AN: Wow, it's been way too long. I've actually had this story written in my head forever and on paper for months. It's pretty sad how long it's taken me to do this, haha. I think I wrote this after Itch, so bear that in mind as to where Chase and Cameron were then. Hope readers are still out there and hope you enjoy!
The sun rises as the moon falls, eclipsing together on the cold wooden floor, as thoughts wordlessly exchange, the bed frame shakes, and something shatters within.
The clock strikes noon when the doors close and sirens sound, a reminder, a warning- halfway there; halfway to the end.
The evening news fanfares to an empty room, misery dashed with urgency in an obnoxiously monotonous voice that treads through crashes and robberies and fatal disaster with carefully-hidden boredom, because after all, that can never happen here.
Empty shells. Empty hardened shells.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Of all things to fall into, she never thought it'd be habits. Because her career doesn't allow for them. Because she never had them before. Because she doesn't want to. And yet, here she stands.
It's Sunday, which is laundry day, and she's stranded in the middle of a battlefield of strewn clothes still warm from the dryer. Most are fatalities, bleeding ink in one place or another, because he left a freaking pen in his pocket.
At first she'd almost cried, because it's just such a lost cause, but she couldn't gather energy to. Instead she slumps on the floor, occasionally tossing a shirt in fury, until the dead bolt clicks to life.
"Allison?" his voice rings out in the silence. "I'm back."
She hears his feet shuffle down the hall and into the doorway, the resignation she should feel overpowered by anger, vehemence.
"What the hell, Chase? Would it kill you to check your pockets once in a while?!"
Chase's eyes snap from her to the clothes then back to her again; he's confused then understands then back to confused again.
"I...Sorry. I guess...I wasn't paying attention when-"
"No shit," Cameron cuts in, tossing one of her shirts aside.
"What is wrong with you, Allison? Calm down, it's just a pen," he half yells. "Breathe. Relax."
"Oh relax. It's only a pen. Only an entire load of laundry that's totally destroyed now!"
Chase glares. "You sound like a fricken nagging housewife. I'm sorry. I'll check next time."
"I..." she starts, then realizes the implications behind what he's said. "I..." she tries again, but it's lost in the cracks of her heart. "Wife?" she whispers, mostly to herself. Then there's silence.
Slowly Chase slides down onto the floor next to her, a little too nervous to touch her, like she's a porcelain doll he's scared he'll crack. She turns to look him in the eye and he nods silently, wondering if she's lost in the past or the future.
"Sorry," she mumbles after a moment, blood rushing to her cheeks.
"Me too," he says gruffly into her ear, and he kisses her where the blush is fading.
Then Cameron picks up a salvageable shirt and Chase stands and walks into the kitchen. They don't talk about it again.
-
The shortest distance to any place is a straight line, she remembers learning. Back in math, drawing triangles and hypotenuses and angles of all sorts. The fastest way to get there, but Cameron never gets anywhere. Because her life exists in circles, and she's getting tired of every day just like the last.
"House asked if we were engaged today."
She doesn't know why she's bringing this up, why she's got this subconscious need for him to know. But she can't even look at him as she speaks, and now she regrets it all the more.
When the silence lasts so long she can no longer stand it, Cameron turns away from the sink full of dishes to see. Chase is sitting so stiff, so tense, that she's worried his heart's forgetting to beat.
"Oh," he says a full minute later, right into the darker green specks of her eyes.
"Foreman looked disgusted," Cameron says nervously, trying to save the situation with humor. "Probably wanted to throw up, especially since he knew about-"
Silence.
Chase shifts awkwardly, because they always dance carefully around that topic, and it's only digging her into a deeper hole, six feet under things that should be left unsaid. "Since he knew us before," she says lowly, then turns back around.
"Yeah," he agrees absently, then comes up behind her swiftly and silently and kisses her gently behind the ear. "It's okay," he tells her, so softly, too softly so that it hurts a little, like he's not speaking at all but rather seeping into her. "I forgive you."
"Thank you," Cameron says, more with her eyes, then turns to kiss him fully on the lips, the faucet dripping away the minutes behind them.
-
The tea set rattles in the China cabinet and the locket swings precariously then clatters against the tiled floor. It doesn't open.
"Oh God," Cameron whispers over the body. "Get him to an OR! Stat!" she then yells a little shrill as she looks down and sees her hands are shaking.
When the nurses come to wheel the bed away she can't even speak; she watches like she's seeing through shattered glass. Everything's refracted and reflected and twisted, and she's starting to feel sick.
Cameron hurries to the nearest bathroom and half-collapses on the counter, her entire body shivering and when she looks in the mirror she's been crying. He couldn't have been more than four...torn open and bleeding from chest to hip...and it took her so long to even notice...
She thinks of his blood, the operation, how as a doctor this shouldn't rattle her to the core so much. She thinks of Chase, and what he'd do- he'll do- and takes a long, rattled breath.
For the first time in a long time, Cameron starts to pray.
-
Once her shift ends she's sure he must be out of surgery, so she sets off toward the recovery hall, pleading she'll find him there.
When Cameron peers through the fourth glass door her body almost collapses in relief. Her knees feel like they're crumbling as she slides the door open and slips inside as quietly as possible.
He looks perfect, sleeping beautifully still. Even with the morphine line and the thick bandages and scratches across his soft baby face he's an angel, and nothing less. Cameron walks past the charts and right to his head, placing a gentle, sort of surreal kiss onto his shimmering, smooth cheek.
Not long after she sits down on the edge of the bed, stroking this boy's wispy, blonde hair almost like he's her own. She doesn't even know his name but she's worried about his pain and parents and who will be here when he wakes, what he will fear, but when she looks back at his soft, serene, almost glowing face, she's calmed once more by this little angel, sent right from the skies to her.
She doesn't know how long it lasts, or how long he's been watching, but eventually she looks up to find Chase leaning against the wall, framed by the door she never shut to her own, unreal heaven, lit by the sunset dipping below the horizon behind him.
"Hey," he whispers, barely smiling, then takes an unsteady step forward.
Cameron looks into his tired, blue-gray eyes and glimpses what's been hiding all along, what she's not supposed to see but does anyway. That Chase is no different than this boy, that he sort of glows with a heavenly haze, that he too is an angel, her angel.
"I- I didn't think he'd make it," she says at last, her voice cracking a little in awe. She can't blink, can't lose the connection to the world she never even wanted to see. "Did you...did you save him?"
It takes a moment, but the Chase nods and Cameron's fighting so hard not to cry from relief. Chase sits down next to her and turns toward the child, brushing hair out of his eye Cameron didn't notice and pulling the blanket over the curve of his tiny shoulder she didn't even see.
After he smoothes out the wrinkles on the bed, Chase rests his hand on Cameron's knee, looking back into her eyes again. She's a little shocked, like she's looked too far, like someone's taken her tiny snow globe world and given it a few hard shakes and it's hard to see through the flurries. "You're going to be a great father."
He smiles a little sadly, like he's already given up on that dream, then flashes a glowing, powerful smile to her. "You're going to make a wonderful mother."
"Maybe I would," she breathes, looking back down at this beautiful, sleeping child that's irrevocably changed everything.
"You will," Chase says roughly, then pulls her into a hug so tight she can feel his heart beating beneath her own skin. Her angel, her perfect, guardian angel, and no one can take him away.
-
Church bells chime loudly to a blissfully ignorant world.
Sugarplums dance across a faded memory as stockings are hung by the chimney carelessly.
Jingle bells echo into the silent night. Herald angels sing to a manger far, far away.
No one hears.
It's Christmas Eve, and Chase insists on going out for dinner so that Cameron doesn't have to cook. The sky is a deep blue as they pull into the parking lot; Christmas lights glimmer in the distance and a giant, inflatable snowman sways in the wind. A thrill of magic sweeps through her, and as Chase holds the door, Cameron takes a backward glance towards the sky in hopes of sighting a big red sleigh.
The host is already stiffly greeting Chase as she comes up behind him quietly, loosening her snow sprinkled scarf from her neck and reaching out for his hand.
"Reservations for?"
"Two. It should be under Chase."
The host glances to his book once more, then sweeps off toward a table in the back, grandly pulling out Cameron's chair out for her. "Your server will be right with you, Mr. and Mrs. Chase."
Chase's mouth opens automatically, and Cameron smiles softly, but the host catches sight of Chase only, then stumbles to correct himself.
Cameron clears her throat. "It's Doctor and Mrs. Chase," she says brightly, her eyes twinkling in delight.
"My apologies, Doctor," he mumbles, then rushes away.
Chase smiles almost nervously, and Cameron's amusement fades. Then the waiter arrives; the silence eases to chatter, but Cameron can still feel the uncomfortable itch beneath her skin, like an IV needle that never goes unnoticed.
-
"Allison," he says, moments after he closes the door to the swirling, dancing snow. "Let's exchange one gift tonight. We did it last year, and there's something I want you to have."
She turns and smiles warmly, warm enough to melt the snow that's caught in her eyelashes. "Okay," she says eagerly. "Just one minute," and she pads across the floor to get his gift.
Because Christmas won't be spent alone this year, and maybe it will never have to be again. Because now they've got a tradition of their own, like families across the globe, and maybe there are more to come. Because this isn't a beginning and it isn't an end; they've reached a stasis, an equilibrium in between where she can finally balance.
"Ready?" Cameron asks, sitting down on the couch. "You open first."
Chase sits closely next to her, eyes sparkling with the anticipation of the young boy he never got to be.
"Merry Christmas," she says quietly while handing him a long, thin box, then placing a light kiss on his cheek.
Chase pulls at the wrapping paper a little impatiently, then slowly opens the box. There's a silver, shining stethoscope rested gently on tissue paper, the thin glint of R. Chase engraved on one side. "Wow," he breathes lowly, staring intently at the engraving. "Thank you." He looks back up and kisses her on the lips fully, then holds the stethoscope up. "R. Chase…it's like…like my dad."
Cameron smiles softly. "It's you," she says. "You can be better than him. You are."
He pulls her in tight to his chest, for security and so much ore she's learned to become. She can almost picture his hand brushing his eyes, now, when she can't see, but his arms never unwind from her back.
"Allison," Chase says finally, and she leans back. "Merry Christmas."
There's a small gift wrapped in silver paper resting on his palm, and as she tears at the paper she recognizes the smooth velvet of a jewelry box. Her heart pounds and her stomach flutters and a million responses race through her mind as Chase gently pries the box from her hand and opens it. It's a necklace, a beautiful gold necklace set with a shimmering emerald reflecting in the lights off the tree.
"Oh!" she gasps quietly. It's not what she expected, but did she want what she expected to begin with? Cameron can't seem to remember as Chase slides the chain free and snakes it around her neck. As soon as the clasp is closed she stands and moves to a mirror, Chase closely behind.
"It was my mum's," he says. "It was one of the few things I got to have after…after it all."
Cameron looks at his reflection for a long time, drinking in his vulnerability that she never gets to see.
"It matches your eyes," says Chase, remembering where he is and when it is all at once.
She spins around to face him, no longer needing a mirror's distance to maintain the fragility. "It's perfect," she whispers, and stands on her toes see directly into his eyes, then slowly her eyes slide close and her lips collide into his and somewhere outside she swears she hears bells.
-
The snow lays dead on the ground, a false allusion that change is really over this time.
Glasses clink to the sounds of false laughter, fake toasts to fake people for fake resolutions.
The decorations, the atmosphere, the thrill of beginnings ever-present almost makes her feel like good has prevailed, that maybe people aren't dying anymore.
But they are, and she knows.
Chase keeps his arm around her for most of the evening, protectively and almost possessively, but she doesn't seem to mind.
A few years ago Cameron didn't even know what love was, now she can feel it in the way he squeezes her hand or looks into her eyes with desperate longing with others so close by.
Cuddy waves from across the room, and Cameron notices a giant TV screen with people shivering in the cold, a shimmering silver ball waiting to fall.
Chase talks lightly with a fellow surgeon, and Cameron falls into the lull of the conversation, comfortable in his arms in a way she never thought she'd ever be. She smiles at a colleague across the room, not willing to leave Chase and make small talk with anyone else.
One minute to midnight, the screen reads, and Cameron's heart jumps with excitement she didn't expect to feel.
"Allison, come with me real fast."
"Where are we going?" she asks, but he doesn't turn to answer as Chase leads her through crowds to the front doors, gripping her wrist unsteadily.
"Chase!" she says through clenched teeth. "Where are you taking me? It's almost midnight!"
"C'mon," he murmurs, pushing on the door. The wind whips her hair in every direction, her necklace swaying and Chase's tie blows backwards.
"It's freezing out here!" She turns back and sees the glittering ball drop and everyone start to count. "Come on-"
"Allison," he says softly, and when she turns back around he's on one knee.
Cameron gasps silently, shock followed immediately by tears. Time freezes; the wind stops blowing. One step back becomes two steps closer; anxiety becomes longing.
"Allison, I love you. And I know we had a rough start, but we've been through a lot together in such a short time. And I want you to be with me. Forever." A heartbeat. A breath. She's waiting; she knows. "Will you marry me?" And he grasps her hand and offers a ring.
Cameron freezes. But now there's no doubt, no fear. "Yes. Yes!" she says; Chase rises and kisses her like they've become one, and they have, then he slides the ring onto her empty finger as everyone cheers in the new year and she finally feels it, feels right.
"I love you," she whispers against his lips, foreheads pressed together and they're alone; the world beyond the glass doors has evaporated for one, tiny moment.
"I love you too," he says, then guides her back inside; heads turn, she holds out her ring and everyone cheers again but Cameron can't seem to hear.
They pat Chase on the back; Cameron smiles and tears streak down her cheeks. And as she wraps her arm around his waist and presses her head to his chest, she knows where she belongs.
AN: :) I've got a few more stories in the works that I'll try to finish as soon as possible. Let me know what you think and I hope you liked it!