A/N: Call it a short break from my Sparrabeth fanfic. Don't know yet if it will be a one-shot or something more. Hope you like it. Read and Review.
Disclaimer: Don't own anyone. Damn.
Glass Walls
She is here. Again.
Opening the glass doors, she stands just a few feet from him, as if the bloody place belonged to her.
As if it was her office.
"What do you want?" he snaps angrily. The pain has been giving him a hard time lately and he doesn't have strength to talk to her… to look at her.
"Nothing… Just wanted to check if you're ok…" her answer is apologetic, nervous, defensive.
"The guy hung himself. End of story. Anything else?"
"That cop was here. Asking questions." She winces subconsciously, seeing the symptoms indicating that House's vicodin isn't working properly tonight. She hates seeing people suffer. She hates when he suffers. And yet she has become a doctor. Maybe it was another form of punishment she had to place upon herself.
"But since you love me so deeply and thoroughly I have nothing to worry about, do I?"
"I told him nothing but the truth"
An expression of pure, but false, horror passes through his features. "Then I'm literally screwed. Do I owe you another date for the effort?"
"A quick make-out session in the broom cupboard would be appreciated" Her voice is deadly serious and for a one second he thinks she actually means it. But then he notices the teasing glint in her eyes… he's seen it before in his own eyes.
"Cameron, stop doing such things to my poor heart. And to the other parts of my body." he knows what she's doing. Distracting. Trying to reach for him when he's in his deepest stage of misery. She's trying to save him. And it makes him sick.
"I talked to Wilson. He says they can give you up to ten years"
"But you'll be waiting for me, won't you?" he instantly sees the effect of his words. It's so amazing to watch, almost like curing another mysterious disease.
He feels the same way when he starts the treatment on a dying patient. When he injects the potion and then almost observes it running in veins, healing. When the body sends signals of the success, informs him the diagnosis was right.
Although this time he knows the potion isn't helping. The venom rolling off his tongue kills whatever feelings she has for him. Desperately, he tries to suffocate her compassion, her friendship, her twisted, not understandable, by all means wrong love.
"House…" she fights back the tears, not willing to give up, not yet.
"What am I to you? Another charity case? Does it make you warm and fluffy when you come here, all compassionate and concerned? Do you feel fulfilled? Do you really think that you being here will change something? Change me?" he raises his voice, not knowing why she pisses him so much. Why he cares so much to know her motives.
"Don't do this" Cameron's voice is trembling
"I'm not doing anything" he is strangely embarrassed by himself, his tone much softer than before… "It's you who came here in the first place."
He focuses his glare on his cane, unwilling to move as long as she is in the room.
Go… leave me now. I need to be alone, I want to be alone. I want to plunge in my misery. You can't change it, you never will…
Yet… Stay… please stay and show me who you're seeing with those pretty eyes of yours. Show me the man you're seeing. For once let me feel. And then go.
"Then I will not disturb you anymore" says Cameron, quietly, and suddenly House is looking at her with his blue, piercing, all-seeing eyes. He stares directly at her for the first time this evening.
She recognizes his inner struggle, however, she knows she doesn't have what it takes to fight his resistance. At least not now, not yet.
I don't want to change you, House.
Cameron turns around and pushes the glass door open. It closes behind her with a swift sound. Once she is in the hallway she glances back and her gaze locks with his. The only thing which parts them now is the immaculate, transparent wall. Transparent but cold.
And just behind it, in his office sits Gregg House, observing the world through the panes, not letting anyone in.
Allison Cameron is an intruder he needs to get rid of. Because the walls from glass can break easily, one unwary movement and one by one, they will all fall to pieces, leaving him exposed, vulnerable.
Gregg House can't let that happen. And so he watches her leave, sees her hesitation, how she almost unnoticeably brushes the smooth barrier rising between them, the tips of her fingers gently caressing the chilly surface. Finally her chest rises in a deep sigh and she disappears, leaving him alone. Again
'Thank god' he thinks, but his stare betrays him, lingering a bit too long on the distant end of the corridor, where she vanished, becoming another hallucination caused by too much vicodin and scotch.
Despite himself his thoughts come back to the moment when he was driving to Atlantic City.
"Have you ever loved anybody else?"
No… House is sure that after Stacy there hasn't been anyone. And yet… he wonders whether the coma guy would believe it. Whether he would say "Give me a hard time", insisting to hear the truth.
House wants to be asked that question again, wants to hear his own answer. He is curious what it would be.
House wonders whether the pain he's been feeling lately isn't from the shattered glass that covers the floor all around him, lacerating his bare feet. Making him bleed.
Glittering bits of his crushed defenses.