Disclaimer: I own a house. I own "House" on DVD. I like the movie, "My Life as a House." As for the show and its characters, they belong to Fox.
A/N: This is Chapter 2 from House's point of view. Please let me know if you like it: I struggled to balance a portrayal of House in physical and psychic pain and House making choices he might not normally make, and felt at times like I was juggling precariously. I hope you'll let me know if it worked. Also, should I keep the story going? Tell me!
Notes: Thanks to Damfinogal for reading and commenting on it. Please see her author page for her awesome House/Cameron story. And as always, thanks to my beta, Timbereads, for her help. Check out her new stuff, especially the hilarious parody, "Who Stole Steve McQueen?"
Warning: This Chapter contains some frank and graphic language/imagery. You have been warned.
He's faithful to her in his fashion.
Even when he's with a whore, it's always her he's fucking.
Tonight he wants to hoist her on the desk, force her legs apart, and screw her until pleasure kills the pain.
He wants to mine deep inside to the hot core of her. Volcano metaphors come to mind. If he wasn't burning up, he could do better.
When I was a child I had a fever….
I am so fucking childish, he thinks. This isn't who I am.
Who are you? Who are you? Who are you? Who are you?
I'm a ghost in a wishing well.
If only he could lift her leg, raise her slender foot to his mouth; twirl his tongue between her toes until she screams.
These are her hands on my chest, her teeth on my nipples, her tongue searing a path down to my belly, and lower –
Oh God.
The shock of an electric current jolts his leg, and still he has an erection. He's rock hard.
I am a rock.
These carnal thoughts might be tender if he wasn't feverish and crazy from the pain.
His leg gets so bad he wonders if he should have cut it off.
It's as bad as it has ever been tonight. He relates to animals that chew off their offending limbs.
On his desk, there's a syringe of morphine. He can't take his eyes off it.
The allure is that Vicodin is to Morphine what Molly Shannon is to Angelina Jolie, he thinks. Vicodin is to Morphine what a matchbook car is to a monster truck.
He's promised Cuddy he won't inject himself again. But then he lies.
Morphine masks the pain in his leg, but it also muddies his mind, and makes him dull.
Boring is the last thing he wants to be. It's the ultimate insult.
He brings his bum leg up towards his chest, and massages it.
Soon he'll drive a nail into his hand like a real martyr, he thinks, darkly.
Bitter thoughts, like a Sumatran brew, and the roasted bean color of Foreman. No sugar tonight in my coffee….
And here he gets maudlin. He knows it, but there are no witnesses. The only disgust he'll earn by these thoughts is his own. He already lives with it.
Cameron, for God's sake, he thinks. For the sake of the God that neither of us believes in, I need a little of that human touch tonight. Come here, but beware. I don't know what I'm capable of.
How the hell did she infiltrate his fortress?
He is so fucked up tonight that if he were his own patient, he'd tell himself to get his head examined. Or he'd foist himself off on Chase as punishment.
Thank God Wilson isn't here.
If only she was.
And then she is.
Cameron appears in his office in the middle of the night, when his pain is at its peak. For reasons he can't fathom, she appears.
Why would she come, after all he's said and done? Has she forgiven him for faking cancer, for not denying that he was sick?
Perhaps.
Cameron generally accepts him just the way he is.
For reasons of his own, he doesn't send her away. Part of it is pure exhaustion from fighting the pain. Part of it is his hunch that Cameron is damaged enough to get him after all.
And then there's this: He crossed a line he thought he'd never cross when he let everyone believe he was near death. It wasn't his intention to deceive them.
It wasn't like when he'd stolen Stacey's medical records from her therapist. He admits he would have gone to any length to find out how she felt about him, and the hell with the consequences.
This was different. This was purely about him. If Wilson had left well enough alone – but that would never happen. Perhaps the only way to get Wilson and Cuddy off his back and out of his affairs is to behave in the one way they would never expect – like a normal human being.
It's true he likes to keep his distance, rarely cares what others think, and prefers to be solitary.
But the team has become something of a dysfunctional family – his dysfunctional family -- and he hates the word dysfunctional. They beat his own family, no pun intended, he thinks.
He pokes and prods them with his cane and his barbs; they bounce back like super balls for more.
He tells them they're boring, but what would he do without them?
The truth is that he finds them intriguing. Each has a back-story worthy of uncovering. He won't rest until he knows everything.
Another reason he lets Cameron in is the very reason he should keep her out.
The kiss.
He keeps reliving it.
From the moment she enters his office, he knows how it will go down. The letter of recommendation, Cameron's brief display of faux courage, the renewed tenderness, and the tentative but determined way she moves close to him, claims him with her eyes. There is nothing to do but stand up and make it easier for her. He knows she wants him to think her motives are mixed.
Her hands on his face do him in. The way her cool fingers brush his lips, learning the planes of his unshaven face, it's as if he's one of those phrenology heads, he thinks, as she closes in on him. The warmth of her mouth unhinges his reason. His last sane thought is that this is treason, before he gives in and kisses back. There's never going to be enough time to learn her lips. Their tongues explore their tongues; she swipes hers across his teeth. His arms hold her shoulders and her back. She's so small.
It all comes flooding back.
Most of all, Wilson's to blame for House letting down his guard.
"House, you're becoming predictable. I think you're even starting to bore Cameron, and she's stoic. Someday soon, no one's going to care about your…antics. They'll start to see you as… tedious instead of eccentric. Your shtick is becoming…old hat. Eventually, you'll get your wish. Everyone will leave you alone. How will you amuse yourself, without all of us to pick apart and piece together again?"
Wilson gets to him. He will never, ever admit it.
Tonight, he'll choose to be human. He can practice on Cameron.
So when she comes in, he lets her stay.
Of all things, he says "hi," like a schoolboy. He knows he sounds insipid. "The hospital is a house away from home," he jokes.
It's pathetic.
"I'm not much good for talk, unless you want to inject me with goodies."
He indicates the syringe on his desk, but Cameron ignores it.
"What does it feel like?" She nods in the direction of his leg.
"Ever been in an electric chair?" he asks, rhetorically. He's doing his best to mask the pain. "Of course you haven't. Me either. But, it's what I think it feels like. That, or electro-shock therapy, or getting stuck by lightning."
She moves around him and sits on his desktop, rests a hand on his sneaker. Her presence helps his breathing return to normal. Even the crazed lust recedes, although there's still a residue of desire. He can finally let go of his leg, where he's been rubbing it.
For a little while, I will let go.
For once, he does.
"You've made it clear you don't believe in God," he says. "Cameron, what do you believe in?" He really wants to know.
"Take off your shoes," she commands.
He hopes for more – take off your pants comes to mind -- but he obeys her, asks, "What are you up to?"
"Just relax, House. Rest."
When she reaches for his feet, he's pre-programmed to resist. She firmly grasps a foot between her small, capable, doctor's hands. Her deft fingers find his reflexology points, and she strokes the smooth front of his foot, and then kneads the underside with her thumbs.
The ache in his groin grows, but the pain in his leg ebbs; his mind unwinds, as if her touch has eased it.
"You asked what I believe," she says quietly. "I believe in bones, because they last forever. I believe in DNA, because it never lies. I believe in getting to the heart of the matter."
What can he say to that? He rests.
For a while, he watches her eyes. Sometimes they're gray; other times they're green. His tiny reading lamp lights her from above.
He's read between her lines.
In her grave eyes he's spied humor, hurt, intelligence, and pride. Tonight, her face is relaxed, her eyes pensive.
If I could read your mind, dear, what a tale your thoughts would tell….
What is she thinking about? He could ask, he knows. Some day he will. Now he doesn't want to think anymore.
Don't think, he cautions himself. Don't think about where all my blood is pooling as she strokes the arch of my foot, knuckles between the balls of my feet. Does she know the effect she's having?
Finally, he closes his eyes. She has told him to rest, relax. He'll listen to her without having to say something back.
Listen to her. It sounds like something Wilson would suggest. Maybe he should listen to Wilson. If he had, the date with Cameron might have led to something, and he doesn't just mean sex. House had complimented her earrings, just like Wilson said. She'd been surprised by him, and treated him to a genuine Cameron smile. Now that was worth something.
The corsage had been his idea. He'd dusted off a courtliness he wasn't sure he'd ever had.
At the florist, he'd lingered, trying to choose between a day lily, a rose, or a peony. He dismissed the carnations as a tired cliché. Weren't peonies associated with funerals? They were waxen, and smelled of decay. A rose made a statement he wasn't sure he wanted to make. What flower would embody Cameron? An aster, maybe? Something purple, he thought.
In his leather jacket and Stones tee, leaning heavily on his cane, rumpled and unshaven, he felt out of place among the perfect hothouse blooms.
An orchid would be too exotic and cold. Gladiolas were too busy. Delphiniums? He couldn't remember what they looked like. Hyacinths were sickly sweet, cloying. There was something about a daffodil, but it was too yellow.
Wildflowers worked for him. He'd tossed a coin between a poppy and a daisy.
The corsage had been a hit. His restaurant pick went over big. He had been prepared to discuss the eatery's décor to death, or hold forth on the weather. How about those cumulus clouds?
And then predictably, he'd mucked it up.
That was then; this is now.
Start small, Wilson has suggested in the past. Share a slice of pizza with a friend.
More pop psychology from his oncologist friend.
For some reason, the point behind Wilson's words sinks in. When House is being cynical – most of the time – he sneers at Wilson's efforts to socialize him.
Because of the divorces, Wilson thinks he can dole out advice about relationships, advice along the lines of get back in the saddle again. Maybe Wilson knows how to be a friend, but does he know the answer to this:
How do you get back to the way you were before the pain? And what happens when you don't remember a time when you weren't damaged? How do you live with the shame of a father's abuse? How do you move on from that?
And there it is, as Dr. Cox would say on "Scrubs," which is one of House's secret pleasures. (It's a few steps up from a soap, so no one knows he watches it.) Everything is a cover for the shame. The physical pain he's lived with since the infarction just provides a conspicuous reason for the way he keeps his distance from the fray.
There's no one he can tell about the shame. He doesn't want to speak of it out loud. He hears his father's voice within his head, a refrain of "idiot, moron, dimwit, get into that tool shed, stay there until you die from dumbness." House blocks it all the time with the music from his iPod.
How the hell is he supposed to learn to love again, to live, when he never really knew how to begin?
Start with one slice of pizza at a time, Wilson would say.
A prisoner to pain, House will try this one small thing.
Like a leopard, he's pretty sure he's going to keep his spots. He can't abide boredom.
Cameron stops moving her hands on his feet, stops, and simply holds them.
"Thanks," he says. Now how about a hand job? He can't help his brain from thinking it. It's force of habit. "Thanks for that."
"Are you hungry?" He asks. And do you want a ride on my satellite of love?
"A little. What about your leg?"
He stands, stiff from sitting and the pain. Grabbing his cane, he throws his other arm around her shoulder, and leans on her.
"It's bad tonight, but I'll live, Cameron. I'm going to live. Come on. Let's go split a pizza and a pitcher."
She nods her consent. "We can play some darts."
It's just for one night, House reminds himself, as they walk out of his office, out of the hospital, toward Princeton and a slice of pizza.
It's just for one night.
