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Intentions
by Treacle_A
i.
The first sign is something so subtle that, had House not been unspeakably bored that day, he might never have noticed.
That said, it would be self-deception not to admit that his awareness of Cameron had changed in the months since the shooting. Her constant presence at his bedside throughout his recovery period, although at first just irritating, had become a guilty pleasure of his and, towards the end, he'd actually caught himself looking forward to the soft slap of the IC door and the sound of her heels as she crossed to read his chart.
He knew that she knew that, when she tipped back her chair and rested her feet on the blankets next to his, he had only pretended to sleep. What she didn't know though was that, while he listened to the soft intermittent scratch of her pen as she pored over her book of Sudoku puzzles, he had also watched her face through half-lidded eyes. Studied the tiny nuances of expression, the shallow frown lines, the faint violet shadows under her eyelids that lessened only as his recovery progressed.
During that seemingly endless period of purgatory, Cameron's scent had become as familiar to him as the soft, teak-oiled smell of his piano, so it was with some degree of surprise when, as she leant over his desk on Monday morning, he noticed the change.
"New perfume."
Her body stiffens, fingers closing over the stapler she is reaching for. Her eyelids flicker and the muscle in her neck tightens almost imperceptibly, He knows all her tells now, and he knows that she is about to lie to him.
"My Mom got it for me," a tiny dismissive shrug, "I'm not sure it's really me..."
"Is it Dutch?"
Her eyes widen. His tone is a little sharper than he'd intended, a little less disinterested, and he sees that she notices. Like she notices everything.
"Uh...I don't think so...." her fingers spasm at her side, "Why?"
He blinks at her, blank-faced, "Kind of reminds me of Amsterdam."
ii.
He doesn't know why it annoys him. People lie to him every day of his life: he trusts no-one, takes nobody at their word. Cameron is no different from any other human being, subject to the exact same universal laws as all the rest, so he cannot explain why the one tiny untruth sticks under his skin like a bamboo splinter. Why he finds himself staring at her when her back is turned. Why he feels the sudden need to make his own bitter coffee before she arrives for work in the morning, and make sure that she sees.
He can't resist it for long. He tells himself he's bored, that she needs to be 'kept in line'. He asks her more careful questions - using words like an oyster knife - and watches her struggle with the need to tell the truth and her precious privacy.
"Women change their hairstyles for several reasons..."
Her face is willfully blank, "Is one of them boredom?"
"Brought on by change. Or a need for change. Or a desire for things to change. Or as a catalyst for change."
"That's a lot of caveats."
"I like to play the odds."
She half-smiles, but something is missing from it. She's unfocused now, he can feel her drifting away from him, towards something or someone else, and anger prickles through him as surprising and sharply painful as electricity.
iii.
He tells himself that he has nothing better to do, that it's on his way home, that he is merely curious as he always is, but as he stands in the shadows outside her darkened apartment building, he feels anything but idle. House has learned to go with his gut, to indulge his emotions, but he feels something at the edges of him starting to fray: unwinding and unbinding and coming loose. He is losing it.
He waits for almost two hours. When the cab finally draws up, she steps from it alone: sleek, gilt dress and her hair softly, darkly tangled. Her pale legs flash like a glimpsed knife blade as she steps away and into her building and he waits a good long moment before bringing the phone to his ear. Long enough to let her get her key in the lock.
"Hello?!"
She is breathless, euphoric sounding and he feels the bile rise in his throat.
"Where have you been? I've been calling you all night."
Another breath and the sound of her shoes falling the the floor, her purse. The clink of her earring against the receiver.
"I...uh...I went out. Why didn't you page me?"
He can't answer. The golden frame of her window hangs above him: picture frames and the outline of a lamp. He can't see her, but just the addition of her presence has brought the room to glowing, fascinating life. He knows the feeling he is feeling now, and he fears it.
"It's not important. I'll see you tomorrow."
It quietly starts to rain.
iv.
Her happiness distracts him. That is his justification at least. The balance of the team is thrown out by it: a peak where there should be a trough, an absence where there should be only a neat straight line. She is half an hour late four days in a row, an hour the next, but even so, he knows his reaction must seem ludicrous. For the first time he sees some kind of realisation dawning in Foreman's eyes, understanding that he just knows will have to present itself as one of the younger doctor's candid little asides: "If it's bothering you that much...maybe you need to talk to her..." as if it's the simplest thing in the world. He pours enough scorn and vitriol on his words to last a week and knows, with every syllable, how completely he is revealing his hand.
He realises that Wilson knows, when he realises that he is avoiding him. Cameron talks to him sometimes now - he regards their conversations as 'confidences' - and his friend has learned something over the years about his inability to keep those from him. Not that he has asked. To even form the question, phrase it, would be to make an admission he cannot and will not make even to himself. The answer, while it still remains unspoken and undecorated by reality, is easier to stand than a statement of fact and his acute sense of self-preservation prevents him from asking the one thing he needs to know:
"Is it serious?"
When he sees her in NICU, one hand resting on the glass, he has his answer.
v.
"His name's Aaron."
She is standing in the doorway, her arms folded. He counts the seconds before he can safely answer, turning his eyes up to meet hers. The light from the single lamp on his desk isn't enough to illuminate her fully, but he can see her expression as clearly as if it were day: the wide-open honesty, the uncertainty and raw emotion that is always licking at the edges of all of their exchanges. He presses the nib of the pen he is using into the blotter and draws a line.
"And I need to know this...why?"
She flickers almost imperceptibly, a candle flame, "Because...I didn't want you to think I was hiding the f..."
"That you have a boyfriend?"
She shifts at the word, or maybe just at his lack of intonation, "That I'm seeing someone."
Her voice is soft and careful and he feels the bile rise in his throat. She is being gentle with him. For almost two months he has protected himself from her, erected barriers between them, disallowed himself from feeling what he knows he already feels and now here, in his office, she is tearing it all down.
He draws a circle, "Since when do I care what any of you do outside work hours?"
He feels her withdrawal from him like a fire going out. Without even raising his head again, he knows she has pulled herself in, her pale hands sliding down and into the pockets of her lab coat, so her can't see her knuckles, so he won't see her nail digging deep into the palms. He feels the pain he is inflicting as acutely as if he is cutting himself.
"He...makes me happy."
She is looking at him, daring him to connect and finally, raising his head again, he does so. The blue of her eyes has darkened to a deep stormy grey, but it is her lips that hold his attention. Her pale full lips that are threatening to tremble. He clears his throat.
"I'm glad," he says.
vi.
It isn't a secret. He's not sure if it was ever supposed to be. Cuddy tells him as she hands over the stack of clinic notes in the morning, prefacing the statement with a warning about the guy in Exam Room 3.
"Cameron's requested the first two weeks off in December. I've agreed, provisionally. Is that ok with you?"
"Two weeks..."
"She's owed a lot more. You can do without her for ten days..." she raises an eyebrow, "Or can't you?"
He starts for a comeback, but the cold feeling in the pit of his stomach prevents him from answering. Waiting in the silence, he sees Cuddy's expression change, the slow melt from mock concern to contrition. When he turns away, she blocks him.
"He's asked her to marry him you know."
He barely misses a beat.
"What are we getting them? The flatwear?" he pushes past her, using his cane as leverage, "Talk to Wilson. He controls my finances..." but she stays on his heel like a shepherd dog.
"She didn't tell you?"
"Why should she? I'm not her girlfriend. I'm her boss."
Staring through the glass of Exam 3, he eyes its occupant, a casually dressed obese man in his late forties. Flips noisily through the three pages of notes.
Lowering her voice, Cuddy steps to one side, "Greg..."
The soft conciliatory tone sends anger flashing through him.
"Let's just skip to the end shall we? You know it makes me feel dirty when we use first names." His voice is a little louder than he meant it to be and, realising they're being watched, he grits his teeth. "You want to tell me I'm making a mistake right? Missing my golden opportunity? That I need to 'open up' and 'feel what I'm feeling'? 'Take a chance'? 'Reach out and touch someone'? Was that what you were going to say?"
Her mouth opens and closes, "I just..." her eyes soften, darken. "I just think that you're letting something go here. Again. And for what? Because you're afraid? Because you're too afraid to tell someone what you really want?"
His knuckles gripping the door handle are bone white. He leans into her,
"This from someone who had to resort to a plastic cup."
vii.
It snows. The last two weeks of November, the first week of the next. House leaves his bike at home, reluctantly at first and then less so. He finds a route to the hospital that takes him through a park that isn't entirely spoiled by graffiti. Snow hides a multitude of sins and, walking through the still, quiet world, he feels something like peace start to enter him. For a full ten minutes, the length of time it takes him to walk from one entrance to the next, he thinks of nothing but white and the sound of melting ice and grit crushing under the soles of his sneakers. Total brain-wipe.
The snow has just stopped falling again on Wednesday when he sees a figure standing, waiting by the gates. He barely glances at her, barely raises his head, until a hand falls on his sleeve. Red woolen gloves and a hat and scarf to match. Her cheeks are the colour of poured cream, a glowing dash of rose in the center of each. Her breath clouds in front of her.
"I was waiting," she says.
He stares at the hand on his arm, but she doesn't move it. Doesn't pull away.
"I need to talk to you."
He grips the handle of his cane, pushing the tip into the sidewalk. Pulls himself more upright.
"Whatever it is, I'm sure it can wait another half hour."
"It can't."
He starts to walk anyway, and she follows. Not angry or even impatient, just as if she expected this, his need to run away even as she was telling him. She keeps pace beside him, staring straight ahead. Her neat leather boots are spattered with melted snow, but her pace doesn't slacken.
"You're in love with me," she says.
Their breath hangs in front of them, a heavy white cloud, and House feels his lungs burning with the cold. His cane slips a little on the tarmac surface, but he steadies himself.
"Haven't we had this conversation before....?"
"No. We really haven't. Not in this reality anyway," she half laughs, throws her head back, "I mean...I've had it with you in my head a thousand times. I come into your office and tell you that I've met someone, that I'm going to marry him, that I'm leaving and - just before I turn to go - you stop me. You tell me not to go, that you're in love me and that...you know I love you..."
He feels his chest contract, pure, raw pain.
"Is there a soundtrack?" he says.
She slows, reaches for his elbow and pulls him to stop. "Why do you always have to make this into something trivial? Pretend like it's all in my head, when we both know it isn't anymore."
"We both know...?"
"Yes. We both know. Stop it. Stop trying to push me away."
She's angry and sad at the same time, but there is no pity now, no gentleness about her. She has made her decision and she is sticking to it. Almost involuntarily, he finds himself smiling. Marveling at the way she always does this.
"How is it you're always so certain?"
She is taken aback a little, not expecting a question. But his eyes are serious now and she tries to answer, stumbling a little over the words,
"I guess...I..."
"That's just it, you don't guess. There's no grey with you. Things are either black or white, wrong or right. Something's either a lie or the truth. What makes you so positive?" Her face is turned up to to his, eyes glowing with a fierce grey-blue, "What makes you so certain you're right?"
She swallows and he sees the little fear, the one she's been hiding so carefully from him. Looking down at her feet, she pulls her coat in around herself, wraps her scarf a little tighter. Her hands in their red woolen gloves mash together, twining fingers, and he stares at them. She raises her head and the blue in her eyes is coloured dark.
"I guess I'm n..."
He kisses her. Her mouth is warm and breathless and, silently, it starts to snow again.
FIN
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Legal Disclaimer: The authors published here make no claims on the ownership of Dr. Gregory House and the other fictional residents of Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. Like the television show House (and quite possibly Dr. Wilson's pocket protector), they are the property of NBC/Universal, David Shore and undoubtedly other individuals of whom I am only peripherally aware. The fan fiction authors published here receive no monetary benefit from their work and intend no copyright infringement nor slight to the actual owners. We love the characters and we love the show, otherwise we wouldn't be here.
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