Disclaimer: I do this for free, in my spare time between working full-time with crazy people and trying to maintain a marriage. I could be delusional, but as far as I know, the show and its characters belong to powers greater than me.

A/N: Thanks to my alpha, beta, and omega: Kymba, ColorOfAngels, and Katej. Kymba and ColorOfAngels provided editorial honors and Katej ... is a remarkable personage whom I adore. BTW, Katej designed my LJ page, so you should visit my LJ, which is under my username. I still have to work on the tags. Sorry.


House had just slid his red Nikes from the piano's pedals and lifted his hands from the keyboard, the last chord of "Maybe I'm Amazed" lingering in the room like the taste of single malt scotch on his tongue when a sharp distinctive knock interrupted the moment.

McCartney's voice looped through his head. Damn that Silly Love Songs writing Beatle, House cursed the songwriter as sentimental lyrics and an impossibly catchy melody stuck to him like a Beelzebug, an insect that wouldn't die no matter how many times you swatted it.

Baby I'm amazed at the way you love me all the time
Maybe I'm afraid of the way I love you
Baby I'm amazed at the way you pulled me out of time
Hung me on a line

Maybe I'm amazed at the way I really need you

He swung his body off the bench and leaving his cane where he'd propped it against the instrument, hobbled to the door, favoring his left leg and using random pieces of furniture like crutches. All the while he pictured Cameron in a hundred different outfits, from her neutral-toned trouser and vest combos fitted over purple-hued puffy sleeved blouses to the satiny red gown that molded her figure and branded it into his brain like a tattoo. Realizing he didn't care if she came to the door dressed in sackcloth and ashes, he reached for the doorknob.

Tapping a finger against his chin, he hesitated, and then decisively threw the door wide open. Seeing the familiar sensitive face on the other side, he slammed it shut.

"Affenschwanz," House cursed.

One perk of being an army brat was picking up smorgasbords of swear words in a variety of languages. As a non-romance language, German was his favorite. It got right to the point that Wilson was a monkey dick.

"House. Open up." Wilson's voice wheedled its way through the wood and after a few seconds, House did as his friend had asked.

Wilson was treated to the delightful sight of House's face the way it looked when he'd eaten a slice of pickle unawares.

"Don't mean to be rude, but this door is on a timer and in 10 seconds it'll slam. Might want to step back, I wouldn't want to damage your earnest, hopeful face." The diagnostician held his brown leather watch to his ear as he stabbed Wilson with his eyes. "Tick, tick, tick."

Without further ado, Wilson thrust a cone of Zinnias and a brown grocery bag into House's arms and stepped backward, having learned long ago that House's bite could be as bad as his bark. "Here. The corsage aside, you suck when it comes to romance. This stuff might … help you over the hump."

Leaning against the doorframe, House sniffed the bag suspiciously. "How did you know that I … that Cameron?"

"That you had a date?" Wilson suppressed the urge to scream the last word the way House would have done had the tables been turned. His friend wrinkled his nose up at the word 'date.' "I may not be the Great Brain, but me and my little brain have our share of deductive reasoning skills …"

Wilson could see this was not going to fly with House, who wore skepticism like cosmetics on his face. "Okay … I ran into Cameron in the hospital parking lot after you dropped her off this afternoon. And by the way, she didn't call it a date. I dared to presume."

House turned his attention to the contents of the bag, mild amusement playing over his features as he inventoried the items.

There was a little blue bottle of silicone based lubricant, condoms with the antibacterial component built in, a bottle of Bardolino, a half dozen Spanish Patron Saint candles – like he'd ever use candles to set the mood – and inexplicably, a red silk scarf.

The look he lobbed at Wilson was a question mark.

Clearing his throat, Wilson explained the purchases one by one. "This," he said of the lubricant, "is like magic. Trust me." Pulling out the condoms and then tossing them back into the bag, he shrugged them away with this remark: "They're industrial strength."

"To protect me from big, bad Cameron, who you've deductively reasoned has the clap? I should cuff you for that," House shifted the bag to his other arm and faked a punch like a wily pugilist.

"Um, no. You're the one who consorts with … wanton women of the night. I'm just trying to … protect Cameron." Wilson reached back into the sack and held up for House's inspection a glass-encased candle with a brightly colored image of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

"Sex paraphernalia and religious symbolism. You don't think the mixed messages will throw her off balance?" House snatched the candle from his hand and tilted the saint's face this way and that until it looked as distorted and elongated as one of Goya's Christs.

"No-o, making her dizzy – and I assume you mean with desire and not with, oh, dismay – is up to you and your … good loving," Wilson's sarcasm bounced off House and landed in the shrubbery. "Besides, I had just enough time to pick up flowers at Jardinière and swing by the Mexican grocery before…"

"You think I'm pathetic, that I need props in order to spend an evening with …" House paused as Wilson took a step toward him and wagged a finger in his face.

"With the first, and, let's face it, House, the only woman who has held your attention since Stacy." Wilson finished a thought that House never would have articulated out loud. "And at the risk of sounding like a Greek Chorus, yes. You're pathetic and you need help." Wilson glanced at his watch. "Gotta go. I'm meeting up with Cuddy for a drink." He flashed his friend a cunning smile.

"Need some of these?" House raised his eyebrows a smidgeon and grabbed a couple of the condoms, offering them to Wilson. "Of course, Cuddy wants a baby."

Wilson pushed the condoms away. "Got it covered, House." He turned and jogged away from the door, his Italian loafers clicking on the cement as House went back inside, moving toward the bedroom with the supplies. Unpacking the sack, the red silk scarf caught his eye and realizing that Wilson hadn't mentioned it, he punched speed dial on his phone.

"What is it, House?" annoyance and long-suffering registering in Wilson's voice.

"The silk scarf?" House fingered it, enjoying the satiny sensation against his nerve endings.

"Threw it in on a whim. Use your imagination."

House held the phone away from his ear as Wilson hung up on him. That he could do.

Procuring his cane from the piano, he limped over to the set of phrenology heads that Wilson's second wife Bonnie had given him before she'd developed a severe allergic reaction to the sight of him. Since he had allegedly ruined her marriage, she'd gone into anaphylactic shock and required epinephrine if she even heard his name. Or so Wilson said. It might have been a wee exaggeration. Trust Bonnie to take stock in pseudo-science. At least she hadn't bought him framed astrology charts, House thought. Turning the L.N. Fowler bust around in his hands, he stared at the back of the head behind the ears – the hypothalamus – and read "a love of sex. Amativeness." Hope resided near the center of the cranium, next to trust, faith, and wonder.

Whatever.

For someone who rejected the existence of an all-powerful creator of the universe, Cameron had never lost faith in him, and she'd seen him at his most pathetic: Blood seeping from straight, deep cuts on the inside of his forearm. (He knew his way around a razor blade). The face he had seen at his door that night held no judgment or condemnation. It was free of pity and there was nothing to indicate that she thought he was pathetic. She knew he wasn't like other people; she also knew he was human. There was no one else he would have allowed inside his apartment that night.

House recalled the last time he had said, "I love you." It was the last thing he remembered saying to Stacy before Cuddy placed him in a medically induced coma. Stacy had asked him if he would give up a leg for her. Of course he would, if it meant saving her life. What had happened to that man, he wondered, the man whose feelings of love and affection for a woman were as strong and constant as a band of steel? He'd thought that part of him had died along with the muscles of his leg, until Cameron had come along, stirring up sexuality, curiosity, and, it seemed, love and affection.

He replaced the phrenology head, and turned to examine the framed results of his Myers-Briggs personality test. Wilson had gotten him drunk on tequila shots one night as the two men watched reruns of "Hogan's Heroes," drinking each time Colonel Klink shook his fist and with his voice rising said, "Hogan," and every time Schultz said, "I know nothing … nothing," in his German accent and each time Newkirk removed the radio from the coffee pot. The night was a blur, but he had a vague memory that a bet was involved and as a result he had taken the test, a Jungian exercise in socionics. House had faith in psychology as a science the same way he had faith in human nature. It was bullocks. And yet when Wilson informed him that he was an ESTJ, the same personality type as Sherlock Holmes, he laughed. When it turned out that Wilson shared Watson's type, House had rolled that around in his brain for a while before dismissing the whole business as crap.

A tentative rap at his front door interrupted his train of thought. Glancing at his watch, he noted that it was quarter past eight. He wondered how his meticulously punctual immunologist, always the first person in the office, could be so tardy when it came to social engagements.

Cracking the door an inch or so, he peered into a very pretty face. Unfortunately, the pouty mouth, high cheekbones and coiffed hair belonged not to Allison Cameron, but to the intensivist he liked to call Bleach Boy.

For the second time in 15 minutes, House slammed the door shut and began limping away until he heard Chase's voice splinter like an adolescent boy's as the youngster invoked Cameron's name.

"Klootzak. Gatlikker." Only Dutch profanity would suffice when it came to Chase. The man raised his ire as much as the average clinic patient – enough to stick a rectal thermometer in his ass and leave it there.

House swung the door open so fast that Chase nearly tumbled into him. That was all House needed: another hug from the ignoranus.

"Remember the Arnello brothers, Joey and Bill? The 'Sopranos' of Princeton Plainsboro? I've got 'em on speed dial." House held his cane out in front of him like a semi-automatic and aimed it at Chase's head.

The ex-seminarian stood in the doorway, wearing a vest over a button-down shirt, a tie decorated with tiny crossword puzzles, and a hangdog look. A cap dangled from one hand. His eyes were red-rimmed, House noticed.

When the blank-faced lad failed to respond, House shoved his shoulder with the tip of his cane. "Are you catatonic?

Finally, the intensivist came to life and pushed the cane back at his boss. "I'm looking for Cameron. I, uh, I ran into Wilson at the clinic and he said he saw the two of you … together." Chase leveled his pale blue eyes at House's.

"Try her apartment," House suggested, thinking that Chase's accent wasn't nearly as cool as Tristan Rogers' Aussie accent on GH. "I have to pee."

Chase's Balmoral cap-toe Oxford prevented House from slamming the door on him a second time. "I already did. She's not there."

"Not my problem. Beat it. Scram." House ordered. When Chase hesitated, he took a step toward the younger doctor. "Don't make me hit you again."

The Australian didn't flinch. "What are you hiding?" he asked, jerking his thumb towards the interior of House's condo.

House heard room for interpretation behind the query, but he chose to ignore it.

"You'll have to ask the CIA. Look, Chase. She's not here. Go home, get yourself an inflatable doll or – wait – I have the number for a hooker who's a dead ringer for Carmen Electra." House stuck his hand in his jeans pocket and pantomimed looking for a slip of paper. "Whatever you do, forget about Cameron."

Chase's eyes dropped. "But I … love her."

"It's contagious," House muttered under his breath.

"What?"

House didn't bother to answer. Instead he used the advantage of his height to tower imposingly over the wanker.

"You want me to tell you that she's over me. That she loves you back. You want reassurance and you came to me? You're even dumber than you look. She used you to get to me."

"Did she? Get to you?" Chase asked, squinting up at the diagnostician while placing his cap on his head.

It was a good question. From time to time, Chase exhibited signs of intelligence, and House almost liked the kid.

"If I told you the answer to that I'd just have to whack you, and that would be messy. You know, all the gray matter and blood dirtying up my property. Eew," House said, mimicking Chase's squint with one of his own.

"Wilson said the two of you looked … happy." Chase made a strange face as he said the word, as if picturing a feel-good version of House had taxed his imagination to its breaking point.

"Life sucks. She doesn't love you. Get over it, but do it elsewhere," House commanded, pointing toward the sidewalk with his cane.

Defiance altered Chase's handsome features. "You don't know what love is," he declared, making a fist of his hand and clenching his jaw.

"And you think you do? Have you learned the meaning of the blues?"

House was truly flabbergasted at the level of Chase's sheer ignorance and naïveté. Had he nurtured a five-year relationship? The guy who blew off both his earthly and heavenly fathers and who dated a dominatrix questioned House's ability to love.

"What?" Chase responded, utterly clueless.

"George Benson," House snarled. "And if we're going to quote great lyrics by mahogany men, listen to this: anyone can tell you think you know me well. Well you don't know me."

"You … like her, don't you." A light bulb, albeit a dim one, lit up in Chase's head. "If you didn't like her, you wouldn't have come back and opened the door."

House looked over at the young maple tree Cameron had given him and absently reminded himself that tomorrow was the day he watered it. "Well, I'm not going to meet you at daybreak for a duel. How about this? Rock, paper, scissors…" he looked at Chase's clenched fist and brought his own hand down flat. "Paper beats rock. I win."

Brows furrowed, Chase shoved his hands into his pants pockets and looked down at his feet.

"So maybe I don't really know you," the younger man said referring back to the lyrics House had just recited. "But I do know Cameron. And I know you're right about her loving me. She doesn't. It's always been you." Chase shook his head in disgust. With a smirk that twisted his face into an ugly mask, he took a jab at House. "Want to know how she likes it?"

House felt the blood course through his veins and rise to his face as he mentally choked his subordinate to death and dropped him like a rag doll on the pavement.

"Think I'm on to it. We've been secretly shagging since our date. Want to know how my fist feels on your jaw? Oh, that's right. You already know. Now beat it, before I brain you with my cane."

Chase surprised him by standing his ground. "From what I hear, you can only score hookers these days. What does that say about Cameron? You can have her." Bitterness, hurt, and anger mixed like alcohol in his voice and tears hovered at the rims of his eyes. As he started to walk away, House spoke.

"First you gave up on God. Then you gave up on your dad. Now you're giving up on Cameron." House shook his head. "And you think I'm pathetic."

He stepped back and slammed the door with his cane, limping to the stereo and choosing the only music on earth besides The Who frenzied enough to ease his mind after the run-in with his young intensivist: Michael Rabin playing Paganini's 24 Violin Caprices. It was the sound of insanity on crack. Massaging his temples, House reached for his tumbler and took a sip of scotch, sinking into the soft leather of his couch.

At the sound of her soft knock, House took one last swig of Macallan, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and with the remote lowered the volume of the crazed Paganini caprices until the music faded into the background.

The virtuoso Italian composer – like blues legend Robert Johnson – was rumored to have sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his remarkable talent, House recalled as he pushed himself from the leather couch. But that implied that he had been offered a choice, and that wasn't the way it worked with geniuses. Sometimes the gift of extraordinary ability was as much of a burden as it was a boon. Regardless, Paganini, the wunderkind of his day, had died from mercury poisoning. No one had figured it out. Like with Napoleon, House regretted that he hadn't been around back then to make a diagnosis. He filed his thoughts away and grabbing his cane, limped to the door.

This time it had to be her.


A/N: So, what do you think? I hope some of you are enjoying reading this as much as I enjoy writing it. Click on the blue button to share your hopes, dreams, and aspirations.