Disclaimer- He's mine. It's official. Honestly. I have him shackled to the bed. The keys been thrown away. But don't tell anyone. What do you mean the men in white coats are coming to get me?

Chapter 25- All The Way

Taxicab 9.45pm

'See, I'm not a total klutz,' Cameron said on successfully making it onto the back seat of the cab without so much as a suggestion of a slip, trip or nosedive.

'The night is young. You still have to get out of the car. I'll reserve judgement till then.'

'Fine. You do that.'

Having established that it made more sense for her to be dropped home first, Cameron instructed the driver of their respective destinations. And flopped back in the seat, accidentally whipping House with her feather wrap as she did so.

'I'm gonna burn that if I ever actually get my hands on it. What is it? Does it serve a purpose or did some poor ostrich get plucked to within an inch of its life purely to adorn your décolletage and irritate my nose.'

'Actually it's synthetic. So no bird is running around butt naked because of me.'

'I still say burn it. Or give it to Chase. I hear feather boas go down a storm in fetish clubs.'

Cameron laughed out loud. 'He doesn't go to them anymore, it was only something his ex-girlfriend was into.'

House sneered. 'Right. Like he doesn't have a pair of PVC hot pants and knee-high kinky boots in his closet.'

'You'd love to see him in that get-up wouldn't you? '

'Prefer to see it on you.' House flinched, realising his flippant retort hadn't come out quite as he'd intended it to.

'Well, I normally only dig it out for weddings and Bar Mitzvahs, but I could always make an exception for you.'

Hmm, House thought. I got away with it, just. But he realised he was in way too deep with the banter, so much so that even he was taken aback by his next slip of the tongue. 'Well it beats the hell out of inviting me in for a cup of coffee.'

With fortuitous timing, the driver pulled up outside Cameron's home. 'Coffee I have. Cat Woman costume I don't. It's at the dry cleaners. But you're welcome to come in for the former.' She paused, then said dismissively, 'I mean, you don't have to.'

House felt himself lost for words, still wrestling with the image of Cameron in skin-tight PVC. Resulting him in blurting out, 'Sure. Why not?' before he had time to collect his thoughts.

After handing the driver a $20 bill, he followed Cameron up her front steps. Seemingly bored by the brief hold-up whilst she rifled through her purse for the overtly girly key fob, he pressed all 6 buzzers with the tip of his cane.

'What are you doing?'

'Playing.'

'Well don't. I have to live here, I don't want my neighbours thinking I've befriended the local village idiot.'

'Hey! I resent that. Moron yes, idiot no. You know you almost hurt my feelings then.'

'Yeah right!' Cameron unlocked the outer door and deliberately let it go, House prodding it open angrily with his cane. As they made their way up the three flights of stairs, he expressed his annoyance with the lack of any elevators, by running his cane noisily back and forth over the metal stair railings. Cameron turned her head back to face him.

'Will you stop it! It's juvenile and not helpful.'

'That's me summed up nicely. Hey, I'm a cripple, I have issues. I'm allowed to behave irresponsibly and I'm also allowed to get away with it. I know my rights.'

'Shame you don't pay as much heed to your wrongs.' On reaching the apartment door, and slipping the key into the lock she continued, 'Now, are you going to behave yourself?'

House, leaning on his cane wearily, visibly tired by the long hike upstairs, raised his eyebrows. 'Well, I'll try but if I find out you lied to me about the fetish wear, I may not be able to help myself.'

'You're impossible.'

He followed her through the door, keen to check out the apartment more fully than he had been able to on his last visit. He curled his top lip up at the treadmill, a reminder that there were some things in life he would never be able to do. The smell of vanilla still hung heavy in the air. Pastel suede cushions in an orderly formation on the sofa, they hadn't been there the other night. Thankfully. Something else to join the damned wrap on the bonfire, along with all things feathery, fluffy, silky, sparkly or pretty. Other than that, the living room was pretty standard. Neutral, inoffensive. Cameron having disappeared, hopefully to scan the closet, House thought, but much more likely to be found in the kitchen filling the kettle, he made his way towards the full bookcase behind the sofa. He ran a discerning eye over the titles, alphabetically arranged he noted. Medical textbooks. A few airport trash novels, alongside a cluster of self-help books. Hemingway, Sylvia Plath, a leather bound collection of Jane Austen, a compendium of Keats (knew I was on the money with that one, he thought to himself) and numerous dog-eared, cracked spine Nancy Drew paperbacks.

'You're welcome to borrow anything you fancy,' Cameron chirped, having returned with two over-sized mugs of coffee.

'Thought you'd never offer. Swap you two Hardy Boys for one Nancy Drew. I have the whole set at home.'

Cameron perked up. 'Really?'

'Errrr…no. Because I'm no longer thirteen.' He slumped down heavily onto the sofa.

'Can you ever be serious?' Cameron said, annoyed that she'd fallen for his snark-bait yet again.

Burning his top lip slightly, having impatiently made a start on his coffee, he frowned at her, as though she had deliberately made the water hotter than a normal kettle would be able to. 'Hell, I'm as strait-laced and deadpan as a nun in brothel. More so.'

Cameron blinked rapidly, as if to erase the sacrilegious image from her mind. 'Charming!'

'Yep, I'm that too.' He fumbled inside his pocket, hoping he hadn't left his pills at the bar. Relieved to have found them he knocked one back. 'Sorry, am I boring you?'

Cameron had made her way over to the stereo, her back to him. 'No more than usual. I just wanted to put a CD on, I like to unwind by listening to music.'

'Unwind? I didn't even know you were wound up. And I'm willing to bet you own nothing on that rack that could even loosely be classified as music. Bubblegum for the ears yes, proper music no.'

'I'm officially ignoring you. So save your breath.' She flicked through a handful of CD's, before finally opting for Frank Sinatra. Personally she would have chosen Kelly Clarkson, but didn't want to prove him right in his assumption.

As the opening bars of 'Fly Me To The Moon' sounded, House appeared shocked. Sinatra? Cameron? What had she put in the coffee? This SO wasn't her style. 'Please tell me this isn't a Backstreet Boys cover.'

Cameron laughed. 'Sorry. I lent that one to Cuddy!' She looked at his dumbfounded expression. 'What makes you think I'm such a philistine when it comes to music? Just because I like pink and glitter doesn't mean I can't appreciate the finer things in life.'

House was too busy enjoying the music, tapping his fingers in time on the arm of the sofa to really give her comment much consideration. 'Favourite track? Of Sinatra's.'

Without a moment's notice she replied, 'All The Way.'

Which threw House completely, his balance on the perch already compromised from her surprising choice of CD. All The Way was his favourite too. And not just Sinatra, it was a song that he had rated as being the finest by a long way for more years than he cared to recall.

Cameron sat down next to him on the sofa, picking her mug up from the table before doing so. Feeling his gaze firmly planted on her, and unsure as to why, she turned to him. 'What?'

'Nothing.'

'You're staring.'

'I'm not.'

'You are.'

'Not.'

'Right.'

He continued to stare, as the next track kicked in. I Get A Kick Out Of You. Nice. Very apt. "I get no kick from champagne, mere alcohol doesn't thrill me at all. So why should it be true, that I get a kick out of you." Oh crap, he thought. Did she plan this? How do women manage it? Sucking you into their web through the medium of music. Snap out of it Greg. At once. But still he found his full attention was focused on her, absorbing the lyrics and her wistful expression simultaneously.

His already weakened state was enhanced further by the fact that track three was their mutual favourite. Oh holy crap. He could feel it washing over him. The headiness he had felt for her so many times previously- when she'd stared into his eyes with her ever-present righteous determination- when she'd brushed past him casually in the lab, unaware of the effect a mere swish of starched lab coat against his thigh could have on him- when she'd looked forlornly at him after his double-whopper with cheese lie about him not liking her, her shoulders drooping before his very eyes before she'd wandered aimlessly away from him down the corridor. As the lyrics unfolded, he felt himself sinking into the second verse. With velvety tones heavy in his ears, it happened. Just like that. Kissed her. Unplanned. Spontaneously. Roughly.

And if that wasn't enough to shake him to his very core, even more alarmingly, he wasn't met with resistance. In fact, Cameron's response was as far from resistance as was humanly possible. Perhaps, as a result, he didn't pull away as quickly as he should have. And when he did, jolted back to reality by Frankie belting out That's Life as though his life depended on it, he was thrown. Completely. Emotions, too varied and diverse for his overloaded brain to process. He saw her startled expression, her smudged lipstick confirmation that he hadn't just imagined the last thirty seconds. Leaving him with no choice to make a hasty (ish) escape to the bathroom. Foot and cane tripping over one another in his urgency. Closing the door and leaning back against it heavily, he closed his eyes and prayed.