Quagmire

Chapter 7

A/N: Hey guys! I promise I have not left. I will ship Cadley till the day I die and most likely write fanfics for that length of time as well. I'm still determined to finish Sold and the rest of the projects I have started. You know, that stupid thing called life, gets in the way a lot. I hope you guys enjoy this chapter and give me some feedback!

Remy clenched her teeth together, making her jaw jut out for just a second. She had to process fully what telling Allison would do to her. House was still staring at her from across the couch.

"You have to weigh the pros and cons." House said, leaning back and taking a sip from his bottle. "You tell her, you're honest but girlfriendless. You don't tell her, you're a horrible person but you have someone to hold at night."

Remy sneered at him. "Allison is more than just a warm body, House."

"Look, you don't have to tell me." House lifted his hands to his chest defensively. "I thought you were incredibly lucky to land my former-duckling. She's quick to trust though," Another sip. "That's why you're fucked."

Instantly cold, Remy shivered under the weight of House's baggy sweat clothes. "I don't want to lose her." She whispered. "I can't."

House shifted his gaze around the room uncomfortably. He wasn't the best at this caring-about-other-people thing. "Why did you do it?"

Remy sucked in a loaded breath. She looked down and her fingers, absentmindedly picking the nail on her pointer finger.

"Was it the need for comfort? After Elizabeth…" House didn't finish.

"It's not an excuse. And it's the only thing I can come up with to explain it to myself." Remy admitted. She didn't know why she didn't just go home to Allison.

"Then maybe that's the truth." House replied matter of factly. "Maybe, you feel, in your subconscious, that Chase can give you a level of comfort that Allison can't."

"That's fucked up." Remy replied quickly.

"I'm not the one who slept with him."

Silence hung in the air.

"No," Remy shook her head. "I love Allison. There is no reason that I did what I did."

"Were you drunk?" House asked, taking his last long swig of beer.

Remy hesitated for a moment. "Yes. We went out for drinks the night I called Elizabeth's death." She spoke under her breath, ashamed.

House gave her a perplexed look. "You had sex with Chase the night Elizabeth died."

Then Remy lost it; she began sobbing on House's shoulder.

25 Nights Earlier

Remy gripped her second bourbon of the evening. The blond Australian to her right was sipping on his third. She looked over at him, detecting every glimmer of sadness in his eyes. Her eyes went back to her drink.

Finger rimming the glass, Remy glanced at the bartender. He was a stalky man of about 27. She had already nicely declined his harmless offer to take her home. He was picking two beers out of the fridge, to give to the couple sitting across from them.

The bar was quiet, slow, and warm. The lights were dimmed and a few lonely dancers swayed on the dance floor behind them, their fingers holding the mouths of bottles.

Chase could already feel his drinks. He figured that he may be a lighter weight that Remy. His intention was never to get drunk. He just wanted to make Remy feel better. He always only wanted to make Remy feel better.

Remy opened her mouth to say something but closed it again. The only words they had shared after they sat down were some nonsense about work and awkward pleasantries about Cameron. Remy never liked talking with Chase about her.

"Thank you," Remy finally said, at a low enough tone that Chase had a hard time hearing her at first. She repeated for her own benefit. "Thank you." She leaned her head, looking at him again. Her eyes were detached but still focused on him. "You helped me a lot with Elizabeth. You never went against my ideas. You weren't an ass like House." She nodded her head to him. "I appreciate it."

Chase smiled, feeling good for the first time that day. "You're not stupid, Remy. When you think you're right, you usually are."

Remy nodded at her own compliment and then sipped again. Then she felt Chase's hand on her thigh. Her immediate reaction was shifting her gaze quickly into his.

Chase rubbed her thigh kindly, never moving it further up than an inch passed her knee. "You're a good person." He said, still resting his hand on her knee. Remy's mind was slowly clicking, slowly understanding that this wasn't right. The bourbon was making Chase's hand feel warm and comfortable and his words were making her slowly lean in to hear more. Then he mentioned her name.

"I'm glad that Allison has you."

Immediately, Remy moved her leg, making Chase's hand slide off. She looked away from him, sinking into her own drink.

"Yea," She responded. "Me too."

They shared a cab back to Chase's place. He invited her in to read a journal article about advanced studies in medical technology. Later the next morning, Remy would not be able to remember any sentence she read from it.

They were on Chase's couch, flipping haphazardly through the most recent pages of the journal.

Remy and Chase both could not decide the next morning who kissed who first. It wasn't romantic or slow. It wasn't hungry. It was passionate without passion. Remy wasn't there. She was somewhere else. She was sitting next to Elizabeth's hospital bed. She was lying next to Allison in their bed. Even the thought of Allison's eyes staring into hers didn't awaken Remy to reject the tongue currently drowning her own.

Drunken stumbles led them to the four-pollster bed in Chase's room, two doors down and to the left. Clumsily, clothes were pulled from bodies and thrown onto the floor. The darkness clouded their already blind judgment.

Remy laid on her back as Chase's body moved into hers. Her nails raked down his back almost brutally. Chase grunted, his eyes shifting form her hair to her face. Her face showed signs of both pleasure and absence- as if she weren't there at all.

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Weary and clumsy in the darkness of her girlfriend's apartment, Remy's fingers found the end table to place her keys on. Despite her spinning vision, her steps were soft, like the hardwood floor was covered in pillows. When she finally reached their bedroom, she saw Allison's calm body asleep under the covers.

Remy remembered the last time she came home late enough to witness the moonlight shining through their bedroom window. It was two weeks ago on a freezing Tuesday night. Since being with Allison, she usually she was fast asleep at ten o'clock, sharp.

Their bathroom light was blinding when she flicked the switch. Thankfully, the door was closed before she did. Remy looked down at the bottles of moisturizers, creams, and miscellaneous other things that they thought they needed at the time of purchase. Every tube and container was laid out in tight straight rows- all the calming colors represented in strict fashion. Remy's fingertips glossed over the marble countertop- scrubbed every other night by Allison's calculated perfectionism. The brightness of the light bulbs above her made her irises burn, but she didn't adjust the dimmer. She waited it out.

About a minute later, she could look directly up into the mirror. That was when she winced at the damage. Dried tear lines of eyeliner ran to the middle of her cheeks. Embarrassment and drunkenness written on her features, Remy shut off the light. The overbearing bathroom light scalded her eyes less than the sight of her deceit. Instantly she could smell everything. The bleach used to sanitize the toilet, the twelve different flavors of body wash standing at attention on the shelf inside the shower, Allison's cinnamon toothpaste. Remy wondered why someone so obsessed with eliminating distractions would create so many pungent ones in such a trapping room.

Remy cleared her throat, as if trying to get up the nerve to confess- to herself. She felt a sock in her throat and her hands shaking like speakers at a rock concert with a deafening pitch. The stillness around her shattered whatever she was keeping together. In the darkness she could see Elizabeth. In the mirror, she could see herself. She knew that they weren't different people- just different bodies ruled by time and circumstance. Elizabeth died, and so would Remy. Remy's eyes burned with salted moisture. With a swift swing of her arm she knocked every bottle on the counter to the floor. The angry clashing stirred her insides.

Then, a lonely click. A slice of light underneath the bathroom door illuminated against opaque tiles.