#Cameron Morgan

[depressedwetnapkin]

[g-girlshavingfun]

Gallagher Girls Masterlist:

Here is everything I've written, everything I'm currently working on, and the ideas I've got planned for the future if I ever get around to them.

If there's ever anything you want me to try writing, just ask and I'll see what I can put together!

WIPs:

A Sister’s Vigil - 5 times Rachel visited her sister in hospital and 1 time she didn’t. 

Completed:

Abby/Townsend:

Warm tequila - Set about 5 years after the events of UWS, Abby and Townsend explore the Christmas markets in London. (2,121)

Mismatched socks - 6 and a half years after UWS, Abby and Townsend face an early winter morning with the twins (3,491)

Lips against a hipbone - The winter before the events of LYKY, Abby and Townsend are a couple months into an op in Buenos Aires when years of tension finally comes to a head. (3,690)

Silent films - Set in between OSOT and UWS, Townsend and Abby are doing surveillance on the Winters in Rome when they start talking about the past. (3,243)

Doctor’s orders - A year before the events of LYKL, Abby and Townsend’s assignment in Buenos Aires ends in disaster, and they wind up having an argument in her hospital room. (2,668)

Ursa Major - Half a decade before the events of LYKY, Abby and Townsend are completing a mission in Dubai over Christmas with Abe Baxter in tow. (4,527)

Last call - While in Rome between OSOT and UWS, Abby and Townsend celebrate The New Year together in a bar. (2,712)

Catherine/Townsend:

A hotel bar - Shortly before the events of OGSY, Catherine tracks Townsend down for a long overdue catch up. (2,949)

A necklace knotted around a fist - Over 15 years before the events of LYKY, Townsend discovers that Catherine isn’t all she claims to be and tries to confront her about it. (2,710)

Cammie/Zach:

An attic - Zach and Cammie are spending the Christmas after the events of UWS at her Grandparent’s ranch in Nebraska with the rest of her family, and they manage to find a moment of peace away from the adults together. (3,836)

Joe/Rachel:

Bitter coffee - About a month after the events of DJGC, Rachel turns up at Joe’s cabin for a catch up before she plans to fly to London. (2,569)

A brown leather belt - Towards the end of OSOT, Rachel tries to get Joe alone for a chat. (2,457)

A wax-sealed envelope - Only a few weeks before the events of LYKY, Rachel makes one final attempt at convincing Joe to step out of the field and into a teaching role at Gallagher. (2,884)

Matt/Rachel:

Knees pressed into soft carpet - Over a decade and a half before the events of LYKY, Rachel and Matthew get distracted while on an assignment. (1,388)

Saltwater - In her first winter as headmistress of The Gallagher Academy, Rachel takes a moment to remember warmer and happier times. (1,882)

Abby & Cammie:

Rusty nails - After rediscovering her father’s grave in OSOT, Cammie finds her aunt outside and catches her in a rare vulnerable conversation. (3,315) 

Abby & Joe:

White silk - Set during Rachel and Matt’s wedding, a decade and a half before the events of LYKY, Abby and Joe meet properly for the first time. (3,337)

Weathered boxing gloves - Not long after Joe wakes up in OSOT, he goes for a walk around the school grounds at night and comes across Abby in the P&E barn. (3,949)

Abby & Macey:

Bodyguards - Set during DJGC but before the adults learn that Cammie is the target of The Circle, Abby keeps Macey from leaving the Academy one October morning. (3,700)

Abby & Matt:

Overprotective - Nearly two decades before the events of LYKY, Rachel and Matthew discover an intruder in their home when they get back from work. (2,557)

Abby & Rachel:

Red wine - 10 years after their father died, Rachel has exciting news for Abby. (3,135)

A safehouse - While on an assignment in Bahrain, 8 years before the events of LYKY, Rachel and Abby disagree on the group’s next move after one of their cover’s is blown. (3,035)

Catherine & Joe:

Old friends - A decade before the events of LYKY, Catherine needs help with her son and knows just who to go to. (2,364)

Catherine & Zach:

Tall evergreen - After one term at Blackthorn, Zach spends the Christmas 3 years before LYKY trying to get through his mother. (2,130)

Cammie & Matt:

A sous chef - Almost a decade before LYKY, Rachel is feeling under the weather, so Matt and Cammie try to make her feel better (2,399)

Cammie & Rachel:

A gold tooth - 3 years before the start of LYKY, Rachel and Cammie find a quiet escape during Matt’s funeral to have an important chat. (2,600)

Joe & Matt:

Sawdust - Two decades before the events of LYKY, Matt brings Joe to Nebraska on a pre-Christmas get away (2,793)

Joe & Townsend:

Figs - While spending the Christmas after UWS at the Morgan ranch in Nebraska, Joe and Townsend try to clear the air between them. (2,897)

Rachel & Townsend:

Spiral stairs - Set between Cammie and the girls’ graduation and Rachel and Joe’s wedding, Townsend is met by Rachel when he arrives to take Abby out for dinner on her birthday. (4,870)

Townsend & Zach:

A broken teapot - A year and a half after the events of UWS, Zach joins Townsend (and Abby) for Christmas at his parents house back in England. (3,241)

A breakup - 6 years after the events of UWS, Zach goes running to Townsend after a fight with Cammie. (4,196)

Upcoming:

Codenames - Chameleon. Bookworm. Duchess. Peacock. To anyone with less than level 4 clearance level, those four words mean nothing more than what they mean. But to anyone who knows what truly goes on behind the walls of The Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women, those four words tell the story of the teenagers who banded together to help take down a terrorist organisation before they even graduated high school. These are the stories of how they became known as such.

Red wine - 3 times a Cameron woman let slip that that they were expecting.

It hurts to miss you, but it’s worse to know - Matthew Morgan had two funerals. Joseph Solomon attended them both.

A safe house - Abby is dedicating all of her time and strength to casing the entire continent of Europe for her brother-in-law. Rachel is dedicating all of her heart and soul to bringing what was left of her fractured family back together to grieve as one. These two states cannot peacefully coexist for long. Of course it all comes to a head in Rome.

Overprotective - 4 times a Cameron woman revealed their boy troubles to the someone who loved them dearly. 

Walking away with your kiss on my cheek and a bruise underneath - Abby and Townsend are not perfect. It isn’t love at first sight or a slowly developing affection that binds them to one another. Their relationship is carved from spitting venom and blazing fire, from tearing through one another’s cracks and crevices with vicious words and scathing accusations, from holding one another close in the fallout and vowing never again. Somehow, what holds them together is fighting tooth and nail against one another and basking in the familiar wreckage that this leaves. They wouldn’t have it any other way. Or, the fights that made Abby and Townsend’s relationship what it is.

[gildengirl]

“I wanted a thousand different things as we stood there, but most of all, I wanted the girl who had been beside me in Boston to turn and realize that I was beside her now. ... “This feels like a safe house.” She finally turned to look at me. “Doesn't it feel safe, Cam?” “Yeah, Macey,” I said softly. “It does.”

- Ally Carter, Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover

[averagejoesolomon]

We're back, baby! Or maybe I should say, we're back WITH a baby!! Welcome to Full Circle 1988, aka: the Cam installation. I am beyond excited to share how these kids handle parenthood. Thank you, as always, for joining me. I know this says chapter one, but Full Circle doesn't start here. I recommend starting on Ao3 with Full Circle: 1978. CW: A pretty significant content warning for this one. We're going to see Rachel in labor throughout this chapter and there are visuals of blood. Things also don't go according to plan, and the line of medical consent gets blurry with Rachel's birthing plan. If that's likely to trigger you in any way, feel free to skip this one. I won't mind one bit.

Chapter One

Matthew Morgan is no stranger to kicking down doors.

And he kicks down this particular door with the kind of force he’d usually reserve for mobsters and arms dealers, rather than the well-intended EMT meeting him on the other side. He hears a smack, then a groan. Matt probably broke the guy’s nose—lucky they’re in the exact right place for that sort of thing.

“We’re having a baby,” he announces to no one in particular. “Right now.”

Three nurses look up from their station, dressed head-to-toe in green and blue scrubs. One waves him over, which is the only cue he needs to dash across the waiting room and blurt out every piece of intel he has. “Her water broke twenty-three minutes ago and her contractions are four minutes apart—”

“Matthew.”

“—but she’s been having them for a couple of hours now and insisted we stay home until they were closer together—”

“Matthew.”

“—and then we stopped for Little Tavern on the way over because we heard you guys don’t let her eat once she’s admitted and she’ll be damned if she’s going to deliver this baby on an empty stomach—”

“Matt.”

He almost forgets Rachel is there at all, which is maybe a little ironic given the reason for today’s visit. Even at thirty-nine weeks pregnant, she weighs next to nothing in his arms. The last time he had this much adrenaline in his system, he was scaling a Lithuanian embassy in the dead of winter without any cleats. 

“Take a breath,” she orders, starting a low, long inhale. Matt follows her lead on the exhale. “Good,” she says. “Now put me down. It’s a baby, not a broken leg.”

Matt’s been trained to take orders in high-pressure situations, especially when Rachel’s the person doling them out. The husband part of his brain gives in to the part that serves at the pleasure of the president and answers to a rigid chain of command. “Yes ma’am.”

He guides her legs to the floor, holding her steady as she searches for her ever changing center of gravity. When she finally finds it, her hands fall away from his neck and she stands tall as ever. Matt still keeps a hand at her back, even though she doesn’t need it.

“Now then,” she says, approaching the nurse’s station. “My husband has all of the information you need for my admission paperwork and, given that my water is broken, I trust you won’t need to check for dilation before admitting me to a room. I’ve already called ahead for Doctor O’Brien, who is on call this evening but expected to arrive within the next hour. My husband and my sister will both be in the delivery room with me—though, my sister is on a plane from Peru and may be a while. Since I’m a first-time mother, I expect we still have some time before that becomes an issue.”

If Matt weren’t so wound up, he might let loose a laugh when a nurse’s jaw actually drops. He knows that look. He’s worn it plenty. In his head, he silently calls it the Rachel Morgan effect—the moment someone is struck by the absoluteness of Rachel’s cool, easy command. She has a plan for everything, and being a first-time mother won’t stop her from being the smartest person in her own delivery room. She’s read all the books. She’s done all the research. Like everything else, she knows exactly how this is supposed to go.

Blind to her own influence and impatient for an answer, she looks around at the stunned nurses. “I’m sorry,” she says. “Were there questions, or…?”

This seems to snap the nurses into action. One of them sputters out a, “No,” and rounds the desk. “No, you’re just very—first time, you said? Let’s get you into a room Mrs…”

“Morgan,” Rachel answers, and the name is still new enough that it sends a joyful jolt across the frayed edges of Matt’s nerves. “Mrs. Rachel Morgan.”

Matt swears it only takes a wave of Rachel’s finger for the EMT to return, this time with a wheelchair. Matt thanks him, apologizes for the nose, and follows close behind as a nurse pushes Rachel past a set of swinging doors. 

“Matthew?”

“Right here, Ace.”

Rachel’s perfectly at ease as he leans in to listen, voice even and classy as ever. “If I don’t have drugs in my system in the next ten minutes,” she warns, “I am going to burn this entire building down, do you understand?”

It’s immediately clear that these aren’t the words of a laboring woman. These are the words of a trained operative who knows all the finer parts of arson, and ain’t far from denouncing her allegiance to all things good and just. “Understood.”

He relays this sentiment to the nurse, using a friendlier tone than Rachel might opt for. Truthfully, it ain’t much different from their usual operation—Rachel keeping the mission objectives front and center, while Matt charms informants into allies. In some ways, they’ve done all this before.

“We’ll have to see how far along she is before we administer an epidural,” the nurse tells him. When Matt insists, the nurse replies, “Really, Mr. Morgan. It shouldn’t take long.”

“More or less than ten minutes, do you think?” he asks.

“Definitely more than ten minutes,” says the nurse.

Matt glances toward Rachel, calm as a wheatfield before a storm, and gets the impression that the winds are about to shift. He spots a name typed across the nurse’s swinging badge and tries a different angle. “You’re the boss, Julie,” he says. “But if I could make a recommendation, as a fool who doesn’t know anything about all this, but knows his wife pretty well?”

Matt read all the same books Rachel did and is every bit as prepared, but what Julie don’t know won’t hurt her. She perks up with a slim smile when Matt calls her the boss, happy to be the expert in an environment that rarely treats her like one, and somewhere between the midwest accent and his own humility, she decides to like him. “I’m listening,” she says.

“The closer we can get to ten minutes,” he says, “the better this is gonna go for everyone involved.”

Years ago, when they first started living together, Joe agreed that Matt’s greatest gift was his ability to disappear into a crowd. In the same breath, Joe also said that his second greatest gift was his likability, and that he’d only waste it by asking questions about how it happens. Like every other bit of advice Joe’s ever given him, Matt lives by this. It’s why he doesn’t question the glint in Julie’s eye. He doesn’t question the way she trusts him just a few minutes into knowing him, or why she feels so inclined to help him. “I’ll see what I can do,” she says.

When it comes to people, Matt doesn’t need to work hard. Never has. And it might have been one of the great mysteries of his life, had Joe not seen it coming a mile away and insisted Matt not waste his time on wondering. As things are, Matt uses every drop of natural-born talent to make Rachel’s life a little easier during what’s sure to be an awfully hard night. “You’re a saint, Julie.”

He doesn’t question the way she smiles at him, the same way everyone does when they think he likes them back.

They roll Rachel into a private room and, true to her word, Julie makes quick work of her assessment. They’re joined by an entire team of nurses, each moving with confidence as they put Rachel in a gown, lift her into bed, prep their instruments, and place heart monitors for mom and baby both. Someone sticks a clipboard in Matt’s hand, burying him in a list of check boxes. Matt dutifully adds Rachel’s name, social security number, date of birth, and everything else Langley would usually redact.

He breezes through the forms. Rachel made flashcards of her family history in week nine, and Matt’s been studying them ever since. Right after he details Diana’s cancer and just before he can check off Henry’s history of headaches, Julie calls out, “Mr. Morgan?”

Matt snaps his attention upright, keying into the room the way Joe taught him. Two windows, sealed shut. Four nurses, all attending to Rachel. A heart rate of 115 and a glance from Julie, sitting at the foot of the bed. Her lips are in a tight line. Her brow is furrowed. A sheen of sweat starts to form along her hairline.

Something in Matt’s training sends his heart straight into his stomach. 

Julie waves him over, trying to keep her features steady. It’s a valiant effort, but ultimately made pointless by Matt and Rachel’s combined decades of experience reading people just like her. People who do hard work and sometimes have to deliver hard news.

Matt joins Julie at the end of Rachel’s bed. She lifts the gown from Rachel’s knees to reveal a growing spot of blood against white sheets. “That’s normal, isn’t it?” he asks her, because he’s pretty sure he read about this. “To bleed a little?”

Her answering look makes it instantly clear that all his books and research are gonna be just about as useful as a screen door on a submarine. He suddenly wonders if any of his intel will hold up in the field. In a hushed tone, Julie says, “I wouldn’t classify this as a little, Mr. Morgan.”

From the top of the bed, Rachel listens in. “What?” she says, eyes glancing toward Julie, then landing on him. “Matthew, what is it?”

All at once, Matt loses any kind of desire to be a voice of authority. He feels like every bit the fool he claimed to be earlier—though one truth still resonates. Matt still knows Rachel, better than he knows just about anything else in the world. And he knows Rachel is at her best when she’s sure, certain, confident.

So he does his best to spare her this uncertain pit sitting at the base of his own stomach. “You’re bleeding.” He presents it like the simple truth it is, the way she taught him to. Composed. Withdrawn. “The nurses are trying to figure out why.”

“Bleeding is normal,” Rachel replies and to untrained ears, she still sounds like an expert. But to him, she sounds anxious, with a jagged edge poking at the end of her sentence. She’s leaning on facts, trying to find the answer to a question she doesn’t even know yet. “Spotting is common.”

Matt glances back down at the blood. It ain’t spotting, and he tries not to notice if the stain has gotten bigger. “You’re right,” he says, landing all of his attention back on Rachel. “Some bleeding is normal. I’m sure it’s fine.”

Julie lets Rachel’s gown fall. “Regardless, Mrs. Morgan,” she says, “we’re going to do an ultrasound, just to check everything for the doctor.”

Rachel nods as though she expects nothing less, but her heart monitor gives her away as her pulse inches up from 118, to 120, to 122. Matt finds a place at her bedside and takes her hand in his, lifting her fingers to meet his lips. He plants affection along every icy knuckle.

She looks up at him, curls spiraling, ringlets starting to stick to her temples, her neck. “You have a terrible tell.”

“So I’ve heard,” he mutters across her skin. “Mostly from you.”

“What’s wrong?” she needs to know. “What is it?”

He sighs softly, breath rolling across her hand until he lowers it once more. “I don’t know, and that’s the truth of it,” he says. “Could be nothing.”

“But it could be something?”

“Yeah,” he admits. “It could be something. But if it is, you’ll know what to do.���

“You don’t know that.”

“Don’t gotta,” he promises. “I know you.”

Without warning, her features twist against a contraction and all the surrounding monitors pick up their pace. Nothing resembles an alarm, so Matt doesn’t worry just yet. Instead, he joins Rachel for a fresh breath, letting her squeeze the absolute Hell out of his hand. 

“I thought we had an understanding,” she grits, “about my drugs.”

“On their way,” Matt assures her, and he steals a glance at Julie to keep him honest. Only problem is, Julie ain’t looking at him. Julie’s looking at an ultrasound monitor, and that furrow in her brow is back. 

She cuts him a glance, stands, then leaves the room. When she comes back with a doctor, white coat and stethoscope included, Matt gets the feeling that everyone in the room knows something he doesn’t. Spy training or not, that’s a bad place for a fella to be. 

The doc examines the image frozen on the ultrasound. Consults the nursing team. Not even Matt, with all his training can make out the words as the man mutters back and forth with frenzied staff. He starts to think maybe spies have met their match in doctors.

Finally, the doctor raises his voice above the clatter of the room. “Mr. Morgan,” he says, glossing over Rachel’s presence entirely. “I understand you’re still waiting for your doctor to arrive, but I’m afraid we’re facing a fairly significant complication.”

Rachel beats Matt to the first question on his mind. “What?” she says, sitting up straight—or as straight as anyone can expect, given the circumstances. “What kind of complication?”

The doctor explains something about placenta, and compromised oxygen, and premature detachment. Matt doesn’t catch it all, distracted by the taste of rust along his tongue, dropping in like an old friend—but he thinks it’s odd anything could be premature when Rachel’s already carried to full term. He hears Rachel chasing down answers, the way she always does, and Matt finds the conversation just in time to hear the doctor say, “We’re recommending an emergency C-Section under general anesthesia, immediately.”

“General…” Rachel starts, but she can’t find the end. “No. No, it’s supposed to be an epidural. We just had an appointment the other day to confirm our birth plan.”

“I understand,” says the doctor, and Matt realizes he doesn’t even know this doctor’s name. “But that’s not a possibility any longer. A vaginal birth could take hours. An epidural could take up to thirty minutes to take effect. Every moment we don’t take action is another moment your baby isn’t getting enough oxygen, and it’s another moment you spend bleeding out.”

“Bleeding is normal,” Rachel argues.

“Mrs. Morgan,” says the doctor. “This is not normal. You’re hemorrhaging.”

“I can handle a little bl—”

She doesn’t finish the thought before the monitors pick up their pace again, another contraction building. Her jaw tightens against the noise, her hand squeezing Matt’s tight once more. Her breath doesn’t come as easily this time, and Matt thinks she might be even paler than usual.

With Rachel out of commission, the doctor turns to him. “I’m afraid it is a matter of life and death. For both of them.”

Matt deals with life and death on the daily, but he’s usually got Rachel in his ear, taking in the world from the top down, watching out for all the corners where death lurks. It’s where she likes to be. Rachel makes the calls. Rachel always sees the road ahead.

But she’s too close to this one. Matt can see it, even from his place down in the dirt. This is going to be one of those rare occasions when Matt has to look at the whole map and make the final call.

All it takes is one nod from Matt for the nursing staff to move in, and he figures Langley could learn a thing or two from how seamlessly this team flows, code words flying back and forth, trained hands working without hesitation, one nurse supporting the next, supporting the next, supporting the next. They operate like a stealth team deep in enemy territory, no one soldier complete without the other.

Hands overwhelm Rachel’s body, adjusting monitors, prepping for IVs, clearing the remnants from her ultrasound. She pulls away at each touch, defensive and raw. It’s lucky for everyone that she’s not operating at her full capacity, otherwise the whole room would be brought to their knees in a matter of seconds. Her words are sharp, her protests vicious, but the nurses carry on through the trenches.

Not getting anywhere with the nurses, Rachel promptly turns to Matt and begins to plead her case. “This isn’t part of my birthing plan.”

“I know,” he says.

“I have a plan. I have a birthing plan—”

“I know. I know you do.”

“My doctor isn’t here. Abby isn’t here. Abby’s on a plane.” There’s an urgency to her, needing to be heard. Begging to be heard. Her heart rate climbs as her wide eyes meet his own. “This isn’t how this is supposed to go.”

Matt reckons she’s had nightmares like this, where the whole word seems to stray from her perfectly laid plans. He sees the way it plays out in her stuttered breath. Feels her panicked grip along his arm. Matt’s been trained to read people, which means he sees every speck of hurt on his wife’s face as the moment she’s planned months in advance finally arrives, betraying her with each passing second.

So he reaches for her, holding her face in his hands and hoping it blocks out every other unwanted touch. His forehead presses into hers when he says, “This is how it’s going.” She’s burning up. He feels it in his palms, in the way her heat settles into the lines along his hands. “And you are—look at me—you can do this. You do hard, unexpected things all the time.”

She shakes her head, tears breaking at the corner of each eye. “I’m supposed to be awake. I want to be awake.”

“They’re going to take good care of you,” he reminds her. “I’m going to make sure they take good care of you, and the baby.”

“I’m supposed to be awake.”

“You’re not going to be awake for this.”

“Matthew—”

“I’m going to take care of you.”

“Matthew.”

“Let me take care of you.”

“I have a plan.”

He leaves a kiss at the crown of her head, then catches her gaze. Forces her to really look at him. To listen, the way she’s made him listen so many times. “And now we have a new one,” he says, putting on his best Rachel Voice. “But I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to be right here the whole time, even if I have to break down the door to the operating room, alright? That much is still part of the plan.”

Her grip is still wrapped around his arm, growing weaker. Pulse slowing. Her eyes skip between his, searching for a way out, before she finally says, “Don’t let them ruin me.”

It’s the first and only sign in the entire nine months that Rachel is really, honestly scared of what’s to come. Matt can hardly blame her. When it comes to Rachel, one moment is never just one moment. This one moment changes how she planned to meet her child. It changes how she planned to go home, how she planned to care for a new baby, how she planned to get back in the field when all is said and done. With Rachel, one moment leads into the next, over and over again until one ruined moment becomes a ruined lifetime, everything she ever wanted tied back to her expectations for here and now.

“They couldn’t if they tried,” he tells her. “And I’ll be damned if they get a chance to try at all, okay?”

Another one of those code words bounces between the nurses, setting more movements into motion. All at once, they lift the locks on Rachel’s bed and begin to roll her away. She reaches for Matt’s hand once more, but she’s already too far gone.

Matt follows after, two steps behind all the way to the operating room.

[theycallmetatertot]

also help im on vacation and thinking abt cam and zach driving around the dc area like "I'm sorry, which one of us grew up here? I'm taking eisenhower, it's faster, shut the fuck up"

[cammie-morgan-goode]

In OSOT, when cam comes back, zach says it's different, and he seem a bit distance quite a while, with him & bex always together. Do you think he's also mad at cam that's why? Or something else?

Oh my poor Zachy boy…

Zach’s mad. He’s furious with Cam. He’s pissed at her.

But not for the reasons we think.

Zach is the one who gave Cammie the idea of running away. He said so in OGSY. He told Cam that they should run. That they would keep each other safe. And Cam told him no. Cammie told him that that was not an option.

And what does she do? She leaves without him and she runs.

Zach doesn’t know where she is. She didn’t leave a note for anyone, she didn’t say goodbye, she’s just gone.

Zach has nobody. He can’t go home. He can’t go to his mom. He can’t go back to school. He doesn’t know if Cammie is even alive until they find her in Switzerland. And during that time he has Bex. And Bex is the only constant in his life that summer. She is the only one keeping his feet on the ground and keeping him from doing something stupid. Because if he can’t find Cammie, what does he have left? Joe’s in a coma for goodness sake.

And then to make matters worse, Cam comes back and she’s different. She can’t remember anything from that summer. He doesn’t even want to think about what she could’ve endured. He doesn’t want to process that. Between the sessions with Dr. Steve, the weapons incident, the memory loss, the fact that the Circle is still out there…

He tried to find Cam and he failed.

Things are different between them and while Cam is trying to process that and her missing summer, Zach is trying to process the fact that anything could have happened to Cammie and there was nothing he could do to stop that.

[circleofcavan]

"what is a gallagher girl? she's a genius, a scientist, a heroine, a spy."

(a first pass at some character-focused photoillustrations and graphics, with the majority of the images sourced from the library of congress's archives. a fun distraction from work!)

[superblycaffeinated]

Year One: At Home In the Dark masterlist

warnings for series: mentions of alcohol/being drunk, mentions of violence/blood imagery (with warnings for specific chapters), mentions of anxiety and depression symptoms (with warnings for specific chapters), swearing - please do not read if you may find any of this triggering and take care of yourself.

“The proverbial saying ‘All’s fair in love and war’ expresses the idea that, like war, where any strategy is accepted, affairs of the heart are also no-holds-barred contests.”

Chapter One:

“Your mission, should you choose to accept is-“

Groans fill the room and Rebecca Baxter rolls her eyes at everyone. An amber bottle pressed to her lips as she nudges his shoulder. A silent, ‘Can you believe them? They’re absolutely no fun.’

Zachary Goode snickers into his own beer, a silent response of ‘No, you’re just overly dramatic as usual and Cam has probably had too many glasses of wine for this.’

“Alright, alright, fine.” Bex waves her hands and to look at him fully. “Truth or Dare? Clock’s ticking Goode.”

Maybe it’s the way he hasn’t felt this light in a long time - maybe ever, that they’re all together again for it too. Summer evening wind blows at his hair that’s gotten a little too long. From their spot on the porch, he can hear the hum of crickets and cicadas, smell the familiar scent of leaves that are ready to turn for Autumn in the air. He doesn’t even have shoes on, he can’t remember the last time he didn’t feel the need to be ready to go. Or it could be the way his heart does this funny thing of swelling and aching in the same beat when Cam blows hair off of her cheek, giggling like she’s eighteen again as Liz pours more wine.

Or maybe he’s just drunk.

“Truth.”

Yeah, definitely just drunk.

The entire circle falls silent, cups and bottles half suspended to parted lips, laughter trails off as eyes widen. Every single one of them can hear each other’s heartbeats, the distinct ping of water from the faucet hitting ceramic inside and down the hall, and the ticking of the clock just inside the dining room.

Cammie sits up straighter, wiping at her lips. “What?”

Bex sits back against the porch column hard. Liz props up on her knees - clearly criss cross applesauce is too child’s play for what’s at stake here. Macey narrows her eyes at him from her spot on the couch above the other two girls as she tosses back the rest of her wine. Even Preston and Jonas look at him with furrows forming above their brows.

Jesus, they’re all so dramatic.

He rolls his eyes and turns to Bex. “You gonna ask me the question or not?”

“But you, you never pick-“ she looks around the group and he marks the date in his calendar. Rebecca Baxter has been rendered speechless and actually physically appears frazzled as she drums her fingers on her knees and looks at the stars. “I mean, what do I ask? I never thought I’d actually get the chance.”

Cammie narrows her eyes and points at him, “Ask him where he hid the M&M’s because I know he did.”

Zach grins, blowing her a kiss that she rolls her eyes at but smiles into her wine glass because of nonetheless.

Bex waves off the suggestion, not serious enough of course. She snaps her fingers and Macey moves to the edge of the couch cushion. “Oh! Private jet and the Russians!”

Bex counters, “Finland, embassy with the Duchess?”

Cammie laughs, “Idaho, potato farmer?”

Jonas shakes his head. “Nah, don’t waste it on that one, I have pictures.”

Zach makes a mental note about finding and deleting those, beginning to hum the jeopardy theme song. He’s definitely drunk, because he should have been noticing the one girl who was far too silent. He should have known that when Elizabeth Sutton is quiet, that means she’s thinking big things.

“What about when he fell in love with Cammie?” The question is calculated, lazy almost in her tone, but it catches him off guard and Liz is far to perceptive to let it slip. His eyes widened, pupils dilating. His breath changed just so, stuck in his throat. His heart rate increased. Damn stupid beer he was never drinking ever again.

The two men opposite him groan at the suggestion and the four women turn on him. Hawk eyes, lioness’ stalking their prey. He was done for the minute the question was suggested. He has one of two options as he sees it now. Lie his ass off to the room of people who know all of his tells or plead with the love of his life.

Zach shakes his head, staring directly at Cammie. “Cammie, no, please don’t make me talk about this in front of everyone? You hate attention, it’s complicated and-“

She hums into her wine glass interrupting him, “I dunno, Zach, I think high school Cammie really needs some answers. You messed with her head quite a bit.”

Shit, bad move. Should have lied right away - ‘I loved Cammie the minute I laid eyes on her in that DC mall. Truly love at first sight, I just had to figure out who that Gallagher Girl really was’ is not gonna cut it now, they’re far too hungry for juicy gossip like they’re back in school.

“We’re married!” He holds up his left hand to prove the point, grasping at anything to make this all go away. Zach gestures out the entrance of the porch, “Our children are asleep down the hall!”

Cam only levels him with a look he’s grown to know very well. It’s the look she gives the kids when they lie and say they brushed their teeth before bed. He’s busted.

Liz stands, the girl closing in on him until his back hits the porch railing. She nudges his chest as she speaks so threateningly for someone with ducks all over their pajama’s. “Spill, or I get the truth serum.”

“You know, I forget that you’re the scariest one of the bunch sometimes Lizzie,” he gulps as Jonas cackles from his spot on the ground.

The four girls simply raise their eyebrows, and he admits defeat. His hands lift to the air beside his head. “Okay, okay, but I need another beer for this.”

Giddy with their victory, everyone settles into comfortable positions, eager to not let him get away with anything but a good and long story.

Zach avoids the creak of the floorboard as he heads into the kitchen, listening intently for the sounds of his children stirring at all. His hip hits the fridge closed in just the right spot, pulling the opener from it’s drawer.

He looks at the fridge as he leans against the counter, a picture of him and Cam in front of Gallagher on the day of Rachel and Joe’s wedding held up by a hand painted magnet. Red splotchy paint covering the words ‘World’s Best Dad’ glazed and shiny from a kiln. It’s not that he doesn’t know when he fell in love with her, he does, it’s just not so simple.

The bottle cap pops off with a hiss, then a click of it hitting the counter. He watches the green metal spin, slowing as it gets closer to meeting the flat surface of the countertop.

“Goode!”

Zach snatches the copper coin he’d been spinning against the tabletop before it flattens and stands, hands held into fists behind his back at attention.

An armed guard with flushed cheeks and a forehead dappled with sweat marches towards him.

Oh swell, it’s Jeff.

At Blackthorne, any guard calling your name in that tone isn’t gonna be great, but Jeff has this way of spitting when he talks, of not realizing what the words personal space mean, and probably has never ever heard of breath mints and their miraculous powers to ward off coffee breath.

Zach’s fingers fiddle with the coin behind his back. He’s getting better about the whole restless energy and showing it thing, but he figures it’s not dire circumstances to be on his game right now. His mind wanders through the possibilities of what today could be about. One of his bedsheet corners wasn’t tight enough, someone found the little yellow package of chocolaty goodness in his sock, or perhaps Jeff didn’t get his coffee and donut this morning and he just feels like picking on someone.

The cafeteria grows more silent as everyone decides that the show that’s about to go down has got to be better than eating the mystery meat on their trays.

“Sir?” Zach questions, staring at the spot just above Jeff’s left ear. A thing Jeff positively hates, causing him to continuously look over his shoulder and wonder what the hell Zach is staring at - but a thing that fills Zach with a small amount of joy.

It’s the little things.

Jeff does just this, head whipping around so fast he’s surprised the man doesn’t give himself whiplash. Jeff’s gaze darts across the wall and back to Zach. Beady, narrowed eyes meet his, Zach’s lips twitch slightly, revealing too much - another thing he’s still working on. But Jeff is fairly harmless and hasn’t quite mastered the art of interpreting Zach’s smaller tells.

“Visitors,” Jeff snarls and Zach’s shoulders fall.

Fuck.

The room grows even more silent, the quiet din of metal silverware hitting their trays and cups hitting wood vanish completely now as the unmistakable red head of hair floats through the cafeteria towards him. Shoulders straighten, voices cease, and breaths are held with each click then clack of black pumps against the concrete floors.

His mother is here, and she’s brought friends.

“Hello darling, miss me?”

Catherine Goode commands attention, she just does. A room full of hormone crazed teenage boys was already going to be acutely aware of a woman wearing a black dress accentuating her curves walking amongst them, they were already going to stare, Zach knows this. But Catherine has something else, the strong voice of a soldier mixed with a soft femininity enveloping each word she speaks, making you think each word is somehow meant only for you. A perfect way to get what she wants that he’s seen in action enough times to know she’s mastered skillfully. Her loss ratio is zero, she has the control every time.

For everyone except her son.

“Can’t say that I have, Cat.” Zach presses the coin between his thumb and forefinger, the indent of Abraham Lincoln surely going to be preserved in his fingerprint forever. He knows it’s a shot in the dark. Sometimes she’s pleasantly surprised by his resistance, dare he say almost impressed. But most times, it ends poorly for him.

Catherine Goode’s eyes - his eyes - narrow, her playfulness disappearing with an art that Houdini would envy. “That’s no way to talk to your mother, Zachary. Let’s go. I have people I need to introduce you to and we have something important to discuss.”

She gestures to the men behind her as she speaks, before stepping closer. Her head dips - like a snake ready to attack. He visualizes it perfectly before it happens, a hand wraps around his bicep, squeezing. Not in a loving, motherly way, but in a warning - strike one. Her voice lowers as she hisses, “Behave,” while fingernails dig into his skin leaving small crescent moons. The snake is playing with it’s food before it tightens it’s coil and removes his oxygen.

“Yes, ma’am.” He grinds his teeth, jaw clenching as the toes of his boots tap together when he straightens to formal attention again.

She smiles, satisfied with his submission and pats his cheek a little too harshly before turning on her heels and clicking away. Her fingers curl behind her head as she walks. “Gentleman.” Then they waggle out to the faces of the cafeteria in a wave, “Boys.”

He hates that he ducks his head, that he follows her blindly. His gut twists as he counts the cracks in the concrete he already knows the number of, knowing that if he were to lift his head, his classmates - if you can even call them that - would be looking at him with eyes full of pity. Sometimes he envies the ones who have nothing, it has to be better than her. But then, it’s like she knows he’ll have a thought like this. She’ll do something almost nice, she’ll make him feel guilty. How dare he wish he didn’t have her, there were good times once upon a time right?

He shakes his head, no, this is what she wants. He simply follows, choosing to hold his chin up in defiance of any pity that he can feel hitting the back of his uniform as he walks out of the cafeteria.

The men she’s brought follow closely behind her. Suits. Not terribly expensive, they’re not big deals. One is slightly taller, a thick brown mustache. This man watches his mother with sharp blue eyes, he’s not fully under her spell it would seem. As Catherine smiles and gestures into a door, the man nods and enters. The slightly younger and shorter one gestures for Zach to enter first. He’s blonde, strong shoulders, with brown eyes that look at Zach in a way that makes him feel like he’s under a microscope. This man closes the door and stands in front of it and Zach would bet his next few meals that he was Secret Service.

Mustache man sits with a groan loudly in a chair as his mother leans up against a low bookshelf. A fairly empty classroom that wasn’t used much these days. While the weather was nice, it was strictly outside for use of the range, running drills, and perimeter and mountain trail runs. Classroom time was for the bitterly cold days that even the teachers and guards knew wasn’t worth making the boys get frostbite over. Catherine fiddles with a cup of pencils, a finger swiping over the top of the shelf and leaving a streak of clean wood in its wake as her mouth pinches in disgust.

Lovely place you send me to school, huh, mom?

“Well, Zach,” mustache man’s voice is gravely, it leads Zach to believe the man used to smoke. The fact mingles with the face in his brain, a connection trying to surface to the forefront of it. Mustache man continues while holding his hand up at a height not too tall, “You’ve grown! You weren’t more than ye high last time I saw you I think.”

Zach’s always hated this greeting. What was a person supposed to say back to that? Thank you? That’s how time and puberty works? That’s what happens when you get three meals a day and stop wondering when the next one will be?

He mashes his lips together in a thin smile with a nod. He’s pretty sure that was a better move than opening it and saying any of that.

The man looks to Secret Service man and then his mother before giving another nod. “Right, well, you must be wondering what we’re here for.”

No, I love being humiliated by my mother in front of groups of people and then following her and two strangers into a dusty classroom to sit in silence, dude. I live for it, it’s my shit.

Again, not saying that, so he remains silent. Mustache man claps his hands together, looking to his mother for further instruction so it would seem. She smiles at Zach, her salesman one - the one he knows she pulls out when she really wants her way.

“Darling, these men, they have a proposition for you. A mission.”

He stands up a little straighter, unable to help himself at the word mission. A real mission? Involving his mother? The men furrow their brows slightly as Catherine continues and his apprehension and curiosity fight bay-blades style in his head - whirling around and knocking edges, unsure of who’s going to pull out in the lead just yet.

“They need some information. Some information that they think only you may be able to get for them.”

Zach waits, knowing his mother is just getting started. She’s setting a trap, complimenting him, loosening some stones in his closed off exterior, weakening it until it’s ready for a final strike. He rolls the grooved edge of the coin between his thumb and forefinger.

Catherine walks along the wall, her hands clasped behind her back. Her heels click against the tile, gaze lost on the tattered map hung on the wall. She leans in, feigning inspection as she speaks again. Her tone somehow lazy but dripping with an authoritative quality that when combined, made you lean in and feel the need to listen carefully. “As you’ve most likely come to know in your training, it’s important, in some missions, to get close to a subject. To have a relationship with them, to make them an asset.”

The mustached man cut in, “An asset is-“

“A person within organizations who provide information to outside sources. Yeah, I know.”

“Zachary.”

Warning number two, he won’t be given a third.

Silence fills the room again at her sharp use of his name. Zach’s head bows and the other two men focus on her - it’s her happy place, he knows this. She controls the room, two grown men with their entire attention fully on her and her son’s submission, she’d bask in it like it was the sun on the beach for hours if she had the time.

Zach begins to flip the coin, impatient for the details of how this all affects him, what exactly it is he’s being asked here. He watches the coin arc in the air and land in his hand several times, waiting for her big finish.

Her slender and skilled fingers intercept the coin on his next toss. Her green eyes hold his and this time, even he can’t deny them as she delivers his very first official mission.

“We need you to get some information from Joe.”

[whatthescallop42]

doodles from PHYSICS CLASS!!!

[g-girlshavingfun]

December Prompts

17) An attic - Cammie x Zach

Zach and Cammie are spending the Christmas after the events of UWS at her Grandparent’s ranch in Nebraska with the rest of her family, and they manage to find a moment of peace away from the adults together. (3,836)

———————————————————————

“We’re not talking about Dubai unless you want to talk about how I saved the day again.”

“Was that before or after you nearly got us caught in the first place?”

“It was certainly after you fucked up your Arabic in front of the Prime Minister, I can tell you that much.”

Zach was losing his mind.

When Cammie had asked him if he wanted to join her and her family at her grandparent’s ranch over Christmas, assuming they weren’t distributed on assignments of course, he had already been nervous. He was a dangerous looking kid who attended a school for troubled boys as far as civilians were concerned, so adults didn’t tend to like him on first meeting. Even the spies in his girlfriend’s family tended to take some time to warm to him, to trust him, to like him, although in fairness those adults knew who his mother was. With only a week away from work, he had worried that Cammie’s grandparents would have him labelled as a troublemaker from the get-go and he wouldn’t have time to persuade them otherwise. Cammie had tried to ease his fears. Had told him that her grandpa would love him as long as he helped out on the ranch, that her grandma would spend the entire week trying to force feed him, that they were kind and loving and very accepting. In the end, it was only the promise that Joe was coming as well, was being dragged to see them for the first time since their son’s funeral, no longer just their son’s best friend but now their daughter-in-law’s new husband, that convinced him to come.

Of course, Zach hadn’t stopped to think about the fact that Townsend would be coming as well.

He should have. Obviously. Him and Abby seemed to be attached at the hip after making up after their most recent fight, and a foot chase with some stray Circle lackeys had left his bad knee in a brace, so it wasn’t a surprise that he had been dragged along to what was apparently her first visit to the ranch since before Matthew Morgan’s first funeral.

It wasn’t all bad. Between Grandma Morgan fawning over the three girls, over college classes and wedding pictures and Abby Darling what happened to your shoulder, and Grandpa Morgan unknowingly pitting the two men against one another when he took them both out into the fields, Cammie’s grandparents didn’t have as much time to interrogate him about his childhood and his family and his plans for the future. In fact, very few invasive questions had been asked at all, and none had been asked about his parents. Someone, either Cammie or Mrs Morgan, had obviously pre-warned the couple about the complicated relationship between Townsend and Zach, as neither of them gave a second thought to their physical similarities or the lingering awkwardness or the way Abby and Cammie kept trying to push them to talk to one another.

That was the problem. The awkwardness.

Even though Townsend had been making painful efforts with him, explaining himself and his relationship with Catherine when she had revealed the truth, stiffly asking questions about his likes and interests in the months after they had found out, going out of his way to look out for him and Cammie both when they started at Langley, the entire situation was still awkward. He didn’t ask for a father, had stopped asking for one a long time ago, and clearly Townsend hadn’t been looking for a son. Plus there was the Cammie/Abby issue making everything slightly more complicated. And the Joe issue. And the Catherine issue. And the… well there were just a lot of issues.

Of course, when Townsend wasn’t bumbling through another uncomfortable attempt at bonding with him, or endearing himself to Grandma Morgan by bonding with Cammie, or suffering through a joint interrogation by Grandpa Morgan and Mrs Morgan, he was doing what he did best. Bickering with Abby.

“My Arabic was flawless-”

“So flawless he tipped off the presidential guard?”

“There was no indication that that was him Abigail, besides-”

Zach was losing his mind.

From across the room, he managed to catch Mrs Morgan’s gaze from where she leaned against her dozing husband, the exasperated glare on her face betrayed by the amusement twinkling in her eyes. She rolled them at him anyway, drawing a small quirk of lips out of him.

“If you seriously suggest that the guards made us because of my table etiquette again, I’m gonna lose it.”

“This is you not losing it?”

It was just the five of them in the room, Grandma Morgan out at an evening pottery class while her husband had gone across the road to bring their neighbours some of their chicken’s eggs. Cammie had disappeared some some ago, which would’ve made him panic had both entrances to the ranch house not been within his eyeline, had the open plan layout not given them visuals on all four exterior angles of the building, had she not promised to stay inside. That left him with the man who was his father, seated uncomfortably on the couch with his girlfriend’s feet in his lap, said girlfriend who was also his own girlfriend’s aunt, and his girlfriend’s mother and stepfather. Talk about awkward.

“You know what Ed? At least I can speak Romanian without my accent slipping through.”

And of course they wouldn’t stop arguing.

“That was one time, and it was years ago!”

Zach was losing his mind.

Thankfully, Mrs Morgan seemed to take pity on him, gesturing to the stairs with her eyes and giving him a slight nod when he raised his eyebrows in question. Truthfully he had wanted to track Cammie down for the past 20 minutes, but he felt a bit bad leaving Mrs Morgan alone with the bickering pair, Joe being no help having fallen asleep over an hour ago. Grateful for the permitted reprieve, he slipped out of his own chair and made his way up the carpeted steps, smirking to himself when he heard the woman who granted it to him begin to tease her sister about an assignment in Bahrain where her own cover momentarily slipped. Townsend had just laughed in response, the two of them seemingly working together to wind Abby up when Zach reached the top of the stairs, the noise from below fading into the background.

Once at the top of the stairs he took a cursory look around, assessed the empty bathroom and the guest room opposite, his room, devoid of life. At one end of the end of the hallway, the room shared by Cammie’s grandparents looked undisturbed, the door still propped ajar by Grandpa Morgan’s jacket caught in the hinges as it was this morning, and the at other end, the room currently shared by Townsend and Abby looked similarly untouched. If he stood on his tiptoes, Zach could just make out the gleam of a dime propped against the top of the door, positioned to fall on the metal handle and make a clang Zach didn’t doubt any agent in the vicinity would react to should someone other than the intended couple open the door. Adjacent to their room, the room Zach was sure used to belong to Mr Morgan by the speed at which Mrs Morgan relinquished it to her sister, her and Joe opting to stay in the den downstairs instead, was Cammie’s. Though the door was wide open, Zach kept his distance, certain he’d face the wrath of someone in this house if he was caught in her bedroom, though he wasn’t entirely sure who would be the most mad. She wasn’t in there anyway. It was too quiet.

That left the attic.

Zach looked up, eyeing the overhead hatch and assessing its placement. It did look slightly misaligned compared to earlier this morning. Taking the access pole, he slowly and quietly slid the hatch open, pulling down the contained ladder and climbing up, sealing up the entrance behind him as he crept into the dim space.

There she was.

Dirty blonde hair still pulled back in the braid Abby had worked on this morning, dust smearing her her prominent cheekbones, rosy cheeks gleaming at him, she seemed to glow in the dim yellow light of the attic. Her feet were wrapped up in the fluffiest socks Zach had ever seen, her torso adorned with one of her father’s checkered shirts layered over one of her stepfather’s sweatshirts. She sat curled up in the corner against a stack of cardboard boxes, the shadows cast by the towers of storage around her obscuring her features from him, a pile of albums to her left and an open book propped up on her lap. Disturbed by his entrance, she looked up towards him as he crawled past old TVs and suitcases to get to her, shooting him a warm smile as he perched himself at her side.

“Ah, you found me.”

He’ll always find her. He’ll never stop looking.

But he didn’t want to bring down the pleasant mood, to chill the soft warmth glowing in his chest, so he just smirked at her. “You’re getting sloppy Gallagher Girl.” She shot him a grin and an eye roll for that, eyes lighting up slightly at the fond nickname. Something thick built up in his throat, in his lungs, in his heart. Something that might be love.

No. It was definitely love.

“Are they still fighting?”

“Like an uptight cat and a stubborn dog.”

“Cats and dogs have nothing on those two.” Chuckling as she knocked her shoulder into his, he wrapped an arm around her and drew them close together, sighing in contentment as she laid her head on his shoulder. “Sorry I disappeared.”

The words were heavier than they needed to be. Both of them silently acknowledging that she had a history of disappearing, of scaring him, of scaring them all. The memories of that summer clogged in his throat, choking him, suffocating him. Pushing through it, he pressed a kiss to her forehead in forgiveness, reaching out for the book, a photo album, sat in her lap.

“Your parents?” She hummed in confirmation and nodded against his shoulder, angling the album towards him so he could get a better look.

An unknown version of Mrs Morgan looked back at him from the photo album, dark hair framing a younger face, expression light with joy and love and youth. Adorned in a white silken dress, she didn’t look that different to the woman Zach remembered from the summer just passed, though the man standing beside her was markedly so. Joe was tall, not quite as tall as Townsend but enough that he was nearly a full head taller than his wife. On the other hand, Mr and Mrs Morgan stood at roughly the same height in these pictures, though Zach was sure she was wearing heels. His hair was lighter than Joe’s, his skin more tanned, his body slimmer where Joe’s was lean. Rather than a subtle smirk, his face was plastered with a wide, crooked grin, eye’s alight with warmth where Joe’s were deep and contemplative. The biggest similarity between the two was how they looked at the woman pictured next to them, loving and trusting and astonished. Zach wondered if he looked that lovestruck looking at that woman’s daughter.

Cammie’s voice broke him out of his musings. “All of Grandma’s wedding questions got me thinking about Mom and Dad’s. Thought I’d hunt down the photo albums while Luke and Lorelai get into it downstairs.”

“Who?”

She blinked up at him. “You’ve never watched- Never mind, we’ll add it to the list.”

Once the Circle had been taken down, the couple could finally spend some time together outside of the Academy without looking over their shoulders every five minutes, without one of them disappearing in a mysterious puff of smoke, without fearing that Zach’s mother could capture or kill them any moment. In doing so, Cammie discovered that his childhood wasn’t just devoid of a father, a normal mother-son relationship, friends his own age, but he also didn’t get the opportunity to watch much TV, Catherine usually picking them up and moving them across the world before they could think to set up an aerial. Every time Zach didn’t catch a reference one of the girls, usually Macey, made, Cammie made a note of the relevant context he was missing and tried to set aside time for the two of them to watch it together.

Last weekend they had watched Mean Girls.

Zach turned to watch his girlfriend’s face as she continued flicking through the album. How her eyes got misty at every picture of her parents, how her smile stretched out her face when she found pictures with Joe lurking in the background, how her laugh brought light the the otherwise gloomy attic when she turned the page to find a picture of her aunt jumping on her father’s back. At a picture of Mr Morgan with his parents, she hesitated, her finger running across her grandparent’s faces, the grief and pain of the last few years absent in the memories of their younger selves.

“At dad’s funeral, the first one I mean, Grandma was completely out of it. She hugged me once then stopped acknowledging I was there. Stopped acknowledging anyone. Grandpa kept crying. He was trying not to, was trying to be strong for Grandma and I, Mom too, but he just kept crying. They lost their child…” Her words failed her, trailing off into the silence and darkness surrounding them. Biting her lip, she appeared deep in thought, eyes a million miles away.

It only took a moment for his memories of last summer to come flooding back, Mrs Morgan’s blank expression haunting him. The way her voice cracked around Cammie’s name and she seemed to shake where she stood. The way her feet seemed to carry her in the direction of her daughter’s room before remembering, stalling, stumbling in place. The way he caught her hunched over Joe in the hospital wing, weeping into her knees with his fingers clutched in one hand, the goodbye Cammie left them in the other.

Looking at his girlfriend’s face, it wasn’t hard to tell that her mind had jumped to the same thoughts.

“Your mom hasn’t lost you Cam, you’re fine.”

Shaking her head, she smiled at him, the pain of agonising over whatever distress she caused her mom still present in her eyes. “How do you do that? How do you always know what I’m thinking.”

I don’t.

If he did, he never would’ve left her alone that summer, never would’ve left her to run off without him. If he did, he would’ve been brave enough to ask her out properly long before he actually managed to. If he did, he wouldn’t spend half his time worrying that she finally realised she was too good for him.

Still, it was nice to know that Cammie thought he could read her mind.

Smirking at her, he just pointed to himself with the arm not wrapped around her. “Spy.” Cammie laughed, throwing her head back in glee. He loved her laugh, loved that despite everything she had gone through, everything his own mother put her through, she still found the strength to laugh so freely. In awe of the woman before him, he moved closer towards her, leant his forehead against hers, pressed his lips to hers and whispered softly against them. “I know you Gallagher Girl.”

She smiled, rubbed her nose against his before moving away. Turning the page agin, she traced the image of her parents trapped in a world before she existed. “It’s a wonder spies have kids at all, knowing they could follow in their footsteps, knowing they could lose them like that. Really makes you think…” Her voice trailed off again, eyes staring deep into his.

Suddenly he remembered their conversation in the moment after he learned Townsend was his father. How he told her he didn’t want kids, wouldn’t want to mess them up like his mother did him. He meant it at the time. He thinks he still means it now. He’s only 18, but he can’t imagine ever knowing anything about being a dad, can’t imagine ever having someone to learn it from, can’t imagine ever risking fucking it all up. Still, looking at Cammie now, how beautiful she looked covered in dust and half concealed by darkness, hiding amongst memories that weren’t hers and ruminating on a future that might be, he couldn’t help but wonder if maybe one day he might change his mind.

Blinking the thoughts away, he instead shot her a self-deprecating gin, tilted his head into the hand that cupped his cheek. “Reckon my parents would disagree.”

Cammie shook her head at him, ignored the existence of his mother and focussed on the on parent they both kind of liked. “You and Townsend have been getting along!” Thumb soothing up and down his face, she leant forward again and pressed their foreheads together, whispering softly. “He cares about you Zach, really. He’s a good guy.”

Zach just shrugged. “It’s still not the same.”

Sure, Townsend was a decent guy. Zach knew now that he didn’t know Zach was his for the first 18 years of his life, knew that he would’ve done something about it if he had. And he guesses the man cares about him, as much as he seemed to care about anyone that wasn’t Abby at least. But it still wasn’t the same, the man was never going to love him the way Cammie’s parents loved her. Zach was never going to get that.

Looking back down at the photo album, he studied the pictures of her parents again.

“You look a lot like him.” She blinked at him, casting her gaze briefly back to the photo album before looking back at him. Her eyes looked misty again. “Both of them actually, but more him.”

Sniffling, Cammie just shrugged, tone mimicking his self-deprecation from earlier. “Not having as many of the Cameron genes certainly helps the whole Chameleon thing.”

Zach knew she thought of herself as plain, as average, as indistinguishable. Knew she felt unremarkable compared to her mother’s side of the family. He thought it was ridiculous. From the moment he met her he knew she’d be the face he remembered for the rest of time. She was the most stunning person he knew. It amazed him that she couldn’t see that.

Running a finger down her cheek, cupping it in his hand, his other arm moving to wrap around her waist, pulling her body into his, he dropped his voice to a whisper. “You always stick out in a crowd to me Gallagher Girl.”

And he kissed her.

Immediately intoxicated by the taste of her, he groaned into her mouth even as he felt her smile against him. They moved together in rhythm, pushing and pulling at one another in a familiar dance of passion. His hand ran from her face to her hair, dislodging the braid that it sat in and running his fingers through the waves of it, nails scratching against her scalp as her own fingers began tickling across his chest. Breaking apart briefly for air, he smirked at her, closing in again to nibble slightly at her lower lip, the breathy whimper that he was met with making his toes curl. Zach was desperate for her. He was just about to lean her backwards to the floor of the attic, press his body on top of hers so he could feel every inch of her when-

“Cameron Ann Morgan! If you and your boyfriend aren’t down here in 5 minutes I’m going to assume you’re doing something inappropriate in the family home and come up there with the intention of removing his skull from his body.”

They sprung apart at the resounding boom of Abby’s voice coming from directly below them, Cammie giggling silently against his lips as he gaped in mock outrage.

Remove my skull from my body? He mouthed at her.

At least it’s just your skull? She mouthed in return.

Winking at her, he grinned and moved his lips silently again, heart filled with light. I knew I was growing on her.

Mrs Morgan’s voice sounded from even further below, what sounded like another floor separating the two sisters. “Abby I told you to go get them not to threaten them!”

“I only threatened one of them! Besides, I’m doing you a favour Rach, trust me.” Voice switching from defensive and amused as she addressed her sister to firm yet teasing as she yelled up at them, Abby rapped her knuckles against the wall as she continued. “Now quit making eyes at each other and get down here squirt, your mom’s too uptight to be a grandmother before she’s 50!”

“Hey!”

Cammie shook her head at him, giggling as he tried to dejectedly lay his head against her shoulder, tried to hide the flush that crept its way up his face. A matching red hue had taken over her cheeks and her neck as she pushed him off her and made her way to the hatch of the attic, poking her head out to speak to her aunt.

“You realise I currently share a wall with you and Townsend right? Talk about inappropriate.”

“Ew Cam. Seriously?” Zach muttered under his breath. He may not think of the guy as his dad, but he also didn’t need to be thinking of him like that.

“Get down here Kiddo, before your aunt gives Townsend a stroke with all the baby talk.”

Cammie swung her legs out of the attic in response to her mom’s voice, a steadying hand reaching up to help her before she turned back to Zach. “You coming?”

“Be with you in a second.”

Studying him for a moment before nodding in ascent, Cammie left him to it.

In the dark silence that remained, he took a deep breath. All at once, he remembered another attic, darker and colder somehow, where instead of photo albums and memories of a good man, it held only weapons and files and tools and misery. He remembered the loneliness that lived in his veins when that attic sat above him, how there wasn’t a room he walked into where he didn’t feel scared and small. He thought about the people in the house below him. The man who was trying to be his father and the man who taught him how to be a man. The woman who had gone out on a limb to trust him and the woman who had gone out on a limb to keep him safe. He thought about the girl who brought him to life, who erased any trace of loneliness from his blood, any sense of cold from his life.

He smiled.

———————————————————————

Authors note:

A little late but the longest instalment yet! Mostly Zammie, as per @gildengirl and @bryn-not-brynn’s request, but also a healthy dose of Zach ruminating on the weird little family situation he’s found himself in.

[gildengirl]

“I suppose a lot of teenage girls feel invisible sometimes, like they just disappear. Well, that's me—Cammie the Chameleon. But I'm luckier than most because, at my school, that's considered cool. I go to a school for spies.”

- Ally Carter, I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You

[natti-ice]

[theycallmetatertot]

27yo cam, trying to justify getting shot for the second time: listen. at least 25% of the time, the only thing happening in my brain is the freebird guitar solo

Joe, having violent flashbacks to living and working with Matt in their early 20s: jesus christ, you really are Matt's kid

[cammie-morgan-goode]

Hey, do you think Zach celebrates his bday- like first, with his mom when he was young, second when he's at blackthorne/teen, and now after uws with cam?

Hi friend, the short answer is yes.

I think Catherine tried to celebrate Zach's birthday. At least for a few years. The important ones in her book. 1, 2, 3, 4... And then she just stops.

It's too hard to be a single mother. In her eyes it's too exhausting. She does try. But she gets tired of failing so eventually she stops. She stops trying so hard. She just doesn't quite see the point...

It started as a dinosaur coloring book. And then it was a box of hot wheels. And then it was a blanket...

By the time Zach was 8, everything became more practical. A new pair of boots. A set of throwing knives. A pack of socks...

And then she stops. She just forgets.

Zach doesn't mention his birthday. He doesn't care. But every year, he picks up a pack of cinnamon chewing gum, a singular package of peanut M&Ms, and a tiny pack of playing cards. He wanders down the halls of Blackthorne or down the streets of whatever city he's in, and he sits.

He stares at the sky, breathes deeply, and whispers a broken happy birthday...

But when Cammie finds out Zach's birthday is in November, she wastes no time in making Zach's night the best night ever. She orders burgers and fries, Chinese food, Italian food (even though its not the same as authentic Italian). And then she picks up a slice of cake, pie, a giant cookie, and a ton of ice cream from each and every grocery store, ice cream truck, and ice cream joint she could find within 45 minuets of their apartment at Georgetown. And she practically dumps it all out on the floor of their kitchen/living room. And they eat until they can't anymore. And they laugh and they talk. And they tease each other and then they just sit in silence. Until Cammie leads Zach away from the mess, pulling him to the bedroom.

Nothing happens. Nothing like that. But for once, Zach sleeps without nightmares because all he can focus on is Cammie's heart.

Beating...

Beating...

Beating...

(written by: @cammie-morgan-goode)

[rana030]

Pov: you're reading fanfiction and suddenly y/n starts to call him daddy