House headed into the Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital without calling anyone to say he was back. A warning wasn't the usual way he did things, and besides, he wanted to take everyone by surprise and see what sort of shenanigans they'd gotten up to in his absence.

"House," Cuddy said in a tone that indicated mild annoyance at his return. "Glad to have you back. How was your vacation? Six clinic hours this week."

Wilson was more welcoming. "You look good. Miami's done something for you. Not sure what yet, though. I'll let you know. By the way, is that a tan?"

Foreman nodded a greeting and held out a file. "Patient came in this morning. Twenty year old male, presented with night terrors, double vision, myoclonic jerk. We started on the whiteboard."

"What do you have so far?" House enquired, flipping through the file.

"Nothing but the symptoms," Foreman said reluctantly. "You want to help out or are you still recovering from Miami fever?"

House quirked an eyebrow. "Jealousy does not become you." He swung open the glass door. "What did I miss?"

Cameron stood up. "Twenty year old male presented with -"

"Oh, never mind, I heard." House perched on the edge of his desk. "Differential diagnosis?"

"Brain tumour," Foreman said, predictably.

Chase looked irritated. Clearly they had had some previous discussion about the probability of it being a brain tumour. "It doesn't necessarily have to be that bad. If you exclude the night terrors, it could be something systemic - his liver, his kidneys, something outside the brain."

House snorted. "Yes, Chase, feel free to exclude any symptom if it makes your job easier."

"Do you think it's a tumour?" Chase asked defiantly.

"I want to know what you think."

Foreman looked amused. "You don't know, do you?"

House gritted his teeth and resisted the urge to pop a Vicodin. "Why are we talking about what I know?"

"Because you're the one with twenty years of medical experience and a kid turns up with neurological symptoms and you don't think it's a tumour." Foreman raised an eyebrow.

"I didn't say it wasn't a tumour. I didn't say it was one either." House was beginning to get a headache. "Right now I want a differential diagnosis from you three. I'm not here to tell you what to think."

"Really?" Chase looked confused. "When did that change?"

Foreman ignored him. "Your argument is specious," he told House.

House was ready. "Your tie is ugly."

Cameron edged her way in between them. "What about sex?"

"It could get difficult," House said. "I mean, we work together, and there's a pretty big age difference..."

"I mean he could have neurosyphilis," she interrupted.

House winked. "Nice save."

"He doesn't have a girlfriend," Chase pointed out.

Cameron said, "He had a threesome once with his brother and his brother's wife."

House stared. And he wasn't the only one. "Come again?" he asked. "You know this how?"

"I thought it might have been neurosyphilis so I took a sexual history," she said defensively.

Chase seemed stuck on the obvious. "A threesome?"

"The brother arranged it for himself and his wife, for their anniversary," explained Cameron, who was apparently just a veritable fountain of information on strange topics. "I mean, Daniel is really cute, and if you ask me, as long as two people really trust each other, a threesome once every seven years might actually help a marriage."

"Okay, I vote we stop the DDX and discuss that comment," House said at once. Chase goggled his agreement. Cameron looked slightly put out.

"Are we forgetting that all the STD tests came back clear?" Foreman wanted to know.

House facepalmed. "Foreman!"

"Oh, pardon me for trying to concentrate on something frivolous like saving a life." The neurologist threw up his hands and picked up a marker. "Okay. Seriously, now. Who says brain tumour?"

There was silence.

"All right, all right." House took the marker and began tapping a rhythm on the edge of the desk. "It's not a brain tumour. Anybody else have any other ideas?" There was silence. "He did get hit with a bullet a couple of years ago. Just mentioning."

Cameron turned in surprise. "He was shot?"

"No, somebody threw it at him." House changed the rhythm of the tapping. "I see nobody here felt the need to thoroughly read the patient's medical history. Anybody see the value in doing a CT scan?"

"How would we get that out?" Cameron asked. "If the surgeons couldn't do it then, why would we be able to do it now?"

"Because we're cool." House clapped his hands together. "Okay, kids. Class is over. Do the scan. If a bullet or a bullet fragment is there, I want to see it."

Wilson entered the office without knocking and wasted no time. "House, how many Vicodin have you taken for the day?" He shot out a hand and grabbed the pill bottle from the desk.

House jerked. "Give that back!"

Wilson was turning the bottle in his hand, reading the label. "This was prescribed two weeks ago. Judging from how much is left..." He shook the bottle, which rattled heavily. "...that would make...let me see..."

House did his best job of glowering. "Wilson..."

"My God, you're taking almost two-thirds of what you were taking a month ago!"

House got up, leaned across the table and grabbed the bottle out of Wilson's hand. "You tell Cuddy and I'll kill you. If anyone asks, tell them I doubled my dosage. Tripled!"

Wilson tilted his head, somehow managing to look incredibly dashing. "House...you're not the same. You haven't been the same since you got back from Miami three days ago. Are you...are you in love?"

House grunted, sat back down and waved a hand in Wilson's general direction. Which, in Wilson's book, was clearly an expression of denial.

"House, seriously. You have to tell me sometime."

"No, I don't have to tell you. You want me to tell you." House leaned back in his chair, picked up three balls from his desk and started juggling. "And as the great philosopher Jagger once said, you can't always get what you want."

"But if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need."

House abruptly ignored the balls and two fell to the ground. "What is that supposed to mean?" Wilson ignored him completely and kept walking. "Wilson? Wilson!" The last ball went soaring through the air and beaned Wilson in the back of the head. The oncologist didn't react, just chuckled as he left.

"CT scan results are back," Chase reported. "Our boy has a bullet fragment in his brain, just like we thought."

Foreman shook his head. "It's in an impossible place. There's no way we could do surgery to get that out."

House tightened his hands on the handle of his cane and pondered. If surgery wasn't possible, there had to be another way. "Okay. You three go home. There's nothing more you can do tonight."

"But," Cameron began, and maybe there was a good ending to the interjection, but House never got to hear it because he interrupted:

"It's two o'clock in the morning. Go home."

Reluctantly, the ducklings obeyed. House, however, picked up the phone.

Horatio opened his eyes and squinted blearily into the darkness. The ringing continued, which meant he hadn't been dreaming. He groped around on the bedside table and managed to find his cell phone. "Horatio."

"I'm sorry, were you sleeping?"

Horatio couldn't help but smile. "That's what most people do at two in the morning." He lay back in the bed, closed his eyes. "What's up?"

"I need to brainstorm. Probably called the wrong person, but hey, right now I'll take what I can get. I need a way to remove a bullet from someone without doing surgery."

Horatio laughed softly. What a question to ask a forensic analyst. "Wow. Not asking for much, are you?"

"Yeah, well..." House trailed off, and sighed. "I got a bullet lodged in an sensitive area of the brain. Surgery's not an option, the guy'd probably end up a vegetable. But the bullet has to come out."

Horatio tried to think. His mind was fuzzy. "A bullet's metal."

"Damn, you're good."

"No, I mean...it'd respond to a magnet. Get a big magnet, put it by his head." Silence followed this. "Look, Greg, I'm not a doctor. I apologize if that was an idiotic statement."

"Actually," House said slowly, "that wasn't idiotic at all. That was brilliant. I have an idea, and I will give you full credit for it if it works. If. Big if."

Horatio sat up. "What are you talking about?"

House told him.

Cuddy looked up expectantly as House barged into her office. "You have a diagnosis?"

"Bullet fragment in his brain," House answered promptly.

Cuddy blinked. "That's it? So simple?"

House seated himself insolently in a chair, left leg over an armrest. "You seem surprised."

"Yeah, well, usually your diagnosis is something more along the lines of you bursting into my office saying, 'His pancreas is exploding because his brain is on fire!'" She folded her hands on the desk. "So you're going to remove it, right?"

"Of course we are." House gave a smile that tried to be innocent and failed utterly.

"House?"

"Yes, yes, we're going to get it out. Don't you worry." He got up, wielding his cane like a weapon before he braced it against the floor. Another odd little smile, and he was gone.

Wilson folded his arms and gave House his best questioning stare. "Does Cuddy know about this?" At House's expected resultant eye roll, he sighed. "You know nobody's going to let you do it, right? Shoot a dead man? Do an MRI on his head?"

"Your point?"

"My point is that not even Chase, Cameron and Foreman are going to back you on this."

House leaned in close. "You take the big dark one, I've got the little girl, and the Aussie will run like a scared wombat if you growl a little."

Wilson tried to look exasperated and only succeeded in looking amused. "I won't tell her, but I'm not covering your ass when - not if, when - this thing blows up on you."

"Great." House was pleased. "See you in court."

The morgue was cold and dark and House didn't care. He wandered around, checking toe tags to see who would be a suitable candidate for his upcoming experiment. The most promising corpse turned out to be a cancer patient. Male, twenty-five, similar height and build to Daniel Radin. It would work.

He wheeled the body to the MRI room, where Cameron, as predicted, had a fit. "You're going to shoot someone?"

House loaded the gun. "Cameron, he's dead. It's not like he can feel it."

"Oh, great. So I guess you won't mind standing by the coffin at his funeral and explaining to his family why a cancer patient has a hole in his head!" She was near hysterics. "You can't do this!"

House cocked the hammer with his thumb and watched as Chase and Foreman muscled the table over so it was standing on the narrow side, with the body of the unfortunate Joshua Morrow strapped to it. "Okay, everybody out of the way."

"Have you ever fired a gun before?" Chase asked.

"Hey, maybe Foreman should do it. He probably has more experience in shooting people." House snorted. "Like I said, everybody out of the way."

His line of sight was clear. He aimed.

"Please," Cameron said softly. "Please don't do this."

"Too late," House replied, and pulled the trigger.

"The position of the bullet and its trajectory through his head looks almost identical to that of Daniel Radin," Foreman reported after a cursory examination of the unfortunate Joshua Morrow's head. "What now?"

"Now," House said, "we do an MRI. Chase and Foreman, get him in there."

Cameron grabbed his arm. "This is crazy," she said, almost in tears. "I can't...I can't just stand here and watch you do this."

"There's a chair outside." House nodded to the door. "I know you're going to run to Cuddy, just do me a favour and wait until this is over."

"All set," came Chase's voice.

"House," Cameron said. "Do not turn that on. Please."

House modulated his voice to sound perfectly calm and rational. "You're mad because I put a bullet in his head. If this works, all I'm doing now is taking it out." He flicked the switch, and two things happened. First, the bullet flew out of the corpse and into the machine, and second, the power cut, leaving the team standing in the emergency lights.

House looked down at Chase and Foreman. "My bad."

"Well, now we know it works."

Cuddy was furious. She had all of Cameron's righteous indignation along with an unhealthy measurement of maternal frustration and some patented boss anger. "You destroyed a very expensive machine!"

"I also discovered a way to save Daniel Radin's life." Without waiting for her to comment, House ploughed on. "We make a hole in his skull over the scar, angle his head like we did with the dead guy, we put him in the MRI machine and we turn it on. Foreman took a look at Joshua Morrow's head. Damage to the brain surrounding the bullet is negligible. It came out just the way it went in. Perfectly clean."

"You shot a dead man!"

"He donated his body to science. I performed a scientific experiment that we're going to use to save someone else's life. I'd say he was very useful." House paused. "Look, I know that's an expensive machine. But if you want to save Daniel, this is the only way. Going into his head is too risky. Every neurosurgeon I've consulted had said so."

"How many neurosurgeons have you consulted, exactly?"

"None," House admitted. "But Foreman said it, and I happen to agree with him. Point is, it's going to cost a lot of money to fix that machine. And it's going to cost a lot of money to fix the machine I'm going to break in the next half an hour as well. But if we don't break said machine, it's going to cost Daniel his life."

Cuddy pressed her fingertips to her temples. Her hair was in disarray. Vertical lines had formed between her eyebrows. "House," she said dangerously. "If by some strange and unknowable miracle I let you do this...this piece of insanity...you owe me twenty-four clinic hours. This week alone. And I'm taking five thousand dollars out of your salary to go towards repairing that machine."

House gritted his teeth. "Fine," he said, and headed for the door. "If you need me, I'll be saving a life."

The procedure worked, which did not surprise House. Daniel was fine, with just a slight short-term memory problem that would probably clear up on its own. And House now owed Cuddy twenty-four clinic hours that he was going to immediately start paying back.

"I haven't been feeling well," the patient said. She was a young woman with long blond hair and a perpetually perplexed expression.

"So I see from your chart." House squinted. "Or I would if I could understand anything written on it? Does this say nausea?"

She shrugged. "It should."

"Do you have a boyfriend?"

She frowned. "Yes..."

"Lie down."

"I'm throwing up all the time, I'm putting on weight..." she said as he spread gel over her abdomen and started the sonogram. "My skin's cleared up nicely, though."

"You have a parasite," House said. "It's draining your nutrients, taking calcium from your bones, interfering with your hormones, making you gain weight. But don't worry, most women learn to embrace this parasite. They nurture it, feed it, dress it up in tiny clothes, even make arrangements so it can play with other parasites."

The young woman looked alarmed. "What?"

House spun the screen to show her the image. "It has your eyes."

The second clinic patient came in with a bad case of pneumonia and declared that God would save him. House took a Vicodin and felt like shoving the bottle down the man's throat.

"I don't want treatment," the patient said nervously. "I have faith."

"Look," House said. "You can have all the faith you want in spirits and the afterlife and heaven and hell, but when it comes to this world, don't be an idiot. You can tell me you put your faith in God to get you through the day, but when it's time to cross the road I know you look both ways."

The man put both hands over his face. "Am I going to die?" he asked, trembling.

House remained impassive. "You will if you don't let me treat you."

"Okay. Do it."

"Come on." House limped across his living room again, cradling the phone between his ear and his shoulder as he set the cup carefully on the coffee table. "There's a weekend coming up. Can't you ditch for two days?"

"Do you have any idea how long it takes to get from Miami to New Jersey?"

"Six hours by plane."

Horatio exhaled. "Greg..."

"Come on, Horatio." House sat on the couch. "I need to see you." He ran one hand back and forth over his head, mussing his hair even worse than it already was. His leg began to hurt. "Please."

"I'll see what I can do," Horatio said at last. "I can't promise anything."

"That's all I'm asking."

Clinic was boring. Not only was it boring, it often entailed getting up close and way too personal with people's bodies. The elderly woman on the table before him was a perfect example of this. She'd presented with all the symptoms of Crohn's, but just to make sure, he was going to have to do a colonoscopy. And shoving a camera through five feet of colon was not something he enjoyed, so he gave her instructions to follow and told her to come back in three days, when he'd hopefully have found a way to wriggle out of clinic duty.

House went on to diagnose a six-year-old girl with cat scratch fever, a preteen boy with scabies, and other random people with insignificant diseases. The most interesting case for the morning was a young couple. The man knew he had herpes, and the woman knew she had syphilis, but it turned out that the woman also had hepatitis and the man also had gonorrhea. House diagnosed chronic infidelity and left with a certain lightness in his step.

For the rest of the day, clinic was clinic. It was conjunctivitis, chicken pox, glaucoma and acute otitis media - in other words, it was mind-numbing. And then a patient was brought in with a bewildering mix of symptoms that kept them busy for most of the evening and night.

House found himself downstairs in the cafeteria. It was half past eleven and he was hungry. And they were closed, which was no concern of his. He gave the padlock a couple hard whacks with the cane and unhooked it from the grate. He was just going through the available juices when he heard a voice from behind him.

"Greg."

House's head jerked up. He glanced back over his shoulder and saw the figure in black, sitting calmly at a table. Red hair glittered under the harsh fluorescent lighting. "What in the hell..."

"You called." Horatio stood, sliding his hands into his pockets. "I came."

House set the juice on the counter and tried to believe what his eyes were telling him. "You're seriously here? I'm not dreaming?"

Horatio looked around, then shook his head. "No."

House launched himself forward, wrapping his arms around Horatio as tightly as he could. He pulled back, took Horatio's face in his hands. "You have no idea how much I missed you," he said huskily, and kissed him.

Horatio returned the kiss with every ounce of barely restrained desire that House himself was feeling. "What if someone sees us?"

House leaned against Horatio, trapping him between his own body and the wall, and took hold of Horatio's jacket. "I really don't care," he whispered, and started giving slow, light kisses.

Horatio moaned, the vibrations coming through his lips, and arched his back. "Not here."

House pushed Horatio back into the wall, hard. "Not here?" he hissed. "It's been three weeks. I'm going to need something more than a hello."

"House!" Wilson was jogging through the cafeteria, looking most alarmed. "What are you doing?" He caught House's arm and pulled him back from Horatio, then turned to the redhead. "I'm so sorry, he's a little out of control. Are you all right?"

"I'm...I'm fine." Horatio did a good job of passing off his surprise as being shaken. "It's nothing, really."

Wilson furrowed his brow. "Are you a relative of a patient, Mr...?"

"No, I..." Horatio was beginning to look confused. "Lieutenant Horatio Caine, Miami-Dade Police Department." He held out his hand, and Wilson shook it with a dropped jaw. "I'm not here in my official capacity," he said hastily, then sighed. "Never mind. I should go." He took a couple of steps back, opened his mouth to say something else, then shook his head and wandered off.

Wilson turned to House. "Miami-Dade Police Department? What did you get up to in Miami? And...and you just attacked him!"

House wondered why Wilson's misconception seemed to surprise him. "Um...I won't do it again?"

"Yes, you will!"

"All the more reason this discussion is pointless."

"House? What happened in Miami?"

House snorted. "Long story.

Wilson folded his arms. "I have time."

"I have clinic hours," House said pointedly. "Bye now."

Wilson stared. "It's midnight."

"Hospitals don't close."

"Are you in trouble?"

"No more than I usually am." House poured himself a whiskey and sat on the arm of the couch. "I'm not complaining. I'm glad you're here."

Horatio stirred his own drink with a finger and sipped it thoughtfully. "I can't believe that worked."

"What, the MRI?" House grinned. "Well, of course it did. It was a good - if expensive - idea. Granted, I'm now minus five thousand dollars and I owe a lot of clinic hours, but hey. The kid lived, and he's going to be fine. How are your cases?"

"I want to hear about you." Horatio leaned forward and gave a flirtatious little smile. "Did you have any patients after that one?"

"Yeah, we got a kid with respiratory problems...treated him for TB, laryngitis and diphtheria before realizing he had fungal pneumonia."

Horatio raised an eyebrow. "You were treating him for multiple diseases without knowing which one he had?"

"Throw everything against the wall and see what sticks." House took a sip of his drink. "Works for spaghetti."

"Wasn't that a very big risk?"

"I take risks. Sometimes people die. But not taking risks causes more people to die, so..." House shrugged. "I guess my biggest problem is that I've been cursed with the ability to do the math."

Horatio seemed to mull this over. "At least you strike a good balance."

House tried not to laugh. "A good balance? In the last twenty-four hours, I hijacked a corpse from the morgue, shot it in the head and blew two MRI machines."

"And you saved a life," Horatio pointed out. "That's not bad for twenty-four hours."

"I have questionable ethics."

"Does that bother you?"

"Not really." House set down the glass. "I do my job, I save lives. That's what counts." He patted the cushion next to him. "Come over here, will you? I don't bite, at least not at first."

Horatio rose and sauntered over. He sank down next to House and stretched his arm out along the top of the couch. "Really? That's a shame."

House turned his head and looked directly into Horatio's eyes. "What do you want?"

Horatio laid his hand on House's arm. "I want everything," he said softly. "Everything that you can give me. I want to be with you, whatever it takes. I'm going to be here for you when you need me, Greg. All I need to know is if you're going to do the same."

House couldn't take the heat of the hand on his arm; he shifted it and linked fingers with Horatio instead. "I know that I don't actually know you all that well, given that we only met five weeks ago, and I know I should be rational and sensible and everything here. But to be totally honest with you..." House broke gaze and stared at the floor.

"Greg," Horatio said gently.

"Do you love me?" House looked back up, eyes searching Horatio's for anything. "I have to know. Do you like me, do you want me, or do you love me?"

"They're not mutually exclusive," Horatio pointed out, and then sighed. "All right. You want honesty, I'm going to give it to you. I love you. Okay? I'm in love with you. I've known that for a long time now, practically since we met. The question is, what are you going to do about it?"

House studied Horatio carefully for a moment, then reached out and put a hand behind his head, fingers curling in the hair. "I want what you want," he said at last. "I love you." Abruptly he pulled back his hand. "And you're going back to Miami in thirty-six hours. Dammit!"

Horatio reached over and took House's hand, which he placed on his own thigh. "Greg," he said softly, "I'd rather not spend thirty-six hours talking about how I'm going back to Miami and we have no time. So, if it's all right with you...can we do something a little more enjoyable?"

House gave him his best soulful look. "Let me show you the bedroom."