Author's Note: Welcome to my first story since a slew of X-Files fanfiction almost a decade ago (yikes!). Feeback lets me know if it should be another decade until the next one.
It was an act of thoughtless reaction, a response as automatic as riding the brakes of a car as gravity yanks it down a hill, threatening those breakneck speeds which even the marked patrol units waiting at the bottom watch with shock, awe, and a bit of appreciation. Such was the pattern of the major events in his life: a moment of blind inhibition always, always preceded a shift in the norm and a new direction for him to head. He liked to fool them all into believing that his life was carefully constructed just to his liking, but it was a sham. He rarely made things happen. What he made was knee-jerk decisions, the consequences of which took him wherever they wanted him to go. He was a fraud, just as out of control of the universe as the rest of them.
Leave it to her to prove it to everyone.
He had saved a hundred lives before - he had saved almost that many in the last six months. He liked to believe that, anyway. He liked to believe that all of the useless patients who bombarded the clinic with their sniffles and their oddly-shaped sunburns and multicolored mucus patterns were all on the verge of death and that his intervention, as much as he protested and harangued to stay away, was what stood between them and the seven layers of hell they were all destined for. Just because he had to remain in purgatory didn't mean they had to. If they lived to see the clinic exit door he could take credit for their surviving that day. It was by his blessing that they lived to see the sunset. The next day was somebody else's job. And if Cameron, Foreman, or Chase saved a life or saw a patient, well he got credit for that too, of course. He was the one responsible for any of the underlings being there, at that moment. Especially when they were covering his clinic hours. He should get double credit for that. So, really, if you took his clinic hours plus those of his minions, plus his practice, it was safe to estimate that Dr. Greg House had saved a thousand lives in the past six months alone. It sounded so grand, so fantastic in the face of Cuddy's claims that his one-patient-a-week ratio really had him at a total of twenty-six lives in the past six months.
A thousand lives - and it had to be her that went and screwed things up.
As a doctor, she should have known. She should have been able to judge just from looking at it that the hunk of steak she harpooned with her fork was too large to squeeze down her throat. She had a gullet so small he sometimes marveled that it didn't collapse upon itself when she wore a necklace. She should have learned by now that steak was a dangerous food. Too much girth for such a tiny, delicate throat.
Maybe he should blame Wilson. It was Wilson who forced them to go out to eat dinner together, ambushed House and dragged him to the steakhouse to celebrate the grant given to the hospital. Yes, it was definitely Wilson's fault. It he hadn't planned it, Cameron wouldn't have been there to choke on the ill-fated steak and throw his life upside down.
Then again, they could have celebrated without House. She still could have choked. It probably would have been Chase who saved her instead. Chase, who couldn't wait to get his grimy hands on her again. It would have been Chase whose arms would have wrapped around her diminutive waistline, thrusting his fists into her delicate diaphragm, holding themselves there a little longer than was appropriate as she sagged, panting and spent, against his body. The whole image made House want to shake himself violently to force it to disappear. It wasn't Wilson's fault, then.
House would replay the scene in his mind for months, bringing it up again and again in those quiet, uncensored moments just before sleep washed over him or when he was flying free on his motorcycle. He would remember, almost unconsciously, the strange silence that fell from her side of the table. She hadn't been talking, just listening as House and Wilson bantered back and forth over something so forgettable they never picked up the argument again. She had been eating, obviously, and House could remember the air suddenly going so still around him that he was up and out of his chair, maneuvering his way around the table before he even saw her face.
Maybe it was the patient's fault, the rich woman with the sick kidney and the healthy sense of humor who liked his bluntness so much that instead of doing what he had suggested and using her money to seduce a fat cat committee doctor into rigging the donor list in her favor or pay her illegal maid to give up one of hers for purchase on the black market, she had willed her entire fortune to Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital with instructions that Dr. Greg House and his department be the direct beneficiaries of twenty-five percent of the money. If she had listened to him and found a way to get that kidney then she wouldn't have died, wouldn't have left the money, and there would have been no reason for them to be at the House of Overcooked Animal Flesh in the first place. Yes, it was definitely the old woman's fault.
He would marvel forever at how rapidly Cameron's skin turned blue. She was silent with wide-eyed terror, her hands just coming up to her neck to signal the others that she was choking as the color drained from her face and she began to flush that awful cobalt color. At the clatter of her fork on the plate Foreman and Chase came to their senses and looked at her, but House was already pulling her from her seat and into his arms, placing a palm over a fist just above her navel. Chase, the blubbering idiot, asked if she was choking. Wilson answered for House, cursing at Chase that he was an imbecile and of course she was choking. Foreman at least had the sense to call for an ambulance, knowing the long-term effects choking could have. House didn't have to say a word. It definitely wasn't Foreman's fault.
House didn't bother with the questions the lawyers wanted people to ask before they gave a victim the Heimlich or any other first aid services. He knew she was choking, she damn well better not be pregnant, and whether or not she consented to having the lethal chunk of sirloin thrust from her throat didn't really matter to him right then. Let her sue him. It wouldn't be the first time he had been wrapped up in litigation. Damn the consequences; let them come.
He hated remembering the smell of her hair as he held her against him and forced air from her lungs to ramrod itself against the meat. He shouldn't have a lingering sense of strawberries and chocolate - what shampoo smelled like that anyhow? He should have been clinical and detached; he should have no memory other than the one, two, three thrusts it took to dislodge the meat and get her breathing again. It flew across the table and landed smack in Chase's snooty chardonnay; that, he would remember with fondness until the day he died. That was true teamwork. She coughed and sputtered and tried to catch her breath. He tried to grab a chair for her to hold on to and support herself, but she grabbed onto his arm instead and he couldn't move. Her body came close to his, not quite leaning on him but close enough that he could feel her rapid inhalation on his chest. She gripped his arm fiercely, steadying herself, and try as he might he could not stop his hand from splaying out across her stomach, supporting her.
He would have liked to blame the restaurant, but they comped the meal and gave House a lifetime coupon entitling him to a free entrée whenever he desired (limit 1 per week, beverage not included) and he couldn't blame anyone offering him something for free.
He would see the event recounted on the evening news, and would change the channel in disgust. She hadn't died, so how was this news? The ringleaders of the media circus interviewed fat, au-jus covered restaurant patrons who called House a hero, and Cuddy managed to make her way onto the broadcast to tout House's life-saving prowess, relishing the fact that, for once, she wasn't being called upon to defend him and even managing to work a mention of the grant in with all her showboating. None of his doctors were foolish enough to put their faces on the broadcast, and for that House decided that maybe the whole thing wasn't Chase's fault.
She was examined in the ER and released almost immediately, able to go home. He waited outside the exam room and, for reasons he would never really understand, offered to drive her home. They all offered, falling over themselves to be gentlemen. It didn't occur to him until much later to ask why they were offering to drive her home when her car was parked securely in the parking lot and she would need a ride back to the hospital the next morning, but it turned out she was too shaken up to drive. She tried to mask it, but in the end she accepted House's offer and let him drive her home - in her car. He left the motorcycle, knowing he could con a ride from Wilson in the morning and wanting to avoid putting her in any more potentially life-threatening situations. There was no doubt a car was safer than a motorcycle.
He would never be able to explain where this sudden unrelenting concern for Cameron's welfare came from. She had been in danger a dozen times before, mostly at his hand, and he never treated her with a modicum of concern or even respect before. He could not diagnose what it was about this time that was different. Maybe it was that he was the one who took her out of danger instead of placing her in it; maybe it was that his defenses were down and he had begun to care about her in spite of himself; maybe it was simply that the rush of adrenaline left him too tired for sarcasm this time. Whatever the reason, he could not bring himself to blame or ridicule her this time around, and so he just stayed quiet.
In the middle of the drive she turned to him with a sheepish smile the likes of which he had never seen flit across her face before. He tried to reply gruffly, but all that came out was a noncommittal, "What?"
She shook her head, already admonishing herself for the statement which was to follow. "I feel like such an idiot."
I feel. Why did women insist on emoting all the time? All his life it had been "I feel …", "I want …", "I dream of …" House didn't believe in all that. Not anymore. Life wasn't about emoting, it was about acting, and living in the here and now.
Maybe that doctor was to blame; the one who missed the blood clot, which lead to the infarction, which killed him for a minute there and left him with an overwhelming sense of carpe diem which clashed with the way the world really worked. Life wasn't really all about the here and now and acting without concern for the future. He knew that, and the evidence reared its head again and again.
Maybe he should blame the Latins for coming up with such a catchy language that it produced overused phrases like Carpe Diem and Tempus Fugit and a thousand others he could never remember when he wanted to sound exceptionally intellectual.
"You looked stupid," he said, doing everything he could not to sound comforting. "It must have been painfully embarrassing for you, your face turning all purple and your arms going all rigid, over a piece of meat any two-year-old would have the sense to know was too big for you. You should blame … somebody."
She looked at him, puzzled. "Not about that. That was my own fault." He could easily blame Cameron; she was always a willing scapegoat. "It's just … after all that, I'm hungry."
House could not decide whether to guffaw with laughter or to hit his head on the steering wheel in frustration, so he did neither. He focused his eyes on the road, driving silently, until the bright lights of a fast food chain beckoned him to the drive-thru window.
Cameron flushed red, chasing away the final traces of blue and translucent white from her skin. "House, I didn't mean to suggest …"
"You didn't get to eat anything," House interrupted. "All of your food went flying across the restaurant too soon. And you could use as many calories as you can get. And I worked up an appetite saving your life so you can go on to spend another day saving humanity one pathetic moral dilemma at a time. You're buying."
Cameron leaned over in search of her purse and House cursed himself for remembering the scent of her hair as it tumbled over her shoulders and towards the floor, curtaining her off from him. This was exactly why House never touched anyone. There were two ways to touch someone: the detached way one touched patients and prostitutes one would never touch again, or the intimate way one touched someone to give them one's heart. Damn Cameron, she had blurred the line and he did not know how he could go back.
It stood to reason, then, that there was no place to go but forward. Barely thinking, as was becoming his pattern for the night, he reached out, touched the back of his hand to Cameron's soft waves, and tucked her hair behind her ear.
She was so surprised that she could do nothing but stare at him. She sat there, torso stretched over her knees, hands resting on the floor by her feet in their abandoned search for her purse, her eyes searching his face for some explanation as to just what in the hell was going on.
Likewise, he examined every cell on her face, although he had no idea what he was looking for. He sought trust, desire, hunger, animosity and pity, but he found none. She appeared, of all things, concerned. He couldn't be certain because he so rarely acknowledged the expression, but Cameron appeared truly concerned - not for herself, but for him. As if him making an affectionate gesture towards her was a symptom of a greater illness.
He could blame Stacy for so jading him against the idea that any woman could care for him without destroying his life, but he had already blamed Stacy for enough. She needed to be left out of this one.
A horn honked and House looked up to see that the car in front him was gone. He inched the car forward to the speaker and, when he looked back at Cameron, found her busily digging money out of her purse. A moment later her hair was up in a bun at the base of her neck. He could never quite determine what that meant, so he chose to take it as an act of rejection.
House parked the car in a lonely parking space at the back of the nearly empty parking lot, certain that leaving the parking lot with the food unfinished would lead either to a car accident or the endlessly uncomfortable moment of Cameron asking House to come inside. He reached into the greasy paper bag and handed Cameron a container of fries with the disclaimer, "I'm not helping you if you choke this time."
Cameron chewed in silence, staring out the front window. House rapidly convinced himself, as he always did, that he had failed. He was not sure of what his goal had been to begin with, but he knew he had come up short.
The moon was full and hung high over New Jersey, creating a silvery light through the shadows left by voids between the streetlights. The weather was turning cold, and a gray-white layer of frost crawled over the car as it idled gently, heated by warm food and the uncertain, stilted breathing of the two doctors inside. House turned on the windshield wipers and they cut an arc through the thin drops. Still the car remained in the parking space, but at least the sound of the wipers cut through the awkward silence.
Cameron finished her food and wadded up the wrapper, tossing it back in the bag. She ventured a glance at House and took a deep breath.
"I should thank you for saving my life." Her voice cut so crisply through the silence that House nearly jumped from the noise.
"Someone would have done it," he recovered. "Tons of men would have jumped at the chance to save the beautiful princess. And feel her up at the same time, of course."
"You didn't let me finish." Her voice was firm now, commanding. "I said I should thank you. But I won't."
He turned to give her his best eye-piercing stare. She locked eyes with him, refusing to drop her gaze to the floor as he expected she would. She had developed quite a serious look of her own. He would have to find a new way to intimidate her.
"Ungrateful -" he started, but she cut him off.
"Not in the least," she quipped. "I'm grateful to be alive, but I was grateful to be alive before. And I'm grateful that you stepped in, but like you said, someone would have done it eventually. I was sitting at a table with four doctors, and I know how to self-inflict the Heimlich, so it's not like I would have died."
"Then why should you thank me?"
Cameron thought for a moment, still locked on his gaze. A hint of a self-satisfied smile danced across her face. "Because you want me to. Because you want me to feel as though I owe you something, so I will continue on as your dedicated, unquestioning servant. You want this held over my head for the rest of my career. You want me to hero-worship you so you can further believe I am deluded in any feelings I have for you. But mostly, you want me to thank you because you want to be the hero."
He could blame himself for giving her a spine. She certainly didn't have one before he got to her, and it was coming back to haunt him.
Who told her she was allowed to be in charge?
He continued watching her, waiting for the denouement of her tirade. She still had not looked away, and he would be unsure later on if she even blinked. He looked back and forth between her eyes, looking for a flicker of uncertainty or hesitation. He found nothing.
He searched instead for something to say in retort, and came up empty-handed. The silence hung heavy and cold in the air.
House reached for a French fry, as it seemed the only rational action to take.
Cameron broke the stare and rested her feet on the dashboard of the car. The toes of her shoes left streaks in the condensation on the windshield. She looked positively smug, and House suspected she was enjoying this just a little too much. Wasn't he, as the hero, supposed to be able to feel in control of everything? Wasn't she, as the near-victim, supposed to be kissing his feet with gratitude? What had gone wrong?
"So," he stumbled over his own thoughts, "am I supposed to thank you for allowing me to squeeze the life back in to you?"
"Nope," she said flippantly. "You save lives. It's what you do. I could have been any random person choking and you would have stepped in."
He knew that wasn't true, but he had the sense to stay quiet. Choking was diagnostically boring, and if someone was dumb enough to stuff their faces with enough food to kill them, then they deserved to die. It was Darwinian. Besides, the Heimlich was practically mandatory curriculum for the third grade. Any nobody could save the life of a choking victim and spare House the hassle of having to get out of his seat. House could count on one hand the people he would give the Heimlich to: Cameron, apparently, was one of them.
It struck him suddenly how peaceful she looked there with her feet up, head resting against the back of her seat. She had never been this relaxed with him before. She moved her head a few times, searching for a comfortable way to rest her head on that godforsaken bun. She reached her arms up in defeat and the chestnut waves spilled down her shoulders again. She tucked the hair back behind her ears and leaned against the headrest again, turning her face towards the window. The moonlight twinkled through the mist covering the car and came to rest on her dewy skin. She was almost glowing.
He could blame God. He could definitely blame God for creating the moonlight, for creating donors, for creating steak, for creating Heimlich, and for creating Cameron. Yes, he could definitely blame God for everything that was happening. House would show Him.
House started the car and released the parking brake, wishing she had just gone home with Chase instead. She was too much trouble, this Cameron girl. Beautiful women should not be allowed to be smart and strong. They were too intoxicating, and he could never resist them. They were only out to hurt him in the end.
As he moved to put the car in reverse, Cameron yanked on the parking break and the car shook from the shock. She was facing him now, knees almost tucked under her, looking as if she were ready to pounce upon him at any moment. Her eyes were piercing and determined and locked upon his. There was that hunger he had been searching for. It permeated his skin with scorching blue heat, dropping his heart into his stomach like a stone. With that hair - that cursed, wretched hair - she looked wild, regal, and dangerous.
She was always dangerous to him.
House swallowed deeply, suddenly nervous. She wanted something, but it wasn't what he expected. She wasn't hungry for him, wasn't filled with a sudden carnal passion that would end with him getting lucky and her feeling ashamed. This had nothing to do with House, hero-worship, or a hump in the backseat. She wanted more - she wanted everything.
It was as if she had just woken up from a deep, angry sleep. She wanted the world, conquered and claimed in Cameron's name. When House died he woke up jaded. When Cameron came close, she woke up alive.
"What are you doing?" he asked, hoping that by asking enough questions, he would be able to knock her back into submissive slumber.
"I have no idea," she replied, the last syllable of her confession lost as she captured his lips with hers and overtook him.
He could blame God, he could blame Cameron, he could blame the cow that gave its life to be the catalyst for this one moment but there, with his lips sacrificing themselves to hers and his hands reaching up to wind themselves through the source of that intoxicating chocolate-and-strawberries scent, he blamed only himself - for not being the one to kiss her first.