Fic: you could be more understanding
you could be more understanding
house md ; house/cameron ; PG ; 3,262 words
when leaving, know that there is always going to be part of you that are ready to follow. everybody’s restless. lockdown.
notes: For blueheronz. I could write a book out of our emails. *laughs* Anyways. Unintentional series? I think so. This is the sequel to check your facts. As I’m still working out lots and lots of my issues. While watching Miami Medical. Happens.
-
There are unopened emails. They sit in a folder that says untitled as if it were ready to make that kind of joke. They blur in the right light though, when her computer sits closest to the window while she walks through her day, at the end of the night, through patient files and old phone calls.
It’s months after she leaves again, House walks into her office.
She tries not to blink. “This is nice,” he says.
He buys her coffee. Or Cameron buys herself coffee; it’s a practiced habit. It feels kind of funny too, seeing him in Chicago without any sort of warning or notice, or even some push on her part.
But it’s midweek, and they’re standing in a coffee shop, half a block away from the hospital like it’s neutral ground and like they haven’t done this before, many times, without thinking. They stand away from the line and she looks at him, studying, watching and waiting for House to say something familiar for her to latch onto. He doesn’t.
“Haven’t been here for a while,” he says casually. She doesn’t know if he’s talking about the city or seeing her. She remembers the last time she was in Princeton and the short, almost strange conversation they decided to have.
“Small talk?” she asks.
His mouth curls. They step forward, closer to the counter to watch one of the girls start to make their coffee. She studies the rough outline of a beard against his face, the shadow that stretches and suits him nonetheless.
“I didn’t know you were doing small talk now,” she adds.
She leans lightly against the counter, then pushes back and turns. She’s fidgeting, pulling her fingers along the ends of the sleeves of her jacket. In front of her, Chicago unfolds against the window and it causes her to sigh. It’s only been a couple of months, a couple more since she’s last been in Princeton - it’s just easier to refer to the time as that.
“First you show up in my emergency room, then you’re taking me to coffee - along I took you to coffee, that hasn’t changed. But small talk?”
“Isn’t that what you do?” he shoots back, and she laughs, softly, because it’s funny in a way that it shouldn’t be. He leans against the counter as they wait, his cane sliding over the tiles with a scratch. “And anyways,” he says, “what do you care?”
She shrugs.
“This isn’t about me.”
“No,” he agrees. “It isn’t.”
They falter. Cameron keeps her gaze to the windows and the city. Across the coffee shop, there’s a parking garage and she watches the transition between people and cars. It’s still strange being back, she thinks, and seeing friends that are only old friends, and her parents who still struggle with her decision, and walking straight back into a mess of old memories that she thought she came to terms with.
She won’t tell him this, although she could; the difference between her relationship with House, and her relationship with everyone else, is that between the two of them, she’s sure there are more kept secrets than anyone else. The difference is, however, is that she’s never really let him seen her at her worse. And somehow, he seems to understand that it’s something he has to earn. This is part of that distance.
“This isn’t permanent either,” she says then, awkwardly linking the conversation together. He looks at her. She meets his gaze. “Chicago,” she tells him. “It’s just good to be some place that I know.”
“Princeton.”
She scoffs. He smirks. He picks up his cane too, switching it from hand to hand. He offers nothing about anyone else. She’s almost relieved.
“You would say that.”
“I’m here for a conference,” he tells her, or lies, but telling her would amount to the same thing. She listens for a different pitch in his voice, a shift from low to lower, in that kind of way that she still hopes to be familiar with. But she can remember the last time she talked to him, and the last time he talked to her, because in the end, those will always be too separate things.
The girl at the bar brings Cameron her coffee first. She smiles at her too, again, because she comes her from the hospital on an odd day. Cameron smiles back softly. She looks at House.
“And how’s the conference going?”
“You know, they’re all the same.”
“I don’t know,” she says. “The last time I went on a conference with you, you nearly got arrested and I wanted to leave you there, but somehow, someway Cuddy talked me out of doing that.”
“I remember that,” he says with amusement.
Cameron shakes her head. House leans into the counter and reaches for a coffee lid, spinning it between his fingers.
“You want to know why I’m here,” he guesses, and she’s surprised at the sudden shift in his voice. She picks at something, meeting his gaze, and he leans forward, almost taking her space. She remembers their moment again; she won’t call it a kiss, or a pass, or even something that she’s supposed to hold to. This isn’t how it works
But he’s watching her, waiting. She wants to understand that.
“I can assume you’re not here for the conference,” she murmurs.
He chuckles.
“You could.”
He shrugs too. She’s tempted to ask about Cuddy again, or even Lydia, the Lydia, which is something that she finds herself thinking about from time to time.
It’s the memory, of course, of facing the idea of House, one idea of House when she was still learning, still watching, and there was Stacy. This is different, she thinks, or was different, different in the way that she still feels about talking about her own memories, about her husband. Cameron’s always been a believer in small moments, small changes, and now knowing this, knowing that he gave that to her, scares her a little more.
He’s here. She’s left with another one of his secrets. She’s more than aware that she gave him one more.
“It’s different, you know.”
She looks at him. She grips her coffee. He’s peering into the bar, watching the girl as she struggles with his coffee.
“Not because you’re not there,” he continues, and his voice is dry, practiced, as if he were hoping to catch her. “It’s different because everyone else is the same, same motivations, same excuses to move on, to move into something new - predictable really and boring too - but then it’s different. I care less, maybe?”
“You never cared to begin with.”
He shrugs. “There’s that. There’s always that.”
“Is there?”
He meets her gaze, as if he were expecting her to shy away. Cameron’s mouth shifts with some amusement and she shakes her head. She doesn’t miss it, she thinks. She doesn’t miss the random, strange and unpredictable moments where he’d drop in and talk to her. But it wouldn’t be them talking, and she was always weighed with some expectation to return the favor, as if she were the one that could keep House as House. It’s nothing she wanted to do.
“You know what you’re saying?”
“I do,” she says slowly. “I think you know too. I think you came here because you wanted to hear something from me again, or something else - I don’t know what it is yet. But you do have what you want with everybody else.”
“I do?”
She shrugs. She hesitates too, trying to find a way to avoid where this might go. She’s not uncomfortable but she’s not comfortable either; this isn’t a game, not like the accusations that are easier to throw at House when you’re on the defense. It’s strange to her that ever since that conversation, the one in the office, and then that transition, to the one that she had with Chase, it’s not the same. They are not the same.
“Sometimes I wonder if you really understand what it is that you do, how you somehow cause people to react - it’s not intentional sometimes, it’s just that you put people in these scenarios and they’re only suited to you. But you forget too that people aren’t going to react the way that you want them to, people are going to react the way they understand.”
She finishes. He frowns, his eyes darkening.
“You moved to Chicago.”
She shrugs again. “I moved because I’m a mess,” she murmurs. “I moved because I need to get out of there and that I should’ve left a long time ago.”
“You regret staying the first time,” he says.
“I don’t.”
His coffee comes, but House doesn’t pick it up. The girl puts it down in front of him and watches him strangely, turning away quickly before either of them says something. Cameron bites back a laugh and shakes her head, picking House’s coffee up and then stepping back.
“You think I would, given that you’re you.”
He snorts. “I’m hurt.”
Her mouth curls. “Nothing I can do,” she says. “But to answer your question, no, I don’t regret it. I don’t regret coming back the second time either. Or the third. I learned that from you too, you know.”
She feels older, she doesn’t tell him. She feels older and wiser and too many things that she couldn’t tell Chase, wouldn’t tell Chase, but might’ve told House had the time and the place been something entirely different. These things still don’t belong to him though. They won’t, she thinks, even if her decision had remained the way he seemed to want them to stay.
“You can always call too,” she adds.
“What?”
“If you want to talk to me.”
He blinks. Then he looks surprised. She offers him his coffee. He takes it, his fingers brushing over hers. They stop and hover over her knuckles, his thumb tracing them lightly before he takes his coffee out of her hand.
“Oh,” he says. He says nothing else until she laughs and the sound is soft enough to mean something. He stares though, watching her and she thinks he’s waiting for something else from her, something that might make more of this okay.
It surprises her.
They move to sit too. They grab one of the last seats, too close to the door but far enough to still maintain some kind of conversation. There is no danger of running into someone that they both know, but there is the possibility that she might see a colleague or an old friend. It’s a big city, but she’s too aware that these things do happen.
House sits first. Cameron puts the coffees on the table, sliding carefully into the booth across from him. Her leg brushes against his. He looks up sharply, frowning again. It’s too quick for her to catch and she brushes it off, dropping her bag next to her.
“You want to know if I tell anybody what you say to me.”
She looks up, blinking.
“No,” she says slowly.
“I don’t.” The answer is short, taunt. His mouth is tight and she sort of freezes, fascinated at what’s happening. “It’s unnecessary,” he continues and she’s starting still, “ - and I - I don’t care what other people think or want to know and it doesn’t really do anything for me.”
She blinks again.
“I’m a secret?”
He snorts, smirking. He raises an eyebrow and she almost blushes, her lips curling in amusement.
“No,” he says.
“It still doesn’t explain - what are you doing?”
He leans in.
“Do you really want to know?”
She frowns and almost shakes her head. She catches herself, maybe because it’s something that he expects, or that he wants, or that it’s something she’s long since stopped giving him.
“You’re not answering my question,” she says, and says it carefully, like they’ve stepped into something, something entirely different. It’s acknowledging it that helps, that may make this into something that it’s supposed to, or something that has been waiting for them to catch up.
“You don’t want me to.”
“Because…”
When she trails off, he takes her hand. He pulls it away from her coffee cup and presses it between both of his. She’s quiet. His fingers start to sweep over her knuckles again, like earlier, in the same kind of way she would expect him too: there’s something too careful about the way he holds her hand, as it’s just her hand and she, long ago, learned not to read into these things. The problem is this isn’t how it works.
“You’re here,” he says slowly, “and I’m there, and it’s better for you to be here and me there because there -”
He stops and his fingers lace through hers. Cameron’s elbow rests against the table. She stares at their hands and thinks you kissed me, the same way she’s been thinking about it off and on.
It wasn’t just a kiss though, the kind of kiss that she’s supposed to forget; maybe had she stayed, maybe had she married differently, or said no to Chase in the beginning. Maybe had each choice just been different.
The kiss wasn’t. She kissed him back like it wasn’t. That much she knows.
“I have to catch up,” he finishes.
“With what?”
“It’s different for you.”
She frowns.
“It is,” he insists, and he drops their hands, pressing his over hers. It feels like a trap or maybe, she wants it to be a trap. “It’s different for you because you’ve never really needed to stay. You know it. I know it. I’m only telling you this now -”
“Because no one else is around?” she interrupts. She’s suspicious and she can’t help it because with her, with her he’s right in saying that it’s different; he knows how to get under her skin and in such a way, in a way that no one else has been able to do so.
“Is that what you want me to say?”
Her eyes narrow and she looks away. “You’re here,” she says, “and I guess that takes away whatever I’ve been expecting. I don’t know what to think. I don’t know what I want to think. When I went back, it was to close the door with Chase. I wasn’t there to see you - I don’t even think I wanted to see you. There were parts of my life that weren’t yours and that was it, and it was my mistake to let you in when I did because it’s me, it’s me that needs to figure out what’s next and I can’t - I can’t believe I’m sitting here telling you this, and that you’re still trying to get the goddamn last word.”
She’s breathless. Her eyes are wide in her reflection in the glass. She stares at herself, still unable to really recognize herself. The way her hair sweeps over her eyes, how they’re suddenly much brighter; the joke, among friends, is that she’s really free.
“You haven’t changed,” she murmurs and looks back. “Is that what you want me to see then?”
He shakes her head. He’s smirking too, like he expected her to say that, like she blew up and almost gave what he wanted. It’s his face, his face, and she’s suddenly angry, angrier that she’s sitting here and listening to this, letting him see her like this.
“This isn’t about you,” she says too, quietly. He doesn’t answer and she tries not to get angry, frustrated. “Stop making it about you.”
She takes a deep breath.
“Stop making this about you.”
She pulls back. Her hand slides out from under his. She grabs her cup and folds her hands around it. She stares hard at him, her mouth pressing tightly. He watches her too, which is strange, because the conversation is over, or feels like it’s over, but she’s too aware that he knows how to push it to start moving again. So she waits.
He’s quiet. He keeps watching her and she waits for something else, something to give so that she can get back to work and forget that this is still happening.
“You kissed me,” he says slowly.
Oh, she thinks. Oh. Oh. It hits her suddenly, strangely, and she shakes her head, almost surprised. It takes her that minute, and then another second, just to really look at him, to look at him in the very same way that she’s sure he’s watched her.
She leans forward, but he leans back, his hands drawing backwards too, only to curl around the edges of the table. She watches as he licks his lips. His eyes are dark again. She sees his mouth shift, only slightly, like it’s ready for a smile or ready for something like a smile, like he’s just been caught.
“You kissed me too,” she murmurs.
It’s gentle, strangely honest. House looks away.
“So.”
The implications are there, and she knows that he’s trying to push her into stepping back, maybe to come to Princeton, maybe to not. It’s a test and she remembers his tests. She remembers that when House reacts, it’s to see how people follow. She’s always left on her terms.
This is something they both understand.
“No,” she says.
It’s almost to humor him. His mouth starts to turn. She doesn’t say no, I’m not coming back or no, you’re not getting that from me; it’s a fight that both of them have never been privy to.
“No.”
She puts her coffee cup down. She pushes herself back and away from the table, her fingers curling around the corners.
“I -”
“Should get back,” he finishes.
“Yeah,” she says. “I should.”
He doesn’t move from his seat. She doesn’t ask if he’s going to come, and he doesn’t press, like she expects him too. It feels odd, it all feels odd, like she’s stepped into something that she shouldn’t, that she doesn’t need, but the two of them are here in it anyway.
“How long are you here?” she asks, to be polite, which makes him laugh. She nearly blushes, looking away and out into the street, biting the inside of her cheek like it’s going to help. She catches his gaze in the window, watching as he presses his mouth over the lid of his coffee.
“Doesn’t matter,” he says.
There’s a moment then, a moment where she measures the distance in her head, measures how close she is to just leaning down and kissing him. To prove a point, she might say. And her hand rises, her fingers brushing against her lips as if to brush away coffee that isn’t there.
He looks at her. She tries not to understand. Cameron reaches for her bag, pulling it over her shoulder.
“Of course,” she mutters.
When she steps back, she catches the smile, the almost smile and has to stop, just for a moment. She’s waiting again, she thinks. He doesn’t look away and she can’t really bring herself to either. He looks ready to say one more thing. Like always. Her eyes are heavy, her mouth parting almost too ready to sigh.
But he shakes his head first.
“I’ll see you around,” he says.
Later in the day, her coffee sits next to her computer on the desk. A nurse walks by her office with a wave. She stares at the coffee, cold or empty; she doesn’t remember, she doesn’t care to remember either.
It takes her a minute. She never really leaves.
house md ; house/cameron ; PG ; 3,262 words
when leaving, know that there is always going to be part of you that are ready to follow. everybody’s restless. lockdown.
notes: For blueheronz. I could write a book out of our emails. *laughs* Anyways. Unintentional series? I think so. This is the sequel to check your facts. As I’m still working out lots and lots of my issues. While watching Miami Medical. Happens.
-
There are unopened emails. They sit in a folder that says untitled as if it were ready to make that kind of joke. They blur in the right light though, when her computer sits closest to the window while she walks through her day, at the end of the night, through patient files and old phone calls.
It’s months after she leaves again, House walks into her office.
She tries not to blink. “This is nice,” he says.
He buys her coffee. Or Cameron buys herself coffee; it’s a practiced habit. It feels kind of funny too, seeing him in Chicago without any sort of warning or notice, or even some push on her part.
But it’s midweek, and they’re standing in a coffee shop, half a block away from the hospital like it’s neutral ground and like they haven’t done this before, many times, without thinking. They stand away from the line and she looks at him, studying, watching and waiting for House to say something familiar for her to latch onto. He doesn’t.
“Haven’t been here for a while,” he says casually. She doesn’t know if he’s talking about the city or seeing her. She remembers the last time she was in Princeton and the short, almost strange conversation they decided to have.
“Small talk?” she asks.
His mouth curls. They step forward, closer to the counter to watch one of the girls start to make their coffee. She studies the rough outline of a beard against his face, the shadow that stretches and suits him nonetheless.
“I didn’t know you were doing small talk now,” she adds.
She leans lightly against the counter, then pushes back and turns. She’s fidgeting, pulling her fingers along the ends of the sleeves of her jacket. In front of her, Chicago unfolds against the window and it causes her to sigh. It’s only been a couple of months, a couple more since she’s last been in Princeton - it’s just easier to refer to the time as that.
“First you show up in my emergency room, then you’re taking me to coffee - along I took you to coffee, that hasn’t changed. But small talk?”
“Isn’t that what you do?” he shoots back, and she laughs, softly, because it’s funny in a way that it shouldn’t be. He leans against the counter as they wait, his cane sliding over the tiles with a scratch. “And anyways,” he says, “what do you care?”
She shrugs.
“This isn’t about me.”
“No,” he agrees. “It isn’t.”
They falter. Cameron keeps her gaze to the windows and the city. Across the coffee shop, there’s a parking garage and she watches the transition between people and cars. It’s still strange being back, she thinks, and seeing friends that are only old friends, and her parents who still struggle with her decision, and walking straight back into a mess of old memories that she thought she came to terms with.
She won’t tell him this, although she could; the difference between her relationship with House, and her relationship with everyone else, is that between the two of them, she’s sure there are more kept secrets than anyone else. The difference is, however, is that she’s never really let him seen her at her worse. And somehow, he seems to understand that it’s something he has to earn. This is part of that distance.
“This isn’t permanent either,” she says then, awkwardly linking the conversation together. He looks at her. She meets his gaze. “Chicago,” she tells him. “It’s just good to be some place that I know.”
“Princeton.”
She scoffs. He smirks. He picks up his cane too, switching it from hand to hand. He offers nothing about anyone else. She’s almost relieved.
“You would say that.”
“I’m here for a conference,” he tells her, or lies, but telling her would amount to the same thing. She listens for a different pitch in his voice, a shift from low to lower, in that kind of way that she still hopes to be familiar with. But she can remember the last time she talked to him, and the last time he talked to her, because in the end, those will always be too separate things.
The girl at the bar brings Cameron her coffee first. She smiles at her too, again, because she comes her from the hospital on an odd day. Cameron smiles back softly. She looks at House.
“And how’s the conference going?”
“You know, they’re all the same.”
“I don’t know,” she says. “The last time I went on a conference with you, you nearly got arrested and I wanted to leave you there, but somehow, someway Cuddy talked me out of doing that.”
“I remember that,” he says with amusement.
Cameron shakes her head. House leans into the counter and reaches for a coffee lid, spinning it between his fingers.
“You want to know why I’m here,” he guesses, and she’s surprised at the sudden shift in his voice. She picks at something, meeting his gaze, and he leans forward, almost taking her space. She remembers their moment again; she won’t call it a kiss, or a pass, or even something that she’s supposed to hold to. This isn’t how it works
But he’s watching her, waiting. She wants to understand that.
“I can assume you’re not here for the conference,” she murmurs.
He chuckles.
“You could.”
He shrugs too. She’s tempted to ask about Cuddy again, or even Lydia, the Lydia, which is something that she finds herself thinking about from time to time.
It’s the memory, of course, of facing the idea of House, one idea of House when she was still learning, still watching, and there was Stacy. This is different, she thinks, or was different, different in the way that she still feels about talking about her own memories, about her husband. Cameron’s always been a believer in small moments, small changes, and now knowing this, knowing that he gave that to her, scares her a little more.
He’s here. She’s left with another one of his secrets. She’s more than aware that she gave him one more.
“It’s different, you know.”
She looks at him. She grips her coffee. He’s peering into the bar, watching the girl as she struggles with his coffee.
“Not because you’re not there,” he continues, and his voice is dry, practiced, as if he were hoping to catch her. “It’s different because everyone else is the same, same motivations, same excuses to move on, to move into something new - predictable really and boring too - but then it’s different. I care less, maybe?”
“You never cared to begin with.”
He shrugs. “There’s that. There’s always that.”
“Is there?”
He meets her gaze, as if he were expecting her to shy away. Cameron’s mouth shifts with some amusement and she shakes her head. She doesn’t miss it, she thinks. She doesn’t miss the random, strange and unpredictable moments where he’d drop in and talk to her. But it wouldn’t be them talking, and she was always weighed with some expectation to return the favor, as if she were the one that could keep House as House. It’s nothing she wanted to do.
“You know what you’re saying?”
“I do,” she says slowly. “I think you know too. I think you came here because you wanted to hear something from me again, or something else - I don’t know what it is yet. But you do have what you want with everybody else.”
“I do?”
She shrugs. She hesitates too, trying to find a way to avoid where this might go. She’s not uncomfortable but she’s not comfortable either; this isn’t a game, not like the accusations that are easier to throw at House when you’re on the defense. It’s strange to her that ever since that conversation, the one in the office, and then that transition, to the one that she had with Chase, it’s not the same. They are not the same.
“Sometimes I wonder if you really understand what it is that you do, how you somehow cause people to react - it’s not intentional sometimes, it’s just that you put people in these scenarios and they’re only suited to you. But you forget too that people aren’t going to react the way that you want them to, people are going to react the way they understand.”
She finishes. He frowns, his eyes darkening.
“You moved to Chicago.”
She shrugs again. “I moved because I’m a mess,” she murmurs. “I moved because I need to get out of there and that I should’ve left a long time ago.”
“You regret staying the first time,” he says.
“I don’t.”
His coffee comes, but House doesn’t pick it up. The girl puts it down in front of him and watches him strangely, turning away quickly before either of them says something. Cameron bites back a laugh and shakes her head, picking House’s coffee up and then stepping back.
“You think I would, given that you’re you.”
He snorts. “I’m hurt.”
Her mouth curls. “Nothing I can do,” she says. “But to answer your question, no, I don’t regret it. I don’t regret coming back the second time either. Or the third. I learned that from you too, you know.”
She feels older, she doesn’t tell him. She feels older and wiser and too many things that she couldn’t tell Chase, wouldn’t tell Chase, but might’ve told House had the time and the place been something entirely different. These things still don’t belong to him though. They won’t, she thinks, even if her decision had remained the way he seemed to want them to stay.
“You can always call too,” she adds.
“What?”
“If you want to talk to me.”
He blinks. Then he looks surprised. She offers him his coffee. He takes it, his fingers brushing over hers. They stop and hover over her knuckles, his thumb tracing them lightly before he takes his coffee out of her hand.
“Oh,” he says. He says nothing else until she laughs and the sound is soft enough to mean something. He stares though, watching her and she thinks he’s waiting for something else from her, something that might make more of this okay.
It surprises her.
They move to sit too. They grab one of the last seats, too close to the door but far enough to still maintain some kind of conversation. There is no danger of running into someone that they both know, but there is the possibility that she might see a colleague or an old friend. It’s a big city, but she’s too aware that these things do happen.
House sits first. Cameron puts the coffees on the table, sliding carefully into the booth across from him. Her leg brushes against his. He looks up sharply, frowning again. It’s too quick for her to catch and she brushes it off, dropping her bag next to her.
“You want to know if I tell anybody what you say to me.”
She looks up, blinking.
“No,” she says slowly.
“I don’t.” The answer is short, taunt. His mouth is tight and she sort of freezes, fascinated at what’s happening. “It’s unnecessary,” he continues and she’s starting still, “ - and I - I don’t care what other people think or want to know and it doesn’t really do anything for me.”
She blinks again.
“I’m a secret?”
He snorts, smirking. He raises an eyebrow and she almost blushes, her lips curling in amusement.
“No,” he says.
“It still doesn’t explain - what are you doing?”
He leans in.
“Do you really want to know?”
She frowns and almost shakes her head. She catches herself, maybe because it’s something that he expects, or that he wants, or that it’s something she’s long since stopped giving him.
“You’re not answering my question,” she says, and says it carefully, like they’ve stepped into something, something entirely different. It’s acknowledging it that helps, that may make this into something that it’s supposed to, or something that has been waiting for them to catch up.
“You don’t want me to.”
“Because…”
When she trails off, he takes her hand. He pulls it away from her coffee cup and presses it between both of his. She’s quiet. His fingers start to sweep over her knuckles again, like earlier, in the same kind of way she would expect him too: there’s something too careful about the way he holds her hand, as it’s just her hand and she, long ago, learned not to read into these things. The problem is this isn’t how it works.
“You’re here,” he says slowly, “and I’m there, and it’s better for you to be here and me there because there -”
He stops and his fingers lace through hers. Cameron’s elbow rests against the table. She stares at their hands and thinks you kissed me, the same way she’s been thinking about it off and on.
It wasn’t just a kiss though, the kind of kiss that she’s supposed to forget; maybe had she stayed, maybe had she married differently, or said no to Chase in the beginning. Maybe had each choice just been different.
The kiss wasn’t. She kissed him back like it wasn’t. That much she knows.
“I have to catch up,” he finishes.
“With what?”
“It’s different for you.”
She frowns.
“It is,” he insists, and he drops their hands, pressing his over hers. It feels like a trap or maybe, she wants it to be a trap. “It’s different for you because you’ve never really needed to stay. You know it. I know it. I’m only telling you this now -”
“Because no one else is around?” she interrupts. She’s suspicious and she can’t help it because with her, with her he’s right in saying that it’s different; he knows how to get under her skin and in such a way, in a way that no one else has been able to do so.
“Is that what you want me to say?”
Her eyes narrow and she looks away. “You’re here,” she says, “and I guess that takes away whatever I’ve been expecting. I don’t know what to think. I don’t know what I want to think. When I went back, it was to close the door with Chase. I wasn’t there to see you - I don’t even think I wanted to see you. There were parts of my life that weren’t yours and that was it, and it was my mistake to let you in when I did because it’s me, it’s me that needs to figure out what’s next and I can’t - I can’t believe I’m sitting here telling you this, and that you’re still trying to get the goddamn last word.”
She’s breathless. Her eyes are wide in her reflection in the glass. She stares at herself, still unable to really recognize herself. The way her hair sweeps over her eyes, how they’re suddenly much brighter; the joke, among friends, is that she’s really free.
“You haven’t changed,” she murmurs and looks back. “Is that what you want me to see then?”
He shakes her head. He’s smirking too, like he expected her to say that, like she blew up and almost gave what he wanted. It’s his face, his face, and she’s suddenly angry, angrier that she’s sitting here and listening to this, letting him see her like this.
“This isn’t about you,” she says too, quietly. He doesn’t answer and she tries not to get angry, frustrated. “Stop making it about you.”
She takes a deep breath.
“Stop making this about you.”
She pulls back. Her hand slides out from under his. She grabs her cup and folds her hands around it. She stares hard at him, her mouth pressing tightly. He watches her too, which is strange, because the conversation is over, or feels like it’s over, but she’s too aware that he knows how to push it to start moving again. So she waits.
He’s quiet. He keeps watching her and she waits for something else, something to give so that she can get back to work and forget that this is still happening.
“You kissed me,” he says slowly.
Oh, she thinks. Oh. Oh. It hits her suddenly, strangely, and she shakes her head, almost surprised. It takes her that minute, and then another second, just to really look at him, to look at him in the very same way that she’s sure he’s watched her.
She leans forward, but he leans back, his hands drawing backwards too, only to curl around the edges of the table. She watches as he licks his lips. His eyes are dark again. She sees his mouth shift, only slightly, like it’s ready for a smile or ready for something like a smile, like he’s just been caught.
“You kissed me too,” she murmurs.
It’s gentle, strangely honest. House looks away.
“So.”
The implications are there, and she knows that he’s trying to push her into stepping back, maybe to come to Princeton, maybe to not. It’s a test and she remembers his tests. She remembers that when House reacts, it’s to see how people follow. She’s always left on her terms.
This is something they both understand.
“No,” she says.
It’s almost to humor him. His mouth starts to turn. She doesn’t say no, I’m not coming back or no, you’re not getting that from me; it’s a fight that both of them have never been privy to.
“No.”
She puts her coffee cup down. She pushes herself back and away from the table, her fingers curling around the corners.
“I -”
“Should get back,” he finishes.
“Yeah,” she says. “I should.”
He doesn’t move from his seat. She doesn’t ask if he’s going to come, and he doesn’t press, like she expects him too. It feels odd, it all feels odd, like she’s stepped into something that she shouldn’t, that she doesn’t need, but the two of them are here in it anyway.
“How long are you here?” she asks, to be polite, which makes him laugh. She nearly blushes, looking away and out into the street, biting the inside of her cheek like it’s going to help. She catches his gaze in the window, watching as he presses his mouth over the lid of his coffee.
“Doesn’t matter,” he says.
There’s a moment then, a moment where she measures the distance in her head, measures how close she is to just leaning down and kissing him. To prove a point, she might say. And her hand rises, her fingers brushing against her lips as if to brush away coffee that isn’t there.
He looks at her. She tries not to understand. Cameron reaches for her bag, pulling it over her shoulder.
“Of course,” she mutters.
When she steps back, she catches the smile, the almost smile and has to stop, just for a moment. She’s waiting again, she thinks. He doesn’t look away and she can’t really bring herself to either. He looks ready to say one more thing. Like always. Her eyes are heavy, her mouth parting almost too ready to sigh.
But he shakes his head first.
“I’ll see you around,” he says.
Later in the day, her coffee sits next to her computer on the desk. A nurse walks by her office with a wave. She stares at the coffee, cold or empty; she doesn’t remember, she doesn’t care to remember either.
It takes her a minute. She never really leaves.