we'll never sleep (god knows, we'll try) 2/3
we'll never sleep (god knows, we'll try)
Cameron/Wilson; Cameron/House; Cameron/Chase; Wilson/Amber
Cameron nods. She knows this song. She’s done this dance.
Takes place in season four, starting with Cameron returning to Princeton-Plainsboro, and ending with Wilson's Heart. Part 2 of 3. Rated R.
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##
We’ll never sleep (god knows we’ll try)
The hospital is closed
##
She’s pulling up her hair as he rounds the corner.
She smiles lightly. “Cuddy told you.”
He laughs, shaking his head. “No, I recognized you when you came in,” he admits.
“Oh,” she says softly. It sounds more intimate than she thinks he intended.
“So uh, you and Chase are uh…”
She nods lightly, then pauses. “I…I don’t know,” she tells him, her eyes lined with worry. “I mean, I do know. We’re…trying.”
He waits.
She exhales and rolls her eyes. “I don’t know why that’s so hard to say,” she admits, crossing her arms.
He nods, and she’s not sure if he’s empathizing or simply being polite. “It makes sense,” he promises.
Her eyes reach for his. She can’t make sense of any of her decisions lately, and she wonders if he has hidden insight into her motives.
“Does it?” she asks.
Wilson opens his mouth to answer, then reconsiders. “You look good,” he settles on, touching her arm lightly. He flinches. “Not that you…you always look good, but I mean…”
Cameron laughs and rolls her eyes softly. “You look good, too,” she teases.
He shakes his head. “Does he know you’re back?”
She shrugs, a small smile on her face. “Foreman’s taking bets on how long it takes him to notice.”
Wilson grins. He pushes a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “What do I get for noticing you right away?” he asks?
She frowns lightly, but the corners of her lips curl up in spite of herself. “I guess you’ll have to wait and see.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Chase mutters, pulling the pink scrub shirt over his head. Cameron watches him, lips pursed slightly.
“Okay,” she says, after a beat.
“Are you coming to my place?” he asks, sliding into a tan sweater.
She considers. “Um…”
He rolls his eyes. “Yeah, okay.”
“What did I…”
“I just don’t know why I keep doing this,” he says, tossing his scrub cap into the locker. He reaches for his bag and slams the metal door shut. “I feel like it shouldn’t be this hard. I don’t know why you want it to be this hard.”
She opens her mouth to protest but comes up short. Sometimes he surprises her. Sometimes she forgets he does know her.
“Maybe we should cool this off a bit,” he says, sighing.
Her eyes widen. “Is that what you want?”
He looks up at her, annoyed. “No, Allison, it’s not what I want. What I want is for you to stay over or show me some sign that you actually want to commit. But you’re clearly not there yet. And I don’t want to force this on you. So maybe…maybe we can just take some time?”
She starts to panic internally, but nods. He’s being more than fair. He’s always more than fair.
He smiles sadly, kissing her lightly. “Let me know when you know what you want,” he whispers.
She’s sitting in his office when he arrives the next morning, her legs dangling over the right side of the chair.
He shuts the door behind him and sets his briefcase down. He slips out of his coat, tossing it onto the chair next to her, and leans against his desk, inches in front of her.
“I think I make bad decisions,” she says, staring up at the ceiling, her deck resting on the left side of the chair.
He tries not to smile, realizing she’s trying to be serious. “What did House do?”
She shakes her head, pushing herself upright to face Wilson. “This isn’t about House,” she says. “That would be too easy. It’s me.”
He frowns, watching her as she grapples internally.
“How can I help?”
She flashes him a smile and sighs. “You can’t. You’ve done enough. I don’t know why I’m here. I just…” She pauses, chucking lightly. “I think you’re the closest thing I have to a friend here,” she admits. “And yes, I know how pathetic that sounds.”
He softens. “We’re friends,” he insists.
She crosses her arms and shakes her head. “No we’re not.”
“We…” he starts, struggling to define their relationship.
She grins, tilting her head. “Exactly,” she tells him.
“I can be your friend, Allison,” he insists.
She looks up at him, considering.
“Alright,” she says, after a beat.
“Great,” he says, rolling his eyes lightly. “So what’s going on?”
She sighs. “I have to figure out how I feel about Chase.”
He nods. “Okay. Why’s that a problem?”
“Because…” she pauses, not sure she wants to say it out loud.
“Because he’s more into you than you are him,” he guesses.
Cameron frowns, but nods.
“Okay, that’s not the end of the world,” he insists. “It’s better than the other way around.”
She shakes her head, hand running over the back of her neck. “Not for me. The reverse? I can deal with that.” They both fall silent as the weight of her words falls over them.
“I don’t know why I can’t end it,” she admits, wincing slightly. “But if that’s what I wanted it would be easy. It’s like I’m blocked.”
Wilson looks up, as if looking into the office a few rooms away. “Maybe you need to get some things off your chest.”
Cameron sighs. “I’m not doing that,” she says bitterly. “I think I’m just having a crappy morning.”
“Well what does Chase say about all of this?” Wilson asks.
Cameron shrugs. “We’re taking some time apart,” she repeats, rolling her eyes.
“Ah,” he nods, a slight twinge of a smile crossing his face.
Cameron doesn’t miss it. “No,” she says, pointing up to him. “See, that’s why we can’t be friends.”
“What did I do?” When caught, he feigns ignorance.
She furrows her brow. “It’s just a never ending game. I don’t even think it’s fun for anyone,” she mutters.
Wilson can’t help himself. “It was a little fun,” he blurts out.
Cameron narrows her eyes, but she softens instantly. “But this isn’t about House,” she repeats.
“Right,” Wilson nods. “You said that already.”
Now it’s her turn to look caught.
She catches the glint of light on her glass as he pushes the door open. She frowns lightly and stares down at the slight amber hue of her drink. Her hand wraps around the glass with ease as she swigs the last of it.
“I’m sorry, I must have opened the door to the past,” he says in that easy tone of his that used to leave goosebumps on her skin.
Cameron shifts in her seat. “I wasn’t blonde then, was I?” she says lightly.
He takes the stool next to her, his cane resting between them, softly grazing her leg. “In reality or my fantasies?” he asks evenly.
Cameron turns to face him. “I always assumed you’d picture me as a redhead.”
House’s eyes wander. “Well now I am,” he says, leaning into the joke. They both smile lightly, politely, almost. He orders another two drinks, one scotch each and she frowns at the oversight.
“You weren’t waiting for me,” he says, a hint of surprise in her voice.
Cameron leans forward, puzzled. “Why would I be?” she asks,
He sighs and she knows this isn’t about her or him or whatever she might be worried about. It’s about some case, some puzzle, and he’s hoping she’ll serve him up a piece of inspiration that has been staring him in the face the whole time.
She takes a sip of the scotch, her mouth turning up at the corners as she swallows. But she reaches out again for a second sip.
“Two years ago, you’d be here waiting for me,” he tells her matter-of-factly.
She blinks up at him. “Things change, House.” She winces. Their favorite argument.
He nods, his steely blues watching her profile. He turns slightly, his knee pressing into the side of her thigh.
She keeps her hands on the bar.
“But you’ve changed,” he says slowly, trying to figure out what’s different.
She starts to protest, but isn’t ready for the fallout. She’s tired.
House eyes her drink and considers. “But one thing hasn’t.”
She looks down towards the floor, resting her chin on her palm. “What’s that?”
“You drink that scotch, even though you don’t like the taste,” he says. “Always have. And you don’t hide your dissatisfaction. But you don’t get rid of it. You don’t ask for something different. You tolerate it.”
She frowns up at him. “So?”
He shrugs, bringing his own scotch to his lips. “You don’t enjoy it, but you stick around. Remind you of anyone?”
She purses her lips.
“Also blonde, even more annoying, grating accent…”
Cameron sighs, silencing him by turning away. “I didn’t ask you to come here,” she reminds him.
“But this is our bar,” he reminds her. “Do I need to run you through all the memories?”
“Oh, you mean like, that’s the booth where you passed out from taking too many pain pills, that’s the table where you insulted me for an hour straight after Stacey left. And over there’s where I had to balance you against me until the taxi showed up to take you home. Powerful stuff.”
House flashes her a nervous smile. “Told you.”
She rolls her eyes and softens. “It’s not our bar,” she tells him. “You don’t come here without me.”
“How would you know?”
“Because,” she tells him slowly. “You couldn’t. Because you’re more sentimental than you’d like people to know.”
He struggles to think of a joke. “I know you are, but what am I,” he says childishly.
Cameron shoots him a look as she finishes her scotch.
“You’re going to go back to him,” House says slowly.
Cameron nods. “I know.”
House shakes his head. “Why?”
Cameron exhales, pushing her glass to the edge of the bar and climbing to her feet. She wraps her black wool coat around her body and turns back to him.
“You don’t want to know why,” she says, tossing her hair over her jacket collar. “We both know you’d rather I keep you guessing,” she tells him.
It’s a quickly scribbled note underneath a lukewarm cup of coffee, but House catches it the next morning when he follows Wilson into his office.
Thanks for everything.
That’s all, no initials, no pronouns, no expounding on what everything is.
In the grand scheme of this never-ending dance, it’s really nothing.
But there’s an implication there, House knows, and there’s a relationship he can’t figure out, something he isn’t a part of, and something Wilson won’t share with him. It’s off bounds, and it makes him livid if he thinks about it for too long, because she’s not Wilson’s girl, and this was never supposed to happen.
Wilson catches the gift and the note and continues talking to House, some anecdote about Cuddy and Taub and he’s barely registering anything he’s saying.
“Don’t you keep your office locked?” he asks flatly, settling down in Wilson’s guest chair. A blonde hair falls from the fabric onto the shoulder of his blazer, but it’s a detail lost to him..
Wilson meets his eye. “Usually, yes.”
“Hmm,” House says, nodding lightly. He can’t remember if Wilson unlocked the door and it’s gnawing at him. But he also can’t ask the question. The implication is too much for him.
But he knows those loopy g’s cold.
He grabs the coffee, a light water ring blurring with the ink.
“Tell Cameron thanks,” he says, before heading out.
There’s a Christmas happy hour at Sharrie’s. The air smells of cinnamon and stale whiskey, and something about the multicolored lights and faint dusting of snow gets to Cameron everytime.
She squeezes Chase’s hand, laughing as Thirteen (Remy, she reminds herself) tells a funny story about Foreman and House. She fits here, somehow, and it’s easy, and nothing’s seemed easy to her in a long time.
There’s a darker side of Christmas though, that she tries to shut out. There’s the flashing of heart monitors, the sound of a crash cart, and her husband, Eric, fading away at 11:58 on Christmas Eve. There’s Joe’s hand on hers, burning, and a grief so deep, it’s bled into the fabric of who she is. Who she’ll always be.
A lingering sadness that gets confused for other traits. Observer’s choice. For Chase, it’s reserve. She overthinks everything and he likes thinking of her this way, black-rimmed glasses falling down her nose as she tries to come to the right answer. For House it’s a savior-complex, an innate need to fix everything around her, to control what she can to make up for her lack of control. For Foreman, it’s a bit of snobbery. She falls quiet at the wrong jokes, holds back when others are reminiscing, and there’s an air that she might think she’s better than all of them.
Only Wilson sees it for what it really is. A melancholy that should have dissipated by now, but instead animated itself within her. It’s not rational and it’s changing her. She’s not light anymore, but she forgets this too often, and tries to be.
“We could visit my parents’ house in Aspen,” Chase tells her as they’re waiting at the bar for their drinks. “Get away for a week.”
She hesitates and he watches her, always overthinking.
“Sure,” she says at last, trying to remember how to be breezy and spontaneous.
They won’t go, she knows. Chase’s tangled relationship with his parents will stop him last minute. And they’ll likely argue about something else before then. Why they don’t live together. Why she spends more nights at her place than his. Why he doesn’t have a key to her place. The boring, practical reasons that make up who they are.
House watches her as she takes her drink, a bourbon neat, same as Chase, and the significance lingers between them.
She averts her eyes.
Because for tonight, they’re happy. She’s happy. And she lets herself slide into it, giving Wilson a quick nod when he smiles at her, Amber’s arm entwined with his.
Of course it can’t last. The argument explodes in her head. Not an argument, she reminds herself. It’s too one-sided. With her and Chase, it’s always one sided. She doesn’t stand for anything, not really. She’s just trying to keep her head about water, and each time he claws at her, she feels herself slip below.
Chase doesn’t know when to let things die.
“It’s a simple question, Allison,” he says, for the hundredth time that day.
Cameron tucks her bangs behind her ears and sighs. “Not at work,” she hisses to him. She knows Taub’s likely taking bets with the team. Did she or didn’t she? And she can already hear the bored tone in Foreman’s voice when he tries to change the subject.
She leaves him there, in the middle of the ER, and she’s grateful when he doesn’t follow her.
“Going up?”
Her eyes flicker up to House’s, and she doesn’t try to hide her disappointment as she steps inside of the elevator.
House smirks, tapping the 3rd floor button with the bottom of his cane.
“I can’t remember. Are we allowed to be alone together?” he asks curiously, watching her face.
Cameron sighs. Of course he heard. “Stay out of it, House.”
His eyes twinkle. “Apparently, I’m already in it. If you know what I mean.”
She rolls her eyes lightly and stares straight ahead. She can feel his agitation. She’s tired of playing his games.
“I mean, maybe he’s asking questions about the wrong doctor,” he says lightly. It sounds like a threat. “Maybe he should chat with a certain oncologist, instead.”
It’s the closest he’s ever come to acknowledging that night, and she knows he’s not sure if there have been others. It kills him, she can tell, the not knowing. That anyone could have a relationship with Wilson he wasn’t directly involved in. It’s not about her, she’s sure. But it’s also not not about her.
She rests her head against the side of the wall, ignoring him.
House’s smile falls and he turns away from her, looking down at the floor. “You used to be fun,” he says, and she lets the insult linger. “What are you going to tell him?” he asks softly.
“What?” she asks, startled by the softness in his voice.
“Well he’s going to ask again, I’m sure. And you’re going to have to answer, eventually.” He pauses to look at her. “So what are you going to tell him?”
Cameron sighs, crossing her arms. “The truth,” she says slowly, blinking up at him. She turns away and bites down on her lip. “I’m going to tell him we didn’t.”
House nods. “Oh, that truth,” he says, suppressing a chuckle. He stares down at the floor as the elevator opens, his hand brushing quickly against hers as he steps off. He turns back, using his cane out to keep the doors from closing and waits for her. He knows where she’s going, but now she can’t bring herself to get off.
She folds her hands and sighs. “I changed my mind,” she says through gritted teeth.
He grins, because he’s getting to her, and that’s really what the past few years have boiled down to anyway.
“Well,” he says, pulling his cane back. “At least we have our stories straight.”
Her eyes burn into his as the door shuts between them.
He’s furious, hand slamming on the bar, and she has to lay her hand across his to calm him down.
“James, talk to me,” she says solemnly.
This isn’t planned. Or maybe it is. She’s here for a drink after work and Chase is out with some college friends. But Wilson spends his free time with Amber or House and she hasn't asked him here. Their friendship crosses a line and they both know it.
But he did come to her bar, she thinks.
“I’m gonna kill him,” he mutters, and she laughs, in spite of herself, because they’ve been here before and it almost doesn’t matter what House has done this time.
He softens instinctively. The bartender eyes her and she waves him away.
“Whatever it is, you should probably talk to Amber about it,” she says cautiously.
Wilson meets her eye.
“It’s not that I don’t want to,” she blurts out quickly. “It’s just…”
He nods and they let the silence hang between them. She slowly pulls her hand off of his and presses it into the edge of the bar counter.
“You’re right,” he says, shaking his head. “But she’ll just play into the game, trying to top him, and I…”
Cameron nods. She knows this song. She’s done this dance.
“One drink,” she offers, nodding to the bartender. “One hour, and I promise the weight of whatever he’s done won’t feel so terrible.”
He smiles, sitting down next to her. He orders her an old fashioned and his scotch neat, and they talk about nothing important - they're very careful not to. Instead they focus on the little moments that they’re trying to ascribe higher meaning to.
But eventually the talking fades, the music softens, and she realizes it's later than she's intended.
Her fingers cling to the glass, condensation sticking to her skin. He's waiting on her cue and it's dizzying, because she doesn't know him in a relationship. She doesn't know how to do this.
“Hour’s up,” she says, softly, eyeing their empty glasses.
Their eyes flicker towards each other. They both know how this would go, if they didn’t have other commitments. If she didn’t have a moral code and there weren't watchful eyes lingering.
Cameron considers for a minute, remembering the flush of her cheeks and the burning of her collarbone that last night, nearly a year before.
She blushes. “It’s for the best,” she tells him.
When he agrees too easily, she realizes he might actually have done it. He might actually be happy.
Everything next happens fast.
One minute they’re on a bus, inducing House into a hallucinogenic state, and the next, her feet are rushing down the corridor, heart wrenching as she watches Wilson clinging to Amber’s helpless body.
She pushes open the door to the women’s room and throws up in the trash can.
She glares at her hollowed out reflection in the mirror and forces her breathing to slow. She waits until her eyes dilate again, then rinses out her mouth and pulls her hair into a loose ponytail. She lets the numbness wash over her before stepping outside.
Wilson’s saying his goodbyes, sobbing, and she can’t watch this. It’s too intimate.
Her eyes flicker to the locker room, where Chase is getting ready. They’re supposed to meet Foreman, she remembers.
She changes course without thinking it through, stepping into House’s vacant hospital room. She sits down cautiously in the chair next to him, and she surmises Cuddy must have moved it there. She doesn’t let her mind wander down that road.
There’s no time.
She can feel Wilson breaking, and she feels like she should be there to help him. She knows what he’s experiencing, and yet she can’t seem to figure out what she can do about it.
She’s powerless all over again.
It’s feels natural to lash out at House. It's even more natural to seek him out. But instead of screaming at him, she breaks into a sob, loudly, as the heart monitor beeps. Everything outside the door feels too heavy and unfair to face.
His hand twinges and she sees his eyes flicker open.
It only takes him a moment.
“Don’t worry, I’ll live, and still be in plenty of need for repair,” he coughs, squeezing her finger lightly.
She pulls her hand back light she’s been burned and stands up quickly, backing up slowly.
His eyes widen, taken aback by her motions. He’s misread her again, and as usual, that’s more interesting to him than whatever is actually going on.
She shakes her head. “Wilson’s right,” she says slowly. “It should have been you.”
If it stings, he doesn’t acknowledge it. She’s left behind any illusions that she can hurt him anymore.
He frowns lightly and takes in a slow breath.
“If you really believe that,” he says softly. “Then what the hell are you doing in here?”
She flinches.
His eyes register her movement and she knows he’s won this one.
“Wilson’s going to need you. Chase probably needs you. The team is crushed,” he guesses, though he doesn’t sound particularly sorry. “So what does it say that you’re in here with me.”
Cameron swallows her guilt and crosses her arms.
It’s nothing she hadn’t been thinking herself.
Part three.