Fic: check your facts
check your facts
house md ; house/cameron ; PG ; 3,537 words
the first time is merely a memory, the second and the third are what write the truth. this is why it’s called waiting. lockdown.
notes: for blueheronz. because you asked, r, and i adore you to bits and you write me the best emails and you're watching damages. i still have ISSUES with this episode. ISSUES and more ISSUES, thus me writing fic.
-
They drift outside. Cameron’s fingers stumble over the buttons of her coat. The papers are in her bag. She’s already checked twice.
“Safe trip, okay?” Chase says finally. They say nothing about Cuddy seeing them walk out of the clinic. He steps to a curb. “Let me know when you get to Chicago,” he says and flags a cab from a coming light. He says it too like he means it.
“Sure,” she says.
There is a part of her that is inclined to push this once more, to say more than she needs to say. She turns slightly, looking up and into the hospital behind her. The lights seem brighter and it’s an odd thought, a funny thought as it comes to this. She counts a few floors up and then follows the windows to the side; the building will jut out into the street more. She remembers House’s office.
Her mouth turns and she shakes her head. It’s going to be strange for a long time, she thinks.
Looking back to the street, she catches the cab as it starts to move towards their corner. Chase lifts a hand again. He doesn’t ask where she’s staying. She doesn’t tell him. It’s an old, final habit.
As the cab slows by them, Chase brushes a hand against her arm. His gaze is soft and she smiles. There’s a horn off in the distance. The clatter of the evening shifts; all familiar, she thinks, and all something that’s interchangeable with her life now.
But she steps closer to the curb, and Chase stops her, taking her arm again. She tenses. He doesn’t let go.
“What?”
“I wanted -” he stops, “I wanted - we needed this,” he pauses and sighs, “I needed this. Does that make sense?”
“Yes,” she says.
She leans up to kiss his cheek too. Her fingers brush against his arm and she draws back. They don’t talk about her promise to call or his need to say that in the beginning. This is less about the things that work for them.
Opening the door, she slides into the cab. Chase shuts it and she waves, murmuring the name of her hotel to the driver.
The cab starts and Cameron settles. After awhile, her eyes close. “It had to,” she says.
There is time before she has to take herself to the airport. She takes a cab from her hotel to downtown, and picks a coffee shop to sit in. She thought about going to her neighborhood. It was only a moment.
Sitting outside, she wraps her hands around her coffee. Her sunglasses and phone rest next to her arm. She stares at them.
There’s the odd breeze though. She tries not to watch the people that come in and out. She’s alone, and it’s the kind of thing that where if she wanders too much, she’ll forget that she isn’t supposed to be here anymore. She doesn’t fit.
A shadow drops over her seat though. She waits for a moment. There is a cough and her mouth shifts slightly.
“Chase.”
She slides on her sunglasses. “Liar,” she counters, and looks up, seeing House as he fidgets. He slides a hand into his pocket and then pulls it out, dragging the extra chair away from the table.
He brings the chair next to her. He sits, frowning. He picks up her coffee and studies it in his hand. She watches as his finger slides under the lid. He doesn’t pop it off and brings the cup to his mouth.
There is a quick silence. Cameron watches a couple walk into the coffee shop.
“Didn’t know you were here,” he compliments finally, and it’s odd, she thinks, hearing him this way. She stays seated and stares. “I don’t care, but I like to know things,” House says too.
“I know.”
“You remembered.” He says it and smiles, smirks like it’s an odd joke; of course it is, but for her, they haven’t that leisure in a very long time.
She reaches forward though. Her fingers pry the cup from his hand and she pulls it between both of hers, drawing the coffee to her mouth. He watches her. She lets him. The corners of her mouth turn too.
“Stop,” she says.
“You’re divorced,” he says.
“The papers are signed.”
The correction is calm. She doesn’t know what else to say to him. There is the truth and then there is the truth, it’s the sort of thing that she’s learned to keep it in a responsible manner, to keep him close and farther away.
“How does it feel?” he asks, and she expects it, meeting his gaze. She doesn’t take her sunglasses off and the corners of her mouth turn again. It almost feels like a smile.
“Fine,” she says.
“Liar,” he mocks; he chuckles and picks up her coffee. He watches her check her watch. When she catches him, she drops her hands to her lap underneath the table.
Her fingers curl around each other. They pull and flex. She thinks back to last night, and to Chase, to what they talked about and what they didn’t. She merely came back with the responsibility to finish this. It’s part walking away, part doing the right thing; she has no expectation for understanding, and at the same time, last night, she had hoped that they would’ve come to some sort of understanding together.
To keep it clean though, she let herself take the blame. It’s just the way it is.
“It feels … it feels necessary,” she says after awhile. “It feels like the right thing. It feels like I made the right choice.”
He scoffs. There’s a lie somewhere in there. He’s watching her like he wants something. She pulls her hands off of her lap and drops them to the table.
“It feels sad.”
“Marriage isn’t for everyone,” he says dryly. She snorts and he shrugs, tapping his fingers against the counter. “I didn’t come here to give you an epiphany. You have to be sick and dying for that one.”
“Good to know.”
“Isn’t it though?”
She snorts. “I’m glad we had this talk, House.”
She didn’t look for him, she thinks again. And again; there was nothing to compel her, nothing to force herself, and her curiosity stood only as a limitation. Chase didn’t bring him up. She didn’t bring him up either.
House is House. They’re all skin and bones. He hasn’t changed, and maybe, maybe it’s more of what nobody gets to see. He calls it change. She can people out that want to see it as change. What she sees doesn’t matter anymore. She tries not to let it.
“You didn’t come to see me.”
“Why would I?”
She asks. He scoffs and picks up her coffee again.
“That was a speech. Before.”
She looks away. “That was me telling you to - ” she stops and quiets. She feels herself start to tense. “That was me telling you to stop,” she finishes, “and that was me saying that I needed to be the one to walk away.”
“Was it?”
“No.”
She means that. He frowns. She doesn’t try and explain herself. Instead, she reaches forward and pulls her cup from his hands. She takes a sip and the liquid burns her tongue. She sputters into a cough.
“I don’t understand you,” he says slowly.
“I’m not asking you to.”
He meets her gaze. She tries not to look away. They stare at each other. It’s conscious, easy; without anything to say, it’s him and her, the way that she always figured they’d be. There are moments where she thinks they could go back, where knowing him might’ve been something she could’ve done right, done in such away that she might have walked away from this without any scars.
“Why?”
He leans forward and rests his elbows against the counter. Their table is small and unsettled. It sways when House leans more of his weight into it. Her mouth curls.
“Nothing good, you know?” she says it gently, thoughtful, as if it were to make some sort of sense as a mix of things rather than what it’s supposed to be. “If I were to ask you to understand, that would make this more than what it needs to be; if anything, that’s what you taught me.”
“Cute,” he mutters.
She shrugs. There is nothing more to say on the matter. He’s probably come to see her one more time, to push and to pull. He has a thing for old curiosities.
There is something to the way he looks at her though, that she feels and tries not to understand. It’s familiar, pulling, and she nearly reaches up to take her sunglasses off. It would give him something though. It hasn’t been long enough for Cameron to trust him like that again.
They don’t sit like strangers. She remembers that too.
Her heels scrape forward. Her toe touches the edge of her bag and it skids into his chair. He leans back and she bites her lip.
“Have you talked to Cuddy?”
He looks at her in surprise. “Why should I?” he asks. He tenses too and she studies him, leaning forward and pressing her elbows into the table. “Should I?” he asks too, and it’s so strange, just to hear the question. There’s nothing genuine though.
“It’s not my business.”
“Do you want it to be?” he asks and says it slowly, lazily as if to mock her. They talk like old friends, she decides. It’s less about that too.
“No,” she says.
Then slowly she starts to slide out of her jacket, pulling at the buttons to drop her coat into the chair. It’s chilly today. It’s not Chicago and her memories of Princeton have yet to feel like memories all together.
When she looks at House, really looks at House and under the safety of her glasses, he seems to be comfortable, comfortable but uneasy. It’s like she’s watching herself, or some version of herself, and it’s one of those times where everything feels more open than it should be.
Her throat tightens, but she smiles. Her mouth twists slightly and House shakes his head. Her hair brushes over her eyes. She pulls herself up to straighten against the seat and she lets herself sigh too.
“Don’t look at me that.”
“I’m not in love,” he says calmly.
The coffee cup stands between the two of them. House takes the coffee lid off of the cup. It pops and scatters over the table.
“I didn’t ask you - ” she tries and starts, his eyes narrow when he cuts her off, “- but you looked at me like that,” he says. “You and everybody else,” he says too. “I make a damn effort and it’s suddenly implicit that I go to the extreme.”
She snorts. “Have you listened to yourself? Ever?”
He pushes the coffee lid forward, then backwards, then forward again. His fingers start to skip against the plastic in a rotating motion.
“Another time, another place. Another woman. A moment. The expectations of people are - they’re so damn predictable. When I was there, in the crazy house, stuff happened. Everybody knows that. I’m only telling you because I don’t have to see you everyday and you knowing, it’s not going to become a thing like it always does with you. You make things. But she reached out, and I reached out - and reaching out is apparently what you’re supposed to these days, all the kids doing it or whatever. I’m not it. I’m not going to be it. There is a whole list of people who changed me - ”
He meets her gaze. His eyes are dark too. She’s frozen, somehow, without anything to say. But he came and found her, she tells herself. He always does. If anything, it’s to have the last word. This isn’t it.
“It doesn’t matter,” he spits too. He finishes and looks at her, waiting and watching. Her lips part and he shakes his head. There is nothing to say, she thinks too. It’s supposed to be funny, and maybe even a little bit sad, sitting here with him like this and listening to things that she can pick out but has really learned to keep to herself. It’s how you survive with House, she thinks. There is really isn’t life after or without House; there will always be that impression of him, whether she wants to have it or not. It’s just there.
But she forces herself to move. Her hands press into the table. She steals a glance at her watch, then at House, and then into the outside courtyard that flanks the coffee shop. She still isn’t due in the airport until three.
“You sound like me,” she says finally. She doesn’t look at him, but she keeps talking. “You sound like me and - I don’t know. I don’t know anymore. I have some things to figure out. It’s just not going to be here. I don’t want it to be here.”
House nods. “What was his name?”
She’s surprised. Her fingers spread against the counter and she bites her lip, trying not to snap back at him. She’s tired today. The whole trip is emotionally draining for too many reasons, always too many reasons.
“What was hers?” she asks instead, and then laughs softly; she knows who they’re talking about, but the why seems to hang over their heads like something completely different. It’s too intimate, but it’s them. She remembers how she works with House.
So she looks at him too. Her mouth shifts into a small smile. He frowns.
“You first,” he mutters.
“Jack.”
He leans forward. She looks away.
“Jack.”
When House says it, Jack’s name becomes something completely different, something more personal than it has been in years. Cameron draws back if only to create space.
“Jack,” she says. “That was his name,” she says too and she’s candid, knowing full well that it’s House and she has never really not been candid with House. It’s the odd fluctuation of their relationship she has with him. This is what she knows how to understand.
This whole conversation is so strange though. She starts to fidget in her seat.
“Does Chase know?”
She scoffs. “Really?”
He shrugs. House wears his expectations in the way he looks at her, and his eyes narrow, if only to mock her in some way. She reads him, or attempts to read him this way; leaning forward, she picks up the coffee lid.
“My parents,” she starts and then stops, really trying to weigh what she’s saying to him. She’s leaving she thinks. She tries again, “My parents tried not talking about him in front of Chase, if that’s what you want to know - I don’t know what this has anything to do with anything.”
“You just told me,” he says.
“It’s easier to tell you.”
“So what, we have coffee. I tell you … stuff. You’re now confessing -”
“Confessing?”
She laughs, actually laughs. The sound is soft and warm. She catches his surprise too, but he manages to continue, looking down.
“ - more stuff; this is weird, you know it’s weird, and that’s all I’m saying,” he tells her and sort of grins, half-grins. It’s almost charming and she’s taken at back, suddenly, at the change in mood. It’s just the two of them, and maybe that’s it.
She still tells him too. “You’re weirding me out.”
“We’re talking.”
“We don’t talk. We talk accidentally, at best.”
“Don’t you have a flight to catch?”
She frowns. She checks her watch too, glancing down quickly. There are a few hours. She was planning to go early anyway. He’s giving her an out too. Putting them back in the same place, she thinks.
“Soon,” she answers then. “You haven’t told me her name,” she says too and her mouth curls. She cares and she doesn’t. Maybe that’s what he’s waiting for, she thinks. That kind of answer.
Neither of them says anything else. They try and fill the silence with just sitting there. She slides the coffee lid across the table and he reaches for it, brushing his fingers over hers too. They still and she waits for him to move them back.
When he doesn’t, she tries to swallow. She tries to think and will him to do something, to say something, to make this what she expects. It’s the silence that begins to build, slowly and thoughtfully; he seems conscious of her, she feels herself becoming too away of his space.
“Lydia,” he says.
It’s then that she pushes her sunglasses back. Her hair spills and frames her face in pieces, soft waves running along her jaw. He stares at her and she waits for him to say something else. He doesn’t.
“Lydia’s a nice name,” she says finally. She means it and stands, lifting the coffee up and staring down into it. There’s nothing but a small puddle, soft with sugar and milk, never too much and never too little.
Her fingers curl around her purse first. “I should go,” she says then too.
“Okay.”
He walks her outside and to the curb, watching as she balances her suitcase against her leg. Her arm stretches out, but she covers her eyes, watching for any oncoming cab. It’s different, she wants to say to him, different here than in Chicago, different in the sense that she’s grown entirely used to. And maybe going home wasn’t the way to make this decision, or isn’t, but it’s what she needs now.
She looks up at him, but he points. “Cab’s coming,” and she turns, just as he catches it, but waving a hand in their direction.
“Thanks,” she says.
He nods and brushes a hand against her hip. She watches the cab instead, biting her lip as it pulls itself to the curb. The driver gets out in a hurry and grabs her suitcase. House watches with her as he lugs it to the back.
When the trunk opens, Cameron turns to him. She doesn’t smile. He doesn’t push. She doesn’t think that it’s odd for him either; the conversation stands as it is, and she’s okay with that.
“Bye,” he tells her then.
She laughs, or makes a sound that’s almost a laugh. “Bye House,” she smiles tiredly. She reaches forward and cups his cheek, brushing her mouth along his jaw. Her lips purse against his skin and she feels his hand curl around her hip, drawing her closer.
He’s calm. She’s calm. This feels less like anything else, she thinks. She doesn’t try to pull back and he turns his head, studying her. She waits for that feeling, the one feeling that makes her want to look away. It doesn’t come.
But her mouth does open and he leans in, touching his mouth to hers. It’s strangely shy for a split second, and she can taste bits of coffee, sharp and heavy. His fingers tug into her hair, twisting through the strands just as her mouth begins to open wider, just as one of them sighs, and she breathes into him. He makes a noise, almost a growl, as her head start to spin. She should go, she thinks, she should go but his teeth pull at her lip and she’s twisting a fist into his jacket as they lean back against the cab. Then it’s House who pulls back, slowly, and thoughtfully.
His fingers brush against her cheek. She stares at him and he shrugs.
“Your cab.”
“Yeah.” She nods too, turning and grabbing the door with a shaky hand. “Yeah,” she says again. She slides into the cab, dropping into the seat, and looks back up at him again. His hand curls around the door.
They watch each other. She tries and nods. Her fingers pull at her sunglasses but drop them inside her purse. She pulls it into her lap. House keeps his hand around the door. He doesn’t shut it.
“Where to?”
The cabbie watches her. Her fingers curl around the strap of her bag. House looks down at her, waiting. They don’t say goodbye. It doesn’t feel necessary. She almost smiles though, again or not again; the corners of her mouth feel sharp, heavy, and he seems to know that, and she seems to know as he pulls back away from the car.
House closes the door. Airport, she hears herself say. Her fingers pick at the glass of the window. It might be something. It might not. Her mind starts to wander and she considers looking back. She considers.
The car starts to move. Cameron’s gaze stays straight.
It stays with her. Weeks later, it stays.
“You should call him,” her friend says. It’s lunch outside the hospital and catching up; it’s the thing to do when you come home, when you reintroduce yourself to family and friends and people that you left behind. Cameron’s not a stranger. She’s doing it all over again.
The absent question makes her friend laugh. Cameron squints in the sun, stirring her straw through her drink.
“That’s not how it works,” she says.
house md ; house/cameron ; PG ; 3,537 words
the first time is merely a memory, the second and the third are what write the truth. this is why it’s called waiting. lockdown.
notes: for blueheronz. because you asked, r, and i adore you to bits and you write me the best emails and you're watching damages. i still have ISSUES with this episode. ISSUES and more ISSUES, thus me writing fic.
-
They drift outside. Cameron’s fingers stumble over the buttons of her coat. The papers are in her bag. She’s already checked twice.
“Safe trip, okay?” Chase says finally. They say nothing about Cuddy seeing them walk out of the clinic. He steps to a curb. “Let me know when you get to Chicago,” he says and flags a cab from a coming light. He says it too like he means it.
“Sure,” she says.
There is a part of her that is inclined to push this once more, to say more than she needs to say. She turns slightly, looking up and into the hospital behind her. The lights seem brighter and it’s an odd thought, a funny thought as it comes to this. She counts a few floors up and then follows the windows to the side; the building will jut out into the street more. She remembers House’s office.
Her mouth turns and she shakes her head. It’s going to be strange for a long time, she thinks.
Looking back to the street, she catches the cab as it starts to move towards their corner. Chase lifts a hand again. He doesn’t ask where she’s staying. She doesn’t tell him. It’s an old, final habit.
As the cab slows by them, Chase brushes a hand against her arm. His gaze is soft and she smiles. There’s a horn off in the distance. The clatter of the evening shifts; all familiar, she thinks, and all something that’s interchangeable with her life now.
But she steps closer to the curb, and Chase stops her, taking her arm again. She tenses. He doesn’t let go.
“What?”
“I wanted -” he stops, “I wanted - we needed this,” he pauses and sighs, “I needed this. Does that make sense?”
“Yes,” she says.
She leans up to kiss his cheek too. Her fingers brush against his arm and she draws back. They don’t talk about her promise to call or his need to say that in the beginning. This is less about the things that work for them.
Opening the door, she slides into the cab. Chase shuts it and she waves, murmuring the name of her hotel to the driver.
The cab starts and Cameron settles. After awhile, her eyes close. “It had to,” she says.
There is time before she has to take herself to the airport. She takes a cab from her hotel to downtown, and picks a coffee shop to sit in. She thought about going to her neighborhood. It was only a moment.
Sitting outside, she wraps her hands around her coffee. Her sunglasses and phone rest next to her arm. She stares at them.
There’s the odd breeze though. She tries not to watch the people that come in and out. She’s alone, and it’s the kind of thing that where if she wanders too much, she’ll forget that she isn’t supposed to be here anymore. She doesn’t fit.
A shadow drops over her seat though. She waits for a moment. There is a cough and her mouth shifts slightly.
“Chase.”
She slides on her sunglasses. “Liar,” she counters, and looks up, seeing House as he fidgets. He slides a hand into his pocket and then pulls it out, dragging the extra chair away from the table.
He brings the chair next to her. He sits, frowning. He picks up her coffee and studies it in his hand. She watches as his finger slides under the lid. He doesn’t pop it off and brings the cup to his mouth.
There is a quick silence. Cameron watches a couple walk into the coffee shop.
“Didn’t know you were here,” he compliments finally, and it’s odd, she thinks, hearing him this way. She stays seated and stares. “I don’t care, but I like to know things,” House says too.
“I know.”
“You remembered.” He says it and smiles, smirks like it’s an odd joke; of course it is, but for her, they haven’t that leisure in a very long time.
She reaches forward though. Her fingers pry the cup from his hand and she pulls it between both of hers, drawing the coffee to her mouth. He watches her. She lets him. The corners of her mouth turn too.
“Stop,” she says.
“You’re divorced,” he says.
“The papers are signed.”
The correction is calm. She doesn’t know what else to say to him. There is the truth and then there is the truth, it’s the sort of thing that she’s learned to keep it in a responsible manner, to keep him close and farther away.
“How does it feel?” he asks, and she expects it, meeting his gaze. She doesn’t take her sunglasses off and the corners of her mouth turn again. It almost feels like a smile.
“Fine,” she says.
“Liar,” he mocks; he chuckles and picks up her coffee. He watches her check her watch. When she catches him, she drops her hands to her lap underneath the table.
Her fingers curl around each other. They pull and flex. She thinks back to last night, and to Chase, to what they talked about and what they didn’t. She merely came back with the responsibility to finish this. It’s part walking away, part doing the right thing; she has no expectation for understanding, and at the same time, last night, she had hoped that they would’ve come to some sort of understanding together.
To keep it clean though, she let herself take the blame. It’s just the way it is.
“It feels … it feels necessary,” she says after awhile. “It feels like the right thing. It feels like I made the right choice.”
He scoffs. There’s a lie somewhere in there. He’s watching her like he wants something. She pulls her hands off of her lap and drops them to the table.
“It feels sad.”
“Marriage isn’t for everyone,” he says dryly. She snorts and he shrugs, tapping his fingers against the counter. “I didn’t come here to give you an epiphany. You have to be sick and dying for that one.”
“Good to know.”
“Isn’t it though?”
She snorts. “I’m glad we had this talk, House.”
She didn’t look for him, she thinks again. And again; there was nothing to compel her, nothing to force herself, and her curiosity stood only as a limitation. Chase didn’t bring him up. She didn’t bring him up either.
House is House. They’re all skin and bones. He hasn’t changed, and maybe, maybe it’s more of what nobody gets to see. He calls it change. She can people out that want to see it as change. What she sees doesn’t matter anymore. She tries not to let it.
“You didn’t come to see me.”
“Why would I?”
She asks. He scoffs and picks up her coffee again.
“That was a speech. Before.”
She looks away. “That was me telling you to - ” she stops and quiets. She feels herself start to tense. “That was me telling you to stop,” she finishes, “and that was me saying that I needed to be the one to walk away.”
“Was it?”
“No.”
She means that. He frowns. She doesn’t try and explain herself. Instead, she reaches forward and pulls her cup from his hands. She takes a sip and the liquid burns her tongue. She sputters into a cough.
“I don’t understand you,” he says slowly.
“I’m not asking you to.”
He meets her gaze. She tries not to look away. They stare at each other. It’s conscious, easy; without anything to say, it’s him and her, the way that she always figured they’d be. There are moments where she thinks they could go back, where knowing him might’ve been something she could’ve done right, done in such away that she might have walked away from this without any scars.
“Why?”
He leans forward and rests his elbows against the counter. Their table is small and unsettled. It sways when House leans more of his weight into it. Her mouth curls.
“Nothing good, you know?” she says it gently, thoughtful, as if it were to make some sort of sense as a mix of things rather than what it’s supposed to be. “If I were to ask you to understand, that would make this more than what it needs to be; if anything, that’s what you taught me.”
“Cute,” he mutters.
She shrugs. There is nothing more to say on the matter. He’s probably come to see her one more time, to push and to pull. He has a thing for old curiosities.
There is something to the way he looks at her though, that she feels and tries not to understand. It’s familiar, pulling, and she nearly reaches up to take her sunglasses off. It would give him something though. It hasn’t been long enough for Cameron to trust him like that again.
They don’t sit like strangers. She remembers that too.
Her heels scrape forward. Her toe touches the edge of her bag and it skids into his chair. He leans back and she bites her lip.
“Have you talked to Cuddy?”
He looks at her in surprise. “Why should I?” he asks. He tenses too and she studies him, leaning forward and pressing her elbows into the table. “Should I?” he asks too, and it’s so strange, just to hear the question. There’s nothing genuine though.
“It’s not my business.”
“Do you want it to be?” he asks and says it slowly, lazily as if to mock her. They talk like old friends, she decides. It’s less about that too.
“No,” she says.
Then slowly she starts to slide out of her jacket, pulling at the buttons to drop her coat into the chair. It’s chilly today. It’s not Chicago and her memories of Princeton have yet to feel like memories all together.
When she looks at House, really looks at House and under the safety of her glasses, he seems to be comfortable, comfortable but uneasy. It’s like she’s watching herself, or some version of herself, and it’s one of those times where everything feels more open than it should be.
Her throat tightens, but she smiles. Her mouth twists slightly and House shakes his head. Her hair brushes over her eyes. She pulls herself up to straighten against the seat and she lets herself sigh too.
“Don’t look at me that.”
“I’m not in love,” he says calmly.
The coffee cup stands between the two of them. House takes the coffee lid off of the cup. It pops and scatters over the table.
“I didn’t ask you - ” she tries and starts, his eyes narrow when he cuts her off, “- but you looked at me like that,” he says. “You and everybody else,” he says too. “I make a damn effort and it’s suddenly implicit that I go to the extreme.”
She snorts. “Have you listened to yourself? Ever?”
He pushes the coffee lid forward, then backwards, then forward again. His fingers start to skip against the plastic in a rotating motion.
“Another time, another place. Another woman. A moment. The expectations of people are - they’re so damn predictable. When I was there, in the crazy house, stuff happened. Everybody knows that. I’m only telling you because I don’t have to see you everyday and you knowing, it’s not going to become a thing like it always does with you. You make things. But she reached out, and I reached out - and reaching out is apparently what you’re supposed to these days, all the kids doing it or whatever. I’m not it. I’m not going to be it. There is a whole list of people who changed me - ”
He meets her gaze. His eyes are dark too. She’s frozen, somehow, without anything to say. But he came and found her, she tells herself. He always does. If anything, it’s to have the last word. This isn’t it.
“It doesn’t matter,” he spits too. He finishes and looks at her, waiting and watching. Her lips part and he shakes his head. There is nothing to say, she thinks too. It’s supposed to be funny, and maybe even a little bit sad, sitting here with him like this and listening to things that she can pick out but has really learned to keep to herself. It’s how you survive with House, she thinks. There is really isn’t life after or without House; there will always be that impression of him, whether she wants to have it or not. It’s just there.
But she forces herself to move. Her hands press into the table. She steals a glance at her watch, then at House, and then into the outside courtyard that flanks the coffee shop. She still isn’t due in the airport until three.
“You sound like me,” she says finally. She doesn’t look at him, but she keeps talking. “You sound like me and - I don’t know. I don’t know anymore. I have some things to figure out. It’s just not going to be here. I don’t want it to be here.”
House nods. “What was his name?”
She’s surprised. Her fingers spread against the counter and she bites her lip, trying not to snap back at him. She’s tired today. The whole trip is emotionally draining for too many reasons, always too many reasons.
“What was hers?” she asks instead, and then laughs softly; she knows who they’re talking about, but the why seems to hang over their heads like something completely different. It’s too intimate, but it’s them. She remembers how she works with House.
So she looks at him too. Her mouth shifts into a small smile. He frowns.
“You first,” he mutters.
“Jack.”
He leans forward. She looks away.
“Jack.”
When House says it, Jack’s name becomes something completely different, something more personal than it has been in years. Cameron draws back if only to create space.
“Jack,” she says. “That was his name,” she says too and she’s candid, knowing full well that it’s House and she has never really not been candid with House. It’s the odd fluctuation of their relationship she has with him. This is what she knows how to understand.
This whole conversation is so strange though. She starts to fidget in her seat.
“Does Chase know?”
She scoffs. “Really?”
He shrugs. House wears his expectations in the way he looks at her, and his eyes narrow, if only to mock her in some way. She reads him, or attempts to read him this way; leaning forward, she picks up the coffee lid.
“My parents,” she starts and then stops, really trying to weigh what she’s saying to him. She’s leaving she thinks. She tries again, “My parents tried not talking about him in front of Chase, if that’s what you want to know - I don’t know what this has anything to do with anything.”
“You just told me,” he says.
“It’s easier to tell you.”
“So what, we have coffee. I tell you … stuff. You’re now confessing -”
“Confessing?”
She laughs, actually laughs. The sound is soft and warm. She catches his surprise too, but he manages to continue, looking down.
“ - more stuff; this is weird, you know it’s weird, and that’s all I’m saying,” he tells her and sort of grins, half-grins. It’s almost charming and she’s taken at back, suddenly, at the change in mood. It’s just the two of them, and maybe that’s it.
She still tells him too. “You’re weirding me out.”
“We’re talking.”
“We don’t talk. We talk accidentally, at best.”
“Don’t you have a flight to catch?”
She frowns. She checks her watch too, glancing down quickly. There are a few hours. She was planning to go early anyway. He’s giving her an out too. Putting them back in the same place, she thinks.
“Soon,” she answers then. “You haven’t told me her name,” she says too and her mouth curls. She cares and she doesn’t. Maybe that’s what he’s waiting for, she thinks. That kind of answer.
Neither of them says anything else. They try and fill the silence with just sitting there. She slides the coffee lid across the table and he reaches for it, brushing his fingers over hers too. They still and she waits for him to move them back.
When he doesn’t, she tries to swallow. She tries to think and will him to do something, to say something, to make this what she expects. It’s the silence that begins to build, slowly and thoughtfully; he seems conscious of her, she feels herself becoming too away of his space.
“Lydia,” he says.
It’s then that she pushes her sunglasses back. Her hair spills and frames her face in pieces, soft waves running along her jaw. He stares at her and she waits for him to say something else. He doesn’t.
“Lydia’s a nice name,” she says finally. She means it and stands, lifting the coffee up and staring down into it. There’s nothing but a small puddle, soft with sugar and milk, never too much and never too little.
Her fingers curl around her purse first. “I should go,” she says then too.
“Okay.”
He walks her outside and to the curb, watching as she balances her suitcase against her leg. Her arm stretches out, but she covers her eyes, watching for any oncoming cab. It’s different, she wants to say to him, different here than in Chicago, different in the sense that she’s grown entirely used to. And maybe going home wasn’t the way to make this decision, or isn’t, but it’s what she needs now.
She looks up at him, but he points. “Cab’s coming,” and she turns, just as he catches it, but waving a hand in their direction.
“Thanks,” she says.
He nods and brushes a hand against her hip. She watches the cab instead, biting her lip as it pulls itself to the curb. The driver gets out in a hurry and grabs her suitcase. House watches with her as he lugs it to the back.
When the trunk opens, Cameron turns to him. She doesn’t smile. He doesn’t push. She doesn’t think that it’s odd for him either; the conversation stands as it is, and she’s okay with that.
“Bye,” he tells her then.
She laughs, or makes a sound that’s almost a laugh. “Bye House,” she smiles tiredly. She reaches forward and cups his cheek, brushing her mouth along his jaw. Her lips purse against his skin and she feels his hand curl around her hip, drawing her closer.
He’s calm. She’s calm. This feels less like anything else, she thinks. She doesn’t try to pull back and he turns his head, studying her. She waits for that feeling, the one feeling that makes her want to look away. It doesn’t come.
But her mouth does open and he leans in, touching his mouth to hers. It’s strangely shy for a split second, and she can taste bits of coffee, sharp and heavy. His fingers tug into her hair, twisting through the strands just as her mouth begins to open wider, just as one of them sighs, and she breathes into him. He makes a noise, almost a growl, as her head start to spin. She should go, she thinks, she should go but his teeth pull at her lip and she’s twisting a fist into his jacket as they lean back against the cab. Then it’s House who pulls back, slowly, and thoughtfully.
His fingers brush against her cheek. She stares at him and he shrugs.
“Your cab.”
“Yeah.” She nods too, turning and grabbing the door with a shaky hand. “Yeah,” she says again. She slides into the cab, dropping into the seat, and looks back up at him again. His hand curls around the door.
They watch each other. She tries and nods. Her fingers pull at her sunglasses but drop them inside her purse. She pulls it into her lap. House keeps his hand around the door. He doesn’t shut it.
“Where to?”
The cabbie watches her. Her fingers curl around the strap of her bag. House looks down at her, waiting. They don’t say goodbye. It doesn’t feel necessary. She almost smiles though, again or not again; the corners of her mouth feel sharp, heavy, and he seems to know that, and she seems to know as he pulls back away from the car.
House closes the door. Airport, she hears herself say. Her fingers pick at the glass of the window. It might be something. It might not. Her mind starts to wander and she considers looking back. She considers.
The car starts to move. Cameron’s gaze stays straight.
It stays with her. Weeks later, it stays.
“You should call him,” her friend says. It’s lunch outside the hospital and catching up; it’s the thing to do when you come home, when you reintroduce yourself to family and friends and people that you left behind. Cameron’s not a stranger. She’s doing it all over again.
The absent question makes her friend laugh. Cameron squints in the sun, stirring her straw through her drink.
“That’s not how it works,” she says.