Aff tae t' Pub

Posted on Wed Jan 14th, 2026 @ 9:57 by Cameron Johnston & Mhairi McIntyre

Chapter: Gobsmacked
Location: Graeme's Garage, New Cresthill
Timeline: Early March
2435 words - 4.9 OF Standard Post Measure

“We’re aff tae the pub, auld man!” Mhairi called through from the garage to the office where her father had made himself comfortable. They weren't expecting any new customers now. And if they did come the double rate would make it worth it to interrupt a good pubbing.

“When’re you getting rid o’ that shipping container?” Was the only response from her father.

“We’re no'!" There was no response, "It’s handy for extra storage." Mhairi ushered Cameron to come along with her, "Ta!”

“Mind and shut the garage when ye’re back, love.”

“Aye, Da.” Mhairi said as she rolled her eyes at Cameron. "Blue door?"

Stood partway down the drive, hands on hips, directing a gormless squint at the now-empty shipping container, the man took a moment to register he'd been spoken to. This wasn't necessarily unusual; Cam, if he didn't work at it, had a pretty consistent capacity to lose synch with the rest of the world and existed in his own field of daisies half the time. That this distraction was significantly worse than it had ever been was difficult to deny, though at least in this case, having just narrowly missed the opportunity to crawl around under the hood of a Hakosuka Skyline probably gave him a good enough excuse.

"Huh?"

He finally wrenched his attention away just in time to realise there was an expectant glare quietly counting down from twenty before arriving at a point where slapping him upside the head would be considered justifiable. Wincing in hesitation, Cam offered a grimace of eternal optimism and hazarded, "Yes?"

It was usually a good word to say to Mhairi in most circumstances, anyway.

Recent weeks had taught her to be a bit more patient with Cameron. Who could blame him, as far as all of them knew he'd been dead. Then again it was too good of an opportunity to not use a prank she'd been brewing for some time. Her face instantly lit up, "Oh my god, I can't believe this is happening. My da would be so proud! Don't worry about the ring, you still have some time to get that. This is so exciting. Do you think Gabby is still open? We could have a look at cakes! The cakes are the best part, aren't they?" The bubbly, excited, side of Mhairi was usually reserved for... well nothing really. Even the once in a lifetime Skyline she had gotten her grubby hands on (twice now, by the way) didn't illicit much more than quiet appreciation.

It made it immediately, excessively suspect of course and would have been an instant giveaway to anyone other than Cameron Johnston, who struggled to get out of his own way sometimes. It was a terrible affliction for someone who could move as fast as he could, particularly when the resulting impact was a tendency to be very, very slow on the uptake.

The panic behind his eyes was, admittedly, the most animated they'd been all day.

"Cakes?"

If eloquence was the mark of an intelligent man, Cameron was forever doomed to bang rocks together in the hope he might randomly burn his cave down before nightfall.

That quickly took all the fun out of it and replaced it with concern. "Cam? Is everything alright?" Mhairi stopped walking and turned to fully face the man that had sped his way into her heart. Sure he was away with the faeries sometimes, but his was a heart of gold and usually there was a really good explanation for it. The past couple of weeks that explanation had been 'he almost died', or perhaps 'he actually died'. The vagaries surrounding his return did nothing to make it easier to comprehend. Whatever had happened there was the creeping feeling that while Cameron might not have actually fully died, something was definitely fundamentally broken.

The look of scrunched confusion was instantly familiar, though it was hard to really pinpoint when the switch had flicked over and the real Cameron had emerged from whatever blanket he'd been hiding under. He wore boyish sheepishness with aplomb and, though his baffled grin was a little too tardy for the momentary blip to pass entirely undetected, it also didn't seem particularly forced. "I have no idea what we're talking about but you mentioned cake, there's no backing out now." Hearing what he wanted to hear was also a fairly trademark move, even if there was still the overarching impression that he had no idea what Mhairi had said, much less picked up on the nature of her teasing.

Mhairi crossed her arms, face stern, "What's going on?" The downside of having go to coping strategies was that those that you needed to cope with on a regular basis recognised them. She, in particular, didn't let him get away with it this time. "You've been," weird, out of it, a knobhead, "different."

One thing hadn't changed; Cameron wasn't a huge fan of the topic swinging around to focus on him, not really. Not in a way that was genuine and poked holes in his defenses and wasn't just some charismatic smokescreen that involved him standing butt-naked in the middle of the bedroom waving his butt around to the radio. He drew attention to himself specifically to deflect attention from himself; it was all very strategic, at least when it actually worked.

Of course, he'd met the one bloody woman in all of anywhere who saw right through him.

"I don't know."

The hunch of a shoulder, his hands now shoved into his pockets, was dismissive but also quite honest. Sometimes, Cameron avoided topics because he didn't like what needed to be said, and other times he avoided them because he didn't know what needed to be said. That probably happened more times than his pride would let him admit.

"Guess I'm botching up this whole zombie thing." It was the closest he'd come in days to even referencing the sequence of events that had lead him to being less dead than originally predicted. Risking a very brief glance sideways, Cameron scrunched up his nose and picked a very convenient time to be very-Cameron about trying to minimise concern. "Maybe I'm just going deaf in my old age." It was a nice attempt to pretend the biggest issue was not noticing when she was speaking to him.

"Ye kin ye can talk tae me," Mhairi wasn't ready to let this one go just yet. She put a hand on his upper arm and gently squeezed. "No need tae hide behind jokes." She caught herself slipping far more into her native dialect. Felt the need to clear her throat but didn't for fear of disrupting the opportunity for Cameron to actually set aside the jester persona and properly respond.

At first, all it earned was silence. That in itself wasn't immediate defeat since it also heralded a lack of defensive denial. Hands shoved into his pocket, Cameron withdrew just that little bit almost out of instinct and then, as they shuffled onwards, he seemed to think better of it and withdrew the hand closest to her to slip an arm around Mhairi's shoulders.

"There's nothing really to talk about," he started, but instead of an attempt to box up his concerns and shove them to the side, it seemed a declaration that at least attempted to provide some perspective. "At least, not as far as I have any memory of it. One minute here, the next..."

The furrow of his brow was directed a mark far ahead, a distant reference point that seemed only visible to Cameron. He'd been staring at it for days now.

"Still here. That big chunk of time when the rest of you figured me gone, I was just..." Once again, he floundered, and it was the lack of ability to properly explain it that had kept him quiet, moreso than any stubborn desire to pretend nothing had happened. "I don't have any concept of it. It's like I woke up and everything had shifted sideways just a bit, and now nothing lines up. It's all the same except somehow...it's not." Cameron shook his head. "But the world did just shit itself, it's probably allowed to feel a bit weird for a while."

"You're allowed to feel weird, Cam." Mhairi gave him a quick peck on the cheek. "I should apologise to Al and Becca." She had the sudden realisation that in the 'time the rest figured him gone' she had gone off on the two messengers of the bad news. And the way that it had hurt was unlike anything she'd ever felt before. She shrugged that off, it was the only proper thing to do. "Fish'n'chips?"

As was becoming altogether too common for his liking, Cameron masked a cringe of guilt at how easily he'd passed it all off as permissible weirdness.. It turned out that dying and being resurrected got you a lot of wiggle-room, which was probably for the best because he had no way in hell of explaining what was actually wrong. If it came down to it, he couldn't even say for sure that anything was wrong, only that there were times where it definitely felt it.

The world felt different. Smaller, somehow, but a whole lot...blurrier. Sometimes, when the friction built up, he felt itchy on the inside of his skin, inside his bones. Inside, where everything that defined him had been snuffed out in an instant and then somehow crammed back in, smushed into a compact space roughly the size of Cameron Johnston and yet the fit wasn't quite right anymore. He'd shrunk more than his fair share of shirts in the wash before, having drastically failed to acquire appropriate levels of domestic aptitude, but this was the first time Cameron had ever felt like his body just wasn't big enough for him anymore.

A tug of his arm around Mhairi's shoulders brought her close enough to plant a kiss on her temple.

"And all the mushy peas you can eat."

"Don't think I forgot about the mushy peas." Mhairi made sure to lean closer to him as they continued their walk to the pub. This was one of those things she'd never thought she'd find staying in New Cresthill. This is why she was determined to get out of this place before her mother passed away. She was just happy that somehow the universe had saw it fit to give her someone who'd wrap his arm around her. "I love you, you know that right?"

One of Mhairi's most redeeming qualities, Cameron would have joked whilst privately considering it at least partially apt, was how much she normally struggled with that kind of sentiment too. They both blustered their way through relationships hoping that actions were worthy substitutes for the words that wouldn't come out right, clutching with gratitude onto the moments where intent seemed to be valued more than botched outcome because if there was one thing that hadn't changed, it was how sodding awful Cameron was at this kind of conversation. Put aside his qualms about her safety, and the wisdom of pursuing anything when the world kept shoving sharp pointy things at him; love had been the last thing he'd been looking for when he'd let Claire drag him halfway up a mountainside and call him a teacher. He didn't think he was very good at it, was decently sure that Mhairi could do a whole heap better, but if there was one good thing to come from lodging a returns claim on death, it was a renewed understanding of when to shut up and count his blessings.

It wasn't easy to admit but he needed her. If it made him a jackass, they'd have to scour the country to find anyone surprised.

"Drove over 100 miles in the pouring rain to save my ass," he spoke into the curls nestled beneath his nose as he lingered. "I'd say the warning signs were probably there, yeah."

Mhairi leaned into him, half wanting to be closer, half wanting to bashfully push him off balance. "I just happened to be in the mood for Glasgow." If her high school friends would see her like this she'd surprise a fair few about the fact that Cameron wasn't a woman, and that someone actually was able to put up with her particular brand of cynicism. "What will you have for dinner?"

She'd seen him put away a full family-size pizza on his own, with sides. Actually, any time they ate out, finding somewhere that provided a 'family-size' was usually the best option because, whilst part of the gift-package that was Cam's mutation was a physique that many had to work a lot harder to maintain, it came at the cost of perpetual hunger.

He hadn't had much of an appetite for days.

Mhairi had noticed because she always did, and seemed to understand the potential health-implications because she was yet to rib him about it. More to the point, it was such a stark difference to his normal requirements that even Valjean had noticed and Cam would have bet money on it being a hot day in Aberdeen before the chef would willingly go out of his way to fill up the staff fridge with actual meal-ready food. Sure, with the way things had been, trying to make sure the staff actually ate was likely more Claire's initiative than anything else but the egg compartment in the fridge-door had been fully-stocked the last time Cam had checked. It was a small thing but it had still got to him.

Good people. He knew a lot of them.

"Lady's choice," he declared, which was often his response because it usually wound up that way anyway but also because Cameron had a sneaking suspicion this was just another attempt to look after him and he couldn't muster the energy to argue with it anymore. "Though this is a great time to reiterate that I'm not eating haggis. I already died once, I don't need a second invitation."

"You have no idea what yer missin'." Mhairi was sure she'd whittle down his resistance to the pinnacle of Scottish cuisine. Not tonight though. Tonight she'd give him this small victory. He'd earned it when he had the bravery to jump in front of a sword for a friend. And then had the decency to resurrect afterwards.