Disclaimer: T'aint mine.

A/N: They finally go out for pizza: Readers, thanks for your patience. To everyone who has read this and reviewed it, especially those who give specific likes/dislikes, thanks for the encouragement. This chapter is dedicated to Tiflissa, who has been so awesome and kind.

If you like it, please review it.

Note: Still not smut, but there is some sexual imagery and language.

The tavern is he takes her to is called "Deuces." Cameron has never heard of the place. A poker reference, doubtless. It seems redundant. But if it serves pizza, she's into it.

House seems to know it, and that's enough for her. She's pleased to be on his turf.

"This place is our secret," he hisses in her ear as they climb off his bike and remove their helmets. "Not even Wilson knows about it. Think you can keep it that way?"

"He'll never hear a peep from me," she says with a smile.

"You lie. You keep secrets the way Liz Taylor keeps marriage vows," House sets the record straight.

She doesn't deny it.

On the ride over, her body fit perfectly behind his. This felt primitive, her straddling him from behind. She was aware of the vibrations of the bike, and the way her clitoris pressed against House's back. She felt humming between her legs. It was like this with horses when she was a teen and used to ride. The friction of man and machine made her close her eyes. She had to force herself not to thrust her pelvis against him.

He takes her elbow and leads her inside. Her nipples harden at his touch. It's like she's been electrified.

The joint is nearly empty. A few blue-collar types await last call. The proprietor, a husky, copper-haired man wearing a white apron, wipes down tables.

Without looking up, he says, "Kitchen's closed."

"Open it," House says, rapping his cane against a tabletop. The man looks up, and then makes a face as if he wishes he hadn't.

House turns to Cameron, points at a table adorned with a red and white checked tablecloth, and a simple vase of lilacs.

"Sit."

Cameron watches from her ringside seat as House approaches the proprietor. At first she wonders if House is having a seizure. He's stuck his cane in the crook of an arm, and gestures rapid fire with his hands. Soon she sees that she can add American Sign Language to his resume. And he seems fluent. He raises his eyebrows maniacally, and motions at Cameron with his cane. He makes the sign for "crazy" and then signs, "She has her period."

She swears she sees House palm the guy a greenback.

In a moment, he joins her, sinking into the cushioned seat across from her, and stretching out his legs under the table. He still looks tired: Circles ring his eyes; but the pain seems to have receded.

The deaf man comes over carrying pale ales on a tray and sets one in front of each of them.

"What'll it be?" he asks, his speech slightly muddied by his hearing impairment.

They weigh the pros and cons of pizza toppings.

"Pineapple? That's for pansies. Wilson would order that," House says, with a grimace.

"Sun-dried tomatoes?" Cameron retorts. "I thought your taste was more pedestrian than that. I consider that topping to be firmly in the Cuddy camp. It's high class, in that annoying yuppie way."

"Green olives? Only James Bond would put those on his pizza, after downing too many martinis. Besides, they're too close to pickles."

"Why, because they're both green? What's wrong, House, wouldn't mommy let you leave the table unless you finished your vegetables?"

"Don't talk about my mother that way, you scamp, or I'll have to paddle you with my big cane."

"Onions. They're yucky, as you would say. Plus, what if we want to seal this date with a kiss?" Cameron says this with a smile. House still looks wary.

"This isn't a date." Then he narrows his eyes at her and taps his chin. "I think it's called a rendezvous."

"Same difference. Anyway, you can't be too careful about onions."

House finally orders, while the guy reads his lips.

"Who's your friend?" Cameron asks, after the red-haired man heads into the kitchen.

"He's not my friend," House answers. "He's pizza guy. He plays poker with me on Thursday nights. Wilson insists on calling him by his name. I never knew it."

"House, only you can make friend sound like a dirty word."

He looks up at her with half a smile. Real warmth and affection lurk behind his eyes. It hits her in the pit of her stomach, and the heat travels down between her legs. If she moved forward in her seat, her knees would touch his under the table. Damn his unshaven mug. Damn his Kryptonite eyes. She wants to grab his face in her hands and kiss him, never mind that she'd probably knock over a beer.

The last patrons drink down their shots and stumble out into the dawn.

And then there were two.

It's just them, and the leftover music from the coin-operated machine.

You and me babe, how about it?

Dire Straits play on the jukebox – "Romeo and Juliet." It isn't their choice.

God forbid.

I'm no Romeo, House knows, rolling his eyes at the song. I don't aspire to it. I wouldn't cut it as a romantic doc on "General Hospital," much less as a tragic lover in classic literature.

On the one hand, he's philosophical about it; on the other hand, there's bitterness behind his thoughts. For a fraction of a moment, he wonders, what if.

What if his father hadn't hurt him? What if he hadn't had the infarction? What if Stacey hadn't left him? What if the pain disappeared? What if he could walk normally again?

He looks up and sees Cameron sitting across from him, her lovely face devoid of pity or need, and swears off thinking about what might have been if only.

He's no Romeo, Cameron reminds herself. He's far from it. House is as mercurial and messed up as Mr. Rochester, and nearly as mysterious as Mr. DeWinter, but he's no Romeo, and he's no Heathcliff.

This is it.

There's just the two of them, face to face in a restaurant, a steaming pizza on the table between them, the pie heaped with spinach, mushrooms and anchovies.

"You like anchovies, but a mere slice of pickle makes you squirm like a two-year-old," Cameron observes.

House resorts to his comeback line.

"I'm – complicated."

So far, Cameron has made an effort to keep the conversation light. She doesn't want to make the same mistakes she made on their ill-fated date. So, no questions that probe into House's psyche: not his Id, his Ego, or his Superego, as tempting as it is.

I'll leave that to Wilson, she decides.

She wants to see how this night will play out, and she's keeping her own cards close to her chest. The trick is to keep House's eyes on her face, not her breasts, she laughs, a Mona Lisa smile upon her lips.

That's easier said than done, she realizes, as she catches House checking out her rack.

He stares down at his hands, afraid if he looks up at her, he won't be able to look away.

She is lovely and sylph-like in jeans and a simple white shirt. The top few buttons are undone, so he can just see the curves of her breasts. Unlike Cuddy, she's subtle, classy, understated, and hot. He wants to reach out and feel her warmth through her clothes. He wants to rid the table of the pizza, and learn her shape, and help her to learn his own, especially down low where he's so hard. He wants to place his palm between her legs, and let it rest there for a while before making a move.

Fucking Mark Knopfler and his impossibly romantic lyrics, serenading the two of them against their will:

I can't do the talk like they talk on TV

And I can't do a love song the way it's meant to be

I can't do anything but I'd do anything for you

I can't do anything except be in love with you.

"House."

Her voice stirs him, and he can't help it. He looks up into those cerulean hypnotists eyes. His gaze lingers. It's beyond him. All he did was look up, and now he's locked into it.

"What?" He wonders if his voice sounds as shaken as he feels.

Don't ask me how I feel about you.

"Do I have spinach in my teeth?"

You know you're whipped when not even a remark like that ruins the mood.

"There's an anchovy dangling from your rear molar, but nope. No spinach."

She closes her mouth, grins like a maniac, and looks back at him.

Her breath quickens.

To hide it, she asks, "Do you want to make a bet?

"When haven't I? What's the bet?"

"It's a stare down. We used to do this in grade school. Oh, stop rolling your eyes, House. They're going to get stuck in the back of your head, and then you'll be sorry. Come on. It's fun. Whoever can go the longest without looking away gives the other…"

"Flowers and candy? A date? A new car? A microwave oven? A trip to Tahoe?"

"Okay, Snarky."

"Snarky? Are you giving me a nickname? Is this a term of endearment?"

"Stands for sarcastic remark. You're an expert at it. How about this: If I win, you get stuck in a room with Wilson, your mouth sealed shut with duct tape, and you have to listen to whatever he says."

"Is Wilson's birthday coming up? Did Wilson put you up to this?"

"Wilson is clueless."

House rubs his chin. "Wilson is clueless. What's in it for you?"

"Oh, I want to watch from an observation room. I'll get off on it. I'm sadistic like that. What do you want if you win?"

Do I have to pick just one thing? The pain returns to House's leg as he considers everything he wants from Cameron, and all he cannot have. Now his head hurts, too. He avoids thinking about his heart.

Just a little is enough.

Now it's Pete Townsend on the jukebox. He was much less annoying as the brains behind The Who. Just a little isn't nearly enough, House thinks. Just a little is just a little. You better bet your life, Pete Townsend. One Vicodin barely makes a dent in the pain these days.

It's true that sometimes it pays to be a minimalist. With the memory, tactile and psychic, of his kiss with Cameron, he'd gone far, at least in his imagination. House had replayed it, extended it, deepened it, deviated from it, made more of it than it could possibly have meant. Oh, he'd milked it.

Just one more kiss wouldn't cut it.

He's imagined an exquisitely slow round of lovemaking. In his mind's eye, her body is a Braille map his fingers long to memorize. He's pictured pushing aside her labia, with his tongue, and then with the head of his swollen shaft. He pushes himself into her, pulls back a bit; pushes further, making room for more of him, inch by tantalizing inch. He finds her wetness, her warmth.

He's dizzy from thinking of it.

What do you want if you win? She has asked.

He has half a mind to ask her for a date. He wants to knock her off balance. She must be expecting him to make sarcastic remarks, to ask her for a blow job, a lap dance, for breast implants, for a threesome with Cuddy, for clinic duty, if he could French kiss her ass, anything of that ilk. God knows he could deliver it.

He stalls. "Isn't this game a little childish?" He says.

Cameron laughs. "You tell me, House. You would know. Or better yet: Ask your magic eight ball like a grownup."

He scowls.

"Come on. It'll get your mind off the Vicodin. You've been fiddling with that bottle in your pocket like Frodo clutching at his precious ring."

Be that way, he thinks, uncapping the prescription and popping three Vicodin. He washes the narcotics down with a swig of beer.

"If I win, you dump Chase," House says, finally. "Your heart's not in it anyway. Your vagina's committed, but you could satisfy those needs with a gigolo, and besides, Chase dated a dominatrix. He's got to go."

Cameron sits back in her seat, poker-faced.

"Wow. Give me a minute."

"I'm not trying to question your choices or make a judgment. It's just that Chase is such a dweeb."

"Then why don't you fire him?"

"He's the perfect target for Foreman's potshots, and Foreman needs that, since Foreman's the perfect target for my potshots, and I need that. This way, everybody's happy."

"Okay. I can't believe I'm agreeing to this, but I was going to end it anyway. I'm going to tell him in my own way, House. It can never get out that this was part of a bet."

It's because I'm severely sleep deprived, Cameron thinks.

"The way I see it, if I win, you win," House dares to say. "Look. If I win, I'll tell you a secret about me that no one knows. Not Wilson, not Cuddy, not my mom, not Stacey."

"And if I win, I win," Cameron says, gleefully.

"Shut up. Let's do this thing."

"I have an idea," Cameron says. She reaches out her hand and grasps his left one with her right. "Elbows on the table. It helps to arm wrestle in order to maintain eye contact. But remember, it's not who wins the arm wrestling. It's who maintains the eye contact. Got it?"

Her hand in his is cool from holding her beer. His is warm from the Vicodin in his bloodstream, and his proximity to her.

"Yeah." He makes a face. "How do we start? Do we count to one hundred? Close our eyes, then, one, two, three? What's the protocol? And were you pretty in grade school?"

"I was gangly. I had buckteeth until I was ten and the braces kicked in. I still won't eat corn because kernels used to get stuck in between."

He shudders. "Eeew. Before we get started: One caveat. I get to pick the jams."

"Jams? That word really ages you."

"At the rate I'm aging, oh very young, I'll be a skeleton by the end of the night." House gets up and limps heavily over to the jukebox and flips through selections on the machine. He picks "Ramble On," by Led Zeppelin, and "Good Times, Bad Times," by Cracker.

"Hey," he says, sitting back down across from Cameron. "Can we talk while we stare? Are there any rules I should know about? Under that All-American girl with a dark, damaged past, I know you're devious."

"Okay. I'll lay it out for you. Basically, anything goes – but keep your other hand where I can see it. I don't want any shenanigans under the table."

He nods. "Ready?"

"Yup. Go!"

House bites his lower lip the way Cameron loves. He lowers his head, and raises his eyes to her. It's an almost purely sexual act, though she's sure he doesn't mean it that way.

Their eyes lock.

He tilts his head one way, and then another.

"Can we blink?"

"Yes, House."

Her eyes widen as House opens his mouth and sticks his tongue out and wiggles it at her like Mick Jagger.

"I want you. I want you so bad," she deadpans.

His eyes are pools of glassy blue – glassy from the Vicodin and lack of sleep, she guesses.

She could drown in them.

Their hands are entwined, and House wrestles her arm to the tabletop in a nano second.

He marvels at the feeling of her tiny wrist and the metacarpals of her hand beneath his.

Instead of letting go, he circles her knuckles gently with his thumb; he raises her hand to his mouth and traces the inside of her palm with the tip of his tongue.

She gasps.

"House."

"You said anything goes."

Her eyes cross and uncross.

"Hmm. That's attractive."

Her eyes are cerulean, with a hint of green. So intent is he on them, he sees tiny flecks of gold deep in the irises. Her lashes are darker than Foreman's mahogany skin.

House's pager goes off. He picks it up, listens.

"Can't. I'm fixating. You can analyze me later."

"Wilson?"

"Who else?"

"Have you ever played that car game where one person says a word, and the other person has to say a word beginning with the last letter of the first person's word?"

"My family wasn't big on games. But, let me guess. You want us to play it while were having our stare-a-thon. Too bad all the barflies left. We could have extended the bet and raised money for Cuddy so could afford reduction surgery on her mammoth ass."

"So, can we play? To make it harder, let's stick to medical lingo. I'll start. Nephrology."

"Yaws," House says. "Can you roll down your sleeve? Never mind. I can do it without looking."

"What are you up to, House?"

"Cameron said that anything goes. Yet she questions my every move," House muses, and then shouts, "Hey Cameron! It's your turn!"

She keeps her eyes on his. This is fun, but she wants to pull back and look at his whole face, this worn, bristly, face that has become so dear to her.

"Syndactyly."

"Yeast infection. Cameron, this is boring."

House has unbuttoned the fastener on Cameron's cuff, and rolled down her sleeve, exposing her bare arm. He wants to look at it, to see the blue vein in her bare wrist, under her alabaster skin, to kiss a path along it.

Both songs on the jukebox have played, and it's quiet in the tavern, except for the occasional sound of a dishwasher being cleared.

Except for their breathing.

"You've got nice eyes," she says.

"You." House says.

She feels his warm breath on her as he leans forward and cups her chin with his hand.

Gently, he pulls her face toward his.

And then the silence ends, as the sound of House's cane slamming against the table makes them cringe.

"God damn it, House! It's almost 6 a.m. Scram," Pizza Guy screams in their ears.

One of them starts at the sound and turns to the loud man.

The bet is over.

A/N: Do you want to see this continue? Do you want to know what comes next? Please review and let me know if I should write another chapter.