Title - Quarters
Rating M
Pairing – Chase/Cameron, Chase/Others
Disclaimer - Not mine
Summary - Four parts don't make a whole, I guess.
Just a little rambling one-shot that probably doesn't make sense. Based on the theory that Chase's 'four girls' are all being split apart to make an uneasy 'whole'. It's not particularly good but it's just something I wrote, then deleted, then reinstated because Calico17 wished to read...
Quarters
All it took was a few words - a few words to catch him, a few words to grasp him and hold him firm.
"So, I was thinking we should have sex."
It seems like a lifetime has evolved since she dug her claws in, since he became the worm that dangled on her delicate, ruthless, fragile, unbreakable hook. At first he'd been coy, head tilted like a curious puppy.
"What if I'm offended by your proposition?"
"Then, you're not the man I'm looking for."
It wasn't her lapdog he became but in a lot of ways she held his leash. She petted him. She threw the ball for him to fetch until she grew tired of their game.
A dog is for life. So is a husband.
Unfortunately, Cameron didn't agree.
So much has come to pass since he danced with that broken ice queen hoping to melt her down into something more. He loved her. Married her. He hoped to turn her into warmth and beauty where she was frozen and cracked before.
It took him so little time to realise that ice burns…
(*)
Chase is left with only memories, now, with photographs of a smiling young man who thought he knew pain but didn't.
"I loved you once but you're ruined."
He's left with an empty ring finger where a promise of forever once was.
Now, he searches for little pieces of her in each and every woman he meets, little slivers of the girl he loved and lost that he can sew together and make something complete out of. She could be Frankenstein's monster or a masterpiece. It would be up to the world to decide.
"You can't change me, Chase. There's not enough of me left to mould."
He couldn't mould Cameron.
He can't even mould himself.
(*)
He wants resolution. Perhaps he wants closure, he doesn't know, but he wants something and he won't rest until he's achieved it.
"You need to get out there," they had told him when his life seemed to be lacking, his face forlorn. He'd nodded his head in silent acceptance as he knew it was true. "You need to move on. Forget about her."
He's heard the old cliché about the fish in the sea a thousand times but he doesn't want a mermaid. He just doesn't want to be alone.
The truth is, for the past six weeks, Chase hasn't been alone. For the last six weeks there's always been a part of her next to him to soften the blow of her absence. There are four quarter segments of Cameron that help to fill in the spaces that she left.
"It's nothing serious," he will insist if pushed. "I'm just enjoying life."
"You're dating four women," Taub gasps, as if it were a conquest. Chase smiles glibly because that's what is expected of him.
They see it as impressive whereas he just sees it as necessity.
"Nice."
Each and every one of the four serves a purpose, nothing more. Each and every one of them provides a piece of the puzzle that Chase will never complete, a part of the patchwork that will never be enough.
His counsellor tells him he's 'dealing well,' is 'coping remarkably' and it seems - wrong.
Chase asks himself, "Is this dealing?" "Is this coping?"
He can't even answer.
(*)
If he closes his eyes, sometimes he can still pretend.
Callie has Cameron's wavy blond hair that she'll curl around her finger in ways that drive Chase crazy. She's young and stupid, a ditzy girl with a curvaceous figure and a sunny spirit. She smiles, and Chase smiles too, and when she calls him "honey" it's a sickly sweet sentiment he'll never get used to but is glad to indulge.
Cameron never called him 'honey'. She called him Chase.
For so long, Cameron simply never called him…
Amelia has Allison's green eyes, forever watchful, judging him on his every move. She tells him his shirt is the wrong colour; that his tie doesn't match and his trousers are too long. She tells him his hair needs to be cut, that his jacket looks old and worn and, when they make love, she tells him she wishes he'd look her in the eye. Amelia doesn't realise he might lose himself if he did; that those old emotions might all come gushing back because those are her eyes and this is her bed.
It's hard to forget that, sometimes, because all he has to do is look at the crack in the wall where the headboard jolted through the plasterwork and he sees Cameron's ghost staring back at him.
Daniella has Cameron's 'moral' spirit, a 'good' girl trapped inside of a body that's bought and paid for. She swears that this is just a means to an end, that this job is just a way of buying her way into college. She tells Chase she's not interested in a life of loveless sex but that the 'convenience' is all too appealing. He'd smiled nostalgically when he likened it to microwave pizza and she hadn't understood the sadness in his eyes. Chase chooses her because she's easy; because she's as convenient as microwave pizza and that kind of serves a purpose.
Marie has Cameron's fatal, irresistible flaw. She has long, red hair and eyes that dance like fireflies. She is feisty and Irish. She is painfully beautiful and, though her hair indicates heat, she is as cold as the mid-winter air that blows outside.
She doesn't care for him and never will.
"You're the one I'm least likely to fall in love with."
Marie uses him and he knows it, welcomes it like a Catholic welcomes flagellation and Christian punishment. He feels her cutting into his flesh like the crack of the whip and he wonders if God feels satisfied when he sees it. She doesn't return his calls. She shows up unannounced. She picks him up when she feels he's of use but when she's not in the mood she cuts him down to size.
He laughs when she mocks him, tells her "You remind me of a woman I once knew."
Maria will kiss him hard and then pull away when he tries to kiss her back, those lips a no-zone when the tables turn. Her nails will scrape down his chest, her hands losing themselves down the front of his jeans but she'll push him away if he attempts to reciprocate. Chase will tell her she's beautiful and she'll smile that beautiful smile but offer nothing in return, will lap up the attention and the compliment but won't reciprocate his words.
"I mean it, Marie, you truly are."
"Don't sweet talk me, Chase. I'm not in the mood. Lets just get this over with."
It's like turning the clock back three years.
Sometimes, she even sounds like Cameron.
(*)
Foreman asks: "So, are any of them standing out for you or are you still just playing the field?"
"Maybe," Chase says.
They all fit a function. Sometimes, he'll sway toward a notion rather than anything more.
Daniella will succumb to his voice, that soft, lilting accent that drives her to the end of the Earth. Amelia will blink her eyelashes so coyly at him when he tells her she is unreal. Soft. Gentle. Putty in his hands.
Callie will bend over backwards if she thinks it will make him 'want' her more, the handsome doctor, the pretty doctor, the clever doctor that brings her flowers and lights up her cigarette from the candle that burns beside her bed.
They make him feel good. They make him feel…functional.
It's Marie he 'wants', though, simply because she doesn't want him back. It's Marie he runs to, simply because she keeps running away.
"It stops being fun when it means something."
At every turn, she reminds him that 'this means nothing' and that 'this is all over when she decides it will be so'. Still, she climbs on top of him with her hands on his chest and her tongue in his mouth, holding him down with the delicate weight of her thighs.
Afterwards, they will lie in bed side by side, arms straight, legs straighter – two people not as one, their bodies untwined and devoid. She will move away from him as if he has fulfilled his requirement and if he moves to follow she will stop him.
Her eyes will stare at the ceiling above as she pulls the sheets up to cover her breasts. He will look at her through fevered eyes, barely able to catch his breath.
"I'm done," she will say, as she drags the sheets away from him to cover herself as she moves to get dressed.
There will be no kiss goodbye.
There will be no love lost.
"I'm done," Cameron said, as she fastened the suitcase up tight and firm, sealing inside of it every last bit of what they had. It was a symbolic gesture when she clicked shut that padlock, more so that she was the only one that held the key.
"Do you even care what I have to say?" he asked, his arms folded across his chest, knowing the answer before it even came. "Do I even matter to you?"
"You mattered," Cameron replied.
Emphasis on the past tense but Chase felt he never did…
(*)
He lies so well.
"It feels good to move on, you know?"
The trouble is, they're all just depictions of Cameron. He hasn't 'moved on' at all.
Callie will sleep beside him, her hair splayed across his chest, her heart beating so rhythmically against him.
Daniella will take her money and leave, reminding him above all things that he is better than this, implying without words that he shouldn't reduce himself to paying for something he could acquire himself.
Amelia will hold his head firmly in her hands and force him to meet her gaze. He will hold his breath as she presses her forehead to his. Then, he will look away, burned by her eyes.
Marie, she will say nothing. He will call out after her, hating himself for his own 'need', for the fact that he could pick up the others and drop them at will, but not her. Not Marie.
Not the personification of Cameron's biggest flaw.
They say that rejection is the biggest aphrodisiac.
"When will I see you?"
She will stop. She will turn. She will flick her hair over her should and she will look him in the eye with an expression that says a thousand words.
She will smile a knowing smile and she will leave him hanging.
He will exhale a breath he didn't realise he was holding when she tells him: "Don't call me. I'll call you."
(*)
And, so it is.
Chase is the envy of his colleagues - Chase, the player with four women that worship and adore him, Chase, the one-man show, his choice of beautiful women to help the night go faster.
He plays the role well. Turn up bright lights. Exit stage left. Pull on your mask and perform for the crowd.
"Who is it tonight?" they will ask, and he will smile that loose, easy smile and give them a random name, the first name that comes to mind.
Callie. Amelia. Daniella. Marie.
You dog, they'll say, with laughter in their voices. You stud.
"Single life is the making of you, my friend. Look at you. You're thriving."
"You wouldn't believe it," he will say cryptically as he forces a smile.
They truly wouldn't believe it.
They wouldn't believe he relives his failed marriage night after night, sucking the marrow of his own regret and self-hatred out of these beautiful women; the one that challenges him, the one that adores him, the one that consoles him.
It's sad, then, that the only one that 'holds' him is the one that pushes him away.
It's sad that the only part of Cameron he truly feels something for is the part that never loved him at all.
He picks up his cellphone for the third time today. His heart skips a beat when Marie's name flashes up on the screen and he sees three words that mean most to him, of late.
"My place tonight."
There's no love in that. It's simple, in the greatest of ways, and Chase strives for that.
He remembers the words of a wise woman that left him and he listens, finally.
He takes the words on board.
"Why ruin a good thing with sentiment?"
He smiles.
Smiles at the straightforwardness of it all, smiles at the memory of precious time gone by without complication; without inconvenience.
He responds in his own three words. Honest and straightforward.
Too willing, perhaps, but what does it matter?
"I'll be there."
Everybody loves microwave pizza, after all.