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A/N: I apologize for the two plus weeks between updates. Thanks to Tiflissa and Houseluvr for reading a draft of this chapter. If you want to see this fiction continue, reviews are the way to make it happen, so if you read it and think, "Me likee," please let me know!
Cameron lingers outside House's bedroom.
Her cheeks are still flushed from embarrassment at having been caught checking out her boss's physique.
For having been caught watching House while he slept.
For the things he said to her when he awoke.
For the things she said back.
She has to reflect: When she showed up at House's office late last night, she never thought he'd be receptive to her presence. In fact, she hadn't expected him to be there, not really. And when it turned out that he was on the premises, she figured he'd send her packing. By packing, she'd pictured him batting her out of PPTH with his cane. Out of the ballpark, as House would say.
So far the weekend had been like an out of body experience -- except for the fact that her body was all too aware of what was going on.
"Are you getting up?" She asks. The gentle timbre of her naturally quiet voice barely penetrates the door of his room. House swings his legs over the side of the bed, and gets to his feet. He should be preparing a strategy for their game of 20 Questions, but his body – specifically his hard on – distracts him. At least it gets his mind off the pain. He clears his throat. "You're bossy."
"It's a simple question," she says.
House places his right hand on the dresser, and with his left, eases his boxers off, pulling the elastic up and over his erection. He tosses the garment on the floor, and then limps toward the shower.
"Be careful what you ask. You just spent the first of your 20 questions."
"Not fair," she says. "We still have to do rock, paper, scissors, to see who goes first."
"Can't hear you. Showering."
Cameron finds her black lacy bra, jeans, and white shirt folded by the sofa where she left them. She pulls House's tee over her head, folds it, and dresses in her own clothing.
House leans against the tile and makes short work of his erection. The showerhead is switched to its massage setting and water pummels his nakedness as he imagines her mouth on him, her tongue. As he comes, he whispers, "Allison. Oh, fuck, Allison."
I can't get no satisfaction.
Desire is as powerful as pain; both drive him to distraction, just as Cameron has done all weekend. She is like Vicodin, he thinks: a little is never enough, he aims to take it whenever and wherever he wants it, and he won't give it up.
His only hope for the moment is to find something to occupy his mind. As he soaps up, he considers strategies for 20 Questions. She mentioned that she played the game growing up. Thus, she will expect that they play it the way it is traditionally played, using categories of animal, vegetable, or mineral – or people, places, or things.
To throw her off from the start, he'll insist that their version of the game adhere to what he likes to think of as House rules.
After all, he never plays by the rules. Not with Cuddy, not with Vogler, not with medical protocol. And he's not going to start now, not even for a woman he … likes.
That's not how you get what you want.
The question he has to ask himself is this: What does he want out of the game?
I want to know what makes you tick.
"You … like me," he had said to her a few years ago, finding her alone in the lab. "Why?"
"That's a sad question," she had said. When she asked him why he wanted to know, it was the answer he'd allowed her.
I want to know what makes you tick.
Who is Cameron?
At one point, he thought he knew.
Wasn't she the naïve ingénue, the caring doctor, the young widow who, despite having lost a husband to cancer, still managed to be little miss sunshine?
She has changed.
Her recent sex marathon with Chase and her newfound ability to stand up to his own authority had thrown House. He'd faked indifference, convincingly, he'd thought.
And then she showed up in his office last night when he was in so much pain.
She'd caught up to him when he was incapable of sending her away.
Was she on to him?
I want you, I need you, I love you.
It's Elvis Presley, singing in his cerebral cortex. But House the Grinch can't allow a tender thought to stay pure: As a rebuke, he hums the Elton John tune, "The Bitch is Back," and smiles.
Cameron.
The need to know what makes her tick is like a mosquito bite. He has to scratch it. His restless intellect is on the prowl.
The only way for him to win at 20 Questions is to jimmy-rig the game. By the end of it, he hopes he'll have the means to break into her head.
As for her heart, he's going to work on that.
He sighs. The point of the game – and he is more than willing to lie about it – is to get into her pants, penetrate her psyche, and infiltrate her heart.
It's simple.
It's personal.
He needs to know this woman who is as difficult to solve as a chess game with Bobby Fischer.
It might cost him. He might have to reveal a little bit about himself in the process.
He might need Wilson.
As she waits for House to shower, Cameron sits at the kitchen table and flips through an issue of Us Weekly. Her face is free of makeup; her hair is pulled back in a ponytail. Anorexic starlets in slip dresses smile from the pages of a section called "The Skinny on Getting Thin."
At this, Cameron groans. At once she feels empathy for the actresses and anger at the magazine responsible for exploiting them.
And she's irked at House for buying the rag – worse, for subscribing to it, along with The National Inquirer and a few other paparazzi driven publications.
How can House read this stuff? Moreover, why does he read it? She wonders. There are no puzzles to be solved within the pages of celebrity rags, and nothing to engage an intellect of House's magnitude.
A moment later, she believes she may have found her answer. A dog-eared page reveals a bony Angelina Jolie, her eyes hidden behind dark glasses. Baby Shiloh is perched on her hip while she clutches her son Maddox's hand. "Mom's death has Angie looking like the refugees she works with as Good Will ambassador to the UN," the cut line editorializes.
Underneath the image, someone – House, surely – has scrawled, "Damaged."
Wilson would have a field day with this information, Cameron thinks. So it's not just Jolie's sex goddess status that attracts House, her unbelievable beauty, it's the fact that she's experienced pain.
It figures.
Once she looks at it from House's skewed perspective, it makes sense. After all, he was the one who told her that "Weird works for me." Is it really all that surprising that he'd idolize a woman who once wore her husband's blood in a vial around her neck? A woman who married a guy like Billy Bob Thornton? A woman who flies across the globe to hang out with skeletal orphans?
Cameron sighs. She can't believe she's spent 10 minutes of her life considering all of this. It's 10 minutes I'll regret on my deathbed.
She looks up from the magazine at the sound of a door opening.
House emerges from his bedroom wearing a clean pair of jeans but nothing else. A towel is slung over his bare shoulder; his hair is still wet. He limps towards the coffee pot, favoring his good leg and swearing under his breath -- at the pain, she presumes.
"No shirt, no shoes, no service," Cameron quips. As soon as the words leave her lips, she knows she's in for it. She pushes back her chair and brings her cup over for a refill, careful not to make eye contact.
He joins her there, and leans his hip into the counter. The smell of toothpaste and soap – and something else that must be pure House, assaults her senses.
"What kind of service did you have in mind?" he asks mildly, looking down at her. "Fill 'er up, big guy? Oh, but that would be me providing you with a service."
A few drops of water run from his damp hair down his bare chest and into the waistband of his pants. The jeans look like they were custom made for House's body. The denim hugs his thighs and his ass, she notices, as he turns to pour himself a cup of coffee. The muscles in his back flex.
"I was thinking about making you some eggs," Cameron lies. "And you have a dirty mind."
"This from the hussy who ogled my big ol' jet airliner as if you wanted a free ride?"
"Give it a rest. I was curious."
Clutching their coffee cups, both head for the kitchen table, where House spies the Us Weekly. He pats the seat next to him and flips through the pages.
"Who wears it best? Reese or Scarlet? Personally, I think they'd both look better without the dress," House says, pointing out side by side photographs of the two actresses wearing identical Calvin Klein gowns.
His naked chest distracts Cameron, as does the scent of him. His bare foot brushes hers under the table by accident. She can feel the heat radiating from his body.
"Oh, here's a fun section," House continues. "It features the stars doing every day things like bagging their own groceries, getting their mail, or trying to eat a hotdog without spilling mustard. Here's Kirstie Alley bending over to pick up an earring. And I thought Cuddy had a gigantic ass."
"You need a new adjective – something besides gigantic or mammoth," Cameron says.
House smiles, and wiggles his eyebrows. "I'll get right on it. How about, 'It's bigger than a breadbox?'"
"It's a start," she says.
He stands. "Hand me my cane? I left it leaning against the counter."
Cameron gets up too quickly and stumbles against him. Placing his full weight on his left leg, House grasps her by the upper arms; steadies her. Her hands rest on his chest.
"You must be hungry. Breakfast at Tiffany's?" House suggests. He holds her shoulders lightly.
"I'm … famished," Cameron says. She's also had enough of half-naked House. "You need a shirt."
He lumbers painfully toward his cane. She stops him.
"I'm fine. I'll get it," she snaps. Song lyrics infiltrate her head: Why can't I get just one kiss.
Or just one fuck.
He makes a face at her behind her back.
Purposefully, she enters his bedroom. Opening the door to his closet, she looks through his shirts until she finds her favorite, the blue Oxford he wore on their date, the one that matches his eyes. Hanging it over her arm, she heads back into the kitchen.
"Put this on," she says, and when he hesitates, she grasps his arm, and pulls it through the sleeve. "Put on the shirt or I'm taking mine off."
"As a threat, that lacks the fear factor," House says, but he doesn't want her to know the effect she has on him, the ferocious thrumming of his heart, and the throbbing of his burgeoning hard on.
"You talk the talk, but you don't walk the walk," she says, smiling. "I can smell your fear."
He starts to button the shirt, but messes it up. His hands are shaking. Cameron steps closer and bats his hands away.
"Here. Let me."
She unbuttons the first three, where House has screwed up, and starts fresh with the one just below his collarbone.
"What about my t-shirt?" House asks. It sounds lame even to him.
"Looks better without."
Cameron works her way down, careful not to let her fingers linger on his chest. She can't stop herself from exhaling audibly, though. When she's finished, she looks up at him.
The expression in her eyes is familiar. House saw it on that night more than a year ago, the night he'd botched his speech for Vogler. It was the night Cameron came to his apartment to tell him that she quit.
But that wasn't all.
She came over to tell him why she liked him. The reason she cited was that he always did what was right.
As if -- And she'd left out the part about him being a sex god.
By leaving the department, she would be protecting herself, she'd said. From what, House had wondered? Her feelings? His?
And then she had extended her hand for him to take. But, House wouldn't shake it. He knew that if his large hand closed around her small one, he would be unable to stop himself from drawing her to him, pulling her body against his, and kissing her senseless.
Later, on their ill-fated date, he had tried to protect her from himself, since she clearly wasn't up to the task.
And now the reality of Cameron is right in front of him – the truth of her luminous presence.
How can he protect her any more than he already has?
House knows who he is, who he has become in the years since the infarction. He knows he is capable of inflicting more harm on this already damaged young widow.
But he is exhausted from the effort it takes to keep her at arms length.
He is weary from the pain it causes him to keep her at a safe distance.
For pity's sake, he thinks. I drive a crotch rocket, I down Vicodin as if the drug is taffy. I take risks with patients' lives.
Perhaps safety is overrated.
And so when Cameron steps back to admire her handiwork, his blue shirt, perfectly in place, when she looks past the top button and her eyes reach his face, words come up from somewhere deep inside him.
"You … still … like me."
She whispers her response. "Yes."
"Give me your hand," he says, his voice an octave lower than normal, and fiery around the edges.
Her eyes widen, but she extends it. House covers it with his own hand, and pulls her up tight against his chest. Without high heels on, he towers over her. He wants to grind his erection against her, to force her lips apart with his tongue, but he holds himself back.
"I'm not going to crush you," he says.
He's not sure if he says it out loud, but he feels her relax against him, and when he looks down at her, her face is tilted up. The expression in her eyes reminds him of the way it feels to come inside a woman he loves, there's a release within them, freedom and triumph.
"Closer," he orders her.
She obliges, standing on her tiptoes, as he lowers his head and touches his mouth against hers, light as meringue.
Just once.
The Kama Sutra always cautions that less is more, especially at first.
His face stays so close to hers she can feel his warm, clean breath. Her belly burns.
"More," she whispers.
When he waits, she takes his face in her hands, drags his mouth down to hers, tilts his head this way and that, attempting to taste all of him.
House's large hands circle her tiny waist, his thumbs touching her hipbones. He pulls her hard against his pelvis so she feels the shape of his prick. Her nipples are hardened peaks of sensation as they rub against his shirt.
His hand moves to grip the back of her head, and his tongue traces her lower lip. He presses his mouth to hers lightly again, holds his mouth against hers for a moment, and then disentangles himself from the embrace.
The way he looks is the way she has always wanted to see him, as if
once he was lost
but now he is found.
She watches as microexpressions move across his face:
Desire,
pain,
desire,
regret,
desire,
hope,
desire,
need,
desire.
As they move apart, her hand trails down his chest.
"Well, that's a start," she whispers, once she gets her breath.
House stands, his arms dropped to his sides. "What happens next?"
"We eat breakfast. We play 20 Questions. You answer your phone. It's called life."
House moves toward the telephone, hesitates.
"Want to bet it's Wilson?"
She smiles at him. "Who else?"
He picks up.
"Can't talk. Too busy fending off Cameron's advances." House listens for a second. "Of course they're sexual. It's not football. Does that answer your question? Oh, God, Cameron Gotta go."
The half smile tilts his mouth the way she loves it as he slams down the receiver.
"Are you still hungry?" he asks her.
After that kiss, Cameron isn't sure which of her organs needs fuel the most: her stomach, or her clit. She wants the works.
"Hungrier," she says.
"Mmm. I like the sound of that."
The two of them head out the door, toward Tiffany's, a hot breakfast, and a game in which not even House knows all the answers.
