House Fic: this is kind of about you

[fated_addiction]

I don’t know. I don’t know. Nostalgia kick? A fond farewell? Snow? Weird week? Things just happen? I need another tea. It’s just like that though. And let’s be honest, I can’t say no to Jennifer Morrison’s pretty, pretty face.

THIS IS KIND OF ABOUT YOU
nobody really says it out loud: it’s complicated. house, cameron, and the beat of that drum.
house md. general spoilers | 3,339 words | pg | house/cameron & appearances

-

The baby is not a baby anymore.

Rachel has huge eyes.

“So Chicago,” Cuddy says by way of greeting, the third or fourth time around. Finally. Cameron has the grace to tear her gaze away from the happy kid and the way she digs her hands into her plate of half-finished macaroni.

“Oh.” She bites her lip. Her fingers push at her hair. Then it’s old news: “It’s fine. Chicago. I like the ER.”

“You do more than like it,” the other woman says. “You’re doing well.”

It’s all weirdly nonchalant and she stares, stares at her former boss, both suspicious and confused. She has been trying really hard to be pleasant since the call came for lunch. Lunch is polite. Lunch will be over when the check finally comes.

But the truth is just as simple. She had a messy divorce. Her friends are the same and they are closer. She’s tired. She enjoys heading up Emergency Medicine. It’s been years. She’s good. Her parents still think she works too hard and worry about her lack of every settling down again and again.

“I guess,” she says slowly, and baby Rachel is at it again, totally uninterested in anything else. Her fingers dig into the plate and it makes this sound, a squish and something else. She giggles, grinning at her mother and then at Cameron.

“It still feels like moving forward,” Cameron admits too.

Cuddy nods. She leans back in her seat. She picked the restaurant. It’s a few blocks too close to the hospital. She gets it. There is a peace offering of an out and an escape. Things don’t change.

“I envy you,” she says. “Doesn’t it feel right?” Cuddy asks, or doesn’t, and her dark hair falls over her eyes. She wears a blue coat, the collar cutting into her throat.

“No.”

“Hmm?” Cuddy shifts her gaze to her daughter. She reaches and combs her fingers along her cheek.

This is not the first time Cameron thinks of House like this.

“Moving forward is still a headache,” she says.

They have an arrangement.

She does not tell Cuddy this. This isn’t her business. There are plenty of things that are not her business when it comes to Cuddy too. She thinks this is why she respects the other woman the most; she has a concept of space and sticks to it.

Lunch ends. She walks with Rachel, Cuddy, and their matching jackets - blue, too navy, too we’re just visiting the city - out into the city air. It’s cold and it feels bitter against her cheeks. There is snow too. It starts to curl against her space and the ends of her scrubs are starting to peek out from her boots.

“I should go,” she says. She fingers her phone.

Cuddy smiles, flashing her teeth. “Yeah, sure.” She adjusts Rachel on her hip and the little girl on her hip waves. “Thanks for humoring me,” she says too. “I appreciate it.”

Cameron nods. “No problem.”

She turns. Her hands dig into her pockets and she slides in between a couple who starts to head for the restaurant.

“Cameron!”

Her lips purse and she tries not to sigh. She turns and Cuddy is watching her with Rachel.

“Sorry,” she says awkwardly. She sighs heavily. “I just -”

“It was good to see you,” Cameron intones.

The older woman laughs. “No, it wasn’t.” Her lips curl. “But I appreciate it - you know, humoring me. I mean it. You - I never liked you, I guess.”

“You guess?” she asks dryly, and she’s walking closer to the other woman. She stops and laughs. “It’s okay,” she says too.

Cuddy shakes her head. “I know.” Her lips twist into a smirk.

“Did you just guilt-pay for lunch?”

Cuddy laughs again. “You ate it.”

“I’ve been on my feet for awhile; give me a little credit.” Cameron rubs her forehead. “I know this is weird, I appreciate that it’s weird, but I don’t know - why me?”

“You were closest to him,” she says.

Cameron blinks. Then she blinks again. Her mouth opens and closes and she stares hard at the other woman. She stands, completely content too, nuzzling her daughter’s cheeks and then jaw. The girl giggles, oblivious and suddenly, her mind flashes back to standing in House’s office years ago.

That’s not true, she wants to say. In fact, it would be her immediate reaction. But she holds herself back and lets out a soft laugh, tired even. Her hand reaches back and her fingers curl around her neck, rubbing into her throat and shoulder.

“I thought you were gone,” Cameron decides to say.

“I was,” she retorts. Rachel makes a sound from her hip. Then she sighs. “I am,” she reiterates. “It doesn’t mean that I don’t think about him. It doesn’t mean that I regret a million things.”

“So then why lunch?” Cameron presses. Her eyes narrow. “I mean … it’s weird, really.”

“You were at Rachel’s -”

“You invited both of us.” She licks her lips. The snow brushes into her hair and she reaches for her ponytail, turning it loose. “You actually liked Chase too, you know.” More, she doesn’t say.

“I did,” Cuddy agrees. Then unspoken isn’t exactly denied.

Cameron shakes her head. “So you came to town because?”

Cuddy stares at her. Her eyes are kind and it’s unnerving. She presses a kiss to Rachel’s cheek and then lets her down. The little girl sinks into the snow and giggles, stretching her arms back.

She watches Cuddy relax. It’s not immediate. It just kind of happens; her shoulders sink and she breathes. She adjusts the collar of her coat and then smiles too.

“I’m getting married,” she says.

Cameron does not go to Princeton.

There is no plane ticket. There is no phone call. She sits on this information for weeks. She forgets about it. She remembers. She’s busy and trauma and staffing are enough to keep her preoccupied and way too busy to care.

But when she does remember, she is sitting in her office. She pulls her legs up onto the chair and her door is shut. There is an email from Foreman, which she ignores, a conference in San Diego, which she ignores too, her lawyer and her brother, who is moving to Toronto, which she ignores as well.

Her laptop pings.

The video icon is blinking. She snorts, shuffling the chair closer to her desk. She rubs her neck and then reaches forward.

She accepts.

House’s face appears on her screen. He grins. The scruff is dark and swallows at his throat.

“Yo,” he greets. “You’re not ignoring me,” he says.

She rolls her eyes.

“I thought about it,” she says.

“You’re terrible at it though.” He leans back against his chair. “Given that you ironically answer all my consult requests.”

“I don’t answer all of them. And technically I’m not talking to you. I’m talking to people who work for you. And Foreman. He’s persistent.”

“Semantics,” he shrugs.

“Whatever,” she sighs. She pushes at the edge of her desk. “Do you want something then?”

He shrugs again. “You answered.”

“That has nothing to do with it.”

Her eyes narrow. She meets his gaze too. Her hair is loose and falls along her throat and shoulders, the ends dragging against her throat.

“Too bad we never slept with each other,” he drawls.

“What does that have to do with anything?” she shoots back. He laughs and the sound is low.

“Mechanics,” he says. “Reasonable banter,” he says too. “Sexual tension that lasts for a lifetime. Except, like, I’m totally going to kick the bucket before you do.”

Her throat burns and she looks away.

“That’s not funny,” she murmurs.

“It’s true and you know it.”

He’s lazy and he’s fishing. She knows. This is why third parties were always a luxury, including states between them among other things.

But House is never one to let go, and she is well aware of the fact that he drove a car through Cuddy’s house, that there was the prison stint, and he is, as always, complacently okay. These things don’t surprise her and years later they manage not to bother her either. It’s a strange weight instead and she files it away as best as she can.

This is the arrangement, you know.

He calls back around later that day, at the end of her shift. Her secretary transfers the call to her cell.

“I don’t want to talk about your mortality,” she half-snaps, and he laughs. The connection in her ear cracks and fizzes. She adjusts the phone and starts to pack her things for home.

“We’re not,” he says. “We’re just talking.”

“That’s stupid.”

“I wanted to know when you were going to tell me you had lunch with Cuddy, that’s all.”

“What?” she blinks. Her cheeks flush and she stops, her hand hovering over her bag. “Excuse me?” she asks again.

“Lunch,” he drawls. “Cuddy.” She imagines him grinning in spite. “You suck at this game, Cameron.”

“File that under things that are none of your damn business.”

Then she hears the smirk. “Whatever. Awkward city.”

“House,” she warns.

“Are you flustered?”

“House.”

“So you’re flustered. So it sucked. Figures.”

“You are the worst,” she says tiredly. She pinches the bridge of her nose. Then she shoves everything in her bag.

She doesn’t want to talk to him, she thinks. It’s like one weird flashback after another. On top of that, it’s all on the surface, everything, and even though it’s been awhile, nothing in the air between the two of them feels clear.

She knows better than to look for closure as it is.

“Nah,” he says. “It seems like something she’d do. That’s all. Or you’d do. I don’t know. I’m out of practice.”

“You were never in practice,” she rolls her eyes.

“There’s that.” He sounds like he shrugs.

There is a pause too. She grabs her jacket and her keys and decides, then, that she doesn’t want to think about.

But she knows the news.

“Are you okay?” she asks finally, her voice softening. She draws back her shoulders and tucks her arms into her jacket. It feels heavy and sinks into the rest of her clothes.

“Stop it,” he says. It rolls into his voice, the sharpness. She thinks of Cuddy, at the lunch, the sudden awareness of the other woman’s happiness, or how she has now decided to translate it, between her daughter and the circles under her eyes.

She remembers smaller things too: the conversation they had just before Rachel became a fixture; her marriage to Chase; how impossible small and large that world they were in, House’s world, seemed then; everything marginalized to avoid the competition they all seemed to have trying to find a place with him; and now, there is the aftermath.

She wets her lips. She moves too, to a mirror by her door and stares at her reflection. Her cheeks are flushed.

“It’s just a question,” she manages. She offers the out. “That’s all.”

There is a pause. Then there is the truth.

“Not with you,” he says.

Fact one?

She does not get on a plane, because if she were to get on a plane, it would be feeding into years and years of bad habits, and so she knows better, to not get on a plane, not placate him and not worry about him because an honest House, is a brutal House, and no one should be left alone with him.

Fact two. There is a fact two.

Cuddy’s invitation arrives in the mail. The wedding is in California. There are ribbons on the edges. Everything screams this is for my daughter. The wedding is quick. Cameron does not judge. It’s symptomatic. She knows all about circumstances. She knows how to get tired. She is tired. She burned her invitations weeks into returning to Chicago. She is not planning to go.

Fact three.

There is a conference. There is always a conference.

New York is a safety net.

An old professor of hers gives a talk about ethics in the New Year. She listens and yawns and checks a patient’s status on her phone.

House is here. Foreman emailed her about a favor. She didn’t reply. They have the same hotel. She could read if he is on the sixth floor or the eighteenth. But the ball’s in his court. The ball’s always been in House’s court. It’s just how this goes.

She still has dinner at the hotel bar, which consists of a beer and sweet potato fries. The bartender tells her that he likes her eyes, that they’re blue or a mysterious shade of green and it makes her laugh because it’s just that stupid.

He makes an appearance around beer number three.

“Cider? That’s offensive. To beer.”

She smiles into the lip of her bottle. “Scotch,” she says to the bartender. “Neat,” she says too, and House drops a hand against the back of her neck.

The bartender flushes and disappears. House takes the stool next to her and his leg rests against hers.

“Babysitting me?”

“Your ego is showing its age,” she says dryly.

He snorts. “Whatever. Foreman is terrible at this game.”

“Mmm.” She takes another sip of her beer and crosses her legs. Her skirt slides over her knee. “I think it’s really about the insurance policy, but that’s just me.”

He snorts. But the corners of his mouth pull. She hides a smile into her bottle too. They don’t look at each other and Cameron turns her gaze to the news scroll on the television over the bar.

They’re quiet too. The bartender drops the scotch glass in front of her. She pushes it with her fingers to House.

“She called me.”

“Oh.” She rolls her neck. It cracks. “I’m sorry?”

He scoffs. “I didn’t answer.” He pauses. “I thought it was the right thing to do, or whatever.”

“You don’t like confrontation,” she says calmly.

“Is that what it’s called?”

She shrugs. He leans forward, his fingers catching in her hair. He twists a few strands into his fingers too, ignoring the scotch, and then dragging them in between them.

“So this is real,” he says.

“Uh-huh.” She curls her fingers around his hand and tugs at it. He doesn’t pull away from her hair though. “It hasn’t been this long in awhile either, I guess.”

“You guess?” His voice is dry.

She shrugs.

“Would you have gone?” he asks then, and he does pull back, dropping the strands of her hair. They hit her shoulder and his knee is pressing harder into her leg.

“To the wedding?” She licks her lips. “No,” she says. “I sent a present,” she says too. “It’s the polite thing to do.”

“She wanted you to tell me.”

“Wilson told you,” she points out, and it’s a guess, it’s the right guess, because House’s mouth twitches and he shrugs. She assumes that Foreman and Chase were invited too.

“So why did she tell you?”

Cameron finishes her beer. The cider licks the back of her throat.

“No idea,” she admits. “Solidarity?” Then she laughs at her words. “I imagine it was like anything else when we talked. She told me because you’re you and we’ll always have that weird sense of loyalty to you being that connection.”

“That’s bullshit,” he says lazily.

“Whatever.” She turns and smiles at him. Then she laughs. “You’re inability to take responsibility is always funny to me.”

“Lies,” he deadpans. She raises an eyebrow and he smirks too. “And you’re so accepting too - all the time.”

She shrugs.

Her head’s back in the office again. Her phone on the bar buzzes and lights up. She ignores it. She remembers instead what it was like to stand in front of her.

“No,” she says slowly.

“Then?” he asks. Her mouth opens too: “Do you really want to do this?”

They stare at each other. The bartender swings by again and takes her bottle. His gaze is forlorn and Cameron cannot hide a groan in her hand.

She rubs her eyes.

“I don’t really know what you want me to say,” she answers.

“So?”

Her laugh is sharp.

“You said a lot of things,” he adds, and the problem, here, is he makes it sound so reasonable. She wants to hate him for it. This isn’t what she does though.

It’s still the strangest thing to think about, how she’s never actually hated him. There’s disappointment, there’s always been disappointment, and to her, she thinks, that’s the worst kind of feeling. It holds a tremendous amount of weight that you just can’t get back and doesn’t change.

“I did,” she agrees finally. “Then again, so did you.”

“Yeah,” he sighs. He downs his scotch and stands, moving to hover over her.

It happens so suddenly: his palm is at her shoulder, her breathing shifts and her throat is tight, he’s staring at her, staring at her hard, and she thinks, just briefly, what would she do if he kissed her - it’s so strange, the thought, easy to add to the list, but it’s his mouth that touches her forehead.

She expects him to say something, he doesn’t, but he does hover and stay right there.

Her hand moves.

Her fingers stretch and open against his chest. She touches the buttons of her shirt, picking lightly at them with her nails.

“House,” she murmurs.

“Shut up,” he says lightly.

She tilts her head and meets his gaze under her lashes. Her fingers move to his mouth. He bites at her fingers.

“I’m not sleeping with you.”

“I know.” He seems amused. “You’re a grown up now.”

She rolls her eyes.

“I know,” he says again, and then awkwardly: “I don’t expect you to. I never did. That’s the stupid and … scary part.”

“Yeah,” she breathes.

Then she thinks about it, because she’s always going to think about it, as these things never go away. He looks so young, suddenly, and his cheeks are hot, they feel hot as she realizes she’s dragging her hand against his face.

She leaves tomorrow, she wants to say. Should. Should. It’s just easier not to - like so many things, and, if anything, she will not use collateral as an excuse.

Sliding off the stool, she pushes herself onto her toes. Her mouth catches the corner of his mouth. Her eyes close and it’s all weirdly reminiscent of before. He could stop her. He won’t. She won’t let him either. It’s all about the cycle.

He does turn his mouth, and it presses back into hers, flat and wet and sharp. She pulls her teeth against the back of her lip and then sort of chokes on a sigh. It’s kiss, but it’s not a kiss, and she has no idea what she’s doing except that she’s close to him and it’s still this easy and there is nothing stranger than nonchalance. This is ridiculous, she thinks. This is a terrible idea, she thinks. Collateral.

But then she still has the presence of mind.

She kisses him.

He tastes the same.

( - and when his mouth sweeps back over hers, when he bites at her lip and the bartender whistles low, it’s the sound of the sports’ highlights in her ears, ringing away as her fists her fingers through his shirt, holding him hard, too hard, hard enough so that her knuckles are white and she swallows her own moan.)

That’s all.

They end up sharing a cab to the airport. Don’t ask why.

Her ticket flashes on her phone. It says nonstop to Chicago. He could be driving back or taking the train but this is about taking Foreman’s money, or Karma, whatever.

She has a fist in the seat between them. Their driver is singing along to Springsteen and it’s terrible. She should be pissed. Her head tilts though and he hands her back her sunglasses.

House’s fingers graze her knuckles.