Author's Note: so, I've had this chapter, and the last one, written for, oh, several days now. They both would've been posted sooner if FFN didn't harbor a secret desire to make my life far more complicated than it actually needs to be. As a result, the chapter I'm working on now will probably go up on Livejournal in a few days, but I probably won't feel like fighting FFN for at least a few weeks. Ye have been warned.

PS: Points to whoever can a) find the song fragment in here, and b) tell me where it's from. I'll totally be impressed.

In the month between the seventeenth and eighteenth times Remy talked to Megan, she was almost fired by House twice, lectured by Cuddy three times, and spurned Foreman's ill-advised yet inexplicably cocky advances at least half a dozen times. She avoided the bar, and instead ventured out to bars and clubs she hadn't been to in almost a year; her conquests became fewer and farther between, nights out foregone in favor of sitting tiredly on her couch and sipping her own attempts at mixing a decent scotch whiskey bitter. Occasionally, she would think she had worked up the nerve to try and make her way back into Megan's life and apologize, explain, put their friendship back together; the farthest she ever made it was halfway to the bar before shame burned in her throat and guilt solidified in her stomach and she panicked, convinced that she had irrevocably shattered the delicate friendship they'd once had.

Then, four weeks and five days after the seventeenth time, she saw Spencer.

It was unplanned and unexpected and not in the least what she wanted. Yet she couldn't ignore the fact that Spencer was standing in her doorway at 8:44 on a Wednesday night, hands in her pockets and an uncharacteristically nervous smile on her lips. Remy stood dumbly, hand still on the doorknob, and stared at her without a single thought in her mind except for why now?

"Hey," Spencer said. Her voice trembled the tiniest bit, her nerves pushing to the forefront of Remy's perception.

"Hi," Remy said. Recovering some of her senses, Remy shook her head tiredly and stepped back, opening the door the rest of the way. "Do you want to come in?"

"Yeah, that'd be great," Spencer said. A minute amount of relief passed across her eyes as she carefully stepped past Remy and made her way into the living room, where she stood with her hands still in her pockets and shoulders hunched.

Remy counted to twenty in her head, waiting for Spencer to speak. "How are you?" Remy finally said, unable to manage the silence.

"I'm okay," Spencer said. She answered quickly, nodding vehemently. "A lot better than I was a year ago."

"Chalk another point up to House being a genius," Remy said dryly.

"Something like that," Spencer replied. She paused, finally pulling one hand out of her pocket and pushing her hair back nervously. It was longer now, Remy noted, brushing past the tops of her shoulders with a hint of loose curls.

"Not that it isn't good to see you," Remy said slowly. She hesitated, surprised to find that she actually meant it. "But what are you doing here?"

"I came to see you," Spencer said simply; the faint blush that spread across her cheeks belied her blasé tone. "I mean, I wanted to see how you are." She paused, avoiding Remy's eyes, and fidgeted with a button on her sweater.

"I don't know if that's weird," she continued eventually. "And don't worry; I remember your policy on repeat performances and all that jazz. But after everything that happened when I was in the hospital last year, and you stayed with me… well, for one, I don't know if I ever thanked you properly for that. I was a long way from home, and it was nice to have someone there looking out for me." The blush deepened, darkening her already-tan skin. Remy cast her eyes downwards modestly, inwardly pleased that she'd at least done one thing right since getting her diagnosis.

"But beyond that," Spencer said. "A lot happened over those few days, but I never forgot what you told me. About… you being sick, about the Huntington's. And I wanted to see how you were doing."

Remy stared at her blankly, semi-aware that her mouth was hanging half open. "I… what?"

Spencer sighed, sitting down on the edge of the couch. "After I got out of the hospital," she said slowly. "I was pretty ecstatic. I was fixed, you know? I wanted to put the whole thing behind me, forget it all, now that it was over with. And for a few months, that's exactly what I did. But after a while, I couldn't put it out of my mind forever, and the one thing that I remembered above all else was that you stayed with me. I used you to get to House, but you still stayed with me.

"And beyond all that," she added. "I couldn't put what you'd told me out of your mind. I couldn't forget how it felt to hear that I was going to die, and I couldn't stop thinking about how you must feel. I wanted to come see you sooner, but I kept getting sent away on business trips, and I didn't think that a phone call would work, so… here I am."

Remy sat down heavily in one of the armchairs, gazing at Spencer, intrigued. "Well," she said eventually. "I'm okay, I guess?"

Spencer snorted. "Come on," she said. "You're not even trying to lie convincingly."

Remy laughed weakly, resting her elbows on her knees and pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes. "You're right," she said to her knees. "I'm not." With a sigh, she looked up, meeting Spencer's eyes. "I mean, the Huntington's hasn't started any symptoms yet. And I'm in a drug trial at the hospital that's supposed to yield some good results. So that's good.

"But, I…" she took a deep breath. "I screwed up something good, I think. With a friend of mine. Really screwed up." Internally, she marveled at how easy she was finding it to talk to Spencer. They hadn't really spoken much the first time around, even during the days she spent sitting in Spencer's hospital room to keep her company; she knew next to nothing about the other woman, but it felt far too good to let some of the past month out of her head for her to stop the words that were tumbling out of her mouth.

"I have this friend," she started. "Megan. She's a bartender at this local place." Slowly, haltingly, Remy laid out the details of her friendship with Megan for the first time, put it out there for Spencer to take in and analyze. For her part, Spencer sat silently on the couch, listening intently as Remy finally let out the shame and guilt and frustration she'd been holding onto for so long.

When she was done, Remy slumped back in the armchair, exhausted. Spencer was quiet, her legs pulled up to her chest and head cocked minutely to one side. Remy wondered when the last time was that she had said that much in one sitting, and felt a gnawing discomfort in her stomach that reminded her why she was so reticent by nature.

"Why did you kiss her?" Spencer asked abruptly.

Remy flushed, clearing her throat and standing from her chair awkwardly. "That doesn't matter," she said, hoping that it didn't sound quite as unconvincing as she imagined.

"Yeah, it does," Spencer said. She hadn't moved, her eyes following Remy's slow pacing with something that bordered on nonchalance and annoyed Remy to no end.

"Who says it has to?"

"Who says it has to not?" Spencer challenged. She sighed. "Look, I may be out of line or something, but I think it matters. Because if you don't know how you feel about her, then there's no way she can, and I think that she deserves to know regardless."

Remy slowed to a halt. Her head tilted back tiredly, feeling suddenly too heavy for her neck as it lolled backwards. She needed to do something about that crack in the ceiling plaster, she noted idly.

After a long moment of silence, she brought her head back forward, looking Spencer in the eyes for the first time since she started her explanation. Arms crossed protectively across her stomach, she shook her hair out of her eyes and spoke softly.

"I wanted to see if kissing her when she looked so sad would feel like kissing you when you thought you were dying."

She held Spencer's eyes for what felt like an unbearable amount of time, utterly incapable of reading a single thing in them, before she cleared her throat once more and looked away. After a brief hesitation, she shuffled into the kitchen and dug a bottle of water out of the fridge.

Spencer followed her after a few seconds, leaning against the island and fidgeting with her fingers.

"Why did you want to know that?"

Remy barked out a dark laugh. "Because when you were dying, I thought I might get a chance to try for something that at least resembled happiness." She chuckled mirthlessly at the baffled look that was clear on Spencer's face. "Look, it's not like I want you to die or anything. But when we thought that you were, that you even had close to the same amount of time left as I did? I let myself dream. I couldn't keep myself from thinking that, hey, there's this girl, and we're in the same boat, and we actually kind of get along, and I already know that she's pretty good in bed. Maybe this will work out okay somehow.

"Then House figured it out," she continued softly. Tears pushed at her eyes, and she glared at the ceiling once more, anger warring with shame in an attempt to ignore them. "And you weren't dying anymore. That hope that I'd let myself feel just… faded away slowly, and I was alone and still dying and feeling like someone had scooped out everything that made me me and there was nothing left but some shell."

"Well," Spencer said eventually, her voice deceptively light. "I am pretty rocking in bed."

Remy laughed tiredly. "Yeah," she agreed. "I mean, I would've given you more than a seven." She pushed herself up to sit on the counter next to where Spencer stood, pushing her hair back to keep her fingers occupied; if she focused on her hair, or pulling at the torn cuticles on her fingers, or rotating the watch that had become too big on her wrist, she could ignore the exhaustion of the last month that was creeping in and pushing at her chest.

Spencer laughed, leaning her elbows on the counter casually. "I'd almost take that as a come on, if you weren't so against repetition."

"Well, I'm always willing to make a few exceptions," Remy murmured without really meaning to.

Slowly, Spencer pushed herself away from the counter, moving back a few steps. "Flattering, but it's not what you want," she said in the gentlest of tones. "Sleeping with me isn't what you want."

"How do you know?" Remy said. She braced her weight on her hands, cocking her head to the side and looking Spencer up and down slowly. Her voice had dropped, regaining the same husky quality that had lured Spencer into her bed the first time.

"Because you want to fix things with your friend," Spencer said simply.

"Doesn't mean I have anything against having some fun before I do," Remy said. Detachedly, she wondered why she was pushing for this when she was entirely ambivalent about it; regardless, she couldn't seem to stop herself.

"Well, I'm saying no, then," Spencer said. She sighed. "Look, Remy, I came here to see how you were, because you were good to me when you had no need to be, and I appreciated it. Still appreciate it, really. I'd like to have you as a friend, and maybe you could use having me as a friend, too. And I don't have any problem with a fun tumble to pass the time with you, but I do have a problem with it when you're only doing it because you want to avoid thinking about fixing this thing with your friend."

Remy inhaled slowly, counting to five before she exhaled just as slowly, staring at the ceiling yet again to avoid Spencer's eyes. "Okay," she said finally. "I'll give you that one. But answer me this, Yoda. How do you even know that I can fix this?"

"How do you know that you can't?"

"And if I can't, what then? Having confirmation that I blew it so royally isn't something I think I can handle, not after the last year I've had."

"Doesn't matter," Spencer said, her voice soft. "Because you shouldn't do it for you, but for her. You owe her an explanation, at least. You do it for her."

Remy gazed at Spencer appraisingly. "Are you a psychiatrist?" she asked abruptly. It occurred to her for the first time that there was a lot she didn't know about Spencer, a lot that she wanted to find out.

She laughed. "No, not a shrink," she said. "I'm a marketing consultant. Marketing is all psychology, though."

"Huh," Remy muttered under her breath. "Crazy."

Spencer shook her head, a small smile gracing her lips. "Okay," she said. "I'm going to go now. Here's my card. Let me know how it goes with your friend, yeah? And maybe we can do lunch sometime or something."

Remy fingered the edges of the business card absently. "Because I'm your friend," she said, half joking and half probing.

"Because you're my friend," Spencer confirmed. She walked back into the living room, sliding into her coat and picking up her bag. Remy stayed where she sat on the counter, staring at Spencer with an expression of sheer incredulousness.

"Let me know how it goes," Spencer repeated. With a casual wave, she made her way to the door. "Bye, Remy."

By the time Remy moved from her spot on the counter, an hour had passed since the door shut behind Spencer and it was ten minutes after midnight.