TITLE: Love & Other Four Letter Words
AUHTOR: RaeAnne
RATING: PG-13 (language)
SPOILERS: Everything through the current season
DISCLAIMER: I own House, okay no I don't but I was going for the insanity defense. All lyrics not mine; all are Elvis Costello and are noted.

A/N: Hi all :-) this is going to be a rather short story but I started if after watching Airborne and I liked the idea so I finished it off, I hope you enjoy and as always feedback is greatly, greatly appreciated! Thanks!!! RaeAnne

Love & Other Four Letter Words

You've changed but not for the better babe
I'd tell you why but what's the use
'Cos it's the same kind of pity
A drunkard gives as his excuse
You were sharp and ideal as a bobby pin
Now your eyes are deserted and quiet
We both look like those poor shattered mannequins
Thrown through the window in the riot

She lies in his arms and without any qualms
Revels in shallow delights
She seems brittle and small, it don't sound like her at all
Since she came back to him after the fall—Elvis Costello, After the Fall

---)(---Liar---)(---

She discovered a strange thing today, a thing that wasn't big yet certainly wasn't small. It was a thing that she had been looking unconsciously for for the better part of sixteen years; a thing which had eluded her till this very day.

Allison Cameron wasn't a vain person in the traditional sense of the word, she had, as she liked to call it, 'self-esteem' and that of course went hand in hand with having pride in one's self, or so she liked to believe. She believed herself to fairly pretty (modesty had her always attaching 'fairly' to her chosen adjective), she was smart (no need to add fairly to that, it was an indisputable fact, she had been in the top percent of her graduating class—she wasn't claiming to be the smartest after all), she was a good person, at least in the ways she measured goodness. Didn't smoke, didn't drink in excess, she helped elderly ladies across the street, she gave bonuses to her doorman at Christmas—remembered his birthday and always smiled at the people she passed no matter what her current mood. She believed that greatest thing one could strive for to make a difference every day, even if it was only a small one. She believed that the sum total of what life was was the memory you left for others.

Allison Cameron was naive.

Or, at least she had been. She sits now in her apartment a large glass of vodka and orange juice at hand and an ashtray with barely smoked Parliament lights pushed from her sight. She glares at the scarred table as she had glared at the doorman who let her into her apartment, the man at the liquor store who sold her the vodka, the grey haired lady who was certainly working at the Quick-E Mart because she couldn't live on social security alone, who sold her the orange juice. She thinks now with disdain and a bit of rueful regret on the woman she had been for now she is very much what she had always despised, she is a bitch.

She lifts the glass downing half of it in one long burning gulp—she'll wish she hadn't later. Truth. She used to like truth; she valued it—esteemed it highly, till she learned it was all lies. How, she wondered, did truth, something so certain and sure—so trustworthy and brilliantly white, turn into something so nastily black? Truth had once been clearly defined, now it was relative, it was…well it was really a lie. Truth: she had once been a very good girl. That truth was now very much a lie. She wasn't good; she had no desire to be. Truth: she had believed in love, she believed in waiting for the 'real' thing. That was now a tattered and torn lie scattered on her bed, Chases' bed, the sleep research lab bed, that elderly patients bed…the kitchen floor, the shower stall, the supply closet and a few other places she didn't care to recall. She's now become that other thing she had always looked down on other girls for, she's become a slut.

She swishes the remaining alcohol and juice around the heavy bottomed cup. Everybody lies, that is what he always said, and she pulls her mouth into a snarl thinking of 'him'. Truth: she hated him. Lie. She lied, she lied to him, she lied to herself (she was quite good at that one actually). Truth: he was a jackass. That was a lie—well half truth. He was very much a jackass but not the cold hearted bastard that everyone believed—that was the lie he was feeding the world. She hated that about him, she hated that she felt that he was giving two ideas—allowing her to see two sides, two contradicting, battling sides, and neither one was a whole truth or a part lie. She couldn't reconcile both sides to paint a complete picture. He made things lies, even truth.

Only he could make a 'non date' more romantic, more pleasant than a real date. Only he could make snarky accusation sound like lovely words of romantic prose. Only he could make her love him by making her hate him. He was the biggest anomaly in her life and yet he was the only thing that was constant, that made her feel okay. 'The most important letter of my life, and you're still an ass' she had accused him when she had had the HIV scare, he had responded 'Comforting, isn't it?' Fact was…it had been—it was, but she would never tell him—she would always lie. It was comforting knowing that he was House, he didn't change, he was an ass, he was jerk—he was House no matter what. He didn't change for people…. Not even her.

She poured more vodka in her glass forgoing the addition of more juice, she didn't really want to soften the bite, didn't want to take out any of the harsh burning that stung her throat. She was starting to like it, starting to like the ache, was finding it maybe a little comforting. Pain was real, you could lie about the cause, you could talk yourself into feeling pain that was really nonexistent but even if everything surrounding the pain was a lie the pain was real, that basic feeling was real. She wanted to hurt tonight, really down deep hurt. It wasn't a masochistic desire—it was just a desperate attempt to making something real, making something that she understood.

She broke it off with Chase because it wasn't real. It was sex, and the sex was real good but it wasn't real in the sense that when she was doing it, it was reactionary, her body did what it was designed to do but it was her heart that she left shut away in a box on her shelf. He had become attached, that was unfortunate but not really her problem, she had warned him, told him straight out—there had been no shades of grey or shades of partial truth, it was plain. The only thing that she did lie about was her motives, and that lie was only to herself.

Foreman had started it, got her thinking about real, about relationships, about life. She had believed what she had with her first husband was real, was 'true love' but it wasn't. She just really wanted it to be.

True love. Lying Love. Just another way House had twisted her, corrupted her, skewed the way she looked at everything—even her marriage. He made her look at what she had considered 'true' love and see it as a lie, see it as a transparent needy attachment. He stole from her what little love she had had and she hated him for that—and that wasn't a lie.

Why did he have to do that? Why did he have to take everything good and turn it bad? Why did he have to take every truth she ever believed and make it a lie?

Puppies bite, cotton candy melts, caring doesn't matter, people are self serving. He taught her that love was a four letter word…so was hope.

Her glass was empty and she observed it with disappointed concentration. Her glass was half full—lie. Her glass was half empty—another lie. Was it even a glass? She laughed loudly, tipping more vodka into it till she filled it just over half then splashed it with juice—just for color, she thinks.

"Everybody lies…" she growls tipping the glass back. Her eyes water as the hot liquid slides down her throat. Her head feels like its spinning, she has an incredible urge to giggle. She's not drunk, not yet—she's got a fine buzz started though.

She grins sucking her bottom lip, she laughs uncontrollably. There is nothing really to laugh about, nothing is really funny—even her laughter is a lie, so she laughs all the harder.

She stands leaving her glass on the table, she stumbles to her bedroom falling face first into her bed—she still can't quit giggling, laughing. She doesn't want to be a liar anymore—she doesn't want to lie to herself anymore.

She laughs, she falls asleep.

TBC