House Fic: laughter as it lays
laughter as it lays cameron, (chase/cameron, house/cameron), pg13
we are all liars and cheaters, sad hearts and replacements. sometimes we need a moment. spoilers for the tyrant. 3,300 words.
notes: this is for blueheronz. ♥ i want to call this a post-ep but it’s also a string of missing scenes? so i’m just going to call it a post-ep because it seems easier. and i’m drinking wine. enjoy guys!
-
Inside the office, they look around like strangers.
“This is a stupid idea,” she says out loud.
Cameron stands closest to the door. She surveys the empty conference room. There is an uneasiness settling in her stomach. The lights are off. There are files on the table. A chair is skewed to the side. She remembers that Foreman and House have been called downstairs.
It’s another round of minutes that they’re losing for treatment. She just wants to get this over with.
“This is a stupid idea,” she says again. Her ponytail is coming undone and she reaches up with frustration, tugging at the few, falling strands. Her cheeks are flushed.
Chase passes her the file with the test results.
“What?” he asks and then grins. “You know you’re a bit curious, and I know I’m a bit curious; do what you usually do, it’s not the patient. It’s House that you’re interested in.”
“You’re not funny,” she mutters. She leans against the glass, fingering the file she has in her hand. Her nails scrape the tab.
She is still angry from this morning and anxious. She knows he knows too; they’ve been passing comments back and forth, rubbing at old wounds for most of the morning. They really don’t need this, she thinks.
“I’m sorry.”
Chase reaches for her. His hand curves around her arm. His palm feels warm over the end of her sleeve. She has this feeling like he’s doing this to prove something; whether it’s to her or to House or even to Foreman remains to be the question. It’s all so strange.
She shakes her head. Gently, she pulls her arm and herself from within reach. She moves to the desk and drops the file. Everything is neatly put away, as if no one as been in the room for months. It’s a disconnecting feeling and trying to place herself within it, only serves to heighten her anxiety.
“I just feel like we’ve talked about this,” she says finally.
Looking to Chase, she shrugs. He sighs loudly, rubbing his eyes. Their moment is too private for home instead of here. It makes it feel like they haven’t had time to process each other and maybe, maybe it’s the stages of her regret coming back to haunt her.
Her problem is that they keep walking in these circles.
“We have,” he says then.
He frowns too. She shakes her head again, watching as he looks away. His mouth falls into a narrow line, heavy too.
“You could’ve backed me up this morning,” she murmurs.
“So that’s what it is about.”
He says it with disdain: the it is is House, the meeting they had with Cuddy in the morning, and Foreman’s plea or almost plea for them to comeback for just a little while. Between them, this is more about House.
She just doesn’t trust this, coming back to the forefront. It’s not an invitation but what worries her marks itself as unfamiliar and murky. It’s different when they’re here and there, helping in phases or out of some obligation that they can laugh about later. It’s different or the very reassurance that she keeps telling hers.
She rests her hands on her hips and looks down.
“No,” she says. “I’m not going to lie - all of this, him,” she pauses, leaning against the desk. She waves a hand around the office. “It makes me really uneasy. This guy is a criminal and it makes my insides twist and - then there’s House. We told each other if they needed help, they needed help. But I just feel like this is not -”
She stops. Chase tries to smile. “You’re rambling,” he murmurs.
He steps forward, to her, and she tenses. His hand cups her face and she meets his gaze as he brushes her hair away from her face. She grinds her teeth and forces a smile.
“This whole thing reeks,” she says.
Chase smiles back tightly.
“It’s only just a case.”
House finds her later. Or she lets him.
“Misguided anger isn’t a good look for you.”
He stands over her bench outside. His hands are wrapped around his cane. He stands taller, waiting. His expression is blank but she finds herself swallowing back the familiarity.
They stare at each other. It becomes less about the patient.
“Getting involved in other people’s business is never a good look for you,” she says. “So it’s like we’re even.”
She holds a cup of coffee in her hand. The benches outside the emergency room are usually empty with doctors and nurses on cigarette breaks and having small moments to gather themselves. In the distance, she hears an ambulance. She straightens out of habit.
There’s little panic out here. It makes her feel guilty.
House sits.
“It bothers you.”
The bench croaks and his feet shuffle forward over the dirt. The breeze picks up lightly and Cameron bends forward, putting her coffee cup on the ground. She reaches up to the collar of her jacket and pulls the fabric up to cover her neck. She looks over to House.
“A lot of things do.”
“This bothers you though,” he shrugs. “Working for Foreman and not me, Chase and being the prettiest, picking side bothers you. It’s cute.”
He smirks then. Her eyes roll.
“I’m glad you’ve taken the time, out of your obviously very busy day, to come here and tell me exactly how I feel. It’s like free therapy.”
“I’ve got a few phone numbers,” he says dryly.
She snorts. Her mouth turns briefly.
A nurse passes with a shy glance. They sit quietly. He taps his cane against the ground. She crosses her legs. Her fingers brush over her knee and she swallows, staring at her wedding ring. The sensation is still odd, almost tired, and she been blaming herself for weeks now, for falling into the habit.
Staring at her ring though, forces some confrontation with sense, or some idea of sense. Under the light, it mixes into a dull color. She knows it’s gold, tells herself it’s gold, but the low lights from the hospital behind her and in front of her make the ring seem dull.
It doesn’t help that House is here, next to her; it’s not that he’s trying to intentionally seek her out or that she hopes, it’s the mere idea of his presence and the weight that it still has with her. She’s too aware of that. He must be too.
“You know what really bothers me?”
There’s no sigh from House, no sense of annoyance. She almost smiles.
“Not really,” he says.
She looks up at him. “It bothers me that all of the sudden, the three of us, are expected to act like a cohesive unit all over again. That the last two years stand as completely insignificant. I don’t care about working with Foreman or Chase, I’m happy to help. Yeah, it bothers me this case. But this whole thing, being placed in front of you like some bizarre cushion for whatever stupid thing you’re planning to do, bothers me more.”
It falls out of her clumsy and half-hearted, as if she were lying to herself in some places. She can taste it. House scoffs though and she flushes.
“Feel better?” he asks.
“Not really,” she shrugs.
“You don’t hide, Cameron.”
She watches him, surprised. He turns to her, frowning. The corners of his mouth are tight and there’s this strange sense that he’s amused too. He looks good, really good, but it worries her, somehow, that she’s speaking to him blindly. This is never a good thing.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’re not stupid either,” he says. “You’re bringing things to work that shouldn’t be here. It’s sloppy and lazy. You don’t hide.”
He’s insistent. She cannot look away. Her fingers curl around her knee. She can feel her ring press into her leg. He’s watching her, as if he were waiting, waiting for some sort of response or action from her.
She bites her lip. She’s hesitant then too.
“I’m glad you’re back,” she says quietly.
He looks away first.
Her hand won’t stop shaking.
In the hallway, she forces herself to stop. She leans against the wall. Her eyes close. She tries to count backwards.
Her hand still shakes.
“Let me see.”
Chase’s voice comes from somewhere next to her. She doesn’t open her eyes. She listens to the hospital; a doctor’s paged over the intercom, she hears a conversation pass in front of her in murmurs.
She can’t unravel here.
“I’m fine,” she says. “I’m - I’m fine.”
Her eyes open but she looks down. She raises her hand and watches her fingers curl into a fist. It trembles. Her throat tightens. It’s as if panic starts to wrap itself into a separate accusation.
“Give me a minute.”
She tries to breathe again. She can feel Dibala’s fingers on her wrist, the heavy grip. She turns her other hand over her wrist, rubbing the lines over her skin. It was hard but not too hard; it was the intensity of his gaze, and the single threat of making a mistake and that kind of mistake. It’s too sudden how the patient becomes more than the patient, and has a name and a face that she doesn’t know how to deal with.
But she should. She should, she tells herself. She sees too much in the ER and knows how to separate herself from the moment, to deal with it. What makes this different?
Her eyes burn. She blinks.
“What’s going on with you?”
Chase’s hand covers hers. His palm flattens over her knuckles. His hand is cold, almost unfamiliar. She lets it rest though.
“I don’t know,” she murmurs and says it as if she meets it. She steps outside of herself, attempting to survey what’s just happen. Her ears ring and the hospital seems to fade into background noise.
She hasn’t felt like this in a long time. She breathes.
“Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t, and bringing it here is making my head spin and things - I’m sorry.”
She pulls her hand away from his, dropping it to her side. She meets his gaze. Chase’s concern makes her head spin. It shouldn’t, she tries to tell herself. It shouldn’t. But when his mouth curls into a tentative smile, her stomach shifts into knots.
“I’m sorry too,” he tells her.
It catches her off-guard. She almost frowns but stops herself. “For what?” she asks. She keeps herself even. “You were right,” she adds. “I’m - I need to take a step back from this. Reassess.”
They watch each other, Chase with his smile and Cameron attempting to hold his gaze. She’s too aware of what they might look like, or what they could look like, and it seems to add to everything else.
She breathes. Her hand reaches for his. She squeezes his fingers quickly, as if to keep herself from catching her own lie. It’s easier than a smile.
“Let’s get coffee,” he says. She takes the excuse.
It all changes after.
It takes her a moment at home. She stands in the kitchen. She still wears her jacket from work. Her hands wrap around each side of the sink. She digs her fingers into the metal, her nails scrapping against the sides.
She’s lost patients before. This isn’t supposed to feel like this.
The day is starting to catch up to her.
Reaching for the faucet, she turns the water on. She sticks her fingers under the water. It’s lukewarm, running over the tips of her fingers. She stares quietly at the motion, the way the water flops off her skin. It hits the sink in quiet pants, making the apartment seem larger than it really is.
There’s a knock on the door.
She looks up. Chase is supposed to be late. She shuts the sink off, pushing herself away from the counter. She stops at the door, wrapping her hand around the knob.
House leans against the frame. She tries to find her voice.
“What are you doing here?”
“Wedding present,” he says. He steps inside and around her, a hand wrapped around a bottle of wine as he looks around the apartment.
She shuts the door. The lights are faint. She’s left the television on, low with the second round of the evening news. She shrugs out of her jacket, walking in front of him and dropping it over the couch. She glances back.
“Wine?”
He puts the bottle down on the coffee table, half-bent. He leans heavily into the cane and the bottle stands in front of the television.
“I’m hoping to get lucky,” he says.
They stand awkwardly. She rests against the couch and House walks in front of her, looking around the apartment. There is the kitchen and the open living room; she won’t offer the rooms to the side, the strange notion of showing him more than he should see.
“This is it.”
She shrugs instead. “Home is home,” she says. Her voice is steady and the nonchalance seems placed, too placed even to her. She says it too quickly too and tries not to show it.
But he’s studying her. It’s the first time where she’s really aware of it, of standing with him and excuses turning between them. He’s come here, to her, and it worries her. She shouldn’t be worried.
“You look uncomfortable.”
“I’m happy to see you,” she says dryly.
He chuckles.
It makes his face soften. There are lines around his mouth, the corners of his eyes; wrinkles, signs of his age, all which seems to make him more handsome to her. He shouldn’t be here, she reminds herself.
Her fingers curl. She watches him as he moves to table of pictures.
“It doesn’t seem like married Cameron to me,” he tells her. He picks up a photograph. “It seems like you’ve walked right out of a damn catalogue. Again, it’s kinda cute with you leaving your avoidance issues all out in the open.”
She clenches her jaw. “Why are you here?” she asks.
His back faces her. She watches him, waiting. Her fingers pick at the couch cushions, rubbing over the fabric. The wedding photos are by the bookcase, facing her over the television.
“The patient died,” he says. “And I’m bored.”
It’s lie and a lazy one. He expects her to catch it. She stares at him, watching as he turns and studies her. She feels exposed again, raw. It’s the day, she tells herself, and the last couple hours. Chase should be home soon. House should go. This isn’t a conversation for here.
“It’s not an answer,” she says.
“You know me a little better than that,” he says.
Her mouth tightens.
“You came all the way out here to tell me that, right? About me knowing you, and me and my issues and anything else that I’ve pretty much done wrong or said wrong or - it’s done.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“You’re here, right?” she asks, stepping forward. It’s almost bitter and makes her more vulnerable than she should be. She moves into his space, trying to take back whatever ground she’s lost.
But House doesn’t move back. He doesn’t look away. It’s unnerving to have him here when she expects something completely different.
He doesn’t answer either.
She keeps herself in front of him. It’s a challenge, or an attempt at a challenge. They feel old and new. She feels out of place. She has no idea where this is going. She wants to know what he expects.
“You really believed it,” he says then, and quietly, almost absently. His mouth opens and then closes. There’s a sigh but it’s from her.
She forces an answer. “Excuse me?” she asks.
He shakes his head. “I figured,” he says. “You change but then you don’t. I thought I had you all figured out. You were supposed to be easy.”
She stares at him.
“Easy?”
The response snaps out of her, heavy-handed and abrupt. Her eyes are large, widening as she stares at him. She’s angry. She’s not. She’s terrified. She feels like she knew this was coming.
And it’s too late.
She takes a deep breath. She takes another one and then rubs her eyes, her hand sliding through her hair.
“You -” She starts and then stops. She tugs at the ends of her hair, rolling a few strands between her fingers. “You came all the way here to tell me that I’m easy and this about you having some weird flashback to - I don’t even know.”
She turns slightly. Her fingers curl her hand into a fist. This is another thing, she thinks, another thing that she’s been avoiding or trying to avoid. There’s a part of her that believes that this has been coming, waiting for her to say something to him.
It feels familiar.
He swallows first. He shifts forward and then he’s towering over her, looking down and then keeping himself steady. She’s aware of him shifting, of herself meeting him halfway. They don’t touch. They don’t say anything. She faces his expectation without anything in her favor.
“This isn’t a game,” she murmurs, and her hand is moving without her thinking, her fingers running against the line of his jaw. His skin is rough and the sensation is off, strangely necessary.
She bites her lip.
“This isn’t a game,” she says again.
Her ring catches the light as she turns her hand against his face. She wonders if it’s cold against his skin, if he’ll say anything. She wonders if it matters.
Slowly, he turns his mouth into her palm. The touch is light and his lips scrape against her skin. He drags his mouth in a light line and then pulls back, letting her keep her fingers against his jaw. She stares at him. There’s too much: she’s confused and absolutely terrified, unable to place where any of this is coming from. She should know. She should know.
“Told you. I have a few numbers,” he says quietly.
Her hand drops quickly, burned. Her fingers twist her ring and she turns away, rubbing her eyes.
“I’m not going to self-destruct,” she snaps.
It’s really over before it begins. She moves to the door, prying it open. She leans heavily against the wood. It’s too much for her.
House doesn’t move.
It’s the end of something and everything else seems to churn, rising to the surface. She waits, steels herself. She hates feeling this way. It’s the day, just the day, she tries to say.
“You were sloppy today,” he says. It’s calm, too calm. It’s almost condescending. “It wasn’t you,” he adds.
Her teeth digs into her lip. Her skin tastes ready to snap. It’s sharp and tired. She rubs her eyes. He watches her, waiting; it’s almost too much, hoping to get an answer that she’s never really going to get or want - it’s interchangeable. This is what scares her.
“Go home, House,” she says.
He nods too and steps away from the pictures. He moves to the door, stopping next to her. His mouth open, then closes. Her knuckles are white. She straightens. It feels like one long pause, waiting for one of them to do something else, to fall into the habit of feeding excuses.
Her gaze drops. “You should go,” she murmurs. And go now, she thinks.
She doesn’t wait for his nod. She doesn’t wait for a comment. It could come and go and they would be back in the same place. He doesn’t give her either. Somehow, there are rules.
Instead he passes her.
The door closes. She won’t watch him walk away.
we are all liars and cheaters, sad hearts and replacements. sometimes we need a moment. spoilers for the tyrant. 3,300 words.
notes: this is for blueheronz. ♥ i want to call this a post-ep but it’s also a string of missing scenes? so i’m just going to call it a post-ep because it seems easier. and i’m drinking wine. enjoy guys!
-
Inside the office, they look around like strangers.
“This is a stupid idea,” she says out loud.
Cameron stands closest to the door. She surveys the empty conference room. There is an uneasiness settling in her stomach. The lights are off. There are files on the table. A chair is skewed to the side. She remembers that Foreman and House have been called downstairs.
It’s another round of minutes that they’re losing for treatment. She just wants to get this over with.
“This is a stupid idea,” she says again. Her ponytail is coming undone and she reaches up with frustration, tugging at the few, falling strands. Her cheeks are flushed.
Chase passes her the file with the test results.
“What?” he asks and then grins. “You know you’re a bit curious, and I know I’m a bit curious; do what you usually do, it’s not the patient. It’s House that you’re interested in.”
“You’re not funny,” she mutters. She leans against the glass, fingering the file she has in her hand. Her nails scrape the tab.
She is still angry from this morning and anxious. She knows he knows too; they’ve been passing comments back and forth, rubbing at old wounds for most of the morning. They really don’t need this, she thinks.
“I’m sorry.”
Chase reaches for her. His hand curves around her arm. His palm feels warm over the end of her sleeve. She has this feeling like he’s doing this to prove something; whether it’s to her or to House or even to Foreman remains to be the question. It’s all so strange.
She shakes her head. Gently, she pulls her arm and herself from within reach. She moves to the desk and drops the file. Everything is neatly put away, as if no one as been in the room for months. It’s a disconnecting feeling and trying to place herself within it, only serves to heighten her anxiety.
“I just feel like we’ve talked about this,” she says finally.
Looking to Chase, she shrugs. He sighs loudly, rubbing his eyes. Their moment is too private for home instead of here. It makes it feel like they haven’t had time to process each other and maybe, maybe it’s the stages of her regret coming back to haunt her.
Her problem is that they keep walking in these circles.
“We have,” he says then.
He frowns too. She shakes her head again, watching as he looks away. His mouth falls into a narrow line, heavy too.
“You could’ve backed me up this morning,” she murmurs.
“So that’s what it is about.”
He says it with disdain: the it is is House, the meeting they had with Cuddy in the morning, and Foreman’s plea or almost plea for them to comeback for just a little while. Between them, this is more about House.
She just doesn’t trust this, coming back to the forefront. It’s not an invitation but what worries her marks itself as unfamiliar and murky. It’s different when they’re here and there, helping in phases or out of some obligation that they can laugh about later. It’s different or the very reassurance that she keeps telling hers.
She rests her hands on her hips and looks down.
“No,” she says. “I’m not going to lie - all of this, him,” she pauses, leaning against the desk. She waves a hand around the office. “It makes me really uneasy. This guy is a criminal and it makes my insides twist and - then there’s House. We told each other if they needed help, they needed help. But I just feel like this is not -”
She stops. Chase tries to smile. “You’re rambling,” he murmurs.
He steps forward, to her, and she tenses. His hand cups her face and she meets his gaze as he brushes her hair away from her face. She grinds her teeth and forces a smile.
“This whole thing reeks,” she says.
Chase smiles back tightly.
“It’s only just a case.”
House finds her later. Or she lets him.
“Misguided anger isn’t a good look for you.”
He stands over her bench outside. His hands are wrapped around his cane. He stands taller, waiting. His expression is blank but she finds herself swallowing back the familiarity.
They stare at each other. It becomes less about the patient.
“Getting involved in other people’s business is never a good look for you,” she says. “So it’s like we’re even.”
She holds a cup of coffee in her hand. The benches outside the emergency room are usually empty with doctors and nurses on cigarette breaks and having small moments to gather themselves. In the distance, she hears an ambulance. She straightens out of habit.
There’s little panic out here. It makes her feel guilty.
House sits.
“It bothers you.”
The bench croaks and his feet shuffle forward over the dirt. The breeze picks up lightly and Cameron bends forward, putting her coffee cup on the ground. She reaches up to the collar of her jacket and pulls the fabric up to cover her neck. She looks over to House.
“A lot of things do.”
“This bothers you though,” he shrugs. “Working for Foreman and not me, Chase and being the prettiest, picking side bothers you. It’s cute.”
He smirks then. Her eyes roll.
“I’m glad you’ve taken the time, out of your obviously very busy day, to come here and tell me exactly how I feel. It’s like free therapy.”
“I’ve got a few phone numbers,” he says dryly.
She snorts. Her mouth turns briefly.
A nurse passes with a shy glance. They sit quietly. He taps his cane against the ground. She crosses her legs. Her fingers brush over her knee and she swallows, staring at her wedding ring. The sensation is still odd, almost tired, and she been blaming herself for weeks now, for falling into the habit.
Staring at her ring though, forces some confrontation with sense, or some idea of sense. Under the light, it mixes into a dull color. She knows it’s gold, tells herself it’s gold, but the low lights from the hospital behind her and in front of her make the ring seem dull.
It doesn’t help that House is here, next to her; it’s not that he’s trying to intentionally seek her out or that she hopes, it’s the mere idea of his presence and the weight that it still has with her. She’s too aware of that. He must be too.
“You know what really bothers me?”
There’s no sigh from House, no sense of annoyance. She almost smiles.
“Not really,” he says.
She looks up at him. “It bothers me that all of the sudden, the three of us, are expected to act like a cohesive unit all over again. That the last two years stand as completely insignificant. I don’t care about working with Foreman or Chase, I’m happy to help. Yeah, it bothers me this case. But this whole thing, being placed in front of you like some bizarre cushion for whatever stupid thing you’re planning to do, bothers me more.”
It falls out of her clumsy and half-hearted, as if she were lying to herself in some places. She can taste it. House scoffs though and she flushes.
“Feel better?” he asks.
“Not really,” she shrugs.
“You don’t hide, Cameron.”
She watches him, surprised. He turns to her, frowning. The corners of his mouth are tight and there’s this strange sense that he’s amused too. He looks good, really good, but it worries her, somehow, that she’s speaking to him blindly. This is never a good thing.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’re not stupid either,” he says. “You’re bringing things to work that shouldn’t be here. It’s sloppy and lazy. You don’t hide.”
He’s insistent. She cannot look away. Her fingers curl around her knee. She can feel her ring press into her leg. He’s watching her, as if he were waiting, waiting for some sort of response or action from her.
She bites her lip. She’s hesitant then too.
“I’m glad you’re back,” she says quietly.
He looks away first.
Her hand won’t stop shaking.
In the hallway, she forces herself to stop. She leans against the wall. Her eyes close. She tries to count backwards.
Her hand still shakes.
“Let me see.”
Chase’s voice comes from somewhere next to her. She doesn’t open her eyes. She listens to the hospital; a doctor’s paged over the intercom, she hears a conversation pass in front of her in murmurs.
She can’t unravel here.
“I’m fine,” she says. “I’m - I’m fine.”
Her eyes open but she looks down. She raises her hand and watches her fingers curl into a fist. It trembles. Her throat tightens. It’s as if panic starts to wrap itself into a separate accusation.
“Give me a minute.”
She tries to breathe again. She can feel Dibala’s fingers on her wrist, the heavy grip. She turns her other hand over her wrist, rubbing the lines over her skin. It was hard but not too hard; it was the intensity of his gaze, and the single threat of making a mistake and that kind of mistake. It’s too sudden how the patient becomes more than the patient, and has a name and a face that she doesn’t know how to deal with.
But she should. She should, she tells herself. She sees too much in the ER and knows how to separate herself from the moment, to deal with it. What makes this different?
Her eyes burn. She blinks.
“What’s going on with you?”
Chase’s hand covers hers. His palm flattens over her knuckles. His hand is cold, almost unfamiliar. She lets it rest though.
“I don’t know,” she murmurs and says it as if she meets it. She steps outside of herself, attempting to survey what’s just happen. Her ears ring and the hospital seems to fade into background noise.
She hasn’t felt like this in a long time. She breathes.
“Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t, and bringing it here is making my head spin and things - I’m sorry.”
She pulls her hand away from his, dropping it to her side. She meets his gaze. Chase’s concern makes her head spin. It shouldn’t, she tries to tell herself. It shouldn’t. But when his mouth curls into a tentative smile, her stomach shifts into knots.
“I’m sorry too,” he tells her.
It catches her off-guard. She almost frowns but stops herself. “For what?” she asks. She keeps herself even. “You were right,” she adds. “I’m - I need to take a step back from this. Reassess.”
They watch each other, Chase with his smile and Cameron attempting to hold his gaze. She’s too aware of what they might look like, or what they could look like, and it seems to add to everything else.
She breathes. Her hand reaches for his. She squeezes his fingers quickly, as if to keep herself from catching her own lie. It’s easier than a smile.
“Let’s get coffee,” he says. She takes the excuse.
It all changes after.
It takes her a moment at home. She stands in the kitchen. She still wears her jacket from work. Her hands wrap around each side of the sink. She digs her fingers into the metal, her nails scrapping against the sides.
She’s lost patients before. This isn’t supposed to feel like this.
The day is starting to catch up to her.
Reaching for the faucet, she turns the water on. She sticks her fingers under the water. It’s lukewarm, running over the tips of her fingers. She stares quietly at the motion, the way the water flops off her skin. It hits the sink in quiet pants, making the apartment seem larger than it really is.
There’s a knock on the door.
She looks up. Chase is supposed to be late. She shuts the sink off, pushing herself away from the counter. She stops at the door, wrapping her hand around the knob.
House leans against the frame. She tries to find her voice.
“What are you doing here?”
“Wedding present,” he says. He steps inside and around her, a hand wrapped around a bottle of wine as he looks around the apartment.
She shuts the door. The lights are faint. She’s left the television on, low with the second round of the evening news. She shrugs out of her jacket, walking in front of him and dropping it over the couch. She glances back.
“Wine?”
He puts the bottle down on the coffee table, half-bent. He leans heavily into the cane and the bottle stands in front of the television.
“I’m hoping to get lucky,” he says.
They stand awkwardly. She rests against the couch and House walks in front of her, looking around the apartment. There is the kitchen and the open living room; she won’t offer the rooms to the side, the strange notion of showing him more than he should see.
“This is it.”
She shrugs instead. “Home is home,” she says. Her voice is steady and the nonchalance seems placed, too placed even to her. She says it too quickly too and tries not to show it.
But he’s studying her. It’s the first time where she’s really aware of it, of standing with him and excuses turning between them. He’s come here, to her, and it worries her. She shouldn’t be worried.
“You look uncomfortable.”
“I’m happy to see you,” she says dryly.
He chuckles.
It makes his face soften. There are lines around his mouth, the corners of his eyes; wrinkles, signs of his age, all which seems to make him more handsome to her. He shouldn’t be here, she reminds herself.
Her fingers curl. She watches him as he moves to table of pictures.
“It doesn’t seem like married Cameron to me,” he tells her. He picks up a photograph. “It seems like you’ve walked right out of a damn catalogue. Again, it’s kinda cute with you leaving your avoidance issues all out in the open.”
She clenches her jaw. “Why are you here?” she asks.
His back faces her. She watches him, waiting. Her fingers pick at the couch cushions, rubbing over the fabric. The wedding photos are by the bookcase, facing her over the television.
“The patient died,” he says. “And I’m bored.”
It’s lie and a lazy one. He expects her to catch it. She stares at him, watching as he turns and studies her. She feels exposed again, raw. It’s the day, she tells herself, and the last couple hours. Chase should be home soon. House should go. This isn’t a conversation for here.
“It’s not an answer,” she says.
“You know me a little better than that,” he says.
Her mouth tightens.
“You came all the way out here to tell me that, right? About me knowing you, and me and my issues and anything else that I’ve pretty much done wrong or said wrong or - it’s done.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“You’re here, right?” she asks, stepping forward. It’s almost bitter and makes her more vulnerable than she should be. She moves into his space, trying to take back whatever ground she’s lost.
But House doesn’t move back. He doesn’t look away. It’s unnerving to have him here when she expects something completely different.
He doesn’t answer either.
She keeps herself in front of him. It’s a challenge, or an attempt at a challenge. They feel old and new. She feels out of place. She has no idea where this is going. She wants to know what he expects.
“You really believed it,” he says then, and quietly, almost absently. His mouth opens and then closes. There’s a sigh but it’s from her.
She forces an answer. “Excuse me?” she asks.
He shakes his head. “I figured,” he says. “You change but then you don’t. I thought I had you all figured out. You were supposed to be easy.”
She stares at him.
“Easy?”
The response snaps out of her, heavy-handed and abrupt. Her eyes are large, widening as she stares at him. She’s angry. She’s not. She’s terrified. She feels like she knew this was coming.
And it’s too late.
She takes a deep breath. She takes another one and then rubs her eyes, her hand sliding through her hair.
“You -” She starts and then stops. She tugs at the ends of her hair, rolling a few strands between her fingers. “You came all the way here to tell me that I’m easy and this about you having some weird flashback to - I don’t even know.”
She turns slightly. Her fingers curl her hand into a fist. This is another thing, she thinks, another thing that she’s been avoiding or trying to avoid. There’s a part of her that believes that this has been coming, waiting for her to say something to him.
It feels familiar.
He swallows first. He shifts forward and then he’s towering over her, looking down and then keeping himself steady. She’s aware of him shifting, of herself meeting him halfway. They don’t touch. They don’t say anything. She faces his expectation without anything in her favor.
“This isn’t a game,” she murmurs, and her hand is moving without her thinking, her fingers running against the line of his jaw. His skin is rough and the sensation is off, strangely necessary.
She bites her lip.
“This isn’t a game,” she says again.
Her ring catches the light as she turns her hand against his face. She wonders if it’s cold against his skin, if he’ll say anything. She wonders if it matters.
Slowly, he turns his mouth into her palm. The touch is light and his lips scrape against her skin. He drags his mouth in a light line and then pulls back, letting her keep her fingers against his jaw. She stares at him. There’s too much: she’s confused and absolutely terrified, unable to place where any of this is coming from. She should know. She should know.
“Told you. I have a few numbers,” he says quietly.
Her hand drops quickly, burned. Her fingers twist her ring and she turns away, rubbing her eyes.
“I’m not going to self-destruct,” she snaps.
It’s really over before it begins. She moves to the door, prying it open. She leans heavily against the wood. It’s too much for her.
House doesn’t move.
It’s the end of something and everything else seems to churn, rising to the surface. She waits, steels herself. She hates feeling this way. It’s the day, just the day, she tries to say.
“You were sloppy today,” he says. It’s calm, too calm. It’s almost condescending. “It wasn’t you,” he adds.
Her teeth digs into her lip. Her skin tastes ready to snap. It’s sharp and tired. She rubs her eyes. He watches her, waiting; it’s almost too much, hoping to get an answer that she’s never really going to get or want - it’s interchangeable. This is what scares her.
“Go home, House,” she says.
He nods too and steps away from the pictures. He moves to the door, stopping next to her. His mouth open, then closes. Her knuckles are white. She straightens. It feels like one long pause, waiting for one of them to do something else, to fall into the habit of feeding excuses.
Her gaze drops. “You should go,” she murmurs. And go now, she thinks.
She doesn’t wait for his nod. She doesn’t wait for a comment. It could come and go and they would be back in the same place. He doesn’t give her either. Somehow, there are rules.
Instead he passes her.
The door closes. She won’t watch him walk away.