House felt the water close over his head with a sense of panic. The jets made the noise underwater frightening and disorienting. He jammed his feet down to the floor of the tub to stop himself from falling any deeper, only to feel an answering stab of pain from his right leg. Then he was aware of an agonising scrape as the planks of the hot tub's seat ripped against the skin over his left hip bone and then his spine.

But all these pains were secondary. Secondary to the primal and urgent need to breathe. Panic was rising in him like bile, a remembered sensation of being restrained underwater that produced nothing so much as overwhelming terror.

Of course, he was only in a few feet of water, and there was no real chance that he would drown, but the panic of that feeling wasn't easily ignored. When he finally surfaced, Alice's hands under his armpits, helping to pull him up, he wasn't ready for her reaction.

She laughed.

"Oh God, are you okay?" she said between giggles. "I'm so sorry. I've never almost-drowned someone—"

"No, I am not fucking okay." House hated that he sounded like a petulant child, but he didn't know how else to cope with the conflict between her light-heartedness and his embarrassment, fear and pain. Obviously that one last thrust had pushed him a little too far forward on the seat. He felt like an idiot.

She immediately sobered. "Oh. Right. Well, let's get you—" She reached over to begin helping him out of the tub.

House didn't know which he despised more, her laughter or her pity. He shook her hand away. "Don't. I'm all right."

He rose out of the water, taking the steps gingerly, leaning heavily on the edge of the tub as he pulled his now-aching right leg out. And to think, it had actually been feeling better.

Behind him, he heard Alice suck in a breath as he wrapped a towel around himself.

"Oh, you're really hurt."

House felt around to his back, to his hip and lower spine where he'd felt the seat scrape against him. The skin was hot – all of his skin was hot – but this was pain heat. Alice scrambled out of the tub and wrapped a towel around herself, bending to examine the scrapes.

"Don't! Leave it!" House said angrily. It was the kind of voice that had his underlings cowering, generally leaving the office before – House suspected – they burst into tears.

"Oh stop being such a baby." Alice smacked his hand away. House was so shocked that he hadn't caused the same reaction in her, he did what she said. "Come inside."

Alice grabbed his hand and they walked inside. She let him use her for balance – he'd left his cane leaning against the sofa in the living room – without making it too obvious. He was grateful for that.

She led him into the living room and gave him a gentle push to sit him down on the sofa. House was still very wet, and he had second thoughts about sitting, but then if she didn't care about her furniture, then why should he? Besides, her ex would probably buy her a new one.

"Wait here."

Alice disappeared and in her absence, House pulled off the soaking swimsuit and pulled on his boxer shorts and shirt, buttoning a couple of the buttons for modesty's sake. He was wishing he'd worn his usual "uniform" instead of trying too hard with a shirt and tie – at least he'd have had a t-shirt to pull on now. He took a few deep breaths and felt his equilibrium returning, now starting to feel embarrassed about his outburst. As the feelings of panic further receded, he was less certain of why he'd been so afraid. It seemed ridiculous now, to have been worried about drowning in a hot tub.

He tried sitting gingerly on the sofa, searching for a position that didn't rub his back or hip against the fabric and also didn't put pressure on his right leg. He soon gave up, realising the only option was to lie flat on his belly and he didn't really want to be presenting his ass to Alice when she came back into the room. Instead he stood up again and rummaged in his jacket pocket for his Vicodin, swallowing two. He felt a tug of regret that earlier he'd thought he'd be in here rummaging for a condom instead of his pain pills, but, looking down at his boxers, the contents of which now had absolutely no spark of life at all, it seemed like that was off the menu.

Alice returned in a couple of minutes with a clean dish towel, a bag of frozen peas, and a bottle of Glenmorangie.

House had to appreciate her approach to first aid.

She wrapped the towel around the peas and peered matter-of-factly at his back. "There's no bleeding, but it's a nasty graze, right on the bone. You're gonna have some impressive bruises tomorrow."

He sucked in a breath as she pressed the cold pack to his back.

"Why don't you lie down? You need to give this a minute before you can go anywhere anyway."

House nodded, somehow okay with being bossed around in the no-nonsense way she had. Besides, she was right. He needed a few minutes for the Vicodin to kick in before he could manage to go anywhere. So he planted himself, face first on the sofa, feeling like a dickhead.

Alice repositioned the peas on his back and then moved around the room, doing things that House couldn't see from his restricted position. But he could hear, and his well-trained ears definitely knew the sound a fifteen-year-old scotch makes when it splashes into a glass. Eventually she came back into his field of vision with two glasses, offering one to him, before suddenly pulling it back.

"Hang on." She disappeared again and House blew out a breath in frustration. It was like holding out candy to a child and then snatching it away.

Basically really, really unfair.

She returned with a triumphant smile on her face. The glass in her hand – it looked like a Riedel, so it had probably cost forty bucks – was now decorated with a red-and-white striped straw. She sat down cross legged on the floor next to him and held the glass up, twisting it until the straw reached his mouth. Meaning he didn't have to raise his head and thereby curve his sore back to drink it. Clever girl.

House had never drunk whisky through a straw and he thought there might well be a very good reason for that, but that didn't stop him from taking a long sip. The straw delivery system seemed to increase the heat of the liquid, but House swallowed two large mouthfuls before releasing the straw with a sigh and a slight burp. Very attractive.

He met Alice's eyes and could see the laughter bubbling behind them. She put a hand to her mouth and coughed, obviously trying to hold it in.

"I suppose . . . it is kinda funny," House admitted.

Alice erupted into giggles. "I'm sorry, I'm really sorry, I know you hurt yourself, but it's so funny." She gasped.

Her laughter was infectious and House couldn't help joining in. He could only imagine what it might have looked like from her perspective, he'd leaned forward to take her breast in his mouth and then had suddenly disappeared under the water. Maybe she thought he'd done it on purpose, taking going down to a whole new level. He chuckled again at that.

Alice leaned back against the sofa next to him, and the towel she was wearing wrapped around her bikini slipped a bit. He could see its position was precarious, it wouldn't take much before it would be in a puddle around her waist and those breasts in their pink bikini top would be revealed to him. He was pleased that the thought made him stir, that he seemed once more capable of that reaction, but his pleasure was soon squashed by the fact that there was very little he could do about it. He really was too sore to lie on his back, and his grazed spine hurt too much to make being on top of her pleasurable. He couldn't lie on his right side because of his thigh, and couldn't lie on his left because of the injury to his hip. She'd pretty much paralysed him in the sexual stakes. The part of his anatomy that had begun to poke a hole in the sofa cushions quickly deflated again.

"Look, I've got a heap of bedrooms here, why don't you stay the night and then head home in the morning? It might be a little easier to move then," Alice suggested.

He looked at her, trying to read her expression. He was simultaneously relieved and disappointed that she knew there would be no point sharing a bed, but he wondered if she was motivated by pity, guilt or revulsion. It suddenly occurred to him that he'd been lying there in his boxers, his thigh clearly visible.

Her eyes sparkled and to his surprise he didn't see any of those things there.

"In fact, maybe in the morning you might be feeling all better." She gave him what he thought was supposed to be a seductive wink, but it just made her look like she had an unfortunate twitch.

He laughed, again.

It hadn't quite been the perfect evening, but parts of it had been very enjoyable indeed.

"Yeah, okay."

--

After showing House to the bedroom down the hall from hers, Alice went to bed. She pulled out an emerald-green satin baby-doll nightie to wear, following her usual "be prepared" formula. Just in case she had to get up to help him in the night.

She couldn't help the giggles that were still bubbling up inside her every time she pictured what had happened. But she tried to squash them, telling herself that it wouldn't be good if he overheard her giggling to herself in her room.

Alice had been straddling him, rubbing against him. He'd been so hard against her clit in just the right way that, even through their swimsuits, she thought she might be able to come. Then he'd suddenly disappeared. She imagined it was something that might have been prize-winning on America's Funniest Home Videos – assuming they had an adults-only version – but at the time, she just felt confused. One minute she'd been feeling dazed and on the brink of ecstasy, the next minute, he was gone. Her legs were braced against the seat and side of the tub, so she hadn't moved, he'd just suddenly disappeared between her legs. Like the vagina dentata myth come to life, he'd suddenly been swallowed whole.

When it had sunk in what had happened, it had been hilarious. Alice had fished him out from underneath her and laughed. Because what else could you do when sex went wrong?

His reaction, though? Not so hilarious.

She got that he would be embarrassed, so was she. After all, she'd been the one grabbing him, urging him closer to her, pulling him off the seat. But then wasn't laughter a great way to cover up embarrassment? Why would he be angry?

Alice lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling, wide awake. Her mind was busy and her body was yelling at her, having been taken so close to fulfilment and then having had it snatched away. She thought about the rabbit tucked away in the drawer of her nightstand and how unfair it was that she'd chosen the real-live-human-penis option and lost out big time. She had no idea how soundproof the walls were though, and she didn't think it was fair to make an injured date listen through the walls as her battery-operated-boyfriend finished his job.

That was probably a bit mean. Even for her.

Alice tossed and turned and finally fell into a restless sleep in the early hours of the morning.