Misty in the Dark
T.V. Show: House M.D.
Pairing: Chase/Cameron
Rating: T
Summary: An odd calmness set on Cameron's spirit, even though the slightest affection supply might turn her world upside down. Chase's carefully appraising eye keeps a constant stream of rhythmic dreams and is determined to protect her from the possibly devouring and lonely night. Post-ep for 6x17 "Lockdown".
"I should go," Cameron whispered brokenly, a crop of unattainable disappointment creeping in her tiny voice as she thought of repeating the same fatal mistake.
Chase looked at her, truly reverently, a dark and relentless fate destroying any chance of reconciliation. "Yeah," he whispered back, a deep and brooding resentment keeping him in the harsh reality.
For a moment, neither of them moved, his hand stroking gently her tousled locks and her palm draped carelessly over his chest, strategically to sense his erratic heartbeat.
A faint accent of reproach passed through Chase as he watched her intently, feeling the struggling sense of primal protectiveness. The excessive need of having her by his side was overwhelming, this last night together unleashing the darkest demons in his infuriated blood stream. Cameron was here, securely trapped in his grasp, looking absolutely angelic and vulnerable to suffer in lonesome, to calculate the stage of their oscillating relationship in silence. He truly decided to prove his implication one last time before the definite separation. A faint, transient and wistful smile lightened his brooding face as an implacable idea formed in his mind.
"How about staying at my place for tonight?" Chase asked, a fever of cynical enthusiasm contracting even his smallest muscle. He was breathless in front of that sight, a particular moment when everything stood still and looked utterly normal.
Cameron's prompt reaction betrayed nothing, only a blunt request being processed taking over her facial control. A few tears came to soften her seared vision, quietly realizing that this wasn't an attempt to seducing, but a prospect of deep affection. A great mechanism of shifting and searching was moving inside her head, wondering if she would cross the trespass of a divorce by accepting to spend the night. She plastered a graceful readiness and vigor, but deep down inside her chest a battle of opinions was thoroughly creating a pang to block her beating heart from sinking in the same mesmerizing trap of love. A thing that was not only possible, but imminent.
"Chase, I-I don't think that's a good idea," Cameron whimpered slightly, a fiery exclamation of wrath and disdain claiming her lips.
Chase looked at her intently and shrugged, picturing a figure of full decision and dignity. "It doesn't have to mean anything. Just for a night, so you are safe," he said in reply, a faintly quizzical look coming into the incisive stare.
Her answer is simple and direct, an ordinary nod to confirm his request.
Dressing up proved to be a difficult task as though their nakedness was not only a private and forbidden part, but a profanity for a couple who had just divorced. Her clothes were scattered in every corner, the previous hurriedness and hunger consuming both their palpating senses. It was one last time before the definite separation. Genuine passion was put into it, the foreboding of some destined change completely unseen. Cameron was convinced, there was no fugitive way back to the basics, only a grim and shuddering pang of realization striking her, even in this aftermath.
She wanted to be impassive, even heartless, but every lingering caress on her darkened hairline exposing exactly the contradiction. Chase looked at her as though she was the most precious and veritable object, a kind of ineffable splendor crowned in every touch. He was willing, even endeared to try again, to restore her shattered and doubt-blinded heart.
The walk to the parking lot was unusually quiet, the ride to his newly-purchased flat resembling the same stillness. The lack of talk appeared strangely timed as though to press the tension, until Cameron's lukewarm and selfish rest of love would explode. An air of stern, deep and irredeemable gloom tried to hang over her, but her natural instincts told her to shout, to express everything, even to risk a new stage of relationship.
His flat was grey shaded, but meticulously neat, a sentiment of affected civility lingering on her skin. Cameron was motionless, measuring the surroundings and realizing that the apartment was conceited to be oddly complicated, the perfect place to get lost in sensations and deep thoughts.
"The bedroom is this way," Chase pointed methodically, shaking her from that intense slumber of meditation. The foreground beneath Cameron's feet was incredibly shabby, reflecting her conflictual feeling and tying a knot in the pit of her stomach. "I can take the couch," he completed, the vigor of precise magnanimity lacing his words.
Cameron was silent, obscurely thoughtful, the indefinable yearning for the days that were irrevocably disappeared. His new bedroom looked like a profanity for her distant body, masked by rigid priorities, completely melted by a wave of heat radiating off his shattered body.
"No. Stay?" The words were out of her ardent lips before she could ever react or willingly stop them, the previously inaccessible solitude of affection disintegrating before her eyes.
"If you want me to, I'll stay," Chase beamed, the opulent nature of this particular arrangement waking in him the desire of loving and being loved.
The world started to spin off its axis, the lockdown incident still freshly lingering on his skin, seemingly throbbing with significance.
The marvelous beauty of her body was lying right next to him, but he didn't dare to touch her expectantly, forbidding himself to get lost in the same maze of vitality. He was reverent and absent, the normalcy of marriage days settling as a heavy and uncomfortable mass hovering over his beating heart.
She was beautiful, she still had the same beauty that would make his limbs go paralyzed and painfully numbed, distressed even. His mind was filled with a formless dread, the mocking echoes of long-departed affection ringing alarmingly in his head.
He had one night, only one to savor and he would return to the same enchanting sullen grief.
A palm on her petite waist could be afforded, even with its sentimental implications.
The morning droned along peacefully, the multiplicity of fresh odors was competing for Chase's attention. The most servile acquiescence of her barely-covered body was imprinted in the apex of his skull and refusing to leave without marking its musing presence.
The golden atmosphere of just before-dawn elicited in the small chamber, it was caressing her ghostly and untouchable presence. Chase got out of the bed locked with many intense sensations, and settled in the living-room, hoping an oasis of meditation might inflict only in loneliness.
The music of her person was singing a swift melody in his ears, the mute, melancholy landscape escaped past his lips in the form of a tormented sigh. The narrow room was full of the brooding powerful of one universal spirit toying with his emotions.
The old ruddy conviction deserted him again, the scent of the unforgettable years enveloping like a vice. Life without Cameron was simply vain.
He yielded to the ingratiating mood of the day, the persona of his judgment absent from the reality. Just as he was sinking in thorough thoughts, Cameron appeared in the threshold, looking oddly faintly colored and vulnerable, and her pitch-black clothes only accentuating her ghostly presence. Ill-dissimulated fits of ambition of making her to stay washed over him while he was imbued with a vernal freshness, a strange vigor ready to bolt off his body.
"I-I should go," she repeated agonizingly slowly, an impatient and authoritive tone sneaking into her voice. "My flight leaves in less than two hours," Cameron announced solemnly, implying a silent melancholy. Her voice seemed hoarse as though she was trying to make a deprecating apology.
The odd sense of repetition crept over them. Chase was still standing poised on the narrow edge of the armchair, his words mystically leaving him drenched and utterly breathless.
With no further sentence, she was out of the door, leaving for Chicago, a place she dared to name home, even if her hearts dictated her to follow the primal instinct.
Chase just looked blankly at her tiny form leaving his life once again, he was deepening in the same tumult of self-disapproval and towering exultation.
Maybe he was condemned to suffer, but not to lose hope. "Time can cure even the deepest wounds and Cameron needs only time," He told himself in the darkest moment, silently praying that it would become a genuine reality.
Chase was back to his old, formless routine. His world was spinning around its whole unwieldy compass, as though it was looking for a balance it would never achieve.
People told him to move on, to forgive and to forget, but they had never put themselves in his own perspective, when moments of swift and prompt decisions put him not only in jeopardy, but in the place of actually countermanding everything and following the windy path back to Cameron.
Chase was coming back from work, walking relentlessly, without target, the quest of a distracting pleasure coming powerfully in his mind. In the air, there was a tang of spring, but he was feeling utterly tired, the flush and heyday of youth and gaiety was completely replaced by the tough and merciless maturity of the age.
The keys rotated perfectly in the lock, the click of the door handle proving to be the only sound to animate his boredom. An ineffable sense of irritability crept within him again, when he measured the empty surroundings, but this time a single little detail immediately attracted his eyes. A soft, purely white material was lying carelessly on the wooden table, on top of it was perched a matching envelope.
Chase's heart stopped instantly, he was propelled by the immortal flame of desire to discover what was hidden underneath the layer of memories. Undoubtedly, it was Cameron's old wedding veil, an item which wasn't supposed to even approach him. Only hope was now glittering in his pupils. Chance still existed.
The intangible and indescribable essence of all their married life flashed before his eyes as his fingers crossed the delicate veil carefully. It was like a vision, like an opportunity long forgotten. He brutally ripped the envelope and started to decipher the note while his digits trembled in that unpenetrated mystery.
Into his eyes had come a hostile challenge, his reading skills suddenly vanished from his mind.
"I'm coming home. I'll be coming home. And if you asked me, I'll stay".
Her handwriting was obvious, the intense love of excitement overwhelming him. Chase's voice was cracked and tense, but still managed to vocalize an answer, one that would certainly heal him. "I'll always want you to stay," he whispered, a madness of actually believing clouding his judgment. He thought he was genuinely talking to the silence, the only unreal person that would listen to his confessions.
"I'm glad you want this, too," Cameron's voice came from the dusty corners of the dark room, where she faithfully awaited the acceptance. Involuntary, she sighed, the awkwardness and reserve finally escaping her tensed body. His affirmation was a prospect for the future, delightfully riden of the vestibule of disappointment.
Chase was involved in a labyrinth of perplexity, her sudden appearance marking a turnover of his unbalanced life. She only elicited a remarkably clear and coherent sentence; the roughness of her decision was truly obvious. He gripped her thoroughly, as though a lifetime passed while being separated. It came to him with a stab of enlighten to be hugging her again, the impulse of cherishing her was more than just powerful. This was a flight beyond the reach of human magnanimity, but he could control its course, only by showing the same affection in response.
He was convinced he had to do something, to establish a new bond, to prove his worthiness.
Tears were sparkling in her eyes, the enormity of coming back torturing even her deepest nerves. He clutched the back of her head tightly, anchoring in the same wistful embrace the sides of her delicate face. Chase took the cue to speak; he wanted to stop lending dazzling tints to fancy.
"Being with you, that's what, makes sense. Maybe it is the only thing that does," he stopped to regain his breath, it seemed intolerably tragic to be mentioning the past darkness. "I don't ever want to let you out of my life again," he moved the words with a strange exhilaration, the strangling sensation of her presence being only a bitter disillusion motivating him to make this promise.
Cameron's hand was draped over his cheek; it was torture of the most exquisite kind not being able to be stopping all her instincts of grabbing him for dear life. "Just show me love," she replied, her fist clenched on his crumbled shirt almost mechanically.
Chase grinned foolishly; it was a night of little ease to his toiling mind, one that had been tortured with resentful regrets. Loving her was instinctive, a thing he was capable since the very first moments.
Wordlessly, in a heartbeat, he was spinning her, a throaty laugh escaping his lips. It was the ecstasy of being reunited that propelled both Cameron and Chase into celebration.
It was a late evening of great silences and spaces, wholly tranquil. In the living room, there was sheer, exuberant and careless joy flying in the air. The newly-united couple was standing hidden in a heap of blankets and pillows, contented to be in each other's arms again.
Lost in delirious wonder, they could only savor a quiet moment together.
Author's Note: Yeah, this is mostly inspired by the fourth season premiere of Chicago Fire. Thank you, my show-talker friend for dragging me in this fandom!
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