"A water bed?" Gregory House questioned with a raised eyebrow.

"Yes, why not? It'll be perfect." Allison Cameron stood there with a stupid smirk on her face. At least it was stupid in House's opinion.

House looked dubiously at the thing. "It's not perfect. Why would you think it's perfect?"

"Well, we did just buy a house together, House." Cameron smirked at him again.

"Bad puns aren't going to improve this."

"It wasn't a bad pun."

"Says who?'

"Me."

"Whatever. Getting back to our problem."

"We need to furnish our house."

"We've got our stuff from both our apartments."

"Yeah, but we needed a bed to share together."

"All right. I can go with that. Still doesn't explain why a water bed."

Cameron beamed. "An old friend of mine lives in Connecticut now. You remember. I went to visit her for a few days."

House was starting to get mildly irritated. To put it mildly.

"Get to the fucking point already."

"O.K. While I was getting shown the sights we passed this store called 'Rubber Match.' Been there forever and back in the day it sold water beds. Of course, now it has had to diversify but it's still there and it's still selling water beds, among other things."

"There's still a market for them?" House was incredulous.

"Apparently. Anyway, I've never had one and since we needed a new bed anyway, I thought this'd be perfect for your leg."

"I see."

"Why don't you try it out?"

"Why don't you return it?"

"No. I went to considerable trouble and expense to have it delivered here. We're keeping it."

"So, you went to a lot of trouble and expense." House scowled. He wasn't sure he particularly liked this new stand up for yourself Cameron but as they were engaged he supposed he was stuck with her. Of course, he could break up with her but since he was oh-so-annoyingly in love with her that wouldn't work. "I guess I'll try it."

"Take off your shoes. You don't want to pop a hole in it and have water leaking all over our house."

"Oh, perish the thought. Except I'm not the one who brought this thing in here."

She just laughed as he took off his shoes and lowered himself onto the bed, thoughts filled with how much easier this would be if he wasn't with Allison Cameron. Easier but not nearly so happy, although happiness was still a foreign concept to him. Anyway, he was on the bed now.

"How is it?"

"It's O.K." Actually it was more than O.K. It was great. So comfortable. It wouldn't do any good to let her know that, of course. No need to let her think she had the upper hand in this relationship.

"So, we'll keep it?"

"You were going to keep it, no matter what I said. You made that clear."

"True. But I thought I'd let you think you had a chance." She laughed again.

"Fine. Would you like to join me?"

"Sure." She took off her shoes and joined him in the bed. And it wound up to be a very nice time.

The End.

AN Rubber Match is a real store in New Haven Ct. I live in one of the towns near New Haven and I got the idea for this story when my husband and I drove past the store late one night. So here it is.