scrapdraught: (047)

[personal profile] scrapdraught 2024-06-11 02:09 am (UTC)(link)
[Camille grimaces. It's one of the kids. A taciturn one (so many are), she hasn't got a good bead on him or his intentions.

Still, what could she even do about it? Camille's nose wrinkles in chagrin as she swipes her unruly hair out of her face, sighing low.]


There's no such thing as alone here. It's a zoo pen. We can wander but we're never out of sight.

[She pats the rock beside her.]

Come sit. Mope with me.
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[personal profile] scrapdraught 2024-06-11 11:17 am (UTC)(link)
[Sure can't pretend.

Camille doesn't make eye contact. There's just the pulse of a muscle in her jaw. Then wordlessly she scoots her sleeve up.

There is the inky writing. And then there's the jagged letters. Worry. Cupcake. Rain.

Nonsensical, disjointed, roughshod thoughts, crowding every inch of pale flesh. They weren't carved all at once, rather opportunistically fit in when the mood struck.]


I had a bad habit.
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[personal profile] scrapdraught 2024-06-11 11:33 pm (UTC)(link)
Don't — hey, don't worry about it. Don't feel obligated to say anything. [Camille pulls her sleeve down and brushes her hair away, meeting his eye. It's easier to quit navel gazing when there's a second body to tend.] I don't like putting that on anyone. Especially not kids I just met.

It's in the past now anyway. It's nothing.
scrapdraught: (047)

[personal profile] scrapdraught 2024-06-12 01:28 am (UTC)(link)
[Call her when you can rent a car.

It's sweet though. He's doing his best, and he really doesn't owe her shit.]


I'll say. [She's walking proof of it. And now they all are. What generous clues their bodies whisper along limbs and spines, keys for the locks they took such care to hide.]

Yeah. It's been a year since I tried anything. I'm staying with people who give a damn, and I don't bother with the ones who don't.

[She smiles, though her head dips, fingers laced in her lap]

That's what pisses me off about the profiles too. I haven't drank in a year either and it still brands me a drunk.
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[personal profile] scrapdraught 2024-06-13 02:25 am (UTC)(link)
It's better than nothing.

[And she had a clean streak prior to that too. Then again considering the year in question, she can't say she blames herself for the slip. Extreme measures for extreme times.]

They seem to. There's far worse than mine up there for sure. [Hers even reads a little sparse, but hey. That's what happens when you cultivate no skills or hobbies. Her life was an exercise in scraping by.

Then a sudden glow catches her eye. Camille looks down with a soundless gasp.]


Oh — sorry, looks like it's got you too.

[She points. Can't let him wander around unawares.]
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[personal profile] scrapdraught 2024-06-13 03:02 am (UTC)(link)
...Yeah? Sure.

[She pulls her sleeves to the middle of her palms and folds over a little, stretching her legs. His own words weren't giving much up. That's tugging her curiosity something fierce, but she can imagine the implications.

One by one deaths, one by one abductions. Dollars drained, assaults both sexual and not. Can't be anything good.]


What do you want to know?
scrapdraught: (021)

[personal profile] scrapdraught 2024-06-13 03:28 am (UTC)(link)
You mean what made me want to quit?

[Hm.

Camille clucks her tongue, thinking how to phrase it without popping open a can of worms.]


I uh. I really had no choice but to. [Her nose twitches, her lips twist.] I got a lot of answers about things to do with my family. Things that made it hard when I was younger. Stuff that was going at the time, too. And I had to cut them out of my life for good.

[She looks to him, raw, reticent. Weary.]

You can't always pick your family. They can't pick you either.
Edited 2024-06-13 03:29 (UTC)
scrapdraught: (037)

[personal profile] scrapdraught 2024-06-14 01:12 am (UTC)(link)
[Camille wets her lips.]

I can hate them in parts. Mama, close to whole. Her husband Alan is such a limp rag of a man, he's too pathetic to take much heat from me. I sometimes forget he was family at all.

Amma, I can't. Not in any big way. Just slivers. [She pauses.] She's my little sister. She's only fourteen now. Even after everything, I can't fully...I can't pin much on her.

[She plucks at the seams of her sweater. Lets her hair fall forward, obscuring her expression.]

And an a strange way, sometimes I still hope they love me. No matter what I think of them. Even if I know they won't.

[Not her parents at least.]
Edited 2024-06-14 01:13 (UTC)
scrapdraught: (062)

[personal profile] scrapdraught 2024-06-16 06:56 pm (UTC)(link)
[Are they really family? They're playing at it, in spite of her advanced years. She's using them as a crutch, a pound of cement to fill a mile-deep cave in. It's helping, yes, but the years she needed the attention for are long past her.]

...I hope you're not speaking from experience.

[She doesn't say thanks. The shame is clouding over. Laying all her woes on this kid. She knows his name and little else about him. Profile scraps, hand-to-hand combat, curses, bringing a "worm" from home. Nothing that warrants her shoveling bullshit on his head.]

Don't worry about it.
scrapdraught: (056)

[personal profile] scrapdraught 2024-06-17 03:54 pm (UTC)(link)
Good. That's good to hear. [She smiles, catching his eye again.]

Everyone's going to get knee deep in it at some point. Most of us will find our way out.

[There's a beat.]

I can't imagine it's all peaches and cream on your end either, given what you're dealing with.

[She hasn't forgotten his own ink, too.]
scrapdraught: (067)

[personal profile] scrapdraught 2024-06-18 04:57 pm (UTC)(link)
[Yeah. She figured it might be something like that.

His age gnaws at her too. What's the count at now, that he's calling it a serial and not a few raw deals?]


...Is it related to your curse stuff? Or incidental?
scrapdraught: (055)

[personal profile] scrapdraught 2024-06-19 04:45 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah.

[She nods, lips pulling in. Camille takes a chance and rests her palm at his shoulder. Her experience with teenage boys comes from a thin scope of being a teenager herself. She can't read them so well any more.]

There's no getting away from it when you're in the line of fire.

[She holds a moment.]

Do you think there'll be an end to it?
scrapdraught: (069)

[personal profile] scrapdraught 2024-06-21 03:05 am (UTC)(link)
And people call me a pessimist.

[Piss poor joke for a hopeless situation. There's not much she can say to the contrary though, and that's what guts her. The only tools she has to tinker with are forged by her own miseries. She knows what it is to feel there's no peace, to drift down miles of tepid tragedies until you hit the dropoff and plummet.

She doesn't know how to get off that road, really. She's doing better, but there's no such thing as being fixed. Not her brain, and not his circumstances.

Camille sighs. She could use a drink.]


You got dealt a rotten hand. I'm sorry. No one should have to bear that kind of weight. Much less a guy straight out of high school.

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