This is Just Another Goodbye, a house, m.d. fanfic

This is Just Another Goodbye

By: Emmy

Betaed by: binomialtheorem (officially the coolest person ever) – Have fun and thanks for the help!

Disclaimer: I obviously do not own House or receive any profit for doing this.

Spoilers: Vague, vague, vague spoilers for seasons two (which you should've seen already) and three, only if you're looking for them though.

Summary: The mind forgets what it can't cope with, you know, and brush your hand along the dip in your leg.

A/N: Well, first ever betaed piece of work, so hopefully you wont have to wince your way through my awful mistakes. Thanks Izzie! Anyway, enjoy it if you can and review if you're nice.

013. I will never hold you underneath for me,
maybe only just enough so you can breathe

You got drunk one night. And in the haze you let fantasies wrap themselves around you. Life and happiness and smiles. They were beautiful and there. You could taste them and hear them and feel them.

For a moment they were real.

Except that reality was a lie and it died, like every other lie.

(Life.)

This is the middle:

She's sitting down in the conference room. Her hair is weaving and winding in graceful lines, brushing her lab coat. Eyes darkened with smudged mascara and exhaustion. She's pale in the light, alone and quiet. Her fingers tracing the edge of her abandoned glasses case thoughtlessly, glasses themselves left perched an arm's length to her right. She's crossed her legs and her skirt has ridden up, cream and skin (you ignore the rhythm of your heart) swimming in your eyes.

You can't decide if she's haunted or haunting.

(There's a balance between the two that you're terrified she's reached.)

She glances up, forehead crinkling. You slide your eyes to the whiteboard, nonchalance ringing flat even to you. There's silence and you stir your coffee in a bid for one last curl of reality. You take a sip and wrinkle your nose, it's cold and wrong. You startle her with the sharp protest the cup makes when you toss it (the coffee dances in the air) into the sink.

"Careful," she warns, "I'm not replacing another mug, even if I've got better taste than you and the others put together."

You tilt your head at her, study the hue of her eyes. The humour in her voice is forced, intriguing you innocently but not quite. She doesn't know if she wants this anymore, but it's an addiction it in its own right. There is no such thing as a finale with you, stuck somewhere in the expanse of eternity and infinity.

Maybe it's everything you ever wanted.

Maybe it's not.

"Yes you will," you insist, because you like her annoyed, and it's nice to pretend you know her.

Her eyes leave yours and drift to the middle of your chest and then through it. You've lost her to her own maze of thoughts and perceptions and you fight disappointment. It isn't that you need her as much as it's that you like her. There's danger in the vulnerability that implies, you suppose, but you aren't anything if not a walking contradiction.

Limping contradiction.

"Probably."

You blink and return your attention to her, but her gaze is still distant. You take a few steps closer to her, watch as she shifts back to the here and now. It whispers painfully of resignation, but you aren't sure who won or if you even care.

(Maybe you've finally grown up.)

You find her perched on the edge of a seat in the empty room of your most recent patient. You've been vindicated, but life's still life. And life lost still hurts. Sometimes you admire people willing to die for what they believe in, when you're feeling romantic or poetic or maybe just pathetic.

(Most of the time you're disgusted, with a whisper of maybe haunting your shadow.)

"Please, all this sentimentalism is gonna make me misty. Or vomit," you shrug and watch for her reaction. She breathes a sigh, doesn't speak, just stares at you with her wide, wide eyes. "We did our job."

"It wasn't enough."

You frown and ease yourself onto the bed, opposite from her. She isn't crying, just wavering on the edge of despair. You think that she doesn't deserve this. Doesn't deserve this fear or this responsibility. But it's hers, whether you like it or not. It's almost beautiful, in a funny way.

"Is it ever?" you murmur, because you've been thinking too.

The room falls to silence, contemplative and pained. You trace a pattern on the blanket, thoughts dancing in and out of focus. You don't push for a subject and find yourself studying the sag of her shoulders and the tight grasp she has on her water. The small ripples that echo across the surface as it's disturbed by the occasional tremble.

(She's loosing control and falling for the seductive release of reluctant bitterness.)

"Life's—there's always death. No matter what," she whispers. "It's always there. And—why?"

You'd answer, except you don't know what to say to something like that. You aren't the way you are because of a superhero complex, you don't disillusion yourself with a happy ending. But silence isn't an option, even if she doesn't expect an answer. As pretty as broken is on her, you prefer the smile.

It lights up her eyes.

"Life's—life," you tell her. "Life's life."

She closes her eyes and nods. You pretend not to notice the tear that tracks down her cheek. It isn't for you to see. But you can't stop yourself from walking over to her side and trailing a hand up and down her arm.

You only stay because she laces her fingers in yours and doesn't appear intent on letting go anytime soon.

(You don't even complain when your leg starts to cramp.)

"Would you bring him back, given the opportunity?"

You're both sitting in Exam Room One. She was doing her clinic duty when you barged in, showed her current patient out the door and pleaded a private 'consult'. She was very quiet when you came in, almost lost and you fought the feeling that you'd crossed the line between you both. You sat down and waited until she did too.

It's pretty much the best hiding place ever.

(Silence took the room and you were left with dangerous, dangerous thoughts.)

So you asked what you wanted to know, but not quite.

"I can't," she replies simply, her pain draped around her shoulders regally.

"Hence the 'given the opportunity?'" you deadpan, because you'd like to know.

She wraps her arms around herself. This is more complex than either of you really understand, almost intimate but not enough to prompt questions like this. You have no right to any of her truths, no right at all. She just hasn't quite learnt to say no to you, not yet.

It's almost something you're scared of.

"I've said my goodbyes," her voice is quiet, but the admission is only a part of the whole story.

It isn't enough for you, there's a need for the entirety, because she's made you greedy. Maybe you always were. There's something about her, though, that makes you want to know and know more. You aren't going to stop wanting.

(She's said her goodbyes, she just hasn't left her ghosts in their graves.)

"Goodbye is never enough."

There's a sigh and it's hers. In a way she's amused, at what, you aren't quite sure. It might be your persistence or it might be the moment (you can never tell with her) but it's in her eyes and on her face.

"Sometimes it has to be," she returns thoughtfully.

You don't agree, but she's left no room for argument, lost herself in a world of memories and pain. You'd tell her not to dwell on it, but even you aren't that hypocritical. So you just sit and watch, wait for her to learn what she needs to, leave behind what she can't live with.

The mind forgets what it can't cope with, you know, and brush your hand along the dip in your leg.

"I don't know."

You try to pretend that she didn't sound so honest.

Somewhere in the space between yesterday and tomorrow you find yourself in a bar. It's crowded and stinks like every bar should. Wilson is sitting to your left and toying with his fourth mug of beer. He's had two other drinks that are about three percent food colouring and ninety-seven percent pure alcohol. He's too drunk to think up a retort to any of your witty queries about his sexuality.

They were dyed pink.

Cuddy is on your right. You have no idea how she got there. Definitely not teleportation, you reason, because that hasn't been invented yet. Things are changing between you and her, but not quite. You aren't going to wax poetic about the dips and slides of your relationship, no matter how much whisky you drink.

(Life's just change, really, it's pointless to fight that.)

There's a lull in the conversation between the three of you, it's drifted into a drowsy, drunk silence. You prefer it to the speaking, though, because something about that made you feel unwanted (maybe there's something between them, or just the beginnings of a possibility).

"I'm going—" Wilson sighs and rubs a hand through his hair and over his face tiredly before pointing his thumb in the direction of the men's room. "Uh— yeah, pee."

"Don't pass out," you warn him, "I'm so not carrying you to my car. You'll puke in it."

He doesn't answer and you aren't surprised. There's still a silence between you and Cuddy, but it's lost that comfort. With all the chatter echoing around you, the quiet is magnified until you can't ignore it.

(You've always hated expectation.)

"I'd say we have five minutes," you tell Cuddy. "If you're quick we can pop 'round the back and have a quickie."

She murmurs a laugh at that, eyes a little hazy with alcohol.

They still have an almost-invitation in them, there's still that chance that maybe— maybe—

But Wilson comes back and it's gone.

(You'd like to think you would've said no anyway.)

You're lying in a bed haunted by half memories. It terrifies you that you lost control of reality for that moment. Somewhere in the haze between bulletshotpaindying and nothingsrealketaminepainketamine, you faced something. There was a moment when you took a step. There was a moment when you finally (finally!) built up the nerve to actually—

But it figures that you'd be able to in a fantasy world.

(You always knew that your ego was overstated.)

"It's raining," you tell her, even though it isn't.

She stares out the window and sighs. It's just the two of you, since Chase is sleeping and Foreman just finished his shift. It's funny, you think, the comfort people find in consistency. According to Wilson at least one of them has been by your side the entire time. In a way you aren't surprised, because sometimes seeing things for certain helps most of all.

You still can't wipe the smirk off your face when Foreman comes in and flips you off when you ask him to get you a glass of water.

You're still in your bed, because Wilson got it into his head that you shouldn't get up or some other sort of crazy-ass scheme to make you insane. It sucks really, because if your leg doesn't hurt then you need to feel it. Make sure this is real and push yourself. Find your limits because the pain— the pain is gone.

It's still throbbing in your stomach and your neck but that doesn't matter.

It can't matter.

(It's-gone it's-gone echoes in your head with each heartbeat.)

"Not today," she whispers, voice hollowed by something you can't identify. "Just— not today, House."

She drifts over to you restlessly, takes a sip absentmindedly from the coffee she bought you. There's something different now, between you. An almost-comfort, a familiarity. She isn't the same person you hired, there's something darker (stronger) about her. In a way you wonder when it happened, or if it was always there, twisting in the background.

(You don't think she's quite forgiven you for being shot.)

"Tomorrow then?"

She laughs then, small and quiet. Her hand ghosts affectionately down your cheek. This isn't as sweet as it should be, because she's hiding something from you. You wonder how much of her is this dark, it's new to you. She's only letting it surface now, in the private familiarity that cages you both.

You can't escape it.

You can't escape her.

"Which one?" she asks.

It's an unfair move, the twist into semantics and wordplay. She's getting surprisingly good at this, shifting logic until it works. Manipulating what she has. It's just another thing that isn't quite hers. Maybe it is and you're just projecting insecurities.

"The one where we make passionate love on my desk."

You have a theory: if you're ever out of your depth, make it sexual.

It's funny watching people blush.

"Oh that one," she says and lifts an eyebrow, "Can't wait."

(You're scared you don't know her at all.)

"I didn't eat yesterday," she tells you.

You noticed. She was pale and towards the end little tremors rushed up and down her. She kept darting a nervous tongue along her bottom lip. Her right forefinger and thumb kept looping around her left wrist. She stood in front of her reflection and placed a hand on her stomach (her top slipped up a little then, you saw and— you don't trust yourself anymore).

"Don't do it again."

"Maybe," is all she says in reply before leaving the room.

(She's not yours, but you're beginning to wish she was.)

"What would you do if we treated someone you hated?" you ask.

You're standing behind her, she's writing up the report from the case and you listen as she stops typing and turns around to face you slowly. She's watching you warily, almost like she expects you to lash out at her. She can taste the change too and it scares you.

(This isn't only in your head.)

"Treat them."

You sigh and step closer to her. She tilts her head up and flicks at her fringe as it brushes her eyelashes. You don't quite know if you like it, because there's millions of things fringes can symbolise. Walls and barriers and safety from the outside world.

You wonder what she's scared of.

"Of course you would," you mock, because you aren't a nice man. You decided that a long time ago. "Good little Allison Cameron does as she's told."

She stiffens when you say her name, like it's some sort of offence. Maybe it is. The acceptance of whatever this is becoming. Drifting to something strange and new. You can't be bothered fighting it, at least, that's your excuse.

You like it because it still makes you look like the bad guy.

"My happiness isn't worth anyone's life."

(It comes out broken, shattered on the edge of the shadows in her character.)

"I—"

Except you brush your lips along her eyelids. Trace them down her cheekbone and to her lips. You're careful not to scratch her with your stubble. You ghost along her bottom lip and then she leans in.

(You always knew she wanted you.)

She wraps a small hand in the collar of your shirt and winds an arm around your neck. You pull away and—

It's just another fantasy. Lie.

It dies.

(You've given up being a coward now, though, because you're sick of wanting.)

You watch her until she catches you looking.

You breathe.

And let go.

(It was never yours, anyway.)

.end.