Chapter Text
He’d bitten his own tongue when she walked out the mahogany double doors at the back of the funeral home. Chase had stewed a game plan to talk to her after the funeral — it was all he could think about once his emotions truly subsided from the fact that they were at a funeral. Cameron hadn’t talked to him — let alone been near him — for what felt like eons. They’d see each other occasionally in the winding hallways of the hospital, or in the cafeteria. Chase would always try to catch her eye; she’d pretend not to notice. She talked to other people, made new friends. But she still got the same lunch she’d gotten when she sat across the table from him every single day.
Chase had admired her from afar — respected her boundaries. He’d chosen to be cordial. At the time, their divorce felt like it caused their entire relationship to go up in flames. Chase was learning to live with the fact that Cameron just didn’t want him in her life anymore. So he’d learned her schedule — tried to at least be in her vicinity occasionally. Not even to talk to her, but just to see her. He wasn’t sure if it was even from a sense of longing for her anymore — but as a punishment towards himself. His periodical mistakes: his brash behavior, the secrecy, his forward nature — all of them chipped away at his relationship with Cameron until there was nothing left. Or until he felt so unmistakable from House that she had no choice but to leave.
Cameron might’ve been on to something. He’d worked himself so thin — he barely recognized himself. Without her, without the normalcy of their relationship providing some sense of calm, his life felt monotonous. He cut into the monotony with drinking. Then women. Then drinking and women. And a man — which was something he did not want to explore further. He had too much going on as it was. Sexuality issues could be figured out later.
He’d wanted to approach her a handful of times — ask if they could just start over. He knew it wouldn’t be that easy, she’d never been one to make things simpler. Then again, he couldn’t really be trusted not to complicate things either. Maybe this was their chance, though. A new chapter was beginning — the hospital would certainly shuffle significantly. Fellows gone. Nothing would ever be the same. Maybe the end of an era could be the start of something new for the both of them.
He felt paralyzed in his own seat in the funeral home, watching the small crowd shuffle out through the doors, losing Cameron in the flock. He knew if he stayed long enough he’d get trapped in a conversation with a slew of funeral-dwellers. So he finally stood up after the crowd had thinned, pushing ahead to see Cameron standing on the curb, arms crossed over one another. Searching for warmth in her black coat, she appeared to be expecting someone.
Chase started to think this might be a bad idea. With all these people here, was Cameron really the person who wanted to talk to him right now? And what would everyone else think when they saw the two of them talking as if nothing ever happened? What would she even say to him, if anything? But he remembered who he was dealing with. Cameron would certainly want the last word — the last moment where she could easily slip away and leave him wondering why he even asked her in the first place.
Before he could stop himself from being stupid, he started walking towards Cameron, deciding to stand back further to brace himself for impact. He’d come to expect the worst recently. He wondered if she thought about him.
“Really lousy day for a funeral.” Chase broke through the silence. What a stupid fucking thing to say. She turned to face him anyway. “House wouldn't've cared, though,” he said, giving her his best attempt at a half-smile — partially to say hello, and partially to make things less awkward, he hoped.
Cameron didn’t fully turn to face him, just looking over her shoulder at him from her stationary position on the curb.
“Yeah, it’s cold,” she said. “But it was a beautiful ceremony.”
Chase took another step forward.
“I was really happy to see you. Er — I mean — not obviously given the circumstances, but just… you’re here. It’s nice,” Chase finished. No matter how many women he courted, talked to in bars, took back home to his apartment, none of them had matched what he felt in his gut when he talked to Cameron. Only seeing her made him weak in the knees — she knew how to look inside of Chase like no other — understand him. To make him feel like he had a purpose. He cared too deeply about the wrong things when they split. He had realized he’d made a grave mistake.
He felt like a child — bashful and shaky. His breath was visible in the condensation of the morning dew. Cameron looked back towards the curb, focusing her vision on anything but him.
“It’s nice to see you too, Chase.”
Chase took a moment of silence between them, taking a breath before starting again, inching closer.
“Would you… want to go get a coffee?”
Cameron turned to face him fully, raising an eyebrow.
“Look,” she started. “I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but deciding to finally talk to me at our boss’ funeral is not going to make me want to talk to you. Or whatever you’re trying to do.”
He wondered if she knew that he’d been seeing other people — was she seeing other people? Of course she was. But what if she wasn’t? What if she laid awake at night thinking about the people that Chase was seeing — how they weren’t her? That they got to live out the very life that she desperately had wanted with Chase before things got serious — no strings attached. Meaningless sex. Until it wasn’t meaningless.
“Jesus, Allison, don’t you think I would’ve learnt some better tricks by now?” Chase laughed.
“I don’t know, you never were good at being subtle,” Cameron glanced over at him. “Still not interested, so please leave me alone.”
“If you don’t want people to see us talking to each other, just tell me. We can go somewhere else.”
“It’s not that,” she said.
“Please, come on. Just a coffee. I’ll pay. I just want to know how you’re doing. Is that really such a crime?” Chase had moved to obstruct her view — which she’d diverted to the brick pathway a few feet ahead.
“Robert,” Cameron warned. “Just leave me alone.”
Chase held his hands up in surrender, pursing his lips.
“Fine — yeah. Okay. I’m sorry,” he said. “But if you change your mind…”
“I won’t,” Cameron replied — a little too quickly for Chase’s liking.
He considered continuing to beg. He considered getting upset. He considered all these things and more on a very, very slow walk back to his car. Cameron was still standing on that damn curb, watching him walk away with his tail between his legs like he’d been scolded.
He hadn’t even put the key into the ignition when she tapped at his driver’s side window.
Chase considered not rolling down the window, playing petty. He reminded himself that any sudden movements might spook Cameron away from having this totally-normal-conversation-with-your-ex-husband-after-your-ex-boss’-funeral-time with him. He pressed the button, sliding the window down as he looked up at her.
“Sorry, I’m not your Uber,” Chase responded, sliding the window back up halfway. He wanted her to say it.
“Chase,” Cameron said. “Fine, you win, whatever. Unlock the car.”
Cameron slid into the passenger seat. For a moment — Chase wished that this was an everyday occurrence: carpooling to work, debriefing in the car. He reminded himself to be in the here and now while Cameron was still willing to speak to him. He was already surprised he’d gotten this far.
“I thought you would’ve gotten a new car by now,” Cameron noted, running her hand over the dashboard, which picked up dust on her fingertips. “Doesn’t seem like you’re taking very good care of this one, though.”
Chase had pulled out of the parking lot, looking across the street for oncoming traffic.
“It still works,” he defended himself. “I can drive to and from work in the snow. I get the car checked out every year. Like a normal person.” He rolled his eyes at her and resorted back to the silence, which was starting to feel more comforting than actually talking to her. Maybe this was a mistake. She didn’t seem to be happy with him — constantly critical of his current living situation. To her, there wasn’t much substance to Chase’s life beyond House. Maybe she was right, though. What did he have to prove without House around? The thought made his stomach twist into an unravelable knot.
When the time eventually came — Chase remembered thinking — when House got fired, died, or a secret third thing, he’d have a clearer plan of what the road ahead looked like. Now he wasn’t so sure. Obviously, his boss’ death was making him do irrational things, like talk to Cameron.
Her hand reached over the dashboard to the volume dial, letting the music envelop their silence and consequently, Chase’s stream of utter nonsense consciousness inside of his mind. Nothing like Steely Dan being played on Princeton-Plainesboro’s CLASSIC GOLD FM station to fill the silence. Chase usually kept the station on in lieu of his general distaste for satellite radio, and his lack of any sort of drive to pay for a subscription for it.
The silence followed them down the road, Chase turning over their interactions in his head. She’d actually tapped on his window, spoken to him, and agreed to get inside of his car. There was an unspoken line between them most of the time that neither of them dared to cross. It seemed like Cameron was willing to disregard that boundary as soon as it was safe to do so.
With every passing building, Chase considered turning the car around and dropping her back off at the funeral home; to apologize for wasting her time, and to reassure her that he’d never bother her again. He also remembered she was the one reaching over to turn up the yacht rock to drown out their silent awkwardness that hung between him. Chase silently thanked Donald Fagen and Walter Becker’s coked-out brains for creating “Aja,” which felt like the correct soundtrack for this whole experience.
The parking lot for a diner they used to frequent was cracked and greying, with haphazard patches of new concrete to fill in larger faults in the pavement. Chase slowed to a stop in between two faint white lines, shifting back into park before letting out a sigh — to indicate that it was time to get out now.
He didn’t walk over to the other side to open the door. Really, she didn’t even wait for him to get out of the car. Cameron unbuckled, opened the door and swung the door shut faster than Chase could get his bearings. He tagged along behind her as they filed into the diner.
On account of it being a weekday, the breakfast crowd was thinning from the early risers to the retirees who could spare a few extra hours of socializing. Chase and Cameron were seated near the window, which still had the lightest layer of frost coating the outside panels. Chase ordered a coffee. Cameron ordered one as well. She poured two creams into hers, Chase took his black.
And they just sat there for a moment across the table from one another. Cameron ran her fingers over her own knuckles on the other hand. Her hands were still warming up from the chill outside, knuckles pink. Close, but not close enough to hand-wringing. Chase noticed things about her that he hadn’t noticed even when they sat uncomfortably shoulder-to-shoulder during the funeral. They’d both aged — not badly, though. They’d just grown up. Above all, though, Chase could study Cameron’s face and see that she just looked plain tired. He was too.
“So,” Cameron started, once again taking the leap of faith to break an otherwise unbreakable barrier between the two of them. “What exactly did you want to talk about?”
Chase realized that he probably should’ve had a better game plan going into this conversation.
“This isn’t me interrogating you,” Chase replied. “I just wanted to talk.”
“Well, you’ve got me captive here,” Cameron shot back.
Chase tried not to think too long about that one — but his mind took no time to fill in the blanks for him on the last time they were both held captive, partially against Cameron’s will. That was the last time he cried about something that he thought genuinely mattered. Everything after that was just noise.
“Don’t do that, that’s not fair and you know it,” he said. “Can you talk to me like a normal person this time, or do we need to air out all of our dirty laundry for the whole diner to hear?”
“You’re telling me not to say things like that?” Cameron shook her head, taking her spoon into her coffee and stirring aimlessly, hoping to appear busy. “I’m starting to think we ended on two different pages.”
“I was hoping we could start with the lighter stuff, but you obviously had other plans,” Chase replied, pointedly.
“Why sugarcoat it?”
“I guess that’s true.” Chase took a sugar packet in his hands, also to appear busy.
“So,” Cameron looked at him earnestly. “Where should we start?”