Wow... the last real chapter. Bittersweet in a way... this story has been a constant for four whole months! At the same time, I find myself really pleased with how it grew from what I intended to be a relatively short "yes I admit it, I like you" story, to this intricate unfolding of their relationship. I hope that everyone else has enjoyed the ride too, and I thank you all for being such sources of encouragement! And a special note... I just noticed that this story has been added to two House communities! I'm completely honored... thank you!
I'm writing the epilogue now and it will be posted on Tuesday night!
Chapter 30
James Wilson had a morning routine. Actually his entire life was governed by routine, disturbed only by House's occasional quirkiness, but mornings were particularly well ordered. Wake at six, give wife a chaste kiss goodbye at seven, arrive at the hospital at seven thirty. Check patients, read mail, and, depending on the type of morning it was, get one of two kinds of coffee. If it was a good morning, he waited a little while and went to the cafeteria for cappuccino. If it was a bad morning, he drank the sludge in the oncology department lounge. Friday morning was a bad one, but it was the end of the week so he compromised by going to the diagnostics department with his plain white mug. The coffee there was always good.
He swung through House's office on the way, but found his computer still off and his chair still pushed under the desk. He took the time to hide House's ball in the bottom drawer, just to mess with him, and moved on to the department conference room. Foreman and Chase weren't there, but he was mildly surprised to see Cameron sitting at her desk in her little office area. He'd held off on teasing House about it, but he'd noticed that he and Cameron had been driving in together almost every day. He also knew that her attacker's trial was due to start in two days. He'd assumed she'd been staying close to House after hours. She had been acting perfectly normal around the office. She and Chase had even had civil discussions within his earshot. But he'd also caught her sitting alone more often than usual and down in the lab testing the equipment.
At the moment, her dark head was bowed over the file she was reading and he considered backing out of the room before disturbing her but some sixth sense alerted her to his presence and she lifted her eyes and turned towards him.
"Dr. Wilson," she greeted him with seeming cheerfulness. "Looking for Dr. House? He's not in yet." Despite the fact that the three of them had eaten dinner at House's place and even gone to a baseball game together, Cameron persisted in calling him Dr. Wilson within the hospital walls.
"Ah… yes, I saw that." He scrambled to pull his thoughts together and push the personal questions to the back before they spilled out of his mouth.
She had never spoken about the attack with him or any one else in the hospital as far as he knew, and he didn't think she was going to be open to words of sympathy now. The way she was sitting reminded him of near-child gymnasts his second wife had forced him to watch on television. Perfectly controlled, perfectly contained, but always on the verge of snapping under the weight of everyone's stares.
He waved towards the coffee pot. "I really just came down for the coffee," he said, words trailing off as he saw that the pot was empty.
"Oh… I'm sorry. I didn't get around to making any yet."
Crap. Now he felt like an asshole who expected her to make the coffee for the manly men of the office.
"No!" It came out a bit more forcefully than he intended and she looked slightly startled and a little bit amused. "I mean, That's all right. It's not exactly on your review. I'll just head down to the cafeteria."
"Are you sure? It only takes a minute."
"I'm sure… you go back to what you were doing."
Cameron looked at him hard for a second, as if trying to figure something out, and then settled herself back into her chair. "All right. Should I tell House you stopped by?"
"Sure, make him feel needed," Wilson said lightly, backing away from more dangerous verbal territory. He didn't make it two steps towards the door before wading right back in again when he glanced over her and asked, "You holding up okay? I mean… with everything?"
She stared past him before moving her gaze to his face. The emotion swirling just below the surface was visible even from across the room. "Yeah. I'm fine," she told him in a carefully modulated tone. "Thanks for asking."
He bobbed his head, accepting her answer, while realizing that she really was a terrible liar. Then he tapped the rim of his still empty mug and walked out of the room.
"Cameron seems a little… tired… today," Wilson said. It was an artless segue after bantering over baseball stats.
House studiously flicked the sesame seeds off of his hamburger roll. "She's probably not sleeping well," he replied. "That's the most common explanation."
Wilson knew he was stepping around landmines and hoped he wouldn't get a limb blown… or torn… off. "I had the impression that you would know that for sure."
It was a struggle not to immediately look away when House glared at him.
"Impressions can be wrong."
"House…" It was his best, reasonable, wheedling tone. The tone that said "c'mon buddy, just 'fess up." Sometimes it worked and sometimes it earned him a cold shoulder for a week.
"We haven't spent the night together since last week," House said sharply.
"Really?" Wilson sounded concerned and surprised. "I thought the two of you… and with the trial this week…"
House snorted and stabbed at the floor with his cane. "The trial has put her right back where she was three months ago. She was thrashing around the bed last week and nailed my leg. I tried to ignore the blinding pain, but she couldn't. She's made excuses to stay at her place since then, and I have not been invited to join the slumber party."
"Jesus," Wilson hissed.
"I'm pretty sure he didn't have anything to do with it, and aren't you supposed to be Jewish?"
Wilson shot him a look and drew in a long, thoughtful breath. "She's shutting you out."
"No shit," House spat back. "Tell me something I don't already know."
"Okay. You're in love with her."
A sort of helpless resignation dropped over House's face, and one corner of his mouth twitched slightly. "Yeah, I know that too."
Wilson sat back, absorbing this new information. He'd almost expected House to deny it, but the man treated it as if it was common knowledge. Calling House on his attraction was one thing. Offering unsolicited dating advice was something else. Hanging out with them and watching House grab her hand when he thought no one was watching, was something else again. But hearing House admit that he loved some one? He had figured he'd be old and grey before those words ever passed House's lips.
"Shouldn't you be happier about that?" he asked.
The power of those blue eyes bored into him for a second before flickering out. House blinked and rolled his eyes; a trick that gave him time to bring his shields up again.
"Right. Because being in love with a woman who's falling apart is such a heady trip," he said with mock cheerfulness. Then, suddenly dead serious, "I'll save happiness for later."
"You don't know how to help her."
"Again, with the information I'm already familiar with," House sniped.
"Well I'm sure she's not doing it to spite you," Wilson sniped back, a spark of annoyance flaring. "Or maybe she is. You know, the world does revolve around you."
House just stared at him before letting his head droop and staring at the cane he now had balanced on his knees.
"Sorry." Wilson was always one to feel guilty, even without cause.
"If it weren't for this fucking leg…" House muttered. If he was healthy and whole she could have beat him in her sleep and he wouldn't have made a sound.
"She would have found another excuse, Greg. It's her, not you. You know that, right? This is her way of protecting both of you and proving she still has some control over her life."
House looked up and eyed Wilson, suspiciously. "You been researching psych cases?"
Wilson shrugged and his mouth curved into a self-deprecating smirk. "No. Julie's addicted to the Lifetime network. It's impossible not to pick up a few things."
House nodded and refrained from shooting off any humorous insults.
"Things are bound to get better again after the trial," Wilson tried to sound hopeful.
"Yeah. I just don't think I can wait that long."
The trial started on Wednesday. Cameron got the call early that morning that she would be expected in court the next day at ten a.m. Mrs. Drake died an hour later.
She went into a grand mal seizure and then experienced a heart attack. They worked for twenty minutes to bring her back and then House called it at eleven thirty-seven. They still didn't know what underlying condition had caused all of her symptoms. She was the first patient they'd lost in over a month and as usual, House retreated to his office, pulled the blinds, slipped on his headphones and stared at the now-useless file. Foreman volunteered to take a shift in the clinic, Chase disappeared to the lab, and Cameron sat at her desk staring at the screensaver on her computer, contemplating the wording of a condolence letter and refusing to think about the trial. Refusing to think about the fact that the person she wanted to have holding her and telling her that everything… patient deaths and rapists and pitying jurors… everything would be all right, was sitting on the other side of the wall.
She felt as if she hadn't really seen him in almost a week despite the fact that they'd had dinner together almost every night and sat through two movies on Saturday afternoon. She spent the time acting as if everything was perfect and he followed her lead and did the same, but as soon as dinner was finished or the movie ended, she made her excuses and drove back across town to her apartment. She could be strong during the day, but it was asking too much for her to carry that strength into the night, and she couldn't let herself hurt him again. She'd get better after the trial. After the trial things could go back to normal. Damn, she hated this. She hated feeling like she'd taken five giant steps backwards. She hated that after almost two months with only sporadic thoughts of the bastard she refused to name in her head, she was back to having night terrors.
Half an hour later she was stills staring at a swirling pattern of colors and hadn't typed a word. She turned off her computer, stood up and crossed to House's office. A soft tap on the door and then she let herself in. He was sitting with his face buried in a medical textbook but he looked up when she entered. The hard look in his eyes dulled a bit and he tilted his head, motioning her in.
"What's up?" They seemed like nice safe words.
"Nothing," she replied, affecting a light tone that she didn't feel at all. "It's only four, but we don't have another patient and Dr. Cuddy seems to have everything covered down in the clinic. I thought I'd head home."
"What about dinner?" A not very subtle invitation.
She shook her head. "Not tonight, okay? With everything… and tomorrow…"
"I'm still picking you up at nine thirty?" He posed it as a question, even though it really wasn't one. He'd told her that he was going to court with her and she hadn't even attempted to argue about it.
"Nine thirty is fine," she answered, following up with a little sigh. "I'm…"
"Don't apologize," he practically barked out. He took a breath. "It's almost over," he continued, a bit calmer.
She raised her eyebrows and a wry grin slipped into place and just as quickly away. "That's what I keep telling myself."
He hoped that his expression was somewhat supportive looking, but he felt like it was probably some half-assed, half-stoned look. Nevertheless, Cameron approached him and gave him a little kiss on the cheek before hurrying out of the office. He bent back over his textbook and didn't watch her go.
Seven o'clock rolled around and he was still at the hospital. He wasn't interested in spending another night home alone, wondering what Cameron was doing half a city away. When he finally did get into his car he sat in it for a full five minutes before putting the key in the ignition and when he sped out of the garage he was not heading towards his townhouse.
When Cameron got home, she immediately showered and changed into soft cotton pajamas. Fifteen minutes after that she was picking at a microwave dinner, watching mindless television and waiting for sound that would tell her that her coffee was finished brewing. She flipped through fifty channels before stopping on the news and tossing the remote to the other end of the sofa. She was going to give herself attention deficit disorder at this rate.
A loud beep emanated from the kitchen and she wearily stood up and set her plate on the coffee table. She was in the middle of the dining room when another sound reached her ears. Knocking. Wood against wood. She bit her lip and squared her shoulders. Whatever this was, it wasn't going to be pretty.
She opened the door and House was there, cane raised in one hand, eyes staring resolutely into her face.
"I was just eating," she said.
"That's all right. I'm not hungry."
"House. Please… go home. I can't do this right now."
"What happened to you… happened to you. But this…" his gesture encompassed everything. "This is happening to us. I'm not there for a whole hell of a lot of people, Allison. I'm here for you. Now are you going to let me in or are you going to push me down the stairs?"
She didn't push him down the stairs.
He passed through the doorway as she backed up, and then his eyes swept over the living room, taking in the pillow and blanket on the sofa.
"New sleeping quarters?" he asked as he heard the door click shut.
"I like having the tv on." And it keeps me from sleeping too deeply.
They stared at each other with an awkwardness that hadn't been part of their relationship for a long time.
"Want something to drink? I just made coffee."
"No thanks. Let's talk."
Jaw set, eyes defiant, she stared up at him. "I let you in. Isn't that enough?"
"You let me in your apartment."
A burst of humorless laughter pushed out of her mouth. "The king of closed-off wants me to open up?"
Her words stung in a way he didn't want to admit, but he ignored it. "Allison, come here." He held out his free arm and waggled his fingers.
She backed up a step. "No."
"Come. Here."
"I said no! I don't want to do this, so just stop it! I can do this… just let me get through this on my own! I don't need help!"
"I don't give a fuck if you need help. I'm sure that you don't. I'm sure that you could toss and turn all night, cry into your pillow, go into court alone tomorrow and come back out again still in one piece. It isn't about needing… it's about wanting. I want to be here for you. If you don't want that, then tell me and I'll hobble out your door and back to my place and you can call me after the trial and we can go back to dating and screwing and never really needing or wanting anything else." He was shouting he realized and Cameron's eyes were wide and grey, her face drained of blood. He lowered his head and stared at the floor while he took two deep breaths. "Otherwise," he said slowly, "otherwise, come here and let me put my fucking arms around you."
The lines across her forehead had deepened into furrows, and she was breathing heavily through her nose, lips still pressed tightly together, but when House held his arm out again, this time she moved towards him instead of away. Three small, slow steps, and one last rush before she was pressing her face against his shoulder, fingers grasping at his half-unbuttoned shirt.
"I hate this! I hate it!" She cried. "Why can't it just be over? I'm tired of thinking about it… tired of talking about it… I don't want to see him again. He'll be sitting there in a suit and tie… staring at me. They'll all be staring at me! Looking at me like I'm helpless and pitiful! Maybe I am… look at me. I'm a wreck. I can't even sleep through the night in my own bed! I can't stop remembering… it feels like it gets clearer every time I dream and I just want to forget about it all!"
House's eyes were closed and he let her talk herself out, holding her a bit tighter every second. One hand pressed between her shoulder blades, and the other at the small of her back, the smooth wood of his cane caught between his palm and her body.
"You're not helpless. You're not weak," he said after her words devolved into tears and then into muffled sniffling and hiccups.
"I hate that too," she said, sounding less upset but bitter.
"What?"
"Making you repeat the same thing to me over and over as if I'm starved for validation."
Where the hell did she come up with that? House decided not to use those exact words. "Aside from your nightmares you've cried on my shoulder exactly three times. Including right now. If you think that's asking too much of me then I guess your expectations of me are even lower than I thought they should be."
Cameron was startled by the tone of his voice. It was a self-loathing she hadn't heard in months. She pulled away slightly and looked up at him. "I didn't mean it like that. I just don't like myself when I'm like this."
"I know," he replied, "but being here is more than an obligation for me. You matter to me. This… we… matter to me," he said, his voice growing rough and trailing off.
She stared into his face for another minute before reaching up and kissing him lightly on the lips. "Watch tv with me until I get sleepy?"
"Planning on kicking me out when that happens?"
"No. Planning on taking you to bed and letting you hold me."
So this is what this feels like.
It was early; very early, and House was staring down at the top of Cameron's head when a word attached itself to what he was feeling. Happy. Not dancing in the street singing a song happy, or Monster Truck happy, or even pulled-one-over-on-Cuddy happy. This was the kind of happy that blocked his throat and pressed against the backs of his eyes. It had been so long since the last time he felt anything that even resembled the emotion that was thrumming through him now, that it had been difficult to place at first. In a corner of his mind he considered that it was fairly twisted to be feeling this kind of happiness when the woman in his arms had struggled out of a nightmare less than five hours earlier, but he couldn't find one cell in his body that would agree to pushing aside the sweet pain in his chest.
Cameron moved slightly and he studied her face for any sign of distress. For the first time, he had been able to soothe her out of her dreams without waking her, and he imagined that the smudges under her eyes were half a shade lighter this morning.
"I never want to get out of this bed," came her soft voice, somewhat muffled in the folds of his t-shirt.
"Neither do I, but eventually someone will come looking for us. Probably Wilson. Possibly Cuddy. Off chance of Foreman. Chase… well, if he's got nothing better to do."
She gave a short laugh and then a sigh. "He actually seemed better this week," she said. "I suppose maybe it's because of the trial." She had tried to keep it all very low-key, but the trial was in the news and this time her name wasn't left out of the reports. Rape victims were apparently more deserving of privacy than victims of attempted murder, and the police had released the fact that she hadn't been raped like the woman Prentis had ended up killing.
"I talked to him," House told her. "We… talked." Then, a second later, "Not about you," he amended.
Cameron smoothed her hand over his chest. "Good. It was getting pretty uncomfortable. I like it when we're all getting along."
"Of course you do. That's because you're such a nice person," he said in a teasing tone of voice.
She slapped him lightly on the stomach but didn't disagree. For another few minutes nothing else was said and then House shifted and a stab of pain went through his leg causing him to wince. Cameron rolled off the bed and groped for his pants which had been tossed on the floor. The tell-tale rattle gave away his pills' location and she fished them out and tossed the bottle to him.
"I think you did that just to get me out of bed," she said as she watched him swallow.
"Yes, I can always rely on your pity for a decrepit old man."
She pursed her lips and gave an exaggerated scowl.
"Go take your shower. I'll make coffee," he said as he eased his legs over the side of the bed.
"What if I told you I don't want to go?" she asked.
House let his eyes wander over her face, settling on her thoughtful eyes. "I'd say, 'Fine. Let's catch a plane to Tahiti.' But you'd never tell me that."
One, two breaths, and then she blinked slowly. "No. I guess I never would."
House was dressed in the clothes from the previous day and coffee was waiting on her bedside table when Cameron emerged from the bathroom with a towel wrapped around her hair and a robe tied snugly around her body. House bent and kissed her forehead in passing before going to the living room to wait for her, somehow knowing that she needed time alone to get herself ready for the day ahead.
A few minutes later, he looked up and saw her standing in the doorway looking uneasy but so determined that it made his hand clench around his cane in sympathy. She wore a black skirt suit with a pale blue blouse, buttoned to the neck. He wondered for a second if she'd worn the same outfit to her husband's funeral, but of course not; that had been years ago. Still, comparisons between the two events ticked through his mind. Cameron, forced to be strong while scrutinized. Then, by family and friends. Now, by total strangers. And him. He imagined she'd looked the same. Beautiful and brave.
"I'm ready," she announced unnecessarily, and he joined her at the door.
They stopped at his place so that he could take a shower and change. This time Cameron was the one waiting in the living room, paging through medical journals and an art book of Joyce Tenneson photographs. She had the same one on her bookshelf. She didn't realize she'd been staring at the same image for five minutes until House's subtle throat-clear pulled her out of her mind. Looking up, she felt her heart seize as she took in the image of House, perfectly dressed in navy suit, white shirt, navy tie. If anyone had asked her why it had that effect on her, she would not have been able to answer in words, only knowing that it had something to do with the way he held himself and the way he was so obviously dressed that way for her benefit; not just as her protector, but as her partner, lover and friend.
"Something wrong? Spot on the jacket?" he asked, making an exaggerated show of looking himself over and giving her time to blink a few times.
"No. You look perfect," she said as she stood up and crossed the room to his side. She grinned as she saw the tiny burgundy Rx symbols that were stitched into the navy silk. "Nice tie."
"Wilson," he said with a smirk. "Apparently he only keeps the tasteless ties for himself." He looked her over and placed a hand lightly at the small of her back. "Still ready?"
"Let's go."
Cameron was feeling much less ready an hour later. It was almost ten-thirty and she still hadn't been called to testify. Instead, she and House were sitting on an uncomfortably hard bench just outside the courtroom, with a bailiff standing beside the door and random people passing by in a continuous stream. The mix of nausea and butterflies in her stomach reminded her of every final exam she'd ever taken multiplied exponentially, and her fingers nervously clutched at her pocketbook when she wasn't rubbing her clammy palms against her thighs.
"You're clenching," House said from beside her. He seemed outwardly calm, but a tiny twitch of his jaw muscle gave him away.
"I always clench," she replied, needing to fall into some familiar banter to try and push down her anxiety.
"You're not the one on trial."
"Then why am I so scared that I think I'll fall over when I stand up?" She was staring straight ahead at the frieze of Washington crossing the Delaware which covered the opposite wall.
House moved a fraction closer to her. "Because you're human," he replied, and then placed his strong left hand over both of hers.
She raised her head and when their eyes met a hundred words passed between them in an instant. House's hand tightened around hers and she started breathing again. People continued to pass by them, some stopping to ask the bailiff which trial was going on inside, some just going from one end of the building to the other. House never moved his hand.
The courtroom doors opened and Cameron swore she felt a blast of ice-cold air hit her face. It had to be the air conditioning, but it still sent goosebumps racing across her flesh.
"Allison Cameron?" Another bailiff, this one standing just inside the courtroom, called her name.
"Oh, God," she murmured under her breath and then she stood up, surprised that she wasn't shaking more, and answered, "Here… I mean, I'm Allison Cameron."
"You've just been called to the stand."
Cameron hadn't noticed that House had stood up next to her, but she noticed when he wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
"Can we have a second?" he asked, gruffly.
"Sir, she's been called."
"A. Second." House repeated, his eyes filling in for the words 'that wasn't really a request'.
The bailiff didn't look pleased but he turned to face away from them while Cameron looked up at House questioningly. He was facing her now, both hands on her shoulders, rubbing a circular pattern with his thumbs even though he knew she could barely feel it through the thick material.
"House?"
"You don't need me here. You don't need me to tell you that you're stronger than the bastard sitting in there, and worth about five hundred of him. You don't need me to tell you that I love you… but I want to." He pulled her close before any more embarrassing emotions could spill from either of them. Then roughly, against her ear, her repeated, "I love you," and left a phantom kiss on her cheek as he pulled away.
Cameron knew that it was cliched and hackneyed and pathetically overdone, but as House pulled away she felt her stomach settle and her strength return. The sound of her footsteps made the bailiff turn around and he gave both of them a stern look before leading Cameron into the courtroom and down the long aisle to the witness box. House passed through the door right after them and yet another bailiff directed him to take a seat but he refused, instead standing against the wall, completely visible from the front of the court.
The witness stand, like in so many courtroom dramas, was slightly raised, and surrounded by heavy oak partitions. Those low walls gave Cameron a sense of security and House's presence gave her peace of mind, and with every breath she felt herself growing calmer. Even when she looked over at the defendant's table and saw Anthony Prentis sitting there, staring at her, she didn't feel the heart wrenching fear she was expecting. He had attacked her. Shot her. Raped and killed another woman. But now he was the one whose life was over and she was still gloriously alive, and feeling more alive with each passing day. That crystalline moment of realization would be the one thing she remembered forever about her time on the stand. Then, ADA Atherton stepped in between Prentis' gaze and her, and the questioning began.
She answered them by rote, looking at Atherton, and sometimes the jury, but mainly seeing past all of them and catching glints of blue from the back wall. Her emotions welled up as she described being shot, but they were honest emotions and she wasn't ashamed any more when a thin veil of tears shadowed her vision for a moment and cracked her voice. As Atherton had suspected, Prentis' lawyer decided against questioning her, and the judge, released her with the standard words 'you may step down'.
Cameron stepped down and kept walking. She had been told that following her testimony, she would be allowed to sit in on the rest of the trial, but she walked past all of the benches and straight towards the door. House was there just a moment before her, and he, not an impersonal bailiff, held the door for her before silently falling into step beside her.
Remaining silent, they walked down the halls of the courthouse, through the metal detectors, through the heavy front doors and down the steps to the sidewalk. Cameron drew in the deepest breath she could ever remember taking, and shrugged out of her jacket. She tilted her head back as House stepped beside her, his mouth curving up almost imperceptibly.
"It's a beautiful day, isn't it?" She said, sunlight washing over her face, eyes turned brightly towards him.
He squinted up at the sky, pale blue with wispy clouds dancing around the sun. "Not bad," he replied, slowly reaching over to curve his hand around hers, "and getting better all the time."
