A/N: This takes place before "Bombshells" and deviates from canon, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it AU. I wrote this for the prompt challenge at hughvillefics on LJ. The prompt was the song, Lips of an Angel by Hinder. It's not beta-d, so all errors are mine. Feel free to point them out. Reviews will be read over and over again and cuddled inappropriately.
Clinging to the pipe running up the wall to the shower head, he steps out of the tub and onto the bath mat. The hook on the back of the door that normally holds his robe is empty, one clean towel rests on the shelf. He snatches it off with a scowl and rubs it over his damp skin before tying it around his waist.
In the bedroom, Cuddy sleeps sprawled across his bed wearing only his robe. A familiar discontent sweeps over him at the sight of her, and he grabs the first set of clothes he lays eyes on and limps out of the room. He has no desire to sleep at the moment, tired as he is. There is a restless anxiety fueling him, sending him pacing toward the window and looking out into the dark night as if there is some answer there.
Letting the curtain fall back into place, he drops the towel in a damp heap on the floor and jerks on his jeans and t-shirt, sitting on the piano bench for leverage. He's stuck, he thinks, spinning his wheels and going nowhere. In his bed is the woman he's sleeping with, the woman who claims to love him, the woman he thought was his last chance at happiness. But happiness seems to be as elusive as the cure for cancer.
His cell phone rings, and he snaps it open to silence it before it wakes her. If she wakes, they'll fight, again, and he's in no mood to deal with her frustration at whatever it is he's done wrong this time. The number on the display is one he hasn't seen in what feels like far too long, and his heart stammers like a nervous teenager on his first date. He answers, his voice a near whisper as he moves back to the window, as far from the bedroom as he can get.
There's a strange note of panic in his voice, he realizes, as he says her name. "Cameron?"
"House." It's all she says, but her voice feels to him like a beacon to a lost ship. He can hear her sniffling and some unidentifiable thing inside him slips and shatters like glass.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing. Everything," she says with a cynical little laugh, and he can tell she's been drinking.
"Are you drunk?"
"Not nearly enough. I miss you," she admits. "I don't know what I did wrong. Why I wasn't good enough. You never told me."
"You didn't do anything wrong," he tells her. "I'm the one who screwed it up."
"Somehow that doesn't make me feel any better," she says. "I'm the one who's alone now and you... you've got Cuddy."
Yeah, he thinks. I've got Cuddy, who uses sex as either punishment or reward, who makes me feel like nothing I do is right. Instead he says, "Where are you?"
"Nowhere," she answers. "I'm nowhere."
The next thing he hears is the dial tone.
"Who was that?"
He snaps his head up and sees Cuddy standing by the couch in his robe, her hair tousled, feet bare, looking sleepy and casual and yet somehow disapproving at the same time. Without answering, he stuffs his feet into his shoes, grabs his jacket and keys and moves to the door.
"House, do you know what time it is? Where are you going?" she says, trying to cut him off before he can leave.
"Nowhere," he answers, shutting the door firmly in her face.
He drives fast without stopping, intent on his destination, his mind spinning as fast as the tires of his car. Their time together, his and Cameron's, brief as it was, comes back to him, sharp and clear and vivid, as if it's the only real thing that's ever happened to him. Every curve of her body, every touch of her skin, her lips, to his was a gift freely given, not a reward for some desired behavior. She gave herself as an outward expression of everything that was within her. He remembers that he felt too much too fast, a sensory overload he couldn't process and he remembers how much it scared him. Not even Vicodin could numb the fear away.
They had that one weekend, and then he pushed her away as the only method of survival he knew.
An hour later, his high beams cast a blue glow over the canopy of pines as he makes a left down a barely-there dirt road slicing through the forest. Moments after that, he's reached the end of his journey, a rustic log cabin nestled in the midst of the pine barrens. He bought it after Stacy left him, sight unseen. He went there to lick his wounds, and found himself patching up the old place with his own two hands as if to prove he was still a man, capable of manly things, instead of a useless cripple.
He told no one, not even Wilson. It was his secret place, one he thought he'd never share. Not until the weekend he brought Cameron there.
She had come to his apartment to quit, to sacrifice herself and save Foreman, after his failure of a speech. He listened to her words, turned away from her outstretched hand and let her walk out his door. A moment later, he followed, grabbed the hand he'd rejected only moments before and all but dragged her to his car.
"Where are we going?" she had asked, stumbling along beside him.
"To the middle of nowhere," he'd answered. He'd taken her, without thinking too much, without weighing the consequences. But somewhere deep inside of him, in a place he tried hard not to look at very often, he knew he was taking her to a place that was sacred to him, to perform a sacred act. If she was going to leave him, then he was going to have her first. He took her to the cabin, led her into the bedroom and loved her more thoroughly than he'd ever loved any other woman. He loved her all weekend long and then drove her home and never spoke of it again. Not on their date, not when he faked cancer and she kissed him, not when he kissed back. But it always lingered between them, a message conveyed from her eyes to his and back again. "I remember. I'll never forget," it said, and it scared him more than anything else ever had.
Without a sound, he opens the door and steps inside the darkened cabin, with only the moonlight sifting through the curtains to guide his way. He finds her on the bed sleeping, fully dressed except for her shoes, tears dried to her cheeks and her hair curving around her neck like a scarf. On the bedside table sits a half-empty bottle of wine, and a wine glass tipped on its side. Kicking off his shoes and shrugging out of his jacket, he climbs in beside her and pulls her into his arms, releasing a sigh like the sound of a pressure cooker releasing steam. She doesn't wake, and yet she molds herself to him, fingers curling possessively into his shirt.
An unfamiliar warmth settles in his chest and spreads throughout his body. He's not happy, but he's not unhappy either. He remembers her words on that fateful night so long ago, "I figure everything you do, you do it because it's right," and he realizes that's what he feels. Right. He feels right.
After all those years of spinning his wheels and getting nowhere, he's finally arrived.