A hyperbaric chamber is a sealed clean room used for treating burns, gangrene, embolisms, and sorta-okay lungs. It creates a pressurized environment that forces pure oxygen into the patient's bloodstream, so, instead of about twenty percent oxygen, the patient receives upwards of one hundred.

It's also quiet, and a good place to think through a major, injury-related headache.

I rubbed my jaw, disgruntled about having submitted and shaved that morning, because now I didn't have my ultra-sexy stubble and, with my lucky charm gone, my day had completely blown. I had sat in my office, popped a couple painkillers to combat the really, really insistent, fist-shaped pain source on my face. Then, since God needed a giggle, Cameron had called me for a consult only because she 'suspected' a tumor in a clinic patient. While I was there, Cuddy had conveniently stopped by to remind me of my utter lack of patients and the backlogged Clinic hours I still owed. God, I hate hypochondriacs with overactive acne (they tend to think it's a plague of boils, and I'm not saying any more about that).

Alright. Let's think this over. I told Jimmy that I loved him, and he punched me. Not the best reaction, granted, but at least he hadn't shanked me or something stupid and irresponsible like that, since my Jimmy is far from irresponsible and isn't stupid all the time. Maybe now he could simmer down and start to realize how much he actually didn't want to kill me. That would be marvelous.

Still, he didn't believe me, which meant that I was stuck sitting on my hands until we had a (shudder) heart-to-heart talk about staying friends or not. Which absolutely sucked since I'm not the type to stay quiet about anything. Contrary to what I had said to Cameron and Chase, I do kiss and tell. Bragging is half the fun of actually kissing, after all. It doesn't count if no one says congratulations, or at least that horrified look of repression.

Damn you, Wilson. I feel like you hit with something red and made of clay. What're those things called? Bricks, someone in the back of my mind supplied. Oh, right, bricks. I knew that. I'd just turned into an idiot ever since I had started looking for some guy that used to be my best friend.

Damn, damn, damn. Me and my big mouth. Someone fetch me a gun. This was why I invented nurses, after all.

All because I was addicted to Jimmy.

The door opened, but it was only to the outer chamber, so it only made my ears pop a little bit. I kept my eyes closed as I lay stretched out on the little cot, really, really hoping that it wasn't who I knew it was.

"Cuddy wants you to know that it's stupid to schedule a patient with a broken leg for a hyperbaric treatment," Dr. James Wilson said. I cringed.

"Well, since it turns out the patient doesn't need it, I decided not to waste the reserved time."

"You knocked other people off the list to sit in here and angst?"

"I wonder why I should have cause to angst?" I finally opened my eyes to glare at him, but he had his eyebrows raised, in an almost-neutral expression. "Get out of here. You have the day off."

He scratched the back of his neck, making him look absolutely adorable, and chuckled. "I didn't want to go back to your apartment after I hit you, so I was hanging out in my office. Cuddy found me and asked me to 'reason with him, for God's sake.'" The studied way he kept his voice level made me laugh, and I laboriously pulled myself into a sitting position, opposite form where he at on the medic's stool. We were almost touching heads, so small was the space.

"Yeah, she totally wants me."

He got quiet, as though he had just thought, 'Speaking of, House said he loved me.' Oh yeah. He's really getting better at hiding his emotions. (Not.)

I spared him from having to say anything more by leaning down until I was in his field of vision, though I must have looked comical. "So, in other news, are we still friends?" At the very least?

He chuckled, at how childish I was acting, probably, and said, "Of course."

"But not the same as before." My mouth curved in spite of myself at the parallel conversation.

"No, not like before."

I ached to ask what I really wanted to know. Is there any possibility of being more than friends? But there are things that you don't ever, ever say.

Besides, I had the terrible feeling that I knew the answer already.

As I straightened up in my seat, he sighed, looking for another subject. "So, are you going to sit in here for much longer? It'll damage your lungs."

"I don't see any point in angsting if you're going to insist on interrupting my thoughts," I responded, anticipating the question.

He pressed the button to depressurized the little white chamber, and I laughed as he held his nose to clear his ears. "You know, there's a much more dignified way of doing that."

"What?" He still had his nose pinched, though, so it came out as, 'Wagn?'

"Press your tongue to the back of your throat, like you're yawning. It works."

I suddenly flashed on the image of pressing him back against the wall and demonstrating by placing his tongue exactly where I wanted it to be, but I shoved it out before I really had time to process it. Not the time or place.

So he tried again and got it, and he laughed a little until he saw that I wasn't joining in. "Greg?"

I shivered. "Let's go, before the time is up."

He opened the door, letting himself out and reaching to take my cane as I shuffled through with difficulty.

"You know, everyone is saying that you have a girlfriend now," he mentioned, as if in passing.

I answered quickly, "I didn't want to explain how my best friend had managed to convince me of the impossible."

He grinned, and finished, "…It's either a girlfriend or a 'clingy hooker'." As I dredged up the memory of the excuse I had used, he stepped closer. "You really can't pull off a tie, can you, House?"

As he easily unknotted and removed some of the evidence that he had spent the nightin my apartment, I wanted to laugh at the thought. Again, it wasn't the time or place.

Before we left the room, I turned back and looked at the lifeless white chamber. Things could have gone differently, if I had had the balls to say some things and do others.

But it will never be the time or place.

A/N: The end...?

Mmm, it's unlikely. That would just be cruel, right? (maniacal laughter) But still, I kind of want to keep this up until thirteen chapters. For, uh...no reason. Heehee. Anyway, what do you vote? Is it good as it is, or shall I continue the torture? Be forewarned, it might not be satisfying to have the emotions remain unresolved, but it is how I think their friendship is really seated. If I continue, the tension will start, and, for another six chapters, it won't come to anything.

Possibly. I'm not responsible enough to write the chapters in advance. (Heh, I don't even have a plotline for this story. I just wait until I'm inspired by something.)

If you're wondering how I pulled a hyperbaric chamber out of the sky, I just got back from an engineering camp, and I was poking around the deep-sea diving area. Lo and behold, a white thing was just begging to be questioned. I asked so many questions, I think I gave the poor guy whiplash...