Chapter Text
Eric Foreman is sick of this crap.
Cameron and Chase are together. Great. Fine. Whatever. He hopes they have ten hundred curly-headed babies, each better at diagnostics than the last.
But what he just doesn't need is them lording it over him. He's so sick of hearing how we never spend enough time together, and we should all hang out more often, and we should have drinks, just to watch them make out all evening when he does come.
It's the fourth such occasion in as many weeks when, a little drunk and a lot bitter, he gives right the fuck up, throws a twenty on the bar, and just walks past them.
He ignores Cameron when she asks him where he's going and steps around Chase when he tries to block him, and the two of them have to all but tackle him to get him to explain himself.
"I'm going home," he snorts. "You guys have fun without me. Oh, wait."
"What's wrong?" Cameron asks, not for the first time, which is just insult to injury as far as he's concerned.
"Maybe I've got better things to do than watch the two of you play grab-ass all night long," he bites.
Only it doesn't have the effect he's going for, because Cameron gives Chase a dumbfounded look.
"He doesn't know," she says gravely.
Chase cocks an eyebrow at her. "How can he not know?"
"He doesn't know," she repeats.
"People in Trenton know."
"Well, Foreman doesn't."
Foreman rolls his eyes upwards. "What don't I know?"
"Why do you think we keep inviting you out-" Cameron starts.
"With just the two of us-" Chase interjects.
"When we could just as easily stay home if all we wanted to see was each other?"
"You guys are assholes," he rejoins- not his finest comeback ever, but it works.
"He really doesn't get it," Chase tells Cameron.
"Foreman," Cameron says, curling her small hands around his bicep, "we wanted you to come out with us."
He's about to say something snippy back, but, uncharacteristically, he reconsiders. In that moment, it dawns on him- half-joking suggestions, glances he hadn't known were significant at the time- and he wonders how the hell he managed to miss it.
Foreman sighs. "You guys are the most useless temptresses in the history of the human race."
"I'm not a temptress at all," Chase responds, pulling a hurt face.
She rolls her eyes. "Not with that attitude, you're not."
He lets her off with a glare, turning back to Foreman. "Did you really think we were just messing with you?"
"That would have been much faster," Cameron assures him. "We could have just gone to House."
Foreman suddenly has the wild, hilarious image of House overhearing this conversation, and he can't help laughing. "If you're going to seduce someone, you should do it right."
Chase is still the tiniest bit huffy. "And how is that, exactly?"
That's his cue to wrap his free arm around Cameron and pull her close, close enough that her breath brushes his face, and he's still not sure if any of them are even remotely serious about any of this, but he kisses her anyway, and the curve of her hip fits so nicely under his palm that he's not even sure he cares.
Watching Chase's face as he releases her, he thinks, for a split second, that he's really screwed up, played this all completely wrong. But then Chase's face breaks into a grin and he kisses Foreman, too- and that's definitely not what he expected, but it isn't half bad. Honestly, it's not all that different from kissing Cameron, which is a weird thought to have, but he thinks he can probably deal with it.
"This is all very cliche, isn't it?" Chase remarks as they pile into a cab.
"What is?" Cameron asks.
He flicks his hair out of his eyes before speaking, and Foreman wonders just when he developed a fascination with watching his lips. "You know, sending my girlfriend out for big black-"
"Don't say it," she warns
"You do want Foreman's big black- ow!"
"You came along," Foreman points out. "What's that say about you?" Chase only shrugs and grins at that one.
--
When he wakes up in the morning, Cameron's head on his arm and Chase halfway wrapped around him, he feels like he's skipped a step, somehow.
The feeling of weirdness persists all the way through breakfast. Chase makes waffles- and somehow Foreman knew he'd been the domestic one. But when Cameron pulls him over to lick the strawberry syrup from his lower lip, it feels normal, natural, somehow- and if he does the same to Chase later, well, turnabout is fair play. It's not enough to make the strangeness die down, but he can't stop himself from smiling, and he figures that's something all by itself.
House gives them a very suspicious look when they all walk in together, but he doesn't say anything. Foreman wonders briefly if they've just blown his sarcasm circuits- too much to snark, system failure.
They have their first fight by four p.m. the next day, followed directly by what turns out to be their first make up sex. And that's when Foreman gets it- he's really happy- really, stupidly happy about this- and just the thought blows his mind. He doesn't even know what it says about him. He doesn't feel any different than before this started- he's not gay, and yeah, he knows all about the DL- but this is something completely other, something he doesn't even have a frame of reference for.
But he likes it.
Six months pass, and he's just a little bit sad to let his apartment go. It's a really nice place in a great neighborhood- but Chase and Cameron already have a house, and the rent is just way too high for him to be wasting if he barely even sees the inside twice a month.
A year, and he's already bored of a whole new set of problems. He's over people in the supermarket looking at them funny. He's gotten past the fact that the waitresses at his favorite restaurant now think he's a pig. He's even come to understand that Chase will never, ever give up sleeping in the middle of the bed, despite his tendency to get up twice a night to use the bathroom, and that Cameron will never admit that the way she loads the dishwasher is obviously wrong.
At two years and two months, he's on the phone with his father, explaining that both his partners are coming to Mom's funeral. Chase is rubbing his back while Cameron says soothing things into his hair, and all he can think through the haze of his grief is, What the fuck just happened?
Three years, four months, and eleven days pass, and he's listening as Chase- his husband, Jesus- tells everyone at the reception about how Foreman didn't know he was dating both of them until it had already happened. He doesn't remember it quite that way, but Cameron- his wife, and damn, it still sort of tingles when he says that- laughs and elbows him, and he smiles.