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[ADRIAN MORGAN]

I'LL WAIT HERE, YOU'RE CRAZY

THOSE VICIOUS STREETS ARE FILLED WITH STRAYS

›phony people come to pray. look at all of them beg to stay. phony people come to pray.‹

Adrian didn’t think that he would ever have a lot of money. Right now, he was doing pretty good, considering how little that he used to have and what he grew up with. Money wasn’t always that hard to get his hands on. And he knew a lot of people who did whatever they could to get money in their pocket, regardless of what kind of pride they had to throw out the window for it. He didn’t steal, he didn’t sell sex, he sold drugs. He thought they were the classier of the three, frankly. Though, not to mention a little bit safer to sell without getting caught or winding up with some fucking STD. And he didn’t generally accept sex either for drugs. He had told people that if it was good enough, he might be willing to, but then when it was over, he just laughed at them for buying it and still demanded money or just claimed it wasn’t that great. Because, when he did that, he was looking for sex, not really charging them nothing. He might drop what they owed a little bit if he really felt bad for them, but sex wasn’t going to help him. He had to pay his own bills and the guys he owed money to and he wasn’t going to be able to do that through sex. He had a little too much dignity for that and he knew it would never fly with most people. If anything, it just set him up for hell if he tried and he didn’t want to. But that didn’t mean that he wasn’t amused when someone jumped to sexual favours to pay him off. If he wanted sex, he’d have it. He usually didn’t need to wave drugs over someone’s head to get them to sleep with him.

He didn’t do it for the hell of it; he did it for money. He didn’t see why that concept was hard for people to grasp. He needed the money for himself. Sure, he knew plenty of dealers that were willing to give their product for sex now and then. They generally had more money than he did though and were more into that than he was. He didn’t need to demand sex from anyone and he didn’t get off on the power trip that some of them had. He just wanted his fucking money. Period. “Do I look like I give a damn? I don’t care if your brother was fucking president. It doesn’t mean anything to me.” He retorted and yeah, it was rougher when someone pulled that card. She had a lawyer brother so he had to be careful, but he would be clean if she tried to trail things back to him. And who tried to throw someone in jail because they bought the drugs to begin with? It was easy to get away with getting people beat up when they weren’t going to go to the cops to tell them it was from a drug deal. And when it came down to it, he might be making the threats and sending people off, but it was easy to deny it. “You mean you actually managed to get it?” He asked, glancing to the shop window momentarily before back at her. If someone wanted to steal dresses that really wasn’t his business and it wasn’t like he hadn’t seen or thought of doing worse. Though, he wasn’t really surprised that she was someone who might steal instead of paying for something. Yeah, he was feeling pretty bitter and ripped off.

made by cupcakesss of Caution 2.0

[♔ CAMERON WATKINS]

AND THERE IN THE BLACKLIGHT

There was something of a thrill in stealing; Cameron didn’t do it because she couldn’t afford things, after all, since while Jay might be reluctant to give her money, sometimes, he generally ended up doing it anyway, however many conditions he put on it. Listening to a lecture might suck, but they pretty much just went in one ear and out the other anyway, given how many she’d had to listen to in her life, so she didn’t really care all that much. When she wanted money, Jay gave her money. That was pretty much how it worked, at the end of the day, and if he didn’t then she knew that she could ask Zack...only she wouldn’t unless she really had to, because she knew that her other brother was saving up for his restaurant and that he refused to let Jay give or lend him the money that he needed. Cameron didn’t understand why, because she asked Jay for money all the time and she didn’t see anything wrong with him, but if Zack didn’t want to, then okay, whatever, that was his decision – it just meant that Cam didn’t want to take away from his restaurant fund, because she really, really wanted her brother to see his dream. Maybe she didn’t need to steal, but sometimes, it just happened...it wasn’t like she went into a shop determined to get something into her bag, just that she found that sometimes, she walked out without paying for something. Most of the time, it wasn’t even something that she wanted. It was a piece of crap thing, or a nail polish, or something lame like that, and Cameron wondered what the hell she was going to do with it – but then her room was full of crap, really. It was full of things that she’d been bought that she’d used a few times and then moved on from. She should really have a clear out, see what she had and whether she was ever going to use it again.

She probably wasn’t; once Cameron got bored of something and moved on, she barely ever went back to it. She could sell all her shit, or give it away, or something. Maybe Jay knew people who’d want it—maybe her friends would want some of it, because Cameron would always rather that they had it than random strangers she didn’t know; it was good stuff, most of it, at least the stuff that she hadn’t stolen, expensive stuff, but her attention span was that of a gnat before she got bored with things, before she got the newer, better version even though the old one worked just fine. And hey, she needed more space in her wardrobe – which was probably ridiculous, given that she had an entire walk in one – so maybe she’d get rid of the two year old shoes that she never wore now. Izzy could have them, if they were the same size; they’d still be better than whatever shit she thought it was okay to wear when it really wasn’t. Cammie really didn’t get how someone could be so hot and still not have any idea about what it was good to wear. Maybe she just went shopping too much – except that there was no such thing as too much shopping. It wasn’t possible in the slightest. “He’s better than the fucking president,” she snapped back, and she genuinely believed that he was; she didn’t care about politics, she didn’t even vote most of the time because they were all as awful as each other, but Jay was the best person ever. If he ran for president she’d vote for him, but she was glad that he wasn’t in politics, really. She probably couldn’t have gotten away with so much shit if he’d been president. She grinned. “I’m fucking amazing.”

TAG: ADRIAN | WORDS: 647 | NOTES: <33 | ORANGE CARAMEL ! @ ATF

[ADRIAN MORGAN]

I'LL WAIT HERE, YOU'RE CRAZY

THOSE VICIOUS STREETS ARE FILLED WITH STRAYS

›phony people come to pray. look at all of them beg to stay. phony people come to pray.‹

Adrian had only been a thief when he had to be. He knew how take things if he needed them. When he was a kid he was adept at shoplifting, but after his mom died, it happened less and less because his brother would have been disappointed if he got his ass pinned for stealing. It wasn’t like he didn’t know guys were could steal, burglarize and take what they wanted. He knew plenty of those, because he ran with the crowd that didn’t bother with legalities much. But, his brother had always insisted that he didn’t get into that kind of trouble. They dealt in drugs and violence, but he didn’t need to stack the charges on if anyone caught him. He needed to be careful and his brother made it clear that he didn’t want to see him in prison. That made two of them, really. Adrian had no interest in going to jail. It wasn’t a deterrent away from his current lifestyle, however. It was the only world that he knew and his brother was supportive of the drug sales. After all, he was the one who got him into it and was for the most part his supplier. He wasn’t his only one, but he definitely had it set up so he would take the fall if he screwed up too badly. He didn’t need that kind of protection anymore, of course. He was twenty-three, but he could always count on his brother to be there and to look out for him. It was something that he didn’t know how he’d live without. For most of his life, he had been the only one that he could trust. There was no one else that he could look up to or even assume might help him if he needed. Even his mother was too obsessed with her own habit to give a damn about her sons. Adrian felt lucky to have the brother he did, even if it wasn’t conventional and he wasn’t the normal role model most people had. But most didn’t have his fucking life and he wasn’t going to listen to their judgement.

He liked that he could go out and purchase what he wanted. Sure, a lot of the money came from drug sales because it was his source if income, but it was his money and it felt good to walk into a store and be able to pay the price on an item. He didn’t always have that growing up and he knew he was never going to have everything that he wanted. He wasn’t going to be filthy rich or anything. If he was ever legitimate it was going to be as a mechanic. And so far, he seemed to be doing well with the classes, better than anyone in his family had done. But, he was still stuck in the lifestyle that he was used to. That wasn’t going to stop. “What the hell ever. You’re brother’s just another fucking lawyer. It’s not a big deal.” He didn’t care how big or bad of a lawyer she had for a brother. He really didn’t. He would continue to get by like he always had without anyone throwing him away. It wasn’t his fault she’d decided not to pay him and he had to resort to those measures. It was her own fault for not paying him when he wanted the money. She forgot about it so as far as he was concerned, she had this coming. Adrian didn’t forget someone when they owed him money. He could forget them so easily otherwise. “How’d you do it?” He asked, and sounded genuinely curious about how she managed to pull it off.

made by cupcakesss of Caution 2.0

[♔ CAMERON WATKINS]

AND THERE IN THE BLACKLIGHT

The sad thing was that this whole thing probably was not enough to stop Cameron from doing something this stupid again; she’d never owe a drug dealer money again, because she’d meant it when she’d promised not to do it, and it wasn’t like she had some habit anyway – she used sometimes when she was at clubs, but that was about it, really, and sure, she had fun, but she wasn’t dumb about it – but there’d be something else, instead, that was so stupid that Jay would be pissed at her, disappointed in her, whatever. He always was, one way or another, and she tried so, so hard to make him proud, but Cameron was pretty sure that it was just something that she was never going to be able to do. She wanted to be good for him, great for him...but this was who she was, instead, this gigantic fuck up who ended up with a fucking dealer on her back because she’d forgotten that she owed him money. Who even did that? Cameron knew that she could be forgetful, sometimes, she really could, but there was a difference between that and...this. Idiot. She really was a fucking idiot, but whatever. She was sorting it out, and then this guy could leave her the fuck alone, and she wouldn’t have to deal with his constant threats anymore. She didn’t like it. Cameron knew that she could handle herself, but equally, she also knew that there was little chance of her being able to beat some guy that was twice her size, if he spent his entire time beating people up. She knew how to use her strength to her advantage, sure, but there was a limit to how well she could do that if her opponent could just sit on her and squash her to death.

But it wasn’t going to happen. When the snow cleared and the banks opened, she’d get the money from Jay, and she’d give it to Adrian, and that would be that, as far as it went. Nothing else needed to happen there, and he could forget that she ever existed, and she’d remember that buying drugs was not a good thing to do, however much it might have seemed it at the time – she’d probably been high when she’d bought them, which kind of painted him as a scumbag, a little bit, but whatever. It was sorted, she could forget it ever happened, and Jay would forgive her, because he always did. However badly she fucked up, she knew that she was in trouble for a while, she knew that he wasn’t pleased with her, but things always returned to normal again. She was glad about that; she didn’t think that she could have borne it if he’d never forgiven her for any of the shit that she’d done in her life. She needed him on her side, she needed him to be there for her, and she knew that it would always be an uneven relationship, that she needed him to do so much more for her than she could ever do for him...but he was her brother. She loved him more than she loved anybody else. “He’s not just another fucking lawyer, he’s the best fucking lawyer in the city!” Cameron didn’t understand law, but she didn’t need to; she knew how good he was, because he won like, all his cases, and even if he hadn’t, she would have still thought that he was the best, because he was Jay, and he was good at everything. She smirked. “By being awesome.” Like she was going to tell him her secret.

TAG: ADRIAN | WORDS: 613 | NOTES: <33 | ORANGE CARAMEL ! @ ATF

[ADRIAN MORGAN]

I'LL WAIT HERE, YOU'RE CRAZY

THOSE VICIOUS STREETS ARE FILLED WITH STRAYS

›phony people come to pray. look at all of them beg to stay. phony people come to pray.‹

Adrian couldn’t be bothered to care what state someone was in when they bought off of him. If they took anything, then they had to pay. It was a simple concept, really. He was offering something to them for money. He wasn’t asking for anything else and he expected to get what he asked for. He wasn’t looking for a good time or sex in exchange for drugs; although it tended to get offered whenever someone’s wallet started drying up. Not that Adrian had never given someone a discount because they’d been good in bed or whatever. He had. But, it wasn’t average and it never took away the entire debt. Sex wasn’t going to pay the bills; not unless he was selling it and that was a line that Adrian was never going cross that line. He didn’t know why people thought they could get away without paying him. Perhaps because he couldn’t actually go to the cops when they didn’t pay him his money. It wasn’t as if he could sue them for something illegal to sell to begin with. But, he could send someone around to kick their ass a few times. And while Adrian could handle himself in a fight, it was easier to send someone else to do it. Not to mention, he dealt with some guys that were even bigger than him and that he didn’t want to risk getting into a fight with if he didn’t have to. Besides, other guys could be a hell of a lot more intimidating than him. He didn’t exactly have the most overbearing appearance. He wasn’t some giant guy and he wasn’t ever going to be. So, he had to take what help he could when it came to forcing people to pay up. And if Cameron kept him waiting for too long when the snow cleared, he was going to send them after her too. It wasn’t that he wanted to do it, but he wasn’t going to take more of her shit.

He didn’t appreciate being forgotten about. He was entitled to that money. And he refused to be intimidated by the thought that she had a brother who was some hot shot lawyer. That wasn’t something that needed to concern him. He would treat her the same as he would treat anyone that didn’t pay him after that long. As far as he was concerned, she could consider herself lucky that he wasn’t taking this even farther. He could have been a complete dick about the banks being closed and could have still tried to take matters into more violent hands. Adrian liked to think that he was reasonable. Though, no one liked being fucked around. “Good for him. Still don’t care.” He shrugged. He raised an eyebrow when she gave her reason, then rolled his eyes. “Did you have one of those huge bag-purses?” He asked, figuring that that was a lot more reasonable. Although, at the same time he didn’t think that she would actually tell him. He wasn’t sure of the point of a secret, given that he was never going to have any reason to steal a dress or steal her method with it. But, it was a little curious how she managed to get out of the store with it. It just wasn’t going to be too upsetting if he was never told the proper answer about it. If he was going to steal something, it sure as hell wasn’t going to be something that he couldn’t use. And there wasn’t a use in the world for a dress like that. And right now, he really wasn’t want of anything he needed to take for himself.

made by cupcakesss of Caution 2.0

[♔ CAMERON WATKINS]

AND THERE IN THE BLACKLIGHT

It wasn’t that Cameron wanted to do stupid things that would get her into trouble with her brother – and to be honest, making Jay mad at her was always more a deterrent than the idea of being arrested was. They fought like cat and dog, sometimes, they really did, but it was never major, it was never anything that she thought would really affect their relationship, whereas when she fucked up, there were times when she was terrified that he really was going to tell her to move out, or cut her off, or something else that would probably have ended in her being dead or some shit, because Cameron was incapable of looking after herself. Even when she was the other end of the country, only calling Jay when she needed something, she still knew that she could get money from him, that he would fix things for her when she inevitably screwed them up, and that she could text him any time if she just wanted to talk to him. She just...seemed to have a knack for doing the wrong thing, for not thinking about the consequences of something before she started it, for getting carried away in the middle and carrying on even though she knew it was wrong because she was having fun. Just like she didn’t think before she spoke, she didn’t think before she acted, either, and Cammie had lost count of the number of times that Jay had had to save her ass because she’d done something dumb. Too many. She was tired of it, honestly. She was tired of being angry, she was tired of disappointing him, and her parents by extension, if they ever found out, which she hoped to God they never would because her dads had given her so much and she didn’t want to let them down – which was why it was her brother who knew just how bad she could be, and how she’d done nothing since dropping out of college. Her whole family was aware of her temper, since it had been a hell of a lot worse when she’d first been adopted, but Jay was the only one who really knew her. It was better that way.

Cameron didn’t talk about her issues easily, and she was far more likely to bury something, to be angry and drunk, or withdrawn in a way that wasn’t usual for her, than she was to tell anybody about what was bothering her – there was a reason that she hadn’t mentioned her nightmares to Jay for the longest time, after all – but when she did finally talk, it was always to her brother. The only time it wasn’t was when she was mad at him, or worried that he hated her, when she usually talked to Zacky or Ly, both of whom were very good at reassuring her that Jason didn’t hate her and that he would still want her in his life. It was one of the things Cameron was scared of most, that her brother would leave her. They had always been the closest, they’d always been the two who had done things together, he’d always been the one that she’d spent most time with, that she’d had in jokes with, and things that she didn’t do with anyone else. Hell, he had nicknames for her that she wouldn’t let anybody else use, ever. Only Jay got to call her Ron or Ronnie. She loved him more than anyone. “You should care, he’d fucking annihilate you,” she returned, and she genuinely believed it. It wouldn’t come to it, because she’d pay Adrian and then he’d leave her the fuck alone for the rest of her life, but she still believed that Jay would win. He always won. She grinned at Adrian, shaking her head. “Not telling!” she said, her voice almost sing-song in its tone; she wasn’t going to tell him, if only because he wanted to know.

TAG: ADRIAN | WORDS: 665 | NOTES: <33 | ORANGE CARAMEL ! @ ATF

[ADRIAN MORGAN]

I'LL WAIT HERE, YOU'RE CRAZY

THOSE VICIOUS STREETS ARE FILLED WITH STRAYS

›phony people come to pray. look at all of them beg to stay. phony people come to pray.‹

Adrian didn’t have a lot of people to disappoint and the standards were already low. He only ever answered to his brother; because he was the only one that he ever thought legitimately gave a damn about him. If something was wrong, he was the one person that he could rush to with hopes that he could clean it up. It wasn’t as if he lived in a world where messes couldn’t get his ass killed. He was living up to what was expected of him really. And if he wanted to be like his brother he was already on his way to that, if not hitting it already. The only difference was that his brother still looked out for him and made sure he was surviving. It wasn’t that he thought he was completely irresponsible. But, he supposed that big brothers were kind of there to help out with that kind of thing. At least someone in his life hadn’t failed him completely. Unlike his parents; who with one nonexistent and the other dead because of her own fucked up mistakes, Adrian didn’t have much to look to where blood was concerned. Beyond that, he didn’t have a lot either. He had a lot of friends, sure, but they were mostly acquaintances and people that he only hung out with at parties or when they wanted to get high. Which was okay with him because he wasn’t looking for any deep connection. He didn’t want to be completely alone, but he didn’t need to be dependent on other people either. He couldn’t trust that deep in anyone. When it came down to it, it was always better to expect that someone was going to try to screw him over. But, see, he had his moments where he tried to give someone the benefit of the doubt. He had given it to Cameron when he didn’t have her pay right away when they met, but not he regretted that.

She wasn’t someone that he could ever see himself trusting that way, especially not where money was involved. But, at the same time, he thought that he had threatened enough that she should know better than to stall on paying him when she had the chance. Adrian wasn’t going to accept that easily and he would gladly send someone after her. Well, maybe he wouldn’t be so glad about it, but it wouldn’t take much. “Whatever. They’re all the fucking same. You’re brother’s no better than the next.” He shrugged, still not believing that he really had anything to worry about where that was concerned. He didn’t care what she thought about her lawyer brother. He wasn’t worried. And even if he had been, he wasn’t going to act it in front of her. All that he wanted was for her to pay him and then he’d get out of her hair. He didn’t see what was so hard about that or why it was a goddamn inconvenience. If you owed someone money, you fucking paid them. There was never anything simpler than that. He didn’t know why it seemed to be a lot for her to wrap her goddamn head around. “Why not?” He asked and he really hadn’t been too curious before, but he seemed to have that curiosity heightened because she wasn’t telling him. “You obviously couldn’t’ve just worn it out of the store.” But it also seemed like something pretty big to be sneaking out of a store. It wasn’t as if he was ever going to have a need to steal a dress so he didn’t know why he needed to know. If only because she refused to tell him.

made by cupcakesss of Caution 2.0

[♔ CAMERON WATKINS]

AND THERE IN THE BLACKLIGHT

If she had known what she wanted to do with her life, Cameron was sure that she would have been less of a drifter. If she’d had some kind of a dream, some huge ambition that she would die if she didn’t fulfil, like Zack and his restaurant, then maybe she would have been more focussed, she would have been good at something. But she had never had a dream job, not like most people did, she had never really been aware of what she was good at and what career could potentially stem from that. She’d cycled through phases, still was, really, where she got her heart set on doing something, and then just moved on a few weeks, or a couple of months later, and never thought about that thing again. It was why she had tried so many hobbies, why she’d been signed up for so many things, only to give up on them; Cameron’s room was full of things that she’d gotten at various times for her latest obsession, things that she’d used and then tucked away at the bottom of a drawer, things that she would probably never use again, because as desperate as she had been to do that hobby then, now she really didn’t give a fuck, and the lessons and the equipment had gone to waste, because it wasn’t going to be the thing that she focussed on. There had been a lot of that. There was always going to be a lot of that; Cameron just couldn’t seem to settle on one thing. She barely settled in one place, and even though New York was her base, she frequently ended up taking off on a whim, just because she needed to get out of the city for a while. Staying there for too long made her feel trapped, and that was not something that she wanted. She loved being here, she loved living with her brother, and she didn’t want to screw it up by being in a bad mood because she was getting itchy feet again.

But Cameron thought that she’d be good here for the moment, at least while the snow lasted; it wasn’t like she could get out of the city anyway, since all the roads were blocked, and as long as she was allowed to go outside to let off some steam (which it would be best to let her do, since she’d probably try and kill everyone at the apartment otherwise), Cameron was very happy to be here for the time being. She didn’t want to be anywhere else; she still worried about her brother, and while she was well aware of the fact that he could look after himself, given that he also looked after her, and also that Izzy was around to look after him, it didn’t change the fact that Cameron was too scared about his well-being to just want to leave him for the moment. He was getting better, she knew that, but it didn’t change the fact that she had nightmares about him dying, it didn’t change the fact that she couldn’t get the image of him in that car out of her mind – sometimes it assaulted her out of nowhere, and all Cam wanted to do was wrap her arms around his middle and bury herself in a bear hug, like she’d done when she was smaller and couldn’t reach to wrap her arms around his neck. “Shut the fuck up right now! He’s not the same as them, he’s better!” People didn’t get to just talk about Jay like that; nobody got to badmouth him in front of her and get away with it, because he was more important than every single person in her life and she had to protect him. She could call him rude names all she wanted, she could moan about him and talk about how much she disliked him, but she was the only one who could. She was his little sister, she had the right to, after all. She shook her head. “’Cause you want to know.” It was as simple as that; it was the only reason why she didn’t want to tell him

TAG: ADRIAN | WORDS: 703 | NOTES: <33 | ORANGE CARAMEL ! @ ATF

[ADRIAN MORGAN]

I'LL WAIT HERE, YOU'RE CRAZY

THOSE VICIOUS STREETS ARE FILLED WITH STRAYS

›phony people come to pray. look at all of them beg to stay. phony people come to pray.‹

When Adrian was still a kid, he learned not to dream too big. He would end up disappointed in the end, naturally. He wasn’t cut out to do anything amazing. In fact, most of his life, he didn’t even know what his future looked like. Even now, he might have been working towards something and he might have had goals, but he didn’t know what his life would be like months from now, let alone years ahead. Who knew if school was going to work out for him? And even if it did, it didn’t mean that he was necessarily going to be successful. It meant that he was qualified to be somewhat successful. He didn’t know if he was really pushing towards anything that was worth a damn, but he wanted to have a little more than being really good at making a sale. Cars had always interested him, so he didn’t see why not. He liked to help work on them so it had been a natural selection. And it wasn’t as if he had to have been a genius to become a mechanic. A part of Adrian wanted to think that there was a little more out there for him, but at the same time, he was a realist and he didn’t know if there actually was. He was lucky to have what he did. If it hadn’t been for his brother or for the way he earned money, then he would probably be dead by now. He might have grown up in a less than savoury environment, but if he had been left alone when his mom died, he wouldn’t have gotten far. He would have been another one of those dirt poor kids that had been tossed around in the system and he would have probably aged out and wound up on the streets. Instead, he fed to those types half of the time. He sold drugs, kept a cash flow coming and had a brother that took care of him if he needed it. He had luck there and he was grateful for it, because it could have disappeared in an instant.

Adrian wasn’t sure what he would have done if he didn’t have a brother. Right now, even, he didn’t want to see what his life would be like. He needed someone to count on. No matter how many times he said he didn’t give a fuck about who cared about him or what was there to help him, he did need his brother’s guidance. He needed some support system, even if it was one person that gave a damn about whether he lived or died. Of course Adrian cared about himself. He didn’t want to end up dead or on the streets by any means, but he didn’t know if he was cut out to be completely alone. He might have been pretty independent now, but it didn’t mean that he was completely by himself. It didn’t mean that he wanted to be alone. But, he also didn’t need a lot of close friends. He didn’t do close. He had a lot of acquaintances, people he dealt to and people he slept with, but there was no such thing as a best friend in his life and he’d never had a real relationship for so much as a day. It was going to stay that way too, as far as he was concerned. Because, he just didn’t attach that way. He would rather keep his distance, because people were fucked up on a personal level, more than they were when they were just partying and having a good time. Once feelings were involved, it was messy and hard and Adrian didn’t feel like being let down by everyone. “Fucking make me,” he dared. “Your brother’s just the same. So shut the fuck up already, no one cares.” It wasn’t that Adrian wouldn’t be able to understand defending a sibling. If someone was bad talking his brother, he would have been ready to punch them in the face for it. “Seriously? That’s not a reason.” Adrian replied; well, it was a reason, but it felt like a completely silly reason, really.

made by cupcakesss of Caution 2.0

[♔ CAMERON WATKINS]

AND THERE IN THE BLACKLIGHT

Cameron didn’t stick with things. She liked trying out new things, sure, and she could get extremely excited over the prospect of doing something new; wasn’t it exciting, though, to try new things, and she genuinely couldn’t understand how people could go about their lives always sticking with what they knew and never trying anything that was outside their comfort zone. Cameron didn’t have a comfort zone – well, technically she did, but it was related to the places that she felt safe, the people that she wanted to be around, and what she did when she was upset, rather than what hobbies she had or was willing to try out. She’d yet to find something that she really didn’t want to attempt—but they never ended up being much more than attempts, really. She tried, sure, but the second that something got hard, the second that she started to struggle, she gave up instead of sticking with it. She didn’t want to fail. It wasn’t necessarily a conscious decision on her part, merely the fact that she got bored incredibly quickly and always needed something to do. Those things didn’t need to be particularly stimulating, or anything, because she was easily distracted with a magazine or by channel hopping, but she liked getting attention, she liked finding things to do, and her attention span was not particularly great. Concentrating was definitely not her forte. It wasn’t conscious, but she gave up before she failed, because then she didn’t have to admit to herself that there was something else on the list that she sucked at. That list would have been a million times longer than the list of things that she was good at, if she had let it exist, but by quitting while she was ahead, she never had to do that. She was afraid of failure, so she didn’t try to see if she could make it work. It was as simple as that.

The only hobbies that she had really kept up with long term were riding and learning Japanese – perhaps the latter wasn’t really a hobby as such, and she could go for months without even going near a horse, let alone anything else, but they were still things that she hadn’t given up on. It didn’t mean she wanted to do either of them for the rest of her life though, necessarily, and it didn’t mean that she had any idea how she could make a career from them. She could speak Japanese well enough to hold a conversation, now, but she couldn’t read or write it unless she was using normal letters, so she probably wouldn’t have made a very good translator, and she was finding it really hard to even just learn one of the alphabets – and they had three, for fuck’s sake, and one of them had pictures that could mean entire words, not just sounds, and they all looked like the same squiggly mess in her mind, so Cameron didn’t know how she was ever going to be able to actually do that. Jay was encouraging, sure, but she was pretty sure that was just because she was sticking with something – something that he had taught her – rather than anything else. It was kind of their thing now. Japan was their place; she liked that. “Shut the fuck up!” she repeated, shoving Adrian’s shoulder – not particularly hard, because she didn’t actually want to get into a fight, but enough to make him see that when it came to her brother, Cameron was deadly serious. “He’s the best person in the world, and you don’t know him so you can’t say otherwise!” She genuinely believed that he was the best, it was as simple as that, and she would defend him until she was dead. “It’s a reason for me.”

TAG: ADRIAN | WORDS: 643 | NOTES: <33 | ORANGE CARAMEL ! @ ATF

[ADRIAN MORGAN]

I'LL WAIT HERE, YOU'RE CRAZY

THOSE VICIOUS STREETS ARE FILLED WITH STRAYS

›phony people come to pray. look at all of them beg to stay. phony people come to pray.‹

Adrian didn’t have much in the way of hobbies. He liked video games and movies and tended to spend a lot of his time partying, but that wasn’t much of a hobby really. Cars were kind of that for him, but it wasn’t as if he had a lot of cars to tinker with. He didn’t have one of his own, though he had been able to help work on friends’ cars a couple times and he liked cars enough to want to go to school for it. But, he didn’t even know how much of a dream it was. Adrian didn’t really start a lot of new things. It wasn’t that he was afraid of trying new things, he just never saw a way to fit it into his life. Most of his life had been spent in the city with the same type of people. Frankly, he rarely left NYC at all and he’d been born and raised there. And Jersey, Connecticut and Vermont remained the only other states he had ever travelled to. He always thought that he’d travel one day, see more of the US, because it was kind of weird never going anywhere. But at the same time, everything he needed was really in one place. He was lucky enough to live in New York—if lucky was really how he could describe it. Frankly, it hadn’t been the best life and he had the short hand a lot growing up. But, he liked it more than he would if he was raised in some tiny town where there wasn’t anything and he had to leave all of the time. He couldn’t imagine ever having a different home. Though, at the same time, Adrian could never think ahead but a couple of months. He didn’t see his future farther than that.

He figured that next year would look a lot like this one. He didn’t see any huge changes coming for him. It took a lot for his life to change. And while some things did, nothing massive really differed year after year. He might do a little better and he was out on his own where he hadn’t been a couple years prior, but that didn’t mean that much. He was still the same person with the same job and with the same life as before. He was content with it too. It wasn’t perfect and Adrian lacked a lot. He might not admit that he cared, but he wasn’t in the best of places. It wasn’t exactly easy to only trust one person in the world and to have a limited future. While he did his best not to think of it that way and thought he was better off than some, he couldn’t help but know that it was so easy to get into a crappy situation. He lived in a world filled with drugs, money and illegitimate work. It wasn’t safe, secure or any of those things. And now and then he met people like Cam who couldn’t even keep a deal to pay up. At the shove, he glared at her, but he didn’t push her back. “Don’t fucking touch me,” he warned. “And I’ll say whatever I want.” He didn’t care what she thought or who her brother is. “Whatever. Yes, I can, because I’m pretty damn sure someone’s lawyer brother isn’t the best person in the world. You don’t know everyone in the world, so you can’t say that he is.” He just pushed her argument back at her. “It’s a dumb reason. Just tell me.” Because she didn’t want to tell him made him want to know more. It didn’t make a lot of sense, except that he was going to annoy her until she told him.

made by cupcakesss of Caution 2.0

[♔ CAMERON WATKINS]

AND THERE IN THE BLACKLIGHT

Cameron didn’t have any great dream that she wanted to fulfil, no huge ambitions that she was going to spend her entire life working towards, because no matter what else she did, nothing would ever come close to it. She had things that she wanted to do, sure, she had places that she wanted to see – she wanted to go to Alaska and Hawaii, because they were the only states she hadn’t gone to, and she wanted to return to Japan because she had loved it there so much – but that wasn’t the same as really having a dream. It was kind of hard to dream of anything but getting out, of anything but having a family and being loved and happy, when you were a kid in orphanages. It was hard to think that you might amount to something, because everything and everyone thought that you wouldn’t. The kids at the schools you attended looked down on you, the parents pitied you, the social workers grew weary of you. Cameron knew what it was like, she knew that; she’d been an angry and violent child, she’d done everything she could to be a pain, but she wasn’t stupid. There were times when she thought she was, and she wasn’t book smart or anything like that, didn’t like books at all, really, but she was far from blind. Oblivious, sure, she could be that, just as she could be forgetful, but she had always known that she was hard work. It was why nobody ever wanted to adopt her. She was hard work. She would never have told anybody, because it was far too soppy, far too stupid and naïve and unrealistic, but when she’d been five or six, all she had wanted of her future was to be happy, because she hadn’t been. Who could have been, in those places? If she’d been happy there, then she wouldn’t have gotten into so much trouble.

When they’d been asked those kinds of questions in class, she’d always put down something stupid, because she wasn’t going to share with those children that hated her that she wanted a family. But she had; Cameron had been a lost, lonely little girl with not a single person in the entire fucking world who loved her, and that was what she’d wanted. It had taken a hell of a long time to get it, and she honestly hadn’t thought that anybody would ever adopt her. She’d fought her dads as hard as she could to try and make them send her back to prove her pint...but they’d proved her wrong instead. It didn’t change how lost she still was, because Cameron knew that she was on some crazy, fucked up path and she had no idea where it was taking her or who the hell she really was, but she had her family, she had her happiness, most of the time. Some people dreamed of being doctors or actors or teachers; she’d already achieved hers...which left her a little aimless, really. Very aimless, in fact; she was flighty, she had no focus, and she wasn’t sure she ever would. But it was okay; she knew that Jay would keep supporting her. He might threaten to stop, but she wasn’t scared that he actually would. He always looked after her. He did everything for her, and he was always there when she needed him, and he put up with all her shit—he really was amazing. “Don’t fucking say bad things about my brother then!” she retorted, because she would always defend Jason with everything that she had. Not even the people that she was closest to got to say bad things about him. “He is too the best! I don’t need to know them, ‘cause he is.” It might have been a very childish way to look at things, but Cam didn’t care; she knew that Jay was the best, and that was all that mattered to her. She didn’t need someone else’s opinion to agree with hers, because she was right. “No.”

TAG: ADRIAN | WORDS: 681 | NOTES: <33 | ORANGE CARAMEL ! @ ATF

[ADRIAN MORGAN]

I'LL WAIT HERE, YOU'RE CRAZY

THOSE VICIOUS STREETS ARE FILLED WITH STRAYS

›phony people come to pray. look at all of them beg to stay. phony people come to pray.‹

As a kid, dreams weren’t easy to come by. What he wanted, more than anything else was to be stable. He wanted to have a home like everyone else’s. He wanted a mom that gave a fuck about him enough that she wouldn’t kill herself with every drug she injected into her veins. At the end of the day, he wanted to matter. He wanted to be worth a damn to her and he had never received that. There were times where he had hope again, where it looked like everything was going to get better and that maybe he had a shot, but then it fell again and when he finally had the most hope he could have, it crashed horribly. There was no wonder why he couldn’t trust and why hope was so distant for him. Adrian had never been able to trust it. He had one person that wouldn’t let him down and that he believed in above all else. Everyone else, he didn’t give a damn about. He couldn’t trust them beyond petty things, because people screwed him over. That’s all they ever did. The world wasn’t there for him and it wasn’t out to get him either. But unless he knew how to play the game, it was going to work against him in every way. Adrian didn’t have a fond outlook on the world. He didn’t have people to look up to that had dreams that were even remotely as big as his and his won were nothing. He wanted to party, sell drugs and work on cars. He didn’t know how long it would last him or where he would be in the next ten years, let alone five. All that he did know was that where he was in the present was better than some of the places he’d been before. By no means was he on a good path. His main source of income was illegal and he dealt and hung out with a crowd that was bound to get him in trouble if he wasn’t careful. It wasn’t like he’d never gotten into it or had ever been worried about his life. Especially when he fucked with the wrong person and ended up having to fight them off. What he wanted was to be the guy that people didn’t want to screw with and because he had connections to take care of people who didn’t pay on time, he accomplished that a little bit.

What mattered was that he was alive now and fine with it. He wasn’t unhappy and would have said he was happy faster than he ever said unhappy. Adrian didn’t give himself the time to be unhappy with anything. He wasn’t going to let himself look at the world as fucked up or at his life as being less than ideal. It was his life and it was fucking perfect. He might not have had a lot of people that he cared about, but it was better than no one. He had one person that was all he really needed. Anyone else didn’t have to enter his life and stay in it. Adrian didn’t think of other people before himself or care deeply about his friends because he didn’t have them to give a damn. If he did, maybe it would have been different. He wasn’t heartless or cruel or completely without empathy. He just didn’t have the connections. He was guarded and kept those walls up for a reason. To put it bluntly, his life had sucked for most of it. There was a lot of bad to remember, but he refused to dwell on it if he could help it. It didn’t change what was in his subconscious, but it kept him going. “Bad things? Less than perfect is fucking bad now?” He asked, scoffing at her. “You sound like an idiot. He’s not the best. Period. Not to anyone else but you.” Because to say he was the best and get worked up about it seemed ridiculous to him. He couldn’t give a rat’s ass about her brother, let alone think that he was the best. Whether it was the best person or best lawyer. “There’s always someone better.” Adrian finally shrugged. “You probably didn’t steal it at all.” Because apparently she couldn’t answer.

made by cupcakesss of Caution 2.0

[♔ CAMERON WATKINS]

AND THERE IN THE BLACKLIGHT

There were times when Cameron hated the world, there were certainly times when it felt as though all she was doing was fighting against it, as hard as she could, because maybe if she did that, somebody would listen to her. They didn’t, or at least it didn’t feel as though they did; at the end of the day, no matter how hard she had fought or how hurt she had gotten, there was always one person who would be there. That was it, just one, and sure, she knew that other people would have come if she’d called them, but they were never the person that Cameron wanted to be with her when she was hurt. Not even the rest of her family, although they had seen her in a bad shape so many times that she shouldn’t even have cared, anymore. She hated being vulnerable, she hated being upset, she hated being weak – and maybe other people didn’t see her that way, but it was how Cameron saw herself, and she hated it. It wasn’t who she was; she was strong, she was violent, she was fighting against the world, and there was no way in hell that she was just going to let people see her when she wasn’t like that. Jay could, though, and sometimes Ly, too, but they were the only people; for everyone else, Cameron would just disappear away from the world, or she’d pretend to be fine, because hey, at the end of the day, no matter what shit went down, she was always fine. That was just a fat. Cameron was always fine, and there was nothing that was going to change that – nothing that a few miles on an open road couldn’t fix. She liked travelling a lot, she liked going to new places, seeing what there was to see. That wasn’t something that she was going to be just giving up. She liked the freedom that it brought. Sometimes she felt trapped, when she stayed here for long periods of time.

She had never been very good at staying in one place. As a kid, she’d been tossed around a lot between different homes, and Cameron had run away more times than she could count, anyway; it wasn’t like she owned more than she could fit in her backpack anyway, not stuff that she actually wanted to keep, and it was so easy to have it packed for days before she took off, seeing how far she could get before the cops found her and took her back to whatever children’s home she was staying in at that time. It hadn’t stopped after she’d been adopted; she’d kept a bag at the bottom of her bed for years, she’d known which things she would take with her, and sometimes she’d just take off without any planning whatsoever, and would need a hell of a lot of coaxing back. She didn’t know why she had done it, not as a conscious thought, but she had done, sometimes she just needed to hide from everyone, she needed space – and it had been Jay who’d been best at convincing her to come home. He was still the one person who could get her to come home, more than anybody else, and sometimes she didn’t listen, sometimes she tried to block out the world that she knew so that she could immerse herself in the one in whatever place she had ended up, but sometimes the only place she wanted to be was wherever Jay was. He made shit better, he always had done. He drove her crazy, sometimes, but he was still the only person Cameron really wanted to hang out with, more than anybody else. He was the best. “Yes! You’re being a motherfucking dick about it. He’s the best. He always will be, so there.” There was no alternative, as far as Cameron was concerned, and however mad she might have gotten at him sometimes, however much she claimed to hate him, nothing could ever have been further from the truth. “No-one’s ever gonna be better!” He was her favourite person in the entire world for a reason. “I did too steal it!”

TAG: ADRIAN | WORDS: 705 | NOTES: <33 | ORANGE CARAMEL ! @ ATF

[ADRIAN MORGAN]

I'LL WAIT HERE, YOU'RE CRAZY

THOSE VICIOUS STREETS ARE FILLED WITH STRAYS

›phony people come to pray. look at all of them beg to stay. phony people come to pray.‹

Adrian had been a lot more naive when he was little and before his mom died. He used to believe her when she said that things would change. Although the doubt was always in the back of his mind, he tried to lend her some hope before she disappointed him yet again. There were times where she would talk about things getting better, about her getting a job and how they would get a better place and he’d go to a nicer school with better friends and everything would be fucking great. Of course, that was a fantasy even to her. Still, he soaked it up and gave her a little bit of hope, just enough that it would hurt like hell when she let him down. He gave her the most belief before she died. He thought that finally, he would get a piece of some better world. And after that, he really stopped looking at anything else. He didn’t give a fuck about living some other life. It wasn’t in his list of goals. He wanted to stay in the same area, with his same friends and with the same job that he had now. He didn’t want to move on to better things, because what the hell was wrong with his life? He didn’t care if he didn’t have anyone that he could really call friend, not to the extent that some people saw the friends they cared about. He literally had no one except for his brother that he honest-to-god cared about. He didn’t even know how upset he’d be if anything happened to the guys he hung around. Sure, he’d be sad. But he learned not to be disappointed and tried to make loss seem like nothing. He had the things that he wanted now. There was a lot that he hadn’t been able to have as a kid that he could easily have his hands on now. Life didn’t suck too badly, but it wasn’t good either. It wasn’t the best life, although he loved how much he got to party and did like his life for the most part. It wasn’t what most would want and there was no changing that. Adrian was always going to have the life that he had, no matter what. And a lot of people wouldn’t get that.

People who he saw as spoilt or entitled tended to get under his skin more because he had never been either of those things. When he saw Cameron, because she hadn’t paid him, that was what he saw. When he first met her, she’d just been hot and a customer that he’d allow get away with not paying him right away. He did that with some people, because it helped pull them in later on. And usually, if he looked at someone, he could pinpoint if they would be able to. And a girl wearing designer clothes usually stood out as having money. There were some people who would ask him for an extension when it was more than obvious that they would never have the money. He had to be careful. “Whatever. Just keep fucking saying it, it doesn’t make it true.” Adrian retorted, because he wasn’t going to agree that some guy was the best. He didn’t even know him or care about him. And he was sure that there was always someone better. That’s how it worked. He wasn’t the best just because he was her brother. Although, Adrian would wager that his brother was the best too, because there was no one in the world that he had counted on as much as he had his sibling. So, in a way, he could have gotten it. Too bad he wasn’t going to relent and think of it that way. It was just annoying. “Mhm, sure, whatever you say. You can’t even tell me how you did it, so how can I believe you even did?” He asked. And it did make some sense, but it hadn’t been why he used that argument initially. Before, it was just a way to try to get her to tell him. Though, really, he supposed, it made sense.

made by cupcakesss of Caution 2.0