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Fireworks
by Treacle-A
Fireworks
In the end, it doesn't happen the way she imagines.
All the scenes she's played out: the hundreds of scenarios, the different movies she's run against the back of darkened eyelids, they always begin and end in the same way. In them, she is always in control: a predator in a slash-thighed red dress. Sometimes alone in a cocktail bar. Sometimes on a date with someone else. Always aloof, always unavailable. She is powerful and beautiful and under control and he? He is momentarily struck dumb. His mouth hanging open as he takes in the expanse of creamy thigh, the plunging neckline, so far removed from the prim white coat and the scraped-back hair he is used to. Arrested mid sentence, his eyes lock on hers before trailing downwards in a slow pantomime of greed. In her private nighttime theater, his expression is always the same: dumbstruck admiration and lust.
In reality, he almost always looks at her with pity.
After the parents have left, she goes to find him. She knows how to hide it now: the well of desperation, the empathy that always threatens to jump from her to them like a spark, and she has done her job well. She has not touched them. She has not held their hands. She has informed them and then she has watched them grieve. 'Retreat to a safe distance'. People in pain are like fireworks, he told her, try not to return to them after the fuse has been lit.
Emotions had to be put somewhere of course, but he showed her how to deal with them too. Push them under the surface, kill the fire before it starts to burn. And once they were buried, sit tight on the earth and pretend like nothing ever happened.
First though, she has to make her report. His rule-book, his rules, and, pushing open the door to the autopsy suite, she sucks a deep breathe into her lungs and prepares her features. Calm and smooth, faintly disinterested, she tucks the clipboard to her chest and steps towards him:
"They've gone home. I told them we'd call as soon as we had a..."
before the words stumble to a halt. Because the rules have changed. House is changing them.
Seated on a stool alongside the table, the long, tightly-muscled curve of his back is stretched out against the fabric of his scrubs. At first she had thought he was just working: concentrating intently on his notes or a particularly tricky incision but now she is closer, she can see him. His face in profile is a mask of pure pain, his jaw locked as tightly as the thin line of his mouth.
"Are you... House?"
Disassembled, the sentence still makes sense, but she tries again anyway, still clutching her clipboard as protection.
"Is it...are you ok? Are you....?"
His hand shifts on the table, and he draws himself up an inch, two. Enough for her to see it's already over with: all the instruments gleaming silver and wet, gloves crumpled. The tiny white sheet back in place, like some ghastly magic trick. His eyes lift to hers: azure blue.
"House?"
She tries again. Waiting for his word to relax, for the world to resume it's normal orderly [fucked-up] order. But nothing ever comes. No words at least.
Standing slowly, he steps in front and then to the side of her, one hand gently wresting the clipboard from her fingers. Setting it down, he takes the pen, scribbles a signature and drops it to the surface.
His hand slides through hers, fingers circling.
"Let's go someplace."
His voice is soft. Slow burn. Like a Roman Candle as you light the touchpaper. Breath catches in her throat, circles and died.
"Go...?"
His head snaps back, his arm straightening, pulling her wrist taut, "Stop thinking."
He's moving and she - she is following. A dumb, shuffling, hopping gait for a few strides, like a kid stumbling behind an adult, one hand half out to stop herself as he pulls her forward through the scrub-room door.
"House!"
His grip on her shifts, up to her wrist. He isn't listening. Grabbing the edge of doorframe, Cameron holds onto it, the soles of her shoes sliding a little on the floor.
"Hou...stop it..."
When she will recall her words afterwards, she will try to make them sound stronger. Angry and tough and imperious, instead of confused and breathy. When she recalls it, the rest of it, she's always the one who moves towards him.
"Just...wait..."
He turns back on her. His grip loosens fractionally. Two seconds pass. A third. Inside her ribcage she can feel her heart beating like a crazed metronome. Her eyes are fixed on his forearms.
"Long enough?"
There is something missing from his voice. Something brittle has gone and all that remains is this: a raw kind of exhaustion that seems to exclude all rational thought, anything but this strange, calm, inexorable command. Pushing the door open wider with the back of his knuckles, he steps back, stretching his hold on her.
"Stop thinking," he says again, and this time she follows him.
He takes her. Out through the scrub and into the x-ray room next door. Hitting the switch on the side of the main light-box, House reaches behind her and pushes the door shut. The juddering grey-blue glow lights everything in stark contrast, like a black and white movie.
There is a long pause. The tubes in the lightboxes hum.
His open hand slides against the bare skin of her waist and she jerks involuntarily, her hands moving to pull his away before skating off to the side, grasping the bench. The other hand, the one that holds his cane, moves slower, feeling its way.
His fingertips are warm, but she shivers anyway. She has never felt his height so acutely before. Inches from her now, he towers over her head, a dark silhouette against the glowing patchwork of lights behind him, his hands encircling her waist as if they are gauging something, mulling something over.
He is silent.
"House w..."
"You're going to have to stop that."
The sound of his voice in the enclosed space fills it completely and she draws back a little. His hands spread, fingertips spanning her lower ribs and, without warning, he lifts her bodily, sets her up on the counter. Her palms, shaking, meet the cold metal surface. Stick there. She breathes. Deeply.
"Stop what?"
She is almost level with his face now and the expression on it makes her feel a little bolder. The corner of his mouth twitches upwards and his eyes lift to hers.
"Stop trying to analyse this. Stop trying to make it into something it isn't."
"What is it?"
The U of his thumb and index finger widen, his fingertips curving around her sides to skim her back.
"An aberration," he says.
When he kisses her, his lips catch her lower one between them, before his tongue slides in, soft and hot. She thinks she can almost smell the cordite, hear the hiss and crackle, as the wave races over her skin, her throat, engulfing her. Every single nerve ending in her body is pulsing with light. And she is shaking. His body is thick and heavy, pressed between her thighs. As he leans into her, the muscles stretch, pushing her wide open and she gasps into his mouth.
His hands slide over her skin. Up. His knuckles skim the sides of her breasts as his mouth devours hers. There is no urgency in him, no greed, only a kind of languorous fascination: a lazy, slow exploration of her body that feels irresistible. If she wanted to resist.
She is out of control. Flashing in and out of light and dark: her head full of sparks. Reality is pushing her slowly backwards, its hands heavy and warm on her body, spanning her breasts. The smell of House's skin is all over and around her and her senses are flaring: crazy flashes as she spins in and out of focus.
When he presses a hand into the small of her back, she curves into it, her spine flexing like a bow. He pulls her into him. He is still fully dressed, but the muscles of his stomach crowd against hers as he melds her body to his own. The thick length of his cock presses into her through two layers of fabric, and for the first time he makes a sound that is totally involuntary. A low, resonant growl in the back of his throat.
Oh god she wants him to...
He is smiling. Against her mouth and then her throat, as he moves down and trails over her collarbone. His hands go wide, one cupping each shoulder, like he wants to break her in two. When she feels his lips between her breasts - the sharp, heavy scratch of two days worth of beard - she almost does. He gathers her up like cloth, pulling one nipple into his mouth while his thumb and forefinger circles the other.
She is slowly coming back to herself. Her hands, until now just skating weak patterns on his back, floating butterfly movements, start to feel, start to come to life. Pushing her fingers up and underneath the thin cotton material, she runs the sharp half-moons of her fingernails down his back, and feels his skin react. Feels the gentle surge against her.
Everything steps up a gear.
She can't remember if she pulls off his shirt or it he does - maybe both of them - but suddenly his scent is filling her whole head, his arms flexed against her, the corded strength of them warm under her touch. She kisses him now. Her lips upturned beneath his, her breath curling into his mouth.
"Taketheseoff."
He runs the words together, against her throat, his thumbs pushing into the flesh above the waistband of her pink cotton scrubs. When she doesn't immediately move, he brings both hands down under her ass in a single sharp tug [a tiny tearing sound]. The movement jerks her forward against him, takes away her breath.
"Off," he says again, into her mouth this time. Pulls in her bottom lip and sucks on it. "Now."
The metal surface is cold under her flesh. Shimmying her hips, she starts to peel the scrubs down, over the thong she has on underneath, but he already has one finger hooked under the tie at the side. Tugging on it, he unwraps her like a birthday gift.
It doesn't seem real that she is naked now. Here. How many times has she stood here, poring over x-rays, alongside him, oblivious to Chase and Foreman. Keeping her voice clear and steady as he brushed against her. Tiny, casual movements that made her skin prickle, made her alive to his proximity. And now she is here again. Thighs spread wide around him, around House, pushing off one shoe with another and hooking her toes under his waistband.
She pushes a little too hard and his hip gives way. A sharp hissing intake of breath.
She flushes, her eyes wide and bright staring into his. "Oh God...I'm sorry...should we...? Your leg..."
"Fuck my leg."
His thumbs press into her thighs, stretching them wider. When he runs a finger along the muscle: traces it inwards and then slowly dips it inside her, he looks straight into her face.
"Fuck my leg," he says again. Soft. Like a thought.
Oh god she wants him to... And he is taking his time. He is tracing the outline of her, the in and out of her, the soft, wet curves, as if he is trying to commit them to memory, as if he is half asleep. His left hand, the one that has been holding back her thigh, slides up her back to catch in the length of her hair, cup the base of her skull. His tongue is as soft as his fingers are firm and insistent and she is buckling, her breath coming like tiny ragged little flames.
"Please..."
It isn't the start of a sentence. It's all she can say. Taking hold of the waistband of his scrubs again, she pulls down, rolling her head on her neck as he finds her ear, skims it with his teeth.
"House..."
Her hand dips, wrapping around the warm, dry shaft of his cock, and he curls his neck, stretches it out again with his eyes closed. His fingers slip from inside her, coating her inner thighs.
She wants to watch him. Watch him as he pushes inside her. Wants it like she never has before. Never. She's had great sex before - dirty sex, bad sex, hot sex - but she's never felt this way. This open to anyone. This naked. She remembers sneaking looks down before, feeling her whole body flush with the [fucked up] strange primal need to see this, to see their bodies joined like this, slick and wet [perfect]. But this. She's never done this before. Never stared into a man's eyes as she pulls him inside her, never watched him look down as she does it, with this unfocused primitive hunger. For her. For what they are doing.
He pushes into her. Slowly. With an almost unbearable friction. At first she thinks it's for his own benefit: that he's pacing himself, trying not to lose control, but then she sees his face, feels his fingers' soft controlled pressure at the base of her spine. Knows.
He is enjoying watching her lose control.
Her belly above the soft, thick thatch of their hair is pale, silver-flat and glistening with sweat, and, reaching down, he runs a finger along the faint line from navel to pubic bone, before tracing down, around the circle where she and he meet. When she closes her eyes, he hears him [soft, low] laugh.
She isn't sure if she wants him to speak, but she feels something like a wail, something like a yell, building in the back of her own throat. Every time he pushes into her it's like adding water to a well: something is rising up inside her, rising to the top when it will just spill over and she won't be able to hold back any longer.
His hands on her belly, her breasts, her throat, are slow and tender, but now his breath too is ragged. Her cheek rasps against her, his mouth buried in her hair and she thinks [impossible] she hears him say [he never has, she never remembers him saying it] her name. His thumb spans her jaw, sliding along her bottom lip. And he says it again. This time into her mouth. And the way he says it, the way he draws out the three syllables is [he'll never say it again] is like a thread working into her. She can't bear it. And he knows it.
She doesn't know how to read him [yet] but she can feel something changing. Somewhere, somehow they're not fucking anymore. There's something else here, something sliding into place, synching up between them. The rhythm of his hips and breath merging with her own: their twin pulses flattening into one smooth alpha wave. His eyes, when she fixes them with her own, are darker than she has ever seen them: the pupils dilated, reflecting nothing but themselves. Her throat opens, but the only sounds she can make are low, soft rhythmic gasps. She can see him watching her, watching the sparks break off and spin out, his eyes reflecting them.
He has buried himself in her and, in the end, it's the expression on his face - the shivering eyelids, the corded muscles in his neck - that sends it to the top: the wave slapping her down and into him faster and harder than she's ever believed possible. He is trembling, damp and warm with exertion, breath curling into the hollow of her throat. Between her own thighs, she can feel his: the flattened scarred surface of the right one shaking deeply, whilst the muscle in the left is rigid and flushed with the strain of keeping his whole body erect for so long.
Reaching out a foot, she hooks one of the stools. The movement pulls him into her again and a sharp involuntary sound [his second], escapes his lips.
"Oh j...are you..?"
"Oh...fine," he draws out the words, closing his eyes briefly.
He slips from her and sits.
In the silence, they both listen. Over the high regular hum of the light-boxes, there are other sounds. In the hallway outside, she can hear the sound of voices [no-one they know] and the distant sound of the elevator.
Holding her breath, Cameron stills the shaking of her stomach, stills everything until there is no other sound but her own heartbeat. Slowing. Regulating. De-synching.
She feels the disconnect as acutely as she did the other. Even before he moves. Even before he takes that first deep breath inwards that he needs to form the words. Even before she sees his fingers twitch on his thigh, his eyes slide to the crumbled scrubs on the floor at his feet. He has no need to say anything, because she already knows it all.
"I'll go first," she says.
It's the only time she ever feels in control.
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 Fox Television, 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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