as_damaged | ☎ voicemail

[Cameron wears very little jewelery, and as such owns next to none. Especially in the City, since all her sentimental bits and pieces-- old gifts, things leftover from a time when she had a proper life outside hospital walls-- are all at home.

She hesitates for half a moment before extending that hand towards him; and when he takes the bracelet from her fingertips she'll let her fingers fall together and her wrist to arch back, straightening.]

[Not many hospital workers do wear much, though Chase still keeps a watch even when it lives most of the day in his pocket. Practicality can become a spartan trap. He presses his palm under the heel of hers and, with the other hand, slips the bracelet over her fingertips, to her wrist. No need to unclasp, but just close enough to her skin that it shouldn't slip free.

And he should talk. He takes her wrist, first, pressing a smudged thumb print to the gold.]

It's not long until we'll have been in the City two years. Have you noticed we're becoming the old timers?

There are still quite a few who've got us beat.

[She smiles, lips a little tight, thinking and trying not to think about that. Two years. As much as she claims to consider time meaningless here, looking back the logic doesn't hold. She rolls her hand slowly in the air, eyes downcast.]

A few. [He clears his throat.] People get married in that kind of time.

[And then he stops, almost too abruptly, as if there's another point that could be made, but the journey is doubled back on at the last minute. When he does continue it's a slightly different tack.]

A lot of my friends have gone, recently.

[Not 'gone home'. No proof of that.]

It... hasn't really happened before. Then, all at once.

[She flinches, only a little bit, and hates it, knowing he's sure to misinterpret it. You can't come to the right conclusions on the wrong assumptions. Cameron wonders if there's such a thing as damaging goods, rather than damaged goods, but that's a worry for another day.]

Are you jealous? That they've-- gotten out, I mean.

[It's an impulsive question, asked gently and (for once) without a tone of judgment. She has a hard time gauging what the City is to him, what he thinks of it, beyond the obvious reactions day to day.]

No.

[That much is at least simple. He bows his head as he shakes it, looking back up through stray strands of blond. He's not jealous, because he doesn't believe they've 'gotten' anywhere. They're just gone. It's been harder than he expected, but then he always forgets how badly he deals with loss.]

I miss them, though. Had a recruitment session to replace my roommate and wound up turning everyone away. And I... need...

[Frustration shows at the corners of his mouth as he turns to face her properly.]

We've known each other five years. You're my best friend in this place and... probably anywhere else, too. If we ever do get home, the one thing I know is I get a shot at more than that, whether I screw it up or not. You're the only real future I might have here.

[The silence pulls around the two, short breaths he stops to take.]

But I want more than what we've had. The only time I've felt stable with you we were cursed out of our heads. Peter left. I felt-- messed up and. Something happened, with someone else. I don't know what it's going to be, if it's really going to be anything. I just think I should give it the chance. I just-- I want to know where I stand with someone, for a while.

[It takes a long, quiet moment for her to roll that around into coherence, and as it comes to mean something she just looks... tired. Not angry. Worn through. Her arms fall a little, balanced on her knees, the bracelet slipping to butt against the base of her hand and for a second too brief to really register she wants to fold her hand and let it fall to the floor and tell him how his consolation prize ends, tell him how he's been drunk on her doorstep and disappeared again. But there's no point to being spiteful, particularly when (as far as she can figure) she loses any way you look at it. Something happened with someone else. She doesn't even want to know.]

Why are you here?

[She asks, tight and tired, and the tone says something more like I'd like you to leave now. What she wishes he understood-- something she's never said because to her, it's too obvious to translate into words-- is that she thought they had something. An unspoken commitment on her end isn't enough, would never be enough maybe to elicit anything similar from him, and maybe she's right when she thinks it's hopeless.]

[He draws his arm back, draws in on himself until both are crossed lightly over his knees, and he's staring away into the middle distance of the loaded table.]

To talk to you. I didn't want you hearing about it because my communicator turned on at a bad time or--

[Or any of the many mishaps in the city that don't need talking about. But that's not all of why he's here, although now, right in the throes of it, he can't voice out loud exactly why. To hear it's okay? To hear something, vocalised, about why it's not. He doesn't know what it takes to push her into anything more than the unspoken, and at this point he's lost faith that it's possible. To have a relationship, not a secret, even just between the two of them.]

I want to know you're still going to be speaking to me, tomorrow.

[Nothing they've had has been official. He shouldn't feel like he's breaking a promise. He does.]

You can't always get what you want.

[That's accompanied by a thin curve of her lips that might have been a smile, for someone else. But it isn't. She's sick and tired of this and maybe it's better for him to be out in the open, certainly she'd rather not be the accidental other woman again, but if he thought she wouldn't mind then maybe all the time they've spent here together has been a waste.

She won't stop talking to him, because that kind of thing is a matter of pride and while House will probably know something's wrong anyway, she'd rather not call attention to it. They're colleagues, after all. What an ugly word.]

[They're friends. And they're more than that, but Chase is weary with trying to figure out what. He's hit and passed thirty, life feels like its getting short not to be settled.

And then he's a hypocrite, because what he's turning to instead can never be anything but temporary, surely. But it's simple, and it's easy, and as much as he likes a challenge, he'll also take that easy route when it's open to him. He swallows against the grit of his teeth.]

Well I'll keep talking to you. Take your time replying if you need to. I can wait.

[They're friends in the long run. Right now, she's begrudging him the measure of trust reserved for a colleague, much less anything else. She doesn't have an answer for him, biting back the words can you? because honestly they're meaningless, and she's right-- in the long run none of this matters.

She hasn't taken off the bracelet, but the second she does up the locks behind him it'll end up in the back of an empty drawer with his wedding ring and a handful of other scavenged treasures she looks at more often than she'd ever admit.

She just looks at him, storm shutters in her eyes, as little deviation from neutrality as she can manage on her face. Maybe if she showed a little more of how she felt about this it would make a difference, but-- well, it's all spilled milk at this point, more or less.]

[She could show how she feels, or he could. The notion of shutting up and kissing her has crossed his mind more than once this evening, but it's only in the cinema that ever makes things right. He'd end up needing to have another talk with another person, as confused, if not more, than before.

still the notion presses. He looks up to her for a long moment before moving, hovering on the cusp of that thought. If there was something to say to make it fine he'd have expertly pinned the words down long ago and had them ready. Infinitely preferable to being this vulnerable and unprepared. He hopes, if she looks back over what he's said, she might be able to pick out the important parts. He suspects, rather, that she'll pick out anything that can be misconstrued to make things worse. She's damn difficult to figure out, and it's a frustration and a draw all at once.

He needs to go. Not before draining the dregs of his Japanese wine, though he'll abandon the plates where they are.]

I've lost enough people, recently.

[He says, finally, checking through his pockets as he stands.]

Neither of us are gone.

[Tongue laving across his lower lip, he shakes his head and tries to stop himself from analysing how this might have turned out better. One hand on the door.]

See you later.

[There's no point to following him to the door. In another situation-- in another world, in the literal sense of that phrase-- it might be different. But there's always something else, and frankly her pride's more than a little wounded by the notion that she's the assured "someday" option. Guaranteed under future circumstances and thus, there's nothing to fight for between them. It's exactly everything she ever wanted to avoid, it's why she held off telling him any of the things he didn't know yet.

But here there's always someone else. Maybe that's what makes the difference; she'd have to be an idiot (and she isn't) not to have noticed that he can have his pick of the women here any time he wants, and he does, and apparently he has.

If will alone could light the path home she'd be well on her way to an impending engagement and divorce, not sitting here waiting to hear the door rattle shut. But the City's never been built on dignity, or saving face. She's known that for longer than he's been here.]

I'll see you at work.

[Home's not so different, in terms of options. Chase could, and has, had his fair share. The difference is connection, something he's actively sought to avoid until recently, when some subconscious switch left him looking to fill a gap with someone he connected with. There and here, that's what makes her different. It's why it's taken him a year an a half to build anything that might compete with it, even for a while, and he's done that without intent. Maybe he could have his pick of a few of the women here. In terms of that, he's practically been a monk. It doesn't feel right to him that he's the one with the choice now.

Cameron isn't a fallback, she's just what he keeps coming back to in what fate seems to have set as a pattern. He doesn't expect it to be an easy win, if it happens again before that one guaranteed shot, but then it never has been and maybe the break in chasing her will let him catch his breath enough. That's if he can really make himself take one. If the curses let him, too. She's hard to look away from, even while his hand pulls back on the door.]

Tomorrow. Same shift.

[He nods, once, just an acknowledgement, bites down on all the other words he could say to make her take him back in and lets himself out.]

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→ if you're offering me diamonds and rust i've already paid

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