17, 18, 19...

House silently ticked off the seconds before Cameron would shift for the millionth time. Her side. Her back. Her other side. Her stomach. This was going to have to stop, and soon.

She turned, this time flipping onto her back. She was upset about something. The thing with Wilson, maybe. Or something Forman had said? She sighed audibly, signaling that she was still awake, and he rolled his eyes. Okay, he so didn't care what the hell was bothering her - at this point, she was a few turns shy of being kicked out onto the couch - back pain or not.

"Cameron," he said as he sensed her revving up for a shift. His voice was quiet but sharp. He felt her still and, for a moment, he had to really concentrate in order to hear her breathing.

"We had a fight." Except she said it all together, "Wehadafight." House scrunched up his face, even though she couldn't see it in the darkness.

"So call Loveline. Phone's in the kitchen."

"But it wasn't a fight," she continued on as though he hadn't spoken. He hated that, hated being ignored. "We didn't yell - well, I didn't yell. He accused me of not caring about him, about his needs - and I said he was wrong. He accused me of sleeping with you behind his back - and I told him he was crazy."

"Cameron." He drew out her name this time - not quite a whine. He was in pain. He didn't do well with this...stuff. Crap like this was why Wilson existed, why he'd gotten married four times. House didn't do hook ups or break ups or feelings.

"I didn't care. And that's - that's how I knew that it was over."

"What?" His interest was slightly peaked, but he maintained his tone of exasperation.

"Us. I mean, I can't marry him. He called it off, but I knew, I must have known."

"The Dick is a hot-headed man Cameron. I'm sure it'll blow over." He was trying to end the conversation, he told himself. So why did he find himself hoping that she'd say more?

"No, it won't. You knew though, didn't you? From the moment you met him. But not me. Oh no, I had to try once again to regain some kind of...whatever the hell this is I've been living for the past...for forever." Her words were rushing out now and House was fearful that her level of "emotion" filling the room was going to smother him. "And what do I do? I not only make the wrong choice, I even fuck that up by coming back here. To this."

When finally the silence he sought for returned, he found it ringing loudly in his ears. Well of course he'd been right. The Dick was a dick. Her problem was like that of most people: not listening to him when she should have. Oh no - he hoped she wasn't going to cry. That would officially make this the worst night of his life.

"Why did you come for me, House? It wasn't to save me - you didn't even know about Richard until you'd gotten there." He saw her bring her arm up to her forehead in the dim light. "I'm such a fool." There it was again - that note of desperation, despondence, that was screwing with his mind. He wanted to stop it, to apply pressure until it could clot on its own, and that worried him. It angered him.

He should have wanted her gone, should have wanted her to drive back to the hospital in the snow storm and sleep in her office. He should have wanted her to marry Richard or to practice medicine in some far off, third-world country. He should have continued to push her away like he'd been doing all these years. But instead, he'd boarded a plane, wandered a city, and found her.

"A while ago I told Cuddy I was taking a vacation," he began in a low voice. She completely stilled at his side. "I told her I was taking a vacation, but really I went to Holland. I met with some doctors. About my leg. The pain. They'd been doing some research...related to some ketamine research they'd done years back. It was experimental, dangerous, not quite legal...but, they accepted cash so..."

She was silent, absorbing his words like she always did, looking for something beneath. Tell me if you find it, he wanted to quip.

"So then there was PT, which I actually went to. Six months."

"And now?" Her voice was so soft he almost didn't hear it.

"Now, I walk."

"And the pain?"

"Mostly gone. Far less than what it was." He shrugged. At least she sounded calmer.

"And...the vicodin?"

"Occasionally," he sighed. This was getting uncomfortable. "But don't tell Cuddy. She'll start psychoanalyzing my behavior."

"I saw you take it though. In Boston. Here."

"Not vicodin. Some crap they gave us in rehab. It sucks but..." He wasn't about to admit to liking the effect his swinging back a pill had on people - from patients to Cuddy to Cameron.

There was more silence for a while, and he assumed that she was taking some time to absorb his revelation. How much time had it taken him? In fact, he still woke up most mornings, hand glued to his thigh, prepared for battle.

"I knew." He turned his head to her, even though her form was nearly impossible to make out in the dark.

"What?"

"I knew," she said again. He analyzed the tone for any shades of pity or that horrifically persistent sense of compassion she always exuded, but found neither.

"You saw me. Before. When I walked back to get my cane."

"No," she shook her head, "Wilson. House, he knows. He told me earlier this evening - I think tonight was the first time he'd gotten all the pieces." House was stunned, and he wasn't an easily confounded man. That he hadn't sensed Wilson's suspicion was...but then again, he'd apparently been missing a lot of things where Wilson was concerned.

"Bastard," he muttered.

"Bastard?" Cameron voiced indignantly. "Oh yeah, Wilson's the bastard. Not telling your best - hell your only friend that you could walk without a cane, without pain? Well now that's just normal. I mean, why the hell are you still walking with it anyway? To put on some sick show? Uphold the `everybody lies' philosophy?"

"No." He felt anger rising in him. "I wanted to make sure that it would last. That I wouldn't give up the cane and have it end up like - like last time." She quieted a little at that. Perhaps he was supposed to take her silence as an apology, an offering. He snorted softly.

"Were you ever going to tell me?" He pursed his lips at her question. "Why do you do this? You always take away my choice. If you would have told me in Boston I would have-"

"You would have come back out of pity. Out of your eternal and misguided notion of who and what I am." He was becoming irate now. Take away her choice?!

"So, what, you figure you'd lie to me and I'd come back out of...curiosity? Pity? It turns out I did come back out of a misguided notion of who and what you are, so I guess that plan didn't work quite as well as you'd hoped, huh?"

"Well I knew you wouldn't dream of coming back unless I was damaged or dying. Damaged seemed easier to pull off on short notice." He bit down a little on his tongue with his back teeth after saying that. It wasn't that it was true - the point with them had never been about truth. It had been about knowing how they could hurt each other, knowing what was hopelessly untrue yet suggestive enough to sting.

Saying nothing, she slipped out of the bed, feet angrily padding toward the kitchen. Another one of those moments, he realized, was upon him. Earlier he'd dipped his toe in the water, allowing himself to have an inch of her, a moment. He wasn't one to think about tomorrows and "what if's" and "now what's." But she was, he knew.

God, he hated change. He didn't do it well. And yet. Cuddy and Wilson had seemed normal to him all this time, though they'd obviously changed. He'd seemed normal all this time - maybe not to Wilson, but to everyone else - and he'd changed. He paused at that thought. He'd changed. No pain - well, no physical pain. The old heaviness of his days had been lifted, and while that had seemed so novel at the beginning, it now seemed...normal.

He pushed back the covers and swung his legs over the side of the mattress. It couldn't hurt, he thought, to walk to the edge and peer down. Could it?

But he knew it would.

She leaned against the kitchen sink, feeling the edge push into her abdomen. Her knuckles turned white as she gripped the counter. There wasn't even a window over it. How were you supposed to stand at the sink and contemplate if there wasn't even a damn window to look out of? She wondered what he thought about while doing dishes, immediately angry with herself for having the thought.

So much of her belonged to him. Her time, her thoughts, her diagnoses. Her decisions. She thought that she had gotten away from it for a while in Boston, that she had successfully run away from home as she'd once tried and failed to do. But looking back she realized that he had always been there - in the way she saw people, the way she approached a case, even the way she saw Richard. At least he's not House, she'd always told herself. Idiot.

She felt more than heard him emerge from the bedroom. The silence as he walked - no more rhythmic limp - was maddening, a reminder of the reality of this moment they were having. Soon he stood right behind her. She could feel his breath, warm and steady against the bare back of her neck. Ever so slowly his long, muscular arms appeared on either side of her, bracing themselves on the counter top. Still he did not touch her. It was as though there was an invisible safety cushion of air between them.

Then again, that was what they were. Always close, never touching. Two steps apart. Three steps behind. Haunted by the past. Fearful of the future. Perpetually alone. He'd taken something from her, that first day they'd met. He'd taken her ability to live a life without him. All the "what if's" in the world would never change that, and so she was left with this inescapable paradox of a life.

She tensed suddenly and wondered why for the briefest of moments before feeling his lips gently graze her neck. The rigidity immediately melted away, but still she was careful to remain apart from him. Slowly, languorously he traced a delicate pattern over her skin. It reminded her of the steady trail she would make with her stethoscope on a patient's back when she checked their breathing. The stubble on his chin grazed her neck and she resisted the smirk that arose on her lips.

"I hate myself," she began softly, closing her eyes to better focus on his motions, "for needing this." He paused, breaking contact. Gradually she turned, mindful still of the invisible barrier. His eyes glinted in the glow of the snow coming from the window and she latched onto them with her own. She needed him to feel the weight of this, the weight she'd carried for so long now. "For wanting you," she finished.

For a beat his expression remained the same: thoughtful, absorbing. She sucked in a deep breath and was about to plot her next action when his hands slid off the counter, finally breaking the barrier as they curled against the side of her hips, fingers splaying across her back. All this happened in the blink of an eye, him tugging her the final inch closer before his lips covered her own.

Her eyes dropped closed at first, eyebrows raising in surprise. She felt relieved - thankfully relieved. It was something - this was something. A path, finally. She didn't know or care where it would lead. He pulled back for a moment, searching out her eyes. She loved it - for all his arrogance and deceit, for all his manipulating and calculating, he would give her this last say, this final decision. Did he know, she wondered, that when it came to this she had no decision. That neither of them did.

She leaned back in, keeping eye contact until her lips were centimeters from his. "Shut up," she murmured against his lips, satisfyingly feeling his own curl into a smile in reply. She felt the rational part of her mind slipping off line, instead concentrating on the feel of House's tongue sliding over her bottom teeth. They instinctively began to gravitate back toward the bedroom. Later she would remember it as a drunken dance - him pushing her backwards toward the door, then a quick turn around and her pushing him.

Eyes open, eyes closed. Sighs and whimpers. Discarded clothes. Fumbling and amusement. It was their release from the maze they'd built themselves. For her it was as much about them - for in that moment they were a them - as it was about herself, about finally letting go and feeling more in control than she had in a long time.

Later, what she would remember most would not be the height of their passionate and demanding forms coming together. It would instead be the exact moment following a blinding white ecstasy, the first moment she let actual thought slip back in. Her eyes meeting his and seeing the same reflected back at her. The quirk of his lips. A blink. And then, his lips grazing her forehead one last time. Perhaps he thought she needed absolution.

She would take it as a beginning.

17, 18, 19...

House counted the seconds before she would once again droopily open her eyes. She'd begun by closing them for a few seconds - I need to rest them, her eyebrows seemed to say. But they'd open again, revealing deep pools of (thankfully) little thought and much contentment. He smirked every time he remembered that he was the one responsible for that contentment.

But then her eyes began to remain closed for longer intervals. They would pop back open, a little alarmed. As though she were afraid it would all disappear if she wasn't careful. He almost resented how right she was. These last few times he'd been monitoring her breathing, checking to see if she had finally fallen asleep.

She lay on her side, facing him - but not touching. He'd been surprised by that. In all his years of Cameron picturing and contemplating, he'd always felt that "cuddly" had been a sure bet. Yet her acceptance - almost as though she understood his reluctance - was intriguing. He counted out two more minutes before finally sighing a little, allowing himself to gaze more openly at her.

She was young still, despite the fact that she'd had enough grief for several lives. He'd always liked that about her, though that quality had usually remained rather elusive where he was concerned. She was young and he had ruined what was left of her life. He hadn't quite destroyed her - yet. But he would, he knew. Eventually he would impose a grief on her so heavy that it would take away that youth. He'd seen it in Stacey. It was more than a heaviness - it was a permanent albatross on the spirit.

She would call him a naysayer. But he knew himself better than even she.

Carefully he brought his hand up to her face. It still seemed a little strange to touch her after all these years of a seemingly unspoken rule between them. Gently, almost weightlessly, he cupped her jaw in his hand. Blue eyes flashed open at him, her breathing remaining regular.

He was sure he looked like a deer caught in the headlights, and he hated her for that. He didn't know what to do, how to explain himself. She might expect this from him now, think that she had changed him in some way. But he wasn't that guy. He would never be. It was just this once. Just to see. And, damn it all to hell, she had to go and-

Soft and warm, her hand smoothly covered his for a moment, pushing it firmly against her cheek as her face nestled deeper into his palm. She sigh almost inaudibly, pressing the side of her lips against the inside of his wrist. Then, snaking her hand back to her side, her eyes fluttered closed once again. So. She would give him this.

He gazed at her, now unhappily, thumb grazing her impossibly velvet skin. She'd give him anything, he realized. Everything. She wouldn't be able to stop herself.

But he - he could.