Fic - The Five Times Jo and Camille Had Moments, and the Time They Had Forever
Title: The Five Times Jo and Camille Had Moments, and the Time They Had Forever
Author: madwomanpoems
Fandom: Big Time Rush
Pairings: Jo/Camille, minor hints of other pairings
Rating: R
Warnings: Um. Let’s see. Domestic abuse, cannibalism, false psychics, character death, cursing, grief, lost moments, gun violence, sexual situations, unethical practices of medicine, gore, cross dressing, prostitution, and mild nudity.
Disclaimer: I don’t own anything. I don’t own Big Time Rush, Psych, I Know You Know (Psych Theme Song), What’s the Use of Wond’rin, the Amanda Palmer video of the aforementioned song, Keep Breathing, any generic hospital shows (most likely Grey’s Anatomy), Pirates of the Caribbean, From My Own True Love (Lost at Sea), any generic western movies, Bruised Orange (Chain of Sorrow), or Forever. Everything belongs to their respective creators, and I have just played with it.
Summary: Five Jo/Camille AU vignettes of fleeting moments and one post-BTR fic where there is something better.
Author’s note: I am sorry about this. Just. Uh. This is really dark and sort of crack-y and really fluffy and I am a little bit of an insane person.
embrace the deception, learn how to bend, your worst inhibitions tend to psych you out in the end.
Camille was making a Jacob’s Ladder with a piece of neon yellow string and watching Bridezillas when James trudged into the office, pulling a large suitcase of cosmetic supplies behind him.
“You know, the real show would be, Bridezillas: Why In God’s Name Anyone Would Marry These Harpies. Ooh! Did you bring Tai food in?” she said, gesturing to James’ case. “Good call on the cooler. Last time you didn’t and-”
“Camille, are you serious right now?” James said, eyebrows up to the ceiling. “These are the samples for my route. Which I’ve had to double. Because you made Chief Gustavo pissed and not even Kelly can get him to hire us back.”
“Oh James. Don’t be the prettiest member of a disestablished boy band.” Camille made a mental note not to use that one again, since the look on James’ face was practically murderous. “Anyway, I’ve been sweet talking Jo, and she called me about a case. We’re meeting her at the boat docks in,” she made a big show of checking the over sized man’s watch on her wrist, “eight and half hours ago…”
James rolled his eyes and checked the clock on his phone. “It’s only eleven thirty.”
“Oh good! Then we have an hour. That’s enough time for me to find my Sherlock Holmes costume! Jamesy, will you be my Watson?” she said, pouting and flinging herself down on one knee.
James swore he did not contemplate removing her tiny little bottom lip from her tiny little face.
“You know that’s never going to happen, right? You and Jo? She’s way too by-the-book to date somebody she works with.”
“She dated Kendall.”
“In high school! Besides,” he said shouting to be heard over her, “do you even think she’s, you know, that she-likes women?”
“I don’t know, she did date Kendall,” she said, a little sadly.
James rolled his eyes, “Yeah, but that was high school, I dated girls in high school.”
Camille jumped up and pointed at him, shouting, “Ha! Proved my point. You buy pancakes.”
James had no choice but to walk out after her after she scampered off to The Blueberry.
--
Maybe, upon further consideration, talking up a girl over a particularly mutilated corpse was a bad idea.
Camille was going to try it anyway.
Jo was currently trying not to sink in potholes as she walked across the street, strands of her blonde hair freeing themselves from her ponytail holder and blowing in the wind.
James whispered into her ear, “You’re drooling. Stop it.”
“Yeah, but just over that donut that Kendall’s got. Get your mind out of the gutter.”
“Lying will send you to hell.”
“So will vanity.”
“So will lust.”
“That gets both of us.”
James stopped talking through his teeth and shot Camille a dirty glare.
“Oh don’t be an extra sour War Head,” Camille spat.
“You’re on your own with this one. I wash my hands of you.”
“Good, we don’t need The Face for this case anyway!” Camille shouted after him.
“Hello,” Jo said, all bemused expression and miles of legs in a pants suit.
“Ignore her,” Kendall said to Camille as he passed. “We aren’t talking to Jo today because she brought a date to a crime scene!”
“She is not a date,” Jo said, with a guilty look on her face as she looked back at the squad car. “I went to pick her up and got called to the case on my day off.”
Camille squinted a little, because one way or the other, Jo was lying to someone. She had promised Camille she would be at this case to help them handle Kendall.
“Not my problem.”
“Yes, but it’s your fault.”
Camille felt something lump up in her throat and something burn at her eyes as she blinked profusely.
“Are you alright?” Jo said when she came over, a soft arm on her shoulder.
“Yeah. Just… I’m getting something,” she said, fingers on her temple and shouting. “Ohh. I’m seeing something. I’m sensing something. It’s… ammonia. Bleach. White. It’s… It’s stinging my eyes.”
Kendall was a little too excited when he shouted, “Poison!”
“You…” Camille went deadpan. “Seriously, you think that the spirits go to all of this work to send me poison? No. I’m seeing. Straight teeth. Latex gloves. Uh. Vans. No. veneers. She’s a… she’s a dentist!”
Jo beamed at Camille like every time she had a vision. Sometimes, like when their eyes caught each other’s over a corpse, it hurt to tell so many lies .
But while Jo kept checking back to her car, where the mysterious date waited, Camille thought the lie felt pretty damn spectacular.
--*--
common sense will tell you that the ending will be sad, and now’s the time to break and run away.
Camille was tired of turning her head to crying and ignoring poorly covered bruises. Camille was tired of thinking about where they came from. Camille was tired of swallowing her rage and forgetting the situation.
Camille was tired of Jett; Camille was going to get her girl back.
So one day, when she entered Jo’s immaculate home, she packed a large knife in her purse.
And a sprig of cilantro.
--
There are some things that Jo will have to keep quiet forever, like the fact that husbands are delicious when cooked in red wine with roasted carrots. There are other things, like how the wolves got into her back yard, that Jo will have to tell everyone she knows.
But as she takes a bite of a particularly succulent rib, she stares at Camille, who is eying her like she is made of gold and she wouldn’t mind going to jail for her. There are some things, like how she cries on the floor later and Camille holds her and she can feel her breath hot on her neck, that she can’t even tell herself.
Camille knows everything about Jo, every single deep dark secret.
Except that Jo knows exactly the way Camille’s hands feel in hers, and that Jo thinks for hours what it would be like to dance together under the same dark skies that she doesn’t have to hide from anymore.
--*--
sea salt tears, swimming around as the rain comes down
James is throwing a fit, generally being a horrific pirate, and making her rue the day that she asked him to come aboard her father’s ship.
“How can you agree to this? How can you allow them to do this? As a woman, how can you allow this, Camille? This torture. Leaving a mermaid to die in the sun is nothing but foolish men play acting at power.”
Camille walks straight to James and points a finger up at him. “That is quite enough. You are not to be making demands. You are the lowest man in this ship. You shall not force my hand in anything.”
Camille takes off her hat and rubs a hand through her grubby hair. Sometimes, being a pirate captain wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. She looks over at the beautiful blonde… thing glistening in one of the tide pools. She sees the men glaring at the pink of nipples peaking out from behind her strands of golden hair.
“However,” she says looking at James, “you are correct, so it will save you from being marooned. I will not stand for this. Any man who doesn’t step back from it will have his throat slit, or be left on the doorstep of the first Naval captain I can find. I will not allow you to torture the poor thing. Besides, that’s no way to go about getting her to cry.”
Camille is wrenching off her boots and wading one foot into the pool and around the creature’s tail. “Mermaids don’t cry from pain or suffering, do they?” she said softly, cupping its jaw. “You are much too tough for that, aren’t you, love? It’s salvation that makes you sob, isn’t it? It’s us being so very kind.”
The mermaid is trembling and gnashing her teeth, anything to keep her from showing emotion.
“Shh…” Camille said, “I wouldn’t let them hurt you. There’s no need of that.” She dropped a kiss on her forehead. “You aren’t like anyone else. You’d just like to be left alone. You don’t want to hurt anyone. Why can’t they see that?”
She chuckled softly.
“But I see that, love. I see that,” she said, looking deep into her eyes as a tear fell down its cheek.
Camille caught it up in a bottle, stoppered it, and clambered off of the mermaid’s tail and out of the pool.
“You will let her go,” she said to her men before turning back to the creature. “Thank you very much for your assistance. You will be released back into the ocean. I believe that this pool should take you there.”
“But,” one of her men started.
“You will let her go, or you will face my consequences.”
“But we could just,” he continued.
“Let. Her. Go.”
“But,” he said.
Before he could get out another word, Camille pulled a pistol from her side, cocked it, and shot him square between the eyes.
“There will be no questions now,” she said to the rest of the men. “You will release her.”
Camille felt the gentlest tug in the pit of her stomach as the mermaid nodded softly in thanks at her while her as she was released
--*--
people are dying, I close my blinds, all that I know is I’m breathing now
Jo barely has any idea what floor of the hospital she is on, let alone how she is expected to try to diagnose a patient. It isn’t as if it is of any consequence; it’s not like the Attendants and Residents haven’t already decided what happened to the next patient and what course of action they will take.
It’s all one big test: the hours, the double shifts, the lack of sleep and personal life, the questions, and the research. The only point is to drill them-to see if they really have what it takes.
Jo doesn’t have much time to wax poetic on the life of an Intern because she is scuffling with her peers. She’s been at the hospital for thirty-six hours, and just making the motions is beginning to take its toll on her. The motions were all that she could see: the running and diagnosing and nose jobs and c-sections and death. Everything was hospital grey and yellow, and everything was monotony.
Until she stumbled onto her.
Lying in the bed, looking very small and very scared, was a pretty girl, about her age, smiling, even though her eyes held that same fear that animals had when they were being cornered by hunters.
Kelly snapped, “This is Miss Baker. She’s presenting with gran mal seizures and nausea. Course of action, Taylor?”
Jo held her face flat. “That’s a trick question. It could be anything. Before acting, you need to run more tests.”
Kelly let out the slightest smile, “Good. She’s yours then.”
--
Jo felt the wall of Camille’s abdomen and went through the list of things that she should be looking for over and over in her head until they were ingrained in her finger tips.
“Usually I like to let a girl get to know me before I let them do this,” Camille said lazily, eyes half closed.
Jo didn’t know what to say, because something was fluttering in her stomach and she knew that this feeling was Categorically Not Allowed. Not for patients, especially ones that were potentially pre-neurological operation. Instead she smiled mildly back at her.
“Come on, Doc. At least buy a girl a drink first.”
Jo smiled for real this time. “Already did,” she said, tapping on the IV dangling off of Camille’s wrist.
“Alright, Taylor, go ahead then.”
Jo giggled and licked her lips a littler nervously before she spoke, “It’s Jo. Jo Taylor.”
“Doctor Jo Taylor. Someone I could bring home to Daddy. Always wanted me to marry a doctor. What are you doing for the next hour, Doctor Jo.”
“Hey, I’m not a radio host. Doctor Taylor or Jo. Never Doctor Jo,” she said with a shudder. “I’m spending the next hour with a pretty girl and an MRI machine. What about you?”
“That would suit me just fine, I think.”
--
It went like this for weeks of flirting and side-glances and tests and surgical prep. Jo slept even worse than usual, worrying about her career and Camille’s health and feeling the rush of butterflies or bats or hormones as she lay across her bed. Her only grace was the fact that it would be over soon. She could pretend to pick Camille up in some dive bar and no one would no the better. There was nothing wrong with falling for a former patient.
Jo closed the door tightly behind her minutes before Camille was scheduled to be rolled out of her room and into surgery. Jo tried hard not to think about the brain tumor in Camille’s beautiful head. Instead she walked to the side of the bed and roused Camille from her sleep by stroking the top of her hands.
“How you doing,” she drawled.
“Oh, I’ve been better. For one thing, I have an impressive bald spot.”
“You’ve never looked better.”
“Says someone who never saw me without a lump the size of a kid’s fist in my head,” she said laughing.
Jo grabbed tightly to her hand and murmured, “Don’t. Don’t Camille. Please. Just. Let’s not think about it.”
“Okay, then. I’ll see you when I get out?”
Jo forced back the lump that was forming in her throat and smiled, “First thing.”
“Just so you know, I plan on being delusional and pretending that surgery was actually fucking you. It sounds more pleasant.”
“You do that,” she said, pressing on of Camille’s tiny hands up to her lips and kissing his softly.
Seconds after she drops it, Kelly and the rest of the interns are walking in, preparing to take Camille to the OR.
--
Jo spent most of the day filing papers and taking out stitches, getting herself assigned to any small case that would make her stop thinking of Camille--- the way she was sitting there with her skull wide open, sharp metal instruments digging into her skull.
After her eighth prostate exam of the day, she looked at her watch and blissfully saw that Camille’s surgery should have been over. She made her way to the bed that she should have been lying in, softly coming out from under the anesthesia. Instead, under the starchy white sheet, was an old man, coughing hard into his elbow.
Jo caught a nurse by the elbow, “Where did the patient that was supposed to be here get sent to? Camille Baker?”
The nurse gave her a practiced sympathetic glance before she went back to counting sterilized gauze pads. “I’m so sorry, but she didn’t make it out of surgery, sweetie.”
Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes, and she could feel her breathing speed up.
The nurse touched her shoulder softly, “First lost patient, honey?”
Jo nods before her feet take off without her knowledge or authority. She did not think about how much her future had changed in the weeks with Camille. She did not think about pain. She thought about her feet, slapping down to the tile, to a place where they knew she would be safe.
Jo slammed into a bathroom stall and was sick. Tears would not come out, because they were a secret that she had to keep. Tears and kisses were something that had to be buried with the dead.
--*--
hey, it ain't such a long drop don't stammer don't stutter, from the diamonds in the sidewalk to the dirt in the gutter, and you carry those bruises to remind you wherever you go.
Camille bent behind the bar, grabbed the cleanest glass she could find, and sat back up to pour a shot of whiskey into it. A beautiful blonde boy sat in front of her with thick, dark eyebrows and a straight nose. He looked like he might be a year or so younger than her, at seventeen or so, with a curve in his stomach and skinny legs.
A perfect target.
“What’s a pretty girl doing in such a rough place? Can’t find a man who would marry you?” he said, and Camille thought that maybe she was wrong about it age, because it didn’t even sound like his voice had dropped.
“Too young for that,” she laughed.
“And not to young for this?” he said gesturing to the establishment and arching one eyebrow.
“Could say the same for you. What’s a fourteen-year-old boy doing in a saloon, drinking whiskey?”
“Name’s Jo,” he said, extending a slender hand. “’Bout twenty years old,” and, raising her hat just high enough that Camille caught a quick glance of a top not under it, “not a boy.”
Camille felt that quiet need coil in the base of her, begging her to take this boy up to her room, to take off the clothes and take down the hair and have a girl for her own to make tremble and scream for the rest of the night. Instead, she bit her lips and ignored the sear of heat in her cheeks.
“Sorry about the misunderstanding,” she said softly.
“Oh, don’t be sorry,” Jo said with a drawl that wasn’t from out West, but from pretty Southern plantations where people drank sweet tea like it was mother’s milk. “I take it as a compliment. Saves my life on a daily basis.”
Camille noticed that she was still holding Jo’s hand, and that it was rough and calloused just like every farm hand she ever met. She dropped it without a word and went to take care of the other men that sat at the bar.
--
Camille took the night off from her extra activities in the upstairs room, forgoing the extra coin for a chance to watch the girl whose hand she held. She watched over her, pistol tucked into the folds of her dress and shotgun under the bar, prepared to take care of her if anything should go wrong.
But nothing went wrong, and instead she felt the heat grown under her skirts as she watched Jo finger the cards and slam a few shots. She kept shooting her sly glances throughout the game. She even caught Jo’s eyes on her while she poured drinks for other men.
Finally, the game ended and Camille waited by the base of the steps. Jo found her, just as Camille knew she would when she had the money in her pockets. Jo folded a few coins into her hands.
“You want to?” she said coyly, pointing to the room at the top of the stairs. When she broke eye contact, she looked down at her hands, counting the coins that had been pressed into them. “This is too much,” she said with a look of confusion smeared on her face. “I-I can’t accept this. No charge for my favorite customer of the day.
“No, ma’am. But thank you for the offer. I can’t say that I wouldn’t love to take you up on it, but I’m afraid I have to get moving out.”
Camille was shocked and more than a little disappointed and she knew that it was portrayed all over her face.
Jo spoke again, “You take care of yourself.” Then she kissed Camille softly on the rouged cheek and whispered into her ear, “And if you’re ever in a little town called Hinnom, Wyoming, you come find me, and I promise I’ll make up for the offer.”
Camille watched as she swaggered out of the room. There was a coin in her pocket that she would not spend. There was a coin in her pocket that she would keep there until her dying day.
--*--
I won't let my forever roam, and now I hope I can find. my forever a home. so give me your forever. please your forever.
Nothing registers with Jo except that there are warm lips mouthing at her breast through the cotton of her tank top. She is sleepy and happy in her bed and not completely sure that she is awake and that this is not the happiest kind of dream. She doesn't even bother to open her eyes until she feels icy hands creep down her hips.
She bolts up with a start-- first from the shock, then from the irritation of it all. Not that she doesn't like being woken up like this, because Camille's tingling mouth is the best wake up call she could ever ask for, but because she knows that Camille has sat awake all night writing.
Jo grabs Camille's hands in her own and pulls her up towards the head of the bed, looking her in the eyes. This was not a time for anything but sleep.
“Hey, beautiful.”
“Hey,” Camille said, voice gravely.
“You know, sleep is a good thing? Most people even enjoy it. And I know,” she said, rolling her eyes a little and laughing, “’most people aren’t writers.’ But even writers need to sleep, Cami.”
“Naw,” she said, mumbling into the curve of Jo’s neck.
Jo stopped counting the months they had been together five months ago. Jo stopped counting minutes on her fingertips. She didn’t have to anymore. Jo was not concerned with minutes and years, even if they did have ridiculous dates on anniversaries because it made Camille happy, because Jo had forever.
Jo Taylor had spent her entire life trying to capture something like forever in all of the wrong places. But Camille was whispering nonsense about her newest chapter to her, something that she would read that night, after Camille had come, naked and clean and shaking, in her arms and before they ate sushi on the balcony. Forever had landed unexpectedly in Jo’s lap. Forever was short skirts and ink stained hands, and Jo would never have imagined it being that way.
(But Jo Taylor had never really believed in Forever before Camille, no matter how much she’d told everyone she did.)
Author: madwomanpoems
Fandom: Big Time Rush
Pairings: Jo/Camille, minor hints of other pairings
Rating: R
Warnings: Um. Let’s see. Domestic abuse, cannibalism, false psychics, character death, cursing, grief, lost moments, gun violence, sexual situations, unethical practices of medicine, gore, cross dressing, prostitution, and mild nudity.
Disclaimer: I don’t own anything. I don’t own Big Time Rush, Psych, I Know You Know (Psych Theme Song), What’s the Use of Wond’rin, the Amanda Palmer video of the aforementioned song, Keep Breathing, any generic hospital shows (most likely Grey’s Anatomy), Pirates of the Caribbean, From My Own True Love (Lost at Sea), any generic western movies, Bruised Orange (Chain of Sorrow), or Forever. Everything belongs to their respective creators, and I have just played with it.
Summary: Five Jo/Camille AU vignettes of fleeting moments and one post-BTR fic where there is something better.
Author’s note: I am sorry about this. Just. Uh. This is really dark and sort of crack-y and really fluffy and I am a little bit of an insane person.
embrace the deception, learn how to bend, your worst inhibitions tend to psych you out in the end.
Camille was making a Jacob’s Ladder with a piece of neon yellow string and watching Bridezillas when James trudged into the office, pulling a large suitcase of cosmetic supplies behind him.
“You know, the real show would be, Bridezillas: Why In God’s Name Anyone Would Marry These Harpies. Ooh! Did you bring Tai food in?” she said, gesturing to James’ case. “Good call on the cooler. Last time you didn’t and-”
“Camille, are you serious right now?” James said, eyebrows up to the ceiling. “These are the samples for my route. Which I’ve had to double. Because you made Chief Gustavo pissed and not even Kelly can get him to hire us back.”
“Oh James. Don’t be the prettiest member of a disestablished boy band.” Camille made a mental note not to use that one again, since the look on James’ face was practically murderous. “Anyway, I’ve been sweet talking Jo, and she called me about a case. We’re meeting her at the boat docks in,” she made a big show of checking the over sized man’s watch on her wrist, “eight and half hours ago…”
James rolled his eyes and checked the clock on his phone. “It’s only eleven thirty.”
“Oh good! Then we have an hour. That’s enough time for me to find my Sherlock Holmes costume! Jamesy, will you be my Watson?” she said, pouting and flinging herself down on one knee.
James swore he did not contemplate removing her tiny little bottom lip from her tiny little face.
“You know that’s never going to happen, right? You and Jo? She’s way too by-the-book to date somebody she works with.”
“She dated Kendall.”
“In high school! Besides,” he said shouting to be heard over her, “do you even think she’s, you know, that she-likes women?”
“I don’t know, she did date Kendall,” she said, a little sadly.
James rolled his eyes, “Yeah, but that was high school, I dated girls in high school.”
Camille jumped up and pointed at him, shouting, “Ha! Proved my point. You buy pancakes.”
James had no choice but to walk out after her after she scampered off to The Blueberry.
--
Maybe, upon further consideration, talking up a girl over a particularly mutilated corpse was a bad idea.
Camille was going to try it anyway.
Jo was currently trying not to sink in potholes as she walked across the street, strands of her blonde hair freeing themselves from her ponytail holder and blowing in the wind.
James whispered into her ear, “You’re drooling. Stop it.”
“Yeah, but just over that donut that Kendall’s got. Get your mind out of the gutter.”
“Lying will send you to hell.”
“So will vanity.”
“So will lust.”
“That gets both of us.”
James stopped talking through his teeth and shot Camille a dirty glare.
“Oh don’t be an extra sour War Head,” Camille spat.
“You’re on your own with this one. I wash my hands of you.”
“Good, we don’t need The Face for this case anyway!” Camille shouted after him.
“Hello,” Jo said, all bemused expression and miles of legs in a pants suit.
“Ignore her,” Kendall said to Camille as he passed. “We aren’t talking to Jo today because she brought a date to a crime scene!”
“She is not a date,” Jo said, with a guilty look on her face as she looked back at the squad car. “I went to pick her up and got called to the case on my day off.”
Camille squinted a little, because one way or the other, Jo was lying to someone. She had promised Camille she would be at this case to help them handle Kendall.
“Not my problem.”
“Yes, but it’s your fault.”
Camille felt something lump up in her throat and something burn at her eyes as she blinked profusely.
“Are you alright?” Jo said when she came over, a soft arm on her shoulder.
“Yeah. Just… I’m getting something,” she said, fingers on her temple and shouting. “Ohh. I’m seeing something. I’m sensing something. It’s… ammonia. Bleach. White. It’s… It’s stinging my eyes.”
Kendall was a little too excited when he shouted, “Poison!”
“You…” Camille went deadpan. “Seriously, you think that the spirits go to all of this work to send me poison? No. I’m seeing. Straight teeth. Latex gloves. Uh. Vans. No. veneers. She’s a… she’s a dentist!”
Jo beamed at Camille like every time she had a vision. Sometimes, like when their eyes caught each other’s over a corpse, it hurt to tell so many lies .
But while Jo kept checking back to her car, where the mysterious date waited, Camille thought the lie felt pretty damn spectacular.
--*--
common sense will tell you that the ending will be sad, and now’s the time to break and run away.
Camille was tired of turning her head to crying and ignoring poorly covered bruises. Camille was tired of thinking about where they came from. Camille was tired of swallowing her rage and forgetting the situation.
Camille was tired of Jett; Camille was going to get her girl back.
So one day, when she entered Jo’s immaculate home, she packed a large knife in her purse.
And a sprig of cilantro.
--
There are some things that Jo will have to keep quiet forever, like the fact that husbands are delicious when cooked in red wine with roasted carrots. There are other things, like how the wolves got into her back yard, that Jo will have to tell everyone she knows.
But as she takes a bite of a particularly succulent rib, she stares at Camille, who is eying her like she is made of gold and she wouldn’t mind going to jail for her. There are some things, like how she cries on the floor later and Camille holds her and she can feel her breath hot on her neck, that she can’t even tell herself.
Camille knows everything about Jo, every single deep dark secret.
Except that Jo knows exactly the way Camille’s hands feel in hers, and that Jo thinks for hours what it would be like to dance together under the same dark skies that she doesn’t have to hide from anymore.
--*--
sea salt tears, swimming around as the rain comes down
James is throwing a fit, generally being a horrific pirate, and making her rue the day that she asked him to come aboard her father’s ship.
“How can you agree to this? How can you allow them to do this? As a woman, how can you allow this, Camille? This torture. Leaving a mermaid to die in the sun is nothing but foolish men play acting at power.”
Camille walks straight to James and points a finger up at him. “That is quite enough. You are not to be making demands. You are the lowest man in this ship. You shall not force my hand in anything.”
Camille takes off her hat and rubs a hand through her grubby hair. Sometimes, being a pirate captain wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. She looks over at the beautiful blonde… thing glistening in one of the tide pools. She sees the men glaring at the pink of nipples peaking out from behind her strands of golden hair.
“However,” she says looking at James, “you are correct, so it will save you from being marooned. I will not stand for this. Any man who doesn’t step back from it will have his throat slit, or be left on the doorstep of the first Naval captain I can find. I will not allow you to torture the poor thing. Besides, that’s no way to go about getting her to cry.”
Camille is wrenching off her boots and wading one foot into the pool and around the creature’s tail. “Mermaids don’t cry from pain or suffering, do they?” she said softly, cupping its jaw. “You are much too tough for that, aren’t you, love? It’s salvation that makes you sob, isn’t it? It’s us being so very kind.”
The mermaid is trembling and gnashing her teeth, anything to keep her from showing emotion.
“Shh…” Camille said, “I wouldn’t let them hurt you. There’s no need of that.” She dropped a kiss on her forehead. “You aren’t like anyone else. You’d just like to be left alone. You don’t want to hurt anyone. Why can’t they see that?”
She chuckled softly.
“But I see that, love. I see that,” she said, looking deep into her eyes as a tear fell down its cheek.
Camille caught it up in a bottle, stoppered it, and clambered off of the mermaid’s tail and out of the pool.
“You will let her go,” she said to her men before turning back to the creature. “Thank you very much for your assistance. You will be released back into the ocean. I believe that this pool should take you there.”
“But,” one of her men started.
“You will let her go, or you will face my consequences.”
“But we could just,” he continued.
“Let. Her. Go.”
“But,” he said.
Before he could get out another word, Camille pulled a pistol from her side, cocked it, and shot him square between the eyes.
“There will be no questions now,” she said to the rest of the men. “You will release her.”
Camille felt the gentlest tug in the pit of her stomach as the mermaid nodded softly in thanks at her while her as she was released
--*--
people are dying, I close my blinds, all that I know is I’m breathing now
Jo barely has any idea what floor of the hospital she is on, let alone how she is expected to try to diagnose a patient. It isn’t as if it is of any consequence; it’s not like the Attendants and Residents haven’t already decided what happened to the next patient and what course of action they will take.
It’s all one big test: the hours, the double shifts, the lack of sleep and personal life, the questions, and the research. The only point is to drill them-to see if they really have what it takes.
Jo doesn’t have much time to wax poetic on the life of an Intern because she is scuffling with her peers. She’s been at the hospital for thirty-six hours, and just making the motions is beginning to take its toll on her. The motions were all that she could see: the running and diagnosing and nose jobs and c-sections and death. Everything was hospital grey and yellow, and everything was monotony.
Until she stumbled onto her.
Lying in the bed, looking very small and very scared, was a pretty girl, about her age, smiling, even though her eyes held that same fear that animals had when they were being cornered by hunters.
Kelly snapped, “This is Miss Baker. She’s presenting with gran mal seizures and nausea. Course of action, Taylor?”
Jo held her face flat. “That’s a trick question. It could be anything. Before acting, you need to run more tests.”
Kelly let out the slightest smile, “Good. She’s yours then.”
--
Jo felt the wall of Camille’s abdomen and went through the list of things that she should be looking for over and over in her head until they were ingrained in her finger tips.
“Usually I like to let a girl get to know me before I let them do this,” Camille said lazily, eyes half closed.
Jo didn’t know what to say, because something was fluttering in her stomach and she knew that this feeling was Categorically Not Allowed. Not for patients, especially ones that were potentially pre-neurological operation. Instead she smiled mildly back at her.
“Come on, Doc. At least buy a girl a drink first.”
Jo smiled for real this time. “Already did,” she said, tapping on the IV dangling off of Camille’s wrist.
“Alright, Taylor, go ahead then.”
Jo giggled and licked her lips a littler nervously before she spoke, “It’s Jo. Jo Taylor.”
“Doctor Jo Taylor. Someone I could bring home to Daddy. Always wanted me to marry a doctor. What are you doing for the next hour, Doctor Jo.”
“Hey, I’m not a radio host. Doctor Taylor or Jo. Never Doctor Jo,” she said with a shudder. “I’m spending the next hour with a pretty girl and an MRI machine. What about you?”
“That would suit me just fine, I think.”
--
It went like this for weeks of flirting and side-glances and tests and surgical prep. Jo slept even worse than usual, worrying about her career and Camille’s health and feeling the rush of butterflies or bats or hormones as she lay across her bed. Her only grace was the fact that it would be over soon. She could pretend to pick Camille up in some dive bar and no one would no the better. There was nothing wrong with falling for a former patient.
Jo closed the door tightly behind her minutes before Camille was scheduled to be rolled out of her room and into surgery. Jo tried hard not to think about the brain tumor in Camille’s beautiful head. Instead she walked to the side of the bed and roused Camille from her sleep by stroking the top of her hands.
“How you doing,” she drawled.
“Oh, I’ve been better. For one thing, I have an impressive bald spot.”
“You’ve never looked better.”
“Says someone who never saw me without a lump the size of a kid’s fist in my head,” she said laughing.
Jo grabbed tightly to her hand and murmured, “Don’t. Don’t Camille. Please. Just. Let’s not think about it.”
“Okay, then. I’ll see you when I get out?”
Jo forced back the lump that was forming in her throat and smiled, “First thing.”
“Just so you know, I plan on being delusional and pretending that surgery was actually fucking you. It sounds more pleasant.”
“You do that,” she said, pressing on of Camille’s tiny hands up to her lips and kissing his softly.
Seconds after she drops it, Kelly and the rest of the interns are walking in, preparing to take Camille to the OR.
--
Jo spent most of the day filing papers and taking out stitches, getting herself assigned to any small case that would make her stop thinking of Camille--- the way she was sitting there with her skull wide open, sharp metal instruments digging into her skull.
After her eighth prostate exam of the day, she looked at her watch and blissfully saw that Camille’s surgery should have been over. She made her way to the bed that she should have been lying in, softly coming out from under the anesthesia. Instead, under the starchy white sheet, was an old man, coughing hard into his elbow.
Jo caught a nurse by the elbow, “Where did the patient that was supposed to be here get sent to? Camille Baker?”
The nurse gave her a practiced sympathetic glance before she went back to counting sterilized gauze pads. “I’m so sorry, but she didn’t make it out of surgery, sweetie.”
Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes, and she could feel her breathing speed up.
The nurse touched her shoulder softly, “First lost patient, honey?”
Jo nods before her feet take off without her knowledge or authority. She did not think about how much her future had changed in the weeks with Camille. She did not think about pain. She thought about her feet, slapping down to the tile, to a place where they knew she would be safe.
Jo slammed into a bathroom stall and was sick. Tears would not come out, because they were a secret that she had to keep. Tears and kisses were something that had to be buried with the dead.
--*--
hey, it ain't such a long drop don't stammer don't stutter, from the diamonds in the sidewalk to the dirt in the gutter, and you carry those bruises to remind you wherever you go.
Camille bent behind the bar, grabbed the cleanest glass she could find, and sat back up to pour a shot of whiskey into it. A beautiful blonde boy sat in front of her with thick, dark eyebrows and a straight nose. He looked like he might be a year or so younger than her, at seventeen or so, with a curve in his stomach and skinny legs.
A perfect target.
“What’s a pretty girl doing in such a rough place? Can’t find a man who would marry you?” he said, and Camille thought that maybe she was wrong about it age, because it didn’t even sound like his voice had dropped.
“Too young for that,” she laughed.
“And not to young for this?” he said gesturing to the establishment and arching one eyebrow.
“Could say the same for you. What’s a fourteen-year-old boy doing in a saloon, drinking whiskey?”
“Name’s Jo,” he said, extending a slender hand. “’Bout twenty years old,” and, raising her hat just high enough that Camille caught a quick glance of a top not under it, “not a boy.”
Camille felt that quiet need coil in the base of her, begging her to take this boy up to her room, to take off the clothes and take down the hair and have a girl for her own to make tremble and scream for the rest of the night. Instead, she bit her lips and ignored the sear of heat in her cheeks.
“Sorry about the misunderstanding,” she said softly.
“Oh, don’t be sorry,” Jo said with a drawl that wasn’t from out West, but from pretty Southern plantations where people drank sweet tea like it was mother’s milk. “I take it as a compliment. Saves my life on a daily basis.”
Camille noticed that she was still holding Jo’s hand, and that it was rough and calloused just like every farm hand she ever met. She dropped it without a word and went to take care of the other men that sat at the bar.
--
Camille took the night off from her extra activities in the upstairs room, forgoing the extra coin for a chance to watch the girl whose hand she held. She watched over her, pistol tucked into the folds of her dress and shotgun under the bar, prepared to take care of her if anything should go wrong.
But nothing went wrong, and instead she felt the heat grown under her skirts as she watched Jo finger the cards and slam a few shots. She kept shooting her sly glances throughout the game. She even caught Jo’s eyes on her while she poured drinks for other men.
Finally, the game ended and Camille waited by the base of the steps. Jo found her, just as Camille knew she would when she had the money in her pockets. Jo folded a few coins into her hands.
“You want to?” she said coyly, pointing to the room at the top of the stairs. When she broke eye contact, she looked down at her hands, counting the coins that had been pressed into them. “This is too much,” she said with a look of confusion smeared on her face. “I-I can’t accept this. No charge for my favorite customer of the day.
“No, ma’am. But thank you for the offer. I can’t say that I wouldn’t love to take you up on it, but I’m afraid I have to get moving out.”
Camille was shocked and more than a little disappointed and she knew that it was portrayed all over her face.
Jo spoke again, “You take care of yourself.” Then she kissed Camille softly on the rouged cheek and whispered into her ear, “And if you’re ever in a little town called Hinnom, Wyoming, you come find me, and I promise I’ll make up for the offer.”
Camille watched as she swaggered out of the room. There was a coin in her pocket that she would not spend. There was a coin in her pocket that she would keep there until her dying day.
--*--
I won't let my forever roam, and now I hope I can find. my forever a home. so give me your forever. please your forever.
Nothing registers with Jo except that there are warm lips mouthing at her breast through the cotton of her tank top. She is sleepy and happy in her bed and not completely sure that she is awake and that this is not the happiest kind of dream. She doesn't even bother to open her eyes until she feels icy hands creep down her hips.
She bolts up with a start-- first from the shock, then from the irritation of it all. Not that she doesn't like being woken up like this, because Camille's tingling mouth is the best wake up call she could ever ask for, but because she knows that Camille has sat awake all night writing.
Jo grabs Camille's hands in her own and pulls her up towards the head of the bed, looking her in the eyes. This was not a time for anything but sleep.
“Hey, beautiful.”
“Hey,” Camille said, voice gravely.
“You know, sleep is a good thing? Most people even enjoy it. And I know,” she said, rolling her eyes a little and laughing, “’most people aren’t writers.’ But even writers need to sleep, Cami.”
“Naw,” she said, mumbling into the curve of Jo’s neck.
Jo stopped counting the months they had been together five months ago. Jo stopped counting minutes on her fingertips. She didn’t have to anymore. Jo was not concerned with minutes and years, even if they did have ridiculous dates on anniversaries because it made Camille happy, because Jo had forever.
Jo Taylor had spent her entire life trying to capture something like forever in all of the wrong places. But Camille was whispering nonsense about her newest chapter to her, something that she would read that night, after Camille had come, naked and clean and shaking, in her arms and before they ate sushi on the balcony. Forever had landed unexpectedly in Jo’s lap. Forever was short skirts and ink stained hands, and Jo would never have imagined it being that way.
(But Jo Taylor had never really believed in Forever before Camille, no matter how much she’d told everyone she did.)