Disclaimer: I own no more than I did yesterday...

A/N: Okay, the House people on this site are officially the most awesome ones I've ever come across. Less than eighteen hours after I put this story up (and for all I know it was actually less than that, I tend to sleep a LOT during the summer...) and my inbox was basically drowning in those messages from my best friend in the world, that lovely bot that brings me reviews. Yay!! I love you all, and all of your critiques are helpful and really, really appreciated. Especially those of you who reviewed twice. (Can I hear a chorus of angels singing?) Any OOC-ness or random displaced angst in the previous chapter or this one are strictly my own fault, because as I've been told before I have this habit of putting in angst where it doesn't belong just for the fun of it. Is that a sick, ridiculous definition of fun? Perhaps. Am I going to stop rambling and let you read the end of this? Absolutely.

"Well, here we are," Cameron said with arms spread wide as she unlocked the door to apartment 17B. Her voice carried an undertone of hesitancy, like she was afraid he was silently passing judgment on each unmatching piece of furniture and stray speck of dust. "It's not much," she added with a shrug, "but it's home."

Chase looked around the living room with an honest smile. "It's great," he said, setting the backpack that contained all of his living essentials down on the hardwood floor next to the door. It really was a nice place in his eyes; he wasn't just saying it. It was a small apartment, to be sure; the front room the stood in, a small half-kitchen, a bathroom and one bedroom made up the whole layout, but somehow it gave off a cozy, not cramped, vibe. The furniture was in a calming, IKEA-approved color scheme of navy blue and a rich mahogany wood that complimented the pale blue walls, and every piece of furniture was laid out with careful thought and precision. Adding a splash of artsiness to the room were four stacks of dusty medical journals with a piece of polished glass atop them to serve as a coffee table. Cameron looked at the sepia-toned Toulouse-Latrec Moulin Rouge poster that hung above the small kitchen table and appeared to be slightly embarrassed.

"It's my mom," she explained. "She's, uh, into feng shui and all of that. I just let her have at it."

"She did a good job of it," Chase said almost wistfully, closing the door gently behind him. He may not have intended for it to happen, but in a few moments he found himself in front of the impromptu coffee table, which held two four-by-six photographs in simple silver frames on its transparent surface. The one on the left portrayed five people laughing and smiling at the camera, two adults and three children: two boys and a girl. Chase's fingers lightly brushed the dust from the faces of the parents, a half-smile crossing his face.

"Your family?" he asked.

"Yeah," Cameron said, looking at the snapshot from over his shoulder. "That was a long time ago. We went to Myrtle Beach for a vacation. I was nine. I always liked that picture," she smiled. "My skin didn't start breaking out for another three years."

"I like it too," Chase said distractedly, abruptly putting his hand back in his pocket as though he'd been caught touching something sacred. Sensing the movement and the agitation that ran deep behind it, Cameron started to walk to the kitchen.

"I'm gonna get a drink," she told Chase. "You want one?"

"Sure. It's an occupational hazard of working for House, huh? You drink all the time…" Chase mused with a grin.

"Exactly. JW Black or Merlot? My bar's a little understocked ever since I left college…"

"JW, thanks."

Cameron had had Chase pegged as a scotch drinker for weeks now. She couldn't bring herself to see the draw of it, though. Honestly, it tasted exactly like motor oil. Well, exactly how you would imagine motor oil to taste, that was. She brought the drinks back, and the two of them sat on Cameron's couch for a moment in silence. Chase took a long pull of scotch with closed eyes, exhaling a deep breath and then gazing thoughtfully into the amber liquid like he was expecting it to speak to him. It stayed silent, however, and Cameron turned toward him. She decided she had to bite the bullet sooner or later, so after a second she addressed the invisible monster lurking on the couch between the two of them.

"I'm so sorry about your mother, Chase," she said softly. "I never knew…"

Chase gave a short, humorless laugh directed at the glass more than her. "It doesn't matter," he said in a voice wiped blank of emotion. "I was only six when she died. I hardly even knew her, and she never knew me either, really."

"Still, I can't imagine losing…" Cameron began, then trailed off when she realized how feeble it sounded. She'd worked with Chase for nine months now, she though, and she still knew hardly anything about him. Where he lived, what he did when he wasn't working, if he was ever not working, even where he grew up… Australia was hardly a specific hometown. For God's sake, it seemed like all she knew about her coworker was what continent he was born in. Hardly enough to form an accurate character sketch. "So you grew up living with your dad?" she asked timidly.

Sensing her hesitancy, Chase gave her a warm smile. She was trying. He saw it. And for the moment at least, he loved her for being the only one to try. Nine long months of being all but alone was more than enough. "For a little while, yeah. But then I ended up in the system, you know? Foster care. They decided he wasn't fit to be a parent. My father had a little too much of a love for prescription drugs. Painkillers, mostly," he explained. "Took away some of the pain of losing his wife, I guess. I was too young to understand it then."

"Maybe you and House should have a heart-to-heart," Cameron commented with a half-hearted attempt at a joke.

"Hey, you lean towards what you know, right?" Chase shrugged. "I know how to deal with addicts, so somehow I'm always surrounded by them, it seems like. In a way, I might be worse than House."

"You do deal Ritalin to high schoolers taking the SAT, don't you? I knew it," Cameron said in mock-accusation, pointing a finger at his chest.

Chase laughed. "Absolutely. Your friendly Australian drug dealer. Nothing that dramatic, I just meant work. I busted my ass to get into med school on a scholarship, pulled all-nighters all the time to graduate, and now I camp out at the hospital to run diagnostic tests at three in the morning. It's a problem, but it's what I decided I wanted, you know? To help people. To save them from disease and from themselves. This time around."

Cameron put one hand on his, feeling the warmth of his fingers. She didn't know if it was the right way to respond to that, most likely it wasn't, but she was trying. Blind stabs in the dark were better than sitting on your hands all the time. "I know how you feel," she said gently.

He smiled and she felt his hand tense and her own stomach flip. "I know you do." His eyes drifted to another framed picture on the end table, this one of Cameron almost as he knew her and another man, in a wheelchair. The two of the were on what looked like the boardwalk only about a fifteen-minute drive from where they were now, she in a bathing suit top and shorts, he in khaki deck shorts and a blue polo. Both of them were smiling, but Chase thought he could see a hidden sadness in her eyes. Identical wedding rings glinted on both their hands. "It must've been impossible to find him, only to lose him so soon."

"It was the right thing to do," Cameron said in a voice coming from a huge distance away.

"Doesn't mean it doesn't hurt," Chase murmured. "Sometimes the right thing is the thing that hurts the most."

Somehow the two of them had ended up even closer, their hands still touching, only inches apart now. Emboldened either by the Merlot or by a sense that this was something she both wanted and needed to do, Cameron brushed Chase's hair off his forehead and smiled softly. "It doesn't have to be," she whispered, and she leaned forward to kiss Chase's lips.

Intoxication, and not from JW Black. The taste, the feel, the sense of her lips on his momentarily stopped Chase's heart. He couldn't breathe but that no longer seemed to be necessary as he kissed her back with a sigh like the weight of the entire world was being lifted from his shoulders. His hands found her hair, her neck, the side of her face, places he had only ever dreamed of exploring with no hopes that his dreams would ever come true. He tasted the stars, he felt immortality. When at last they broke apart to breathe, he looked at her and breathed only one word, almost like a prayer.

"Hallelujah."

RIIIIIIIIING!!

Dr. Robert Chase groaned quietly and rolled over to look at the Allison-Cameron-shaped object that had burrowed beneath the bedsheets. He nudged her gently in the shoulder, and an arm disentangled itself from the blankets and hit out wildly and inaccurately as punishment for his waking her.

"Are you going to get that?" he asked her, his voice slightly hoarse in the morning. He cleared his throat twice in an attempt to fix it.

"It's on your side," she grumbled, gesturing blindly at the phone.

RIIIIIIIIING!!

"It's your house," he pointed out.

"Just answer it," she ordered, burying her face deeper underneath the pillow. She did sound horrible, Chase consented as he felt around for the phone. Cameron was clearly not a morning person. And really, what were the odds of it being someone he knew?

"Hello?" he said vaguely into the receiver.

There was a very pronounced, almost scandalized silence for a moment (if silences can be scandalized over the phone) before a very familiar voice managed one word in response.

"…Wombat?"

Oh, Jesus. Chase winced and hit Cameron in the shoulder, pulling the blanket up over his exposed chest reflexively, like someone had actually just walked in the door rather than calling on the phone. "Er, Dr. House?" Cameron sat bolt upright in bed with a horrified start.

"Oh. My. God!" House said in shock. "You slept with her, didn't you?"

"Morning, House, what can I do for you?" Chase said pointedly.

"You did!" House crowed; this plus Wilson's love for the musical theatre was like Christmas come early for him. "My little ducklings are mating! I demand to be named godfather."

"House, you're an atheist," Chase reminded him tiredly.

"So?" Apparently this was unimportant; Chase was sure House just wanted to pop up at random and inappropriate moments to tell people to say hello to his little friend and leave disembodied horse heads as parting gifts. "Tell your thunder from down under that I want you two lovebirds to be at work in forty-five minutes. The test results came back, and we need to start treating for lupus immediately." Click.

Chase hung up the phone and sighed. "Lovely," he muttered to Cameron, who had begun to recite an impressive list of swear words under her breath, most of them "fuck" in varying parts of speech. "It'll be all over the papers in fifteen minutes.

RIIIIIIIIING!!

Chase swore loudly and picked up the phone again. "Hello?" he said testily.

"Put on some pants first, wombat," House said. "I don't want to give Wilson any ideas."

Click.

Well, there we are. Pointless and slightly ridiculous? Absolutely. But I had a lot of fun writing that last part...

You people are awesome. I don't even need to ask anymore, do I? You know what to do.

-RebelFaerie-