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CHAPTER 4
Sera put the finishing touches on her grilled salmon while keeping one eye on the clock. 'He's gonna be here soon and I'm still puttering around in the kitchen!', she thought a little frantically. 'At least, I'm dressed and have my face on!' Sera put the platter on the warmer and took of her apron. She went into the bathroom to check her makeup and spritz on some body spray. She looked at herself in the mirror, took a deep breath, and gave herself a little pep talk.
"This is not a date! We're just eating some dinner, hanging out, relaxing after a difficult week, etc, etc…" Sera stopped. The talking to herself thing had to stop. She checked her hair again. The short style looked good on her, if she did say so herself. Everyone at the hospital had complimented her on it. Sera grimaced. Well, almost everyone. Cameron had looked at her and said, "Oh, I see you cut your hair" then walked away.
Sera had thought that over time, Cameron would have become a bit less hostile towards her. After all, she'd been working with the diagnostic team for two months now. But, if anything, the situation had gotten worse. Of course, it didn't help matters any that House had given her a couple of Cameron's jobs to do. Several times, Sera had, without being told, gone back and gotten some more information from the patient or their family that wound up being crucial to the case. After embarrassing Cameron for missing vital data while getting the patient history, House had assigned Sera to get histories. He also had Sera answer his emails after Cameron had accepted an invitation on his behalf to attend a conference. These things, on top of the coffee debacle, had led Cameron to give Sera the silent treatment for a few weeks (which Sera didn't actually mind).
The last straw for Cameron, however, had been when House asked Sera to go to the monster truck rally with him.
flashback
Wilson was supposed to go, of course, but he received a call from his mentor, Dr. Houston, who was a department chair at Harvard Medical. Houston had had triple bypass surgery and James had taken his class for the rest of the semester (about a month). Houston needed to go back into the hospital for some tests, so he asked James to conduct a seminar that he had scheduled, since the younger man had filled in for him so ably during his recovery. Unfortunately, the seminar was on the same evening as the monster truck rally, so Wilson had popped into the diagnostic dept. office and gave House back the ticket. When the rest of his team arrived to discuss a new patient, House had told all of them that he had an extra ticket for the monster truck rally since Wilson had "bailed" on him again. House had looked at Foreman, who quickly shook his head no. Chase looked at House hopefully, but House had snickered at him. He then glanced at Cameron, who smiled at him, certain that he would take her. House smirked at her and said, "Been there, done that" before turning to Sera. Sera glared back at House. Even though there was no love lost between her and Cameron, she thought House was horrible for saying what he did. House saw her glare, accurately interpreted it, and tendered Cameron a half hearted "Sorry" after rolling his eyes at Sera.
House turned back to Sera. "So, are you ready to put your money where your mouth is?", he asked her, holding up his extra ticket. Just that morning, Sera had scoffed at House when he was animatedly talking to Foreman and Chase about Gravedigger. Of course, neither of the men cared one way or the other about Gravedigger, but they had learned that it was best to humor House when he was excited about something. Sera came into the room, listened for a few seconds, then interrupted House with, "Too bad Gravedigger was crushed by Madusa. And THAT truck is driven by a woman, no less." Well, that led to an extremely heated debate that would have lasted for hours if Cuddy hadn't stopped by to drag House down to clinic.
Sera looked at the ticket in front of her face. If she went, Cameron would never forgive her. Sera thought back to the petty comments and nasty looks that had been thrown her way by the younger woman, and realized that she didn't give a flip if Cameron forgave her or not. She reached over and took the ticket from House's hand. Just to rub salt in the wound, she said, "Greg, I would be delighted!" Sera ignored the sub-zero cold front that was blowing in from across the table and stuck the ticket in her pocket.
end flashback
Sera smiled when she thought about that night. Madusa had beaten Gravedigger by one point and House had had to cough up $100 and give her a ride to work on his motorcycle for one week (he passed her street on his way to work). House gave her the dorkiest helmet he could find, but Sera didn't care, especially when she saw the look on Cameron's face when she swung off of House's ride and he held her hand to help her off. Sera suspected he did it because he knew Cameron was watching, but she didn't care. Somewhere along the way, she started taking pleasure in getting under Cameron's skin. Sera never deliberately set out to irk the woman, but she didn't bother trying not to bother her.
Sera shook her head and frowned at herself in the mirror. 'What the heck am I doing thinking about Allison-freaking-Cameron when I have a handsome man showing up at my door any moment?', she wondered. She gave her makeup one last check, smoothed her hand over her very snug jeans, and readjusted her bra so that the girls were nicely, but conservatively, displayed. Although Sera wasn't necessarily interested in any long-term relationship, it had been so long since she felt comfortable and safe enough to even have a dinner guest. So even if they never went out again, she fully intended to enjoy her evening.
Sera heard the doorbell and took a deep, steadying breath. She walked slowly to the door, not wanting to appear too eager. She carefully checked her security camera to make sure it was her guest at the door before opening it. She grinned at the handsome man standing there with drinks in one hand and some videos in the other. She looked into his beautiful eyes and said, "Hey, you! Come on in!"
Sera smiled and stepped to the side as Robert came in. He leaned in and gave her a friendly peck on the cheek. He held up the bag of DVD's in his hand. "Here you are. A whole night's worth of Russell Crowe movies, as promised!" "As threatened, you mean", Sera muttered under her breath as she headed down the hall to the eat-in kitchen. Robert heard her and reminded her, "Come on, now. A deal is a deal. You and Foreman got to pick the fun activity the last two times we all hung out. It was my turn. "
Sera stuck out her tongue at him. "Do you see 'Ric here? I don't think it's fair that you enforce that on our date when he's not around to suffer along with me." Sera turned around to put the drinks on the counter and missed seeing Robert's face light up over the word "date". Chase put his hands on her shoulders and turned her back around. "Well, when you put it that way, I guess we can wait until Foreman's around. I would hate to miss an opportunity to torture him. Problem is, we don't have anything to do now." At the same time, both of them became aware of how close they were standing, the huskiness of Robert's voice, and the fact that his hands were on her shoulders. Robert's last words almost seemed to echo through the kitchen and both of them stepped away from each other quickly. Sera turned away from him to get silverware out of the drawer. She thrust the cutlery at him, not meeting his eyes, and said, "Here, can you set the table?"
Robert could feel the heat on his face. 'Dmn, I'm probably bright red right now. Why did I have to say that?', Robert thought as he put the silverware on the table. He took the platter from Sera and put it on the table. He helped her bring glasses and the rest of the food to the table. When he pulled out her chair for her, he couldn't help but notice her light, floral scent that she was wearing. He was trying extremely hard NOT to notice the way the jeans enhanced the curve of her bottom or the way the shirt hugged her in places he hadn't known she had. 'I've just realized how much I hate nurse's uniforms', Robert mused.
"Are you hungry?", Sera asked. The question caught Robert off guard. Considering the thoughts he had just been trying to shove out of his head, he immediately started to blush again at the inadvertent suggestiveness of the question. He quickly picked up his drink, hoping to divert her attention from his flaming face. Sera cocked her head to the side and looked at him like he was nuts. "Robert, are you okay? You look a little flushed. Are you too hot?" Slightly alarmed when he started choking, Sera got out of her chair and rushed to Robert's side and began pounding him on his back. After a few solid, somewhat painful whacks, Robert stopped gasping and started breathing normally.
Sera squatted down next to him, refilled his glass, and handed him his drink. Robert took a few sips to clear his throat, then said to her in a slightly raspy voice, "You know, the whole thumping a person on the back when choking thing really doesn't work very well." Sera shrugged and went back to her seat. She took a few sips of her drink and replied, "I know that. I wasn't hitting you to stop you from choking. I was hitting you because you were having naughty thoughts." At Robert's dumbfounded look, she smiled sweetly at him. "Yeah, I figured it out after the 'hungry' comment. Men are so easy." She then proceeded to dig into her delicious meal, ignoring the pouting, disgruntled, but oh-so-sexy man sitting across from her.
"So, since you've ruined my movie watching night, what are we going to do?" Chase wiped his mouth and took another sip from his glass of wine. They were just finishing dinner. After getting off to a rather humiliating start, the rest of the meal had been perfect, with wonderful food (he was going to get fat if they continued to date), interesting conversation, and an excellent Riesling. They had talked about everything under the sun and he had even given her a suggestion for getting along better with Cameron, although Sera wasn't really sure she wanted to get along with Cameron. The only reason she would even consider it was for the good of the team.
Sera looked over the rim of her glass at Robert. He looked relaxed and happy. Shame she was about to mess that up, but she'd rather get this out of the way now so she never had to talk about it again. She waited until he took a drink from his glass and said "So, I hear you and Cameron bumped uglies a while back."
For the second time that night, Robert started choking. This time, she just sat calmly sipping her wine and waited for him to get himself together. He got his breath back and drank some of his water to clear his throat. Then he glared at her.
"What the hell was that? Why are you asking me about that? And where did you hear it, anyway? And "bumping uglies"? Where did you get THAT expression from?" Chase's face was back to that cute shade of red that amused Sera immensely. She answered his questions in order.
"THAT was a question. I'm asking you because I don't want it hanging in between us nor do I want your lovely co-worker to try to use it against us. I heard it from House, of course. I think that expression came from a movie I saw. Tango and Cash, I believe. You haven't lived until you've heard Sylvester Stallone say 'bump uglies'."
Chase processed all of this information. "House, huh? I'm gonna kill him." Sera laughed. "No, you won't. That would be patricide. Besides, I also heard it from Cuddy, the nurses in the clinic, AND the nurses in the ICU. Nothing stays secret in this hospital, sweetie. I'll probably get someone coming up to me Monday asking me for the salmon recipe that I fixed for you."
Chase was still stuck on the "patricide" comment and didn't respond. Sera leaned over and stroked his hand, bringing his attention back to her. "Look, Rob, people make mistakes all of the time. Although I can't believe you would have sex with someone while they were all coked up…"
"It was meth", Chase interrupted.
"Whatever! The circumstances around it happening bother me more than the actual fact that you had sex with her. I just want to know that you didn't take advantage of someone during a moment of weakness and I also want to know if you still have any residual feelings for her…or her for you. Because I don't particularly want to get a scalpel in my back."
Chase sighed. "I did try to stop her. I did. But she was rather aggressive and pushed me against the wall…are you sure you want to hear this?" He had noticed that Sera was wearing a somewhat sickly look, like she was about to vomit.
Sera shook the mental image out of her head. "OK, you can skip the details. But you did make an attempt to stop it?"
Chase looked a bit shamefaced. "Well, there were several half-hearted attempts. I kinda figured she wasn't quite herself. But she is an attractive female, and I hadn't been intimate with anyone in a long time. I stopped protesting when she ripped my shirt open…" He stopped when Sera held up her hand, looking pained.
Sera closed her eyes tight and hit herself on the head a few times. "Get out! Out! Out!" She opened her eyes and found Chase staring at her in bemusement. Sera frowned at him, "I told you no details! Now I'm going to be scarred for life! Do you still have feelings for her?"
Chase didn't answer right away. He knew this was an important question and he wanted to give it the thought it deserved, although he pretty much already knew the answer. Finally, he answered. "I care about her, but only as a friend. We went out once after that incident, but it was awkward and uncomfortable. I realized that we have very little in common, we don't enjoy the same things, and she's still carrying a torch for House, although she's less obvious about it. After what happened, I wasn't interested in her romantically any more."
Chase leaned over and picked up Sera's hand in his. He kissed the back of it softly. "I really like spending time with you. I hope the stupid things I've done in the past won't stop you from going out with me on another date."
Sera smiled at him and tried to ignore the tingles that were making their way up her arm. "So…this IS an official date? We're not just hanging out?"
Chase gave her a sexy little smile that made the tingles jump to her tummy. "Well, since I plan on kissing you senseless before I leave tonight, I think that officially makes it a date."
The tingles migrated a little lower. Sera took a sip of her wine. 'Sheesh! I'm getting this turned on just from him saying he's going to kiss me?' she thought. She gave him a look that she hoped was daring. "Kiss me senseless? I've never had anyone do that before. I'm not even sure it's possible."
Chase, who still had her hand in his, gently nibbled the inside of her palm. The tingles increased at an alarming rate. Sera pulled her hand from his and blurted out, "Miniature golf!"
Chase raised an eyebrow. "What?"
Sera took a deep breath to make sure her voice was steady. She got up out of her chair, walked around, grabbed his hand and pulled him out of his chair. "Miniature golf. I know the perfect place and it's not too far from here. They stay open late on Friday nights. I saw this place online and I've been dying to go. I was gonna suggest it when it was my turn to pick the hang-out spot next time you, 'Ric, and I went out." Sera really wanted to get out of the house. She wasn't sure what would happen if she and Robert stayed at her place and she wasn't ready for what he made her feel.
Robert looked at her carefully. He hoped he hadn't misread the signals, but it seemed like she was trying to get them out of the house. He looked into her dark eyes and saw something he'd never really seen in her…fear. She was scared…of him? Robert wasn't sure, but if hitting a little ball through some windmills made her feel more comfortable with him, then so be it. He grinned at her. "Ok, we can go, but the winner gets to choose the activities for the next 5 dates."
Sera looked at him with wide eyes. "Five! Don't you think that's a bit much?" Robert leaned down and quirked an eyebrow at her. "What…are you scared?" Sera tossed her head. "Of a little wombat? I don't think so!" Chase groaned. "That does it! You are not allowed to eat with House and Wilson any more at lunchtime. They give you too much information. Come one, let's go!" "But…the dishes…wait until I put the dishes…" Robert grabbed her hand and pulled her towards the door. "Come on! I want to go now. I'll do the dishes when we come back, I promise." Sera wasn't one to turn down help in the kitchen. She grabbed her denim jacket and her keys, set the alarm code, and they left.