen but he and Cam are using very different working definitions of the words that both of them are just taking for granted, so they walk out of any given attempt at a Talk with WILDLY different ideas about the fuck what they just talked about, and just

jfc, I just

……see, the thing about Derek Hale is that, even when he is not ACTIVELY being a total douchebag (i.e., deliberately doing things that he knows are wrong or hurtful to others and/or should be able to tell are wrong or hurtful to others and/or can legitimately be held accountable for because maybe he’s a little off in his understanding somewhere in the equation, but for the most part, he’s not; he just decided to value something of import to him over things like,

“uh, strictly speaking, Derek? you really probably shouldn’t just emotionally manipulate your boyfriend into things, especially not if you do it with no apparent second thoughts — like, that’s just taking a Bad Thing and making it WORSE — and double-especially not if you then HAVE SEX WITH HIM IMMEDIATELY AFTERWARD, even if the sex and the manipulation are not technically related to each other”)?

like……… he could be on his bestest of all possible best behaviors and more or less on a Good Path where he’s being considerate and respectful and NOT engaging in any of his fucked up behavior patterns…… and it’d still just be a matter of time until he slips and forgets to check himself and starts fucking things up and not really caring about other people — or remembering to force himself to put himself in their shoes until he actually gives a crap how his actions affect them (or comes up with at least two possible readings of his actions that do not agree with his own) — again.

because lashing out at people and looking out for himself above all others (with a distinct pecking order of Favorites who get dragged into his considerations sometimes, in order of how favorite they are) and doing things without thinking them through? …these are all defense mechanisms that Derek has learned and acquired through a lifetime of abuse, and they’re so ingrained in his behavior that he often doesn’t even see himself doing them? like, it’s a situation in which you want to say, “Derek has the self-awareness of a rock and that’s an insult to rocks"…

but the thing is that you CAN’T?

because it’s NOT actually an insult to rocks

because, by its most basic very nature, the statement, “Derek Jeremiah Hale has the self-awareness of a rock and that’s an insult to rocks” takes for granted the assumption that Derek and rocks are playing the same game, when actually? if rocks are playing baseball, then Derek is…

…well, Derek is probably putting himself and everyone else through a grueling surreal nightmarish decathlon from Hell, in which the ten events are: all-night chess-risk; strip poker with Derek’s own personal endurance challenge rules; extreme Scrabble; Dance “Dance 'til You Drop” Revolution; a trivia contest with very few explicit right answers; “last person standing” fight club showdown matches; mystery dinner theatre, where the story is based on Cardassian enigma tales, where all of the suspects are equally guilty…

but you have to figure out who’s guilty of what before someone else figures out what you did and turns you over to the Obsidian Order; a twenty-three-mile run through treacherous and very dangerous woodland terrain with at least three slasher movie serial killers on the loose and no working cell service; one of those, “make three distinct looks based around a theme and walk in the first annual Rupaul’s Something or Other Drag Ball” challenges from Rupaul’s Drag Race; and pairs exhibition skate ice-dancing.

just… it’s pairs exhibition skate ice-dancing where you don’t know who your partner is or what song you’re skating to until an hour before you go on

like……… Derek and rocks are not even vaguely in the same sport right now. if rocks are doing the halftime show at the Super-Bowl, then Derek is on the other side of the town like twenty miles down the road, past the old library, wandering around outside the vintage movie theatre over in the de facto LGBTQ+ neighborhood, wondering where he missed his turn and why there are a bunch of hot people in sparkly underwear, heels, and fishnets, being loud and hugging each other and singing songs he thinks he’s heard at Cam’s before, as they all meander into the theatre (also, who is Rocky Horror, is he at all related to Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky or what, because Derek doesn’t know)

naturally, there is a reason for Derek’s total lack of self-awareness — TL;DR: Peter encouraged it because it made Derek more malleable and less obstreperous, and even if he hadn’t, Derek probably would’ve learned it anyway because when getting angry about something doesn’t work or help him make it stop, then his second line of psychological self-defense is making himself emotionally shut down and dissociate from it as much as he possibly can — but… that doesn’t really help anyone who tries to have ANY kind of a relationship with him, romantic-sexual or otherwise.

like, I mean it. Peter hardcore exploited Derek’s attempts at dissociating and being emotionally vacant, and used them to pretty much ruin Derek’s relationship with his Dad (who was really kind a hapless, misguided but well-intentioned loser who got told, “no, Byron, I have Laura handled, you just go play with your bird-houses” by Talia

and, “no, Talia’s Husband, it’s totally fine; my sister told me to look after Derek so you could go and play with your bird-houses and well, we’re getting along just fine, aren’t we, Little Champ” by Peter,

and then he didn’t realize how bad shit was getting with Talia fucking up Laura and Peter fucking up Derek (different kinds of fucking up, and Talia’s wasn’t intentional but… still) until way too late to stop a lot of the damage because Derek and Laura learned that they didn’t need him and shouldn’t ever admit when this might not be true…

so by the time Cora was born, Byron Hale just went, “OKAY THIS ONE IS MINE I GET TO HAVE A REAL RELATIONSHIP WITH THIS ONE AND IT WON’T SUCK T.T” and blatantly favored her in a way where he kinda stopped trying to intervene with Derek and Laura because… his feelings were hurt and he got easily distracted by the baby who didn’t hate him like he thought Derek and Laura did, and allowed himself to miss a lot of the signs that his other two kids were Not O-Fucking-Kay,

and by the time he DID get the message, his hands were kinda tied by the fact that Derek and Laura professed to be just fine without him and to not need his help or particularly want it, just… whatever, it’s fine, okay, why don’t you just go play with your bird-houses or watch the Ralph Bakshi Lord of the Rings with Cora again, Dad)

so, uh… basically, there is always at least SOME potential for Derek to slip and go back to acting like he did circa seasons one and two because actually making any REAL AND LASTING progress requires him to attempt self-awareness — and I mean, ACTUAL self-awareness; NOT, “Derek broods and circular thought processes himself into a hole about his feelings and his problems”; like, he needs self-awareness that appreciates himself as a part of some larger context and appreciates perspectives other than his own — and his ability to do this is seriously impaired by the long-term effects of what Peter did to him and how he learned to cope with it and how Peter used Derek’s own coping mechanisms to groom him further

TL;DR: there is LITERALLY NO WAY that Cam and Derek can be together and NOT be a total fucking DISASTER.

even if it seems like they have their shit together this time and everything is happy, DO NOT BELIEVE IT, because they don’t, they never do — and given that one of them is very pro-therapy when other people choose to seek it out but VERY VERY AVERSE to the idea that he needs it himself (Cam) whereas the other one practically repels mental health and will be a difficult patient for even the best and most capable of all possible practitioners of the psychological arts and/or mental health related caregivers (Derek), the chances of this ever NOT being the case are minimal, at best.

with, “minimal, at best” being a nicer way of saying, “no real chance in Hell but by all means, feel free to keep dreaming”

they are a perfect storm of issues and bad decisions and complementary coping mechanisms of sometimes dubious efficacy and healthiness and, in the end? it’s just??

…true, this storm is objectively way worse for Cam, since he’s the one who’s getting misled, lied to, emotionally manipulated, put in situations where even he isn’t sure whether or not he actually consented to that sex that just went and happened, etc., and even in all human AUs, he’s the one who gets more attention in the ER on any given visit because, while he CAN hold his own in a fight against Derek (and while Cam will definitely TRY to fight werewolf-as-per-canon!Derek, even when he is still plain vanilla squishy human), Cam… doesn’t LIKE fighting Derek.

like…… that one time he broke Derek’s nose? that was totally heat of the moment rage of, “DON’T TALK SHIT ABOUT MY MOM OR BE A SHIT ABOUT HER SUICIDE, YOU FUCKING DICK” and Cam was under rather a *LOT* of duress at the time. on a normal day, when he is not actively grieving his mom and actually got sleep last night, he doesn’t WANT to hit Derek back, even in self-defense, because, like?

yes, he’ll DO IT, since… if Derek is itching for a fight, getting him to back down is next to impossible — and he is, unfortunately, really good at luring Cam into fighting him without it being obvious at first — but… Cam knows about Peter. not ALL of what he did, no, but enough to make him feel like shit whenever he and Derek get into it with each other, and to make him try to defend himself as non-violently as possible

I mean…… there’s a reason why Melissa assumes that their, “consensual rough sex story that went too far” story is bullshit at… pretty much every interval where she hears it? and that reason is NOT, “they both look like they were put through a pretty equal amount of physical Hell”

………but even given that it’s objectively worse for Cam here? there are also a lot of reasons why it’s bad for Derek and…… true, most of those are of the formulation, “Cam’s refusal to properly hold Derek accountable for X bullshit thing he does because of this assumption that doesn’t matter if Derek only does it to Cam? …yeah, that enables Derek in X bullshit behavior and means that he just keeps doing it to people, in addition to never actually dealing with his problems about why he does it”

—but the major point here, for me as shipper? is that OH MY GOD, this is NOT a relationship where Cam and Derek have found someone else whose demons play nicely with their own and sometimes it gets hard because recovery is a non-linear process and there’s some shit in their lives that these two will probably just never “get over,” or “recover from,” period — but they love each other and that makes it okay and enables them to find healing and happy shit and the promise that life can get better, no matter how bad our losses; that it can be good again

no, see, this is more like a relationship where Derek’s demons are in a perpetual fight with themselves, and they take it all out on Cam’s demons because Cam’s demons are there and convenient and alternately fighting them back or trying to get them to chill out a little and just let Cam love them, and well, Cam’s demons just kinda take it because they think they can actually help Derek’s demons and they want to help Derek’s demons and there are a lot of points that they’re confused about but they keep making out with Derek’s demons and thinking this might help with things

and then Derek’s demons just totally up and burn Winterfell to the fucking ground, and half of Cam’s demons are like, “??? but why” while the other half are like, “fucking shit god-fucking-dammit why didn’t we see this fucking coming,” and Derek’s demons still get Cam’s into bed with them anyway, all because they teared up and made a sad face and swore that they didn’t mean to burn Winterfell to the ground, it was an accident

and y'know? …I love this dynamic for a lot of reasons I don’t feel like introspecting about right now, but? …sometimes, it gets way too emotionally exhausting, WAAAY too quickly, and compels me to, say… have Derek go join the Night’s Watch in a melodramatic huff (partly because he thinks Cam will come and stop him, partly because Jon Snow did it and that means it’s COOL)…

while Cam instead hits it off and inexplicably makes friends with the beautiful Braavosi sell-sword captain who shows up in the Reach, escorting two runaway little ladies from the Vale (Braeden being the sell-sword, with Allison and Lydia being the runaway from the Vale), and totally joins King Renly’s Rainbow Guard with Isaac, Ser Loras, and Brienne, and is Super Interested in the cute little Stormlands bastard who one day shows up at King Renly’s side,

with Renly being all, “okay, gang, this is Scott Storm, the son of Melissa Sand, a healer and Prince Oberyn’s paramour’s cousin, and Lord McCall, my big brother’s King’s Justice. I know he’s only like Isaac and Loras’s age, but he’s gonna be our new Master of Whisperers now — he totally proved himself to me, and only Margey and Loras are allowed to question me on this, so you lot be nice or I’ll be very upset with you, and… Everyone, Scott. Scott, everyone. Let’s all have fun tonight to celebrate both our honored guest, Lady Stark, and Lord Storm’s appointment to my small council. :)”

but anyway… yeah. just. as I was saying: collectively, Cam and Derek have NEGATIVE chill. that is, any chill they might accomplish individually? goes right down the drain when they’re together, and… I mean, I’m not NICE to Scisaac or anything because I am terrible and I *LIKE IT* when my babies cry…

but at the same time? they get to beat my fucked up crack ship because I can actually get any kind of chill with them, which is something that I cannot say for Isaac’s and Laura’s brothers

also? the SINGLE WORST PART is that it doesn’t need to be like this. if the two of them would just NOT HOOK UP in the first place, they could just STAY what they were in childhood and adolescence — i.e., rather dysfunctional best friends but in a way like, “we put the FUN in dysfunctional; yes, we’re totally bickering at each other in a way that would put movie!canon Remus and Sirius to old married couple shame

“(though we do not outshine book!canon Remus and Sirius, and Cam keeps trying to make us fit his slightly misidentified vision wherein he is Remus and not Sirius, when actually, there really isn’t a good analogue for us in the HP 'verse, since most of the characters we actually resemble on an individual level do not get along, or at least don’t have a relationship, and we’re really only anything like Harry and Ginny in Derek’s headcanon where Cam gets to be Ginny because of… some? reason?? or other that?? tbh only makes sense to Derek)

“……but okay really, seriously? we’re arguing but we’re fine, it’s all fine, this is just kind of what we do”

……I mean, they could at least make this all work out for a while and if they broke up at any point, it could be in a way less messy, “we’ve grown apart and Cam is kinda deeply disturbed by what’s become of Derek and he can’t just keep covering for Derek or acting like it’s all fine for the rest of their lives” way that, even in its various hurt feelings, would at least NOT have the same world-shattering sense of betrayal that Cam ends up with when they get all romantically and sexually entangled, and he lowers his guard in a romantic way, and Derek does SOMETHING or other to take advantage of this or to throw it back in Cam’s face, and so on and so forth — they could avoid ALL OF THIS if they’d just NOT try to be together

but no.

that almost never happens.

and as soon as one of them goes, “hey you know what we could do? we could, like, totally try fucking and/or dating each other” and gets the other one to go, “you make a compelling case, [name]”? as soon as someone kisses the other one, or gets bored and suggests a blow-job, or whatever, there’s no un-ringing that bell. they’ll be in love until it kills them both

—or at least until one of them ends up dead — and even then, whoever’s left alive will get the joy of being in new relationships and feeling like they’ve moved on, only for their dead ex-boyfriend’s ghost to rear his head at the most unexpected moment and shake them to the core all over again

did I mention that these two are a fuck off emotionally exhausting DISASTER of a relationship? because they are. and LOL “BRIEF,” and I still owe you the OTHER unexpurgated post at… idk, some point that is not now, because right now, I am 5,000% done with this post. the end, by me.

*: Cam has had to replace his phone because of Derek — or Derek-related incidents — on three separate occasions. but at least the first time Derek broke it was legit an accident. he took it because he thought it’d be cute and endearing to tease his boyfriend, and then he got Cora to come play 'monkey in the middle’ with Cam as the monkey and his phone as the ball — which she normally wouldn’t’ve but it was making Camden frustrated and Cora hates Cam more than she generally hates most people who are not: Boyd, Danny, Derek, Erica, Isaac, Jackson but only lukewarm-ishly on alternating Fridays, Laura, Lydia, or Malia** — and then Derek fumbled catching it and it fell in a sink full of water, soap, and dirty dishes.

…the second time was the time when Derek fucking hulked out all over Cam’s phone. and technically, Derek didn’t break it the third time, either, but… well, Cam was trying to show Laura how SIM cards work and how to change one if necessary, only he’s not as adept at this as he thinks he is, and Derek decided to come over and, “help out,” and the ensuing game of, “no, Derek, NO! no touchy!! no touching my phone, you are a menace to its continued life and wellbeing!!” sort of resulted in Cam’s phone going through Talia’s wood-chipper. ……but at least he saved his SIM card?)

**: …yes, this list purposefully doesn’t include Scott. mainly because Cora hates him almost as much as she hates Cam — almost. or maybe she hates Cam almost as much as she hates Scott. she’s not sure, she really dislikes both of them, it’s hard to tell. but…… Scott has that whole obnoxiously earnest and doe-eyed, “I’m going to save all the people even if I have to give up my own life in the process,” teenage werewolf Jesus, defender of the helpless act (except, to borrow lines from Johanna Mason: Scott has that act, only it’s not an act, which just makes it — and by extension Scott himself — that much more unbearable);

and Cam has the thing he does where he wants everyone to be honest but he lies to himself, he can’t decide how he feels on certain subjects so he tries to have things all ways, he’s attracted to men in pain and he actually thinks that his line about, “because i can’t be with someone who’s actually well-adjusted and anyway, boys with issues fuck better” is fooling anybody when really he’s trying to focus on his boyfriends’ issues in order to ignore his own and feel mentally healthy, he’s used to feeling worthless so he self-sabotages constantly so he can just get the part where he fucks it all up over with but at the same time he’s prideful enough to make Cora finally get why it’s a sin, he’s so fucking insistent on how he’s a bad person and bad news in general when he has the internal structural integrity of a fucking Twinkie

(which… Cora is looking for a new metaphor here, since being informed, by Derek, that Twinkies are the etymological root of the gay slang term, “twink,” and that Cam has Issues about the culture of specific inter-community identities and self-concepts, the various subcultures associated with them, twinkiness vs. non-twinkiness, and if he, Cam, fits into any of it at all and if so where and what exactly the Hell does he do all of these disparate facts about his relationships with masculinity and femininity and sexuality and how he kind of doesn’t really feel like any of the subsets of U.S. gay male culture…

—like no really, little sister, please. please, do not poke this bear. Cam’s Dad and his retrograde ideas about gender and sexuality and in particular about masculinity and what makes any given physical enactment or performance of masculinity successful or not, just… Edmund Lahey has so completely fucked Cam up about this that, at least once or twice a month, Cam will work himself up into a hole about overthinking any or all of this, and that hole usually ends with him being a shit show and drunk-dialing Derek while he’s crying over either Dead Poets Society or Brokeback Mountain, and half the time, he was actually trying to drunk-dial Isaac.

Cam keeps doing this despite how many times Isaac and Derek have taken his Brokeback Mountain DVD or BluRay discs away, just…… he just keeps getting new ones. he stashes them around his apartment in completely counterintuitive places LIKE DRUGS and a drug problem would probably be a lot easier to deal with…… okay, no, actually, it wouldn’t be, but at least Cam wouldn’t have been in love with heroin like he was with Heath Ledger and he wouldn’t over-identify with heroin to the extent that he does with both Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar, and just don’t even start on how much he over-identifies with Neil Perry, like…

Cora, ffs. one time, he accidentally drunk-dialed SCOTT while he was being a shit-show with Dead Poets Society and a bottle of whisky, and Scott, who was unaccustomed to what in the Hell Cam is like when he gets drunk, thought Cam was a suicide risk so he panic-called Isaac and Braeden and Parrish and then Derek just in case, and based on how both Cam and Scott recounted the call, it wasn’t entirely out of line for Scott to think so? he… slightly Chicken Licken’d it, overall, but he also had no idea what he was dealing with and panicked, and…

and okay, Cam was already forcing down his third glass of water and watching one of his happy place movies by the time they got to his place — Sleeping Beauty, and he even had a babbling but more or less coherent explanation for why that one and not one of the other options — but they still got here because of his Issues about masculinity and femininity and sexuality and his place or his lack thereof in gbq+ male culture and please Cora, Derek is begging you: pretty pretty please stop poking this bear, okay?

…………and well, okay, Cora hates Cam but she’s not enough of a dick to kick him in Issues about gender and sexuality that are also apparently hella deeply influenced by his dead abusive shit-stain father. mostly because…… okay, she feels for him there, because the biggest thing she got out of Talia as a mother was Issues about gender and sexuality and why did Cora so explicitly prefer to watch Lord of the Rings with her father and help him build birdhouses in the garage and work all year with him on their father-daughter matching costumes for the Renaissance festival.

……and apparently, it would be a dick move to kick Cam in those issues but. it isn’t really Cora’s job to care about his feelings; she just cares that that is a type of dick move that would violate her personal moral and ethical code)

but going on with stuff that Cora WILL and DOES pick on Cam for: he has more fights about stuff that doesn’t matter than a YouTube comments section, ffs he has more fights about stuff that doesn’t matter than DEREK getting lost in a YouTube comments section and lbr Cora’s brother does not have a reputation for being even tempered or easy to swallow, he’s passionate which Cora finds stupid and at this point, it’s not even entertaining, it’s just tedious — and… well.

both Cam and Scott have committed one offense that Cora has no intent to forgive them for, ever: they are apparently more interesting to Derek than his own fucking sister.

meaning only Cora herself, since the age difference between Derek and Laura is significantly smaller — Laura is only ~2 years older than her brother vs. Derek being ~8 years older than Cora — and Derek and Laura are closer than Cora’s ever been with Derek, though Laura actually makes an effort to have a relationship with her sister, whereas Derek… just kinda assumes that they have a relationship and puts almost no work into maintaining it, and Cora is mad at him for this, too…

………but she actually loves her brother, regardless of just how often he makes her feel like punching him in the face, so Derek? is actually capable of earning Cora’s forgiveness for this — or would be if the Hales talked about any/all of the shit going on with them…… ever? which they don’t, oops — whereas… uh?? WELL??

outside of the people whom Cora actually gives a fuck about, she has no ties to Cam or Scott that could compel her to forgive them for whatever the fuck they did to make THEM so much more interesting to Derek that he just doesn’t seem to CARE about the details of Cora’s life and can barely bother to remember her fucking birthday (a good 30-40% of the time, Laura ends up reminding him that Cora’s birthday is coming up; and in a good half of those cases, Derek manages to forget it anyway) but can turn around and rattle off all kinds of pointless crap about his on-off boyfriend and Scott.

liked if you ask CORA? why SHOULD she forgive Cam and Scott? yeah, okay, fine with your, “blah blah blah it’s not their collective fault that Derek kinda regularly forgets what his priorities are and/or forgets the fact that he has to split time between all the different people he cares for — all like, ten to fifteen of them — and that’s HIS issue, not actually a reaction to anything Cam or Scott did"…… but Cora isn’t convinced that they DIDN’T do something to make themselves way more interesting to Derek, and she can’t figure out what it is, and she could stop being a pouty jealous little shit who is hurting on the inside because she’s afraid that maybe her big brother doesn’t really love her

………but then she doesn’t actually care that she’s kinda well in the wrong about this whole debacle, and she doesn’t care that it’s not nice to actively enjoy how much she can make Scott (and to a lesser extent Cam) get nervous around her and start twisting over what X thing she did in their vicinity means, and hey, whatever, fine, she’s in the wrong. okay cool. as soon as you find a good reason why she should care, please let her know, because this feels pretty right to her even if it isn’t, on a moral or ethical level that is defined by anything but her weird squidgy feelings that she doesn’t want to admit are kinda hurt by this perceived rejection

…I mean, she also won’t really ACT on how much she hates them beyond being mean to them — and to an extent that…… yeah, no, they have gathered that Cora hates them, it’s kinda hard to miss, at this point tbh? but a lot of the time, it’s up for debate whether she especially hates them or not, because that’s just because people who Cora likes care about them and Cora doesn’t LIKE Cam and Scott, or making anything in their lives easier without a very good reason, but she ALSO doesn’t like pointlessly making the people she actually DOES care about miserable over her shit where she hates the two of them

……………also, uh, yeah, I cribbed lines about Britta Perry in here very much on purpose, which is a thing? ……mostly because I don’t know when I started realizing that Cam had accidentally picked up a lot of things in common with Britta — but he DOES, now, oops? …I really tried to list some of them in a more “full and complete” way, but it got unwieldy so let’s just say that…

aside from the fact that they’re both abuse survivors with often completely wretched taste in men. Cam and Britta are both prideful as FUCK ALL and sort of cycle through acting like Stepford Smilers, Stepford Snarkers, and Drama Queens as part of their quest of trying to distract people from the fact that they have some really deep-seated self-loathing issues and little to no faith in themselves or in the strength in their relationships

(both of them fear being hurt or abandoned by the people they love, eventually, and Cam also has the belief that everyone in his life would probably be so much better off without him. like, the argument that Cam is overcompensating for something in being so hyper-vigilant about his loved ones because he needs to believe that they need him for something?

…uh, yeah, no, that’s not even an ARGUMENT, really. it’s just kind of a fact.)

(”self-loathing issues” here being a category that includes thinking that a huge part of their public act(s) comes out of their belief that they aren’t actually some good thing that they really want to be — despite displaying that they are this big important [or at least important to THEM] thing — and having more experience with being worthless that they regularly self-sabotage, and “refusing to just let it be and admit that they made a mistake that would make them look foolish, and seeing whatever the Hell they’ve gotten themselves into through to the end out of fear of being mocked, even though they are, in doing this thing, embracing the nigh on complete metaphysical certitude of destroying themselves a bit”)

…………they’re also both Bunny Ears Lawyers with hardcore Sugar and Ice Personalities, who are also your friendly neighborhood Ethical Sluts-cum-Chivalrous Perverts (though Cam shares this with Isaac, since the Lahey brothers have very different styles of flirting with hot people — and Isaac is pansexual vs. Cam being gay, so they end up dealing with different, though occasionally overlapping, potential dating pools — but they both have more game than the International Scrabble Masterclass Finals and the Ben Wyatt and Leslie Knope Worldwide Championship of Chess-Risk, combined)

(also… uh, just ignore the big case of heterosexism going on there in that one Chivalrous Pervert article and the fact that it’s written as though it’s only about men. tbh, I feel like Britta can definitely fall into this trope — though Shirley is usually more likely to go there with objectifying specific dudes [especially Jeff, though not exclusively him, c.f. Sexy Dreadlocks Guy] and Britta is, as seen in “Comparative Religion,” more likely to go there while being an IRL slash fangirl — though I will definitely note that it’s less pronounced in her than it is in Cam. …meanwhile, Cam isn’t romo or sexually into ladies, but he *is* protective of girls and women, and possessed of a huge chip on his shoulder about misogyny, in particular the misogyny that either: a. comes from fellow gbq+ men;

and/or b. kicks him in the brother instincts somehow — like, if someone goes after Braeden, who is Cam’s best friend and no romo soulmate and who was once on the receiving end of a karaoke dedication of “Hey, Soul Sister” that led to a debate between the two of them about whether or not it was a love song (which ended with both of them going, “shit, I don’t know anymore, I thought it was/wasn’t, but you make a good case and the lyrics really *ARE* frustratingly vague — ugh fuck me, this is annoying… ugh, do you wanna just go home to one of our places and play some fuckin’ Mario Kart, I think we should go play some fuckin’ Mario Kart”),

or, say, if someone goes after Erica, who is effectively family and Cam’s little sister by virtue of being Isaac’s “slightly” codependent non-romantic soulmate.

……which led to a very hilarious misunderstanding with the guy Cam was seeing, this one time, because he (Cam) forgot to specify that Erica and Isaac aren’t actually blood related. also that they are VERY affectionate with each other, in a way that’s like, “they tongue-kiss by way of saying, ‘good morning’ and there… are… not necessarily any Intentions there?? like, there might be intentions, but they could just be saying, ‘good morning.’”

…also, they’re not blood related or anything, and Cam just calls Erica, ‘sister’ because, ‘little brother’s ‘somewhat’ codependent bff and no-romo soulmate’ is a mouthful, so…… yeah, uh.

……poor Guy Cam Was Seeing At The Time. that was a very awkward few minutes of sitting at the kitchen table, watching Erica and Isaac open-mouth kiss each other while they meandered around making up breakfast, waiting for Cam to get out of the shower and please explain why his siblings were making out with each other)

that was a fun digression in footnotes

now I feel compelled to, idk, end on a slightly less downer note

so, uh… Cam has a few tattoos. even in AUs where werewolves are still a thing, he gets them done and either stays human, or has them well before getting turned and is just like, "what, so I’ll have to get them touched up more often, then?” after he’s already gone, “okay, bite me :|” at Laura or Scott

and insisted on it with, “Look, Isaac’s in this so now I am too; he goes, I follow, and if he tries to go where I CAN’T follow, I’m just not going to accept that so I’ll follow him and drag him back from it — kicking and screaming optional but if he’s difficult, then I’m ready for that. I know what the risks are, and I accept them and absolve you of any responsibility for what happens next if it doesn’t go well. *pulls back his sleeve, holds out his arm and kind of emphatically shakes it* ……come on, now. BITE. me. ………please. :|”

(and then someone brings out a blowtorch and Cam v abruptly gets all, “ohhhh I might well have made a terrible mistake .___.” but he suffers through it anyway because his tatts are just that important to him)

the most important ones are his chest/side-piece of Il Sodoma’s take on Saint Sebastian’s martyrdom — because what better way to get a tatt in honor of your little brother than by getting one that takes up a large portion of your torso, and happens to depict the vaguely eroticized martyrdom of (one of his potential) middle-namesake(s), who is also very unofficially known/popularized as the patron saint of men who romantically and/or sexually prefer other men, and has been for literal centuries, despite the Catholic Church not sanctioning this in the slightest (also, you and Isaac were not raised Catholic, or as members of any organized religion actually) —

and the tattoo he got for his Mom (a rose curving around to frame the first verse and chorus of, “Everything’s Coming Up Roses,” because… that was Eleanor’s lullaby for him and it was from Their Show, the one by Sondheim and Jule Styne that had a revival on Broadway in 2008, and it had Patti LuPone playing Mama Rose, and Cam happened to take leave while it was still playing and, when he stopped in New York to see the Hales, he woke Derek up at Hell O'Clock in the morning so that they could go up to Manhattan to get the student rush tickets, and then Derek also got dragged to the show, and at the intermission, he was vocally and loudly confused and frustrated by the very concept of musical theatre, also he didn’t understand the show at all or what was happening or why Cam though this Mama Rose person was so important a character, like?? what is so enthralling about this shit Cam, Derek doesn’t get it and tbqh it makes him feel ANGRY why did you make him come see this, you guys could’ve gone to see Laura’s new girlfriend’s indie punk band play at a dive bar in Brooklyn where literally everyone would assume that Cam’s only wearing his Army issue camo jacket ironically and they’d ask if he eats vegetarian or vegan, then get kinda morally outraged when he’s all, “……I eat MEAT, why don’t you” and ugggh Derek really wanted to see what happens when Cam gets put around these fucking hipsters who hang out with Laura’s new gf, WHY IS CAM MAKING HIM SEE THIS WEIRDO SINGING PLAY INSTEAD)…

……and the pansy tattoo that he has on the inside of his wrist

why does he have a pansy tattoo on the inside of his wrist?

uh, well… it was an impulsive af decision, one that Cam made while he was moderately intoxicated and incredibly frustrated with his own fucked up relationship with all the different ideas fighting around in his head about masculinity, femininity, how he fit into the roles associated with said ideas, how his sexuality and relationship to different aspects of U.S. gbq+ male culture, and with his own fear of being seen as too gay, too flaming, too queer, too odd, too much of a sissy or too much of a pansy or so on and so forth…

so he decided to go get this cute little flower tattooed on his wrist to remind himself that his father was a fucking jackass and that it’s okay to be a pansy, and… well, it hasn’t had any effect on how complicated his relationships to all the various fiddly gender things are?