Five variations on the turning-point of the House/Cameron relationship. Emphasis on S2.
I
"I don't pay you to sit around," he says. "I needed those results twenty minutes ago."
It could start like this.
She peers down a microscope, hair frizzing out of her ponytail, a sign of her fatigue from a long and taxing work day.
"These things take time," she responds, and she isn't able to keep all the annoyance out of her voice.
She hopes he'll leave, but she knows he can't resist pushing her buttons. She is a puzzle he is forever trying to solve, and she knows he's recognized an opportunity as she hears his uneven step padding into the lab.
"They do take time," he says, and she realizes that he's standing right next to her. "But not this long. Maybe you had yourself a nice cry over the centrifuges before you began the test?"
She draws herself away from the microscope then, and her exasperated gaze is tired. "Fine," she concedes. "I had to run the test again. I wanted to make sure."
His eyes are darting around the lab, and finally come back to rest on one of her errant curls. "You ran the test again." Accusatory.
She scrubs a tired hand over her eyes. "I made a mistake," she admits. "I screwed up halfway through and I had to start over. Happy? Human error; everyone's capable of it." She is entirely too defensive. "Everyone is allowed to make mistakes sometimes."
"That why you slept with Chase?"
When she speaks, he concentrates on the circles under her eyes, the pallor of her skin, the bite mark on her lower lip from her bad habit of nervous, worried chewing.
"It was a mistake," she replies, turning back to the microscope and hoping he'll leave it at that. She knows her hope is foolish.
His hand closes around her arm and pulls her away from the equipment. "Is this your new protocol?" he continues, refusing to leave her alone. "Who's next? Foreman? Wilson? Is Cuddy on the list?" His fingers trail a path up her arm. "When's my turn, Cameron?"
Her brow crinkles and her lips part. "What?"
His fingers continue their journey up her arm before darting horizontally to cup one of her breasts. "When is the damaged girl going to fuck me to make herself feel better?" His lips drop to her ear and his voice dips lower. "Because I could use a good hard one, and I don't feel like spending the money."
She pulls away and steps back. Her eyes are fury and her breathing enraged. A nipple presses out from the fabric of her blouse, but that's not something she can voluntarily control.
"Go to hell," she spits, and walks out of the lab.
II
He watches through tired eyes as she flits about the conference room, getting it ready for the day.
It could start like this, too.
The sound of her washing out the coffee pot and filling it with fresh water is entirely too loud for his liking, and he groans loudly.
She pauses in her busywork and walks into his office, a few errant drops of water sliding down the outside of the glass pot she still holds in her hand.
"I didn't know you were here," she says. "Your lights were off."
He groans again, this time at the volume of her voice. Through the slotted blinds he cannot close any further, the morning grows brighter, forcing sunlight through thin slits. "Yeah," he replies, and his voice is quiet, rasping. "I like the dark."
Her brow crinkles in thought, but he cannot see it. He can only hear her voice, now little more than a whisper. "Are you hung over?"
"Did it take you four years of medical school to learn how to diagnose that, or are you just that smart?" Much of the bite of his statement is lost from the necessity of a quiet voice. "Is the coffee done?"
"I haven't started," she replies.
He closes his eyes and carefully leans back in his chair. "Then why are you still here?"
She hears her exasperated huff as her heels click back out into the conference room to continue her morning routine. His ears perk as the coffee does, and several minutes later he can smell the brew. He can hear the sound of coffee filling the mug, and it is entirely too loud. As is the clicking of her arriving heels.
She thrusts the coffee into his reaching hand, and a few drops fall onto his skin, leaving small red welts. For her part, she leans against the door, stirring her coffee.
"Are you going to tell me why you were drunk?" she asks, and her voice, while still low, is disbelieving, as though she knows that he'll refuse her with a snide comment, sending her out of the room.
He isn't sure why he tells her. Maybe it's the hangover, maybe it's the pain from his scalded hand -- or his throbbing leg -- maybe it's just that he's bored and wants to stir something up.
"The pills aren't working as well anymore," he says, "and Cuddy's banned me from the hospital's supply of morphine."
"I'm not getting any for you," she says, cautious.
"I'm not asking you to."
She looks at him for a moment, and discreetly sniffs at the air. "So you're thinning your blood with alcohol to try and alleviate the pain." She raises her chin in acknowledgement. "Given that you wore that same shirt yesterday, I'm guessing that you probably did it here."
He pinches at his eyes before blinking rapidly, trying to clear his head. "That's about the long and the short of it, yeah."
Her eyes burn into his skin -- and he can feel it -- and his headache intensifies.
"How the mighty hath fallen," she says, and there is more to her words that he will realize, later, when he is alone.
III
"I thought I'd find you here," he says, using the hook of his cane to pull out the chair across from her. "You're quite predictable."
It could start like this.
He plucks a crouton from her sickly-looking salad and crunches it between his teeth. "Do you understand that when you're at this hospital, you're subject to my rules?"
She spears wilting lettuce onto her fork and fixes him with a glare. "I'm on my lunch break," she replies, and her tone is almost snide. It is not an attractive color on her.
He crunches on another crouton. "We're having a conference over lunch. You need to get back upstairs."
Her eyes track Chase as he enters the cafeteria, a nurse hanging on his right arm.
"You never said anything," she says, and turns her attention back to her dying salad.
"I'm telling you now," he replies. "You need to get back upstairs."
"I'll go back when my lunch break is over," she says, taking a final bite of salad.
He lightly raps the handle of his cane lightly against the edge of the table. "Does your sudden refusal to obey my orders have something to do with Foreman?"
She glares at him, but whether it's because he's hit upon a still-sore subject or because he's just stolen her drink, she isn't quite sure.
"You can blame me," he says, his lips moving to close around her straw, "if it would make you feel better."
"You should have read that article." She stabs at her ailing salad a bit too forcefully, and a plastic tine breaks off of her fork, hiding amidst limp leaves. She pushes her plate away from her.
His lips pulled into a sardonic grin around the straw. "You don't get it, do you?"
Her brow furrows. "Get what?"
"Why you're angry. You really don't understand why you're angry."
Her throat is dry, and her eyes fall on her stolen drink. She refuses to bend to his level, and she will not ask for an explanation. Maybe she knows that she never really has to, with him; his ego panders only to itself. That somehow, she knows he'll talk, whether she wants him to or not.
"You're angry," he says, "because you think you're a good judge of character, and you can't help hating that you might be wrong. That your ability to judge people is extremely lacking."
Her eyes dart to Chase eating lunch, to the nurse laughing at something he's said.
"You think I can't read people?" she asks, and her voice is low and dangerous. "You think you're the only one who can?"
He smirks, and she comes undone.
"Because let me tell you what I see right now," she continues. "I see a man who is still so obsessed with his own misery that he goes out of his way to make everyone else miserable as well. I see a man who would lie about a lunchtime conference to watch the growing rift between two of his employees, simply for his own entertainment. I see a man who cares nothing about his employees, as long as they stay close and loyal...so much so that he refuses to meet his expected responsibilities outside of diagnostics. And I see a man who is brilliant, and knows it, and is condescending to everyone surrounding him, including his best -- and as far as I can tell, only friend."
She pushes herself to her feet and adds, "Am I anywhere close?"
Before he has the chance to open his mouth -- in shock, in righteous indignation, she does not care -- she hisses, "I have work to do," and stalks out of the cafeteria before he has the chance to open his mouth.
IV
She places a scotch on the bar and slides into the seat next to him.
It could start like this, as well.
He raises his head to look at her, and somehow, he doesn't have the energy to sneer, to make her leave. So he lets her stay.
"I saw Chase's tallying on the whiteboard," she says, sipping from her own drink. Vodka tonic, he thinks. Or maybe it's gin. He's not close enough to smell.
"I suppose that any day I can tie with God is a good day," he sneers, and lifts the glass of scotch up in acknowledgement. "Thanks."
"Do you believe in God?" Her question is surprisingly light, especially considering her penchant for soul-bearing conversations.
"We've been over this already," he says, "a long time ago."
She shrugs and sips at her drink. "People change."
Her words are a trap and he knows it. "What about you? Your idealism would naturally dictate that you believe in a higher power."
She shakes her glass and the tower of ice falls back into the remaining liquid. A tiny smile pulls at her lips. "We've been over this already," she parrots. "Do I believe in some sort of benevolent form dictating every aspect of my life? No, I don't. But I do believe that not everything is under our own control."
"Destiny?" he drawls, sipping from the scotch.
"Maybe," she says, and finishes her drink. "But probably not. I just think that there are some things in our lives that are completely out of our control. Whether it's in the hands of God or of other people, I don't know. My money's on other people. And chance."
"Chance." His question lies in his statement.
She nods. "Chance," she repeats. "I took a chance coming over here in the first place. But it's more than that. I rarely come to this bar, and when I do, I'm with Chase and Foreman. I came alone tonight and I ran into you."
"And you're saying that's not destiny?" he mocks. "Fate?"
She shakes her head. "It's the chaos factor," she states. "The lurking variable. It shows up in the final result, but you can't control for it."
Her eyes track the bartender who grabs her empty glass. He finishes his scotch, and orders another round for them. He gives the bartender a twenty and waves away his change.
He shifts in his chair to face her more fully. Gesturing with his drink as she sips at hers, he says, "You say that things aren't in your control. Was your employment in this department due to chance?"
Her lips pull into a mockery of his knowing smirk. "I'd like to think it was my impressive resume, but it's more likely due to my impressive rack."
He narrows his eyes at her and scoffs, taking a drink of the scotch, letting it burn down his throat.
She traces a manicured finger over the edge of her glass as she studies him. Finally, she speaks.
"I think you see me as your chaos factor," she says. "Chase and Foreman you can handle, and you can even predict part of me. But you're still trying to figure me out," she says, "and I think it scares you that you can't define me completely. That you can't control for my presence, my actions, in whatever you do. But you're forgetting something."
He drums the fingers of one hand across the top of the bar, only once. "Tell me."
"The factor of choice," she says. "Not everything is out of our control. All you have to do is make an effort to obtain it. Try talking to me. Take tonight; this wasn't entirely unpleasant, was it?"
He says nothing. Unprompted, she leans in and brushes a quick kiss on his forehead. She is there and gone before he even realizes.
The only thing she's left behind is an open offer, a half-empty drink, and the phantom presence of her lips.
V
The knock surprises her, and she unfolds herself from the couch to open the door. He is there, in all his unshaven, tattered glory, leaning a forearm on the doorframe.
His eyes dart down her slim figure, and back up, taking in her casual dress. Her favorite jeans -- long over-worn, with soft and fraying denim. There is a small hole right above the left asscheek, but she knows to be careful with her positioning.
He looks at the hallway, inside her apartment, anywhere but at her. "Can I come in?"
She steps aside and watches him enter, closing the door behind him. He takes in her barely-touched glass of wine, her abandoned book. Her voice, sounding quietly behind him.
"Can I get you something to drink?"
He turns, meets her questioning gaze, and holds it.
"Do you ever wonder what we would be like, Cameron?" he asks.
She draws an abortive breath. "What do you mean?"
His eyes narrow in speculation. "The sex," he says. "I know you've thought about it."
Despite herself, she can feel her skin flush, and she is fairly certain that he can see it. For she has thought about a great many things regarding this man, and her body has always been honest.
"Sometimes," she answers, and her voice is quiet. She somehow finds the courage -- or perhaps the nerve -- to meet his eyes. "Do you?"
He taps his cane once, twice, three times on the floor in rapid succession. His gaze does not waver under her strengthening eyes. He takes two awkward steps forward, snakes an arm around her waist and pulls her flush against his body. His lips capture hers, hard and rough.
He pulls back some time later, and murmurs against her lips.
"What do I have to do to get rid of you?"
In a further retreat, he continues. "Why isn't your presence in the department enough for you? Why does your perfume have to linger in the office long after you've left? Why do I still feel the heat of your body at my desk hours later? And now you've invaded my personal life as well."
She has been around him long enough to know not to apologize. She hasn't done anything wrong, and what angers him is that he knows it. Instead, she gives him her silence.
He steps away and seems content enough to gaze, to analyze. He knows he will never solve her, and he finds the notion that she could ever solve him completely ludicrous. He cannot foresee the future after he leaves her apartment. Perhaps they will regret it. Perhaps it will happen again. All he knows is the here and now.
At the moment, he is fixated. Her skin is flushed from his touch, and her breath still comes in tiny pants. He can imagine the same scene with her lips swollen and her hair tousled, and it is all he can do to keep his mind focused.
"I see you flushed," he says, "and moaning. I see you writhing across my sheets and arching your back as you come."
Until this moment, he has been unaware -- and so has she -- that he has managed to back her into the wall next to the door leading to her bedroom. That his free hand has come up to rest near her head, pinning down a few errant strands of hair.
"So tell me," he repeats, and his fingers trail across her clavicle and down her stomach to flirt with the hem of her shirt. "What do I have to do to get rid of you?"
She draws her lower lip between her teeth and nibbles absent-mindedly, and he slips a hand under the hem of her shirt to run calloused fingers across the smooth skin of her stomach.
She somehow manages to find her voice. "Do you really want to?" she asks, and tentatively trails his fingers across his stubbled jaw. "Do you really want to get rid of me?"
Lips meet and hands grasp before fingers finally entwine and she leads him through her open bedroom door.
It could start like this. It could start any number of ways.