Disclaimer: Do not own!!!
A/N: Spoilers for Ugly! After this, I'm going to follow my own game plan.
House had avoided her like the plague for the next couple of weeks. Not that that was hard, since she was confined to the ER. Once or twice she'd tried to talk to Wilson about him, but Wilson had been surprisingly tight-lipped. He let it slip that House had been showing up to work hungover more often than usual, which only frustrated and worried her. Deep down, she knew she was an idiot for calling him in the middle of the night to tell him she missed him. Even now she cringed as she remembered the click of the phone as he hung up on her and her ridiculous hopes. It'd been stupid of her to even entertain the notion that he might return her sentiments. But, despite her (many) rejections, she couldn't help how she felt about him.
"No, no. I-I love Dr. House." It took a moment for her to remember that she was being filmed. She'd been on autopilot as she'd answered questions and dealt with her patient. Cameron looked up when she heard the voice of the director. "I mean, what did you ask me again?"
Crap.
"Okay, so I may have done something stupid today," Cameron admitted to Chase. He was scrubbing up for the surgery, and didn't stop washing his hands to ask her a tired,
"What happened?"
"Well, the documentary crew was filming me and asking me questions about House, right?'
"Okay," Chase said, not sounding happy about the direction of the conversation.
"Right, so I may have said something that made it sound like I love House. You know, like I was in love with House." Whenever Cameron was nervous and trying to explain something, she tended to gesticulate a bit more than she usually did. After leaning to the left to avoid a flailing hand, Chase realized just how serious this was to her. It also didn't take a lot to figure out why it might be.
"Cameron!" he exclaimed, turning off the water. "What exactly did you say thatmay have made it sound like you're in love with House?"
"'I love Dr. House'?" Chase didn't say anything, but he turned away from Cameron, and threw off his scrub cap with a big sigh.
"Jesus, Cam, what were you thinking?" His voice was raised slightly, but he was still surprisingly calm. Maybe, she reasoned, he was just frustrated about the delayed surgery, and he was taking it partly out on her. That thought actually made her feel a bit more comfortable, and gave her the courage to keep speaking.
"I wasn't thinking, that's the whole point. I was distracted and I said something stupid, I know that. It's pretty obvious that I need to clear some things up, so I've been practicing a little speech, and I was hoping that you would give me five minutes to listen to it? You know, give me some advice? Please, Chase." She gave him such a pitiful look that Chase couldn't help but agree.
"I have about ten minutes." He motioned toward the door that would lead them to the surgical locker room.
"Great! Thanks!" Cameron hoped that her cheeriness would belie the unease that she felt.
It was true that she'd been practicing a speech, qualifying her qualification. So, when she stood in front of the mirror, it came much more easily than she imagined. She could do this, right? It would explain everything, no problem.
"I look defensive, don't I?"
"No, no, I think that's great. Clears everything up." Uh oh.
"You don't sound too convinced," she noted, turning around and crossing her arms over her chest. Chase stood up and walked towards her.
"Cam, the only reason why you would worry about everyone thinking you're in love with House is if you actually were in love with House." He stopped inches away from her, and crossed his arms over his chest. Cameron tried to ignore the sense of frustration she felt as he raised his eyebrows, clearly expecting her to say something.
"I'm not… I mean, that's ridiculous, why would I be in love with House?" She threw her hands up in the air, and stalked back to the mirror.
"That's anexcellent question." Chase hadn't moved, so when she looked up into the mirror, she saw him, watching her movements carefully. After a couple of deep breaths, Cameron tried speaking once more.
"He's a jerk, a misanthrope, and he's never, ever… well, that's not true, but, you know…"
"Dr. Chase?" A surgical nurse had opened the door to the locker room. "You're needed for surgery."
"Be right there," Chase answered, still looking at Cameron. He waited until the door closed again before speaking again. "Cameron, it's okay. I'm sure they won't even use that part in the film, and if they did, I'm sure people won't think that you're madly in love with House. Presumably they'll have seen the rest of the film, so they'd probably think you would have to be insane in order to be in love with someone like House." For a moment he hesitated, and Cameron had the feeling that he wanted to say more. But he didn't; instead, he left the room without saying another word.
"'You would have to be insane in order to be in love with someone like House.' Great." Cameron looked into the mirror, and knew exactly what she was seeing: she was looking at a crazy woman.
"Cameron was smart."
"I'm beginning to doubt that." With that parting shot, Wilson left House alone in the room, with only the incriminating footage to remind him of what an ass he was. Frustrated, House went through the footage a couple more times, smacking his forehead at all the appropriate moments. Beautiful women did seem to currently be his Kryptonite, but it didn't make any sense. After all, Cameron was beautiful. Hell,Cuddy was beautiful. Granted, Cameron had rendered him speechless once or twice. Okay, right, and there was the whole calling-her-at-two-in-the-morning-and-then-hanging-up thing he did a couple of weeks ago. But, in his defense, in that particular case it was probably the alcohol that had coerced him into doing something so dumb. But Terzi? Thirteen? Maybe Wilson was right: he needed a real relationship.
Sighing heavily, House placed his head against the desk, unthinkingly letting the tape run.
"Before you worked in the ER, you worked for House, right?"
His head shot up. Immediately his gaze settled on Cameron's image. In another lifetime, she must have been a Hollywood starlet—if it was possible, she looked even more glamorous in black and white, which was surprising considering she was working a grueling double shift in the ER. He felt his heart pound when she told the film crew that she loved him—even if she didn't mean it—but his eyes were glued to the screen.
"He was always…stimulating. Not in the erotic sense of the word." Oh God. House covered his face with his hands. She didn't. He didn't want to hear anything else; he shut the tape off with a violent gesture, and placed his head against the desk once more.
All of his thoughts were whirring in his mind. He saw Terzi's face, Thirteen's, and, most of all, Cameron's. When he saw Terzi, he felt a slight curiosity and a rush of desire. Okay, well, that was easy enough to deal with: he wanted her. He would either act on that, or he wouldn't. She didn't seem to have much promise as a diagnostician, though. For the moment, he pushed her aside. Next came Thirteen. Okay, well, she was pretty, but more than anything else, House felt curiosity. He wanted to figure her out. She was intriguing, enigmatic, troubled. But any reaction he had to the other two paled in comparison to what he felt when he called to mind Cameron.
While his thoughts whirred softly when he contemplated Terzi and Thirteen, it was like a hurricane in his mind whenever Cameron appeared. He felt everything at once: desire, curiosity, fear, pain, tenderness, frustration, melancholy, passion, familiarity, comfort. The most bizarre feeling was this warmth in the pit of his stomach that seemed to radiate throughout his body. As an experiment, he thought about both Stacy and Cuddy, and was surprised to see neither his ex-girlfriend nor his boss called forth such violent emotions as Cameron did. It scared him.
I miss you, too...You're a freak…
Not all change is bad, you know.
He looked up, Cameron's voice echoing in his head. But he didn't know how to change.
Start small, House. Take a chance. Maybe something that doesn't involve sticking stuff in your brain. Pizza with a friend; a movie. Something.
His brow furrowed as he contemplated his various options, but just as he started to become accustomed to the idea of having pizza with a friend, his pager went off. With a growl, he reached for his cane and rushed off, hoping to get as far away as possible from the rough cuts and everything they were telling him.
The moment the cameras appeared to start filming the surgery, Cameron got out of the way. She still wanted to watch—after all, she should be supportive of her surgeon boyfriend—but she was careful to stay out of sight. It didn't faze her to see Thirteen scrubbed up and ready to go into the surgery; House might just have asked her to go on purpose to stand as a pawn in some sort of power play with Chase. So she moved to another room, not the gallery, where she could watch unnoticed.
But then something big was happening. Cameron looked up at the gallery and saw House and Wilson standing there, just as she noticed Thirteen, Chase, and the cameras rush into the operating room. They hovered around the patient for a moment, and then they picked up a razor and shaved part of the patient's head. She couldn't see what they discovered, but it was something important. House gave Thirteen a proud look while making a remark to Wilson, and Cameron felt her heart constrict. She watched House for a moment longer, until Chase stormed into the room, slamming the door behind him.
"I can't believe it!" he screamed. Cameron jumped.
"Wh-what happened?"
"Lyme disease. He…He…I just…" Frustrated, Chase hung his head and leaned against the wall. "I wanted to do this surgery so badly."
"Well, you will. Just not today." Cameron took a very hesitant step towards Chase. "It's okay."
"That's not the point, Cameron. I saw the cameras, I wanted the attention, I wanted the acclaim, or whatever, and I barely thought about the patient."
"No offense, Chase, but you've never been the one to care most about the patient," she pointed out, confused.
"I know, I know. But, for the first time, I just…it was completely about me. I almost thought that House was just trying to take away my shot to do this surgery—it never even occurred to me that there could actually be something wrong with the kid."
"We all make mistakes, Robert," she whispered. Chase's head shot up, and he found her eyes. They both stood still for a moment, each wishing they could tell the other the truth.
"When we were working for House, at least there was a puzzle to solve, and the patients were part of that. Now it's as if they're just… a hunk of meat for me to work on. I had wondered if this would be good for me, you know, to get away from all the crap that people put you through. All the lies, deceit, mistrust… But maybe it's better to have that than nothing at all. I… What happened to me?"
"What do you mean?"
"This isn't what I want to do."
"Me neither." Chase chuckled softly in response to Cameron's confession.
"Who knew? We're both unhappy."
"Yeah, we are." When he heard the melancholy in her voice, Chase looked up at Cameron, apprehensive. As he tried to read her expression, Chase's face fell. He saw all he needed to know.
"You're unhappy with me."
"Yes, I am." Cameron could tears roll down her cheeks—tears she hadn't even been aware of. She tried to take a breath, but the effort was too much for her, and she started to sob. Chase rushed to her, and put his arms around her. "I'm so sorry, Robert, I really am. I tried so hard to be happy, but I'm not. I don't think I ever will be. I'm so sorry, I didn't… I don't want to hurt you."
"It's okay." He'd hesitated before he said that, but she could hear the resignation in his tone.
"It is?" She looked up at him, her mascara running down her cheeks.
"In the end, Cam, I hope you realize that I only want you to be happy. I…You mean a lot to me—more than I could possibly say. But, if being with me makes you…" he broke off, sighing. Cameron thought she saw his eyes shine with unshed tears, but she couldn't be sure. "It's always been House, hasn't it?"
"What do you mean?" Tired and sad, Cameron softly placed her head against his chest. He pulled her closer to him, wishing desperately that he didn't have to give her up.
"You love House." There was a pause as Cameron hesitated, but then she nodded. "I-I'm sorry, Cameron." For the last time, Chase kissed her forehead; he closed his eyes and let his lips linger against her skin. "Let me take you home."
"O-okay," Cameron agreed, still not taking her head off of Chase's chest. She couldn't believe that Chase was going to just let her go, but the thought that he would do so for her made her smile. Still smiling, she wrapped her arms around him, and hugged him.
House was fully intent on boasting to Chase, even though, technically, he hadn't come up with the diagnosis. He was wandering the surgical wing, hoping to find him. As he walked by a door, he finally caught a glimpse of Chase's blonde hair. Backtracking somewhat, House took in the scene in front of him.
Cameron was smiling and hugging Chase, while Chase kissed her forehead. They looked like a perfectly happy couple. If House had bothered to look a little closer, he would have seen the tears in Chase's eyes, or Cameron's smeared mascara. But the initial picture was enough for him. Chase had what he wanted.
House turned away from the door and stormed down the hallway. He was going to go fire someone, and then he was going to get roaring drunk off of the bottle of scotch he had hidden in his office. Sounded like a good night.