House Fic: you're walking backwards
you’re walking backwards house/cameron, pg.
there is such a thing as a quiet war. make sure you sign the right papers. spoilers for teamwork. 4,414 words.
notes: So I’ve had a resurgence in House love? Not entirely sure as to why, but tumblr’s kind of the place where that magic happens and I keep making those things. And I really, really love JMo’s pretty face. Plus, I’ve had a lot of time to kill on this job site. BUT ANYWAYS. This is for surreallis because it was J’s birthday last week and I’m about to unload on the gifts. So you’re AWESOME, J. And there’s another thing to come!
-
You should know.
The more things change the more they stay the same.
She knows this too.
The fifth meeting there is a table between them. Chase watches his lawyer. Cameron watches the window. Outside, the color of the sky is starting to gray.
“All parties in agreement?”
“Yes,” her lawyer says.
The man throws around words like particular and insufficient. Chase’s lawyer is an old university friend. Cameron remembers meeting her at the wedding, far from nearly being a year ago.
“We’re in agreement,” her lawyer says too. The man touches her arm and Cameron turns away from the window, nodding. There are papers in between them, on respectable sides, and spread neatly. One lawyer looks to the other lawyer. It could be a joke, she thinks.
Chase still shifts uncomfortably. The woman next to him slides a few pages across the table to in front of Cameron.
“It’s time to sign then. Mrs. Chase, you’re on the right. Dr. Chase, you’re on this left corner here. The papers will be filed in the morning and all in all, it’s been a successful management for both parties, yes?”
Her ears are ringing. She watches as the woman slides a pen across the table. It stops somewhere towards the center. She stares at it. The light from the window hits the clip in an odd way - it makes the gold dull not sharp and Cameron looks down at her hand.
“Doctor,” Cameron murmurs finally. All eyes are on her. She sighs. She picks up the pen that her lawyer puts next to her. It spins between her fingers and then stops, stumbling over her knuckles. The pen scatters over the papers.
“Excuse me?”
Both lawyers shift in their seats. One chair creaks; the second makes a long moan and echoes in the room. Chase looks at her not at his lawyer. His frown cuts hard into his mouth.
“It’s always been Dr. Cameron,” he says.
Chicago remains to be a strange transition. Her apartment is quiet and half-empty, almost ready for another leave.
When House calls, she almost doesn’t pick up. She has a bag of groceries in one hand and the other nearly drops her phone. Some habits are hard. She still expects someone to try and greet her at the door.
“Is the Pope Catholic?”
His question makes her sigh. On the other line, she listens as something rips.
“Is there a reason why we still have these conversations?” she asks, sighing; he calls on occasion, she answers on more occasions, and it’s one of those few things that hasn’t really changed, or doesn’t want to really change. There are her words to him, that one moment, that one split moment where she just told him everything. This is the problem.
“Or,” she adds, “the idea of you starting this with a hello. And maybe, I might decide to answer this with a hello back. Novel concept, I know.”
“You started it,” he says.
“I don’t call you.”
He chuckles. Dropping her bag, she runs a hand through her hair. She looks around the apartment, at the boxes that have somehow moved themselves into the corners of her place.
House clears his throat. She’s suddenly aware of voices on the line and turns slightly, pulling her bag off her arm. She pays little attention to him. She pulls out a large envelope and tosses it over her table. Her keys follow. She watches as they skid across the top.
“So I have a question,” he says and it gets quiet. Cameron stops and closes her eyes, listening to him. “Did you really think that getting married would solve all your problems? I mean, let’s think about this. Let’s collectively think about this. You and being married seems to be a stand-in for some kind of ultimate failure.”
It doesn’t hurt when he says it, when he tries to say it; she’s learned to pick out little nuisances, hitches in his voice and how certain words and phrases seem harder than others. It’s what she does now, not seeing him, and it’s a strange thing, much more intimate and bizarrely appropriate.
Like she tells him. She doesn’t call. He does.
“Are you drinking?” she asks.
“I’m on medication. We all know this.”
It’s the same thing as saying I knew you were in Princeton or I know you’ve been coming back; she has no desire to visit, to the others, and reconnect the losses that she’s already soundly cut. Nobody’s really pushed to ask about her either and in that sense, she wonders why House is still pushing. She knows very well that they didn’t finish on his terms.
Her eyes open. She pushes the envelope to the side and picks up her keys, pocketing them in her jacket. She moves into her kitchen, heading to a cabinet and pulling out a wine glass.
“I’m still trying to understand,” she says. “I’m still trying to understand why you’re calling me or why you’re caring enough to call me. I’m not coming back. If you put money on it … well, sorry I guess.”
She waits for a laugh. There is nothing but the sounds of whatever room he’s in. He’s not at home and she assumes if he was, she’d hear the television or Wilson or music - she manages to draw a list in her head, names and numbers and all sorts of directions that somehow tie back to him.
“I’m still in therapy.”
He’s drinking, Cameron thinks. She sighs. He has to be. It’s late and she looks to the watch around her wrist, but forgets the time difference.
“This is a good thing.”
“Are you at work?” he asks and it’s such a strange question, half-amusing and half-endearing; she imagines him, just as she last saw him, that irresponsible show of unwarranted vulnerability that she took from him in the end. She won’t apologize; she’s still years ahead.
“I’m home,” she says slowly. “Work is over for a couple hours,” she says. “Then I go back. Then it starts again. You know this too.”
“Emergency medicine?”
“It’s not about the rush,” she says.
He scoffs. “Otherwise,” he chides, “you’d still be working for me.”
“It was never about you.”
It something she never understands, or understood, the sound of disappointment in his voice. He either cares very little or too much, and too much is just another way of saying that he cares enough to take what he needs from her. But he can’t get what he needs from her, she thinks, because there’s change and then there’s this change.
“It was never about you. At least in that way,” she repeats and listens. She hears the echoes of a call, the loud voice of someone being paged out towards the hallway. There are rustles and she can see him in her head, standing and then sitting, maybe wincing and then rubbing his leg.
But then she looks around her apartment, at the boxes full and empty, and remembers the things she’s been saying lately: this is home now, she told her parents. She’s happy to be home.
House clears his throat. “That’s not what you said,” he tells her.
When Chase calls, she picks up. She is at work. She still has the right frame of mind to think about things like loose ends. But when she clears her throat, half-waiting for him to launch into something else about her coming back to Princeton, she doesn’t quite get that.
“Our apartment’s sold.”
He pauses and sighs. She waits to feel something like relief.
“This is good, right?” she asks instead, and tries a smile too as one of her nurses passes by with a wave and an absent hello. She pulls herself into walking outside the emergency room, leaning against the wall and watching the traffic that pulls in and out of the area.
“This is good,” he says. There is pause. It’s hesitation. “You need to come back, Allison. There are more things we need to go over and sign.”
“So send it to me,” she says.
She watches the streets. It’s somewhere between an early evening and the end of the afternoon. The streetlamps are starting to show, cast in the odd shadow. She waits though, waits and hopes for some sense of reassurance; she doesn’t know how to give that to him anymore and she’s sure that Chase never gave that to her to begin with.
But this isn’t about then or even now, this has become about how to finish.
“I can’t,” he says finally. It’s always half-hearted anyway.
In Princeton she stays in a hotel not with a friend. She makes sure to come to the hospital first. This is nearly a week after Chase calls. The friend has stopped asking about reconciliation. By now, there has to be some sense of clarity ready.
Walking down the hallway, she ignores familiarity for practice. She is only here for a couple of days. She doesn’t want to talk about the divorce proceedings, the paperwork, and the meetings. She doesn’t want to talk about Chicago either. This is business and this about polite smiles. This how it’s supposed to be now.
But things are ultimately too familiar, and she finds herself ignoring the odd greeting or smile. A hospital is a hospital. People are tense when they’re being polite. She lets herself return that favor. Whatever’s easier, she thinks.
When House’s office comes into view, her stomach sinks at the low lights that spread through the space and then into the conference room. Things can still be seen. She doesn’t expect change. She stops and watches Taub exit the office in another direction, pausing to lean against the wall and wait for him to disappear.
“He’s not here.”
From behind her, House shuffles into her space. He eyes her critically. She straightens out of habit and he flashes a tight smirk.
“I’ll wait.”
She shrugs, watching House. He takes a step forward and then to the side. She follows reluctantly as they wordlessly head to his office.
“Does he know you’re coming?”
“We’re having dinner,” she says. She lies too. There’s a coffee shop around the corner. She knows that’s in the plan instead.
He doesn’t hold the door open. She catches it before it hits her side, closing the door quietly behind her. There is no one in the conference room and she looks away quickly, watching as House sits in his chair.
He continues to watch her. His cane starts to spin in his hand, rolling into his palm and then back over his knuckles. The motion stops. It starts again slowly, just for the repeat.
She leans against the wall though, obscured from the conference room. Her hands slide into her jacket pocket. She’s dressed in work clothes, tired and uncomfortable. But she doesn’t look away either, letting him watch her and letting herself stay. If only it were as simple as that, she thinks.
“You’re not pregnant,” he mutters. “Are you dying?” he asks too, and she snorts, shaking her head. “I’m just running over the lists, the usual suspects list - you’re that predictable, you know.”
“So you tell me.”
He smirks again. She sighs. Her mouth feels hard and tired. He raises an eyebrow. She shakes her head. She doesn’t give in.
“Our apartment was sold.”
He sighs, looking away finally. Her amusement is brief.
“You came back for that.”
“And papers,” she says. “I have to sign a lot of papers, too many papers, actually. We’re having lunch, or dinner - and then I’m heading back. This is what grown-ups do, grown-up things.”
“Who knew?”
She shrugs instead of answering. Pushing herself away from the wall, she moves to his desk. Her fingers brush against the edge and then start to walk along the top, tracing the wood and the few odds and ends that he still keeps around. There are scratches and papers. She picks up his ball and then turns. When she leans against his desk, she catches him watching her again.
Slowly, she starts to toss the ball from hand to hand. He shifts in his chair.
“You like Chicago.”
“For now.”
Her line of sight is now split between House and the hallway. It’s hard to believe that it feels more like years than months since she’s stood here. She puts the ball down.
“What does that mean?”
“Because you care.” He gives her a look and her mouth curls, just as she starts to shake her head. “It means that I’m okay with liking Chicago for now, and nothing more - why does everything have to some sort of exclusive meaning when it comes to you?”
“Because you care,” he throws back.
“That would be what you’d say.”
She means it lightly and says it without thinking about their last conversation. Or the one-sided conversation, she thinks.
House stands though. He’s almost clumsy but still drops his cane. He pauses and rubs his leg with a wince. When he looks at her, he frowns. She waits for some strange observation, but he says nothing.
He moves to her and then around her. She follows him with some curiosity, turning when he finally sits at his desk. Without thinking, she moves too and leans against the ledge on his side.
They stare at each other. She doesn’t wonder what he’s thinking, if he’s going to ask some question that might inevitably make her angry. She expects to be angry. She’s been everything else before. But it’s hard not to care, not be curious, because the energy between them remains to be the same.
When she looks at him, she can feel it. It’s the slight turn of his mouth, his gaze here and then away. Change hates House and House hates change. This is nothing new, of course.
“I’m trying, you know.”
It comes out of the blue. His head bows and she frowns, watching as he rubs his eyes. He stands again and brushes by her. The motion startles her and she twists, taking his chair too. He moves to grab his cane.
“And how’s that going?” she asks, and then hesitates, straighten herself against his shirt and her eyes are almost too wide. She’s resigned and it feels strange. She almost forgets why she’s really here.
House stops at the other chair. He picks up his cane.
“I don’t know.” His eyes close and he says it slowly. “If I did, I would be getting laid. It would be a great epiphany or the kind of epiphany that everybody expects. Or needs. Or I don’t know. People still need predictability, after all.”
Predictability is a dig and she almost laughs. Her gaze follows him as he turns back to the desk, moving to her on the other side.
“You’re giving up.”
“Is that advice?” he leers, and leans over her chair, his leg presses into hers and throws the cane over his desk. “Because I can tell you what kind of advice I’d like, given that you’re ultimately single and on the obvious rebound.”
She smiles softly. Her mouth parts but she doesn’t laugh. She can taste the sound though.
“I’m not going to tell you what to do. Not that you would listen, but telling you what to do is just stupid and a waste of time.”
“You’re smiling.”
“I find this funny, really funny actually.”
“Looks like it,” he murmurs.
“What would you like me to say?”
He looks away. She could get up, she thinks. It would be easy. But she stays in his chair. She’s long-since stopped worrying about the hallway and maybe even Chase coming in here. She used to. They both knew she used to. This was always heavier than it needed to be.
Reaching forward though, she touches his hand. He looks startled and his hand drops back. It hits the desk and he scoffs, letting it dangle at his side. Her fingers linger mid-air. Then they curl into a fist.
“I’m being honest here,” she says quietly, “I left. You really didn’t say much - if anything, I said my peace and expected you to say the same thing you’ve been saying for years. You talk change like everybody else, but do you do it?”
His eyes narrow and she almost expects it; she’s pushing him, pushing for a lack of anything else to do and she’s under the strange suspicion that she was supposed to find him, like Chase ultimately had one more point to prove. She doesn’t want to think about that though, or revisit those facets of her relationships that have been really staring her in the face for these last couple months. But she’s on edge too. The uneasiness is still there.
“Is this going to be another one of those things?”
She looks at him in amusement. But that fades, and Cameron lets herself look over his hand. There’s a small, red welt against the back.
“Do you want it to be?”
She asks. He scoffs. It was never supposed to make sense, she thinks.
“You’re buying me a drink tonight,” he says.
Later in the night, she forces herself to go to the hotel bar, and it’s not because she wants to but there is that part of her that expects him to show if she doesn’t. She orders wine. When he shows, the bartender brings him the scotch she ordered early.
“Chase came back to work.”
He looks surprised when she looks up. She shrugs and he takes the glass in his hand. He finishes the scotch off quickly. He orders another one.
“I heard you have a patient,” she says calmly.
“I always have a patient. People worry about me being bored. It’s not good for the hospital, or whatever.”
“Or whatever,” she agrees.
He sits next to her, facing her. His knee brushes her leg. He hooks his cane off the bar and stares. She raises an eyebrow.
“I’m not inviting you upstairs, to be clear,” she says too.
He snorts. But he says nothing else. Maybe because she means it, maybe because she doesn’t; this is the indirect response she has to seeing him again, to really seeing him again and being completely uninvolved in the things that unfold here from day to day.
“It’s strange, seeing you.”
She admits it but not like it’s a mistake. She feels his curiosity too. The bartender brings him another glass and slides it over the wood. The glass scratches and Cameron pushes it back to House because it’s too close to her.
“Strange,” he repeats. “I’m drinking,” he says.
This time she snorts and rolls her eyes, watching him as he brings the glass to his lips. He swallows hard. The ice drops back into the glass hard.
“Right.”
“Well, here’s the thing - you’re here and I’m assuming, giving your track record and the fact that both you and your ex-husband blame me for the natural dissolution of your marriage -”
“House,” she interrupts.
But he ignores her, gripping his glass. “And naturally, I’m somewhat curious about some things that you said to me. Because they’re the kind of things that you say when you’re unconventionally desperate.”
She studies him. She remains call, far from earnest but feels impossibly expectant of this reaction. She reaches for her glass of wine, rolling her fingers against the stem off the glass. House’s hand covers her though.
One by one, he slowly starts to pull her fingers away from the glass. If she’s surprised, she hasn’t reacted like that yet or shows it - she simply watches him, tensing quietly.
“It’s only been a couple months.”
“Exactly,” he points out.
They’re quiet and it’s a small, uncomfortable silence that falls between them. Her gaze drops to her wine glass but his hand still holds her fingers. She feels his thumb begin to trace over the lines in her skin, neither soft nor hard, only as if he were trying to remember them or change them - she’s not sure how to think of it or if she wants to.
House drops her hand. It stays standing in mid-air.
“Funny, how we’re all grown-ups.”
“Except for me,” he says.
She laughs suddenly. The sound is warmer than she wants it to be and she pulls her hand back, dropping it into her lap. The wine glass stands alone on the bar and he has yet to touch his second glass.
“Except for you,” she agrees.
“I’m trying though.”
He looks at her.
“Or so people think,” he says slowly. “I don’t know. I don’t know a lot of things and it still, it still bugs the hell out of me.”
She’s quiet. She looks away too. The wine glass is waiting for her to pick it up. She squeezes her hands in her lap. House sighs.
“I live with Wilson.” He says it and says it to her as if he was waiting for her to laugh again, but she doesn’t laugh. There’s no warmth in his voice and it’s a comment for the sake of commenting. She doesn’t comment either, bringing her glass to her mouth. “It’s easy to live with Wilson too because Wilson’s predictability is - it’s Wilson, if anything.”
“Sure,” she says.
“Sure?”
He’s amused. Her gaze wanders to the bartender, watching them at the end of the bar. He starts to wipe down glasses.
“You’re like anybody else. We stick to what we know or what we need to know. Foreman came back and stayed. Chase -” she trails off, her eyes closing. She doesn’t finish the sentence. “I went home to Chicago. Because there’s my family and I think I’d like … I want to be around my family right now.”
“Is that why you told me?”
“Told you?”
Her eyes open. He shrugs. Oh, she thinks.
She takes a minute though. It feels like a leisure. A man walks into the bar, tie skewed and a rumple coat on his arm. She watches as he walks by the bar area and moves to a table off to the side. House snorts.
“I don’t know why I told you. I wasn’t exactly in the greatest frame of mind then. Do you want me to take it back?”
“Do you?”
She’s serious. She doesn’t know what he wants from her. The question is simple, too simple, do you seems to want to mock her instead of pulling anything away from her that he needs.
But she looks at him, looks at him and never away. Her eyes are wide and his are too bright. It’s a brief thought, but she does wonder what they look like; still wonders because it’s the sort of thought, the kind of thought that used to reminder about what was between them. She doesn’t want to call it love, but somehow, even without saying it, it makes the most sense.
“No,” she says finally.
He leans forward. She tries to draw back but there is nowhere to go. His hand presses over her knee and she reaches for it, her fingers curling around his wrist. It’s a dysfunctional way of meeting halfway, somehow.
But he doesn’t pull his hand back and doesn’t draw away. There’s a flutter inside of her and her stomach slowly starts to tie itself into knots. It feels entirely too romantic for her to understand and too frightening for her to want to. He’s waiting for her. She doesn’t know why.
Her mouth still turns slightly. She moves then without thinking too. She doesn’t feel that sense of repetition. Her hand brushes against his face, her fingers spreading over his jaw and she leans into him, her mouth touching his. It happens once, then twice, and she feels his mouth as it opens against hers. There is the wetness of his drink, the pungent taste of the scotch - she doesn’t care but it’s bitter and he deepens the kiss, slowly.
His hand is in her hair then and she’s sliding off her stool, if only to stand between his legs. She kisses him without hesitation, as if they were here before in some other shape or way. There is nothing gentle about the way he kisses her too, or curious for that matter. There is no sense wanting to forget or needing to forget, as if they’ve separated themselves from everything else.
When she pulls back, his hand stays in her hair. He keeps her close and her eyes open slowly.
“You’re leaving tomorrow.”
His voice is low, heavy. She tries not to want to read him.
“In the afternoon,” she murmurs and she still says it, just like she said to him earlier - I’m not inviting you up. It’s still a kind boundary.
“Is -” he starts and then stops, just as she shakes her head. His mouth turns only slightly. “I won’t ask,” he says then too.
“I don’t expect you to.”
“I want - ”
His hand slides over her jaw. He says it and it she wants to believe that it could be someone else, something else, but things between them have always been ahead of them. There is the desire to push and there will always be that desire to push; she’s convinced but it’s not time. She’s not waiting for him either. She doesn’t want to wait.
She lets go of his wrist, remembering. She doesn’t slide back onto her stool. She reaches for her wine glass and finishes it off.
Her eyes close briefly. “You should go,” she says softly.
It is something she needs to say, just like she needed to say what she did in his office months ago or when she left the first and second times. She doesn’t wait for him. She doesn’t have it in her and by now, she thinks, by now this is something that she should be able to expect. This is more than understood.
But he doesn’t press or touch her again. The bartender starts for them. Somewhere behind Cameron, there is a loud laugh. A phone rings and she remembers her flight home again.
Cameron pulls out her room key. House reaches for his drink. His voice is even.
“Make sure you sign your papers,” he says.
There are no calls the week she gets back to Chicago.
It seems simple enough. It’s only just a week after all.
there is such a thing as a quiet war. make sure you sign the right papers. spoilers for teamwork. 4,414 words.
notes: So I’ve had a resurgence in House love? Not entirely sure as to why, but tumblr’s kind of the place where that magic happens and I keep making those things. And I really, really love JMo’s pretty face. Plus, I’ve had a lot of time to kill on this job site. BUT ANYWAYS. This is for surreallis because it was J’s birthday last week and I’m about to unload on the gifts. So you’re AWESOME, J. And there’s another thing to come!
-
You should know.
The more things change the more they stay the same.
She knows this too.
The fifth meeting there is a table between them. Chase watches his lawyer. Cameron watches the window. Outside, the color of the sky is starting to gray.
“All parties in agreement?”
“Yes,” her lawyer says.
The man throws around words like particular and insufficient. Chase’s lawyer is an old university friend. Cameron remembers meeting her at the wedding, far from nearly being a year ago.
“We’re in agreement,” her lawyer says too. The man touches her arm and Cameron turns away from the window, nodding. There are papers in between them, on respectable sides, and spread neatly. One lawyer looks to the other lawyer. It could be a joke, she thinks.
Chase still shifts uncomfortably. The woman next to him slides a few pages across the table to in front of Cameron.
“It’s time to sign then. Mrs. Chase, you’re on the right. Dr. Chase, you’re on this left corner here. The papers will be filed in the morning and all in all, it’s been a successful management for both parties, yes?”
Her ears are ringing. She watches as the woman slides a pen across the table. It stops somewhere towards the center. She stares at it. The light from the window hits the clip in an odd way - it makes the gold dull not sharp and Cameron looks down at her hand.
“Doctor,” Cameron murmurs finally. All eyes are on her. She sighs. She picks up the pen that her lawyer puts next to her. It spins between her fingers and then stops, stumbling over her knuckles. The pen scatters over the papers.
“Excuse me?”
Both lawyers shift in their seats. One chair creaks; the second makes a long moan and echoes in the room. Chase looks at her not at his lawyer. His frown cuts hard into his mouth.
“It’s always been Dr. Cameron,” he says.
Chicago remains to be a strange transition. Her apartment is quiet and half-empty, almost ready for another leave.
When House calls, she almost doesn’t pick up. She has a bag of groceries in one hand and the other nearly drops her phone. Some habits are hard. She still expects someone to try and greet her at the door.
“Is the Pope Catholic?”
His question makes her sigh. On the other line, she listens as something rips.
“Is there a reason why we still have these conversations?” she asks, sighing; he calls on occasion, she answers on more occasions, and it’s one of those few things that hasn’t really changed, or doesn’t want to really change. There are her words to him, that one moment, that one split moment where she just told him everything. This is the problem.
“Or,” she adds, “the idea of you starting this with a hello. And maybe, I might decide to answer this with a hello back. Novel concept, I know.”
“You started it,” he says.
“I don’t call you.”
He chuckles. Dropping her bag, she runs a hand through her hair. She looks around the apartment, at the boxes that have somehow moved themselves into the corners of her place.
House clears his throat. She’s suddenly aware of voices on the line and turns slightly, pulling her bag off her arm. She pays little attention to him. She pulls out a large envelope and tosses it over her table. Her keys follow. She watches as they skid across the top.
“So I have a question,” he says and it gets quiet. Cameron stops and closes her eyes, listening to him. “Did you really think that getting married would solve all your problems? I mean, let’s think about this. Let’s collectively think about this. You and being married seems to be a stand-in for some kind of ultimate failure.”
It doesn’t hurt when he says it, when he tries to say it; she’s learned to pick out little nuisances, hitches in his voice and how certain words and phrases seem harder than others. It’s what she does now, not seeing him, and it’s a strange thing, much more intimate and bizarrely appropriate.
Like she tells him. She doesn’t call. He does.
“Are you drinking?” she asks.
“I’m on medication. We all know this.”
It’s the same thing as saying I knew you were in Princeton or I know you’ve been coming back; she has no desire to visit, to the others, and reconnect the losses that she’s already soundly cut. Nobody’s really pushed to ask about her either and in that sense, she wonders why House is still pushing. She knows very well that they didn’t finish on his terms.
Her eyes open. She pushes the envelope to the side and picks up her keys, pocketing them in her jacket. She moves into her kitchen, heading to a cabinet and pulling out a wine glass.
“I’m still trying to understand,” she says. “I’m still trying to understand why you’re calling me or why you’re caring enough to call me. I’m not coming back. If you put money on it … well, sorry I guess.”
She waits for a laugh. There is nothing but the sounds of whatever room he’s in. He’s not at home and she assumes if he was, she’d hear the television or Wilson or music - she manages to draw a list in her head, names and numbers and all sorts of directions that somehow tie back to him.
“I’m still in therapy.”
He’s drinking, Cameron thinks. She sighs. He has to be. It’s late and she looks to the watch around her wrist, but forgets the time difference.
“This is a good thing.”
“Are you at work?” he asks and it’s such a strange question, half-amusing and half-endearing; she imagines him, just as she last saw him, that irresponsible show of unwarranted vulnerability that she took from him in the end. She won’t apologize; she’s still years ahead.
“I’m home,” she says slowly. “Work is over for a couple hours,” she says. “Then I go back. Then it starts again. You know this too.”
“Emergency medicine?”
“It’s not about the rush,” she says.
He scoffs. “Otherwise,” he chides, “you’d still be working for me.”
“It was never about you.”
It something she never understands, or understood, the sound of disappointment in his voice. He either cares very little or too much, and too much is just another way of saying that he cares enough to take what he needs from her. But he can’t get what he needs from her, she thinks, because there’s change and then there’s this change.
“It was never about you. At least in that way,” she repeats and listens. She hears the echoes of a call, the loud voice of someone being paged out towards the hallway. There are rustles and she can see him in her head, standing and then sitting, maybe wincing and then rubbing his leg.
But then she looks around her apartment, at the boxes full and empty, and remembers the things she’s been saying lately: this is home now, she told her parents. She’s happy to be home.
House clears his throat. “That’s not what you said,” he tells her.
When Chase calls, she picks up. She is at work. She still has the right frame of mind to think about things like loose ends. But when she clears her throat, half-waiting for him to launch into something else about her coming back to Princeton, she doesn’t quite get that.
“Our apartment’s sold.”
He pauses and sighs. She waits to feel something like relief.
“This is good, right?” she asks instead, and tries a smile too as one of her nurses passes by with a wave and an absent hello. She pulls herself into walking outside the emergency room, leaning against the wall and watching the traffic that pulls in and out of the area.
“This is good,” he says. There is pause. It’s hesitation. “You need to come back, Allison. There are more things we need to go over and sign.”
“So send it to me,” she says.
She watches the streets. It’s somewhere between an early evening and the end of the afternoon. The streetlamps are starting to show, cast in the odd shadow. She waits though, waits and hopes for some sense of reassurance; she doesn’t know how to give that to him anymore and she’s sure that Chase never gave that to her to begin with.
But this isn’t about then or even now, this has become about how to finish.
“I can’t,” he says finally. It’s always half-hearted anyway.
In Princeton she stays in a hotel not with a friend. She makes sure to come to the hospital first. This is nearly a week after Chase calls. The friend has stopped asking about reconciliation. By now, there has to be some sense of clarity ready.
Walking down the hallway, she ignores familiarity for practice. She is only here for a couple of days. She doesn’t want to talk about the divorce proceedings, the paperwork, and the meetings. She doesn’t want to talk about Chicago either. This is business and this about polite smiles. This how it’s supposed to be now.
But things are ultimately too familiar, and she finds herself ignoring the odd greeting or smile. A hospital is a hospital. People are tense when they’re being polite. She lets herself return that favor. Whatever’s easier, she thinks.
When House’s office comes into view, her stomach sinks at the low lights that spread through the space and then into the conference room. Things can still be seen. She doesn’t expect change. She stops and watches Taub exit the office in another direction, pausing to lean against the wall and wait for him to disappear.
“He’s not here.”
From behind her, House shuffles into her space. He eyes her critically. She straightens out of habit and he flashes a tight smirk.
“I’ll wait.”
She shrugs, watching House. He takes a step forward and then to the side. She follows reluctantly as they wordlessly head to his office.
“Does he know you’re coming?”
“We’re having dinner,” she says. She lies too. There’s a coffee shop around the corner. She knows that’s in the plan instead.
He doesn’t hold the door open. She catches it before it hits her side, closing the door quietly behind her. There is no one in the conference room and she looks away quickly, watching as House sits in his chair.
He continues to watch her. His cane starts to spin in his hand, rolling into his palm and then back over his knuckles. The motion stops. It starts again slowly, just for the repeat.
She leans against the wall though, obscured from the conference room. Her hands slide into her jacket pocket. She’s dressed in work clothes, tired and uncomfortable. But she doesn’t look away either, letting him watch her and letting herself stay. If only it were as simple as that, she thinks.
“You’re not pregnant,” he mutters. “Are you dying?” he asks too, and she snorts, shaking her head. “I’m just running over the lists, the usual suspects list - you’re that predictable, you know.”
“So you tell me.”
He smirks again. She sighs. Her mouth feels hard and tired. He raises an eyebrow. She shakes her head. She doesn’t give in.
“Our apartment was sold.”
He sighs, looking away finally. Her amusement is brief.
“You came back for that.”
“And papers,” she says. “I have to sign a lot of papers, too many papers, actually. We’re having lunch, or dinner - and then I’m heading back. This is what grown-ups do, grown-up things.”
“Who knew?”
She shrugs instead of answering. Pushing herself away from the wall, she moves to his desk. Her fingers brush against the edge and then start to walk along the top, tracing the wood and the few odds and ends that he still keeps around. There are scratches and papers. She picks up his ball and then turns. When she leans against his desk, she catches him watching her again.
Slowly, she starts to toss the ball from hand to hand. He shifts in his chair.
“You like Chicago.”
“For now.”
Her line of sight is now split between House and the hallway. It’s hard to believe that it feels more like years than months since she’s stood here. She puts the ball down.
“What does that mean?”
“Because you care.” He gives her a look and her mouth curls, just as she starts to shake her head. “It means that I’m okay with liking Chicago for now, and nothing more - why does everything have to some sort of exclusive meaning when it comes to you?”
“Because you care,” he throws back.
“That would be what you’d say.”
She means it lightly and says it without thinking about their last conversation. Or the one-sided conversation, she thinks.
House stands though. He’s almost clumsy but still drops his cane. He pauses and rubs his leg with a wince. When he looks at her, he frowns. She waits for some strange observation, but he says nothing.
He moves to her and then around her. She follows him with some curiosity, turning when he finally sits at his desk. Without thinking, she moves too and leans against the ledge on his side.
They stare at each other. She doesn’t wonder what he’s thinking, if he’s going to ask some question that might inevitably make her angry. She expects to be angry. She’s been everything else before. But it’s hard not to care, not be curious, because the energy between them remains to be the same.
When she looks at him, she can feel it. It’s the slight turn of his mouth, his gaze here and then away. Change hates House and House hates change. This is nothing new, of course.
“I’m trying, you know.”
It comes out of the blue. His head bows and she frowns, watching as he rubs his eyes. He stands again and brushes by her. The motion startles her and she twists, taking his chair too. He moves to grab his cane.
“And how’s that going?” she asks, and then hesitates, straighten herself against his shirt and her eyes are almost too wide. She’s resigned and it feels strange. She almost forgets why she’s really here.
House stops at the other chair. He picks up his cane.
“I don’t know.” His eyes close and he says it slowly. “If I did, I would be getting laid. It would be a great epiphany or the kind of epiphany that everybody expects. Or needs. Or I don’t know. People still need predictability, after all.”
Predictability is a dig and she almost laughs. Her gaze follows him as he turns back to the desk, moving to her on the other side.
“You’re giving up.”
“Is that advice?” he leers, and leans over her chair, his leg presses into hers and throws the cane over his desk. “Because I can tell you what kind of advice I’d like, given that you’re ultimately single and on the obvious rebound.”
She smiles softly. Her mouth parts but she doesn’t laugh. She can taste the sound though.
“I’m not going to tell you what to do. Not that you would listen, but telling you what to do is just stupid and a waste of time.”
“You’re smiling.”
“I find this funny, really funny actually.”
“Looks like it,” he murmurs.
“What would you like me to say?”
He looks away. She could get up, she thinks. It would be easy. But she stays in his chair. She’s long-since stopped worrying about the hallway and maybe even Chase coming in here. She used to. They both knew she used to. This was always heavier than it needed to be.
Reaching forward though, she touches his hand. He looks startled and his hand drops back. It hits the desk and he scoffs, letting it dangle at his side. Her fingers linger mid-air. Then they curl into a fist.
“I’m being honest here,” she says quietly, “I left. You really didn’t say much - if anything, I said my peace and expected you to say the same thing you’ve been saying for years. You talk change like everybody else, but do you do it?”
His eyes narrow and she almost expects it; she’s pushing him, pushing for a lack of anything else to do and she’s under the strange suspicion that she was supposed to find him, like Chase ultimately had one more point to prove. She doesn’t want to think about that though, or revisit those facets of her relationships that have been really staring her in the face for these last couple months. But she’s on edge too. The uneasiness is still there.
“Is this going to be another one of those things?”
She looks at him in amusement. But that fades, and Cameron lets herself look over his hand. There’s a small, red welt against the back.
“Do you want it to be?”
She asks. He scoffs. It was never supposed to make sense, she thinks.
“You’re buying me a drink tonight,” he says.
Later in the night, she forces herself to go to the hotel bar, and it’s not because she wants to but there is that part of her that expects him to show if she doesn’t. She orders wine. When he shows, the bartender brings him the scotch she ordered early.
“Chase came back to work.”
He looks surprised when she looks up. She shrugs and he takes the glass in his hand. He finishes the scotch off quickly. He orders another one.
“I heard you have a patient,” she says calmly.
“I always have a patient. People worry about me being bored. It’s not good for the hospital, or whatever.”
“Or whatever,” she agrees.
He sits next to her, facing her. His knee brushes her leg. He hooks his cane off the bar and stares. She raises an eyebrow.
“I’m not inviting you upstairs, to be clear,” she says too.
He snorts. But he says nothing else. Maybe because she means it, maybe because she doesn’t; this is the indirect response she has to seeing him again, to really seeing him again and being completely uninvolved in the things that unfold here from day to day.
“It’s strange, seeing you.”
She admits it but not like it’s a mistake. She feels his curiosity too. The bartender brings him another glass and slides it over the wood. The glass scratches and Cameron pushes it back to House because it’s too close to her.
“Strange,” he repeats. “I’m drinking,” he says.
This time she snorts and rolls her eyes, watching him as he brings the glass to his lips. He swallows hard. The ice drops back into the glass hard.
“Right.”
“Well, here’s the thing - you’re here and I’m assuming, giving your track record and the fact that both you and your ex-husband blame me for the natural dissolution of your marriage -”
“House,” she interrupts.
But he ignores her, gripping his glass. “And naturally, I’m somewhat curious about some things that you said to me. Because they’re the kind of things that you say when you’re unconventionally desperate.”
She studies him. She remains call, far from earnest but feels impossibly expectant of this reaction. She reaches for her glass of wine, rolling her fingers against the stem off the glass. House’s hand covers her though.
One by one, he slowly starts to pull her fingers away from the glass. If she’s surprised, she hasn’t reacted like that yet or shows it - she simply watches him, tensing quietly.
“It’s only been a couple months.”
“Exactly,” he points out.
They’re quiet and it’s a small, uncomfortable silence that falls between them. Her gaze drops to her wine glass but his hand still holds her fingers. She feels his thumb begin to trace over the lines in her skin, neither soft nor hard, only as if he were trying to remember them or change them - she’s not sure how to think of it or if she wants to.
House drops her hand. It stays standing in mid-air.
“Funny, how we’re all grown-ups.”
“Except for me,” he says.
She laughs suddenly. The sound is warmer than she wants it to be and she pulls her hand back, dropping it into her lap. The wine glass stands alone on the bar and he has yet to touch his second glass.
“Except for you,” she agrees.
“I’m trying though.”
He looks at her.
“Or so people think,” he says slowly. “I don’t know. I don’t know a lot of things and it still, it still bugs the hell out of me.”
She’s quiet. She looks away too. The wine glass is waiting for her to pick it up. She squeezes her hands in her lap. House sighs.
“I live with Wilson.” He says it and says it to her as if he was waiting for her to laugh again, but she doesn’t laugh. There’s no warmth in his voice and it’s a comment for the sake of commenting. She doesn’t comment either, bringing her glass to her mouth. “It’s easy to live with Wilson too because Wilson’s predictability is - it’s Wilson, if anything.”
“Sure,” she says.
“Sure?”
He’s amused. Her gaze wanders to the bartender, watching them at the end of the bar. He starts to wipe down glasses.
“You’re like anybody else. We stick to what we know or what we need to know. Foreman came back and stayed. Chase -” she trails off, her eyes closing. She doesn’t finish the sentence. “I went home to Chicago. Because there’s my family and I think I’d like … I want to be around my family right now.”
“Is that why you told me?”
“Told you?”
Her eyes open. He shrugs. Oh, she thinks.
She takes a minute though. It feels like a leisure. A man walks into the bar, tie skewed and a rumple coat on his arm. She watches as he walks by the bar area and moves to a table off to the side. House snorts.
“I don’t know why I told you. I wasn’t exactly in the greatest frame of mind then. Do you want me to take it back?”
“Do you?”
She’s serious. She doesn’t know what he wants from her. The question is simple, too simple, do you seems to want to mock her instead of pulling anything away from her that he needs.
But she looks at him, looks at him and never away. Her eyes are wide and his are too bright. It’s a brief thought, but she does wonder what they look like; still wonders because it’s the sort of thought, the kind of thought that used to reminder about what was between them. She doesn’t want to call it love, but somehow, even without saying it, it makes the most sense.
“No,” she says finally.
He leans forward. She tries to draw back but there is nowhere to go. His hand presses over her knee and she reaches for it, her fingers curling around his wrist. It’s a dysfunctional way of meeting halfway, somehow.
But he doesn’t pull his hand back and doesn’t draw away. There’s a flutter inside of her and her stomach slowly starts to tie itself into knots. It feels entirely too romantic for her to understand and too frightening for her to want to. He’s waiting for her. She doesn’t know why.
Her mouth still turns slightly. She moves then without thinking too. She doesn’t feel that sense of repetition. Her hand brushes against his face, her fingers spreading over his jaw and she leans into him, her mouth touching his. It happens once, then twice, and she feels his mouth as it opens against hers. There is the wetness of his drink, the pungent taste of the scotch - she doesn’t care but it’s bitter and he deepens the kiss, slowly.
His hand is in her hair then and she’s sliding off her stool, if only to stand between his legs. She kisses him without hesitation, as if they were here before in some other shape or way. There is nothing gentle about the way he kisses her too, or curious for that matter. There is no sense wanting to forget or needing to forget, as if they’ve separated themselves from everything else.
When she pulls back, his hand stays in her hair. He keeps her close and her eyes open slowly.
“You’re leaving tomorrow.”
His voice is low, heavy. She tries not to want to read him.
“In the afternoon,” she murmurs and she still says it, just like she said to him earlier - I’m not inviting you up. It’s still a kind boundary.
“Is -” he starts and then stops, just as she shakes her head. His mouth turns only slightly. “I won’t ask,” he says then too.
“I don’t expect you to.”
“I want - ”
His hand slides over her jaw. He says it and it she wants to believe that it could be someone else, something else, but things between them have always been ahead of them. There is the desire to push and there will always be that desire to push; she’s convinced but it’s not time. She’s not waiting for him either. She doesn’t want to wait.
She lets go of his wrist, remembering. She doesn’t slide back onto her stool. She reaches for her wine glass and finishes it off.
Her eyes close briefly. “You should go,” she says softly.
It is something she needs to say, just like she needed to say what she did in his office months ago or when she left the first and second times. She doesn’t wait for him. She doesn’t have it in her and by now, she thinks, by now this is something that she should be able to expect. This is more than understood.
But he doesn’t press or touch her again. The bartender starts for them. Somewhere behind Cameron, there is a loud laugh. A phone rings and she remembers her flight home again.
Cameron pulls out her room key. House reaches for his drink. His voice is even.
“Make sure you sign your papers,” he says.
There are no calls the week she gets back to Chicago.
It seems simple enough. It’s only just a week after all.