Title: False Ending
Pairing: House/Cameron, mentions of House/Cuddy & Cameron/Chase
Summary: Nope, I think I'll let you be surprised.
Warnings: ANGST!!!!!
Beta: daisyb10
A/N: Long ago, in a galaxy far away .... okay, no. A while back, I asked my fellow fans to suggest fics they'd like to read based on fics I'd written in the past in a time stamp meme, to help me get over my writer's block. I've managed three so far, so it is a help, just very slow going. In any event, everytimeyougo asked for a fic based on the following line in All the Unshed Tears (which can be found here) and which should probably be read first, so this one will make sense. And this is pretty close to canon compliant through the end of Season 5.

She'd been with him once. About six months after his relationship ended. It was drunken and angry and sad simultaneously and nothing like she'd ever imagined.

Cameron stood in the dwindling sunlight, her hands wrapped around a three-quarters full beer. The late autumn heat had long since warmed her drink and dried the condensation from her fingers. She shifted again uncomfortably, again wondering whether it was too soon to leave and if her absence would even be noted. She'd always hated these fundraisers; fancy or informal, they all embodied the kind of superficial judgments of things and people that she had hated since she was very young.

This one, at least, was less obviously phony than some she had attended. Cameron remembered with a bittersweet pang her first fundraiser at PPTH. A swanky poker night with tuxes and formal wear; save a stray moment or two, Cameron had hated the entire evening. But this, this was almost tolerable. She chalked it up to Cuddy, and the changes that motherhood seemed to have wrought upon her.

Cameron let her eyes wander over the fairgrounds that had been set up on the PPTH campus. A carnival, it was certainly a refreshing change in comparison to the stuffy and awkwardly striving for elegant events that were usually thrown to entice donors to the hospital. PPTH employees and their families were here in abundance. Even if the wealthier donors stayed clear of this event, Cameron was sure that the profits from the day would be substantial.

Cameron took a sip of her beer and grimaced; it had gone warm. She sighed, surveying the crowd again. Cuddy and Rachel were snuggled under a canopy, out of the sun, and Cameron couldn't help but smile at their obvious bond. Wilson was loitering behind them, looking for all the world like he couldn't decide if approaching her would be a bigger mistake than not. Chase, Cameron let her eyes glance over Chase. Things between them had fizzled, quickly and painfully and there wasn't any sense in dwelling on it. House was…House was here?

Cameron straightened unconsciously, wanting for House to notice her and wanting him not to notice her noticing him. She needn't have worried; House was too preoccupied making a ruckus. Cameron leaned forward, concerned and hating herself for it. She sighed, watching Cuddy and Wilson exchange a few quick words.

Things between House and Cuddy had been, strained, to understate it, since their break up. Cameron had watched their relationship with as much interest as she could muster; in the middle of dissolving her marriage, she'd been able to manage only so much concern for his love life.

House was obviously drunk, and annoyed at the beer vendor for refusing him further service. The quick words between Cuddy and Wilson became more and more tense as House's protests became louder and louder. Cuddy waved her arm in House's direction and Wilson cringed, pinching the bridge of his nose and nodding before walking in the direction of the security tent. Cameron clenched; this was going to get ugly quickly if someone didn't head it off at the pass. She glanced at Chase, caught him sneering in House's direction and her decision was made.

She was across the fairground quickly, eyes darting toward the security tent. She reached House and the beer vendor just as Wilson and two guards emerged and struck off in their direction.

"House, come on, let me get you out of here," she said firmly, taking him by the elbow and attempting to lead him away.

"Get your hands…off me," he began forcefully, strong, almost belligerent, but trailed off into uncertainty as he finished. Cameron recognized the look on his face; he was trying to remember something, something that was just out of his mind's grasp. "I've told you that before. When did I tell you that?"

"I don't know," she told him, trying to remember any circumstance when she'd had her hands on House long enough to warrant his reprimand.

"I was hallucinating," House said. He looked at her, really looked at her, and for one shocking moment Cameron could see terror in his eyes. "I was hallucinating."

"You're not hallucinating now. You're drunk, and you're making a scene," Cameron said. She glanced over her shoulder. Wilson and the security guards were closing quickly.

"I'm not…," House followed her gaze. "I'm not going to let them take me back."

"House, you need to listen to me. Nobody is going to take you anywhere. We're going to walk over to my car, and I'm going to drive you home." She didn't wait for an answer, just pulled on his arm until he started walking. She cast a quelling glance over her shoulder in Wilson's direction and breathed a sigh of relief when he stopped the security guards.

"What are you doing?" House asked when they entered the parking garage, as if finally realizing that Cameron had been leading him off the hospital grounds.

"Stopping you from getting arrested," she answered. She pulled her keys out of her pocket and unlocked her car as they approached. She opened the passenger side door and waited. House stood, unmoving. She gestured for him to get in and he just stared at her. "What?"

"Why are you doing this?"

"Doing what?"

"Pitying me."

"I'm not pitying you. I'm rescuing you from the big bad Cuddy monster and her evil henchman, Wilson the Worry-Wart, because I stumbled onto their nefarious schemes to embarrass you in front of your colleagues. Don't worry, it was all an accident, you're still Super-House, able to limp faster than a speeding bullet and leap tall curb stones in a single bound. Can we go now?" Cameron again gestured at the open car door, and House climbed in without further delay.

Cameron got in and started the car, pulling out into traffic and squinting against the setting sun.

"This is a terrible get-away car," House commented.

"Why?"

"It's too…"

"Cameron?"

"Normal. A get-away car should be sleek, hot, fast and just a little beat up from escaping in a close call. Or, if this is the superhero's car, it should have gadgets."

"Does an MP-3 player count? Besides, Superman didn't have a car."

House had no reply to that. Or, Cameron realized, he might have had a reply if he hadn't apparently passed out.

"Great," she muttered.

What should have been a ten minute drive had stretched to nearly thirty five. Traffic was hellish. Cameron didn't believe in hell. There was no need for hell if there was no heaven, but she wasn't arrogant enough to think that her beliefs were necessarily correct. If there was such a place as hell, Cameron thought this might just be it. Trapped in an unmoving vehicle, going some place you don't really want to go with someone you don't really want to be trapped with because your own best trait/worst flaw just wouldn't let you do otherwise and with nothing to do but dwell on the ridiculousness of the situation and how your personal failings had brought you here.

Yeah, that sounded an awful lot like hell.

And then House woke up.

He jerked awake, fingers tightening around his cane as he took in his surroundings. After a half hour nap, Cameron could only hope that House had slept off enough of the alcohol to be less of an ass than the one that had almost been tossed off the hospital premises.

"What the hell are you doing? Kidnapping me?"

Or not.

"You got drunk and threatened to use the hook end of your cane to fish out all twenty feet of the beer vendor's intestinal tract when he refused to serve you. I put you in the car before Cuddy and Wilson could have security remove you by force."

"Oh."

"Yeah. Oh." Cameron stared straight ahead. The traffic didn't require her attention, they hadn't moved in nearly five minutes, but she didn't want to invite any nasty comment from her passenger.

"God, you're pathetic."

"House, just… don't. I'm doing you a favor. You can either accept that in silence, or get out. Good luck getting a cab in this mess." She let her eyes flick over his cane ruthlessly, taking out her frustration with herself on him, as he had done so many times to others. "Or you could walk."

House stared at Cameron for a long few minutes before turning his gaze out the passenger window. They passed a few minutes in silence. Cameron felt a shift in the energy between them, like her sniping had earned her something. Not his respect, certainly, but maybe a small amount of approval.

"What did you mean when you said you were hallucinating?"

House didn't acknowledge her.

"When you told me to get my hands off you, you said you'd told me that before and then you said you were hallucinating. You had that look; that House look you get when you're trying to remember something or when something clicks. What did you mean?"

House shifted in the passenger seat, and Cameron watched him, intrigued. He looked…embarrassed. House, embarrassed? That was almost inconceivable.

"House?"

"I…Hallucinated is such an ugly word. I prefer to think of it as a dream induced by severe blood loss."

"That…doesn't make any sense," Cameron said slowly; try as she might, she couldn't follow his train of thought.

House shifted again in the seat, and Cameron began to wonder if he was in pain. Surely this conversation couldn't be making him this uncomfortable.

"When I was shot, you were applying pressure to my wounds; I had a few…dreams, weird images, whatever you want to call them. In one of them, you were touching me, and I told you to stop. That's all."

Something about the way he said 'that's all; made it clear that it was far from all. And Cameron, tired, cranky, and sick to death of his games and his rules and his judgments, decided to push. He was at her mercy, captive in her car, and the opportunity was just too good to pass up. Really, if the situation were reversed, it was exactly what House would do.

"If that's all, then why do you look so embarrassed? You were losing blood, I was touching you, you were in pain…real life events bleeding through into a hallucination you had while you were going into shock is completely normal. And in no way embarrassing. You're lying." She turned then and pinned him with a look of supreme confidence.

House stared back at Cameron, and realized, not for the first time, that while he might have taught Chase to think outside the box, and Foreman to stand by his convictions and damn the consequences, Cameron had learned something completely different from him. Cameron had learned to see people. It wasn't that she'd ever really been unaware of people's faults, of their failings, of the darker side of everyone that made people lie and cheat and steal. It was that she chose not to see it. It was conscious, her desire to reject that inevitable human frailty that is within everyone. Her years of working with him had changed that. He had changed that. She still saw the good in everyone, even when there was so little of it to see. But she no longer ignored the bad.

It was extremely satisfying. And incredibly arousing. Not, in House's experience, a good combination when paired with blonde locks and a killer bod. It was likely to tempt his mouth into a feat of stupidity.

"I used a robot to simulate sex with you."

Something like that, for example.

"You…" Cameron face scrunched up as she tried to conjure a mental image. "How would that even work?"

"In the hallucination, I used the robotic surgical arms to convince my patient that it was delicate enough to perform a procedure by using it to undress you." House tapped his cane between his feet. No back pedaling from that statement; it was probably best to just answer the question and let her be disgusted, outraged and then toss him out of the car. Or regard him with one of her stony silences until she got him home. House didn't really care, so long as he could stop talking about it.

"So, what you're saying is that in your hallucination, you wanted to have sex with me."

"I…pretty much always want to have sex with you," House drawled. Come on, Cameron, where's the righteous indignation I need to get me out of this conversation, House begged mentally.

"Right."

"Yeah."

Cameron took a deep breath, staring straight ahead at the traffic again. The light ahead turned green and she crept forward, almost making it far enough to turn off the main street and ask House about a short cut. He must know another route; she could be dropping him off in ten minutes and get out of this bizarre turn of events that had her and House somehow discussing their imagined sex life.

Or maybe she could just stop having an imagined sex life with House.

"So we should have sex," Cameron said. House turned a stunned glance in her direction.

"You want to have sex with me."

"Yes."

"Just sex."

"Yes."

"Didn't you just divorce the last guy you had this kind of arrangement with?"

"The last guy I had this arrangement with proposed. Is that going to be an issue with you?"

House simply glared, then tilted his head and regarded her quietly for a moment. "Take your next right. There's a short cut."

House hooked his cane on the back of the door and limped slowly to a bottle of something amber-colored on top of the piano; Cameron wasn't sure what it was, but she followed and when House had poured himself two or three inches into the glass that sat beside the bottle, she took it. Five long swallows were all she could manage before the burn began to make her choke. Combined with the two and a half beers she'd had at the carnival, it would be more than enough.

She replaced the bottle on the piano and turned to look at House, who was frozen with his glass nearly touching his lips. Their eyes locked, and suddenly this stupid idea was not so stupid. It was real.

House brought the glass to his lips, never letting his eyes leave Cameron's. He drank slowly, perhaps letting the moment spin out, or giving the alcohol time to affect Cameron. Or maybe just building up the courage to finally do this thing that they'd been dancing around and retreating from for so many years.

House placed his empty glass on the piano. He reached for Cameron and she for him, and together they succeeded in knocking the bottle over and spilling the last of its contents across the floor. Just one more in a series of missteps and false starts between them that made Cameron pull back and reconsider just how unwise this really was.

"This is a bad idea," she said.

"The worst," House agreed.

"It's not going to make things better," she continued. And just by saying it, it became true. There was never going to be a happy ending for the two of them. Even this, finally being together after all the time they had worked so hard to stay apart, was not going to fix anything.

"It never does," was his rejoinder. And Cameron wondered just how badly his broken relationship with Cuddy was hurting him. They'd been friends for so long, been good to each other by being so ruthless to each other, and then ruined their delicate balance by tipping the scales toward the physical.

Tears formed behind Cameron's eyes. She and Chase had begun with a physical relationship and tried to build it into something it wasn't. Cuddy and House had spent a lifetime building a friendship and then tried to escalate it with sex. Both methods were fraught with failure. What chance did that leave of anyone ever finding love?

"It never will. Will it," she didn't make it a question, because she already knew the answer.

"No," he answered anyway. And then he kissed her. He was fast, faster than he ought to have been for his age and in his inebriated state. It took Cameron precious seconds to catch up, the alcohol having done its insidious work.

When finally she responded and she allowed his tongue to work her mouth, she felt those hot tears leak from behind her closed lids. He tastes the same, she thought. It should have been comforting, that it was as she remembered. Instead it served only to illustrate to Cameron that nothing about House would change. He would remain the same, ever apart from her, no matter the circumstances. This would change nothing between them.

He pulled back, taking deep breaths and searching her face for something. To flee from emotion he didn't want to see, or to find the understanding he hoped for Cameron wasn't sure. But what Cameron saw, what she'd always suspected and he'd always denied, was how much he longed for this.

He pulled her to the couch and she followed. He sat and she straddled him, bringing her lips to his and her hands to his newly short-cropped hair. And then for long minutes it was nothing but soft lips, slow kisses and searching hands. Shirts were abandoned, zippers pulled and then her hands were on him and he was bucking into her.

House let out what might have been a choked moan or a garbled sob, and Cameron felt an irrational anger stirring in her. He wanted this so much, needed it so badly, but he did everything in his power to ensure that it would never work and Cameron hated him in that moment. Clouded with passion and drink, she punished him with her mouth and soothed with her hands, using her teeth to show her displeasure at his enforced solitude while her fingertips gave him the solace he sought.

With a little fumbled shifting and tugging, two pairs of jeans were heaped onto the floor. Cameron moved to straddle him again, and caught sight of his leg. She stalled, because she'd never seen it before, because she didn't want to hurt him, but mostly because it was so much of what had made House into the man she was there with.

And suddenly House was the one who was angry, certain she was pitying him again. He grabbed her arms and pulled her to him roughly, thrusting in without concern for her comfort or readiness. He began a fast and furious rhythm, forced a hand between them and rubbed her mercilessly. He surged when he expected she would retract, and they bumped heads clumsily. Cameron's lip split and blood oozed even as House kissed her breath away.

That little bit of pain shouldn't have been enough to trip her into orgasm, but it was, and she worked very hard not to think about that. House grunted against her shoulder as he came, and slumped back onto the couch immediately afterward, the blood from Cameron's split lip smeared over his mouth and chin.

She reached out to wipe his face, and he batted her hand away.

"Don't."

Cameron nodded, choking back tears again. This was not just going to be another misstep, another false start between them. It would be their false ending. She could tell him it hadn't been pity, but he would never believe her. And he could tell her he wasn't really angry, simply afraid of screwing up one more thing and finding out that he really was the sort of man who couldn't be loved, but he wouldn't.

Cameron stood and dressed, found her shirt was missing a button and her bra was torn. She picked up her purse where she had dropped it on the floor when she came in. She picked up it, fumbling for her keys and hoping against all hope that he would say something, anything, so there would be some point they could go on from.

Keys in her right hand, the doorknob in her left, Cameron turned and looked at House. He stared into the kitchen, and it took only twice as long as it should have for Cameron to be sure he was never going to look back. Not at her standing at his door, and not over their time together.

She left.

And handed in her resignation to Cuddy the very next day.