Hello. Well, I got four reviews, and they were chunky and positive, and there was much rejoicing on my part, and that's why I've posted the next chapter. (That's not true. I'd be posting this if the only people who had access to it were - like- polar bears, so, yeah.)

Quick note. I write things all in one go. I wrote this all in one go and was going to post it as such, but it'd get shoved out of the top fingy in about four hours by the angst and I'd be sad. So it's in chapters, about ten or fifteen (though no promises). They flow together a lot because I suck, so it's best to read the last part of the chapter before when you start the first part of - oh, you'll figure it out.

It was nice to be out on the road with a prettier car than anyone else's, and despite his mood House felt a trace of good humour returning. As it did, the headache faded. About time, he thought vaguely, outrunning a four-wheel drive on the highway.

He even managed to make it through the clinic without Cuddy jumping on him and shouting at him about the clinic, and to his office without Wilson tracking him down to lecture him about – well, whatever it was that he was doing immoral.

He flopped at his desk and amused himself with bouncing his ball against the glass wall and irritating Foreman, who appeared to be trying to do some paperwork before work started. Paperwork. It'd been a while since House saw any of that being actually worked on. Usually it just got carried around and looked at now and again.

What the hell did you do to paperwork, anyway?

Ah, well, it didn't matter. The nagging headache had faded into nothingness and nothing dramatic was happening. Or annoying, or depressing, or disturbing. Weird day.

"House?"

Cameron was at the door and she was holding a box. House eyed it warily.

"What?"

"Don't be angry."

"I've never ever liked anything anyone said after saying that," House warned her. She crossed the floor despite his glowering, and dropped the box on his desk. It meowed. There was a sudden stab of pain right behind his eyes and he had a sudden foreboding that this had happened before. Again. But unlike déjà vu, this time he knew what was coming next. That was –

" – a kitten," Cameron concluded. She'd apparently been talking all this time. Fancy that. Wait a minute.

"What, here? What do you want me to do with it?" he demanded. She opened the box.

"The kitten's cuteness is not going to win me ov- aww," he ended, somewhat inarticulately, as a tiny ball of ginger fluff with wide blue eyes was revealed in the bottom of the box. Cameron beamed at him.

"Isn't he sweet? I got him to raise morale here."

"Ooochy bookie snookums," House crooned to the kitten, inserting a finger into the box. The kitten bit it savagely, seeming to pull House out of some kind of trance. He shook his head violently as the headache crept back.

"What the hell?" he demanded. "Why was I just talking like that?" Cameron looked somewhat defeated.

"I thought the kitten's cuteness might have won a way through your tough exterior to the soft-hearted man that's really under-"

"What have you been smoking, and why didn't you share it with me?" House demanded, sucking on his bleeding finger and giving Cameron a baleful look. She stammered a bit, before he rose to his feet and limped out of the office. His headache faded as he left Cameron and the kitten behind.

"Geez," he muttered, flopping down into the chair near Foreman. The neurologist looked up at him over the file, and House peered at it.

"What're you doing?"

"Paperwork."

"Oh."

There was a long silence in the room.

"... Anyway, nice talking to you," House said uneasily. "I have to – go." He moved out of the room, feeling somewhat awkward. Behind him, Foreman rolled his eyes and muttered something about being ignored and neglected that would have made no sense even if House had heard it.

His headache was back.