Note: I just found this fic on my hard drive today. I wrote it last summer based on a prompt at the LJ comm, hughvillefics, but I guess I thought it wasn't finished. I don't remember. The prompt was the song "Set Fire to the Rain" by Adele. This feels finished to me now, so here it is. Takes place after "Moving On."

She stood at the water's edge, beneath a fine mist falling from a steel-tinged sky. The waves tugged at her bare feet, trying to pull her in. But she was already there, drowning on dry land.

A mere ten feet away, he stood, not a dream or an apparition, but flesh and blood. His presence was more powerful than the tide, dragging her into an undertow and sweeping her out to sea.

"What are you doing here?" she called out over the sound of the surf.

His t-shirt was plastered to his chest, his cane digging into the soft dirt as he limped forward and stared down into her eyes. "Apparently I can't quit you," he quipped.

"You're making jokes?" she said, incredulous. "You plowed your car into Cuddy's house and fled the country and you're making jokes?"

"It's my default setting," he replied, glancing out into the deep and back again. "Thought you knew that about me."

"I haven't seen you in two years and you show up here out of the blue. What are you doing here?"

"I can't go home again," he said with a shrug. "So I came here."

"Well you can't stay," she said, pushing damp hair out of her face and turning away from the water.

"You wouldn't help a man in need?" he joked, pushing his lower lip out in a pout. "Just think of me as a stray puppy."

She turned to him again, her shoulders and back rigid, held in place by anger as if they were set in cement. "Stop it, House. Whatever it is you're doing, just stop."

As she marched off again, he caught her, grabbing her arm and spinning her to face him.

"That's it? You won't even invite me in out of the rain? Thought you loved me?"

"I did love you once. The you I used to know. But you haven't been that man in a long time."

"I'm still the same man, Cameron," he said, his words stinging like the cold slap of the waves on her skin. "You just never really saw me."

"Bullshit," she snapped, her voice rising above the roar of the tide. "There was a time when there was some truth, some compassion, some decency somewhere inside that bastard exterior. I know it."

Defeated, he refused to look at her, a maelstrom in his eyes that matched the angry sea behind him. "What do you want me to say, Cameron? I'm sorry?"

"I want you to tell me the truth, House. Tell me one true thing. Can you do that?" Her hands rested on her hips, her stance as unrelenting as the storm brewing just offshore.

He stared out to sea for so long, she nearly turned away again, resigned to the fact that he was incapable of truly opening up to anyone, least of all her.

"I loved you," he said, so low and quiet she nearly missed it. "I wanted you. I just..."

"Just what?" she insisted, waiting.

"I just couldn't make myself do anything about it. I suck at relationships. By the time I realized I wanted one, you were with Chase."

He moved forward again, as close as he'd ever stood to her, the damp of his shirt melding into the damp of hers. She inhaled sharply as his hand moved up and cupped her cheek, his thumb sweeping aside the tears she hadn't known were falling from her eyes.

"I loved you," he repeated. "And I lost my chance."

The next thing she knew, she was kissing him, her tongue and his sliding against each other, one hand gripping his shoulder as if to keep him from slipping out of her grasp.

"I'm sorry," he murmured, as he broke away. "I'm sorry for hurting you. It's what I do. I hurt everybody. I don't know how to do anything else."

There was such sorrow in his face and in the slump of his shoulders that her heart broke anew, and she realized for the first time that the one he hurt the most was himself.

"It doesn't have to be this way," she said, blinking through the rain and the tears. She took his hands in hers, squeezing as if all the passion she felt for him was flowing into her fingers. "Go home, fix the mess you made, face the consequences. And tell Cuddy you're sorry."

"I can't," he said, gripping her hands in desperation. "I don't... I can't. It's too late."

She pulled him into an embrace, and he clutched her as if she were keeping him anchored amidst the storm.

"You can, House. You can do anything."

A/N: I'm going to pretend this happened, and then House went to jail and when he got out he and Cameron started secretly dating. ;)