Fic: chicago the windy city
chicago the windy city
house md ; house/cameron ; 3,536 words.
points on a map. it's not a contest on who finds who. lockdown.
notes: Fourth in a series, following check your facts, you could be more understanding, and when writing distance. For the wonderful, ever-so supportive blueheronz, as my love affair with this series wouldn’t be possible without you. Also there’s a cameo for enots. Because I couldn’t help myself.
-
In June she counts her seventh month in the city. She counts the days too.
There is a new photograph of her parents sitting on the corner of her desk, smiling up at her. It was Christmas but this year, there was no Chase. It wasn’t strange. Like everything else, she’s the only person that’s treating it like it happened.
When House calls, she almost doesn’t answer. “My therapist thinks that you’re good for me,” he says, just as she sits down behind her desk. She imagines him leaving the hospital and looks at the clock. It’s late, she thinks.
Her fingers brush over the files. “What?”
“He says you’re good for me,” he repeats. “In a weird, nonsensical kind of way,” he drawls. “But you’re good for me. You’re in another city. You’re still not boring. You invited me to your dead husband’s sister’s wedding. I ruined your marriage -”
“House,” she cuts through, her voice dry. “Really?”
“I’m just saying.”
It’s easy to think about the last time that they’ve talked, the kind of time it was, and the string of events that locked them together. She invited him first, she thinks, and in an odd way, it still is the kind of relationship that they have: first date, how she’s left, and how they work.
But the wedding is still fresh in her mind too, and how easy it was to be close to him, without everything else. The problem is that she thinks about everything else too.
“A phone call, huh?” she asks finally, nowhere near curious. She’s amused, she decides. Maybe, she thinks, she’s even surprised. She was thinking about calling him. Then she wasn’t. She’s inclined to keep to a sense of spontaneity.
House scoffs. She bites back a laugh.
“I’m in therapy,” he says.
“You’re almost funny too.”
He laughs over her comment. Her gaze wanders around her office. Her fingers play with the corners of a magazine, folding it over from side to side. There’s nothing personal about her office. It’s a small corner of the hospital floor, tucked behind the emergency room. There are more pictures here, of family and the odd friend. She isn’t ready to put anything else; a photo, the odd book, pieces of herself that she’s still very careful with.
They are quiet though. She studies the files under her hand. Trauma is still an unexpected choice for herself, she thinks. Her fingers brush over a few names, the labels, and the pieces of paper that read requests from other colleagues. There is a brochure tucked away from everything else.
It’s harder to think of him and see him either. “There was an accident,” he says first, finally. He sighs too. “A bad one.”
“Oh.”
She blinks and then pushes back in her seat. She stands and turns, walking to the door without saying anything. She leans against the frame, watching the hallway. At the end, two nurses stand talking loudly.
“Aren’t you going to ask?”
His voice shifts, low, and she thinks that there’s something else. There has to be. She can see him in her head, eyes widening with amusement, the slight, sly shift in his mouth. The memories are heavy, sometimes.
“What?” she throws back, shaking her head, “I’m supposed to ask you how it went? Are you really going to sit here and talk to me about protocol and patient families, the extent of an event -”
“Not really,” he cuts her off.
“Then what am I supposed to ask?”
Her eyes close. She listens to him sigh and her mouth tightens. She swallows, tilting her head back. Her mind wanders to the wedding for a moment.
Weddings, he had said. Cameron moves back to her desk.
“I’m wondering why you went back,” he cuts through again, and the silences, tight and coarse, seem to be on purpose. She knows that he plants them, he waits with her and pushes hard with everybody else. Maybe it’s because she goes to him, but she goes to him with a response and not a ploy.
“To Chicago?” she asks.
There is a heavy silence on the line again. It happens fast and it’s too certain, tired even. It surprises her again and she leans back in her chair, staring into the hallway. She sits before she says something else.
“Why do you stay in Jersey?”
He doesn’t laugh but she can see that smile, the smile spread against his mouth in her head. It’s easy to think about him this way. His habits are his habits and House has never really stood in anything undefined.
“Ties,” he says, and he means it, he means it in a way that she understands. There are parts of House that have never really changed.
“Liar,” she counters.
“You’re not answering my question,” he says back. “I mean, if you can’t -”
“I thought we were past this.”
She says it and straightens the files. She tilts her head to the side, pressing her phone into her shoulder. There is a knock on her door and one of the nurses, from down the hall, stands with another file in hand.
Cameron forces herself to smile. She waves the woman in. She walks to the desk, dropping another file on her desk. She stands too, waiting.
“That’s cute,” House says, dry and coarse; she’s not angry, but she used to try, try and not get frustrated, try and not push back.
She watches the nurse for a moment, forgetting. Her fingers curl around the file and she opens it, pushing pages back. She doesn’t really read and House says nothing, as if he were waiting for her to speak first.
“Why did you go back?” he asks again, he doesn’t say the city name or mention her family, the old, odd connections that she has or had.
Instead, she hands the file back to the nurse. She drops her pen.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” she says.
Serena is not an old college friend. When she comes into the city that Friday, Cameron still thinks about House and the phone conversation. She goes back too, all the way back to the kiss, and then the next kiss, to the wedding and everything else that hasn’t made sense since.
They are having lunch and Cameron sits, bent over her coffee, picking at the napkin in her lap. Her fingers run against the paper.
Serena laughs. “You’re a million miles away.”
Cameron blinks, then blushes, reaching for her coffee. “Sorry,” she says. “It’s been a weird week. Well, it’s been a stranger couple of months.”
“Tell me about it,” the other woman says.
“How’s Miami?”
That earns a smile, a real kind of smile, and Cameron’s reminded of the differences between them: age, location, and choices. Their mothers are old friends, neighborhood friends, and it’s nice really to have a relationship that hasn’t really walked through the ringer with her.
“Hot,” Serena says. They laugh, and Cameron catches the blush, studying the other woman carefully. She admires the passion, remembers the passion, and thinks it would almost be funny had she been one of those doctors that wrote warnings into the conversations with other people.
But she likes that Serena doesn’t talk about her coming to the city, that they don’t trade stories, the real kind of stories, and that they can just sit and talk about nothing when she comes into town.
“I have a new boss,” Serena says lightly, shaking her head. She looks to the window, and then outside, studying the view absently.
“A new boss?”
“Well, he’s not really new. Sometimes, he still feels it. He’s a strange, strange man.”
“They’re all strange,” Cameron murmurs. She should laugh or even smile, but it’s just easier to mean the words, to mean it and then let that go. It’s an old habit, a sane habit, and as she still employs it from time to time. There’s just not a structured need for it.
But she looks at Serena, watching her as she sort of lights up when she talks about her boss. She almost laughs. She remembers that look too.
“So you took -” Serena stops and blushes, and Cameron sees her mother written all over it. There are just things that she’s told her family, her mother in particular, that looking back, she has no idea why. Of course, when she was with Chase, everything, everything about House, came up all over again.
This is about the wedding though. Serena looks down at her coffee.
Cameron shakes her head. “My mom, huh?”
“Told my mom,” Serena laughs. She leans against the table, dropping her elbows against the top and wrapping her hands around her cup. “I want to say good for you, but I’m pretty sure that’s not what you need me to say.”
“I don’t know what I need to hear.”
Her mouth twists. Cameron looks away too, rubbing her eyes. It’s the thing you’re supposed to say, she thinks, to a friend. It’s the right thing a doctor would say to their patient as well.
“He called me,” she says quietly. “We talk now,” she says too.
“That’s good, right?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
Serena studies her. Cameron tries not to pay attention. It still feels odd to be back into the habit of having these relationships, friendships that work and function outside the kind of environment that she’s been in for the last couple years.
And it’s hard to get over too, knowing the difference between expectations and how she is. Her mouth tightens into a smile and Serena shakes her head, pushing her coffee off to the side.
“It’s a learning process, right?” she asks, and Cameron laughs, rubbing her eyes. “I’m serious though,” Serena says. “I feel like you have to teach yourself how to move around all of this because either you end up like - well, like your boss. And in my case, it means that I’m setting myself up to lose my mind.”
“That’s nothing new.”
Both women laugh. And slowly, Cameron’s smile fades. She picks up her cup and presses it between her hands, bringing it to her mouth; the coffee touches her lips and it’s it cold, but she ignores it. These days coffee is for the taste.
It’s here where she thinks of Chase too. There’s nothing warm or cold about her thoughts; she may be tired, distant, and it’s strange, but it was over before, she thinks leaving, even after everything, served only to be some kind of affirmation.
She thinks of House too. “If only it was because he was my boss.”
Serena smiles at her then. “He’s not your boss anymore,” she says.
She calls him when she gets home. It’s a Saturday and she’s walked out of the hospital in her scrubs, tired, too tired, and really unwilling to make the transition between work and home just yet.
There are three rings though. She thinks about hanging up, but he answers on the fourth, or really the fifth, voice gruff and tired. She remembers that he was or wasn’t living with Wilson. It’s been seven months, she thinks.
“What?” he snaps, and she snorts, moving to a window to push it up. She grunts and the window slams up into the frame. There’s a pull in her neck and she immediately rubs the skin. She thinks of House and his hands. She remembers the heavy press of him, and what it meant to be that close.
She blinks. “I didn’t think you’d answer.”
“That’s stupid.”
“Is it?”
Her eyes roll.
“Well,” he starts. He stops. She thinks about him smiling, or almost smiling; it’s been a uniformed thought as of late.
But she says nothing. Silence thins over the line as she moves deeper into her apartment. She kicks off her shoes and pulls the phone back briefly. Her hand curls tightly in her shirt and she yanks it over her head. The air is cool against her skin and the strap of her tank slides down her shoulder.
She almost drops her phone. The phone barely blinks. Cameron checks the screen before she talks again.
“It’s not my turn,” she says.
He scoffs. She thinks that’s what has been bothering her about all of this, that she offered a part of herself, in turn for the very pieces of him that she has; with her though, she understands that it’s never been intentional. And if it’s intention, she may never really know.
“I’m just saying what you said to me,” she says too. “And whatever you answer, I’m not trying to push. I just wanted -”
“You wanted to talk,” he says, and he says it with such disdain, something that confuses her; she doesn’t know whether or not she wants to think of it as odd or necessary. She smiles though, despite herself.
“I did.”
“Did?”
“Want to talk,” she answers.
He’s quiet. There is a rustle of papers over the line. “Really,” he says then, but it’s not a questions. “You really want to talk?”
“Not like this,” she murmurs.
It’s never like this either. Maybe that’s why she invited him to the wedding too - at first it was to prove a point, the kind of point that he’s thrown at her too. She wanted to show him her vulnerability and in such a way that she could control it, that she could decide what she could give to him.
But House assumes that she wants something back. This she knows all too well.
“You’re there,” he says lightly.
“And you’re there,” she says. “It’s the same thing. We’re talking in circles again.”
“Is it?”
The question walks between the two of them. She says nothing. Her eyes close and she remembers the simpler things. The sharp taste of his mouth. The way his fingers curl in her hair. She thinks he likes that, oddly enough, drawing his fingers through her hair, the little tug and how his fingers settle at the nap of her neck.
She remembers the moment of being with him. She would like to say that there’s nothing there, but standing in her bedroom, her eyes open and she stares at the bed. She can always see him here.
“I can’t keep coming back.”
It slips and she moves to sit on the bed. Instead, she falls back and into the mess of sheets. Staring at the walls, she listens.
“I didn’t ask.” He exhales and it’s soft. There’s no one in the office, she thinks. It would be the only way he’d call her.
“Yes, you did,” she says quietly.
“How are we going to talk?” he asks.
“Do you want to talk?”
There is a long pause. She expects nothing, so she smiles. She smiles because he doesn’t see her and bites her lip so that she doesn’t laugh.
Turning on her belly, she rests on her elbows. The sheets are cool under her elbows and her tank begins to rise up against her skin. She sighs because she can’t help it and she doesn’t know what else he wants to hear from her. She’s not good at giving it to him. She never says what he wants her to say.
“I want to be able to look at you,” he says. There is this change in his voice. She listens for people, for the others - and they are still the others - in the background, talking and grumbling.
“I want to be able to look at you,” he says again, and there is that sigh, the one that she knows, as he starts again. “You’re easy to read,” he says too and she can pick up the lie, the right lie.
He isn’t here. She isn’t there.
“I have to go.” She straightens, holding the phone tightly. “This isn’t over,” she says and she means it, means it without even thinking.
There is a laugh.
An email is waiting for her on Monday.
House’s name is before the subject. She doesn’t read it yet.
When she calls him back, it’s because she wants to. She’s never waited for him to come after, but she does know how to play the fine line. There are some lessons that you just can’t lose when it comes to House. This is still a couple of days later.
She has an hour before lunch too. She could go back to her office, but she takes her phone heads outside. For the air, she tells herself.
“You’re calling again,” he greets. He’s amused and the sound of his voice almost makes her blush. “I’m surprised.”
The hospital is quieter outside. She stands against a wall, just outside the emergency room. She watches an ambulance as it begins to pull away from the curb. There are no sirens and for a moment, she begins to relax.
“I said I wasn’t done talking,” she returns. They both laugh, or Cameron laughs and House makes a sound, and it’s an odd juxtaposition of sound, and she swallows back a bitter taste.
“I was there,” he replies.
“Good.”
“I mean, I’m sure you assumed that I was just going to listen to you talk and talk and talk and then not do anything about it.”
“Absolutely,” she murmurs.
“I’m hurt.”
“Of course,” she sighs, “you are.”
She had a plan, she thinks too. Her hand presses hard against the wall. Her fingers curl and then straighten, pressing her palm into the brick. It scratches against her skin and she bites her lip. She had a plan.
But House doesn’t answer right away either, or insult her; there is a chorus of voices on the other line and Cameron smiles, merely out of amusement. She won’t ask about a case or the case because that is the first thing that you break from, leaving House, and the easiest. It’s been so long since she’s thought about House and the allure of medicine, the kind of medicine that she’d like to practice and understand.
“I should fire someone,” he muses, out loud, and she laughs, caught. “Seriously. I’ve already got the talking to myself, the therapy, and the drug addiction down cold. But I pay these idiots for answers.”
“You keep them,” she murmurs. She’s almost unaware of what she says too, half-remembering that Chase is still there. She says nothing more though and stares out into the parking lot.
This is June in Chicago and she finds a medium in the heat, the way it never completely crawls against her skin, like in Princeton. She can hear the city too, the heavy horns and understands that she doesn’t need to see the clumps, the groups of people that move around.
She’s surprised that House says nothing about her on the line. She might even be grateful too. She doesn’t know.
“Did you read it?” he asks finally, and the voices are gone. She’s left watching nurses circle a cigarette instead of listening. She doesn’t know them and they don’t recognize her.
She thinks of Serena, briefly. It’s been a long time since she’s really worked for House. “Your email?” she asks too, clearing her throat.
“You didn’t,” he guesses.
“I haven’t had the time.”
“I do.”
She says nothing. She blinks. She wishes for coffee too. Her fingers wiggle at her side. They brush against the fabric of her pants, picking it away from her leg.
“Have time,” he adds. He ignores her. “In a few weeks, there’s a weekend. If you had read it, you would’ve known.”
“That you have a weekend,” she says.
“That I have a weekend.”
Cameron is well-aware of what he is asking. Her fingers move at her sides again - one-two, two-three, three-four. She’s aware of herself counting, years, maybe, days, maybe. She keeps telling herself the same thing in her head too: she is aware of what he’s asking her. She is aware of what he means.
Maybe she should read the email, she decides. She could read twice, maybe to be sure. She doesn’t know what he’s asking really; it could be a test, it’s always a test, and her head’s beginning to spin.
There is everything underneath though. In the last couple months, six, really seven, she begins to think about the things that they’ve told each other. She’s talked about walking away from Chase. He’s told her about what’s changed, what it was like; there’s a real difference in knowing that, she thinks. She doesn’t ask how much more she knows than everybody else. She doesn’t take.
She looks up when there are sirens, catching the flashing lights as they run into the entrance of the parking lot. She tenses and then sighs. Maybe this is where it changes. Maybe this is what she needs. End or beginning, beginning and end; this has to finish somewhere and this is something they both know.
When she sighs, she sees a few doctors wander outside. The sirens get louder and she pushes herself away from her corner. House starts to say something, but she barely hears anything.
She sighs too, “Where would we go?”
On Thursday, Cameron books a ticket.
She takes the minute.
house md ; house/cameron ; 3,536 words.
points on a map. it's not a contest on who finds who. lockdown.
notes: Fourth in a series, following check your facts, you could be more understanding, and when writing distance. For the wonderful, ever-so supportive blueheronz, as my love affair with this series wouldn’t be possible without you. Also there’s a cameo for enots. Because I couldn’t help myself.
-
In June she counts her seventh month in the city. She counts the days too.
There is a new photograph of her parents sitting on the corner of her desk, smiling up at her. It was Christmas but this year, there was no Chase. It wasn’t strange. Like everything else, she’s the only person that’s treating it like it happened.
When House calls, she almost doesn’t answer. “My therapist thinks that you’re good for me,” he says, just as she sits down behind her desk. She imagines him leaving the hospital and looks at the clock. It’s late, she thinks.
Her fingers brush over the files. “What?”
“He says you’re good for me,” he repeats. “In a weird, nonsensical kind of way,” he drawls. “But you’re good for me. You’re in another city. You’re still not boring. You invited me to your dead husband’s sister’s wedding. I ruined your marriage -”
“House,” she cuts through, her voice dry. “Really?”
“I’m just saying.”
It’s easy to think about the last time that they’ve talked, the kind of time it was, and the string of events that locked them together. She invited him first, she thinks, and in an odd way, it still is the kind of relationship that they have: first date, how she’s left, and how they work.
But the wedding is still fresh in her mind too, and how easy it was to be close to him, without everything else. The problem is that she thinks about everything else too.
“A phone call, huh?” she asks finally, nowhere near curious. She’s amused, she decides. Maybe, she thinks, she’s even surprised. She was thinking about calling him. Then she wasn’t. She’s inclined to keep to a sense of spontaneity.
House scoffs. She bites back a laugh.
“I’m in therapy,” he says.
“You’re almost funny too.”
He laughs over her comment. Her gaze wanders around her office. Her fingers play with the corners of a magazine, folding it over from side to side. There’s nothing personal about her office. It’s a small corner of the hospital floor, tucked behind the emergency room. There are more pictures here, of family and the odd friend. She isn’t ready to put anything else; a photo, the odd book, pieces of herself that she’s still very careful with.
They are quiet though. She studies the files under her hand. Trauma is still an unexpected choice for herself, she thinks. Her fingers brush over a few names, the labels, and the pieces of paper that read requests from other colleagues. There is a brochure tucked away from everything else.
It’s harder to think of him and see him either. “There was an accident,” he says first, finally. He sighs too. “A bad one.”
“Oh.”
She blinks and then pushes back in her seat. She stands and turns, walking to the door without saying anything. She leans against the frame, watching the hallway. At the end, two nurses stand talking loudly.
“Aren’t you going to ask?”
His voice shifts, low, and she thinks that there’s something else. There has to be. She can see him in her head, eyes widening with amusement, the slight, sly shift in his mouth. The memories are heavy, sometimes.
“What?” she throws back, shaking her head, “I’m supposed to ask you how it went? Are you really going to sit here and talk to me about protocol and patient families, the extent of an event -”
“Not really,” he cuts her off.
“Then what am I supposed to ask?”
Her eyes close. She listens to him sigh and her mouth tightens. She swallows, tilting her head back. Her mind wanders to the wedding for a moment.
Weddings, he had said. Cameron moves back to her desk.
“I’m wondering why you went back,” he cuts through again, and the silences, tight and coarse, seem to be on purpose. She knows that he plants them, he waits with her and pushes hard with everybody else. Maybe it’s because she goes to him, but she goes to him with a response and not a ploy.
“To Chicago?” she asks.
There is a heavy silence on the line again. It happens fast and it’s too certain, tired even. It surprises her again and she leans back in her chair, staring into the hallway. She sits before she says something else.
“Why do you stay in Jersey?”
He doesn’t laugh but she can see that smile, the smile spread against his mouth in her head. It’s easy to think about him this way. His habits are his habits and House has never really stood in anything undefined.
“Ties,” he says, and he means it, he means it in a way that she understands. There are parts of House that have never really changed.
“Liar,” she counters.
“You’re not answering my question,” he says back. “I mean, if you can’t -”
“I thought we were past this.”
She says it and straightens the files. She tilts her head to the side, pressing her phone into her shoulder. There is a knock on her door and one of the nurses, from down the hall, stands with another file in hand.
Cameron forces herself to smile. She waves the woman in. She walks to the desk, dropping another file on her desk. She stands too, waiting.
“That’s cute,” House says, dry and coarse; she’s not angry, but she used to try, try and not get frustrated, try and not push back.
She watches the nurse for a moment, forgetting. Her fingers curl around the file and she opens it, pushing pages back. She doesn’t really read and House says nothing, as if he were waiting for her to speak first.
“Why did you go back?” he asks again, he doesn’t say the city name or mention her family, the old, odd connections that she has or had.
Instead, she hands the file back to the nurse. She drops her pen.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” she says.
Serena is not an old college friend. When she comes into the city that Friday, Cameron still thinks about House and the phone conversation. She goes back too, all the way back to the kiss, and then the next kiss, to the wedding and everything else that hasn’t made sense since.
They are having lunch and Cameron sits, bent over her coffee, picking at the napkin in her lap. Her fingers run against the paper.
Serena laughs. “You’re a million miles away.”
Cameron blinks, then blushes, reaching for her coffee. “Sorry,” she says. “It’s been a weird week. Well, it’s been a stranger couple of months.”
“Tell me about it,” the other woman says.
“How’s Miami?”
That earns a smile, a real kind of smile, and Cameron’s reminded of the differences between them: age, location, and choices. Their mothers are old friends, neighborhood friends, and it’s nice really to have a relationship that hasn’t really walked through the ringer with her.
“Hot,” Serena says. They laugh, and Cameron catches the blush, studying the other woman carefully. She admires the passion, remembers the passion, and thinks it would almost be funny had she been one of those doctors that wrote warnings into the conversations with other people.
But she likes that Serena doesn’t talk about her coming to the city, that they don’t trade stories, the real kind of stories, and that they can just sit and talk about nothing when she comes into town.
“I have a new boss,” Serena says lightly, shaking her head. She looks to the window, and then outside, studying the view absently.
“A new boss?”
“Well, he’s not really new. Sometimes, he still feels it. He’s a strange, strange man.”
“They’re all strange,” Cameron murmurs. She should laugh or even smile, but it’s just easier to mean the words, to mean it and then let that go. It’s an old habit, a sane habit, and as she still employs it from time to time. There’s just not a structured need for it.
But she looks at Serena, watching her as she sort of lights up when she talks about her boss. She almost laughs. She remembers that look too.
“So you took -” Serena stops and blushes, and Cameron sees her mother written all over it. There are just things that she’s told her family, her mother in particular, that looking back, she has no idea why. Of course, when she was with Chase, everything, everything about House, came up all over again.
This is about the wedding though. Serena looks down at her coffee.
Cameron shakes her head. “My mom, huh?”
“Told my mom,” Serena laughs. She leans against the table, dropping her elbows against the top and wrapping her hands around her cup. “I want to say good for you, but I’m pretty sure that’s not what you need me to say.”
“I don’t know what I need to hear.”
Her mouth twists. Cameron looks away too, rubbing her eyes. It’s the thing you’re supposed to say, she thinks, to a friend. It’s the right thing a doctor would say to their patient as well.
“He called me,” she says quietly. “We talk now,” she says too.
“That’s good, right?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
Serena studies her. Cameron tries not to pay attention. It still feels odd to be back into the habit of having these relationships, friendships that work and function outside the kind of environment that she’s been in for the last couple years.
And it’s hard to get over too, knowing the difference between expectations and how she is. Her mouth tightens into a smile and Serena shakes her head, pushing her coffee off to the side.
“It’s a learning process, right?” she asks, and Cameron laughs, rubbing her eyes. “I’m serious though,” Serena says. “I feel like you have to teach yourself how to move around all of this because either you end up like - well, like your boss. And in my case, it means that I’m setting myself up to lose my mind.”
“That’s nothing new.”
Both women laugh. And slowly, Cameron’s smile fades. She picks up her cup and presses it between her hands, bringing it to her mouth; the coffee touches her lips and it’s it cold, but she ignores it. These days coffee is for the taste.
It’s here where she thinks of Chase too. There’s nothing warm or cold about her thoughts; she may be tired, distant, and it’s strange, but it was over before, she thinks leaving, even after everything, served only to be some kind of affirmation.
She thinks of House too. “If only it was because he was my boss.”
Serena smiles at her then. “He’s not your boss anymore,” she says.
She calls him when she gets home. It’s a Saturday and she’s walked out of the hospital in her scrubs, tired, too tired, and really unwilling to make the transition between work and home just yet.
There are three rings though. She thinks about hanging up, but he answers on the fourth, or really the fifth, voice gruff and tired. She remembers that he was or wasn’t living with Wilson. It’s been seven months, she thinks.
“What?” he snaps, and she snorts, moving to a window to push it up. She grunts and the window slams up into the frame. There’s a pull in her neck and she immediately rubs the skin. She thinks of House and his hands. She remembers the heavy press of him, and what it meant to be that close.
She blinks. “I didn’t think you’d answer.”
“That’s stupid.”
“Is it?”
Her eyes roll.
“Well,” he starts. He stops. She thinks about him smiling, or almost smiling; it’s been a uniformed thought as of late.
But she says nothing. Silence thins over the line as she moves deeper into her apartment. She kicks off her shoes and pulls the phone back briefly. Her hand curls tightly in her shirt and she yanks it over her head. The air is cool against her skin and the strap of her tank slides down her shoulder.
She almost drops her phone. The phone barely blinks. Cameron checks the screen before she talks again.
“It’s not my turn,” she says.
He scoffs. She thinks that’s what has been bothering her about all of this, that she offered a part of herself, in turn for the very pieces of him that she has; with her though, she understands that it’s never been intentional. And if it’s intention, she may never really know.
“I’m just saying what you said to me,” she says too. “And whatever you answer, I’m not trying to push. I just wanted -”
“You wanted to talk,” he says, and he says it with such disdain, something that confuses her; she doesn’t know whether or not she wants to think of it as odd or necessary. She smiles though, despite herself.
“I did.”
“Did?”
“Want to talk,” she answers.
He’s quiet. There is a rustle of papers over the line. “Really,” he says then, but it’s not a questions. “You really want to talk?”
“Not like this,” she murmurs.
It’s never like this either. Maybe that’s why she invited him to the wedding too - at first it was to prove a point, the kind of point that he’s thrown at her too. She wanted to show him her vulnerability and in such a way that she could control it, that she could decide what she could give to him.
But House assumes that she wants something back. This she knows all too well.
“You’re there,” he says lightly.
“And you’re there,” she says. “It’s the same thing. We’re talking in circles again.”
“Is it?”
The question walks between the two of them. She says nothing. Her eyes close and she remembers the simpler things. The sharp taste of his mouth. The way his fingers curl in her hair. She thinks he likes that, oddly enough, drawing his fingers through her hair, the little tug and how his fingers settle at the nap of her neck.
She remembers the moment of being with him. She would like to say that there’s nothing there, but standing in her bedroom, her eyes open and she stares at the bed. She can always see him here.
“I can’t keep coming back.”
It slips and she moves to sit on the bed. Instead, she falls back and into the mess of sheets. Staring at the walls, she listens.
“I didn’t ask.” He exhales and it’s soft. There’s no one in the office, she thinks. It would be the only way he’d call her.
“Yes, you did,” she says quietly.
“How are we going to talk?” he asks.
“Do you want to talk?”
There is a long pause. She expects nothing, so she smiles. She smiles because he doesn’t see her and bites her lip so that she doesn’t laugh.
Turning on her belly, she rests on her elbows. The sheets are cool under her elbows and her tank begins to rise up against her skin. She sighs because she can’t help it and she doesn’t know what else he wants to hear from her. She’s not good at giving it to him. She never says what he wants her to say.
“I want to be able to look at you,” he says. There is this change in his voice. She listens for people, for the others - and they are still the others - in the background, talking and grumbling.
“I want to be able to look at you,” he says again, and there is that sigh, the one that she knows, as he starts again. “You’re easy to read,” he says too and she can pick up the lie, the right lie.
He isn’t here. She isn’t there.
“I have to go.” She straightens, holding the phone tightly. “This isn’t over,” she says and she means it, means it without even thinking.
There is a laugh.
An email is waiting for her on Monday.
House’s name is before the subject. She doesn’t read it yet.
When she calls him back, it’s because she wants to. She’s never waited for him to come after, but she does know how to play the fine line. There are some lessons that you just can’t lose when it comes to House. This is still a couple of days later.
She has an hour before lunch too. She could go back to her office, but she takes her phone heads outside. For the air, she tells herself.
“You’re calling again,” he greets. He’s amused and the sound of his voice almost makes her blush. “I’m surprised.”
The hospital is quieter outside. She stands against a wall, just outside the emergency room. She watches an ambulance as it begins to pull away from the curb. There are no sirens and for a moment, she begins to relax.
“I said I wasn’t done talking,” she returns. They both laugh, or Cameron laughs and House makes a sound, and it’s an odd juxtaposition of sound, and she swallows back a bitter taste.
“I was there,” he replies.
“Good.”
“I mean, I’m sure you assumed that I was just going to listen to you talk and talk and talk and then not do anything about it.”
“Absolutely,” she murmurs.
“I’m hurt.”
“Of course,” she sighs, “you are.”
She had a plan, she thinks too. Her hand presses hard against the wall. Her fingers curl and then straighten, pressing her palm into the brick. It scratches against her skin and she bites her lip. She had a plan.
But House doesn’t answer right away either, or insult her; there is a chorus of voices on the other line and Cameron smiles, merely out of amusement. She won’t ask about a case or the case because that is the first thing that you break from, leaving House, and the easiest. It’s been so long since she’s thought about House and the allure of medicine, the kind of medicine that she’d like to practice and understand.
“I should fire someone,” he muses, out loud, and she laughs, caught. “Seriously. I’ve already got the talking to myself, the therapy, and the drug addiction down cold. But I pay these idiots for answers.”
“You keep them,” she murmurs. She’s almost unaware of what she says too, half-remembering that Chase is still there. She says nothing more though and stares out into the parking lot.
This is June in Chicago and she finds a medium in the heat, the way it never completely crawls against her skin, like in Princeton. She can hear the city too, the heavy horns and understands that she doesn’t need to see the clumps, the groups of people that move around.
She’s surprised that House says nothing about her on the line. She might even be grateful too. She doesn’t know.
“Did you read it?” he asks finally, and the voices are gone. She’s left watching nurses circle a cigarette instead of listening. She doesn’t know them and they don’t recognize her.
She thinks of Serena, briefly. It’s been a long time since she’s really worked for House. “Your email?” she asks too, clearing her throat.
“You didn’t,” he guesses.
“I haven’t had the time.”
“I do.”
She says nothing. She blinks. She wishes for coffee too. Her fingers wiggle at her side. They brush against the fabric of her pants, picking it away from her leg.
“Have time,” he adds. He ignores her. “In a few weeks, there’s a weekend. If you had read it, you would’ve known.”
“That you have a weekend,” she says.
“That I have a weekend.”
Cameron is well-aware of what he is asking. Her fingers move at her sides again - one-two, two-three, three-four. She’s aware of herself counting, years, maybe, days, maybe. She keeps telling herself the same thing in her head too: she is aware of what he’s asking her. She is aware of what he means.
Maybe she should read the email, she decides. She could read twice, maybe to be sure. She doesn’t know what he’s asking really; it could be a test, it’s always a test, and her head’s beginning to spin.
There is everything underneath though. In the last couple months, six, really seven, she begins to think about the things that they’ve told each other. She’s talked about walking away from Chase. He’s told her about what’s changed, what it was like; there’s a real difference in knowing that, she thinks. She doesn’t ask how much more she knows than everybody else. She doesn’t take.
She looks up when there are sirens, catching the flashing lights as they run into the entrance of the parking lot. She tenses and then sighs. Maybe this is where it changes. Maybe this is what she needs. End or beginning, beginning and end; this has to finish somewhere and this is something they both know.
When she sighs, she sees a few doctors wander outside. The sirens get louder and she pushes herself away from her corner. House starts to say something, but she barely hears anything.
She sighs too, “Where would we go?”
On Thursday, Cameron books a ticket.
She takes the minute.