Fic: Decameron part 3, Cam/H one-sided, H/W
Fic: Decameron, part 3/10
Author: Nakanna Lee
Pairing: Cam/House one-sided, H/W
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Your perspective has changed.
A/N: I can't thank everyone enough for the wonderful feedback. My schedule is absolutely insane and I didn't get to reply, but it's great hearing your perceptive reactions! : ) Cam has always seemed darker to me, even if she is naive about it. Anyway... Hope these updates remain consistent; thanks so much for commenting again!
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DAY THREE
House’s newest patient has a trifling shadow on her liver, which gives him the perfect excuse to rely on Wilson. The two consult on the other side of the glass wall in House’s office. You watch, Wilson dropping conspiratorial suggestions while House pensively scratches his beard.
They stand together like nothing ever happened.
Turning back to the inconclusive lab results, you blink several times and feel yourself swaying in your seat. Chase keeps asking if you slept at all last night. You glare momentarily, wondering how makeup failed to conceal the darkening circles beneath your mascara-laden eyes.
After the previous evening’s debacle at House’s apartment, you had driven home, hands trembling on the steering wheel. Denial is one of the most difficult stages to overcome, and regretfully, House appears oblivious to being stuck there. More than that, Wilson has convinced him to lay down his guard. Whenever this dalliance crumbles, House is going to have nothing to protect him.
You opened a bottle of green tea, didn’t touch it, and spent the rest of the night trying to decide on a plan.
Now, Foreman is rummaging around the differential room, searching for an encyclopedia, and Chase is mulling over the results beside you. The pen clinks momentarily against his teeth, which you’d typically find somewhat grating if you weren’t so distracted.
You think back to nearly two years ago, when Wilson knocked on your door like a nervous teenager and sputtered out some warning about not hurting House. Hypocrite. He’d been jealous, and now that he’s gotten close to House and his pain, it’s a power trip for him.
The heliotrope hides under your old resume, pages of photocopied trials, and the beginnings of your latest medical article. Everything is locked securely in your desk drawer. You haven’t yet considered where you’ll follow House and Wilson next, but it certainly will not be back to an apartment.
At least not for a few days.
House came in this morning rambling about principles of physics, and the likelihood of Object A defying gravity and propelling itself against Object B, apparently bent on destruction.
Chase and Foreman stared. You’d blushed furiously, remembering Wilson sprawled open so shamelessly on the couch, hair mussed and eyes heavy-lidded as he called House’s name. His first name.
You sit quietly, frustrated, as Wilson and House return from the adjoining office. Wilson says he doesn’t think it’s cancer, but another scan should be taken, just to make sure.
He’s so cautious, so thorough, and it’s no wonder to you how he manages to keep his affairs quiet-until he decides to play self-sacrificing hero and come clean, as if it’s guilt that plagues him.
House nods, subtly grateful, and Wilson leaves. There is no closeness to it, nothing pronounced, and you realize in what an awkward situation House really is. He shouldn’t be forced to keep a relationship under lock and key, whether he claims that’s for the best or not. Who does he expect to take home to the family on holidays? To share dates in public with? To wake up next to after a night snuggled in bed together?-and hasty, alcohol-induced fumbles in the kitchen don’t count.
Wilson moving his belongings into House’s apartment does nothing but cruelly lead him on. House will be dragging their secret relationship along until it’s battered beneath the weight of their lies and denial; then Wilson will scoop up what’s left and run off to the nearest, pathetic pair of open arms.
The best way to protect House, you decide, is to prevent them from being too comfortable in each other’s company. You’ve read that it’s the little things that cause relationships to go awry, all the small, nit-picking details that make life with another person borderline unbearable. And you figure those will be simple enough to orchestrate, since you’ll be hidden under the heliotrope’s sightless cloak.
But all that will come at another time. The mere thought of House’s apartment engraves embarrassment into you. House obviously is not gay. You check off the list of women in your head he’s either mentioned or alluded to, including prostitutes. Who you assume are female. But it’s not like you need to go out on a limb to reach that conclusion.
Wilson, on the other hand… You suppose Wilson blurs whatever lines might restrict himself from him pleasure. Seems reasonable. Adequate, even. He has no preference, because either gender can need him. Besides, the man can’t hold a marriage together, and if that doesn’t raise some suspicion, you don’t know what does.
* * *
You’ve had enough thinking about Wilson. When you slip off to the bathroom, the heliotrope is in your purse. Moments later, it’s looped in its slipknot and hanging righteously around your neck, like a mission in mineral form.
Chase and Foreman are off running another test. House sits alone in his office, head bent over the file of his new patient, and you know he sees the one you lost yesterday between the lines.
You commiserate. Everyone in the department-everyone in the medical field, for that matter-has felt the crushing expectation to save lives, and oppressive self-doubt when you don’t. You’ve seen people suppress it, though none as well as House.
But just like Esther haunted him, so will yesterday’s patient, until he can convince himself that there was no way he could have predicted what would happen during surgery given their prior knowledge. It wasn’t a mistake. It’s just another random death for unknown reasons.
Now, though, everything suppressed is scrawled across his lined face. His features are too creased to belong to such an intelligent, strong man, victim only of his own shortcomings-and now Wilson’s, too.
If you lean close enough to him, maybe you can hear his thoughts. You quietly bend down at the waist behind him in his chair, carefully keeping your breath light, as you nearly press yourself against his back. Your chin hovers in the angular space between his neck and collarbone. He’s warm, and the clothing you refrain from touching gives him a softness that last night with Wilson couldn’t have known.
Delicately, you lay out one of your hands next to his. It’s so small comparatively; it would vanish in a handshake and be lost entirely in an embrace. But it would fit.
You peer clandestinely closer. The ripples across his weathered knuckles blend seamlessly into the lengths of his long fingers. Now, they strangle a pen and scratch out possible diagnoses on paper; but you remember them holding fast to the motorcycle handles as you clung to his waist that one time; and you can picture him working out melodies on the ivory, slowly coaxing forth just the right tune to color the air.
Your thumb strays, and cautiously you brush it against the dark sleeve of his blazer.
Then suddenly he’s pushing out his chair, and you just barely save yourself from landing on your back as he rises hastily. You fall away from his personal space. At first, you think you’re slight touch has spooked him, but he was no more aware of you than a lingering soul in a spirit world, one in which neither of you believe.
* * *
You hate when he moves without his cane. Alone, his loping steps send an intrinsic, panic-impulse through you. It’s human nature, you know, to find injury and pain disturbing, and those two things are so evident as he hurries down the hall.
He’s apparently discovered the diagnosis. The lab results had been anything but conclusive, but House sees things in a whole spectrum of lights. Each symptom or blood count or t-cell level has various connotations. He’s found another connection in the puzzled arrangement of tests.
You wish you could’ve caught it. There’s a flash in his eyes when any one of you-including Chase and Foreman-are clever. He admires intellect. It earns praise, and you’re determined to prove yourself in that category as well as others.
If he would just open up to you.
In a few moments he’s halfway down the hall, the pronounced limp bringing to attention his recurrent wound. None of it matters. He’s so stubbornly set on declaring the treatment dramatically and in person that he won’t wait for anything, least of all pain.
You have a pager, you remind him mentally.
Forgetting the glass walls, you pull the heliotrope from your neck and your form materializes again. Only afterwards do you think to glance around, hoping that no one was watching. You’re in the clear.
You call for House to wait as you quickly move after him. He’s going to entirely negate whatever remaining effects the ketamine has if he insists on straining himself like this. You hope he’s too focused on getting to the patient’s room to notice that you’re approaching him from the exact opposite direction of the bathrooms, which is where you supposedly were for the past ten minutes.
But it’s Wilson opening the door to the patient’s room, and Wilson catching him by the elbow before his leg gives out. And it’s you bringing up the rear, struggling to retain professionalism in front of the patient. Wilson’s eyes dance across his face as House tells the diagnosis, breath coming in short bursts.
He’s right, he knows he is, and in a few short hours the tests will confirm it. Embarrassed at his show of physical weakness, though, House doesn’t stay to gloat. He briefly orders nearby nurses to administer the proper treatment, then rummages through his pocket for the Vicodin, which hasn’t made an appearance in weeks.
Wilson opens his mouth to say something, then shuts it. Proof that even he knows he’s ineffective.
You smile gently as House leaves Wilson’s side and moves back toward the door. Instinctively, you extend your hand and take his arm.
But you quickly realize the closeness you shared back in his office was tolerated only because he didn’t know about it. A green-blue color leaps to the surface of his eyes as he pulls his arm away.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m helping you.”
“Go do that in the lab,” he replies shortly. “Did I hire you to take care of me?”
He’s through with looking you in the eye, and you don’t press anymore. Emotion will show itself when ready, not before, and you’ve learned when it’s best to give him space.
You're halfway down the hall when you realize the heliotrope isn't with you. You almost run the rest of the way back to House's office, where you know you took it off, but it's not there either.
tbc... http://nakannalee.livejournal.com/10692.html