Disclaimer: Don't own; don't sue. Gracias.
Note:Post-Role Model (day after). Slight spoilers, but not many.
Summary: Cameron wanted to assure herself that she imagined the soft note in his voice. House had no soft voice. Not with her.
A/N: I hope all of you enjoy! D My first House fic. I would greatly appreciate feedback.
Chapter One
What Could Have Been Involuntary Manslaughter
Allison Cameron unlocked her car door slowly. She listened to the careful click of the handle, watched the lights inside beam suddenly with brightness and slid into the driver's seat, subconsciously settling herself in for her half-an-hour drive home. She started to reach for the seatbelt, but abandoned the gesture of safety to slap the lights off in a temper unseen in her calm expression. Lights had no right to shine on a day like this.
Fists clenched over the steering wheel, Cameron breathed deeply, trying to calm down inside. She glanced up at the hospital she no longer worked at and blinked rapidly to stave the tears threatening to spill down her face. She reminded herself that it wasn't worth crying over, a job. She could be easily hired again. She was smart, talented, qualified…
"And…pretty," she murmured scathingly, putting in just enough sarcasm to nail her former boss's daily tone.
But is he worth crying over? nagged a nasty voice in her brain, and she put the keys in the ignition roughly, as if punching it.
No. He doesn't like me. But - hell if I know, Cameron snapped mentally.
Just because he said he didn't like you, you're running away. Cameron was irritated that the voice sounded like a mixture between House himself, her mother, and her own logic.
Cameron stretched her right hand out and pushed a random button on the dashboard, willing it to be the radio. It was. She sighed with relief as music pounded out all hope for thought and she eased her car out of its space that would be marked "Cameron, Princeton-Plainsboro, M.D.", for the last time.
Then, she nearly had a heart attack.
Screaming, she swerved to the right, narrowly missing a parked car, and just managed to come to a stop before smashing her front bumper into the gray concrete wall of the parking garage. She felt herself starting to laugh softly in a slightly hysterical tone as she realized that neither she nor Gregory House was injured or dead.
For House had been standing very calmly in the middle of the lane, and she had been very close to running him over, bum leg and all.
She watched, still slightly wheezing, as he sidled to her driver's side window and thumped lightly on it with the top of his cane, as if she couldn't see him and he was trying to get her attention.
She stared up at him through the tinted glass, unbelieving. She had almost killed him.
But now she really was going to.
Cameron had every intention of throttling the breath out of him with the tie that hung loosely from his neck, but when she found herself standing in front of him, her hands were shaking and weak.
House considered her. Cameron readied herself for a verbal lashing, carefully prepared and executed only like he could deliver it, but it never came. Instead, he shifted slightly and brought from behind his back…his red coffee cup?
She stared at the object, and then flicked her eyes back up at him, waiting for him to speak.
"Well, take it," he admonished dryly. "I don't stand waiting for people in parking garages to be squashed like road kill without a cause."
"You have a cause?" Cameron inquired, still trying to calm her breathing.
House tipped his head a bit to the side, his eyes probing, searching, calculating. Cameron felt like she was completely transparent.
"Yes, as a matter of fact. You forgot your coffee cup when you…ah, picked everything else up today."
Cameron snorted derisively. "Mine is in the box."
"One, don't snort. It isn't becoming on any woman, pretty or not."
Cameron wanted to slap him. Or kiss him, she decided, but she wasn't sure which, and he was still talking.
"And two, consider it my going-away gift. I was too busy to send for a fruit basket."
Cameron allowed herself a very small smile. "I'm allergic to bananas."
"Noted. Where's your allergy bracelet?"
"For bananas? Please."
"Don't be admitted to this hospital for an allergic reaction, then. I hope I never see you in my clinic."
"You hope you never see anyone in your clinic."
House looked as though he were about to say something, but he didn't. A bit, Cameron remembered, like he had last night, when she had made herself the fool of the century going by his apartment to say goodbye.
"I…came in to get my stuff today," she muttered irrelevantly, gesturing at the aforementioned box sitting in the passenger seat of her still-running car.
House was silent until she tried to speak again.
"Yes, and you avoided me. All day. Very clever of you, I still can't figure out how you did it."
Cameron shrugged one shoulder, the right. House thought to himself that he would find it annoying if she had been anyone else.
They stood in an uncomfortable silence that begged for conversation. Cameron scuffed the toe of her brown leather pumps on the paved floor, and House cleared his throat with a noise like a piece of chalk snapping.
"Do you like seafood?" Cameron suddenly asked. Breathlessly, but she hoped he hadn't noticed.
He had. "Yes."
"Foreman's sister works at the bay restaurant on Airport. He gave me a certificate for a free dinner. For…leaving."
House felt a twinge of embarrassment. Foreman gave her a free dinner at an expensive restaurant, and he gave her, what – his old coffee cup? He knew she hadn't meant to compare the two, but he still felt the whiplash.
House looked at her expectantly. She quirked one eyebrow quizzically and House had to remind himself that this girl got on his last nerve – no matter what – before she understood.
"Oh, well – do you want to come with me tonight? To eat?"
In answer, House walked around to her passenger door and let himself in, giving the box of random office and lounge items a contemptuous glare, as if it were at fault for her resignation, and moved it to the back seat before sitting down. He quickly placed the coffee mug in it without her seeing, and put on his seatbelt.
Wondering what on earth had just possessed her, Cameron silently shut the car door behind her as she too buckled her seatbelt. For a nervous moment neither of them spoke, until House provided a sufficient ice breaker.
"You have fuzzy dice?" he asked, looking incredulously at her. "Pink fuzzy dice?"
Cameron almost giggled, caught it, and replaced it with a knowing smile.
"I've been driving with them since the tender age of sixteen," she replied, making sure no men with canes were standing in the way before she pulled out.
"This is already ruining dinner," House informed her, hooking his cane on the notch that separated the air bag and the dashboard.
"So," he stated. "On Airport, you said."
"Apparently. The coupon is in my wallet."
"On no terms will I go through your purse."
"It won't bite."
"The tampons might."
"House!" Cameron glared furiously without taking her eyes off the road.
"What?" he asked innocently, and she heard the twinkle in his eye better than she would ever be able to see it.
"Never mind."
"I'm sure they sell chocolate at the restaurant for women in your way. Expensive. Maybe with caramel -" he began, but she suddenly honked loudly at the empty road, just to rattle him. He jumped, and this time, she allowed herself to snicker softly.
"That means shut up."
Defeated in one battle, House did indeed press his lips together. But he hummed softly, tunelessly, just to annoy her, as she took the exit off the highway and traversed the feeder road to New Jersey Bay Company.
"Do they sell burgers here?" asked House as they strode away from the car toward the politely lit wooden doors. Cameron shot him a look.
"What? I don't like shellfish."
She stopped walking and looked him in the eye. "What on earth are you talking about?"
"Shellfish, defined as shrimp, lobster, crab, crawfish, fish, and all other manner of sea creatures. Ooh, especially scallops." He gave a mock shudder. "Killer."
She remembered to count to ten before she replied. "Why are you here, then?"
"Did you really think I waited for two hours only to give you a coffee cup?"
Cameron wanted to assure herself that she imagined the soft note in his voice. House had no soft voice. Not with her.
"Two hours?"
He didn't move, or reply. Cameron swallowed, as discreetly as she could. The parking lot light pole made his face look even more rugged than normal.
House was sure that he had touched something inside her, but he couldn't tell if it was good or bad quite yet. He didn't even notice that they were somehow closer together than when they had first stopped, a few feet away from the door.
She didn't either, but she did notice the way he was still calculating her, reading her like a book with those intent eyes, eyes that adamantly refused to be shadowed in the semidarkness of the evening. She wondered irrationally if they ever closed. They were always alert, always solving, always knowing, always twinkling in that infuriating sort of way he had about everything, even monster trucks.
"We could…try McDonald's," she rasped, her voice sounding too rough for the soft silence that had fallen.
He blinked.
"Yeah."
Silently, she turned back to her car with her head down while he followed behind, wondering what kind of shampoo she used to make her hair smell like a cross between vanilla ice cream and oranges.
A/N: Woohoo for cliffies! I'll be back with more soon, and thanks for reading!