A/N - thanks for the feedback for part 1 - it was much appreciated.
The Diagnostician
She's like salt in his wounds – a sharp, clean sting, which can still take his breath away. The counterpoint of pleasure and pain is hedged in by the irony that she was, at least in part, responsible for those wounds in the first place.
Her rules and limits are a constant source of torment – the analogy 'a bitter pill' rattles around in his head when he thinks about her. But his relationship with pills is the most significant in his life, so he is reluctant to equate his love hate relationship with Vicodin to the way he feels about her.
The tight suits and low cut blouses, the sway of her hips and the way her legs look in heels are decent enough compensations – but the material for his fantasies doesn't entirely off set her role as his own, personal demon. Of course, it goes without saying that his own, personal demon would be hot as hell and that he'd leap at the chance to screw her – if he could leap.
She's nothing at all like Cameron – keeping her idealism firmly in check, only rarely allowing things to get personal, fighting dirty when she has to. And sometimes she's a little too like Stacy – determined, sceptical, more than capable of arguing her corner, seldom surprised by the lengths he goes to. Yet really she isn't like Stacy at all, because Stacy left.
He likes her willingness to fight back. He thinks she realises that their sparring is one of the few things he allows himself to enjoy, although neither of them will ever admit that. His favourite moments are those when he walks away, having got the last word, leaving her open-mouthed in shock by something outrageous he has said.
Of course, she's competitive enough to refuse to let him get the last word every time and he's not stupid enough to fail to appreciate the way she looks when she wins. The glittering eyes, tiny smirk, the added sway to her hips are images that imprint themselves on his brain, revisiting him at the most inconvenient moments. In a hospital full of people he mostly ignores, she has an irritating ability to make him notice her.
He finds it amusing that his colleagues so readily believe the fiction that at some point they slept together. Which isn't to say that it won't become a reality, someday. He thinks about that in terms of 'when' not 'if' and the tension shimmers between them like the air on a hot day.
He has been fanning the flames of the rumour – without really thinking about the consequences. It's interesting that she hasn't called him on it, hasn't told him to shut the hell up,that her response is to watch him with an enigmatic expression. It's interesting that she has started spending time with Wilson behind the closed blinds of her office. It's even slightly interesting that he minds.
He thinks she's too careful to get drawn into an affair. Which isn't to say she's immune to Wilson's charms – it's more that he doesn't believe she would be comfortable with the aftermath and he's not even sure that James would be.
But, if James wants her what then? He isn't sure what he'd do in that situation. He could step aside, like good friend. Or would a 'good friend' make the point that a married man should probably avoid getting involved with his boss? He could make a move himself, transform that theoretical 'when' into an actual one and tell himself he was doing it to protect James. But that wouldn't be entirely true. He isn't good at doing things for other people – not even for James.
He wants her – which is a complicated, difficult admission. When he closes his eyes he can see her, sprawled in his bed, hair a hopeless tangle, body limp from pleasure and probably about to say something sarcastic.
He sighs, fishes a bottle out of his pocket and swallows a pill, all the time thinking that now he has clarified the diagnosis, there is really only one cure for the malady that ails him.
Physician, heal thyself.