House Fic: that minute alone (3/6)
that minute alone
house md; cameron-centric (house/cameron, house/cuddy) ; 3,262 words
some secrets aren’t meant to be kept, it’s who you decide to tell.
notes: This is for mathhhh and for her birthday and inspired by that infamous tumblr quote:
“Cameron finds a sense of identity in her quest to be a good person. David Shore and I spoke a lot about how Cameron has a history heavily impacted by loss… The real woman that David based Cameron on lost three siblings in a fire at a young age and then lost her husband to cancer within the first year of marriage. I have always considered all of this to be a part of Cameron’s past.”
-
“It’s just a building.” That never tastes right, she thinks.
House stares at her. There is a crack against the fence and Cameron turns, catching a few kids in the corner chasing a ball. She can feel House still watching, and the ball hits the fence again, stumbling against the chains and then flapping into one of the kid’s hands.
“Why are you telling me this?” House asks. I wish it were this simple, she wants to say. I wish it was something I could say. There are so many things that have been left unsaid; it’s present, and here, it’s always here, always growing, and she wonders briefly if this is a good idea. She’ll tell him. She’ll finish the story. She always does.
“I don’t know,” she says slowly. Her hand covers her eyes. “I mean you flew all the way out here, obviously care too much, and maybe, maybe I still don’t know how to not give you what you want.”
“You’ve never given me what I want.”
His voice stumbles next to her. She ignores him, her eyes turning to the building again. If she remembers this right, she thinks, the fire started from the basement. They say still that it was electrical failure. It wasn’t just her family, there were other families, there are always other families; this makes it harder to be selfish and tired. Grief is not unique.
She reaches forward though. She brushes her fingers against the fence, letting them trace the pattern of the chairs. House shuffles closer.
“Danny almost died.” She swallows.
“He was in the apartment?”
“Yeah.” She nods too. “You think I’m a mess,” she says humorlessly. “You think I have a savior complex. My brother’s three of me.”
“Fascinating.”
“Not really.”
“That still doesn’t tell me why you’re telling me this now? I can assume, or is - is that what you want me to do. Assume that you’re telling me, and from telling me this, are you -”
“You’re not making any sense,” she cuts him off. She glances it at him, sideways. Her hair slips over her eyes. “As usual,” she mutters.
“So what happened?” he ignores her, and takes a step back, trying another question. She almost laughs. The questions are almost always circular and they’ll come back again, and then again. It’s the way these things go.
“I don’t know.”
She thinks about her brother again. Her mother cried when he left. She cried when he left. Their father, her father was nothing more than angry. It was the same thing when she got married the first time; there was that expectation and that anger, and her parents, her parents had treated it like a phase. It’s cruel and it’s selfish, thinking about it. She doesn’t tell House this.
Turning, she leans against the fence. A car rolls past them in the street. She watches as it turns into traffic, hesitating.
“There was something wrong,” she starts, “with the electrical work. Something triggered the fire in the basement and then something in the apartment helped it. Danny really doesn’t talk about it.” House clears his throat. Cameron’s mouth twists and she shakes her head. “I don’t blame him. You really don’t know how to start dealing with these things.”
“Loss,” he says.
“Loss,” she agrees. “You have to understand that my choices, the things that have taken to me to this point in my life - all of this - ” she waves her hand around and points to herself. Her fingers press into her chest, just above the fabric of her collar. “All of this,” she repeats, “is me. I’m not asking you to change me. I’m not even really asking you to accept it. But I have. I’ve had to. We’ve all had to.”
“You’re …” He scoffs, shaking his head. “You’re not talking about you. You’re hiding behind everyone else.”
“Maybe I am,” she murmurs.
His eyes are wide. They are not staring at each other. He catches her, or she catches him, and it’s one or the other. It’s sudden too, or maybe she’s never noticed; when she looks at him, she’s completely caught off-guard. Her mouth opens and closes. The rational thing would be to go back to the hospital.
But then he looks away. He shifts and turns, leaning against the fence with her. She watches as his cane drops and skips against the sidewalk. The end starts to trace in a circle, slowly against the dirt. It’s almost thoughtful. Her gaze drops and she watches, waiting.
“This hasn’t been home to me in a really long time,” she says finally.
He is quiet. Then his cane stops moving. She swears he leans closer, and he asks, “So what are you doing here?”
Inevitability.
What people don’t know is that they’ve had this conversation long before, maybe not about her and hers, her family and her sense of loss, or his, or his idea of what moving forward really means; but on the off-chance that you’re curious, it was one of those conversations, one of their first that happened and that was it.
She said to him, “It’s not that I can’t trust people. It’s that I’ve trusted too many people without thinking.”
“That’s your fault,” he said, and they had been in his office, him at his desk, her standing by one the chairs. He had barely looked at her too (this depends on who’s remembering this moment, of course -) with glasses sliding slowly down his nose. “I don’t know why you’re telling me too, but it’s your fault.”
The corners of her mouth turned. “I know it is.”
They have a drink in the hotel bar, after. It’s long after her shift, and she won’t talk about the fact that he followed her back to the hospital, sat and waited until she was done for the night. Instead, she makes herself comfortable at the bar and next to him, studying the way the light hits the rim of her wine glass. She hasn’t touched it yet.
“So you’re in love,” she says slowly.
“That’s what they say,” he says. He shrugs too. Her mouth quirks with some amusement, and he shakes his head. “I don’t know. It’s definitely need. It’s definitely some stupid, unremarkable sense of self that I need to satisfy. I’m a selfish son-of-a-bitch, remember?”
“I remember.”
“No hesitation.” He chuckles.
He has a scotch. He only drinks scotch. This isn’t a memory; this is bottom drawer, underneath a stack of journals and a video case that holds photos instead of a tape.
She studies him. He brings the glass to his mouth, pressing the rim against his lip. He quirks an eyebrow at her and she lets herself have a slight, slight smile. It feels a little strange and she turns her gaze to watch the bartender instead, cleaning off the glasses in the corner.
Cameron picks at her napkin. Her fingers fold a corner. “Well, if anything, I am honest with you. Fatal flaw.”
“It’s annoying,” he says, and there’s some slip of affection. She looks at him in surprise and he looks away. His hand spreads over his drink. His fingers cover the glass and start to slowly rub it against the bar.
They are both too vague. Force of habit, maybe. The glass shuffles over the wood and then stops as the bartender passes. Cameron catches his gaze and he nods towards their drinks. She shakes her head.
“She doesn’t know you’re here,” she says too, to House. He clears her throat and the feeling is immediate, twisting in her stomach. She didn’t think much of it before and there’s small part of her, hopefully, that Cuddy knows that he’s here. But she knows House likes his messes too.
“She doesn’t,” he says slowly.
“Don’t bring me into this,” she warns.
“You’re already in it,” he says.
She stares at him, stunned. Her eyes are wide and her mouth opens. He nods. You’re already in this. It makes her heart race.
“Think about the way you left,” he says, and his voice is calm, too calm. She’s suspicious and tries not to show it; this isn’t the conversation she should be having with him. Her fingers press into her forehead. “That was a half-assed goodbye, you know.”
“I can’t talk about this now,” she says quietly. She shifts back, almost standing. There’s a strange push of dizziness and she always thought that somehow, someway if they were to have this conversation, if they were to seriously have this conversation, she could handle. And maybe it’s the month, this long, apparent time of year.
“I know,” he says instead. He looks at her and the corners of her mouth curl slightly. The knots in her stomach tighten.
“So you’re bringing this up now?”
She shakes her head. He gestures to the scotch with his hand, and then to her.
“I’m bringing this up now.”
She says nothing. She grabs her bag, digging out some cash for their drinks. She doesn’t even bother asking him. She digs out a scarf from her bag first, wrapping it tightly around her neck. She grabs the cash then too, and a few dollars slip onto the floor.
Sighing, she shakes her head. She puts her money on the bar. House ignores it and brings his glass to his mouth.
“Don’t go,” he mumbles into his drink.
“And stay?” she rubs her eyes. “I’m trying to talk to you. For reasons, I - what are you doing? I can’t handle this right now. This isn’t -”
“There you go again.”
Is this what you want? She wants to ask. It seems like he’s searching for some sense of routine, of predictability. A part her wants to laugh, and the rest knows that she can’t handle it right now. It’s a mess. She’s a mess. She’s trying to figure herself out again and nothing seems to be working. She doesn’t want to regret coming back to the city, but there is so much here.
Her hands start to tremble and she reaches out, pulling the glass from his mouth. He looks at her in surprise, but she’s careful.
“What am I doing exactly?”
His eyes are bright. She tries to look away, but he leans in, serious, or something like serious.
“You’re looking for an out,” he says. He lifts his drink to her.
“What do you want me to say?” she hisses. “You catch me off-guard. I don’t know what to say to you half the time and then, then when I get the nerve or have that sane moment where I can talk to you.”
“At least you admit it.”
“And what about you?”
“Stop,” he warns.
She snorts. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to even touch that.”
They’re quiet. She looks away, into the bar. There are people lingering just around the entrance. A family peeks out from the front desk, heading towards the elevator and she has to remind herself that she’s in a hotel bar and there’s very little to expect anyway.
She slides her bag over her shoulder, digging her keys out of her pocket. This will be over soon, she tells herself. But she can’t help but wonder what he’s doing, why he’s come; he’s always been sort of unconventional in how he reaches out, but she’s too cautious and it’s still too soon. She hasn’t forgotten what she said to him.
Cameron takes a small step back. “Why are you really here, House?” Then she steps forward, picking up her wine glass. She finishes it off.
“You asked me to come.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“To listen,” he says dryly. “To your sad, sad story about losing your husband and your siblings and how it made you the person you are so that I can finally get you. That’s what you want to hear, isn’t?”
“Not really,” she mutters.
She finishes her drink off.
“Do you ever just listen? Have you?”
He’s quiet.
“I thought so,” she murmurs.
This is the part where she wants to tell him that she’s never expected much from him, that he should remember and give her that at the very least; but things never work this way. She’s just not going to pretend.
There is still what she’s told him.
Taking a step to him, she leans over him, over the chair and cupping his face. Her fingers spread against his jaw and she leans into him, her mouth brushing against his skin. She lingers and closes her eyes. Just because she can, she thinks. He exhales too though, loudly as his fingers press against her hip. His drink is somewhere next to him and she’s leaning in, heavily, as if not to touch it or acknowledge anything else.
Then she draws back. She doesn’t look at him. She doesn’t say goodbye. With her back to him, she manages to rub her eyes.
She heads out. Behind her, there’s a loud chuckle. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he calls.
Home has a message on her answering machine waiting for her. There is a part of her that expects House and that odd, manic way he has with trying to fix silences or trying to prolong everything else.
“Just wanted to - I don’t know,” her brother’s voice hits her living room, half-scrambled with the background of a bar. She hears someone yell the game and her mouth twists in some kind of absent recognition. Of course, she thinks.
But when she sighs, she sighs on cue with her brother’s voice.
“ - you’re crazy for going back,” he finishes. There is a laugh too and she listens too carefully. “I keep thinking that I haven’t gone far enough.”
This is the truth.
Her office door is open in the morning. She is not surprised. There are two coffees in her hand and when she walks inside, she passes House the second cup as she moves behind her desk.
“When are you leaving?” she asks, and it’s casual, almost too casual, in the kind of way that feels unexpected and amusing to her. She doesn’t smile and he’s holding his coffee, half-watching her and half-studying his fun. She catches the screen lighting up briefly.
“Does it matter?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“I don’t know yet.” He’s lying, she thinks. She doesn’t push though and sits. He leans forward, dropping his phone on her desk. “Why?’
She shrugs. His legs go over the corner of her desk. He stretches them out and winces and she starts to dig into her bag, pulling out some of her things. There’s a pile of messages on the corner and she picks them up, picking through them. She has to call her brother back.
“Sunday,” he says finally. “Sunday night. There’s a patient waiting for me or something. I don’t know. I thought they could handle it. I always think you can handle it - it’s why I picked you.”
She snorts. “That’s not why you pick people.”
She thinks of Chase then, briefly, and falls to sense of wariness and wonderment. Her ex-husband hasn’t walked into affection yet and she’s sure, if you asked him, it would be the same response for him too. They just decided to be adults, finally.
She looks up at House too and he’s watching her, waiting. The collar of his shirt is twisted up, scraping against his throat. Her fingers curl briefly.
“So,” he says.
Her eyes dart to the side. “We can keep talking about nothing,” she murmurs.
He picks up a file from her desk and starts to comb through it. Her gaze drops to his hands and he folds a few pages back, just a little too hard.
“I have nothing to say,” he says. He looks pointedly at her. “Are you going to talk about it?”
This is a bad idea, she thinks. There are things, bigger things, that she suddenly wishes for. Control. A cigarette. The last cigarette she had she was eighteen. There’s a faint memory of taste. Then, she thinks of the fire.
Her head drops back and her eyes close.
“Talk about what?” she murmurs. “My family? The fire? The fact that my parents are still a mess, after all these years, and my brother is my brother, and I’m - well, I’m back here, you know? I was three, House. My memories are sort of limited. And really, all I can tell you are stories about after. What it was like to grow up in that house; what it’s still like to come back and sit with my parents around this time of year. It’s appearances, really. It’s the appearance being okay, of keeping your personal life personal and the rest of it is supposed to fall into place. I am just as screwed up as the next person and not once, once have I tried to hide it from you. I just choose not to talk about it. Why? I have no idea. Maybe it’s because every time I decide to do it comes out into this mess of words and I can’t even begin to hear myself,” she stops and pauses, rubbing her eyes. A low sigh escapes her mouth. “Do you know what it’s like? Trying to figure yourself out after years and years of falling into some kind weird expectation of everything always being okay. You don’t. You don’t because no matter what happens, you’re still you and you know you’re still you. For whatever reason, you don’t know how to apologize for being you and that works, not matter what. So tell me, tell me what I’m supposed to talk about.”
“You could’ve told me this in Los Angeles,” he says. She doesn’t look up. She’s not angry when he says it. His legs drop off the corner of her desk and she catches his hand as it rubs hard against his thigh.
“I didn’t think you’d come,” she says softly.
He scoffs. “And you’re not coming back.”
A laugh slips from her mouth, unsteady and frank. She grasps her messages and then drops her elbows to her knees. Her hands go to her face. Of course, these conversations just come with House.
“My mother wouldn’t talk for months, you know. At least to my father,” she says. The words are coarse, particular. “That’s what I remember the most. I remember that and then I think, why the hell am I falling into these relationships?”
“Same reason I don’t want kids.”
She meets his gaze. Her mouth curls a little and she shakes her head.
“You don’t know what you want,” she says pointedly.
“I want to be happy,” he tells her.
There is something honest about the way he looks at her. There is nothing honest about the expectation, it’s something deeper, something stranger, and there’s a heaviness that twists inside of her. They stare at each other like this, even as she stands. He’s waiting for her and she feels it; it’s pressure and it isn’t, it’s who makes the next move.
“I mean it,” he says too. This is what breaks it.
Her gaze becomes hard. Her palms flatten against her desk and she turns away, just for a moment, to catch the time on her clock. She lets out a sigh, just for a moment, and then pushes herself up to stand.
“And I just want to get through this part of the year,” she says to him.
It hits her later in the day.
ONE | TWO | THREE | FOUR | FIVE | SIX |
house md; cameron-centric (house/cameron, house/cuddy) ; 3,262 words
some secrets aren’t meant to be kept, it’s who you decide to tell.
notes: This is for mathhhh and for her birthday and inspired by that infamous tumblr quote:
“Cameron finds a sense of identity in her quest to be a good person. David Shore and I spoke a lot about how Cameron has a history heavily impacted by loss… The real woman that David based Cameron on lost three siblings in a fire at a young age and then lost her husband to cancer within the first year of marriage. I have always considered all of this to be a part of Cameron’s past.”
-
“It’s just a building.” That never tastes right, she thinks.
House stares at her. There is a crack against the fence and Cameron turns, catching a few kids in the corner chasing a ball. She can feel House still watching, and the ball hits the fence again, stumbling against the chains and then flapping into one of the kid’s hands.
“Why are you telling me this?” House asks. I wish it were this simple, she wants to say. I wish it was something I could say. There are so many things that have been left unsaid; it’s present, and here, it’s always here, always growing, and she wonders briefly if this is a good idea. She’ll tell him. She’ll finish the story. She always does.
“I don’t know,” she says slowly. Her hand covers her eyes. “I mean you flew all the way out here, obviously care too much, and maybe, maybe I still don’t know how to not give you what you want.”
“You’ve never given me what I want.”
His voice stumbles next to her. She ignores him, her eyes turning to the building again. If she remembers this right, she thinks, the fire started from the basement. They say still that it was electrical failure. It wasn’t just her family, there were other families, there are always other families; this makes it harder to be selfish and tired. Grief is not unique.
She reaches forward though. She brushes her fingers against the fence, letting them trace the pattern of the chairs. House shuffles closer.
“Danny almost died.” She swallows.
“He was in the apartment?”
“Yeah.” She nods too. “You think I’m a mess,” she says humorlessly. “You think I have a savior complex. My brother’s three of me.”
“Fascinating.”
“Not really.”
“That still doesn’t tell me why you’re telling me this now? I can assume, or is - is that what you want me to do. Assume that you’re telling me, and from telling me this, are you -”
“You’re not making any sense,” she cuts him off. She glances it at him, sideways. Her hair slips over her eyes. “As usual,” she mutters.
“So what happened?” he ignores her, and takes a step back, trying another question. She almost laughs. The questions are almost always circular and they’ll come back again, and then again. It’s the way these things go.
“I don’t know.”
She thinks about her brother again. Her mother cried when he left. She cried when he left. Their father, her father was nothing more than angry. It was the same thing when she got married the first time; there was that expectation and that anger, and her parents, her parents had treated it like a phase. It’s cruel and it’s selfish, thinking about it. She doesn’t tell House this.
Turning, she leans against the fence. A car rolls past them in the street. She watches as it turns into traffic, hesitating.
“There was something wrong,” she starts, “with the electrical work. Something triggered the fire in the basement and then something in the apartment helped it. Danny really doesn’t talk about it.” House clears his throat. Cameron’s mouth twists and she shakes her head. “I don’t blame him. You really don’t know how to start dealing with these things.”
“Loss,” he says.
“Loss,” she agrees. “You have to understand that my choices, the things that have taken to me to this point in my life - all of this - ” she waves her hand around and points to herself. Her fingers press into her chest, just above the fabric of her collar. “All of this,” she repeats, “is me. I’m not asking you to change me. I’m not even really asking you to accept it. But I have. I’ve had to. We’ve all had to.”
“You’re …” He scoffs, shaking his head. “You’re not talking about you. You’re hiding behind everyone else.”
“Maybe I am,” she murmurs.
His eyes are wide. They are not staring at each other. He catches her, or she catches him, and it’s one or the other. It’s sudden too, or maybe she’s never noticed; when she looks at him, she’s completely caught off-guard. Her mouth opens and closes. The rational thing would be to go back to the hospital.
But then he looks away. He shifts and turns, leaning against the fence with her. She watches as his cane drops and skips against the sidewalk. The end starts to trace in a circle, slowly against the dirt. It’s almost thoughtful. Her gaze drops and she watches, waiting.
“This hasn’t been home to me in a really long time,” she says finally.
He is quiet. Then his cane stops moving. She swears he leans closer, and he asks, “So what are you doing here?”
Inevitability.
What people don’t know is that they’ve had this conversation long before, maybe not about her and hers, her family and her sense of loss, or his, or his idea of what moving forward really means; but on the off-chance that you’re curious, it was one of those conversations, one of their first that happened and that was it.
She said to him, “It’s not that I can’t trust people. It’s that I’ve trusted too many people without thinking.”
“That’s your fault,” he said, and they had been in his office, him at his desk, her standing by one the chairs. He had barely looked at her too (this depends on who’s remembering this moment, of course -) with glasses sliding slowly down his nose. “I don’t know why you’re telling me too, but it’s your fault.”
The corners of her mouth turned. “I know it is.”
They have a drink in the hotel bar, after. It’s long after her shift, and she won’t talk about the fact that he followed her back to the hospital, sat and waited until she was done for the night. Instead, she makes herself comfortable at the bar and next to him, studying the way the light hits the rim of her wine glass. She hasn’t touched it yet.
“So you’re in love,” she says slowly.
“That’s what they say,” he says. He shrugs too. Her mouth quirks with some amusement, and he shakes his head. “I don’t know. It’s definitely need. It’s definitely some stupid, unremarkable sense of self that I need to satisfy. I’m a selfish son-of-a-bitch, remember?”
“I remember.”
“No hesitation.” He chuckles.
He has a scotch. He only drinks scotch. This isn’t a memory; this is bottom drawer, underneath a stack of journals and a video case that holds photos instead of a tape.
She studies him. He brings the glass to his mouth, pressing the rim against his lip. He quirks an eyebrow at her and she lets herself have a slight, slight smile. It feels a little strange and she turns her gaze to watch the bartender instead, cleaning off the glasses in the corner.
Cameron picks at her napkin. Her fingers fold a corner. “Well, if anything, I am honest with you. Fatal flaw.”
“It’s annoying,” he says, and there’s some slip of affection. She looks at him in surprise and he looks away. His hand spreads over his drink. His fingers cover the glass and start to slowly rub it against the bar.
They are both too vague. Force of habit, maybe. The glass shuffles over the wood and then stops as the bartender passes. Cameron catches his gaze and he nods towards their drinks. She shakes her head.
“She doesn’t know you’re here,” she says too, to House. He clears her throat and the feeling is immediate, twisting in her stomach. She didn’t think much of it before and there’s small part of her, hopefully, that Cuddy knows that he’s here. But she knows House likes his messes too.
“She doesn’t,” he says slowly.
“Don’t bring me into this,” she warns.
“You’re already in it,” he says.
She stares at him, stunned. Her eyes are wide and her mouth opens. He nods. You’re already in this. It makes her heart race.
“Think about the way you left,” he says, and his voice is calm, too calm. She’s suspicious and tries not to show it; this isn’t the conversation she should be having with him. Her fingers press into her forehead. “That was a half-assed goodbye, you know.”
“I can’t talk about this now,” she says quietly. She shifts back, almost standing. There’s a strange push of dizziness and she always thought that somehow, someway if they were to have this conversation, if they were to seriously have this conversation, she could handle. And maybe it’s the month, this long, apparent time of year.
“I know,” he says instead. He looks at her and the corners of her mouth curl slightly. The knots in her stomach tighten.
“So you’re bringing this up now?”
She shakes her head. He gestures to the scotch with his hand, and then to her.
“I’m bringing this up now.”
She says nothing. She grabs her bag, digging out some cash for their drinks. She doesn’t even bother asking him. She digs out a scarf from her bag first, wrapping it tightly around her neck. She grabs the cash then too, and a few dollars slip onto the floor.
Sighing, she shakes her head. She puts her money on the bar. House ignores it and brings his glass to his mouth.
“Don’t go,” he mumbles into his drink.
“And stay?” she rubs her eyes. “I’m trying to talk to you. For reasons, I - what are you doing? I can’t handle this right now. This isn’t -”
“There you go again.”
Is this what you want? She wants to ask. It seems like he’s searching for some sense of routine, of predictability. A part her wants to laugh, and the rest knows that she can’t handle it right now. It’s a mess. She’s a mess. She’s trying to figure herself out again and nothing seems to be working. She doesn’t want to regret coming back to the city, but there is so much here.
Her hands start to tremble and she reaches out, pulling the glass from his mouth. He looks at her in surprise, but she’s careful.
“What am I doing exactly?”
His eyes are bright. She tries to look away, but he leans in, serious, or something like serious.
“You’re looking for an out,” he says. He lifts his drink to her.
“What do you want me to say?” she hisses. “You catch me off-guard. I don’t know what to say to you half the time and then, then when I get the nerve or have that sane moment where I can talk to you.”
“At least you admit it.”
“And what about you?”
“Stop,” he warns.
She snorts. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to even touch that.”
They’re quiet. She looks away, into the bar. There are people lingering just around the entrance. A family peeks out from the front desk, heading towards the elevator and she has to remind herself that she’s in a hotel bar and there’s very little to expect anyway.
She slides her bag over her shoulder, digging her keys out of her pocket. This will be over soon, she tells herself. But she can’t help but wonder what he’s doing, why he’s come; he’s always been sort of unconventional in how he reaches out, but she’s too cautious and it’s still too soon. She hasn’t forgotten what she said to him.
Cameron takes a small step back. “Why are you really here, House?” Then she steps forward, picking up her wine glass. She finishes it off.
“You asked me to come.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“To listen,” he says dryly. “To your sad, sad story about losing your husband and your siblings and how it made you the person you are so that I can finally get you. That’s what you want to hear, isn’t?”
“Not really,” she mutters.
She finishes her drink off.
“Do you ever just listen? Have you?”
He’s quiet.
“I thought so,” she murmurs.
This is the part where she wants to tell him that she’s never expected much from him, that he should remember and give her that at the very least; but things never work this way. She’s just not going to pretend.
There is still what she’s told him.
Taking a step to him, she leans over him, over the chair and cupping his face. Her fingers spread against his jaw and she leans into him, her mouth brushing against his skin. She lingers and closes her eyes. Just because she can, she thinks. He exhales too though, loudly as his fingers press against her hip. His drink is somewhere next to him and she’s leaning in, heavily, as if not to touch it or acknowledge anything else.
Then she draws back. She doesn’t look at him. She doesn’t say goodbye. With her back to him, she manages to rub her eyes.
She heads out. Behind her, there’s a loud chuckle. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he calls.
Home has a message on her answering machine waiting for her. There is a part of her that expects House and that odd, manic way he has with trying to fix silences or trying to prolong everything else.
“Just wanted to - I don’t know,” her brother’s voice hits her living room, half-scrambled with the background of a bar. She hears someone yell the game and her mouth twists in some kind of absent recognition. Of course, she thinks.
But when she sighs, she sighs on cue with her brother’s voice.
“ - you’re crazy for going back,” he finishes. There is a laugh too and she listens too carefully. “I keep thinking that I haven’t gone far enough.”
This is the truth.
Her office door is open in the morning. She is not surprised. There are two coffees in her hand and when she walks inside, she passes House the second cup as she moves behind her desk.
“When are you leaving?” she asks, and it’s casual, almost too casual, in the kind of way that feels unexpected and amusing to her. She doesn’t smile and he’s holding his coffee, half-watching her and half-studying his fun. She catches the screen lighting up briefly.
“Does it matter?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“I don’t know yet.” He’s lying, she thinks. She doesn’t push though and sits. He leans forward, dropping his phone on her desk. “Why?’
She shrugs. His legs go over the corner of her desk. He stretches them out and winces and she starts to dig into her bag, pulling out some of her things. There’s a pile of messages on the corner and she picks them up, picking through them. She has to call her brother back.
“Sunday,” he says finally. “Sunday night. There’s a patient waiting for me or something. I don’t know. I thought they could handle it. I always think you can handle it - it’s why I picked you.”
She snorts. “That’s not why you pick people.”
She thinks of Chase then, briefly, and falls to sense of wariness and wonderment. Her ex-husband hasn’t walked into affection yet and she’s sure, if you asked him, it would be the same response for him too. They just decided to be adults, finally.
She looks up at House too and he’s watching her, waiting. The collar of his shirt is twisted up, scraping against his throat. Her fingers curl briefly.
“So,” he says.
Her eyes dart to the side. “We can keep talking about nothing,” she murmurs.
He picks up a file from her desk and starts to comb through it. Her gaze drops to his hands and he folds a few pages back, just a little too hard.
“I have nothing to say,” he says. He looks pointedly at her. “Are you going to talk about it?”
This is a bad idea, she thinks. There are things, bigger things, that she suddenly wishes for. Control. A cigarette. The last cigarette she had she was eighteen. There’s a faint memory of taste. Then, she thinks of the fire.
Her head drops back and her eyes close.
“Talk about what?” she murmurs. “My family? The fire? The fact that my parents are still a mess, after all these years, and my brother is my brother, and I’m - well, I’m back here, you know? I was three, House. My memories are sort of limited. And really, all I can tell you are stories about after. What it was like to grow up in that house; what it’s still like to come back and sit with my parents around this time of year. It’s appearances, really. It’s the appearance being okay, of keeping your personal life personal and the rest of it is supposed to fall into place. I am just as screwed up as the next person and not once, once have I tried to hide it from you. I just choose not to talk about it. Why? I have no idea. Maybe it’s because every time I decide to do it comes out into this mess of words and I can’t even begin to hear myself,” she stops and pauses, rubbing her eyes. A low sigh escapes her mouth. “Do you know what it’s like? Trying to figure yourself out after years and years of falling into some kind weird expectation of everything always being okay. You don’t. You don’t because no matter what happens, you’re still you and you know you’re still you. For whatever reason, you don’t know how to apologize for being you and that works, not matter what. So tell me, tell me what I’m supposed to talk about.”
“You could’ve told me this in Los Angeles,” he says. She doesn’t look up. She’s not angry when he says it. His legs drop off the corner of her desk and she catches his hand as it rubs hard against his thigh.
“I didn’t think you’d come,” she says softly.
He scoffs. “And you’re not coming back.”
A laugh slips from her mouth, unsteady and frank. She grasps her messages and then drops her elbows to her knees. Her hands go to her face. Of course, these conversations just come with House.
“My mother wouldn’t talk for months, you know. At least to my father,” she says. The words are coarse, particular. “That’s what I remember the most. I remember that and then I think, why the hell am I falling into these relationships?”
“Same reason I don’t want kids.”
She meets his gaze. Her mouth curls a little and she shakes her head.
“You don’t know what you want,” she says pointedly.
“I want to be happy,” he tells her.
There is something honest about the way he looks at her. There is nothing honest about the expectation, it’s something deeper, something stranger, and there’s a heaviness that twists inside of her. They stare at each other like this, even as she stands. He’s waiting for her and she feels it; it’s pressure and it isn’t, it’s who makes the next move.
“I mean it,” he says too. This is what breaks it.
Her gaze becomes hard. Her palms flatten against her desk and she turns away, just for a moment, to catch the time on her clock. She lets out a sigh, just for a moment, and then pushes herself up to stand.
“And I just want to get through this part of the year,” she says to him.
It hits her later in the day.
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