Yvi

Tra-la-la; this is a ficlet I may or may not name or cross-post or do anything with. A little bit of Chase angst, a little bit of Chase/Cameron fluff, and gratuitous mentions of glitter paint. Totes kid-friendly. I’ve never actually written straight-up Chase/Cameron anything, but this was fun.

Prompted by enigma731, who was feeling fluffy. Hope you’re feeling better!




He came over and she was gift-wrapping, unwittingly doing a fair impression of a Hallmark commercial.

It was a strange combination of seasonal cheer and bittersweet nostalgia, and Chase was sure she was just as oblivious to that as well. A reminder of the Cameron who’d once brought in Christmas stockings with everyone’s initials carefully drawn on in glitter paint, refilled the bowl of candy canes on the conference room table. The year after that, no one had said anything about the change when she brought in Hershey kisses instead. Although, inevitably, those came with their own repertoire of snappy wisecracks on House's part.

"You're cooking?" Her apartment smelled like a bakery.

“Just a cake.”

He tried to make a cake once, but was in a hurry and frosted it before it cooled. It had ended up looking like a gigantic, half-melted candle. Cameron had laughed a little bemusedly and he'd fervently wished he'd gotten a gift card or something instead. It had just been an impulse, a whim, and he’d never actually gotten a homemade cake before, for his part, so why not? Repression and projection, she would have said, if she'd known. Cameron probably grew up corn-fed and well-bred, paper party hats and beaming relatives year after year. They didn’t really talk about their families much. “It’s weird,” she’d said, as if that explained everything, and they'd gone out to dinner.

Chase preferred to think she had at least tried a piece instead of throwing the whole thing away. It could be hard to tell with Cameron--the thought always counted unless she decided she didn't really need to be thought of by the person in question. He’d rather be disliked than taken for granted.

"For my cousin,” she added significantly when he eased open the oven door. “I want to try and have their presents mailed tomorrow." The end of a construction-paper Christmas chain was dangling out of the cardboard box at the other end of the table. Her cousin’s kids were both young, he remembered; the box was probably full of things like glitter-painted stockings and candy canes, making up for the lack of a conference room this year. There wasn’t much sense in gussying up the ER for the holidays--a few paper decorations on the walls, that was all. Cameron loved making changes that everyone could see.

More importantly, she was intent enough on folding it back in without tearing it for him to peel open the container of frosting sitting on the counter. By the time she turned around, he already had a satisfyingly massive amount of the stuff balanced on a table knife. “Why is it that every guy in the universe assumes that if a woman has food, it’s automatically up for grabs?”

“You’re not gonna use the entire can on one little cake.”

“I might.”

Flipping open the cupboard, he found a half-empty box of graham crackers. Cameron eyed him with a wariness that spoke volumes. “More importantly, why do you eat like you’re in kindergarten?”

“Kindergartners don’t know how to cook either.”

“There are so many holes in your logic I don’t even know where to begin.”

“Like you’re any better.” As if he hadn’t noticed the boxed Betty Crocker cake mix. “You doing anything with your time off?”

"Going to my parents'," she said, looking up. “Want to come?"

That, he didn’t expect. Before, in their early days together, he would have singled out sympathy as the impetus for the invite, but she was done feeling sorry for him. Now, he guessed it was loneliness. Or curiosity, or familial pressure to bring home a boyfriend, or she’d just assumed he’d be in Melbourne the entire time anyway. Or maybe she actually wanted him there. “Seriously?”

“Why not? It’ll be fun.” She grinned and plucked the knife out of his hand, lapped a smear of frosting off his lower lip. “Their house is going to be packed; we can stay at a nice hotel.”

Too many possibilities, and they’d known each other for over three years but she wasn’t ready to give straight answers for everything yet, so he picked the one he liked the most. She was pushing back his hair, not saying a word--just wrapped him in both arms as they stood wrapped in domesticity neither of them had any idea how to handle. “Sure.”