From Out of the Shadows
Author's Note: Firstly, House, M.D. does not belong to me, it belongs to FOX, David Shore and lovely people across the pond. Secondly, I really shouldn't be writing this as I should either be writing my Latin IV critical commentary or one of the many other stories that are in progress but sadly, I'm midway through season 4, episode 15 ("House's Head") and the Muses have come to me. So, I have thrown my other writing commitments aside and decided to just put down this little one shot as a present to myself and to anyone who wishes to read - and hopefully review - it!
Happy reading,
DaenerysTargary3n
Allison Cameron hated the E.R. on these nights. Truly, the number of patients that were brought through the hospital doors with run-of-the-mill and dull afflictions made her brain die a slow and unsatisfactory death. Quite literally the only excitement and interesting event of her night shift was the admission of her mentor who had managed to get involved in the bus crash that had filled the E.R. of P.P.T.H. and broken his temporal bone.
"Dr. Cameron, we've got patients…" Crystal, her most officious floor manager, reminded her.
The blonde doctor pulled down the x-rays from the white light and moved back into the cataclysm of her assigned workplace, seeking the next patient who required her help. All she really wanted to do was be with Foreman and Chase and House, investigating the next conundrum and playing P.I. - that job had made her heart and soul sing! Now, she had to do sutures on a guy's arm.
"Has ANYONE seen House?!" Dr. Cuddy's shrill voice asked over the din of the busy room.
"I thought he was with his team. Page Thirteen."
Wilson turned up on the scene, "It's Thirteen and I who are looking for him."
House's superior and best friend looked at the female former member of the Diagnostic team but she had no clue where Greg House had escaped to.
"We were trying to get him to an M.R.I. but...we lost him."
Cameron rolled her eyes, "Typical. Where have you looked?"
Jim Wilson listed all the corners of the large metropolitan hospital in which the elusive doctor had not been located, however, Allison Cameron had an advantage. She opened the man's mail, did the man's filing, knew where his porn was kept and occasionally did his grocery shopping. She could get inside that man's head even faster and more effectively than she could her own boyfriend.
"Dr. Cuddy," she said, pulling a suture taut, "take over for me here and I'll go look. I'll find him."
With that, the Dean of Medicine just took over from the E.R. attending and watched the woman in the pink scrubs cast off her latex gloves and head out of the Emergency Room.
"Where's Cameron?" Chase asked tersely, bringing Cuddy and Wilson out of their reverie.
Cameron took the elevator up to the roof but had no luck there. She chuckled to herself on the way down to the basement as she realised she was searching for House. Not only in the present but in the greater scheme of things, Cameron truly was searching for House. Sure, she was in a relationship with Chase but she knew in the deepest, darkest place of her damaged soul that Chase was not the one and she would not be spending the rest of her life waking up to someone with an Aussie accent. If she had her way, she would wake up intermittently with an older man, with a pronounced limp and a gross attitude who spoke in with a vaguely British lilt.
"Oh God, I'm a horrible person! Why did House never call me Cutthroat Bitch?"
As she rounded the corner and entered the general ward for comatose patients, her body turned limp as she was met by no conscious ass of a diagnostician.
"If I was House, where would I be?" She sighed, attempting to know his current addled, fractured mind.
With her eyes still closed, she let her legs move, one foot then the other until she was jogging towards the cafeteria. He was hungry. He was not ravenous for physical nourishment - that was not House's way. He was starving for the end of the road, the answer to the puzzle, the silence he required to get his brilliant brain in gear and the solitude necessary for his genius to shine. Unfortunately, House's proclivity for metaphor and symbolism entailed that his hunger for mental and medical food for thought led him to the place where alimentary food was served...during normal working hours.
From the shadows, she observed him bent over a piece of scrap paper which presumably was replacing the whiteboard in his department office for his differential diagnosis without others. He seemed alright for someone who had a dent in their skull. She had no desire to interrupt his thought process, but when she saw him cast his notepad aside, wince and grasp at his forehead, it was time to emerge from her hiding spot.
"House? House!"
The man's eyes were scrunched tight shut and he bent forward to rest on the table. Thereupon, his body is still. He cannot react to Cameron's frantic voice as she attempts to elicit a response from his tired and agonised form. He cannot think what is ailing the patient that would "turn him into Batman" as Wilson so helpfully said.
Then, he felt cool hands remove his clammy ones from his forehead and replace them.
"What?" He stuttered.
As the fingers of the foreign hands began to rub small circles into his temples, he heard Allison Cameron shush him and slide onto the chair behind him, easing him forward to accommodate her.
"How did you find me?"
She laughed, "I know you, House. I know that when everyone - myself included, by the way - is clamouring for you to slow down and rest, you need emptiness and vacant spaces. Wilson also told me where he'd looked for you and I know that nothing makes you happier than an empty cafeteria. Plus, no one but me would have ever thought to look for you here, so...you wanted it to be me that found you, otherwise you'd have gone to that bus stop just outside the hospital where Wilson might have looked or the empty office on third where Cuddy knows you have a stash of Vicodin. You wanted me to find you…"
"Don't flatter yourself." House bit back, unwilling to acknowledge that he had wanted his former female team member to find him out because he couldn't definitively tell himself why.
"I don't," she retorted with her boss' enigmatic wit, "I just let you flatter me."
"Shut up!"
Cameron did as she was bid, but not without smiling slyly at House's obvious recovery from his debilitating head pains. She didn't want to draw his attention back to the discomfort in his skull, not after her massage was being so effective. Besides, it meant something to her that House did want it to be her that came to his rescue, not that she'd ever admit that to him or he'd accept it to her.
Instinctively, she laid her head down on his shoulder and nestled into the crook of his neck. When he did not shrug her off or move her, but instead relaxed into her, she took her arms away from his temples and wrapped them around his chest. The feeling of his chest as it puffed out and drew in in short, swift bursts unnerved her greatly for it was a reminder of how close he had come to death in that bloody bus!
"What is that? Is there blood coming out of my ear again?" House enquired as he felt something wet drip onto his shoulder.
"No," Cameron sniffed, "sorry, it's me."
"Wait, are you crying?"
He felt her nod into his neck and turned awkwardly so he could look at her face as the tears flowed down its alabaster cheeks.
"Yes."
His face scrunched up into an expression of beguilement, "Why?"
She thumped him soundly on the chest, where she was certain nothing was broken, and chided, "Because you nearly died! You could have died just because you were too drunk to ride your 'donorcycle' home! Then, when they'd have brought you into the E.R. it would have been me that called time of death. Did you even think of that? That I'm the senior attending in the E.R., not to mention your former team member who works there, so whether or not I was free, they would have called me! I would not have been able to pronounce you, House, I just would not have been able to say the words. So, yeah, I'm crying because you're alive and I don't have to grab some stupid intern to pronounce time of death on the man I lo...used to work for!"
"The man you? The man you love?! Come on, Cameron, you don't love me! You're in a bloody relationship with Chase!"
Cameron winced and withdrew at House's verbal assault of her, "What does that mean? That does not mean I love him, House. All it means is that I'm with him, but to tell the absolute truth, I'd rather be with you…"
House climbed off the chair with a frown on his face and moved to the other side of the table to face the woman who apparently still held a flaming, fiery torch for him.
"You don't love me. You love Chase and his blonde hair and inane accent. You just like damaged people, remember? And, because I've just survived a bus crash with a temporal bone break, you're suddenly seeing your perfect guy keeling over in front of you."
"So, what if I do? I've loved you since I started my fellowship, I left you because I couldn't try to see if Chase was the one with you in my life every damn day and I came back to you because I know now that even why I am trying to get on with my life without you...I can't, House!"
The recipient of all these emotions and expressions of unwaning love just sat as still as stone and observed every muscle and contour of Cameron's face and how her eyes were yearning for some reciprocation of her love.
"I can't, Cameron," House murmured, "I cannot be your knight in shining armour. You should be with Chase: he's your own age, handsome, a good doctor, a great surgeon, a better person than I am. You are too good and young to be with a cynical and sarcastic old codger like me."
She smiled, unable to believe what she'd just heard come from her former boss' lips. Knowing what she did now, she glided off the smooth cafeteria seat and surprised House by straddling his lap with her lithe and limber legs.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?"
As she leaned forward until her lips were millimetres away from touching his, she whispered softly, "You didn't say you had no feelings for me, that you didn't love me too. You just said why I shouldn't be in a relationship with you. You didn't even lie and tell me you didn't love me. You do love me and you love me as much as I do because you're not willing to admit it but you're also not going to lie to my face about it."
Then, without giving him opportunity enough to respond, she kissed him full on the mouth with all the passion she built up in the months since she had starting dating Chase. He was stone-lipped for a second but then he kissed her back.
Once the synapses in his brain had stopped squirting his brain with the liquid ecstasy that was kissing Allison Cameron, his cogent mind that was unattached to his heart returned to sanity and he pushed her away.
"I'm not going to start a relationship with you just because you've realised I do love you, you know?"
She smiled knowingly, "I know, but I just want one moment where I get to know what loving you and feeling you love me is like. Afterwards, you can go back to being House and trying to figure out what is wrong with your patient and I...I will go back to Chase."
"You would actually have sex with me and then go right back to Chase without batting an eyelid?" He asked truly shocked at her.
"Yep."
He scoffed, "So, what happened to the Cameron who had a moral compass and whose heart shattered into a million tiny pieces because love was not all it was cracked up to be?"
"She grew up and learnt that life is unfair and love is what you make of it. She also found a man who is hard to love but who caught her heart nevertheless." Allison said, stroking her lover's unkempt stubble.
"What has this man, rogue he must be, done to deserve the love of such a wise woman?"
Allison planted a chaste kiss atop his lips, "She is not so wise, but the man she loves is the cleverest, most brilliant and sexiest man she ever set eyes on."
"Well, then. I'd better prove my worth to her." House said placing his wide hands under her arms and lifting her so she was directly upon his burgeoning erection.
Cameron would have been lying if she said she was unsurprised by her companion's acquiescence to her platitudes. She had not expected Gregory House to quite literally take her so hastily and without pushing for Chase's dignity as her boyfriend.
"Yes, you had but be careful, I don't want to strain your pretty head."
With that, she kissed him open-mouthed and sought the sweetness of his tongue with hers. The kisses with House were so different to her kisses with Robert, whose sweetness came through in the way he touched and embraced her, whereas Greg House's sarcasm and obsessive personality was reflected in the harshness and passion of his kiss.
Spurred on by her enthusiasm, House brought his hands up through her blouse so that he could feel her bare and heated skin. Not satisfied with what his sense of touch provided, his hands roughly unbuttoned the obstacle of her blouse and thrust it from his lover's body.
"You are wearing too many clothes too, you know." Allison said looking between her top half only covered in her bra and House's still shirt-clad upper body.
His eyes were nothing if not inviting, so she tugged his shirt over his head and then began a trail of kisses down his neck until she reached his pert nipples and lavished them with attention and love.
"Enough!" House bellowed.
Cameron ceased her ministrations and looked for explanation in his eyes, "What's the matter?"
He did not give his answer verbally, but instead just fumbled at the buttons on her pants. He could not make love to this woman, the only woman he had true, sincere feelings for since Stacy. All his haggard form could do, all his beaten and weary mind could do was fuck her. He would do so skilfully but there would be no tenderness or sweet nothings to the assignation.
"We are not a couple, Cameron," he huffed, "we are not dating and I am not Chase. If you want to know what it's like to be with me, I'll show you, but don't expect this to be sweet or gentle."
"I never believed you were anything like Chase. I want you to fuck me. If I wanted anyone else to make love to me, I wouldn't be here, basically naked on top of you," with a glance downwards and noting she was still clad and it would be awkward for him to undress her, she extracted herself from his lap and grasp and tugged down her pants and underwear, "so be yourself but with me."
House beckoned his medical Muse back to him and sighed when she adeptly freed his manhood from his pants. When she then mounted him once more, naked as the day her parents made her, the warm sweetness of her sheathed him and comforted his wounds in body and spirit. He was large but not large enough for her to require more than a second or two to acclimate herself to his form.
It was she who made the first thrust to feel more of him under her skin. The sensation of feeling the strength of his hardness beneath her was exhilarating and sense her soaring above Princeton far more effectively and joyously than Chase ever managed. She chased thoughts of the Australian from her thoughts, seeking only to concentrate on the epitome of manhood upon whom she thrust herself, for her affair with him would be much shorter and a unique experience. Chase would be in her bed later, but House would be grunting under her writhing body for these minutes alone.
"Faster, faster…" She panted as she could no longer maintain the pace she had set.
It was music to his ears, hearing the far younger woman come undone on top of him and because of the effect he had on her. His own release was not far off and his desire to take over the workload from Allison was in favour of his orgasm.
With a resounding scream from her and a bellow of her name from him, they came together sweatily and shuddering. Both were glad in the moment after they came down from their high that no one was anywhere near the hospital cafeteria to hear the sounds of their fucking.
"Well," House began, "that's that."
"You're a heartless ass, you know?" Cameron replied with a sarcastic smile turning up the corners of her lips.
He smiled as he wiped himself off and marvelled at how much better his head felt after their coitus, "You love me because I am a heartless ass, Cameron."
Allison looked down at her scantily clad body, "I know...and I also know I can't - and won't - stay with you because of that even if you would let me."
"I taught you well, Dr. Cameron," House acknowledged, "and you are right. It would not do for you to stay with me, especially as right now, I need to go and take a bath to try and remember what it is I simply can't."
Cameron laughed partly happy and partly dismayed by her fate. She would assuredly return to Chase and be in his bed by the night's end, but she would dream of House's arms and lips and strong chest. He, mad and adorably incorrigible man that he was, would most likely forget about her and her lips and arms and breasts, preferring instead the thrill of his newest problem and medical quandary.
"See you later, House. Don't get lost...unless I'm the only one who can find you."
As the lady dressed herself and walked out of the large, otherwise vacant room, he put his own shirt back on and glanced down at the crumpled paper on which he had scribbled the potential diagnoses for the bus driver. Those ideas all seemed inadequate after making Dr. Cameron come so vocally. All he could think was that her last words had some indication of an invitation for the future and would he find himself devouring her lips and other parts of her body again…