A/N: Ok, I am at a point where the ending is already written. I just have to come up with the stuff in between. Won't be long, so bear with me…
CHAPTER 15
Evening finds her in the kitchen filled with soft light, cooking her own dinner. Simple vegetable stuff, nothing heavy or sophisticated. Automatic nod toward the microwave when that stops with a loud drrrring. She wipes her hand in her apron. Her hair tied in a tight pony-tail. Her posture, as usual, proud, yet as far of what one might call opportunistic as it can be. Only her merest gestures betray something unfitting the tiny speck of humankind called Alison Cameron. Her face, flawless and bearing the marks of long, insomniac weeks, is turned over the dish, and her senses concentrate on the most mundane issue she could come up with: eating.
As she sits down to consume her frugal meal without an appetite, she remembers how he enjoys his own meals, munching away like a ten-year old kid, really giving it all, appeasing the angry gods of hunger. A smile creeps onto her face as she pushes the plate aside. Again, like on the numerous evenings that have ensued that certain one, she succumbs to her instincts that tell her, well, what she has known for two years.
She cannot be taken up with anything other than him. Work, work is good. Her mind focuses on sickness and the different cures to what ends a human life. She considers it a charitable deed to save people, and it is only when she sees someone get better that she feels lighter. Apart from that, she is lead, dark, heavy, trailing with difficulty on the mucuous tracks of time. In fact, she feels time is so slow that she actually traveled back to her fifth grade. Big, bulky boy, whatshisname, whatever, feared by everyone in class, secretly adored by tiny, freckled Alison. He bullies her like everybody else. Yet her gigantic eyes don't fill with tears, but with adamant admiration, growing every day. She frowns, remembering those days… She wonders whatever happened to that boy. Aside from being reincarnated as Gregory House. Sighing, she leans back to her couch. She is at a point where accepting her own actions is out of the question. Loving him would be wrong. Hating him would kill her. Giving him up would steal life from her. Punishing him, as shown ever since he had left her apartment, would not work.
She had contemplated his words, oh how many times, struggling to make them sound ok. So what if he wanted her that badly? So what if he finds her attractive? She keeps thinking of herself as someone else, a stranger who seeks advice on those ridiculous help lines, opening herself up to the whole world, wallowing in pain and enjoying all the attention she can muster. After all, what could be better than collective empathy? She settles comfily against the soft fabric and watches herself. What would she advise, were she not herself?
Boredom slowly seeps through the curtains of the night. The only place she had rather be in, she can't even think about. He is shunning her, avoiding her, dodging her, like in fifth grade. Only an occasional glare and a frown tells her that he registers her physical presence. His mouth only spits up orders and medical queries. Not even the familiar, and, funnily enough, sadly missed nasty remarks alleviate her solitude when she is next to him.
She had been a good fuck, that's all. Nothing more. Time to face it, lass.
……………………….
She had been his glimmer of light, his ray of warmth, his sunny countenance, his softness of touch and his soulful contentment. The drink goes down and scorches his throat, but he welcomes the feeling. His guts are more and more familiar with the burning of alcohol; in fact, he misses his usual two or three drinks a night, if he drops in exhausted and is too lazy to limp down to the shop at the corner and buy the stuff. In his lucid moments, such as this one, he starts realizing that he is becoming an alcoholic. It all started with a drink on that fateful evening. And then, another. And then, a third one. By the fifth one his left leg didn't hold him any longer, so he fell onto the carpet and hummed himself to sleep.
The next day, a colossal hangover kept him from bugging everyone at work. He avoided people as much as he could, and he tried to stay away from the one person that had become his obsession. Without success. Their meeting was one gargantuan embarrassment, she cold as ice, he terribly clumsy, not knowing what to do or not to do. They ended up not saying a word to each other for days. By the time she was strong enough to lift her eyes up to meet his, he had pulled himself together and was as impassable as on his worst days, only more so. She saw it fit to keep silent. He saw it fit to act like a jerk.
Ahh, drink… soothing, balmy, intoxicating… heh… funny, funny me… he gurgled into his empty glass. His phone lay next to his hand, if he extended his fingers a little, his index touched the metallic cover. He could call her, of course. The possibility floated in the room like the sweet scent of summer rain, and he floated with it, knowing that he could fall back on it anytime. Lift, press, wait, talk. Simple gestures. Would change so much.
But right now he doesn't need to do anything at all. Just lying there is bliss, with the room turning and the objects flying around like crazy. He is away, away from what he had been… some time before. Memories are not clearly stacked up like they used to be; his head is a jungle in which he gets lost each time he tries to dwell on anything too much. Remembering is the worst. Dragging out the drawers of his mind, full of stuff he had been trying to get rid of for good.
Oh, how divine she felt… desire flashes in, he sees her nipples, her face, his manhood craves to be inside her once more. He fights against it, the last speck of decency in him yelling how wrong it all is, but then he relinquishes the doubt, and his hand starts moving up and down inside his pants. Release is quick, languid. His breathing is hardly quickened, his eyes search for confirmation in the dark room. He had done it. Again.
He feels pathetic. He knows he is becoming everything he despises in people: whiny, helpless, insincere. The changes occurring within him are beyond his reach, despite his belief that he is capable of anything. He is slowly losing it, losing it all. And why? Because he feels powerless against… against a young, beautiful, strong, gentle woman. As he plays the thought in his mind, he starts laughing at himself in the darkness. Wilson was so right: he has it, he has it bad. He is up to his neck in slime, or whatever they call it… love or something. He knows he should get out, wash it all off, get back to what he was. But funny thing is, as he tries to flip himself over, and fails, he realizes he loves the warmth of it, the fuzziness of the emotional bliss and pain combined, the sweet suffering, the hurtful anticipation of that… that something, which comes eventually. What is it? He racks his brain in vain. He feels a heavy drowsiness weigh down on his whole body, and he abandons himself to it. Sleep, merciful sleep comes, and as he drops off, all his limbs tingling with alcohol and dreaming, he pulls his arm under his head and imagines it is her slender body.