#i am in this mobius strip of shipping them because i hate that fandom goes “half of cameron's time on the show was fake and didn't happen”

[all-pacas]

CAMERON HAD A THING FOR CHASE ALL ALONG: THE PROPAGANDA

I've talked before about how you can make a fairly decent case for Chase having a tiny crush on Cameron since S1: I'd never go so far as to say he was in love and pining this whole time, but the man was attracted and made it pretty clear. It's admittedly harder to see this from Cameron's POV, since the show is not very good at illustrating her feelings generally (her crush for House is blatant, but also arrives from on high out of the blue), but… I think you can make an interesting case that Cameron had been lightly interested in Chase for just about as long.

The thing is: in S1, the two are clearly friends. As early as episode two, we see them joking around together (Chase also takes a moment to sexually objectify her), and Chase is actually the most likely of the team to stick up for Cameron or defend her: he makes something of a habit of telling House her good ideas, and there are a few differential scenes where he takes her side over House's. Cameron, in turn, is both the only one to doubt/refuse to believe Chase would rat to Vogler, and is openly worried about Chase in Cursed. It's useful to compare Foreman's relationships with them both here: Foreman and Cameron clash surprisingly often about patient care and ethics, and both immediately (correctly, mind you) assumes Chase ratted to Vogler and doesn't show the faintest interest in the Rowan Chase drama. Cameron and Chase joke around, stick up for one another, and get along. The one exception is in Heavy, when House intentionally pits them against one another to save their respective jobs: I'd argue that Chase turning on Cameron so fast is meant to be surprising in part because they're usually so aligned.

Chase is also someone Cameron confides in. He is the one she talks to about her crush on House, and the scene in which she first addresses it is fairly telling:

Cameron: Did House seem weird to you? Chase: Are you expecting him to be weird? Cameron: We spoke about how we felt. Chase: You told him you liked him? Cameron: No, of course not. Chase: What are you talking about, then? Cameron: I asked him if he liked me. Chase: Why would you do that? Cameron: Because I like him. Chase: You like him, like him? Cameron: Doesn’t matter, he doesn’t like me. Chase: Hey, he doesn’t like anybody. And nobody likes him.

Cameron feels vulnerable here, and yet she goes to Chase and is pretty up front with him. He doesn't seem that surprised by her crush, and even tries to reassure her about it. She does not have this conversation with Foreman, nor is it the only time she and Chase talk about this sort of thing: they have a very similar conversation in S2's TB or Not TB, where she tells him about the patient asking her out.

(*As an aside, Cameron's habit of using Chase as a sounding board for her crushes on other men is probably a big reason he ends up so insecure and worried about House as a romantic rival later on, lol.)

In S2, we actually see this friendship continue: Chase is openly worried about her in Hunting before the Meth Hookup, asking her to drinks, checking up on her, and even offering to work overtime on her behalf; this is again fairly different compared to Foreman and House's more muted reactions (and his own later apathy towards Foreman in Euphoria, lol). She is somewhat understandably more muted in supporting him in The Mistake, considering they'd just had sex — but she unilaterally tells Stacy Chase did nothing wrong, and doesn't deny her bias towards him. They're friends! They've always been friends!

But there's no denying there's always been a sexual/attraction aspect, too. Cameron is actually the main instigator of this: in Occam's Razor, she hears that Chase might be interested in her and sexually harasses the hell out of him; this isn't a sincere sign of attraction, exactly, but… Chase makes a surprisingly number of comments that make it clear he's attracted to her, and it actually is requited. She makes jokes about his sexual prowess in Safe, she enjoys teasing him in Occam's Razor, she is consistently amused instead of annoyed when he jokes about patients wanting to ask her out or drawing attention to her necklace and therefore breasts. It's not flirting, exactly, but the sexual edge is always there: in a cut line in Occam's Razor, Cameron confirms she does find Chase attractive and want to 'jump' him, but is resisting these impulses because she can control herself.

She is told repeatedly in Hunting to be selfish, to do something she wants, to have fun for a change. And she calls Chase over for sex. (This, in an episode where she also had a major health scare and he was the only one to show open worry for her well being.) We can't pretend that oh, the thing she always secretly wanted to do was meth: the episode pretty clearly implies she's been wanting to fuck Chase for a while. When he tells her it can't happen again, she doesn't argue or seem upset… but tellingly, she never says it was a mistake, or a bad idea. She calls out the patient for lying about how happy he is, but never actually seems to regret her actions. She did something she wanted, and that could have just been having casual sex, having fun for once… but she called Chase.

This is something she repeats in S3, in an even more telling way. Cameron doesn't just decide to start a FWB relationship out of the blue, because she's bored: she claims it's convenient and simple, but you absolutely should not forget that earlier in the episode she and Foreman had a discussion about commitment, that relationships are on her mind. Foreman told her she's afraid of commitment, and so she turns around and… propositions Chase? She's trying to prove Foreman wrong here, prove herself wrong. And it's clear right away that Cameron doesn't believe any of her words about convenience and practicality: by the next episode, she and Chase are spending all their time together at and out of work; by Top Secret and Fetal Position they're not just having sex all over the hospital but eating meals together after work; by Airborne she's calling it a relationship and being corrected by Chase. Even if she's insisting it's a casual relationship, she spends two months glued to him and kind of treating him like they're dating.

And again — it's Chase. She doesn't proposition Foreman, she never tries again with House after S1 (the Half Wit makeout session being clearly driven by her lingering crush but not at all an attempt at a relationship with him), she hesitates but rejects TB Guy, she doesn't try to date anyone else. She keeps singling out Chase, someone she already likes and cares about and who she knows cares about her (even just as a friend). She keeps propositioning him. Chase, too, seems to believe there's more to this than she insists: he is honestly surprised and hurt when she rejects him in Airborne ("You can't tell me that you—", he starts), and in Act Your Age reads her dead to rights by pointing out how wildly out of character her stoic act is. Implicitly — and explicitly, according to the show — he is correct.

In Lockdown, Cameron is nice enough to tell us how she (at least retrospectively, in her head) views the relationship. She is trying to stand up to Chase's accusations, but it also does read as a statement of intent, and it does match up fairly well with all of this:

CHASE: The first time you slept with me was because you were on crystal meth. CAMERON: I was on the drugs because I was emotional. It was the emotions that led to the sex, not the drugs. CHASE: Not true. After that, you refused to let it go further than just sex. CAMERON: Because I knew I was falling for you and I didn't want to.

She slept with Chase not because she wanted the sex, but because it was Chase, because she was emotional and scared and he was her friend. She rejected him in Airborne because she was scared of falling for him, not because she didn't care. She has cared about Chase since S1; Cameron runs and avoids her feelings whenever she can as a rule, and this is no different. But she's cared the whole time. She keeps singling out Chase because she likes him, not because she doesn't.