title: Keys
word count: 1300ish
pairing: Camsten (Kirsten/Cameron)
prompt: "Teach me how to play?" (prompt 10 on the ask meme)
summary: He's got steady hands, being able to pilot a stitch so well, so it's no surprise that he can play an instrument as well as he can think of nicknames for her on the fly.
for: obsessedrandomness on Tumblr.
a/n: This is also a way of filling a headcanon of mine about Cameron's life as a kid (after his heart surgery). And the whole thing kinda got away with me and got way longer than I originally intended it to be… oh well.
She's always had the habit of showing up at his apartment unannounced, and ever since he just barely survived being stitched into, she's been hovering like a mother hen around him- not that anyone was going to bring it up, considering the death-glare they'd receive if they did. Kirsten's just feeling a bit protective of Cameron recently, and so what if being protective entailed being in his home 90% of the time and insisting that he not do field work- or any stitching at all -for at least another month? She'd rather he not leave his apartment at all until next year, but she's not stupid, and she knows that he'd flat-out refuse if she even suggested him staying behind for any longer than the four more weeks they agreed on.
So, yes, Kirsten has been a bit overbearing as of late. And since he gave her a set of keys to his apartment- she was over all the time anyway, he explained, so it'd just be easier for everyone if he didn't have to get up to answer the door every time she stopped by (which was often) -she could now just come right in whenever she wanted, or when the urge to check up on Cameron to make sure he was fine got a bit out of hand. Kirsten liked seeing that he was okay with her own eyes, and it's not like he minded her impromptu visits.
Today was no different. She had woken up in the morning before her alarm went off, and had quickly gotten dressed and eaten a bagel before taking the bus downtown to the Chinese restaurant. While she was walking from the bus stop to the restaurant, she called Cameron briefly, just to check up on him.
"Cameron. You're good, right?"
"Yeah, Stretch, I'm fine. You know, you don't need to worry this much. It's not like I'm running around chasing bad guys. I'm just stuck in my apartment with only my cookbooks and Netflix to keep me company." There was a bit of wistfulness in his tone, but Kirsten wasn't too worried about that. He sounded fine, if a bit bitter, but fine nevertheless.
After that, she hung up quickly and sped down the last block to the restaurant. After being escorted to the elevator, she rode it down to the lab, and with a curt nod to the Ayo (she was the only one here this early in the morning besides Maggie, and Kirsten herself), she briskly walked to the conference room.
It didn't take long for everyone else- minus Cameron, of course, who was still on house-arrest -to get there, and Kirsten kept herself busy by typing up some new lines of code, specially designed to slip past a computer's firewall and retrieve information before destroying it. The program had some great hackers on their team, but their coding skills were severely lacking when it came to viruses for getting rid of intel. She was, after all, a fairly skilled hacker herself, so she liked to help them out from time to time with their work.
By 9:00, everyone had found a seat in the room, and they all directed their attention to Maggie. After a quick explanation of the case- a middle-aged man who was supposed to testify at a big trial, who was probably killed by an agent of the defendant, or maybe the crook himself -they all set off to their respective stations to prepare for the stitch.
Kirsten groaned, rolling her shoulders backwards in an attempt to ease their soreness. She had just run around a half-mile trying to catch up with the murderer- she had done track in high school, but that had been years ago and she was admittedly not quite that athletic nowadays.
Fishing her key to Cameron's apartment out of her pocket, she slipped it into the door's lock and turned it until she heard the telltale soft "click" of it unlocking. She pushed open the door silently, not wanting to bother Cameron in case he was doing something important. A small smile creeped onto her lips and she sighed as she sniffed the air, smelling a delicious scent; some kind of mix of chocolate and cinnamon, as well as the sweet smell of vanilla. Cameron must have been baking then, something that he did less often than regular cooking, but his baked goods would make just about anyone drool, just at the smell.
Pushing the front door gently to a close behind her, Kirsten was just about to call out to Cameron when she heard the soft notes of some kind of musical instrument. It sounded like someone was playing rather hesitantly, although other than that, the piece sounded practically perfect. Kirsten took a few steps further into the apartment, and her eyes widened at the sight of Cameron sitting on a small bench, playing the piano.
His back was to her, but it was clear he was concentrating on the music. Even with him blocking most of her view of the piano itself, she could see his hands flying across the keys quickly.
He had steady hands, being able to pilot a stitch so well, so it was no surprise that he could play an instrument as well as he could think of nicknames for her on the fly.
Although seeing a grand piano crowding Cameron's living room furniture was definitely odd.
Kirsten couldn't help but smile a tiny bit as she watched him play the melody, and she stepped forward silently again, leaning against the wall and closing her eyes, just absorbing the music.
A few minutes later, the sound of the piano keys tapered to a stop, the song clearly ending. Kirsten blinked, slightly surprised she'd been able to lose herself in the music as much as she did. Cameron still wasn't looking her way.
"You should play piano more often, Mozart."
Cameron let out a high, girly (he would forever deny that being the case) shriek, spinning around so quickly and standing up that he knocked over the bench he had been sitting on. "Jesus." he breathed, hand over his wildly beating heart, "Don't sneak up on me like that, Cupcake!"
Kirsten just rolled her eyes. Nodding towards the piano, she opened her mouth to speak. "When did you get that?"
Cameron looked fondly down at his instrument. "I bought a few months back, but it didn't get delivered until this morning. It's just like the one I had when I was a kid."
Kirsten walked over to him, and nudged him to the side before sitting down next to him on the bench. Her fingers brushed across the keys and she tried to play a few chords, but the sound that came out was unattractive and off-key. Both of them winced slightly, but she continued to try and string notes together in a way that sounded nice.
"How'd you learn to play so well?"
Cameron's face dropped slightly, but he smiled a bit. "After my heart surgery, I couldn't go back to playing sports for a while. I could've after around 6 months, but my parents wouldn't let me. So I took up a musical instrument to try and stay busy."
Kirsten paused her attempts to play a chord correctly. She hesitated for a moment. "Teach me how to play?"
Cameron looked a little shocked, like he hadn't expected her to ask much more about the piano. "Sure." He frowned. "Wait, with your temporal dysplasia, how will you be able to keep up a certain tempo?"
Kirsten shrugged. "I'll learn. I can always use other things as time measures."
"Uh, what?"
She sighed, turning to face him. "Like how I know it always takes you exactly two minutes and 30 seconds for you to brush your teeth, or how you'll spend about 20 seconds staring into your fridge in the morning before you decide what to have for breakfast. Things like that."
Cameron paused, processing what she had just said.
"You timed how long it takes me to decide what to eat in the morning?"