#*searches the numbers* and yeah...the distance from bonny doon to sf is only 20 miles less than nyc to phl? that's wild!

[haltandcatchfiretothemax]

FEMSLASH FEBRUARY 2021 #9: In which Cameron meets Donna in the city

[CN: food mentions, snacking]

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PREVIOUSLY: #3

Cameron and Donna remained in what was basically constant contact even when Cameron was out at her property. They emailed each other several times a day, almost always about work, and they talked on the phone nightly. “It’s kind of perfect?” Donna said one night, phone balanced between her ear and shoulder, as she rubbed some of the moisturizing lotion she kept on her nightstand into her hands. “I miss you, but I never feel like I miss you, if that makes sense? I always know that I’m going to see you in a few days, and I look forward to it.”

Cameron, lying on her bed so that she could see out the window, as she usually did, conjured up a very accurate image of Donna sitting up in bed while talking to her. With a content sigh, she said, “It makes perfect sense.”

Perfect though it was, neither Cameron and Donna’s routine not the regular return to the calm and quiet of her property was enough to stave off the inevitable: several weeks later, Cameron began to experience that old familiar restlessness that she always seemed to feel two to three months into working on a project by herself. Cameron had learned a lot about ‘working smarter’ while designing the navigator with Donna; with great effort, she’d gotten much better at taking regular breaks, at alternating between coding and other tasks, and at letting herself do some of her work related thinking in a more relaxed way, while doing household chores. But she’d finally reached the point where it didn’t matter how many errands she ran, how many breaks or walks or drives she took. She needed a true change of scenery.

On another nightly call, six weeks later, Cameron asked Donna, “Do you have anything big going on at Symphonic tomorrow? Or maybe the day after? Or would it be okay if I dropped in for a random visit?”

“I’m the boss,” Donna reminded her. “If anything big happens, it has to wait for me.” 

Sitting at her desk, holding her her cordless phone to her ear, knees hugged to her chest with her free arm, Cameron pictured the dazzling smile with which Donna always made such egotistical statements, an expression that always made Donna’s male colleagues, who knew that she wasn’t really kidding, visibly uncomfortable, but always seemed to amuse the women she worked with, who understood that she was, on some level joking. (Donna absolutely was the boss, and everything very much did have to wait for her. She also never would have dreamed of making any of her staff or the firm’s partners wait just to prove that she could, and the women who worked with her knew this.) What Cameron did not and could not picture was that at that very moment, Donna, once again sitting up in bed in one of her luxe pajama sets, was hunched forward, casually painting a layer of quick drying top coat over the red polish on her toenails, as carefree as a woman who had never once answered to anyone else in her life. 

“Couldn’t have happened to a nicer gal,” Cameron smirked.

“I know, right?” Donna said, putting the cap back on her bottle of top coat. She screwed it closed, and then set it on her nightstand. “So you’re coming up to San Francisco this week, then?”

“I think I just need like, a full day out of my workspace,” Cameron said, unfolding her legs. Planting her feet back on the floor, and setting her elbows on her desk, she said, “You know that thing, where it’s the end of the beginning with a project? And like, you can feel it? And it’s like, you’ve been doing real work, but at the same time, you know that the real work is about to start?” She sighed. “I feel like that’s a completely normal part of the process. Like, you have to get to that point to get anything done, right? But for some reason, it makes me nervous. It’s like, the ground levels out, and you realize that you’ve plateaued. I guess it’s the pressure to level up. Or whatever.”

Donna leaned back into her pillows, against her upholstered headboard. “Plateaued. You know what Gordon told me once? He said that during those over nights in the kill room at Cardiff, he learned what the word ‘jump’ means. Are you getting pre-jump jitters?”

Cameron took a deep breath and thought about it. “Well, this isn’t a risk like The Giant was. But I guess so?” She leaned back in her chair. “Even if it’s not a huge risk, I guess it’s just about jumping into the project, or something. Like, committing. You’ve done the prep work, and now you know that it’s time to step back for a minute, and then start getting ready for the next phase.” She looked around her trailer, and she pictured Gordon, how he’d looked when she first met him, the Cardiff office, Bos. After noting to herself that she needed to call Bos to confirm their next weekly dinner, she said, “It probably doesn’t help that the thing we’re trying to make is about people dying, and death.”

“It’s also about rebirth, though, I think,” Donna said gently. “And connecting.”

Abruptly, Cameron said, “I’ve been thinking about Japan a lot lately.”

“Oh yeah? What about Japan?”

“About…” Cameron started. “About what it was like to work on something by myself, after working in an office with so many people for years, in a completely new place where I didn’t know anyone. I wasn’t happy at Mutiny, and then I wasn’t happy with Atari, and, for a while I just assumed that I was incapable of happiness.” She frowned, and then said, “And then, you know, seven years later I got divorced, and I was like, ‘Oh. Okay.’”

Donna laughed and then made herself stop. “Sorry. That’s not funny.”

“It’s a little funny,” Cameron smiled. “You know what’s really funny? How much easier it is to deal with work and with professional struggles when you’re partnered with the right person.”

“That is funny, isn’t it?” Donna chuckled. “So. See you tomorrow, then?”

The next day, Cameron was woken up at 6:30 in the morning by the sound of pouring rain beating against the roof of her trailer. She waited to see if it might pass, but when it was still raining heavily four hours later, she called Donna to reschedule.

The day after that, Cameron woke up when her alarm went off 10am, to a gorgeous day and a light blue sky scattered with fluffy, unthreatening clouds. She got up, turned on the radio on her nightstand, and made her bed while humming along to the new Foo Fighters single, “Monkey Wrench.” She managed to not think about work once while showering, getting dressed, quickly making an egg sandwich and coffee, packing both to go, and heading out the door. 

Around 3:30, Donna heard Cameron’s voice. She was making small talk with her assistant, Maya, and holding a paper coffee cup in each hand. Donna jumped up and rushed to her office’s door and stuck her head out. “Hey! You made it!”

Cameron and Maya both turned to look at Donna. Cameron’s shoulders loosened, and her face relaxed, that pinched ‘help me!’ grimace melting into a real smile. Donna noticed that she looked just a little disheveled. “Here, come in,” Donna beckoned. “Sit. Relax!”

Cameron turned back to Maya and said, “Gotta go, my boss is calling me,” making Maya giggle.

As soon as Cameron was in her office, Donna pulled her close, and kissed her on the cheek, and then frowned, and hastily tried to rub the dark pink spot of lipstick off of her face. “How are you?”

“I’m okay,” Cameron said. She offered Donna the coffee cup in her left hand, and Donna took it, grinning when she saw that it was a London fog. Cameron sat down on Donna’s couch, and put her own cup down on the coffee table, and as Donna sat down next to her, she opened her backpack and pulled out a paper bag packed with four plain scones. 

“Oooh,” Donna said. “Don’t mind if I do,” she said, as Cameron handed one to her. 

Cameron took a scone for herself, and then she said, “These are unfortunately store-bought. I thought about making some for us, but the airstream’s baking capabilities are limited. And I also thought it’d be silly to carry them all the way here, on the bus and the train.”

Donna nearly choked on her scone. “What do you mean, the bus and the train? You took the bus and the train all the way here? From Bonny Doon?”

Cameron’s face took on that mildly pinched look again. “Yes! I did! I was curious as to how long it would take, so I figured, ‘there’s only one way to find out’!” 

Donna’s mouth hung open for a second. “And?”

Smiling ruefully, Cameron nodded, “It definitely took two buses, two trains, and five hours!” 

Donna slumped back into the couch. “I’m exhausted just thinking about that, my G-d.”

“I thought growing up in the Dallas suburbs, where you totally need a car, and then going to school in Austin, where you don’t really, was weird.” She picked up her coffee and took a long sip. Cup still in hand, she continued, “But living in Japan for seven years, and then coming back here? That’s weird.” With a real frown and a heavy sigh, Cameron wailed, “I got so spoiled by Tokyo’s transit system.”

Donna smiled glumly at her. “Wanna move back? I can always open a regional Symphonic office there.” 

“Nah. But hey, if you wanna put that money toward lobbying whoever to get a high speed rail system built in the states….”

“Ugh,” Donna scoffed, throwing her head back in disgust. “Don’t get me started on this country’s crumbling infrastructure. If I could easily throw money at that problem, I would.”

“I know you would,” Cameron said. “And I would fully support you in that endeavor.”

Donna sat up and grabbed her drink and her scone. “How was it though?”

Putting her cup down, she said, “Well, it was a lot! But it was also relaxing. I ate my breakfast, and I did some reading, and then I just sat there for a while, and before I knew it I was taking out my notebook so I could write down some work ideas.” Wistfully, she said, “I did that in Tokyo a lot, I’d go to the train station and I’d just, get on whatever train, and go wherever. And every time I would worry about getting lost, but I never did? I always had my map, and there were plenty of maps in the stations, and there were always people there, both the other riders and all of transit workers, and they were always so down to at least try to help? It wasn’t anything like needing help here. Or in Texas.” 

Donna grinned at her. “So it was the change of scene you were looking for?”

Cameron smiled back at her, and then said, “Maybe you should ask me after I make it back home? For now though, yeah, it really was. What’s the saying? It’s the journey not the destination? Something like that, yadda yadda yadda,” Cameron said.

Donna sat up, and crossed her legs at the knee. “I’m very glad to hear that it worked out, then.”

“Yeah,” Cameron agreed. She waited a full minute before asking (partly because she was, as always, distracted by Donna’s crossed legs), “But still — would it like, totally ruin the moment if I begged you to give me a ride home? Or at least, to Mountain View?”

Donna laughed so loudly that it startled her assistant.