Disclaimer: T'aint mine.

A/N: Many thanks for all your reviews and kind words as well as those who raised questions and/or provided constructive comments. I think I'm fully invested in this story by now, but please tell me if I'm wasting my time and yours. Review it, and give me your opinions. There is no financial gain or literary glory in this, so please, if you read it, review it!

The sound of House's cane slamming into the table wrecks the ambiance. Lost is the intensity of the moment: her eyes and his fixed on each other's like rivals or lovers. Whatever was implied by House reaching forward, cupping Cameron's chin in his hand, and drawing her face nearer, has been misplaced by the violence of Pizza guy, whacking at their table with its lilac vase and the remnants of a good time.

His act changes everything: it's cause and effect. Cameron's head jerks up and her body presses back against the booth; a glass of scotch falls to the floor and shatters. The spirits rise from below and envelop them. Pizza guy, who wields the cane like a baseball bat, tells them to scram.

House remains fixed in his stare-a-thon mode, eyes narrowed and aimed where Cameron's were a second ago. He doesn't even flinch. But she loses her focus. Her hand slips from his, and her face morphs from fear to annoyance in an instant.

"You're going to give him a heart attack," she says, her quiet voice on edge. Pizza guy shuffles a bit, looking rueful.

"I'm sorry," he says. "That was obnoxious. I'm just really tired."

She nods her head in House's direction, and then, with sense of humor intact, adds, "After all those Rueben sandwiches, he probably has a heart condition."

House's mouth twitches at all of this, but Cameron misses it. By the time she swivels in her seat to face him again, it's too late. He has won the bet.

"Lose him. By Monday. " House says. He cocks an eyebrow and looks at her sideways. "That's the deal, right? You get rid of Chucklehead. Don't be a bad sport, Cameron. All you're losing is sex with Chase. My guess, not that I'd know from experience, is that a vibrator would be more exciting than an ex-seminarian."

In her head, Cameron weighs Chase's sexual bag of tricks with her high-pressure showerhead and smiles.

"I don't think you want to hear my thoughts on vibrators," she says, regretting the last two beers she drank. "Chase started to sweat when I told him how I feel about sex and the female orgasm. You know, how it can last up to an hour. I thought he was going to pass out from desire. You wouldn't fare much better if I went on about electric toothbrushes or the jet stream from a hot tub."

House looks from the slightly smug smile on her face to her throat, which he longs to kiss, down to the place where her breasts are just visible below her clavicle – he knows she's wearing a lace-edged bra -- and there he sees that her nipples are erect. It stirs him. His penis responds predictably as he feels himself becoming hard again.

"Sometimes I can't believe I hired you," he says, with exasperation. "Have you failed to detect that I suffer from acute satyriasis? Do you actually think I don't want to hear you talk about the ways you pleasure yourself? You should know me well enough to know the pleasure would be all mine." He licks his bottom lip for the lascivious effect. "If you had talked dirty to me during the stare down, you might have won."

"Whatever." Cameron shrugs, determined to remain cheerful in the face of defeat. "I'll talk to Chase on Monday. You won, fair and square."

Pizza guy snorts at this. He lurks near their table, sweeping up broken glass. The remains of a 12-inch pie have been shoved to the side. There are tiny piles of spinach where House has picked off the offending greenery. Little crust corpses litter the pizza pan, courtesy of Cameron. Pizza guy grins and shakes his head.

"What?" Cameron asks, irritation lacing her voice like cyanide. The barroom lighting burns her eyes, and she's starting to feel the hollowness that comes from pulling an all-nighter.

The redheaded man takes off his Notre Dame baseball cap and scratches his head, then replaces it with the visor in the back. "Lady, if you know House, you know he's going to mark the deck."

"If by that you mean that he lies and cheats and manipulates, yes, I'm aware of it. If you mean that I've been had, well, where's the evidence?"

House clears his throat. "You don't want to answer that," he says to pizza guy. "There will be – consequences."

It's Cameron's turn to raise her shapely brows. "Oh, I think he does." She turns to pizza guy, looks at him closely. A metaphorical light bulb explodes in her head as she figures it out. "You helped him set me up, didn't you? Let me guess. It was when he went to pick out 'jams' from the jukebox. I wasn't watching. I was eating. He must have signed to you to come over at a certain time and get theatrical with his cane. Am I getting this right? Am I even close?"

Pizza guy comes over and extends a hand.

"Congratulations, lady. You're a quick study. You can play poker with me anytime. I'm Fitz. I own this place. Isn't House a pain in the ass? What are you doing with him?"

"I'm not with him with him. And you? You're not deaf, are you?"

Fitz and House exchange glances. House gives him a nearly imperceptible nod, as Cameron looks on, arms folded.

"Nope. I'm coming clean here, lady. I'm just your average Irish-American schmuck."

"He's an out of work actor," House hisses. "I like to throw him a part now and then since he's obviously a no-talent ass-clown. Sometimes it works to my advantage on poker night."

"Isn't he a peach?" The sarcasm oozes from Fitz's gruff voice.

"None of this matters, because I won – fair and square, according to your rules, Cameron. You said 'anything goes.' Or were you referring to that frightful musical? By the way, you're sitting with your arms folded in front of you. When you do that, I get a great view of your mammorific spheres."

House leans across the table and makes a show of ogling her breasts. She grasps his shoulders and pushes him back in his seat, while imagining what it would feel like if he ripped open her shirt and teased her nipples with his tongue. Already they poke against her lacy bra. The image is vivid. If he laid one finger on her knobs, sensation would descend to her clit, and there would be more throbbing between her legs.

She shifts in her seat. Sometimes she thinks that they should get a room.

"You're right, House. You won. Get over it. But now we have to bet on something else. I have a dream, and it still involves Wilson sealing your mouth shut with duct tape and analyzing you."

"Lady, you deserve it for figuring out our little scheme. Hell. You deserve it for putting up with House in the first place."

"Stay out of it, pizza guy, or I'll make Thursday night Uker night and you'll have to partner with Wilson." House stands, leaning on the table for support. "We can revisit this whole bet thing in a moment. But for now I have to – if you'll forgive the vernacular -- whiz." He grabs his cane from Fitz's hands, and hobbles to the head.

Cameron leans back in her seat, hands folded in front of her. Fitz starts to clean up the mess on the table.

Suddenly a huge smile blooms on Cameron's face. "Oh, wow."

"What is it?" Fitz asks.

She looks up, grinning. "You just cost me a bet. You'll get nothing out of me."

Fitz transforms his face into a golden retriever's and she can't resist.

"Okay. I don't know what jogged my memory, but I was just thinking about the first time I heard about House. I did my internship at the Mayo Clinic. My best friend, Mia Cohen, was mildly obsessed with him. She liked to tell urban legends about him. It's just funny, thinking about it now. So much has happened since then."

One noon hour Mia had found Cameron in the cafeteria. Mia had been to one of House's rare lectures at Princeton and had lived to tell the tale. Over salads and iced teas, she'd raved about the experience.

"There's no one like him. Haven't you heard about him? He's got a reputation the way a skunk has B.O."

"I've heard he's a great diagnostician," Cameron said, levelly. "I've heard he's the best there is when it comes to infectious diseases. That's all I've heard."

"Allison, sometimes I think you live in a cave."

"I'll admit to being a lab rat. But, what's so great about this Dr. House?"

"The guy's got a bum leg," Mia said, as if it qualified the physician for a Golden Globe.

"So what? Stephen Hawking is in a wheelchair. You don't get extra credit for being handicapped."

"Yeah, but with him it's kind of sexy, like when a soap opera hero wears an eye patch."

Cameron looked skeptical. "Hmm. Soap opera and hero. Isn't that an oxymoron? I put soaps in the same category as sports. They lower your intelligence."

"That's right. If it's not under a microscope, Cameron won't watch it."

"Anyway, back to sexy lame guy."

"He's an equal opportunity asshole: No one is exempt from his scathing diatribes. He walks with a cane, and uses it as a prop the way W.C. Fields wielded a top hat."

"You've got a way with a metaphor," Cameron said, smiling at her friend.

Mia waved her away.

"He's as tall as God, has a voice like a snake bite, and an ego the size…."

"Of Texas?"

Mia grinned. "I was going to say the Pacific Ocean."

"Do you read much American folklore, Mia? Because the way you talk, he sounds like a medical Paul Bunyon."

"You haven't even heard the best of it. Apparently, the man plays the piano like Vladimir Horowitz, or maybe Ray Charles, or possibly Elton John. I heard he's a brilliant pianist. Rumor has it he shoots up heroin, and he never, ever sees his patients."

Cameron let out a laugh, and speared lettuce, cranberry, a candied pecan and some feta on her fork.

"You learned all of this from a lecture? Can you even tell me what he talked about? How much of this is true, I wonder? Coming from you, I subtract 75 as your over-active imagination."

"Some of it may be rumor," Mia acknowledged, her black eyes full of humor and smarts. She was short, with the musculature of an amateur gymnast, and straight, no-nonsense hair. She eschewed all makeup on principle. "But what matters is this: I heard he's looking for an immunologist to join his diagnostic team at Princeton Plainsboro. You could learn a lot from him – this I intuit. You should think about it."

Cameron pushed back her plate; she sipped her tea.

"I'll look into it," she promised her friend.

"A good memory, huh?" Fitz asks. He has sat down across from her while they wait for House to get back from the bathroom.

"Yes. It reminds me of how much I miss Mia. She's still in Minnesota. I need to call her and invite her to visit. And it cracks me up to think about how well she summed House up. So, how long have you known him?"

Fitz smiles and shakes his head at her. Constellations of freckles reside on his broad face. His eyes are an ordinary blue, but warm as the Caribbean. If it weren't for the few extra pounds girding his waist, he could pass for good looking, Cameron thinks.

"I'm under a strict vow never to give out any personal information about House. We have a deal. But, I will tell you this, because you're exceptionally lovely, and you seem like a nice lady. House has never brought anyone here with him before. That's one thing. The other thing is just an observation. It might have just been me, and I know you two were playing some sort of game, but I could have sworn that House was going to kiss you."

Cameron touches her lips, as House appears at the table.

"You two look – cozy. Move," he orders Fitz. Fitz slides over in the booth to make room for House. "No, beat it. This isn't a party."

Fitz shoots a 'whatever' look at Cameron, and skedaddles.

Cameron fixes House with her truth or consequences expression.

"So then, what is it? It's not a party. It's not a date. It's dawn and then some. I'm beat."

She doesn't want the night to end, never mind that it's already morning. Events from the past several hours cross her mind like unfinished business. Looking House in the eye has had an effect. While they played the staring game, there were instances when she felt like she penetrated the exterior of his iris and dove deep down inside of him. It was intimate. And then, when Fitz had interrupted them, the feeling had vanished. She felt so close to House one moment, and faraway the next. It was as if a cool breeze had passed between them, where before the temperature was tropical.

The color of his eyes reminded her of her favorite painting, "L'Embrace, from Picasso's blue period, and not just because of the predominant hue of the piece. She considered the painting a simple statement on intimacy and trust. It featured two strong-limbed figures holding one another in a loose clasp. The woman looked like she might be pregnant. Cameron had seen it on a family trip to Europe. Her reaction to it was immediate and as intense as desire. She'd sobbed. The image had resurrected a cosmic sense of loneliness. It was something that she lived with. Sometimes House helped her forget about it. He distracted her from her own losses the way video games, soaps and hookers distracted him from his pain. More often she felt loneliness more keenly because of his presence, and what had failed to develop between them.

She is reminded of an experience she must have buried in her subconscious. It is of the first time she ever saw House, although at the time, she wasn't aware of it.

In Princeton for her job interview at PPTH, she passed a stranger on the street. He was a tall man, striking because of the cane he used, the indefinable blue of his eyes, and the charge that passed between them as they exchanged a glance and then moved on. The fact that their eyes met was surely happenstance or fate. Cameron had been left with the impression that she knew him, that more intimacy had been exchanged in a single look than you get when you swap spit. She was sure she'd never seen him before and that likely they would never meet.

When Cuddy had led her to House's office for her interview, she was unprepared for her reaction when she saw the man with the cane and the penetrating gaze. He'd looked her up and down, but no recognition had crossed his face.

House stands in front of her, looks down at her with concern. Emotions cross his face, and then vanish like moisture in a desert.

"I would love to stay here and keep looking at your face. I suppose it's not your fault it's perfect," he says. The man can make a compliment sound like an insult. "But you're tired. We're both tired."

A seed of hope sprouts within her heart. Before, she couldn't look away from him because she wanted to win the bet. Now she can't look away because she worries that she'll never see House like this again. His wit is as scythe-like as ever, but these little pockets of tenderness undo her.

Here they are again, House thinks, unable to look away.

Can't we just stay like this, like the lovers in that insufferable poem of Keats that Wilson likes, the lovers who are forever about to kiss but never kissing? In the same Ode to whatever Keats gets so high on the dismal romance of the situation he can't help himself, and pens the lines, "More happy love, more happy, happy love." He must have been feverish from the tuberculosis, House reasons.

So this is what it's like to have his heart declare war on the reason he so prizes. Sometimes his feelings threaten to destroy the walls of his fortress.

Suddenly he's tired. Physically, he's beyond exhausted, and yet strangely charged. He questions the state of his head.

"I have a proposition. This is purely for convenience, so don't get any ideas, Cameron."

"What are you thinking?" She asks.

"That's a dangerous question to ask a man with satyriasis, but then you spaced out on my symptoms."

"House, out with it."

"Let's go to bed."

Cameron keeps her eyes on his; he can see her pupils contract. Her mouth slackens in astonishment.

"Mick Jagger said it best. Let's spend the night together. It's not a trick. We're both tired. Your car is at the hospital, and we're closer to my place. We can go there and – what is it you kids say? Crash. Wilson's already christened my couch."

Waves of fatigue hit her. Driving seems like too much for her brain. She's operating on fumes. Her competitive nature still holds sway.

"What about the bet?" She asks. "Speaking of Wilson."

House rests a finger on his chin before answering.

"You're like a bird dog. Persistent. We can resume later in the afternoon, after both of us sleep, and after the Undertaker kicks some ass."

"Oh, God. Wrestling?"

"You might like it. It's the next best thing to Monster Trucks."

"What's the bet going to be?"

"We'll play Twenty Questions. We'll figure out the stakes later."

"My family played a version of that game. It was fun. Okay, you're on."

As soon as Cameron says it, she regrets it. Playing Twenty Questions with House is akin to playing Russian roulette with a fully loaded gun.

A huge yawn escapes her. House holds out his hand and pulls her up. She sways near him, and the smell of leather coupled with the heat of his body just about knocks her off her feet again. He wavers for a moment, massaging his bad leg, and then hands her the helmet, and fastens his own.

On the motorcycle ride to House's home, she almost nods off. It feels so good to be fitted snugly against him, with his leathery smell flooding her senses.

At his place, it's awkward. She brushes her teeth with her index finger. The apartment is as she remembers it, the piano figures prominently into its schema. House has given her one of his tees to sleep in. He has made up the couch like a bed, and pulls back the covers like an invitation. They both stand by the couch for a moment. House leans heavily on his cane. As usual, he dwarfs her. She can tell how drained he is, and so she marvels at the pure sexual energy that crackles back and forth between them. Her pulse beats out a rhythm between her legs. He leans toward her, a little unsteady on his feet, and then pulls back. They are like soldiers who advance and then retreat. His eyes are on hers. She reads what's in them. It's a look she won't forget.

"Good night," he mumbles, turning toward his bedroom.

"Good morning," she says to his back.

A/N: Is this salvageable? Should I continue?