The eighteenth time Remy spoke to Megan, it was two days after Spencer had been there, and the first thought that flashed through Remy's mind when she opened the door to her redheaded friend was that Megan had never been to her apartment before, replaced in short order with a mild panic that made her chest hurt.
"Hey," Megan said quietly. Her usual shy smile was nowhere to be seen as she stood in the hallway outside Remy's apartment, hair falling loosely around her shoulders, fingers tensed and tight around the strap of her purse. There were fresh-looking bruises—purpura, Remy corrected herself automatically, and a fresh pang of guilt tightened in her chest as she remembered again the last time they'd spoken—marring her forearm. "Can we talk?"
Remy stared dumbly at her as a few seconds ticked by painfully slowly, before shutting her mouth and wordlessly stepping back and motioning her inside. She shut the door slowly, a small measure of disbelief that Megan was standing in her apartment battling against the growing swell of apprehension in her throat.
Megan stood awkwardly next to the couch, fidgeting with a buckle on her purse and not meeting Remy's eyes. Remy, for her part, stood tensed and almost trembling with nerves ten feet away; she stared at Megan and desperately tried to conjure up a single thing to say, the almost-eloquent words she'd blurted out to Spencer two days earlier, an explanation that would fix their friendship. Nothing came, though, and instead Remy simply stood, bare feet rooted to cold hardwood floors, and shivered involuntarily.
Megan sighed suddenly, dropping her purse onto the couch and facing Remy with her hands tucked into her pockets. She looked as casual as Remy had ever seen her, if she ignored shoulders held in a tense line and tendons standing tight against the line of her neck. There was no fatigue in her eyes or dark circles underlining them to match Remy's, and a stab of irrational annoyance prodded at Remy's throat; a selfish part of her wanted Megan to have suffered as much over the past weeks as she had.
"I was going to wait," Megan said quietly. "For you to come back, explain, talk, whatever. I figured you would." She paused, eyes trailing downwards.
"The only steps," she muttered, voice impossibly soft, and she looked back up to meet Remy's gaze squarely. Remy felt an undercurrent of shame creeping up and pushing back the apprehension, and tore her eyes away from Megan's.
"Look," Megan started again. Her eyes were hard, her voice underwritten with a strength Remy had never witnessed from her. "I don't know where things go from here. But you owe me an explanation, I think. It's only fair. Let's start there and see where it ends up, yeah?"
Remy could only nod carefully, not trusting herself to speak yet. Megan matched her nod, an appraising look in her eyes, and she sat down primly on the couch. Hands folded in her lap, she watched Remy patiently. Waiting.
The seconds flipped by slowly as Remy bit her lip and stared at her toes and tried desperately to collect her thoughts in some semblance of order. A painful half-minute passed by, filling her head with flashes of memory and frustration and complete desperation; she finally looked up without meaning to and blurted out a strangled "I'm sorry."
Megan stayed silent, moving only to start twisting the ring on her thumb. Her discomfort was palatable.
Remy took a deep breath and let it out as slowly and silently as she could, counting to fifteen on the exhale. "I know I screwed up," she said finally. "In more ways than one. I guess I've never really been fair to you, the whole time I've known you. You were my friend, and I don't think I ever really treated you like one. So, I'm sorry for that.
"And I'm sorry for falling out on you like I did," she continued. "I dropped a bombshell on you, I guess, and then I left you hanging. That wasn't fair to you, especially not after—not with everything you told me.
"I'm sorry that I kissed you like I did." The thoughts she had been struggling to verbalize were suddenly expanding in her throat, desperate to be let out and pouring through her lips like a waterfall. "I was out of line, and again, it wasn't fair to you. I'm sorry that I never really explained to you why I did it. I'm sorry that I flipped out at you about the drugs, because you were right and I don't have any moral high ground when it comes to that."
Remy paused finally, forcing herself to breathe. Megan still sat silently on the couch, though the hard line of her shoulders and the slightest tremble in her fingers gave her discomfort away.
"And I'm sorry about your family," Remy said softly. "I'm sorry that you lost them, and I'm sorry that there's nothing I can do or say that will bring them back, or even make you feel a little bit better. I can't imagine what it's like, all of that, and I wish that I could fix it for you." She fell silent, watching Megan carefully for any reaction.
Long seconds passed, in which Remy couldn't make herself breathe and Megan couldn't seem to make herself speak. Remy traced the fingertips of one hand over the lines in the palm of the other, counting away the moments, at a loss of where to go from there.
After a painful minute and a half passed, Megan finally broke the silence. Looking up at Remy through her eyelashes, hands still clenched together in her lap, she spoke in a refreshingly reticent manner.
"Why did you kiss me?" Her voice was as hesitant as her words, soft and probing even in its uncertainty. The delicate blush that Remy had grown accustomed to over recent months spread under the freckles on her cheek, and a small rush of warmth grew correspondingly in Remy's chest.
"That's what you want to know?" she couldn't stop herself from asking. "Not… about what I said—"
"Not yet," Megan interrupted. Her voice was still gentle, but the determination she had shown up on Remy's doorstep with had returned, leaving no room for argument.
Remy laughed quietly, mirthlessly. "Well, it's kind of a buy-one-get-one-free kind of deal," she said sardonically. "Still want to know?"
"Yes," Megan said immediately.
Remy sighed. She finally moved, shuffling over to take a seat on the opposite end of the couch as Megan. She rubbed her hands over her eyes tiredly, as much an act of exhaustion as it was to buy herself more time to think.
"There was this girl," she finally said. She couldn't bring herself to look Megan in the eye, her gaze falling instead to a spot just behind the redhead's left ear. "Spencer. I picked her up at another bar, and in the middle of the night she had a seizure. I took her to my hospital, and she ended up a case in my department because no one knew what was wrong with her."
Remy paused, licking her lips nervously. The words were as hard to force out as she'd expected them to be. "We cycled through a few differentials, and came up with a diagnosis that gave her about ten years before she died. It sucked, but it fit, and at the time it was the only thing that fit.
"I was in some trouble with my boss." She couldn't bring herself to admit to how badly she had fallen down her spiral, that she had been fired; that shame could come out another day. "He didn't want me working anything, so I spent time with Spencer in the hospital. We were getting close.
"Then House had an epiphany and figured out that the diagnosis was wrong. She wasn't going to die, she had something entirely manageable. And everything went back to normal for her, except better, because she was cured."
Remy finally shifted her gaze to meet Megan's. "When I kissed her and she thought she was dying, it felt like… I don't know. Solidarity. Understanding. We were both in the same situation, and we both understood, and it just… fit." She paused, holding Megan's eyes with her own. "That's why I kissed you. Because she gets to live and kissing her would never feel that way again, and you look sadder every day than she did the day she thought she was dying. I thought I might find something like that again with you."
"Did you?" Megan asked. The immediate question startled Remy; she blinked rapidly, turning the question over in her mind repeatedly.
"I don't know," she said eventually. "It was different."
Megan nodded. She stood slowly, arms crossed over her stomach tightly, and paced slowly up and down. Remy remained still, eyes following Megan's movements stoically. Her exhaustion, compounded on itself for weeks, pressed on her temples and her eyelids drooped, her shoulders slumping slightly. The explanations she'd poured out for Megan left a hollow feeling in her chest; she felt neither lighter nor happier from the catharsis, but instead nothing more than an intense desire to sleep.
"What do you have?" Megan finally stopped her pacing, facing Remy with sad eyes. "You're sick, right? With what?"
Remy inhaled slowly. "Huntington's chorea," she said, forcing the words out slowly. She struggled to not look away. Megan didn't move, save for her brow furrowing in the slightest.
"What is that, exactly?" she asked. "I mean, I've heard of it, I think, and I know it's bad, but that's it."
"It's a neurodegenerative genetic disorder," Remy recited dully. "It tends to present in the mid-thirties, and impairs muscle coordination and cognitive function. The physical symptoms tend to present first, and the cognitive ones progressively afterwards. It's not fatal on its own, but fatal complications like pneumonia and heart disease, as well as injuries from falls caused by impaired muscle function, are common."
Familiar sadness worked its way back across Megan's features, and Remy steeled herself in preparation for the pity that so often followed knowledge of her disease.
"How long?"
Remy almost didn't hear the question, uttered more quietly than even the softest word spoken all evening. "Ten years," she whispered. A foolish part of her thought that maybe if she said it quietly enough, she could pretend it was never said, never true, never a real problem. "Give or take a few."
Megan nodded absently. Her eyes drifted downwards, fixing on her shoes; Remy's gaze inadvertently followed, her eyes locking on to the scuffed Scarpas that must have once been close to white. Remy stared hard at the shoes she recognized by virtue of a rock-climbing roommate at Sarah Lawrence and wondered absently why she'd never noticed before that Megan wore climbing shoes regularly.
Megan moved back to the couch, sitting down opposite Remy and pulling her knees up to her chest, pausing to kick her shoes off. She rested her chin on her knees, staring at Remy calmly. Remy felt her cheeks flush and looked down at her hands, waiting for Megan to speak.
"I don't know," Megan started. She paused, shifting back to relax against the arm of the couch. "I don't know if it would do any good to say I'm sorry," she finished. "I guess you're probably pretty tired of hearing that. But I want to."
"It won't hurt," Remy mumbled. "And no one else has said it, so I can't really be tired of it."
Megan's eyebrows rose slightly, but she seemed to swallow her words before she spoke. "I'm sorry," she said carefully. "Just like you're sorry about my parents, I guess. I'm sorry that I can't fix it."
"Thank you," Remy murmured. An uncomfortable silence spread between them once more. Megan didn't move her chin from her knees, and Remy slumped back, eyes locked on an obscure point in the air above Megan's head. Remy wondered if this counted as fixing things.
A beep from Megan's phone pulled them both back to the present. Blushing lightly, Megan fumbled in her purse and extracted the device. She read the text message quickly and with a sigh. Dropping the phone back into her purse, she slowly unfolded herself, feet dropping to the floor next to her shoes.
"I have to go to work," she said apologetically. "Danny's 'sick'." She slipped her feet into her Scarpas, and Remy smirked.
"Sick?"
Megan laughed at the skepticism in her voice, and the hollow feeling in Remy's chest filled in a little with something vaguely comforting. "Yeah," she said. She offered a small smile. "He's got a date. Can't let work stand in the way of that."
"Of course not," Remy deadpanned. She rose to her feet as Megan did, determinedly not thinking about the awkwardness that continued to hang between them. Stepping around her coffee table, she led Megan to the door, opening it and stepping to the side. "Have fun at work," she said, and inwardly cursed her undeniably lame words.
"Thanks," Megan said. She stood in the doorway, weight shifting back and forth subtly. "Have a good night."
"I'll see what I can do," Remy said wryly. She smiled crookedly, and when Megan returned it, Remy's smile felt honest for the first time in weeks.
Megan hesitated, fiddling with her purse strap, and then stepped forward and hugged Remy carefully. The unexpected gesture was as awkward as anything ever was between them, but it did little to keep Remy's arms from wrapping around Megan's back, or her forehead dropping tiredly to rest on Megan's shoulder. It was easily the most intimate contact Remy had experienced with anyone in over a year. Rose and jasmine and sandalwood tickled her nose as she inhaled slowly, familiar Burberry perfume invading her senses as her muscles slowly relaxed into Megan's embrace.
Megan's arms tightened briefly around her before she stepped back, regarding Remy levelly. "You coming out tomorrow night? I'm working."
Remy nodded without thinking. "I'll be there."
"Good," Megan said with a smile. "See you then."
"See you," Remy echoed as Megan waved, almost childishly, before turning and walking down the hallway. Remy stood in the doorway, watching her until she disappeared into the stairwell.
Eventually, she shuffled back into her apartment and shut the door quietly behind her. Exhaustion weighted her entire body, but for once it didn't feel suffocating; she slipped under the blankets on her bed, tugging a pillow tight against her chest. With a quiet grumble of contentment at the memory that tomorrow was Saturday and she wasn't on call, she finally let her eyes drift shut and for the first time in weeks, slept peacefully through the night.
That was the eighteenth.