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[♔ ZACK WATKINS]

Yankee Stadium. He loved it and hated it at the same time. Thankfully, since they'd built the new stadium in 2009, Zack's feelings towards the church in the Bronx were a lot more positive. Before 2009, he didn't let the fact that Yankee Stadium was the last place he'd ever seen his biological family bother him too much. His fathers had worried, back when he was younger, that taking him to a game in the city would be traumatizing for him, but after they went for the first time when he was nine and he showed them how well he could handle it, and how he could put his love of baseball first when it came to going to a game, they relaxed a bit.

He still had the flashbacks though, and even though he was grown and self sufficient, there was always that one or two minutes in which his mind wandered back to when he'd been six and had waited outside the gates of the stadium for a family that was never coming back to pick him up. He hated that after all these years he still went there, even if it was only for a brief moment, but he couldn't help it. But like we said, since the new stadium had been opened six years ago, things had been a lot better.

It was why he didn't mind waiting outside the gates for Cameron to meet him. He'd taken the train here from Brooklyn, and she was coming from Manhattan. They could have met at the Subway station but those were always clusterfucky on game day, so he figured having a solid meeting place right outside of the gates was his best bet. His eyes scanned the crowd for his sister, and on more than one occasion he checked his cell to see if she'd texted him. They had seats right on the first base line, about two rows behind the dugout, which was fucking amazing, and the game was set to start in about twenty minutes. To him, that was enough time to get their beers and hot dogs and make their way to the seats in time for the National anthem. He loved baseball, and he loved that he had the opportunity to go to games from time to time. It was a night game against the Red Sox, which meant the whole entire place was going to go completely fucking nuts and he couldn't wait for it at all. He thanked god that the people who ate in his restaurant were loaded and gifted him things like amazing baseball tickets as thanks for the meals he cooked. He never thought he'd be successful like this, on the covers of magazines and whatnot, but he wasn't going to look his gift horse in the mouth. Instead, he returned the high five of a passing eight year old who complimented him on his Mariano Rivera jersey and looked for Cameron once again.

tag campon. zacktor is wearing jeans and a mo jersey. template credit goes to tillie at caution and sds.

i'm just a kid myself ,

[♔ CAMERON WATKINS]

i couldn't spill my heart!

you mean that much to me and it's hard to show

Shit, she was late. Shit shit shit. It wasn't unusual, of course, because Cameron pretty much didn't run on any time scale but her own, not caring about the fact that other people might have things to do – in fact, it wasn't so much that she didn't care as it simply didn't cross her mind that she might be holding them up by making them wait for her, arriving somewhere half an hour late. But she had always done things her way, and if that meant that some days, she was late to everything that she was meant to do and didn't end up going to bed until six in the morning, then that was that – she'd make up for it by going to bed at nine a few days later, because a regular sleep pattern was not something that she was in possession of. This, however, wasn't something that she wanted to be late for; they needed to have a chance to get food and drink before the game started – Cameron was not going to be lasting an entire game without food, thank you very much – and she also wanted a chance to talk to Zack, since she'd not seen him in what was probably months now, thanks to the race with Lysander and then flying over to meet Jay on his cruise. She'd talked to him in the meantime, of course, but it wasn't the same, and she was excited that they got to do this, just the two of them; it would be awesome, without a doubt. She did feel that sometimes, he was too busy working to hang out with her, and sometimes she wanted to hang out with just him, and not Shane and/or Jackson too, which is what it had seemed to be every time that she'd headed over to his place recently, so this was really, really something that she didn't want to be late for. She'd caught up with herself a little by the time she got off the train, thankfully, and she was pretty sure that there was still plenty of time before it started – which was good, because she still had to find her brother amongst the crowd of people. She loved this; Cameron loved the noise and the fact that there were so many people here, all of them excited – and hopefully all of them rooting for the good team, and not the one that they were going to annihilate. Losers. Before she'd been adopted, she had loved crowds because it was easier to run off in them, to get lost among the sea of people when some social worker or foster mom let go of her hand for two seconds, and they always found her again (unfortunately), but she'd had her few minutes of freedom, and it had been great. She'd run away at other times, too, kind of had never stopped, even after her adoption, but she'd never been the kind of person to shy away from loud, busy places. Fuck that; she was going to yell her fucking lungs out, so there. It wasn't like anybody would be able to stop her. She frowned for a moment before she spotted Zack, running over to him with a grin on her face. “Zacky!” she called, coming to a stop in front of him. “Hi! Let's go in, I'm hungry.”

[♔ ZACK WATKINS]

It wasn't long before he looked up and saw Cameron running towards him. He grinned, fully expecting her to jump on him or something, like Jackie had done when she'd come back from Prague and he'd gone to meet her at the airport, but when she didn't, it didn't change how glad he was to see her. Even if she didn't want it, one of his arms moved around her and pulled her into a hug.

God forbid we don't get you fed right away and you take a second to tell your big brother how much you missed him!

He joked, though as bad as it may have sounded, Zack didn't think that Cameron had missed him at all. Not that he was emo about it or anything, but in his mind, as far as brothers went, she only really cared about Jason, and what Jason thought about things. Everybody was quick to jump on him for not being available to do things because he was working or spending time with his family, but they never stop to consider how he might feel about them leaving for months at a time with little to no notice. It was why he could never get too pissed when one of them accused him of not being around ever, because he was consistently around, he just had a schedule and obligations they needed to work around and couldn't always do things at the last minute. If he had advanced notice though, he was usually available for any and everything. Case in point, today's game. Cami wanted to see the Yankees, he'd made it happen. She said she wanted it to be just the two of them, he made it happen. Yes, it meant he was taking Shane and Jackson to the day game on Sunday, but still, he did whatever he could to make people happy when he could.

Beer and dogs?

He asked once they'd made it through the gates a few minutes later and stood in front of one of the larger concession stands. Zack had gone straight to the line, because even if the vendors would come right to their seats, he wanted to get something to start the night off. It can be assumed that they got a shit ton of food and drink, then, with loaded hands, made their way down to their seats. The night was crisp and calm and smelled like baseball, and Zack was on cloud nine.

Fucking boosted, you think Granderson's going to homer again?

Because apparently we're going to use facts from this season's baseball series against the Red Sox to supplement this topic. Curtis Granderson had, in a recent game, hit three home runs in the game, which was kind of a super huge deal.

tag campon. zacktor is wearing jeans and a mo jersey. template credit goes to tillie at caution and sds.

i'm just a kid myself ,

[♔ CAMERON WATKINS]

i couldn't spill my heart!

you mean that much to me and it's hard to show

“Fuck off!” she replied, predictably, letting Zack hug her, leaning into him a little without actually hugging back; as enthusiastic as Cameron was, she was not one of those people who went around hugging everybody, and it took a hell of a lot for her to want to do it with anybody. Oh, she'd let them hug her, as long as it didn't happen too often, because people seemed to like that, but she generally had to be upset before she wanted a hug, and since she rarely admitted to being that way, it wasn't something that happened often. Again, another outward sign of affection that she was well and truly shit at. Sex was one thing, hugging was quite another. But just because she found it difficult to show affection, it didn't mean that Cameron didn't feel it. She might not have been about to tell Zack that she'd missed him, but she had; some of the time, and especially after the conversation they'd had a little while back on instant messenger, she felt as though he thought she didn't love him, or care about him, and she really, really did. Cam wasn't going to deny that Jay was her favourite brother, that he was the one who she'd listen to, the one she wanted to spend most of her time with – and who she completely idolised – because it was the truth (although it wasn't because he was rich. Sure, the fact that he could buy her shit was so awesome, but she'd have felt the same way even if he'd been dirt poor). She was closer to him than she was to Zack or Jackie, that was a fact. But she still loved them both far more than she'd ever be able to express. She cared about what they thought, and how they were doing, and they weren't as involved in her daily life as Jay was, given that she lived with him, and needed to tell him pretty much everything that she did, but they meant the world to her. She'd have done anything for either of them—and she had missed Zack. She just couldn't tell him that. It was much easier to focus on the prospect of food and the upcoming game than it was to try and force herself to say something that she was uncomfortable saying just because it would make her brother feel better. Honestly, her siblings (and parents) were the only people that she'd bother to do that for anyway; Cam didn't say things just because she was meant to, or people expected her to, but she'd try, with her brothers and sister, even though she invariably ended up saying the wrong thing just because she didn't think before she spoke. “I'm shocked that you even need to ask that question,” she teased, because duh she wanted beer and hot dogs; she wasn't sure that there was ever a time when she wasn't hungry, to begin with, she adored junk food, and this was a game, so of course she needed to be stuffing her face with things that were probably bad for her. She'd eat an apple once she got home, or something, no big deal, and go for a run tomorrow. By the time that they were settled in their seats, Cam was already eating one of her dogs, and she was feeling buzzed; she loved the atmosphere, the noise, knowing that they were going to be watching something great, plus she was hanging with Zacky, which she genuinely didn't think she spent enough time doing. “Maybe one,” she decided with her mouth full, leaning back in her seat. “Not three again, though. Unless he's a fucking god or something.”

[♔ ZACK WATKINS]

Buying concessions didn't take as long as he'd expected it to, and soon, the two of them were heading to their seats with hot dogs and beers. He didn't usually eat this kind of stuff, preferring more... edible cuisine to anything processed, but for baseball, he always made an exception. You just couldn't actually go to a baseball game without having a hot dog or three. It was tradition, just like getting peanuts and into a screaming match with fans of the rival team was. Today was going to be particularly rough, as the opposing team were the mortal enemies of the Yankees, which meant that the die hard Bostonians who dared to wear their Red Sox gear to support their home team were already getting harrassed. There were more than a few extra police on duty, crowd control mainly, some with riot gear just in case things got REALLY bad, but Zack paid them no attention, choosing, instead, to focus on eating his own hot dog.

I bet it's gon' be Swish tonight. I have faith in him.

He said, speaking of Nick Swisher, one of the best players on the team, in his own personal opinion. It might have been because he'd come into the restaurant with his wife one night and after insisting on coming back to the kitchen to compliment him himself, he'd actually come back a week later specifically to give Zack a signed Jersey and ball for Jackson. It was going above and beyond, and Zack appreciated that about people whose careers actually allowed them to be picky and choosy about the people they associated with.

Three minutes later, he was on his feet again, the Yankees cap he had on his head taken off and held over his heart as some Broadway diva sang the National Anthem. The first pitch was thrown a minute after that, and the game had begun. He sunk back down in his seat as the Sox came up to bat, half paying attention to what was happening on the field, half concentrating on not spilling his beer as he drank it.

I'll bet you ten bucks we win by five or more.

tag campon. zacktor is wearing jeans and a mo jersey. template credit goes to tillie at caution and sds.

i'm just a kid myself ,

[♔ CAMERON WATKINS]

i couldn't spill my heart!

you mean that much to me and it's hard to show

Baseball food was Cameron's favourite kind; actually, she liked eating fast food in general, and burgers were probably her favourite, but when she was with Zack, she always felt as though he expected her to eat more healthy things, so being at a game totally justified her stuffing her face with horrendously greasy processed meat. She was going to do it anyway, but at least this way, her brother was doing it too. Honestly, Cameron would eat pretty much anything. She wasn't picky, and there were a few things that she didn't like, but generally speaking, food was food and she was always starving. She didn't know how she had gotten to be that way, but she had eaten more than anybody else for pretty much as long as she could remember. So did Jay, which meant that between them, they got through enough food to feed a small army, which meant a hell of a lot of empty cartons when they got Chinese food, and that Izzy had learned early on that she did not cook enough food anymore and that she needed to increase her quantities greatly. Cam didn't understand how people could just not eat very much, and maybe her view of what was normal had been skewed by living with Jay, but come on, food was fucking fantastic! Okay, so she probably didn't eat enough fruit, but she did have some, and yeah, she had too much chocolate and fast food, but it wasn't like she'd gotten fat or anything. Sex was great at burning calories, as was dancing around the apartment with her music turned up when Jay was at work, and she worked out properly sometimes. Keeping in shape was important and shit, and Cam still wanted to look good. She just wasn't going to obsess over her weight, not when there was so much food out there that she wanted to eat. She'd starve otherwise – she was always starving. She was dealing with that, though, by practically having finished one of her hot dogs before even getting to her seat – pausing to yell at a group of passing Sox fans, because seriously, did anybody think that she wasn't going to yell herself hoarse? This was going to be awesome, way better than just watching it on TV would have been, and she was glad that she and Zack were hanging out, too. Cameron thought that she was going to try harder to do that more often, if she could drag him away from his new family, because things had gotten a bit weird while she'd been away and they'd had to talk about emotions and shit and she really didn't want to do that – Cam just hoped that he'd be too caught up in the match to remember that he wanted to make her talk about ways to help her be less angry, because Cameron didn't want that even a little bit and was guaranteed to try and do everything possible to just blow him off when it came to that. It wasn't shit that she talked about, not ever. She was here to have a good time, not try and stop her brother sending her to therapy. It was bad enough that Jay was already doing that, especially since it wasn't working. “Only 'cause he's like, your best friend now,” she replied teasingly, pausing in her eating for long enough for the National Anthem before she was stuffing her face again, apparently planning to go for a record number of hot dogs. “You're on!” she agreed, wiping her hand on her jeans before holding it out for him to shake, not because she disagreed with what he was betting on, but simply because she never could turn down a bet like that. “We're gonna win, though.”

[♔ ZACK WATKINS]

He shook her hand with a grin and then sat back down so he could start in on the shitty food he'd gotten for himself. There was something about being in Yankee stadium that made everything good though, so he was able to think less about the crap he was putting into his body and how long he was going to have to work out to actually get rid of it and more about the fact that he was happy to be able to share this with Cameron. He rarely spent time with her alone. It was usually the two of them and Jason, or the two of them and Jackie. Zack spent most of his sibling time with his youngest sister, but a lot of that had to do with the fact that Jackie usually sought him out when they went more than a few days without seeing each other. Of course that wasn't the case while she was studying in Prague, but when she was actually in town, she wasn't a stranger by any means.

It wasn't that Cameron WAS a stranger either, she just had different priorities. She liked having fun, and a lot of times Zack admired how carefree she was. Yes, he wished she put a little more thought into what she was doing with her life, but at the same time, he knew she was a free spirit and unless he saw her actually hurting herself? He wasn't going to do anything to try and stifle it. At the same time though, he couldn't turn into Jason. His older brother meant well, he knew that, and was the only person who ever seemed to be able to ACTUALLY get through to Cami when she was in one of her moods, but he needed to not keep financially supporting her. Nobody would ever let her go without actual necessities of course, but Jason didn't need to be financing random ass trips around the world for her. He tried to keep his feelings about things like that to himself, but he knew that his siblings were well aware of how he felt.

So come on. Tell me about your trip. The parts where you weren't shitfaced and having sex.

He asked, because talking online for five minutes before they started arguing about who was hotter didn't count as an actual conversation about something that was obviously a significant part of her life. He still wasn't a fan of hearing about his sister's sexcapades, but he'd risk it to know more about what was going on in her life. His eyes remained on the game though, watching as the Red Sox attempted to actually get on base.

tag campon. zacktor is wearing jeans and a mo jersey. template credit goes to tillie at caution and sds.

i'm just a kid myself ,

[♔ CAMERON WATKINS]

i couldn't spill my heart!

you mean that much to me and it's hard to show

It was good to be home. Some years, Cameron spent more months away from the city than she did in it, but New York was always going to be home, it was always going to be the place that she came back to. Sure, her dads lived in Albany, and she'd drop in and see them from time to time – generally choosing to get the train up there, because she was still fucking terrified of the stretch of road between the two cities after the accident, not that she'd have admitted that to anybody – but New York City was where all her siblings lived and it was where she considered to be home. She'd lived with Jay for years now, and it was still his place that she was staying at, but all of her things were there and she knew that he was never going to ask her to move out and get her own place. Sometimes she'd talked about it, usually when she was feeling like a ball of crap that was nothing but a disappointment to him, like she was ruining his life by being there, and that things would be easier for him without her around, but she was always glad that he didn't agree, because she liked sharing a house with him. She could have lived on her own, but it wouldn't have been the same, and then she'd have had to remember to clean more often than once in a blue moon, and she had all her shit the way that she liked it there, and it was better for her to live with him, she thought. As long as he wanted her to be there, Cam wanted to be there too, and that wasn't going to change. She'd go off and stay in different places, either with her friends or Zack, in the city, or random hotels or other friends' places when she went further afield, but this was always going to be home. Maybe if her siblings ended up living in different places, that would be different, but she couldn't see that happening. Jay and Zack both had their jobs here, and Jackie had school to finish, although she was going to join the Peace Corps or something like that afterwards which meant that she wasn't going to be around the whole time. Honestly, she'd probably end up living wherever Jay was, but she liked it here, and Cameron didn't want that to change any time soon. For someone who never stuck around in one place long, and who changed her hobbies and interests more often than she changed her clothes, she wasn't good with change when it was the kind of stuff that was the basis of her routines and the way that she lived her life. She didn't like it when those things got fucked with. Her stability came from knowing where her family was, and she liked it when they were all in the same city, it made it easier for her to see them all, and she thought that she was going to be around here for at least a little while, which meant that she planned to spend as much time with them as she could before she got bored and decided to get in her car and just drive. “It was awesome!” she told him, and yeah, okay, the last part had been kind of shitty, she'd felt bad and she'd drunk too much and Jay had gotten mad at her, but when it had been her and Lysander in the car, it had been amazing and she really hoped that the two of them could go roadtripping again. Maybe not straight away because he had to find a job or whatever, but soon. “I wasn't shitfaced 'til I was on the boat, dumbass. When we were driving I was sober.”