☎ voicemail

[as_damaged]

❝You've reached Allison Cameron, please leave a message.❞

☎ voicemail ☎ text message ☞ action

[ooc: you know the drill, if you need her and there's no recent post &c &c. whatever. ♥♥♥]

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→ if you're offering me diamonds and rust i've already paid

[as_damaged]

[They're friends in the long run. Right now, she's begrudging him the measure of trust reserved for a colleague, much less anything else. She doesn't have an answer for him, biting back the words can you? because honestly they're meaningless, and she's right-- in the long run none of this matters.

She hasn't taken off the bracelet, but the second she does up the locks behind him it'll end up in the back of an empty drawer with his wedding ring and a handful of other scavenged treasures she looks at more often than she'd ever admit.

She just looks at him, storm shutters in her eyes, as little deviation from neutrality as she can manage on her face. Maybe if she showed a little more of how she felt about this it would make a difference, but-- well, it's all spilled milk at this point, more or less.]

→ if you're offering me diamonds and rust i've already paid

[worksmart.livejournal.com]

[She could show how she feels, or he could. The notion of shutting up and kissing her has crossed his mind more than once this evening, but it's only in the cinema that ever makes things right. He'd end up needing to have another talk with another person, as confused, if not more, than before.

still the notion presses. He looks up to her for a long moment before moving, hovering on the cusp of that thought. If there was something to say to make it fine he'd have expertly pinned the words down long ago and had them ready. Infinitely preferable to being this vulnerable and unprepared. He hopes, if she looks back over what he's said, she might be able to pick out the important parts. He suspects, rather, that she'll pick out anything that can be misconstrued to make things worse. She's damn difficult to figure out, and it's a frustration and a draw all at once.

He needs to go. Not before draining the dregs of his Japanese wine, though he'll abandon the plates where they are.]

I've lost enough people, recently.

[He says, finally, checking through his pockets as he stands.]

Neither of us are gone.

[Tongue laving across his lower lip, he shakes his head and tries to stop himself from analysing how this might have turned out better. One hand on the door.]

See you later.

→ if you're offering me diamonds and rust i've already paid

[as_damaged]

[There's no point to following him to the door. In another situation-- in another world, in the literal sense of that phrase-- it might be different. But there's always something else, and frankly her pride's more than a little wounded by the notion that she's the assured "someday" option. Guaranteed under future circumstances and thus, there's nothing to fight for between them. It's exactly everything she ever wanted to avoid, it's why she held off telling him any of the things he didn't know yet.

But here there's always someone else. Maybe that's what makes the difference; she'd have to be an idiot (and she isn't) not to have noticed that he can have his pick of the women here any time he wants, and he does, and apparently he has.

If will alone could light the path home she'd be well on her way to an impending engagement and divorce, not sitting here waiting to hear the door rattle shut. But the City's never been built on dignity, or saving face. She's known that for longer than he's been here.]

I'll see you at work.

→ if you're offering me diamonds and rust i've already paid

[worksmart.livejournal.com]

[Home's not so different, in terms of options. Chase could, and has, had his fair share. The difference is connection, something he's actively sought to avoid until recently, when some subconscious switch left him looking to fill a gap with someone he connected with. There and here, that's what makes her different. It's why it's taken him a year an a half to build anything that might compete with it, even for a while, and he's done that without intent. Maybe he could have his pick of a few of the women here. In terms of that, he's practically been a monk. It doesn't feel right to him that he's the one with the choice now.

Cameron isn't a fallback, she's just what he keeps coming back to in what fate seems to have set as a pattern. He doesn't expect it to be an easy win, if it happens again before that one guaranteed shot, but then it never has been and maybe the break in chasing her will let him catch his breath enough. That's if he can really make himself take one. If the curses let him, too. She's hard to look away from, even while his hand pulls back on the door.]

Tomorrow. Same shift.

[He nods, once, just an acknowledgement, bites down on all the other words he could say to make her take him back in and lets himself out.]