surprise

;House, S1. Up to Mob Rules, mentions of Heavy, AU after. "It took him three seconds to size you up and surprise, he doesn't like you." Cameron/House sort of. One-shot.

Cuddy doesn't like House, Chase doesn't like House, the new chairman doesn't like House, and House doesn't like anyone. People should stop asking. People should stop being surprised.

It's just the two of them and Cameron is tired and it seems okay because it's just Chase, and he sounds surprised when she tells him she likes House. House doesn't like her back (she asked. Who asks?). It doesn't matter though (House doesn't like anyone). Chase tells Foreman. Foreman teases her. Maybe she's crazy. Maybe somewhere during the monster truck thing, maybe somewhere in all the times he's called her pretty she started to think that maybe House was this warm guy underneath his cold exterior and maybe that was just stupid.

Cameron's used to an awful lot of maybes. Maybe it was a nurse who found the Ipecac. Maybe Chase was just trying to save his job. (Maybe the cancer in her husband would go away.) Maybe House didn't know the woman was bulimic. Not a lot gets by House though. He's House. It's his job.

Maybe Foreman was right about how much it hurts to be around him.

It's late. Cameron could go home (to an empty bed to stare at the ceiling and feel sorry for herself) or she could keep working, could slave over a book of rare and unusual diseases to crack just one more weird case. They're all rare and unusual. They're all weird. They always lie. Everyone lies.

Her eyelids start to droop. M blurs with N and the words run together, slipping through paragraphs and morphing in pages until she's not entirely sure what she's reading about. Books make good pillows. She thinks of late nights studying when she was fifteen and Jonathan Dougall said she had a nice rack; when she was 18 and graduating at the top of her class; when she was 20 and her college roommates were all out drinking (; when she stayed up all night reading a book on how to manipulate an argument, partially so that everyone would respect her more and partially so that House would listen to what she had to say). She thinks of mobsters. She thinks of canes. She falls asleep.

A hand on her shoulder shakes her awake. She looks at her watch (11:55 p.m.), then looks behind her. House stands there, leaning on his cane, scruffy unshaven face, not wearing his doctor's coat (it itches), hard face unreadable. Cameron is embarrassed and flustered to have fallen asleep- runs her hands through her hair, shifts her shirt. "What are you doing here so late?" she asks, mouth slow and sleepy.

"I could ask you the same thing." House likes the irony of cliché phrases. Likes videogames and General Hospital and dramatic music and doesn't like Cameron or anyone. "Working hard or hardly working?"

She huffs a breath through her nose and sighs, looking at the table morosely and wondering what happened to confident, smart, superior Cameron.

House says, "It's late. You should go home. No one wants a tired doctor. Not very trustworthy."

Cameron grabs her book, nodding, and makes her way to the door when he says-

"I lied."

She makes a sharp intake of air. Does he mean about liking her? Is that why he hesitated? Is it why-

"About the patient who needed a heart. I knew about the Ipecac."

It makes her angry, somehow. Or just disappointed. She turns to face him slowly. "Why bother telling me? So I feel like I should report you? So you get your medical license revoked?"

"Because I trust you," he shrugs, "and I know you won't. Besides, it's twelve oh three. Technically we're not on the job. Maybe I'm telling you as a person and not as a doctor."

Cameron is starting to hate maybes. "You're always a doctor."

He hesitates, breathes out slowly. "And you're always right." He limps past her, out the door.

She dreads going in to work the next morning. Things will be awkward.

Of course they aren't. House doesn't even blink at her, treats her just the same as always. Slightly arrogant, slightly amused. Always working on a puzzle while missing the universal irony of the fact that House is like finding a piece of a puzzle but not knowing what puzzle the piece belongs to. Cameron tries not to act any different than she ever does. Tries not to let him know he affects her. Tries not to let it bug her when he leans over her shoulder to look at notes. Tries not to notice the color of his eyes.

So that is them and they are nothing.

Cameron stays late. House stays late.

"Fire me," she finally says, "You have to fire someone, so fire me."

"No."

"Why not?" she demands. "I'm trying to make your job easier. I can get a job somewhere else."

"I'm not firing you, Cameron."

She vaguely wonders when her name stopped being Allison and became Cameron. They only call her Cameron at the hospital. Outside, in the non-hospital world, she's just pretty, hit-on-in-bars Allison. She's starting thinking of Cameron as someone who belongs to House, like just because he calls her by her last name that she is another person to him.

"Why?" she asks again.

"Jeeze, Cameron, one wouldn't think that one's team would actually beg to be fired."

"I'm not begging, I'm asking why you won't."

House hesitates. This is not the first time he has done this around her.

Cameron leans across the desk they're both sitting at, grabs his face and kisses him. House does not move. When she pulls away, he won't meet her eyes.

"Maybe I will fire you, after all," he mutters.

"No more maybes," Cameron says, and grabs his hand on a whim. He looks up at her then and she wonders if this is the first time that anyone has ever been affectionate with him. She thinks she sees something in his eyes. Love, or lust, or something close.

"I don't like you," he says huskily, pushes back his chair, and leaves.

People should stop asking. People should stop being surprised.