Many thanks to positive for the beta.
This is for the lovely and talented gabesaunt because she's always encouraging and wonderful.
The scent of garbage reminds her of New York City, the hustle, the bustle, the thin veneer of glitz that clings to old brick and stained concrete. It's strange, it really is, how such a putrid scent brings back some fine memories, of friends in cafes at three am, of stolen weekends alone, of discount Spamalot tickets.
Her mind takes certain elements and connects them to others without her approval. It's why sulfur has her immediately recalling a high school outing to an art museum; it's why the faintest scent of cinnamon makes her want to vomit because she caught a whiff of it while under the spell of a vicious stomach bug when she was nine.
The ocean is reminiscent of a lot of things, most of them things that she doesn't care to remember, for the sake of her too-wounded heart. And water chestnuts make her cry, so she rarely orders Chinese. Cardboard coasters were what her college boyfriend Ethan used as frisbees to fragment the time during study sessions; she doesn't care to remember Ethan.
Whiteboards, they are intrinsically weaved into the vision she has of him. She, for one, never quite understood why he needed such a large office. Diagnostic medicine wasn't so in demand that there should be a large space dedicated to it, and she wonders now if it had anything to do with Cuddy's affection for him. Coffee maker, sturdy chairs, modern appliances, things that oncology and pediatrics have; everyone else uses the common rooms that are peppered about the floors, providing moderate respite for the weary doctor.
The whiteboard, she ponders where it came from, if he requested it, if it was a staple in the process before she came along, or if it was something that was helpfully provided by the dean of medicine. But she clings to that damn clean slate of a surface, doesn't really care how it came to be, just recalls it fondly for a split second before she sleeps, before she showers, before she does a semi-conscious lumbar puncture.
The thing that she misses the most is the slick scratch of the dry erase marker on the whiteboard. The dull 'pop' as the tip of the pen touches the surface, the sweet hiss as it moves along, adopting his messy penmanship. The wafting, phantom, sharp-alcohol scent as he'd write an S with an insane flourish. The way the ink would pool just slightly in the dip of a 'p', when the lines would meet in a capital 'D'.
That swishy-squeaky sound of the instrument on the surface, swooping and dipping and pointing and falling. It's a sound that's both a blessing and a curse, it's welcome and the worst thing she could hear. Like the sound of gum being chewed too loudly, a clock tick-ticking, the blat of an alto saxophone. She's a million and one miles away when she hears that sound, her ears being pulled along with it, allowing herself to become lethargic and intensely overcome.
Sleepy, Cameron drifts off to a place where she's agitated, on edge, full of angst; when she thinks about him, it's like being on the brink and she can't help but wonder if one day she'll just throw herself into oblivion. Certain times, she'll stumble into surprise as she realizes how exhilarating it is simply *thinking* about what she loved about him. Or what infatuated her about him.
"Don't keep pretending that there's something here," he had told her once when he was feeling particularly vicious.
But a woman who has grown doesn't react to such things and so she didn't because it wasn't becoming of her new self, and thus she ignored him, smiled, unfazed. She thinks now that if she'd just told him that it wasn't that easy, maybe it would have been easier. To think that, to think any of that is simply insane and she thinks about the definition of insanity and how vexatious it is to hear people talk about Merriam-Webster when you're just trying to prove a point.
It's insanity.
By definition.
The clip of the cap coming off of a stubbed marker, bouncing off of the ledge of a board, scattering psychotically to the floor. The Pollock-wave of the implement through the air as he gestures haphazardly, an unbalanced balancing act. Then the sweet, stiff bump of the cluster of fibers as it comes into contact with melamine resin, gliding along to form the word 'symptoms'.
She won't keep pretending that there's something because she knows there is, a sort of untapped potential that may never be stretched and tested. There will always be something lingering around the edges of them, frantically vibrating whenever they come close enough to feel the others' breath. They bounce off of each other like plastic on linoleum and around, around, around, a blue line circle, circle, circling around the word heart. Not as a symptom, but the root of the problem.
She is this insane kind of person—a willing masochist, Chase once called her—accepting and basking in the lingering pain that resonated throughout her soul when he spoke ill of everything that she is. Just to have him feel something, something emotional, something real and whole and viciously vivid because of her, for her, was enough to accept accusations that she's weak and lies about being happy, fibs about knowing what she wants.
He knows her, knows her better than she thought someone could, but then, he's the sort to know a lot of people better than anyone else does. But there's a comfort in that, and she wants to know about these things, what he sees in her and how he knows it all so completely.
Because she likes to solve mysteries too, and wants him to map it all out for her on that board with arrows and diagrams illustrating how she came to be so willing to give it all up on him. And he would cap the marker and place it on the ledge and leave it all for her to wonder at, because he'll never give it up easily for her.
Just like he won't let her touch that damn marker to that white surface and spell it all out for him.
Chase touches her at night, cool fingers slipping around her navel and she imagines that it is red ink being pushed by House's hand and he's writing all, all over her.