Was House leaving the hospital for good?

Unthinkable. He wouldn't leave her—them. Or would he? Cameron brooded as she and Chase wandered through House's apartment looking for clues. Clues were what led her to these desperate measures in the first place. There was a panicked little knot in her stomach and she needed to make it go away.

It had started with opening his mail as usual. Finding a plane ticket to Boson raised alarm bells in her head and she had approached Foreman.

"Do you have any idea why House would want to go to Boston?"

Foreman shrugged. "The chowder?"

"Plane tickets, this Friday. I opened his mail." Cameron lowered her voice. "I heard there's an opening at Harvard for division chief, Infectious Disease."

Foreman put on his gloves. "Ambition is not one of his more prominent traits." He paused. "Although…"

"What?"

"He was testing blood in the clinic. Don't think it was the patient's blood."

Cameron quipped, "Why? It was green?"

Foreman remained serious. "No, he was checking for routine stuff." He waited a beat. "Makes sense if he's checking for basic medical clearance for employment."

They exchanged a long look.

And now she was breaking into House's apartment. Persuading Chase to accompany her wasn't hard. Cameron was amused at how nervous Chase was at first but then he suggested having sex in House's bed.

They didn't, of course. Chase was too much of a wuss to actually do the deed there. Cameron, smoothing her hand over the blanket, stared at the bed with a blank expression. House's body, naked under the sheets, lust in his eyes…she closed her eyes, imagining it. Wondering how it would feel to have him under her as she rode him hard and fast. Or teasingly slow as his mouth explored hers.

"Hey, we're out of here," called Chase, already walking down the hallway. She straightened and followed him out, her eyes unreadable.

The next step was telling Dr. Cuddy about the plane ticket. She knew that Cuddy would take it from there and call her contacts with the ferociousness of a bulldog, demanding to know how they thought they could steal House away from the hospital without a fight.

Cameron expected Cuddy to let her know the results and was surprised when only a resounding silence met her queries. And was that fear in the older woman's eyes?

The knot in her stomach grew tighter.

Her mouth a thin line, she spotted Dr. Wilson leaving the building and ran after him. "Dr. Wilson. Wilson!"

He kept walking and she sped up, determined. "I just spoke to Cuddy. She can't confirm whether House is applying for a job at Boston."

Wilson winced. "Yeah. I'm late for a..."

Cameron played her trump card. "If I have to look for work, I have a right to know."

Wilson stopped walking and sighed, closing his eyes. He turned to face her, sorrow and pain etched across his face.

And then the idea of House leaving for a job turned horribly into the idea of House dying and being stubborn and stupid about it by hiding it from everyone around him. Cameron huffed at his idiocy but amid the pain and sorrow was something else.

She stared at the keyboard under her fingertips, thinking, feeling the absolute unfairness of it all. And shivered at the idea that she had touched House's bed and thought of his body and how angry she still was at him. Cameron snorted at herself. She was mad at him for something that had happened a year before, something he probably never gave a second's thought to. And that something led her to change, to hide herself and her emotions and have sex with Chase to pass the time. How screwed up was she, anyway? Was there even a way to fix it?

Well, maybe she couldn't fix it, but she wanted retribution. And now there was no time for cowardice.

Cameron nodded at the screen, one short, sharp jerk of determination. She typed the letter neatly, printed it out, and walked into his office.

House sat, working on a piece of wiring. He looked up, taking off his glasses. "PET scan done?"

"No."

"You come for my feelings? 'Cause I left them in my other pants." Inwardly, he sighed, hoping to get past the scene before him as quickly as possible.

"This is a letter of recommendation. I'm applying for a job at Penn." She handed him the letter.

House glanced at it before signing, hiding his shock. "Thank you for writing your own. I'm sure my thoughts are beautifully phrased." He was pleased that his voice remained offhand.

"Thank you for signing it. Saves me having to fake your signature."

House handed it back and watched as she slipped it into an envelope. "Stay away from Weiss. He cries with his patients. Holds their hands as they die. He won't like you."

Cameron tilted her head, her silent "why" visible in the movement.

"Your new-found nonchalance in the face of cancer."

She blinked. "I thought you'd find it appealing."

House leaned back in his chair. "Twenty seconds. Pretty good."

"For what?"

"Time it took you to go from hard-ass to human being." He stood up and limped to her carefully. "You really want to leave?"

"If you're not here, there's not much point of staying."

"I'm not dead yet." He kept eye contact.

Cameron stepped towards him and House stiffened. "What are you doing?" He froze as she came even closer, stunned at what he saw in her eyes, and tried to diffuse what was suddenly out of his control. "I know this must be a turn-on for you—" House stopped, his breath caught in his lungs as she touched his face and brought it closer to hers, brushing her lips over his.

He wanted to protest and then didn't. Her lips were warm and soft and he felt lust stab straight through to his groin. He opened his mouth and slid his tongue to hers as she gripped the back of his neck with one hand and massaged, her tongue weaving with his all the while.

House wanted to lose himself in the experience of being kissed by Allison Cameron. Her mouth, warm and welcome, her hand touching his skin, created an automatic response from his body. He'd have to be dead three times over not to react. But the analytical part of his brain wondered where her other hand was going. It should have been trailing down his body, not her own…and one eye opened to see her hand slip into her lab coat. He reached down and gripped her hand hard, pulling it up with the needle still trapped in her fingers.

"A little whorish to kiss and stab."

"You kissed back." She was breathless but unrepentant.

"I didn't want you to die without knowing the feeling." House yanked the syringe from her hand. "Actually, no woman should die without knowing the feeling."

"All I need is a few drops of your blood."

"Foreman and Chase's lips are not gonna get so close, now that I know your plan."

"There's a nurse downstairs about to risk his job to steal the blood you drew from yourself yesterday."

Anger flooded him. "I'm Patient Number 020406, in the record room, under the name Luke N. Laura! There's a whole file of blood there, along with CT scans, MRIs, CSF, everything you need."

Cameron kept a neutral face. Goading him into giving her the information was risky at best but apparently he missed it as the real manipulation.

She started to leave the office, torn between anger, satisfaction, and a frustrating ache between her thighs when House called after her, "If you need a sperm sample, come back without the needle." She gave him an annoyed look as she exited.

House rubbed his lips, still feeling the softness of her lips and tongue tasting and exploring and inviting him in. He straightened suddenly as Cameron strode back in.

"I have something to say."

He raised an eyebrow, eyeing her defensive stance. "I think your lips said just about everything."

"I was angry, House."

"I thought that was my stage. After denial, of course."

"Shut up." Cameron ran a hand over her hair, smoothing it to the band of her ponytail. She looked ruffled despite her slim neatness. "I wanted to kiss you. The needle? Come on! Did you really think I was going to get a decent draw while we were playing tonsil hockey? That I was going to find the vein with my eyes shut and you were going to hold still for it? Being a prick yourself, you'd notice a little one."

He stared at her in astonishment.

"I was angry."

He cleared his throat. "Yeah. Okay. Can we concentrate on the real patient now? Remember him? Piano genius who's also an idiot? Oh wait, I see the confusion now!" He smacked his forehead in mock seriousness.

"Don't you want to know why?"

House rolled his eyes. "Life's unfair, we never had time to make a go of it, orchestral music swells in the background, check. Anything else?"

Cameron smiled slightly. "That's not why." She turned and walked out again, leaving House puzzled and annoyed. He realized that he could still smell her on his clothes, her heat and the musk they had raised between them. Over one kiss. Fuck. He was going to have to jerk off and change. He stood and left his office with a scowl.