Author's Note: in case there's anyone who's actually be wanting an update in the last month... I'm terribly sorry for the delay! I started a new job, and then I moved, and then I got saddled with what was either the worst and most stubborn cold known to man, or swine flu. Then there was Christmas shopping to manage, and a trip to the other side of the country for after Christmas to get in order. Needless to say, things have been a bit hectic.

So, here's an update! (A double feature, if you will.) Consider it a holiday gift, because I doubt I'll have any time to write between now and the new year. Happy Christmas/Chanukkah/Kwanzaa/Yule/winter solstice!

Two weeks after the eighteen time Remy spoke to Megan and two days after the twenty-fourth time, Remy dug Spencer's card out from under a stack of newspapers on her kitchen table and leaned against her refrigerator, staring at it thoughtfully.

The weeks following her living room confessions to Megan had been good to Remy. There were still moments when her heart thudded painfully in her chest, the unbearable weight of her impending sickness compressing her chest to the point where she found herself grasping in her pocket for her inhaler and pressing a hand to her painfully tight chest. There were nights when she wanted nothing more than to drown herself in a handle of scotch to avoid the horrible drawn-out death she was bound for. But then she could go to Megan's bar, and Megan could always tell and would put together a scotch whiskey bitter for her and force her to talk about it, drawing the words out of her in a manner that was simultaneously shy and too forceful to deny.

Remy had forgotten what it was like to have a friend, but she had found an unusual but constantly strengthening one in Megan. A quiet agreement had formed between them, where Megan was allowed to shake her head imperceptibly and give Remy a stern look when the doctor was in the midst of an unsavory pickup, and Remy was allowed to babysit Megan when her own sadness became overwhelming and she need an injection to let her forget. Twice now, Remy had spent a sleepless night in Megan's apartment, sterilizing needles before Megan used them and sitting in the easy chair in Megan's bedroom as she kept a sharp eye on her drugged friend, the redhead relaxing into her high and eventually falling asleep; Remy would spread a blanket over her and monitor her vitals and fret silently until she would reluctantly shake Megan awake in the morning when she had to leave for work. Twice she had stumbled into work, with circles under her eyes, to snarky comments from House and annoyance from Foreman, probing questions from Kutner and glares from Cuddy, and weathered every comment and glance stoically.

The quiet hum of the refrigerator was comforting, the stainless steel warm against her back. Remy let her eyes slide shut as she considered the business card in her hand. Last night, she had left work in a cheerful mood, a case solved and a patient recovering; she had gone straight to see Megan on the redhead's night off, feeling that her good mood and the weekend ahead of her was a sign that they should go to a concert; she had arrived at Megan's apartment to find her curled up in a ball on the couch, makeup streaked with tearstains and a small bag of heroin sitting despondently on the table in front of her. Remy had felt her good mood evaporate in an instant as she knelt in front of her friend and tried halfheartedly to talk her out of using the drugs, even though she knew she had little right to even try, given her past. She had been as successful as she had been the first time they spoke about it, and once more found herself pacing back in forth in Megan's living room while her friend injected heroin between her toes.

Opening her eyes slowly, Remy turned the card over in her hand, turning it from back to front and back again, considering the phone number etched into it. A part of her desperately wanted to call Megan and see how she was, but she had learned the hard way that Megan was insistent on having her space after a breakdown. She tamped down on the instinct and pushed herself away from the fridge. Picking up her phone from the counter, she hesitated, and then dialed out the number on the card.

An hour later, Remy was in her car, heading into New York to have a late lunch with Spencer. She had caved in as she left and called Megan, who had answered on the last possible ring, sounding tired but less sad; the redhead had made an unexpectedly sly comment about Remy's "date" and told her to have fun. Remy had resisted the urge to roll her eyes and stick out her tongue at Megan—not because it was immature, but simply because Megan couldn't see her—and told her that she'd be back after dinner and would come by the bar.

"Yeah, I'm sure you'll be back tonight," Megan said, quietly sarcastic as always, and this time Remy actually had rolled her eyes.

"I'm hanging up now," she said. She knew that she sounded far more cheerful than offended, and didn't care. Briefly, she considered what her colleagues would say if they saw this side of her.

"Use protection," Megan said. Her soft smile was somehow evident even over the phone.

Two hours after that, Remy sat in a small restaurant in Chelsea, in the midst of a strangely comfortable conversation with Spencer over a shared pizza and a glass of red wine. She listened amicably as Spencer told her about her job, and responded in kind, providing plenty of entertaining renditions of House badgering Foreman and bating Cuddy.

As they waited for dessert to make it to the table, a silence that was only halfway as awkward as Remy would have expected fell over them. Remy fiddled with the stem of her empty wine glass, staring at it in a carefully casual manner and glancing up at Spencer through her eyelashes; the other woman was sitting back in her chair, arms and legs crossed casually as she fixed an appraising stare on Remy.

"So," Spencer finally said, pausing as their desserts were placed on the table. "I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that since you're here with me now, you probably tried to patch things up with your friend." She paused once more, leaning forward and resting her chin in her hand. Remy felt a slight rush of heat in her cheeks and bit the inside of her cheek. She wasn't sure how she liked having gone from no friends to two who could more or less read her mind.

"Yeah," she said finally. "You might say that."

"And what else might you say?"

Remy shrugged, tracing the tines of her fork along the edge of the tiramisu in front of her. She was torn between bursting out happily that finally something in her life felt okay—maybe not great, maybe not even good, but okay, which was so much more than she'd had a year ago—and foolishly holding onto it alone, a part of her convinced that if she spoke of it, everything would fall apart.

The former won out, and she couldn't keep herself from glancing up at Spencer with an uncharacteristically shy smile on her lips. A slow grin appeared on Spencer's face.

"Good," she said. "I'm glad you worked it out."

"Me too," Remy mumbled, inexplicably but sufficiently embarrassed; she focused her attention on the plate in front of her, studiously cutting off a perfectly rectangular piece to eat.

"So are things back to normal?"

"Yes and no," Remy said slowly. She sighed, slumping back into her chair. "She's still using."

"You can't get her to stop?"

"I don't have any right to," Remy said. She swallowed the self-disgust that rose in her throat at the words. "It's not like I have a leg to stand on when it comes to doing stupid shit."

"Doesn't mean you can't try," Spencer reasoned. "It doesn't matter what you have or haven't done, really. She's your friend, and she's hurting herself, and you care about her. It makes sense that you'd try to help."

"I watch out for her when she's high," Remy said slowly. She wasn't sure if she was justifying her inaction or disparaging it. "I get her clean needles, I take care of her."

Spencer shrugged. "Yeah, it could be worse, I guess. But the fact that it isn't doesn't mean that it's good, either."

"Yeah," Remy muttered. The tiramisu lay abandoned in front of them. Her appetite had disappeared; she found herself wishing desperately for another glass of wine.

Spencer sighed. "Look," she said. "I may be out of line and it may not be my business, but from what I've seen, you've got this really dumb habit of assuming that you can't do things. You thought you couldn't deal with being around me when I was in the hospital, but you did. You thought you couldn't patch things up with Megan, and you did. I'd even guess that you thought, after your diagnosis, that you couldn't manage friends anymore, but here you are anyways.

"Your lack of confidence is kind of cute," she continued. She smirked at the eyebrow Remy raised at her. "Not that it's the only thing." Her eyes slipped momentarily up and down Remy's form; a small thrill of excitement pulsed in Remy's chest.

"But the point is," Spencer continued, her eyes once more locked on Remy's, expression as serious as it had been moments earlier, as if she hadn't just blatantly been checking Remy out. "It's also kind of annoying. You're clearly capable of plenty of the things you need to do, but you convince yourself that you're not. And frankly," she added. "You need to get over it."

"Get over it," Remy repeated flatly. The excitement she had felt didn't disappear, as she might have thought, with Spencer's comment; rather, it mellowed to a quiet hum throughout her body. She couldn't remember the last time someone had managed to elicit such a reaction from her, in her body or in her heart.

"Get over it," Spencer said, nodding in confirmation. She nodded at the waiter when he brought the check over, snatching it up before Remy could get a hand on it. "Shut up," Spencer said kindly when Remy opened her mouth to protest.

As Spencer went up front to settle the bill, Remy slowly pushed herself to her feet, shrugging into her coat. She felt young and shy, like a ninth grader on a first date. She wasn't used to feeling so unsure; even the dates she had gone on as a kid had come and gone simply and easily. Without meaning to, she reached into her coat pocket for her phone, thumb hovering over the redial button that would call up Megan so she could ask for advice; she stopped herself just before pressing send, scolding herself for such thinking.

"Ready?" Spencer said as she slid into her own coat.

"Yep," Remy said. Pleasantly enough, the confidence in her voice didn't sound nearly as forced as it actually was.

They walked in silence, wrapped tightly in coats against the early edges of winter. Remy restrained herself from glancing over at Spencer constantly, instead forcing herself to focus on the steady rhythm of her steps. Her childhood habit of counting steps reappeared, and she made it up to almost three hundred steps in surprisingly comfortable silence when Spencer slowed to a stop next to her. Remy looked up questioningly, and Spencer smiled, half-indulgent and half-mocking.

"My building," she said, gesturing to the doors behind her.

"Oh," Remy said stupidly. She glanced around, searching for street signs to get her bearings, or a taxi that could get her to her car. The residential street was quiet and empty, except for them; Remy marveled at the utter lack of city sounds that she had always associated with even the neighborhoods of New York City.

"You want a drink?" Spencer offered.

Remy hesitated momentarily before nodding. "Sure."

Spencer lived on the twelfth floor. Remy was jealous of her apartment, which put even her own to shame; apparently, either being a marketing consultant was unfairly lucrative, or Spencer was just extremely good at it. She watched as Spencer tossed her coat and keys over the back of the sofa, kicking her shoes off and down the hallway, and assumed that it was probably the latter. Marketing, after all, was just psychology, and Spencer had proven to be unnervingly good at that.

Spencer handed her a beer, a bottle of her own in her hands. "Cheers," she said, raising her beer in a salute to Remy.

"Thanks." Remy took a slow drink, leaning against the doorjamb at the entrance to the kitchen and setting her purse down on the counter beside her. Spencer stood a few feet away, impossibly casual in her jeans and bare feet, one hand in her pocket and the other wrapped loosely around the beer bottle.

After a full thirty seconds of awkward silence, of which Remy could not think of a single thing to say, Spencer stepped forward and took the beer bottle out of her hand, setting both down on the counter. Remy's breath caught in her throat as Spencer stood silently in front of her, meeting her eyes calmly and quietly. With her shoes off, she was exactly the same height as Remy in her heels, their eyes dead level with barely a foot separating them. Her brand of soft-spoken was entirely opposite of Megan's, reeking of comfort and confidence and something irresistibly playful. Remy wondered absently if the playfulness was new, or if it had just been overwhelmed their first time by sickness and alcohol and uncertainty.

A handful of seconds ticked past, and Remy was far from surprised when Spencer stepped in the last bit and kissed her; it was familiar and comfortable and the feel of Spencer's lips sliding across hers somehow didn't bring back a single memory of their first encounter. What did surprise her was that she didn't hesitate to return the kiss. More seconds slipped by, but she wasn't counting; her focus was limited to Spencer's lips against hers, Spencer's fingers trailing lightly against her jaw, Spencer's weight pressing her against the wall.

When Spencer finally leaned back, breaking the kiss, Remy couldn't keep a soft "Damn" from slipping out of her mouth. She opened her eyes slowly, holding Spencer's gaze, and offered a playful smile. "I know that that just blew your seven out of the water."

Spencer smirked at her. "Yeah, pretty much," she said. She leaned forward once more, kissing Remy again; Remy let herself fall into the kiss, her hands finding Spencer's hips and pulling her closer. When Spencer pulled back for the second time, Remy pushed forward, fingers tightening on her hips and an almost-silent sound of protest bubbling in the back of her throat. She leaned in and kissed Spencer again, a fleeting feeling of triumph fluttering in her chest when Spencer couldn't seem to resist.

It wasn't until Remy's thumb brushed under the cotton on Spencer's shirt, skimming up from her hipbone to her ribs, that the other woman pulled away, her own hand moving to halt Remy's. "Wait," she breathed.

"For what?" Remy mumbled impatiently. Undeterred, she moved her lips to Spencer's neck. She groaned in annoyance when Spencer stepped back.

"Wait a minute," she said again.

Sighing, Remy crossed her arms in an effort to keep her hands to herself. She felt roughly eleven seconds away from jumping Spencer and knocking that seven off record once and for all.

"What for?" she repeated.

"Well," Spencer said with a smirk. "I'm trying to ask you out, but that doesn't work very well when I can't form a coherent thought."

Remy matched Spencer's smirk with a cocky one of her own. "Coherent thought, huh?"

Spencer chuckled. "Don't let it go to your head," she warned.

"You tell me you're going to ask me out and think that a comment about my kissing is going to go to my head?"

"I know that a comment about your kissing already went to your head," Spencer shot back. "But hey, far be it from me to take anything away from your abilities. They're top-notch."

"So, we're waiting for… what?" Remy drawled.

"Not tonight," Spencer said. She took a step back, her hands slipping into her pockets.

Remy's brow furrowed. "Oh?"

"No," Spencer said. "Like I said, I'm trying to ask you out." She offered a small smile. "Dr. Hadley, would you like to go out to dinner with me sometime?"

Remy couldn't stop the shy smile that she was so unaccustomed to from spreading across her lips; she wasn't sure if she wanted to anyways. She couldn't think of a single time in her life when someone had so often drawn out such shyness.

"I can't remember the last time someone asked me out on a date," she said without meaning to, her voice only a breath above a whisper.

Spencer shook her head. "Don't think about it that way," she said. "Just think about the fact that I'm asking you out on a date now." She cocked her head to one side. "So, what do you say?"

Remy felt her smile widen the slightest bit. "Yeah," she said. "I'd like to go out with you sometime."

Spencer smiled, not moving from where she stood—just out of arm's reach, irresistibly casual in bare feet and bright eyes. "Glad to hear it," she said. She moved forward, smirking teasingly at Remy as she bypassed reaching hands and instead simply picked up her beer bottle from the counter to Remy's right.

"Tease," Remy mumbled. She halfheartedly attempted to glare at Spencer, but could only manage what she imagined was something between a glower and a pout. Her fingers itched to grasp and touch and feel; she hooked her thumbs in her suspenders and her fingers half into her pants pockets to keep them from reaching unwillingly for Spencer.

After a short-lived staring contest—which she lost miserably—Remy sighed and glanced at the flashing clock numbers on Spencer's microwave. If she was going to stop by and see Megan before last call, she needed to get on the road.

"You need to leave," Spencer said. Her tone hovered between knowing and questioning, and Remy raised one shoulder in a shrug, but nodded nonetheless.

"Yeah," she said, half rueful and half quietly pleased. "I told Megan I'd stop by the bar tonight."

"Probably a good idea," Spencer said with a nod. The gentle tone in her voice that had been unavoidable every time they spoke of Remy and Huntington's and Megan and awkwardness was back, as Spencer's demeanor slid from enticing to supportive effortlessly. She set her still half-full beer down on the counter slowly, shaking her hair out of her eyes.

"So," Remy said quickly, desperate to take at least a little initiative where Spencer had dominated thus far. "What did you have in mind for this date?"

"Well," Spencer said slowly. Just as easily as seconds earlier, her demeanor shifted again, a shine in her eyes and a playful smile on her lips. "I was thinking of something along the lines of dinner and a show."

"What kind of show?" Remy stepped forward, moving almost cautiously, half convinced that Spencer would step back every time she moved closer; a tiny bit of triumph warmed in her chest with each step closer she got.

"Something funny, probably," Spencer said. Her voice was dropping as Remy inched closer, eyes hooded; she remained unmoving, hands in her pockets, allowing Remy to retake some control. "Any preferences?"

"As long as it's not one of those weird artsy things that I'll never understand, I'm good," Remy said, her voice low. She stood almost flush against Spencer. She leaned forward the slightest bit, brushing a soft kiss against Spencer's jaw; eyes open, she watched as Spencer's fluttered shut. "Time frame?" she asked, lips still against Spencer's skin.

"I have to go to Seattle this week," Spencer half-whispered. "I get back Thursday night. So…Friday?"

"Friday," Remy said thoughtfully. She ran through her schedule, trying to remember if she was on call that night. "Friday is perfect," she said. Unhooking one hand from her suspenders, she pressed her fingertips and palm lightly against Spencer's cheek and kissed her one last time.

"Sounds great," Spencer breathed out. "I'll call you when I get back into town."

"Good," Remy said. With a smile that felt more honest than she intended, she kissed Spencer's cheek and stepped back, picking up her coat from the chair she had tossed it over. Slipping into it slowly, she kept her eyes locked on Spencer. "What's in Seattle?"

"Rain," Spencer muttered disgustedly. "And fog."

Remy chuckled. She buttoned her coat up slowly. "Not a fan?"

"Not remotely," Spencer said. She picked up her beer, taking another sip. "But there's also a client, and they pay big money, so off I go to the land of rain and perpetual depression."

"Sounds fun," Remy said. "By which I mean, sounds like a pain in the ass. Sometimes my job sucks, but at least it sucks in the same state."

"Don't rub it in," Spencer said, leveling a mild glare at Remy. "But hey, upside: lots of fly miles. A few more cross-countries like this and I can fly off to Australia in first class, for free."

"Uh huh," Remy drawled. Her coat buttoned, she picked up her purse, fighting the urge to fidget. "Well," she said after a moment, praying that she didn't actually sound as awkward as she thought she did. "Have a safe trip."

"That's the idea," Spencer said. She walked Remy to the front door, opening it slowly. "I'll do my best to find a funny, non-artsy weird show."

"Good." Remy stood in the doorway, thinking about the cold car and long drive awaiting her, and considered how unwise it would be to push Spencer back into the apartment and not leave until sometime before Monday morning.

"Take care, Remy," Spencer said, her smile as quiet as her voice.

"Thanks," Remy said. "For dinner, and the drink, and… well, thank you." She met Spencer's eyes squarely, determined to ignore the blush she knew was reddening her cheeks.

"Anytime," Spencer said. Her smile widened. "It was my pleasure." One hand still in her pocket, the other gripping the doorknob, she leaned forward and kissed Remy, pulling back before either of them fell too far into it. "Night, Remy," she said with a smile.

"Good night," Remy said. She stepped backwards into the hallway and watched as Spencer offered her a final encouraging smile before disappearing behind the closing door.

After a long few seconds of standing in the hallway, Remy uprooted her feet and made her way out of the building. The fatigue she was so used to feeling was fading, replaced with something that one could almost classify as a euphoria wrapped in Spencer's lips and charm and smirks and the thought that she was leaving Spencer's to go see her friend and how it felt to be this excited about any part of her life again.

Once she made it back to her car and had tipped the cabbie outrageously well, she pulled her phone out and hit the redial button. As she pulled out of the parking lot and waited for Megan to answer her phone, she smiled quietly to herself.