"Okay..."
Cameron fidgeted. That was one of the more tactful things he could say, she supposed. She jumped when she heard his voice again.
"And... did you need something?"
"Uh.."
It dawned on him. House suddenly realized why his ex-fellow was sitting in what used to be her usual chair after making him coffee. Damn it. What the hell did she expect? Tea and sympathy? All she would get was goading and gloating.
He pretended that an unexplainable feeling briefly made itself known when he had heard the news. Wilson tried, for two days straight, to psychoanalyze him, to provoke a response, anything. No success. House prided himself on surviving that... Wilson didn't call him Fort Knox for nothing. Her voice brought him out of his reverie.
"I heard about the methadone."
Crap. This was why he didn't go after her that second time. She keeps bringing up... things... why must she corner him like that? Yank what little control he has from him? Does she enjoy it? Does she really want to hear his lashing? Hasn't she learned by now? God, she must either be very stupid or very brave, to constantly... urgh. He went with stupid. It felt like yesterday, his temporarily new lease on life. It felt like just yesterday he was sleeping well, (albeit under the watchful eye of Sandra) and living without the thing that made him the way he was. He was devastated. He wouldn't admit to anybody, but he was. But, he intellectually realized that he needed all and anything under his control to firmly stay that way, which is why he rejected the methadone. His mind was all he had, and under it... he couldn't even treat fucking dehydration.
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She must have caught the shadow pass his face, followed by what looked like frustration. And anger. Cameron flinched inwardly. Word vomit... why must she bring up the goddamn methadone? It was just another one of the many disappointments he experienced, and try as she might to stop it, her heart broke for him.
"I just refused the one thing that could take my pain away. Sound familiar? Learn anything new?"
He stared at his shoes, not wanting to see the startled look on her face. He didn't expect a reply.
"Yeah. You shouldn't shave."
His head snapped up and his eyes widened. Before he could say anything else, she continued.
"The tie was nice, though."
Her breath caught in her throat as a slow smile curled into his mouth. His eyes were twinkling. The number of times she saw a genuine smile grace her ex-boss' face were still countable on one hand. Thank God she was sitting down... after five years and a lifetime's worth of drama, to think he still had that kind of effect on her... For the umpteenth time, she began to think that maybe, she and Chase were never meant to be. The engagement was rushed, the whole relationship built on precarious foundations of benefits and Tuesdays. She had wanted to get over House, to get out of the rut she seemed to be eternally in. Quite a big part of her felt guilty. It was an ingrained response... he had genuinely liked her, loved her. But now, as she felt herself smiling back at House, for the first time, it dawned on her that maybe, she was not in a rut. Maybe, this was her getting out of it.
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He said the only thing that came to mind.
"Thanks."
"Anytime," was the airy reply.
"Special plans on your first day off in..."
"Two weeks," she exhaled.
"Diagnosticians don't have to wait that long." She rolled her eyes at him, earning her a smirk in response.
"Shut up already."
"Back to my question."
"Sleep... I'll decide what to do tommorow." He raised his eyebrows in surprise. Two days in row... must have been an awful two weeks. She probably insisted on finishing all the paperwork too.
"House."
"What?"
"I asked you a question." One eyebrow this time; reminding her that no, that was not smooth, but issuing a silent invitation to ask anyway.
"What are you doing? Tommorow's Sunday, so..."
"The usual." It was what he did no matter what time of day it was... soaps, pizza, booze and Vicodin. It wasn't always pizza... sometimes it wasn't anything.
"Getting shitfaced." He wasn't fazed this time. This was perhaps rarer than the smile, she thought. The corners of his eyes crinkled, revealing amused eyes, exposing unusually deep laugh lines... pain lines. Her heart clenched again before she could stop it. Damn methadone. He cocked his head to side, as if issuing a challenge.
"Your point being?"
"Maybe I want to get shitfaced too." He was slightly fazed this time, but found himself considering the possibilities.
"I'll be watching.." She cut him off.
"Soaps. I know... what do you say? I'll even bring Indian."
"I hate Indian." She scoffed at him.
"Uh-huh."
"No, really. I tried every restaurant within ordering distance, and they're all crap."
"There are great ones outside ordering distance..."
"I mean the fricking tri-state area. Edison did nothing for me."
"The one in West Windsor is pretty good...the one by McCaffrey's?"
"My father was stationed in India for two years, and trust me, nothing compares to the real stuff."
"Thai, then."
"Eh.."
"House!"
"Someplace I haven't visited. Italian."
"Deal." She nodded once, apparently satisfied with the conclusion of the verbal tennis match they just played.
"My place... hour and a half."
Cameron half-smiled at him while getting out of her chair.
"See you then," was all the reply he got.
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As he mounted his bicycle and rode back to his place, House wondered what the hell he had gotten himself into. He had heard, of course, of the Chameron break-up, as well as the fact that he was part of the cause. He didn't know how he felt about that... throughout her fellowship, he was determined to keep this particular piece of lobby art at arms length. She was too young, too innocent, too fragile, too... everything. Chase was perfect for her... a symbiotic relationship, as it were. His insides twinged strangely at the thought of her and Chase. Of them... he mentally shuddered. House's keys pinged in the oddly shaped red dish sitting just inside his door as he tossed them in and shrugged off his jacket. It was better than being her charity case, he mused. Tossing his coat at the general direction of the closet, he hobbled towards his kitchen to pour himself a glass of water and lowered himself onto the couch, elevating the bad leg. It seemed like he was sitting there for just minutes when Cameron's knock sounded on the door.
"It's open," he called out.
She came in bearing bags and bags of food, and after glaring at him for refusing to help, made her way to the island in the kitchen and dumped all the bags on the countertop. Cameron had ordered extra of everything, just to stock his fridge with leftovers. She was glad she did, looking at his appallingly empty fridge. Well, she thought, at least he had wine. Even though she had seemingly agreed to watch soaps with him, she grabbed a plastic bag from the counter, and went into the living room. She tossed it at him, not bothering to see if he caught it, much to his amusement. Going back into the kitchen, she located plates and cutlery, and made a plate of antipasto. Digging out the aforementioned dusty bottle of wine from the recesses of his cabinets, she grabbed two glasses and carried everything to the couch. Setting them on the coffee table, she paused to kick off her shoes and settle into the armchair across from the couch. He stared at her.
She stared back.
He broke the silence first.
"I see you brought entertainment."
She smiled. She had an inkling her ex-boss would not mock her choice of entertainment for the night. Much.
"Did you even look at it?"
She picked up the plastic bag and shoved it at him. At that point, he did look at it.
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Not even he could have predicted this... a Hugh Grant marathon, maybe, but the thought of Cameron and James Bond seemed... wierd. And they were all Sean Connery, who was, in his very humble opinion, the best James Bond that ever existed. A flicker of surprise crossed his face and a ghost of a smile danced across his mouth. It looked like a boxed set, with every Bond movie his favorite Bond had ever starred in. Every movie that he had snuck out to see as soon as he was old enough... every movie that had made the rounds years too late in dilapidated movie theaters with naive proprietors. The smile widened, as he lifted the box out of the plastic bag. Everything from Dr. No to Diamonds Are Forever... with director's cuts, deleted scenes, featurettes... Before he could think, he turned towards Cameron with the smile still in place, eyes twinkling, his mouth curled in a way that somehow seemed to make him look like a different person... like..
Her breath caught in her throat.
Like Greg, her mind conviniently supplied. Before she could silently wax lyrical about his momentarily open features, his expression was wiped carefully blank.
"It'll do."
All breath was released posthaste, and she smirked. She set down the glass of wine she had yet to sip from and raised an eyebrow at him.
"I'm ecstatic."
She put in the first movie in, having decided to watch it in chronological order, so she started Dr. No first. Something changed when he was watching them, and Cameron thought nostalgically about her non-date with him.. the closest she had gotten to Greg, instead of the prickly facade of Dr. House. He rambled, incessantly, recounting how watching these movies over and over in Japan perfected his Japanese, and when they were bootlegged, Greek. It was as if he had completely forgotten her presence, or by an unexpected miracle, was talking despite it.
She thought back to that night which was forever capitalized in her mind. Monster Trucks. That Night.
Yeah.. House could be cute when he wanted to.. and he was a shameless 007 geek. She was enjoying herself, looking at him softly gesticulating about whatever... she couldn't concentrate on what at the moment. It wasn't until a bad joke and the end of the movie that she was shaken from a reverie.
"You do come close, you know," he began.
"To what? James Bond?" she raised her eyebrow at him.
"You did for a short time..." he trailed off, as if for dramatic effect. She raised her eyebrow and waited. Patiently. He stared back at her until her patience ran out and she snapped.
"What?"
"Have license to drill." His smirk was full blast, threatening to crack her own carefully maintained veneer of indifference. What the hell. She started chuckling, throwing an olive across the coffee table, only to be deftly caught and consumed in the blink of an eye.
"Shut up," she managed to get out, while simultaneously trying not to inhale her wine. Still smiling, she shook the next DVD at him before popping it in.
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By the time the credits for Diamonds are Forever rolled, Cameron was half-slumped on the couch, a multitude of containers littering the coffee table. She was hunched over, her back to the side by the door, her feet propped on House's good thigh. House, on the other hand, had his head back, bad leg elevated, and was snoring delicately with is mouth partially open. The unfortunate beep of her pager snapped both of them out of their slumber, and Cameron leaped from the couch, much to House's bleary amusement. She scrambled until she could find the source of the offending noise was located and silenced.
"I have go back in, Barton had an accident," she said, reffering to one of her fellow ER attendings. Despite his best efforts, House couldn't help but miss the warm pressure on his thigh and feel just a bit disappointed.
"Go. Ride in and suture." His tone came out clipped.
"Rawr." Cameron made her hands into claws and motioned them forward. House's shoulders, which had stiffened unexpectedly, relaxed somewhat as the corners of his eyes crinkled at her.
"Who told you about that?" He asked, expecting a reply he didn't like.
"Wilson. And Dr. Hadley," she said, as she moved to clear the plates and put the food away.
"13, huh? Hot threesome in the works?" He couldn't resist snarking.
She came back out to face him.
"Thought I'd crossover for a bit, considering my newly single status, and Foreman's getting more appealing by the day," she said airily. House raised an eyebrow and smirked. She went into the kitchen to finish tidying up and came out to grab her coat.
"Good God, woman, what the hell did I do to you?" Was his playful retort.
She came up beside him and laid a hand on his arm and squeezed.
"You didn't do anything," she said, words no louder than a whisper. She squeezed again in farewell, a silent I-had-a-good-time accompanied by a half-smile.
"I grew up."
She smiled again before leaving, and that smile held so many things, so many emotions flitted across her face that he would analyze ad nauseum throughout the night...but for then he nodded in reply and watched the door open and close.
Allison Cameron. God, had she changed. She did, he surmised, she did grow up. But Allison was still in there. The way she smiled that last time, the way she squeezed his hand, the way she tidied up, there were still traces of the old Cameron in there. But she was a little bit more jaded, a little bit more skeptical, and a little bit more... grown up, and pride and guilt fought for dominance among the myriad of thoughts running through his head.
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That wasn't their last meeting. After the James Bond marathon, there were day-long quests to find "decent" Baklava, English comedy nights, motorcycle shows, and Die Hard marathons. She kept visiting his office and making coffee, much to his delight, and he kept barreling through the ER to personally ask for consults.
They were... becoming friends. Huh.
House was lounging on his couch on a lazy Sunday afternoon when nature called and demanded that he move. Grabbing his cane, he heaved himself up, idly thinking that he shouldn't have tossed the brown one in the dumpster. He froze, frown rapidly deepening. Heaving a sigh he instantly berated himself for, he looked up at the ceiling in frustration. Food could come later. He needed a distraction. So he limped to his piano and started playing.
After running through his memorized repetoire, he stood up and opened the piano bench for music, only to come face to face with chaos. Perfect, he thought. He'd been wanting to organize those anyway.
Evening found him going through piles of his sheet music, sorting them out according to genre and composer and sliding them into plastic covers when a visiting card fell from between the paper onto his lap. Dr. Catherine Montgomery, the card read. Small, neat, bright red lettering covered the back.
House,
Whatever, wherever, whenever, however. It's the least I can do, and besides, I don't think you can tolerate any others.
Cheers,
Monty
So much for a distraction... so much for pretending he hadn't been thinking about the goddamn methadone the whole goddamn time.
His conversation with Chase in the locker room was on the forefront of his mind when he picked up the phone and dialed the number of an old, old friend. If they could be called that, he thought. If anybody could be called that in reference to him.
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She was heading back from the vending machine closest to the ER for fuel when House limped past, holding on to a gurney.
Her jaw dropped and the package of crackers she was holding fell to the ground. House barely spared her a glance as he was heading up to Diagnostics, and Cameron somehow found herself following.
She was on auto-pilot; she barely noticed House in a sweatshirt, or the lacerations on his arm and abrasions on his face. As she came up the stairs, she noticed Cuddy smoothing House's hair back and following him.
A wave of bile rose up in her throat. Not that House's reply to her overtures was anything other than normal, but Cameron was slowly turning green at the sight of her hands on his face. She never felt anything other than the urge to roll her eyes at the three ring circus that was House and Cuddy, but....
Before she could finish her thought, House had rounded the corner and disappeared into the hallway. Cameron steeled herself.
Put yourself together, woman. You have an ER that needs you, the voice inside her head said. She hit the button for the elevator and a floor later, ran into Wilson.
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A/N: And we go back to the previous chapter, top section... before the flashback. Thanks to the "ones" of readers :D, shoutout to ChaosandMayhem and her awesome profile. The name of the shrink is me metaphorically raising my glass to the ever-fabulous iyimgrace. "Locked In" was great.. especially the office-call Cameron made. Still digesting "A Simple Explanation"...