8.

She found House just as he was exiting his office.

"Can we talk?"

"You're asking now? Usually it comes out as more of a bark."

"I mean about - you know what I mean. Get in there." She pointed back towards his office and he gave her an asinine smile as he moved past her.

"See? Just like that," he said.

She followed after him with a roll of her eyes for good measure.

They'd come to an agreement of sorts in the past couple of weeks, unspoken though it was. House hadn't approached her or brought up the subject at all - he'd withdrawn, and she understood. It was still early days yet, and they both needed time to let everything sink in. So she hadn't sought him out either, just left him to himself.

For the moment at least she was resolved and mostly okay with the idea that he was probably going to play some part in this. Even if neither of them knew, yet, what that part was. He might not be interested in being a father, but he couldn't not interfere and involve himself to some extent. At least as far as that went, she was pretty sure what to expect.

Hovering. Stalking. Rude comments. The usual.

None of that had started yet, but she knew it was only a matter of time. Frankly, she would have liked to put it off as long as possible, and leave him to his avoidance. But today things had to change. She'd gone for her first prenatal exam, and now felt duty-bound to share the details with him.

As he moved around his desk and lowered himself into his chair, she sat facing him and said without preamble, "Deborah Feao - do you know her?"

"Should I?"

"She's a friend of mine. She's also the best OBGYN in the area."

He cocked an eyebrow at that. "If she's so good, how come you don't have her working here?"

"Because she keeps turning down my offers. She prefers private practice, likes the autonomy."

"Likes the pay check, more like."

"Yes, she's doing very well for herself. The point is that I went to see her yesterday, after work. Her waiting list is miles long but she's squeezing me into her schedule."

"You and your connections - good thing too. You might have been stuck with those quacks up in obstetrics."

"It has nothing to do with how good they are - I just don't want to put them in the position of treating their boss."

"And you don't want anyone here knowing your little secret."

"Well there's no way I could go for a prenatal check-up without the entire hospital knowing before I even got my feet in the stirrups. And you're right - I'm not ready for that yet." She sighed. "Anyway, I have something for you." She opened the folder she was carrying purely for discretion's sake, and pulled out an envelope containing a compact disc, and a picture, and handed them over. "From the ultrasound. I thought you'd want to see."

He tossed the CD down on his desk, but held onto the picture. She kept talking as he looked at it. "Everything's progressing as it should for eight weeks. Anything in particular you want to know?"

He didn't respond, just perused the image for a moment longer then went to hand it back to her. She waved him off. "You can stick it on your fridge," she said. And when he gave her a look which made it quite clear that sticking things on refrigerators was something sentimental morons did, she smirked. "Send it to your mother, then. Moms love this kind of thing."

"You'd know," he replied pointedly.

She didn't know what must have shown on her face at that, something resembling a deer caught in headlights she suspected, but it was enough to make him backtrack.

"Guess you're not ready to have the M-word thrown at you just yet?"

"Might take a while, yeah," she said, unnerved, and at the same time annoyed at herself for being so. She searched around for something to say and her eyes landed on the disc lying on his desk. "You're not going to watch it?" she asked, nodding down at it.

"Old news." He shrugged. "I want to see it first hand."

"So you... want to come to my next appointment with me?"

"No," he drawled, and pointed a finger at her midsection. "I want to see it. For myself."

She found herself crossing her arms over her chest. "I don't need another ultrasound. You can look at that one."

"Don't want me seeing the old tum-tum? No matter how hard you keep trying to repress this particular factoid, I have seen you naked."

She rolled her eyes, irritated. But the truth was she didn't really know why she was objecting. It wasn't a completely unreasonable request. Besides, it would take five minutes and he would probably just keep bugging her about it until she agreed, anyway.

Having talked herself around, she sighed and relented. "Fine. But not now - tonight, after hours."

He just gave her a smug look in response. Luckily, she had the perfect way to wipe it off his face.

"You've got clinic duty in five minutes," she said.

"I'm sneaking around in my own hospital," she muttered.

It wasn't technically sneaking. Just because the clinic was dark and empty, that didn't mean she didn't have every right to be there. It just felt like she was doing something wrong - sneaking into the clinic at night for a clandestine ultrasound. With House.

"Don't worry, you're with a pro."

Which was true. If anyone was an expert on escape and evasion tactics, it was House. He hardly needed any encouragement, however, so all she said was, "Let's just get this over with."

Preceding him into one of the exam rooms, she watched him pull the ultrasound machine over. He looked over at her standing there with her arms crossed uncomfortably over her chest, and patted the exam bed exaggeratedly. She rolled her eyes but complied, pulling up her shirt and unzipping her skirt so she could ease it down a little. There wasn't any need for discussion, he just squirted gel on her belly, smoothed it around with the wand. They both knew how this worked.

As the image appeared, his eyes were fixed on the screen. Meanwhile, she found herself watching him instead.

He looked for a long time, face expressionless. He wasn't talking, just looking, and House's rare silences were always telling. She turned her eyes away, feeling almost as if she was intruding on him in this moment - a feeling she couldn't justify. This was her uterus he was inspecting, after all. This was her... my baby, she forced her mind to complete the thought.

She wanted to call him on it, get him to say something at least, but she didn't. Nor did she return her gaze to his face, just closed her eyes instead and relaxed for a moment, deciding to let him try and find whatever it was he was looking for.

The next thing she new, the machine shut off abruptly, and she looked over to see him holding out a box of kleenex. She grabbed a couple and wiped off her stomach, rearranged her clothes, got up off the table and threw the wad of tissues away. She turned back to see him getting to his feet.

She didn't want to just leave it like this. She wanted to know what he was thinking, what he was feeling. She also knew there was little to no chance that he would tell her if she asked. And she found she didn't want to take that chance even more than she wanted to know. But she had to say something - the silence stretching out between them was too strange, too far from what she was used to with him.

"So," she said, keeping her tone light, "I hope you're happy now."

"Happy?" he returned distractedly.

"I let you have your scan, didn't I? But don't think for a moment I'm going to let you poke and prod me for the next seven months. You're not an OBGYN, and you certainly better not entertain any notions of being mine. I already have one of those, remember?"

"The good Dr Feao." Suddenly he looked at her sharply. "Did she schedule you for an amnio?"

She frowned. "Not yet, we didn't -'

"You're thirty-nine, not way over the hill, but getting there - you'll have an amnio and you can tell your bestest buddy to save a little genetic material for me."

"Why?"

"Paternity test," he said flatly.

"You're kidding. You think I'm lying to you?"

He shrugged, his whole demeanour suggesting defiant indifference.

"If you must know, you're the only person I've been with in... in the particular time frame we're talking about." He smirked at her careful wording and she huffed angrily. "You don't really believe it might not be yours. You're just... I don't know what you're doing. Just trying to make my life difficult, probably, like that's anything new. Believe me, if there were any other candidates I'd hardly be heartbroken."

His eyes dropped away from hers. "You want me," he said slowly, his voice tightly controlled, "to just accept that... that thing is mine. It's no problem for you - it's inside you. I can't just -"

"You mean you won't."

He groaned and rolled his eyes to the ceiling. "Don't get pissy like I'm insulting your spotless reputation. This isn't anything to do with who you have or haven't screwed - like I care!"

"Well what, then?" she demanded, confused and taken aback by his sudden vehemence.

"I don't get the warm fuzzy maternal experience. I don't want it, either. I'll just take the science, instead, the hard facts. I need to see it."

She didn't know how to respond to the desperation in his voice. She just stared at him until he deflated, the tension leaving his frame.

"It's possible..." he stopped and dropped his head, letting out a short, sharp laugh. "It's possible I'm not handling this too well. Or at all."

"Yeah," she said, still not sure how to respond to him when he was like this, but glad he was calming down.

"Yeah," he echoed. "And with that stunning revelation - which, lets be honest, we could all see coming from miles away - I have to go home, get to bed. And by 'home' I mean 'bar'. And by 'get to bed' I mean 'drink my own blood volume in alcohol'."

He glanced up at her, just for a moment as he moved past her, but it was enough for her to see the apology there, the chagrin at losing control, at having exposed himself to her.

"Yeah, see you," he muttered.

She couldn't just let him go.

"House," she stepped after him, her hand landing on his right arm just as his left reached for the door handle. He hesitated, and she curved her fingers round his wrist, holding on. "There's time, remember?" she said earnestly. "You told me that the other day. There's time for us to figure things out. Do you really think I expect you to be perfect? I know you - the fact you didn't relocate to Alaska the moment you found out is impressive." He didn't say anything but she watched him relax a little as she spoke. She decided to try a little brevity, and patted his arm. "Out of the two of us, I have to say I'm surprised you're the one having the meltdown. When do my issues get an airing?"

His mouth twisted up in a smirk, though he still didn't look at her. "We can take turns freaking out at each other. Because that won't get old fast."

"At least I have hormones as an excuse. What's yours? Aside from you being a big drama queen, I mean."

She smiled inwardly as she saw she'd scored a hit. He turned towards her, leaning one arm against the door. "Of all the many, many other women I could have knocked up, it had to be you? Allow me my hysterics."

"Don't I always?" She found herself almost unconsciously mirroring his position as she attempted to stare him down, even as he towered over her. "Putting up with your temper tantrums, bad behaviour in general, not to mention the not-exactly-infrequent illegal activities is all part of my daily routine."

He just stood there looking pleased as she listed off his shortcomings. Part of him, she knew from long experience, just loved being scolded - he was like a little kid at times, looking for all the wrong kinds of attention. He would say it was part of his charm. She would never, ever admit that she agreed.

When he reached out, his hand touching her face, she wasn't really surprised. She'd known, she'd known from the night they had spent together that this would likely happen again. From the moment he'd turned towards her just now with all that challenge and heat in his eyes, she'd known it was coming.

She let him tilt her chin up, his thumb sliding along her jaw, and a moment later his mouth covered hers.

It wasn't like the last time. That had been fun, and good, but also clumsy and careless and rushed and worlds away from the slow, deliberate way he was kissing her now.

It went on for a long, smouldering, drawn out moment, kissing intently up against the door in the quiet, deserted clinic, and then his mouth slid away from hers and left a damp trail across her cheek. "Let me take you home," he breathed in her ear.

Her fingers were fisted in his shirt and she panted against his neck, breathing in his skin. Her mind was a feverish jumble and it didn't seem fair, she thought, to do this when she wasn't so dunk she could pretend the next day that it had just been the alcohol talking - that she was lonely and he was just there.

No, this time there was no avoiding the fact that this, right now, with him, was exactly what she wanted.

"On that death trap you call a bike?" She pulled back to look at him as she mustered a response. "No way in hell."

"Okay, then you take me home."

Her lips brushed his again, and then she nodded. "Okay."