Chapter Text
Cameron was halfway through her first coffee. The waitress made a pit stop at their table to top the mug off. Chase ordered breakfast for both of them — eggs, over medium, with rye bread and sausage for Cameron. Spinach and egg white omelette with multigrain toast for him.
“I guess, if we’re going to start anywhere, it would make the most sense for me to apologize,” Chase said, holding his mug between his hands. The Splenda packet that had been taking up space in between his fingertips had served its time as a stress reliever.
“For… which part?” Cameron replied.
“I don’t know,” Chase rolled his eyes, already feeling himself get frustrated with Cameorn’s antics. “I just feel like I should start off with an apology. To clear the air.”
“Usually when people apologize its because they have something they feel guilty about, not just because.”
Their plates finally slid in front of them fresh from the kitchen, Chase’s omelette still collecting heat while Cameron reached for the jam in the middle of the table. She thanked their waitress on their behalf.
Chase diverted to pay attention to his omelette instead, sawing into it with his dulled knife. Cameron spread jam on her toast with hers.
“Don’t think that the food is going to get you out of this,” Cameron joked.
“I was the one who brought us here,” Chase took a piece of the omelette into his mouth. Way too hot. He tried to recoup by drinking a bit of his coffee, opening his mouth slightly and hoping Cameron didn’t notice too closely. He swallowed. “So why the hell would I try to ignore the conversation you obviously want to have?”
“Me?” Cameron asked. “Please, there are a few things on my list I’d rather be doing than this. Like, maybe, I don’t know, mourning our dead boss.”
Chase took a beat. He’d been processing House’s death in slow motion. It was this insatiable loss to him — this empty feeling in his chest when he thought about him. The man who’d fired him and later relied on him to carry the team. And the stabbing… Chase could never forget that. He remembered wanting to walk again to spite House — and House bided his time by egging him on. Nothing they did was serious, at its core. A weird dance, or ritual, between the two of them that took the form of fucked-up-father-and-son, or something like that. House would never call it that. Chase wouldn’t hesitate.
It wasn’t a secret that Chase had lacked guidance as a young fellow — and House certainly knew that he was the most impressionable out of the three. Foreman would push back on any sudden testing — looking for a way to find a hole in House’s diagnosis. Cameron wouldn’t let his ego trump her morals. But Chase answered House's beck and call, he’d agree with him to the ends of the earth. Their relationship was confusing, convoluted, and difficult to dissect. With all of its faults, though, Chase felt an unmistakable sense of dread sinking into his psyche. He’d been berated, punched, disrespected, lied to, and sent on many a mission on House’s behalf. But he’d also learned, had a job, and knew that — deep down somewhere — House thought about him as much as he thought about him.
Often Chase wondered if he idolized House more than he did when practicing his own faith. That was an answer sealed between him and God. Or maybe him and House.
“My dead boss, not yours,” Chase reminded her. “But whatever, yeah. You’ll always be family, or whatever.” If Cameron was going to act as annoyed as possible about being held captive at brunch with her ex-husband, he was allowed some level of return ammunition.
“How’s your…” Cameron trailed off, looking down at the table — but Chase knew she was talking about his leg.
“Surprised you didn’t keep tabs on it,” Chase admitted. “But, yeah, whatever.”
Cameron threw her hands up, shaking her head and letting her back thump against the booth.
“You’re so bitter,” she started. Ouch.
“Can we save the actual conversation for after food, please?” Chase requested. “Just like, start light. Or yeah, instead we can move directly to the stabbing, which you now seem to care about?”
Cameron’s gaze remained stone-cold.
“Maybe that was my small talk,” she replied. “So don’t start.”
They ate the rest of their meals in silence, both stealing glances at the other. Chase was really hoping this would’ve been more civil. Cameron wished that Chase would quit the act and talk to her like a normal person. It was like leading a horse to water with him.
The waitress topped off their coffees in exchange for their empty plates, Chase brushing crumbs off the table lightly onto the ground before looking back up at Cameron. She averted her glances onto the table instead.
“Can we talk about your leg now?”
“No, I don’t want to,” Chase replied. “Can we talk about something else?”
“Not really, no. Don’t you want me to stay?”
Chase paused and narrowed his gaze.
“It’s fine. It was… all just… horrible. I don’t know what else to say to you. You should’ve been there if you wanted to know so much about it,” Chase retorted to defensiveness.
“Mature,” Cameron reminded. “I ask about your health and you give me a shitty answer. Yeah, you really are just like him.”
The ‘him’ in question was unspoken into existence — the man himself — he needed no further explanation. Cameron had left under those circumstances: that Chase was slowly turning into House. There was nothing that she could do. He seemed to be fine with that assumption.
“Contrary to your beliefs, I’m nothing like him. I just needed his guidance and he was there to provide it. I was scared,” Chase replied.
“I offered you a way out.”
“I panicked.”
“How the hell do you choose him over me?”
“I didn’t know what to do.”
“We could’ve had another chance.”
“Don’t you think we’ve had enough chances?” Chase asked, feeling an immediate pang of regret in his chest. That one hit a little too close to home for both parties.
“You’re the relationship expert, obviously,” Cameron scoffed. “I know nothing about love, right? You’re the one who carried our relationship on your back, right? So what the hell did you think I meant when I told you that I’d love you no matter what happened?”
“Only to turn around and say you never loved me anyways,” Chase shot back, voice hushed but terse.
“You know that I didn’t mean it like that,” Cameron said. “I didn’t know what to say.”
“Neither did I, but somehow I’m the bad guy?”
“I never said you were.”
“It was implied,” Chase noted, stirring a packet of Splenda into his coffee. Cameron looked down at her watch. “...got somewhere to be?”
Cameron looked at the door they’d entered through, a sensor sounding every time a patron entered or exited the dining room. She thought about it — walking out the door and leaving this conversation. Leaving him. She had an opportunity to do it, but something kept her seated solid in the booth. If she left, she’d be feeding into their vicious cycle of finding each other at their lowest again. She’d rather crack this situation open while she still could.
“House changed you,” Cameron said. “I don’t know when it happened, but there was a turning point when I knew you were his, not mine. It wasn’t worth fighting for. And I could either have both or none of you. And I chose the latter.”
“Mature,” Chase nodded mockingly, furrowing his eyebrows. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Can you just shut the fuck up and listen to me instead of berating every single thing I say?” Cameron’s voice faltered, a rare moment of vulnerability from her towards Chase. She’d been guarded and careful with the way she approached him. She was determined to appear unfazed by this whole affair, but Chase was slowly chipping away at her shield. Chase didn’t dare respond.
“Just listen to me,” Cameron looked him in the eye. “I don’t care who or what you are now. I don’t care what you do — how you do it — but you need to understand that I had my reasons for doing what I did. You can’t hold it against me for leaving. Whatever evil caricature of me you’ve created in your head — it’s not me. I don’t even know who I’m talking to anymore, Chase.”
“Cameron, please.”
“I still think about the first few days in the lab. I was so fucking scared — worried about House, worried about you, worried about Cuddy. I remember you grounded me — or at least balanced me out. Foreman too, obviously. There’s just something about the way we talked that felt so normal then,” Cameron continued. “Now, I just don’t even know who you are anymore.”
Chase didn’t really know how to answer that. There was a lump in his throat and everything felt difficult to swallow. Both physically and metaphorically.
“I’m sorry, Allison,” he sighed. “I’ve just moved on.”
He really hadn’t — in all honesty. The days where he thought about Cameron extended into weeks, months, years. Soon it’d be decades. She’d move on with him, surely, find someone else to berate for a while before another eventual divorce. Chase was certain she’d never settle for anyone — she’d continue chasing the high she got from their first endeavors. It was what he laid in bed at night thinking about.
Cameron pursed her lips, once again retorting back to her hand-wringing to ignore the issue at hand. Neither of them left the other on very good terms — the lockdown was really a mistake — and so much was left on the table that Cameron felt like the entire situation had a faux ending. Maybe this was the real ending for them.
She wanted to close this chapter of her life for good. With the funeral, it felt like the right time — but she couldn’t bring herself to take the leap of faith to do so. Something about sitting across the table from the one person you keep coming back to, over and over again, was hurting her heart. He looked dejected even after he’d cleaned up nicely for the ceremony — Cameron wasn’t sure if she could even pull him out of his haze.
“You and I both know you haven’t moved on,” Cameron started. “Or else you wouldn’t have asked me to brunch.”
“I just wanted to catch up.”
“Why didn’t you invite Foreman?”
“I knew you’d immediately bring up our marriage.”
“Wanted to beat you to it,” Cameron retorted. “Don’t try to pretend like you didn’t want to talk about it. Or what happened when you signed the papers.”
Lockdown was a stain on his conscience. Cameron really had caught him in the crosshairs during what would prove to be some of the lowest lows to date. She rubbed salt in the wound — but immediately stuck around long enough to bandage it up and make sure it healed.
“Do we need to talk about what happened?”
“Absolutely not,” Cameron laughed. Chase wished he felt more at ease, but something just kept nagging at him as they spoke. “I know you want to.”
“Never said that.”
The silence lulled between them. The emotional roller coaster was taking a toll on them both. Cameron still wanted to get up and walk away. Chase just wanted to disappear.
“I think a lot about…” Chase looked up at Cameron, clasping his hands together. “How it was in the beginning.”
“You were miserable,” Cameron reminded him.
“I was miserable, yes, but I was happy. I’d give anything to have that back again instead of dealing with all of the consequences of a few years of happiness.”
“I’m pretty sure the universe doesn’t work that way. I think that’s just called getting older.”
“Not getting older,” Chase replied. “Just… growing up. We’re not old.”
“Suit yourself,” Cameron shrugged. “I don’t mind aging.”
Their waitress made another round at their table but Cameron put her hand out to signal the refusal of any more refills on coffee.
“He’ll take the check, whenever it works for you,” Cameron smiled up at her, sending her off to the wait station to ring them up. Her cheery demeanor shifted back into its distant state as she turned back to Chase.
“Looking to get away already?” Chase prodded.
“I didn’t want her to keep bringing us coffee,” Cameron replied.
“Yeah, right.”
There was something else both of them wanted to say — probably both extremely different than the other — but it went unspoken in the awkward silence they’d been cultivating.
“So if you didn’t want to talk about our marriage, then why’d you actually want to talk to me?” Cameron asked.
“I didn’t say it wasn’t important to me.”
“I know, but you just said —”
“Can we move on, please?” Chase stressed the last part, finally breaking the staring contest he’d been winning with the table and looked up at Cameron.
“Move on? Chase, how do you expect me to do that?” She replied. “You expect me to just forget about it all and pretend like it never happened — just so we’re both more comfortable?”
“I didn’t say that because I didn’t care.”
“It was implied.”
“Well, I didn’t mean it,” Chase added.
“What you mean to say is that you don’t want to confront this.”
Chase could’ve said the same to her when he signed the papers. She had to be forcibly trapped in the room with him to even discuss their issues. And, even then, she wasn’t truthful. Instead, she blurted out what she felt like Chase would want to hear in that moment. Neither of them wanted to talk about it, because that’s how it had been since the beginning.
A relationship that blossoms out of a partial drug-induced hookup into a coworkers-with-benefits situationship where only one of you really feels deeply about the relationship is never a good starting point. What Cameron wouldn’t admit to him was that — it wasn’t that she wasn’t interested in a relationship with Chase — she was just too afraid to commit herself to something like that.
She’d spent most of her time before Chase without strings attached: on her terms. Cameron liked to think it made her feel more in control. Something about her infatuation with Chase changed her, though. It’d changed him, too.
“I obviously wanted to confront our… issues. I’d say you were more afraid than me,” Chase replied. “I don’t know why you keep accusing me of feeling a certain way, Allison. I never wanted to get to this point. Where you… feel like you don’t even know me well enough to understand what I might be feeling. And when you do — it's wrong.”
Cameron wanted to be right about Chase — that he’d forgotten her and moved on. What she’d hear through Wilson and others about Chase was always less than… ideal. That he’d sleep around, drink, and generally act like an idiot. She had blindly assumed that he’d just continued his life without her — even though she really knew that wasn’t the case.
Chase thought about her often — he’d already reiterated that sentiment. Replacing the Cameron-sized void in his life was detrimental to his general outlook. So far, it wasn’t doing much of anything for him.
“I guess, I don’t know,” Chase started after Cameron refused to reply. “I just wanted to take this time to talk to you. It’s obviously the end of an era and time for us to give up on trying to pretend that we hate each other.”
Cameron knew he was right — that they were both due for an open, honest conversation instead of the mental gymnastics they were playing with each other right now.
“Can we talk somewhere more… private?” Cameron asked him.
Chase looked up as the waitress slid the bill in front of him, smiling. He turned back to Cameron, giving her a quick nod.
“Your place or mine?”