Call It Hell (Call It Life)
A/N: This is really old on LJ, and I wasn't going to post it, but I'm kind of mass uploading everything right now. Jo/Camille angst.
Love.
It's not the kind of thing that Jo has ever given a lot of thought to.
Even when she was a little girl, she didn't think about fairytale princes with their fairytale kisses. And if she had, she would have wanted the damsels in her bedtime stories to pick up swords. It was a null point though, because Jo's mother taught about the ancient world at the local university, and she never once told Jo about pretty pretty princesses.
Castles were dull and being saved was overrated. The stories Jo heard at night were those of warrior queens and soldier girls, of women who had proud traditions of independence and of standing tall. Jo grew up wanting the wilderness and the thrill of adventure and the utter exhilaration of being able to do anything.
She was going to become Jo Taylor, the girl who was capable of doing all things. She firmly believed that, even as a kid. She would dream about it, the great wide world of anything and everything while her parents were fighting in the kitchen, talking about why her daddy was never home.
Love never really figured into her dreams in more than a distant, hazy way. It was something expected, but it was never as important as growing up strong. Or free. Because even at age seven, Jo knew that another person was like a weight, tying you down. That's why her mom never left North Carolina. That's why her mom never would, now.
Jo's mother died three days before Jo's dad retired from Langley, forever. She never saw the world. Like the princesses she so disdained, locked up in a castle, she never even left the county.
That was not going to happen to Jo. She took up acting in the third grade, and she was determined to become good at it. It was the only career she could think of that would give her complete autonomy, the only thing a nine year old girl could do that would make her millions of dollars while simultaneously letting her go everywhere there was to go. Jo worked hard, and at sixteen, she won her fare to California, dad in tow. Home had stopped being home long ago, when her mom grew pale and tired; when she'd vanished completely from Jo's life.
There was nothing to miss in North Carolina. She never looked back.
And California- it was light and sound and color, and all these people who Jo couldn't have imagined up even if she tried. Jo fits there. No one tries to hold her down or hold her back. It's a place where she really can do…anything. She finds steady work, she gets a boyfriend, and she makes friends. Close friends; the kind she never had back in Carolina, where everyone knew all of her family's dirty little secrets.
And then there's Camille.
She's a whirlwind, always moving, always a breath of fresh air in Jo's lungs. She makes Jo laugh, whether they're screaming down the highway in her dad's rental with flyaway hair and sea salt in their eyes or if they're relaxing on Camille's bed, flicking through magazines and talking about their careers. They don't really talk about boys, and Jo wonders if that's weird. She has Kendall and Camille sometimes has Logan, but it's like the time they spend together is time the boys cease to exist.
Jo's going to miss that.
"Did you say goodbye to Kendall?" Camille asks, dark eyes dancing with innuendo.
"We went star gazing," Jo says, jabbing Camille in the arm with her finger. They're lying on her bed, but there aren't any magazines. Just Camille's ceiling, painted a deep brilliant red and plastered with constellations; glow in the dark stars that aren't glowing because all the lights are on.
"Your dad let you stay out past curfew?"
"It's my last night in LA." Jo shrugs. "He figures I can't get into too much trouble. Plus I think I saw him hiding in the bushes, watching."
Way to be creepy, dad, Jo thinks, but she doesn't say that out loud. The man has bugs everywhere.
"Aw, so no goodbye kiss?" Camille teases.
"Nope. Tomorrow," Jo says. She means it, probably, because the goodbye kiss is like, a tradition. Jo doesn't mind it; kissing is nice. Kendall is really, all around, nice. He's the first boy she's ever dated for more than a few months, and she likes him a lot. Leaving him and all his crazy behind is going to be harder than leaving North Carolina ever was.
"Did you tell him you love him?" Camille asks, nudging Jo with her arm. The touch; it's like a spark in her veins, like a thrum of electricity where their skin connects. It's comforting and familiar, and Jo thinks that this is what having a best friend is about. She'll miss it, more than she'll even miss Kendall and his stupid-cute dimples. She'll miss everything about Camille, really, but she figures they're going to be Skyping all up over the world for the rest of their lives, when they're both famous Oscar winning actresses. Might as well get used to it now.
"It's not the right time," Jo says.
"It's always the right time for love," Camille declares, and that has to be a line from one of her silly soap operas. Jo laughs, and Camille props herself up on one arm, her curls spilling down over her collarbone.
In the soft glow of her bedside lamps, Camille glows. Jo doesn't know why Logan can't quite seem to work up the willpower to hold on to her; Camille is breathtakingly beautiful. Jo has spent more than one audition wishing she looked less like an All-American girl and more like Camille, with her sloe eyes and her cat smile and the way her aura completely owns a room.
"I'm serious. It's going to be tragic if you love Kendall and you don't tell him."
"I- um. I don't know if I do?"
"Oh." Camille looks surprised. "I thought you guys were head over heels for each other."
"We are, but I just don't know if it's…love." Jo swallows. Love is big and scary, neither of which are things she's ever associated with Kendall.
"It's such a tiny word, isn't it? Camille muses, flopping back onto her pillows. "But it has all this meaning."
Camille emphasizes her point with spirit fingers, smiling. She has a gorgeous smile. It makes something in Jo melt, ever time. Camille is looking up at the plastic stars, and Jo wonders aloud, "Have you ever been in love?"
"Sure," Camille's still smiling this melted chocolate smile and something pangs in Jo's heart. That smile; sometimes it makes Jo feel nervous, like her skin is on too tight. Right now, it feels like that, like Camille is an electrical socket that's making the hair on the back of her arms stand on end and her insides puddle from the heat of it. She's is suddenly sure that she's going to miss everything about this girl.
"What's it like?"
"It's like…" Camille spins her index finger in the air, tracing the curvature of a constellation. In a hushed voice, she says, "It's like- like jumping off a cliff. That moment you're hanging in midair? It's that, the fear and the adrenaline, all the time. And it's also like when you're swimming, and a wave takes you under, and your lungs are burning and you need air more than anything, but you're daring yourself to see how long you can stay beneath the surface? It's that too, and the moment right after, when you break the surface and it's fresh air and sunlight and all that split second where you feel like that's all you're ever going to need. And it's like taking a test you didn't study for, when you second guess yourself every minute because you're not sure of the answers, or if you're getting anything right. You feel all of those things, all the time, and this too."
"This?" Jo's pulse turns thready. She stares into Camille's big brown eyes, losing herself for a moment, a second, and it does kind of feel like drowning and flying and second guessing herself, all at once.
"This," Camille repeats. "Being able to lie under the stars with someone, talking about anything. Or not talking at all." She shrugs, her lips still quirking into something that's not quite her melting smile, but close, so, so close. "It's being completely comfortable in your own skin with someone."
"Oh." Jo says softly. "That sounds nice."
"It is." Camille puts her arm around Jo, pulling her into her side. "Don't worry. You'll figure it out one day."
But, Jo wonders, doesn't she already have all of that?
She thinks about driving down the highway, music loud, Camille's electric fingers resting light on her arm, her chest flooded with sunlight and hope and laughter.
She thinks about all the times she's video chatted with Camille while one of them is on set; at least five times a day when she barely ever talks to Kendall more than once, if that.
She thinks about how leaving Kendall felt like this terrible, awful, necessary choice while leaving Camille completely behind has never even seemed like an option.
And then, because Jo has spent her entire life training herself to act first and think later, to hide the parts of herself that are small and vulnerable behind the parts of herself that are strong and independent, she kisses Camille.
It's nothing more than a soft press of her lips, but Camille jerks back like Jo is the one with the electric socket melting smile; like Jo has burned her. She stares at Jo long and hard, sitting up.
"Jo. I didn't mean-"
"I know," Jo says. And she does. She knows that Camille was talking about Logan, or maybe James, because Camille can't really seem to decide between the two. But that doesn't make hearing it out loud sting any less.
Jo's heart feels like lead in her chest. She scrambles off of the bed, brain buzzing. "I should-"
"You don't have to go," Camille says quickly, and there's something in her eyes that Jo can't really translate, but she expects it has something to do with pity, or disappointment, or one of the many emotions that might make all her promises to herself about being strong crumble into dust.
She wants to ask if they're still friends, and she wants to ask if Camille hates her now, and she wants to ask if they could try that again.
That's the part that scares her the most.
Warrior girls do not run, but Jo does; she bolts from Camille's room as quick as her legs will carry her. The following day, when Kendall comes running down the corridor of LAX for a goodbye kiss, she allows herself to acknowledge that his is not the face that Jo wants to see.
She sits at the gate- ready to fly to a country she's never been to, ready to start an adventure- and she pulls her knees to her chest on the plastic chair like a little girl. She doesn't really feel ready for anything at all. Love isn't something that Jo's ever really thought about, but she is thinking about it now, because something deep in her chest hurts. Maybe, if she'd given it some thought before, she would have avoided this entire mess. She would have missed feeling like this.
It's a fall into the rocks or never coming up for air or failing a test that decides an entire future and Jo wants to rip her own skin off because it's not just less than comfortable; it's brutal. It hurts. She stares at the neon letters spelling out New Zealand on the flight board, nearly as bright as stars.
When Jo lands, she's supposed to call Camille, but she thinks that maybe she won't, because she doesn't know if Camille going to pick up. What kind of strength is that? She can't even press a stupid button on a phone.
All these years, Jo has thought that her mother didn't tell her stories about love because it wasn't a necessary thing, because it wasn't something that warrior queens needed. But now she knows; love destroys. It turns brave girls into cowards and warrior girls into weaklings and wild girls into running girls, who can't even say a real goodbye. Her mom never told her those stories because then Jo would have known what was coming. She would have feared it.
She fears it now, because three years is a long time- but somehow Jo doesn't think it's quite long enough to get over the broken feeling inside her chest.