#at what point do i stop saying i’m only a lukewarm chameron shipper

[eliotquillon]

you know how there’s a million and a half stories where chase is sick and weak. screw that. give me something with cameron

this was meant to be a bit silly but then it got all goopy and disgusting. chase stop being a simp for cameron challenge. anyway in s5’s the itch cameron mentions that she knows the patient because she ran the community outreach flu drive the year before, and she IS suspiciously absent from the s4 christmas episode moreso than even chase, so imagine that this is set around then.

After six long weeks running the county flu vaccine drive, Cameron finally wakes up one morning with a fever of one-oh-one and a dry, hacking cough that makes Chase wince just at the sound of it. She’d been vaccinated herself, of course, but only for the most prominent strain; whatever version she’s caught clearly isn’t the one she was giving out shots for. “I knew this was going to happen,” she says miserably, while Chase force-feeds her Tylenol and wraps her in the sweatshirts she insisted he buy on Black Friday mostly because, he suspects, she wanted to steal them for herself. “It’s been way too long since I last got sick. I’m due.”

And I’m sure the flu drive had nothing to do with it, Chase does not say, because he’s seen Cameron sick before; during House’s summer of ketamine she came down with a nasty case of strep, and despite so, so clearly being miserable, she’d insisted on coming in as soon as the antibiotics rendered her no longer infectious. He and Foreman had had to trick her into going home early by offering to cover the later half of her shifts, and Foreman had only agreed to do that because all of his favourite nurses kept coming up to complain about how much of a hardass Cameron was being. The point is, it’s better not to argue with Cameron when she’s sick. It’s especially better now that Chase is her boyfriend.

“Can I get you anything else?” he asks tentatively. He doesn’t have work today, and even if he did, well—it’s not protocol, but he’d call off anyway. The part of him that shudders away from the memories of cleaning up his mum’s vomit and checking his baby sister’s cold didn’t turn into pneumonia is outweighed by the part that relishes in getting to see Cameron when she’s kind of gross: hair greasily undone, make-up off, wearing sweatpants and no bra. He’s never dated anyone long enough to get to the comfortable stage before, and the vulnerability is a good look on her. “Don’t you have some tea in the back of your cupboard?”

“You don’t have to stay,” Cameron lies even as her whole face lights up. It’s cute, Chase thinks. And also unexpected; he’d been expecting a fight, like the one they had last summer about her going home with strep. “I don’t want to get you sick.”

“Seriously, I don’t mind,” Chase says, and Cameron smiles gratefully at him; she’s too-warm and feverish in the bed beside him, and she can barely lift her head, but he finds that he really, truly means it. Cameron is on good terms with her parents, but they live all the way over in Chicago; between the price of plane tickets and her schedule, she only sees them a few times a year. He wonders when was the last time somebody took care of her when she was sick. Probably not since undergrad, he thinks. And then he remembers her first husband, and how she had stayed with him to the end, and mentally revises: probably not since high school. Maybe even as long as Chase himself. “I’ll make you your tea, yeah?”

“Thank you,” Cameron croaks out, and she’s so contagious right now, practically a petri dish of influenza, but when she raises her face towards him he kisses her damp forehead obligingly. She isn’t a cute sick person, but Chase is hopelessly endeared anyway. “You’re the best.”

Love you, Chase almost says, but, well, he really does know better than to start a fight with an unwell Cameron. “You can return the favour when I catch whatever you have,” he teases, and the softness of her responding smile makes biting his tongue all worth it.