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Cami didn't know what she was doing with her life today. Every so often everyone had days where they woke up on the wrong side of the bed or, yanno, woke up from nightmares where they were carelessly slaughtering everyone they loved. She suspected the nightmare had come because she'd fallen asleep on the couch without Otto and hadn't moved into the bedroom at all like he had at some point. Cami was getting far too used to sleeping with the weight of someone curled against her to keep the nightmares at bay.

At some point the Sun trainee had decided that she was going to do the thing she didn't do all that well: bake. Marching down to the kitchens to shamelessly borrow everything she didn't have it wasn't long until the shared room was filled with the smell of baking chocolate. It took even less time, once the confection was out of the oven, for Cami to be sitting at the counter and digging into it with a large plastic spoon that was not usually used for eating.

Two more were set on either side of her because you really never knew who was coming to visit and she was waiting and hoping that two people specifically would find their way to her soon. Otherwise the 12" x 17" pan was going to be empty.

And that'd be sad.

Celebrating her mood was rather spot-on though why she was doing that she didn't understand. Then again what did she understand? What did anyone understand? ********. If she was going to start crying into her hard work it'd just make her mad and then everything would just be a big ball of ******** awful.

Instead of saying much she simply pressed a spoon upon her darling Otto and smiled. "Dark chocolate brownie cake that wasn't cooked all the way so it's a little molten with chocolate icing. Gotta ice it as you eat it though." A finger pointed to one of three little cans of icing, a knife sticking out of it. Never mind that 'not cooked all the way' was made to sound intentional and not at all like Cami had given up on watching a timer, ripping the thing from the oven when it looked mostly done.

She really needed to get back out on the training fields in the worst way. Or corner Maebe. Or perhaps Dylon. Jasper? Ugh. For just a moment she dropped her head into her arms with a bit of a scream before leaning her temple against Otto's shoulder. "I think I have cabin fever. Which is stupid because I keep leaving." Also an easy cop-out.

It was the best worst goddamned idea there ever was. Already her stomach had that sugar-sick feeling that you got when you ate too much of a good thing but she was going on. It wasn't like there was any hair to hold out of her face if she got sick anyway, right? Otto's stroking up and down her back at least had Cami stepping away from her insane notion to become a cake being straight out of Hyperbole and a Half, opting instead to put her spoon down and try to figure out what the hell to say.

She could lie. There was always the option to deflect onto another topic and not what was bothering her. He'd told her not to be dumb though, that he wanted her problems, cuz he cared about her. "'m just dumb." That was easy enough to admit, why not the rest? "Couch sleeping is apparently a bad idea. Had some pretty nasty nightmares and now I just feel all..." She shook her head. Disconnected was the word she wanted but the kind of connection that tended to make her feel human again was not something Otto would be able to help with.

Still, the hand up and down her back was making her feel better. Enough to nibble at the chocolate instead of ramming the spoon in her mouth like it was a damned shovel.

Whoops, there went the shovel! At least she caught herself before the second heap of frosting, taking a swig from her glass of milk. It had ice in it, which would be strange, until you realized how much milk was in the glass and how badly she wanted to keep it cold. "Yes just wake me up and make me shuffle my way into bed because sleeping alone is literally the worst." Turning slightly her tone was accusatory but the (chocolate-stained) smile was as bright as she could manage. "You've ruined me, Otto Graves. Utterly ruined."

She was broken up about it.

Really.

Taking another drink fingers tapped on the glass, a sure sign that she was bothered. "It hurts." It was abrupt. "I wake up from killing you and everyone else I care about and I'm all alone and...it hurts." For a moment a hand lingered over her heart before she let it fall away. "I thought I got past all that pain a long time ago but I guess not." And, really, she didn't know how to feel about it. Cami had 'loved' people but she hadn't loved someone in a long time. What was that about a good defense being a good offense?

Hadn't worked. Not this time.

It could have been worse, her look said. Instead of brownies which could be shared and were not harmful to anyone around her it could have been liquor. Drunken Cami was one of two things, amorous or weepy, and nobody really wanted either of those now did they? Grabbing a paper towel to scrub at her face, using the camera on her phone to make sure all was well, the spoon clattered into the sink with finality.

"Nothing is easy." It was a little flat, a little ugly. "No matter how much you want it to be or think it is or anyone says it is, nothing's ever easy." Even saying it she felt how ugly it was, could almost see in the air the thick blackness that had spilled out, and rubbed fingers over her face to try to clean it off her aura, or psyche, or whatever the hell. "Ugh, I'm sorry. Physical pain I can do all day. This hole in my back's nothin' at all compared to the burns. Physical pain has a timer on it though. It'll go away. This...doesn't. I've been carrying it around all day and I can't stop hurting and I want to."

Again her head thudded down onto the counter. "I don't know. I'm a mess today." Lifting her head, she tried to smile. "Sorry."

Sliding off her stool entirely Cami wrapped her arms around Otto so that she could rest her head against his shoulder, trying to absorb the advice in the best way she could. "I know, I know, old dog. New tricks. To be fair, though, normally you wouldn't have even seen me shoving cake in my face with chocolate all over. I would have made two cakes and left one pristine so that it looked like I only ate a perfectly normal piece. Then I'd eat the carnage cake alone when no one was looking." Flicking the spoon she'd handed him lightly, her lips turned up but not in a smile. Just an acknowledgement of the first good feeling of the day so far.

"I saved a spoon for you, at least. Maebe too but I didn't really expect to see her." Things had been a little off between them lately and Cami hadn't yet summed up the will to corner her sweetheart about it. "And I'm not sad, per se, I'm frustrated. I want to do something so that I forget about why I hurt in the first place. If I can forget then it won't hurt anymore." Theoretically. It had worked in the past but in the past the only time her heart had hurt in conjunction with someone she loved it had been because they didn't want anything to do with her.

So she'd found someone who did. Many someones who did in their own way. Except right now it didn't quite feel right and it felt a little odd to be having those thoughts while clinging to Otto. Except it wasn't a bad odd. Just...odd. So she just squeezed a little harder, not enough to hurt, and subsided a bit.

Cami wished he would eat the cake just so that she couldn't go back to it like some kind of monstrous chocolate crutch. "Well yeah, I'm pretty sure my mom wasn't raising me to be a person she was raising me to help me glide past everything she thought she did wrong at my age. I mean...I didn't tell you about her much." That complicated things. Fingers itched to snatch up the third spoon while she talked so instead she just pushed Otto's closer to him.

Living vicariously worked out.

"Normally I go get laid. You've noticed that if you're with someone who does it right you stop thinking and then it's hard to have everything crash back down unless you really want it to. Not a permanent solution but the band aid approach isn't always a bad one." Sighing, an arm still hooked around his waist, she stayed leaned in. "Thus the cake. Chocolate is the next best thing." But it wasn't helping.

"Anyway, it's all about contrivance. No one wants to deal with your problems so keep them to yourself. Hide them. Hide those messy feelings because they'll just make people not want to be around you." A spate of Creole followed, a practiced rote, eyes tired and weighed-down inside. Turning suddenly she kissed his cheek, lightly. "Sorry. Like I said, I'm off today. I can only kill you so many times in my sleep before it makes me crazy."

She didn't know there were rules. If there were she might have broken them on sheer principle; Cami wasn't much for social norms. Her go-to, however, that was an interesting question. "Honestly? I didn't even bother to ask. My mood's well'n truly ******** when I'm not sure that my favorite band aid will hold things together. I figured baking was a little more constructive because then I could potentially feed more than one person. And it never seems like a good idea to get drunk when you never know what's gonna happen on the island." On leave? Oh yeah. She'd been tempted to immediately use her second day to get s**t-faced somewhere but that also had the added detractor of passing out and waking up on a day she was supposed to be back on-island.

Hearing that Otto had no intention of eating her hard work had her snatching up his spoon before he could stop her, loading no more than a single normal bite with icing on the end of it. Hopefully, cajoling him, she held it up. "C'mooon Otto not even a bite?" Eyelashes bat playfully as the spoon crept closer to his face. "I worked hard on it just for yooouuuu~" Which they both knew was a lie that couldn't keep the goofy smile off her face.

"It's your faaaavorite! Chocolate!" Closer and closer. "Don't make me make choo choo noises oh my God."