Stepping Stone

Author's Notes: R for sex and swearing. Cameron angst with primarily House/Cameron, though some mentions of Cam/Joe and Cam/Chase. Semi-AU for "Love Hurts," and containing spoilers up to 3x17 "Fetal Position" / 3x18 "Airborne," during which this is set. Basically, my thoughts on the progression of Cameron's character through the seasons and the possible motivations of her Season 3 "arrangement" with Chase. My first Housefic and my first attempt at second-person, so all concrit regarding characterization and general structure/flow of the story are greatly appreciated!

-- --- --

Chase confides in you that Foreman's reaction was the same as Cuddy's: warning you (never him, no attention paid to him except for being on the other end of this arrangement) against getting hurt. Foreman even tells you himself the next week, tries to anticipate your feminine weaknesses about separating emotions from sex, and honestly you're not surprised – the Allison Cameron they envision did at one point exist, petite and pristine in her white gown with flowers in her dark hair, barely legal to sip champagne at her own wedding reception. Of course she would confuse fucking with love.

They doubt that you could have that girl behind. You used to find yourself wondering the same – how you've gone from not even touching yourself when Joe's face appeared in your mind to propositioning your coworker in and on various Princeton-Plainboro surfaces. Only House refrains from offering advice, because he's seen the glowing line from A to B to C and (you hope) mentally relives B when he can't hire a hooker.

So, there's the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question: How did you go from absolutely no sex with a man you loved to meaningless sex with the last man you'd fall for?

Easy – you had meaningless sex with a man you could very well have loved.

---

Café Spiletto, 2005. You never imagined you'd want to block out a meal

At least he pays for dinner; he's enough of a gentleman to do that. But then again, the same goes for him picking you up, or opening the door of the restaurant for you, or the lovely corsage. That's what makes this so much worse.

Apparently he isn't gentleman enough to wait when you linger at the table; he's leaning against the driver's side door of his car when you emerge from the restaurant. You wet your lips to fire an assault on him for forcing you to tip the waiter extra, but, as always, he gets the word in before you can.

"So, my place or yours?" he asks with a sardonic waggle of his eyebrows.

You bark a bitter laugh. "You can't seriously think that I'd sleep with you after this."

"Why not?" he responds evenly, eyes tracking over your body and face with slow, calculating confidence. "It's already been established that you're beautiful, and obviously I possess some sort of rough charm you find attractive."

"Not" – you don't waste energy denying his point; that's what this night was supposed to be about, revealing your true feelings – "when you ruin things by being such a jerk."

Something human flickers in his eyes, but before you can even think to pursue it he sinks his claws into the catch in your voice. "Come on, Allison, all of the cool kids are doing it."

You flinch as your first name drops from his lips for the first time. It wasn't supposed to be like this. A chilly breeze sweeps through the parking lot, and you hug your elbows. "Just take me home, House."

"So you can cry into your pillow over one bad date?" he retorts, equal parts disgust and amusement. "If you're going to give up that easily, then you're more pathetic than I thought."

"What is your problem?" you snap, but his answering smirk tells you that you've only proven yourself mundane, just like every other sniping victim of his. You refuse to shrink away, noting in the back of your mind that you would've stopped talking a year ago, when you started working for him. "Why do you treat me like one of your patients – constantly poking and prodding, leading me down avenues of false expectations and hope, for the sole purpose of solving some goddamn puzzle?"

The smile he grants you is crooked, mirthless. "You're not the only one looking to fix someone."

You gape at him. "That's not fixing me! That's – you want to make me as miserable as you are!"

"Wrong. You need to learn to protect yourself. World doesn't play it easy for stuffed animals. If you can't get through a night with me, there's absolutely no hope for you."

Your face is flaming with embarrassment and mounting fury, and didn't Wilson say that you would be the one to break his heart? "But – I don't –"

His voice snaps your sputters in half without raising one decibel. "Then show me you won't leave the playground sobbing just because I yanked on your pigtail. Show me this doesn't bother you—"

You lurch forward to slap him, but you end up kissing him – always the first to act, forever proving something – instead, one hand fisted in that damn blue shirt that highlights the muscles in his chest and the color in his eyes, the other clutching the short hairs on the back of his neck. For a moment he's sneering against your mouth, but then his lips part beneath yours and his tongue slides into your mouth. He takes advantage of your surrendering moan to grasp your back with his hands – his cane must have dropped to the asphalt, you didn't hear it – and pull you tight against him.

From the first day you looked into his eyes he's had you trapped, but now you physically can't pry yourself from him. He is relentless, tugging at your lower lip with his teeth and then sweeping his tongue over the spots of pain; one hand grips your ass, the other tangles in your hair. You're gasping into his mouth, more from lack of oxygen than desire; his stubble scours the soft skin of your jaw; and this is all so wrong. Yes, you'd allowed yourself to imagine that maybe he'd take your hand while driving, or walk you to your door and tilt your chin up for a firm, even passionate kiss, but nothing like this – not cruelly crush you into him to remind you who has the power, overwhelming you with fingers and lips and tongue. You suddenly remember the woman he mentioned living with, know that he wouldn't have held her this way, because he must have loved her.

All at once his right leg sags – you stumble into him, he breaks the kiss as "Fuck" slides from his lips in a hiss. You take advantage of his pain to lean close and whisper, "Your place." His eyes, electric blue beneath the streetlamp, flick to yours, surprised. "That way, you won't have to hobble out of my house in the middle of the night," you respond to his unasked question, and in one motion release your grip on him and get in on the passenger's side.

When he doesn't immediately open his door, you almost lose your nerve. But it turns out he's just retrieving his cane, a process that by the sounds alone makes him seem infinitely more pathetic, and finally he joins you in the car, his customary leer back in place. "Atta girl," he murmurs, the first thing he's said to you in a mini-eternity.

You don't look at him for the rest of the ride.

---

It's been two years and you haven't felt that same fire, and even though you know that Chase couldn't come close (hah), he's the one you approach, if only so you won't sleep alone on Friday nights (or Saturdays, or Tuesdays, or Thursdays…). Every time is like a performance: you rough and needy and loud, slamming his headboard into the wall and likely waking up half his apartment complex, using him over for the sole purpose of getting you off. Chase is along for the ride and really doesn't seem to mind; you even figure that he'd probably like it if you gave life to the hot tingle in your palm and slapped him across the face.

It's only when you lie awake at 3 am, having allowed yourself to be tucked into Chase's admittedly muscled arm, that you allow yourself to think about who you're really performing for. When House catches you in the janitor's closet, you force yourself to stop denying it – every stolen kiss is a challenge, every night (or afternoon) of fucking is proof. See, you want to say, I can do it, too. I can be the one to hurt not care.

---

"This isn't lovemaking by candlelight," he taunts you as the two of you crash through the door of 221B. His hands are crushing your new black dress like tissue-paper around your ass, long musician's fingers digging into your thighs. You almost strangled him trying to yank the tie off, ignoring the heat that coursed through you when he made a comment, voice dark and low, about you getting off on that sort of thing, and now you've ripped three buttons on that blue dress shirt. Your perfect date-not-dinner-between-two-colleagues is being shredded into something ugly and unrecognizable.

"You'll have to take care of me first," House continues, searing your neck with an open-mouthed kiss and grinning when you shudder. "And you'll have to do all the – work." The last part comes out as a grunt, partly out of surprise from landing on his back on his bed and partly from lust, as you waste no time in sinking down on top of him (admit it, you've been wet since the parking lot).

It's everything you've fantasized about for the past seventy-two hours, amplified by your embarrassment and pain and anger – you rocking over his hard cock, panting and arching your back when you feel him rub against your g-spot. He watches you, his forceful gaze never wavering even as his murmurs become grunts. His hands are curled around your hips, trying to force you down on him faster, rougher. "Come on, Cameron," he grits out, but you brace your hands on his sweaty chest and keep your thrusts shallow, teasing yourself with flutters of pleasure and making him clench his jaw and buck his hips upward in frustration.

Finally he curses and sits up abruptly, mouth striking yours in an unintentional kiss, then shoving you off him and flipping you over to slide into you again, features contorted with the pain such a swift movement elicits but also growing pleasure as you wrap your legs around his waist. You laugh as your head hits the mattress because, after years of overcompensating for your debilitating beauty, you find that you actually like manipulation.

Bastard comes first, just like he said he would, but he drags his stubbled jaw across your collarbone and his rough thumb across your clit until you're mewling and gasping his name (because he can't take that away from you, too) over and over, teetering on the brink. When you come, your chest clenches on a sob because you remember the goddamn Freud and reverse psychology and know that if he's fucking you now he's going to look through you tomorrow as if nothing's changed, and you'll never be in his bed again.

---

Surprise, surprise, Chase ruined everything, first by trying to assert some control (as if he had any in the first place) over where and when you had sex. Now he's staring at you, all floppy hair and soft lips but worst of all adoring eyes – loving eyes.

And all you can feel is anger, blazing and out of absolutely nowhere. You didn't want any emotional complications – you told him as much (he agreed at the time), and now you're so enraged you want to shove him into the snow, batter his chest with your fists, shriek obscenities until your throat is raw.

Instead you calmly set him straight, break his heart, coldly watch him go. But you know that he's going to be back, because suddenly you're living déjà vu through House's eyes – your hopeful, lingering gaze; your smugness at asking him out; your ridiculous excitement at Café Spiletto. Now you can hear his voice as keenly as if he stood behind you: You idiot.

Three years, and you can count the number of hard-won pieces of the Gregory House puzzle that you've accumulated on one hand. It's not worth all this. You wonder if he's been your stepping stone from bright wedding day to cold winter night, or if he's grabbed your ankle and dragged you under with him.