Author's Note: Chapter two, more from House's point of view than Cameron's. (And an extra note: I am posting the other three chapters to this today for a fellow writer who misses my one shots. Everyone seemed to want chapter stories and continuations, so I tried breaking down a few stories like this one and 'Nightmares' into chapters. Maybe...I'll stop that now. Anyway, chauncey, this is for you.)

He had been watching Cameron for a while now, though she would be embarrassed to know that. After he had shocked her into allowing a mouth swab so he could get her HIV test done—the one she kept studiously avoiding—by declaring his love for her, she had spent the rest of the day in a pensive and angry mood, watching him when she thought he wasn't looking, and refusing to speak to him even when he cornered her in the hall and told her to quit pouting. The look she had given him had been so frustrated, so fraught with emotions he wanted to ignore, that he had limped off before she could decide she wanted to say something, after all. Everything had gone to hell in a hand-basket with Stacy, and he had withdrawn to try and get back a little of his sanity, rebuild some of his walls.

Women really sucked.

But then he had caught a glimpse of Cameron outside one of his favorite adult establishments—because who doesn't love a stripper when the love of your life can't be in your life?—her eyes shifty as she exchanged money for something else with a dark-haired man on the corner across the street. And he immediately knew. She was going to use again, get high again. And when Cameron was high, if the past indicated anything, she got horny. So he decided to see if he couldn't follow her this time, make sure she didn't do something stupid like sleeping with Foreman. Or Cuddy. And then he had gotten distracted by thoughts of her with Cuddy, and had nearly missed her stumbling from her apartment into a taxi.

Now he was stuck in this blaring excuse for a dance club, watching her get fondled and licked by a tweaker on X, and finding himself just a little hard at the thought of the body that had been pressed against his just a few moments before. Sure, Cameron had hugged him before, but…but being pressed against silk and tight jeans and hot, slick skin was a little different than embracing an ingénue doctor in a lab coat.

He shifted a little against the wall he had sunk into, grinning slightly as Cameron gently pushed away her overly affectionate dance partner and began to move, slim hands sinking into the masses of her dark hair and lifting it from her neck, which was arched back as her eyes drifted closed. He swallowed as her hips moved in a slow circle, flinched as her hands dropped from her hair to her hips, sliding slowly up her stomach to cup her breasts, and then up over her shoulders and into her hair again. He had watched her dancing for long enough tonight to know that, while her usual movements were graceful and unconsciously sensual, the way she was dancing now was specific, erotic. Directed.

At him.

Not for the first or the thousandth time, House cursed the chunk of muscle absent from his right thigh, the ever-present cane that served as a reminder of what he was not, what he would never be again. Not that he had been a connoisseur of dance clubs prior to the infarction, but the sight of a beautiful woman was oddly inspirational, and right now that beautiful woman was dancing. With a string of silent curses lingering on his tongue, he gripped his cane until his knuckles were white and aching, then turned and limped for the exit, pressing the cane down hard on the toes of anyone who did not shift out of his way as he passed through their heated, enmeshed bodies.

The air outside was cool and tainted with cigarette smoke, and House shook two pills out of his Vicodin bottle and sucked them down while eyeing the alley he found himself in with distaste. Probably about time to haul his forty-something ass home and jerk off to memories of brunettes in silk with glowing skin and hungry eyes.

"House? Wait."

Speak of the devil.

TBC