The Best Little Secrets Are Kept. 10
The best little secrets are kept
Chapter ten
Cameron
This has got to be a first; House hasn’t said a word for five whole minutes. Somebody should probably inform the Guinness Book of World Records.
He’s staring at the floor, moving the air trapped in his mouth, from one cheek to the next and tapping the butt of his cane against his foot.
Chase turning up like that is bad for us both, and we need to have a conversation about what our next move should be, but that would involve addressing exactly what we’ve been doing. I’m just not sure how I’m going to pull him into that sort of a conversation.
Brushing it off or avoiding the matter is not going to work this time, and he knows it. I clear my throat and manage to get him to look at me.
He thinks he’s made a mistake, I can see it in his eyes, and not just that, there is a deep, awkward regret there too. I doubt he realizes how much it stings for me to see that so unguarded in his expression.
“Chase is probably going to bring it up, and I won’t be surprised if it’s in front of Foreman,” I say. There is an uncomfortable shift of movement beside me before he speaks.
“Yeah, I know,” he agrees.
‘So, should we deny everything?” I ask. We need to agree on a loose game plan at least, before he escapes out of here.
He leans forward slightly, clearing his throat before he speaks. His features have become ruffled by whatever troubled thoughts he’s having.
“It doesn’t matter what we tell them; you answered the door half dressed and my bike is in the parking lot,” he says, regretfully. He tilts his head to the side, perplexed over this unwelcome problem. “They’re grown men, not seven-year-old boys. We’ll only look stupid and desperate if we try and deny it.”
“Okay, so we’re going with option B then? We stumble into the office tomorrow,” I start, he observes me seriously, as if I’m about to suggest a sound diagnostic suggestion to solve our dilemma. “Making out,” I then add flatly as my eyes find his. “Maybe one of us could sport a shirt reading ‘yes, we are’ across the chest?”
Our roles have suddenly become reversed; he’s being serious and I’m doing the sarcasm. He gives me a stern, almost upset look, before looking away from me.
He’s obviously not happy that I’m making light of something he’s struggling very hard with. I’m doing what he does to everybody else, every day of his life, but I need to provoke a reaction out of him somehow.
“Do you want me to lie or admit it, if they ask?” I say quietly.
He shakes his head, “Say what you like. This doesn’t just affect me does it? Although I’m going for option C, which is telling them to mind their own goddamn business, because it’s got nothing to do with them.”
“They’re going to make jokes, House; they’re not going to ignore this, however much you wish they would.”
He shoots me a quick look.
“And I’ll ignore them, like I normally do when they start talking crap. Don’t worry, I’ve had plenty of practice; I tend to blank out around ninety percent of what they say that isn’t medically relevant.”
A brief, uncomfortable silence falls between us again. It seems he’s going to brazen it out and ignore them, and he’ll probably get away with it too. I won’t be so lucky.
If they don’t get a reaction from House, they’ll work on me. They’ll keep nit picking until I get frustrated enough to admit what happened, in a vain attempt to shut them up. That’s how it’ll go, I can see it now. Foreman is good at getting this sort of thing out of me.
“I should go,” House mutters, as if he’s just read my mind and realized that he’ll probably get off relatively lightly compared to the mocking I’m going to have to endure.
“So what’s the plan?” I ask when he reaches the door.
“I don’t know, don’t worry I’ll think of something, I always do don’t I?” he says with a forced confidence.
I roll my eyes at him, this is our problem, and he’s wrapping it up and taking it home to work on alone. Typical.
He leaves and I lean on the door for a few seconds, wondering what will happen when he finally works everything out about me, only to find there wasn’t all that much to work out after all.
What a let down to realize I simply enjoy this as much as he does, because I’m attracted to him. That’s far too simplistic for him. My feelings for him don’t make for an interestingly complex puzzle piece; they’re just normal human emotions, how boring.
I sit on the sofa and wait for the sound of his bike to kick over, it rumbles loudly in the lot. I listen as the engine revs and I hold on to the sound as it travels further and further away, until I can’t pick it out of the rest of the traffic,
And when I’m sure I can no longer hear the engine, I decide my apartment feels very empty.
~
House
Trying to sleep is a waste of time; my mind is clogged full of thoughts I can’t seem to move aside until the morning. They want my attention now. I have less than ten hours to build up an arsenal of remarks, cutting enough to defend against whatever Chase and Foreman can come up with when they start screwing with me tomorrow morning.
I’m sure Cameron will be a secondary target in all of this; teasing Cameron is easy and common.
It won’t be a full on attack, they’ll take a paper cut approach, little cuts here and there, jibes every now and again, and I know they’ll get as much mileage as they can out of it.
The moment I show them how uncomfortable I am about it, they’ll know they’ve got a weakness.
My secondary worry, no actually not even a secondary worry, it’s minor, but still, I’m bothered by Chase’s arrival at Cameron’s place. It’s bugging me.
To say it was unexpected is an understatement. I didn’t realize they hung out socially. Of course, it’s the sort of things colleagues do but given their history, all of it - not just the sex - I’m surprised.
The way he acted toward her during Vogler’s reign of terror wasn’t exactly chivalrous, and he took advantage of her when she was out of her mind. Why isn’t she disgusted by his actions? What does that say about her, and what is it you have to do to her to make her hate you?
Hanging out together on a weekend hints at a closeness between them, and I’m not sure what’s worse, the fact that it exists or the fact that I missed it, completely.
My right palm slides up and down my thigh absently, as my left hand reaches blindly for the Vicodin on my bedside table.
And why did she have those journals? Not just one, but all of them. It would be hard to get them all, unless she’s had them a while, since college. That should freak me out, not endear her to me even more, but unexpectedly it’s the latter.
I wish my mind would shut up.
Knowing tiredness will put me off my game tomorrow morning is stressing me out of sleep even more. Every sound in the apartment seems amplified, from the faucet left dripping in the bathroom to the faint squeak of Steve’s wheel in the kitchen as he follows his nightly exercise routine.
Eventually I have to get up, and go and take it out of his cage. I probably should have gotten a goldfish, something that won’t remember to hold a grudge and bite me the next time I try to feed it.
“Sorry, but you don’t understand how annoying that is,” I say tiredly, withdrawing my hand from his cage, clutching his treadmill. He stands up on his hind legs and I watch his whiskers twitch as he sniffs he air.
The next stop is to turn the water I left dripping in the bathroom off. I might then get a few hours sleep before I have to get up and endure the Monday from hell.
It’s two in the morning; the scotch I drank before I went to bed hasn’t settled very well in my stomach, it’s left an uncomfortable cramp there. And I need a convincing explanation for why my bike was parked outside Cameron’s apartment on a Sunday evening. Even Chase won’t be fooled with ‘Wow, a bike exactly like mine huh. What are the odds?”
I think there is something unsettling about the inevitability of it all. The idea that I’ve been predictable, that it was bound to happen at some point, how could a guy like that not take the opportunity to sleep with her?
It’s not like that. I don’t know exactly what it is like, but don’t let it be that. Why climb Everest? Because it’s there. Well, that’s not what’s been going on.
I still can’t sleep. The wheel is silent, the faucet isn’t dripping. But the wind ruffles the leaves enough for it to be annoying. For every subtle noise I dull, dampen and mute, my brain will only find another distraction to keep me awake, because tonight, my thoughts are too important to ignore.
I finally start to tire around four thirty, when I realize I only have one option, only one thing I can do now.
And as hard as it’s going to be, I really don’t think I have any other choice.
~
Cameron
Monday
There are two patient referrals waiting for House, when I arrive on Monday morning. I sit down at the conference table and read through them both, trying to work out if one deserves more attention. Both cases contain unusual symptoms House will probably find interesting, so he’ll have to pick which one he wants to take.
Chase arrives with Foreman, of course. I watch them amble slowly down the corridor toward the office, deep in conversation. They’re whispering conspiratorially and when they enter the room, they have similar, knowing smirks attached to their faces.
“Good morning,” I offer lightly, reaching for the second file again, so I can give House the bullet points of interest for each case, when he arrives.
Foreman offers a cheery, ‘Good morning,’ before grinning at me and dumping his bag on one of the chairs. He then heads for the coffee machine.
“It won’t bite you, you know,” he says over his shoulder. It’s a reference to the fact that I haven’t made a pot of coffee yet.
“House prefers your coffee to mine,” I toss back, flicking through the sheets of the history I’m reading.
“Well don’t feel bad, I think he prefers your mechanics.”
I look up at him, not entirely sure what that is supposed to mean, “What?”
“Bike mechanics, you know, because his bike was in your parking lot last night. I guess you were helping him to lubricate his gasket?”
Chase snorts out a laugh before folding his arms and glancing at me, stupid grin firmly fixed to his face.
“One day that big mouth of yours is going to get you into trouble, Robert,” I say coolly, trying very hard not to let myself flush red.
“What do you mean?” he says innocently. “We figured you’d been helping him repair it. We honestly couldn’t think of another reason he might be at your place on a Sunday evening.”
I decide my plan of action, for now, is to ignore thenm the best I can. I start to give a brief overview of the cases. Chase takes one file from me and Foreman takes the other. They manages to be serious for about ten minutes, discussing the cases and swapping files, but eventually Foreman can’t resist leaning back in his chair, folding his arms and regressing to the age of twelve.
“So, last night, did you help House get his engine running?”
Foreman half says and half chuckles this comment, and of course, the patron saint of bad timing - Gregory House - arrives just inside the door as Foreman is finishing his comment.
The door shuts and alerts us to his presence. We all look up at him as he shrugs his jacket off and dumps his backpack.
I then focus all of my attention on the history Chase has just handed back to me. One potential patient is a thirty year old mother of two. She has a nasty rash and has been suffering from regular, inexplicable nose bleeds.
I think House is pretending he didn’t hear Foreman’s comment, but he must have done. He looks like he’s had about ten minutes sleep and spent the night on somebody’s sofa. This must be the only time I’ve ever seen Chase and Foreman actually looking excited now he’s here. The looks they’re passing back and forth make me feel nervously sick.
“Good morning Dr House, did you have a nice weekend?” Foreman beams cockily.
“Fine,” House replies, in the most suspicious tone of voice he can find.
Chase shoots Foreman another smug look; I wonder which one of them will dare to make a comment first.
“We have two new cases. You need to pick which one to take,” I inform him.
“Oh, don’t make me choose, you pick,” he says childishly, pawing a dismissive hand at me. He then heads over to the coffee machine, pulling out his pills on the way and dry swallowing one, before getting himself a mug of coffee.
“We have a male kid or a thirty year old mother of two,” Chase informs him.
“I say we take the kid; sounds like it could be an interesting case,” Foreman says, looking at the file he’s got in his hands. “Kid threw a punch at his father, shortly before puking all over his mom and then passing out.”
“Feisty hormonal teenager coming down off X, boring, next,” House rejects the first pitch.
“Except, the kid is seven,” Foreman says, cocking his head to the side and quirking one eyebrow up.
House’s head falls to the side with interest.
“Seven year old Rocky, that’s far more interesting. Is he normally combative when Daddy says he can’t play on his Xbox?”
“Both of his parents insist the sudden aggression was highly out of character and that he’s normally very calm and will do what he’s told.”
House pulls his patented ‘Yeah right’ face, “Seven year old boy does what he’s told; I think not. I wonder what else they’re lying about?”
“We also have a thirty year old mother, with a nasty rash on her lower extremities, inexplicable nose bleeds and bleeding gums when she brushes her teeth.”
House has a quick think about his options then picks up a black marker pen, and draws a line that splits the whiteboard into two sections. He writes ‘Rocky’ on the left side and ‘Mommy’ on the right.
“Symptoms, go,” he says.
We all exchange puzzled looks before Foreman shrugs and starts reading his patient’s symptoms.
“Sickness, drowsiness, irrational behavior, lethargy and sporadic episodes of rigidity,” Foreman says.
House’s marker hovers over the right side of the board; he’s about to write Foreman’s symptoms under the ‘Mommy’ heading.
“Those are Rocky’s symptoms,” I say quickly. House diverts the marker to the left and starts writing them down.
“Just checking you’re awake,” he mumbles.
“Rash on the ankles and shins, easy bruising and excessive nosebleeds,” Chase says.
“Mommy?” House asks, looking over his shoulder at me; I nod.
“Sounds like Mommy has a simple bleeding disorder,” Foreman remarks, before shaking his head and shooting Chase a challenging stare.
“Wash your mouth out: bleeding disorders aren’t simple, sometimes they’re beautiful and complex,” House says disagreeably.
“Sorry, it’s just we have a very sick kid with meningitis-like symptoms; his case seems slightly more important than a rash.”
“It’s not a bleeding disorder; coagulation abnormalities normally cause bleeds in the muscles and joints. Have we got any of that stuff going on?” Chase asks.
“No,” I offer, after flipping up a page and double checking the history. “Mucosal bleeding normally occurs when there is an abnormality of primary haemostasis,” I finish.
“The kid hasn’t stopped puking since ten o’clock last night,” Foreman interjects, as if he’s the only one in the room doing his job, while the rest of us gossip about something completely insignificant.
“Drinker? Smoker?” House says, still looking at the board.
“Of course not, he’s seven,” I reply.
“Not the kid, the mom,” House moans, as if throwing around two cases is how we do things normally.
“And this is why we should just pick one case,” Chase grumbles, raising his eyebrows at me.
“But if we solve both, we can have next week off,” House says, turning to look at him.
“Delirium kicked in this morning,” Foreman adds.
“Rash, nosebleeds, delirium?” House says, puzzled, moving his stare from Chase to Foreman.
“The kid,” Foreman replies impatiently.
“When was Rocky admitted?” House asks.
“Saturday morning,” Chase answers. “It probably is meningitis or maybe encephalitis. The ER can deal with it, we should take the woman’s case.”
“Yet they’ve referred him to me; they’ve obviously performed a series of tests that have come back inconclusive. What’s already been done?” House asks, eyeing the board again.
“Elevated blood NH3, slightly hypoglycemic, and they did think meningitis, but there is no neck pain, light sensitivity or headaches,” I offer.
“He also has a rash, but that’s from the chicken pox,” Foreman points out.
House’s head tilts to the side, and then he turns slowly and fixes Foreman with an irritated look.
“The what?”
“His chicken pox; he had the virus a few weeks ago,” Foreman repeats.
“Did his mommy give him any aspirin while he had the pox?” House asks seriously.
Foreman scans the file and shrugs, “Sure, so what?”
“Did the ER rule out toxic poisoning?” House asks me.
“Yeah,” I reply. House turns and wipes the kid’s symptoms off the board with one swipe.
“It’s not meningitis,” I say, unsure why he’s just picked the, seemingly, healthier patient.
“I know,” House replies. “Chase, when we’re done here get down to Rocky’s room and start him on ten percent glucose; after you’ve done that you need to perform liver function tests for SGOT and SGPT.”
Chase’s eyes flit to the side in thought and he’s silent for a few moments before looking up at House. “You’re thinking Reyes syndrome,” he says unsurely.
“Yeah, inexplicable virus that sometimes kicks off on kids recovering from chicken pox, almost always kids who’ve been treated with aspirin when they had the virus.”
“Crap,” Chase mutters under his breath. The smirk he’s been wearing since he arrived is suddenly replaced by a frown.
“If it’s Reyes, it’s already in the later stages,” Foreman says gravely.
“That’s why I wiped him off the board; kid probably won’t see the end of the day,” he holds his hand out for the second file, “Mommy wins.”
~
We finish the differential for our female patient and House orders me to perform a complete blood count, PT, PTT and TT tests to rule out coagulation abnormalities. He sends Foreman and Chase to deal with our sick seven year old.
Chase and Foreman get up; it seems the challenge of two cases has proven a very effective diversion to the gossip they were so hotly waiting to use to their advantage. They’re about to leave the room, but House, it seems, hasn’t forgotten and has one more thing to say.
“Oh and for the record, my bike didn’t break down last night. There was no lubricating of any pipes, tinkering of engines or changing of oil. Cameron and I were having sex. It’s something you boys will find out all about when you grow up, and coincidentally it’s absolutely none of your business. Okay?”
Everybody in the room seems to freeze in their respective positions, all except House, who quirks his head to the side and raises one questioning eyebrow. I have definitely just flushed red. The stupid ass.
Foreman gives Chase a quick, surprised look, then they both nod. Neither has a worthy comeback, because nobody, not even me, was expecting that.
“Good,” House says with a smile, he then turns and takes a sip of his coffee while looking at the white board.
Foreman and Chase exchange ‘Did that just happen?’ looks and then scamper out of the room so they can discuss that bombshell in more detail. I wait until they’re clear before I place a hand on my hip and shake my head.
“That was very maturely handled,” I say in a tone of obvious irritation. I’m not sure if I’m angry or amused; probably a little of both. If it was somebody else’s business, a blunt approach like that wouldn’t surprise me. But it isn’t, it’s his personal business, I can’t believe he just threw it out there like that. It stopped them dead in their tracks though; it sort of worked.
“I cut to the chase,” he says calmly, with his back still to me. He then offers a slight shrug before limping toward his office.
There was going to be a reveal, one way or another, he just took control of it the only way he could.
I sigh and make a personnel note to my self: never underestimate House. I then leave the room too, and spend as much of the day as I can, avoiding everyone I work with.
~
Two weeks later
A few weeks go by and eventually the novelty of bugging me about House’s revelation wears off. Chase and Foreman haven’t made the mistake of mentioning anything else in front of him though.
I haven’t seen House out of work since the Sunday Chase turned up, and things have sort of gone back to the way they were before we got drunk and stupid.
There are a few subtle changes; his casual, almost flirty remarks haven’t got a place in the morning differentials anymore. If he were to say something risqué, all eyes would flit between him and me expectantly, so he’s avoiding that.
On the odd occasions we’ve been alone, we’ve only had medically relevant conversation. Neither of us daring to bring up the stuff we should be talking about. We’re back behind our emotional barricades, and quite happy to stay there it seems
I picked up the phone on Sunday evening and almost called him, but I chickened out before I dialed the number.
I have had a little time to think about things and be honest with myself; I’ve actually stopped pretending that the sex meant nothing to me. I’ve stopped trying to convince myself that I don’t have any real feelings for him anymore.
I have had to admit to myself that I still feel the same as I did a year and a half ago. Back when Foreman teased me about the effect House had on my tummy. I can still remember the sickly feeling I got when House walked into the room after Foreman had been teasing me, and brushed up against my shoulder.
I feel the same way I did when House came to my apartment and asked me to come and work for him again, I can clearly remember the butterflies in my stomach when I told him the conditions for my return, in no uncertain terms. I’ll never forget the look in his eyes; he didn’t get it, still doesn’t get it.
I can remember the nervous excitement that filled my stomach the first time I rode on the back of his motorcycle, can still smell his leather jacket and feel the icy breeze on my face, as we cut around the traffic to Anica’s apartment. The memory always makes me feel cold because of the snow.
I can still remember the smell of Stacy’s perfume, how it was all over him the night he came back when we were working late on a case and we needed his help. It was the night he screwed her, I’m sure. The memory of that smell still leaves a taste of jealousy in my mouth.
I can admit what I’ve known since I went to watch monster trucks with him, when I didn’t even know what monster trucks were, and didn’t really care. I know I’m in love with him, unfortunately, and there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do about it. For every stupid, hurtful, rude or obnoxious thing he does, he’ll quite often follow it up with something brilliant to balance things out again.
So, the question is, what do I do now? I’m really not sure. I would like to talk to him about the way I feel, but I’ve done that before and had it backfire spectacularly. I’m not comfortable about burying these sorts of emotions, but I’m not a masochist either.
I can’t help but sense that things were cut short far too early, like we hadn’t come to a natural conclusion about what we were doing and how it was going to end.
Chase turning up that night spooked us both, and we’ve spent the past few weeks pretending the two weeks before that, never happened.
But they did, and we had fun. This seems like an incredibly abrupt and underwhelming ending, for something that had been building for nearly two years.
And situations that involve House are rarely underwhelming.
~
House
Days turn into weeks, and work begins to approach something close to normal again. Chase and Foreman are still shooting each other those conceited little smirks, but luckily, my unexpected admission has left them somewhat stumped for jibes.
It’s no fun to taunt me about something I’ve openly admitted to them; they wanted me to lie and squirm and deny everything. I wasn’t going to give them that.
It’s been about two and a half weeks since Cameron and I last had sex; there hasn’t been a day where I’ve not thought about how much fun ‘hanging out’ with Cameron was, though.
She hasn’t mentioned it once, and I’m doing a very good job of pretending it never even happened when I’m around her.
I have picked up my cell phone on a few occasions, my thumb hovering over the call button before I toss the cell away or put it back in my pocket. On Saturday evening I even got as far as hitting dial after scrolling for her name, before hanging up straight after I’d done it.
I don’t go through with it for the same reason each time; I don’t know what to say to her, I don’t know how I feel and I don’t know what she wants to hear.
But I’m having one of those nights where the idea of calling her crosses my mind, and I suddenly have my cell in my hand, passing it carefully through the fingers of my right hand.
I’m watching General Hospital. I’ve already seen it today, but right now it’s the only distraction I can find to stop me hitting the dial button.
Five minutes before the end the cell has been in and out of my pocket at least five times. She hasn’t tried to discuss things once: how can she just be happy to forget about it? Maybe she’s glad it ended abruptly?
I stare at the number lit up on my cell, and I will myself not to call. Telling myself I’m a stupid idiot and that I’ll regret it. A little ball of tension coils in my stomach every time I highlight her name.
This is so stupid.
I let out a gentle sigh of frustration and I tap the cell against my chin, I’m not going to call her.
I put the cell back in my shirt pocket, but by the time the OC has started and finished, it’s back in my hand again.
I stare at it for a few moments, and then channel surf until I find an episode of ‘American Chopper’ just starting. I get halfway though watching it before I’m idly scrolling through the numbers again.
My hand raps against the arm rest. Then I decide to just go ahead and dial her number. I feel very apprehensive, but I do it anyway. I have no idea what I’m going to say.
Cameron picks up after three rings, “Hello?”
“Hey,” I say brusquely.
Why don’t I ever listen to my own common sense? Probably because it’s been stuffed into a locker at the back of my mind for years, and is used to getting the shit kicked out of it if it speaks up. There is a brief pause, before I hear her reply.
“House?”
“Yeah,” I offer awkwardly. My eyes are closed now and I’m wincing; what the hell am I doing?
“What’s up?” she says curiously.
“Nothing, nothing’s up, I….what are you doing?”
“Reading a book,” she says, matter of factly.
“Cool,” oh god, just hang up, just shut up and hang up. Why is this so hard?
“What are you doing?” she asks. There is some music on in the background, very low; I can’t hear what it is. How can she be reading and listening to music?
“Oh you know, manly stuff?” I offer, tapping my hand anxiously against my leg.
There is a pause on the other end of the line, then she laughs lightly and says,
“Right, so you’re watching soaps?”
“Pretty much,” I admit, quietly. She chuckles lightly into the phone at the admission, and I desperately want her to come over and let me see if I can draw some more rare sounds out of her. I particularly like the one she makes when I’m going down on her and she’s about three seconds away from an orgasm.
“Okay, is that all you wanted to know?” she says, breaking into the memory I have of my tongue and her clitoris getting better acquainted.
“Wanna hang out?” I force out uncomfortably; we both know it’s a euphemism for something else. There is another pause, and I close my eyes. This is the part where she crushes me for all the time I’ve spent annoying and upsetting her since we met. .
“We haven’t done that for a while; I figured maybe we weren’t going to hang out any more,” she says, carefully.
“Oh, right, well. It’s just I thought we had a pretty good time, when we…you know, I wasn’t sure if we were or weren’t, ahh…” my words trail off, I’ve lost the ability to have a coherent conversation.
“When you say hang out, what do you mean?
“You know what I mean,” I say, before clearing my throat.
“No I don’t actually, not anymore,” she says flatly.
“Spend some time together,” I say awkwardly. I have to resist the urge to follow that with ‘Having great fucking sex’ but I manage it, because I’m not sure that’s all I’m asking anymore. Although, the sex part is very good.
“When, tonight?”
“Sure,” I reply, quickly. I expected a mild rant, maybe a lecture, or ‘don’t call me at home again, House’ or something. Not this.
“Okay, if we hang out tonight, will I need to bring a change of clothes?” Cameron asks.
“I think so, yes,” I reply, very aware that I’m now smiling.
“Alright, I’ll see you in an hour,” she says, calmly.
“Okay,” I say, trying to hide the astonishment in my voice. “See you in an hour,” I repeat.
That was far too easy. “You get extra points if you bring chocolate,” I add boldly, before she hangs up.
~
When Cameron arrives she’s only just through the door before I have her back pressed against it, my hands rolling her hips forward to meet mine and most of my tongue in her mouth. She’s not exactly unhappy about this greeting though, seeing as five seconds later she’s pawing my dick through my jeans.
“Nice to see you too,” she comments, breathlessly, when we break away.
“I was a little surprised you called, I thought maybe we weren’t going to do this anymore,” she adds, trying to gauge my reaction.
Of course I look away as I think about her comment.
“I never said that.” I force myself to look back at her. She smiles and shakes her head.
“Then, if this is going to continue, we need to have a conversation, don’t we, about a few things?”
I nod my agreement. “We will, I promise, but later,” I finish, raising a suggestive eyebrow. She rolls her eyes at me. But it’s the good kind, not the kind she gives me when we’re moments away from a bitch spat.
“Later,” she agrees. “But we are having that conversation, House, sometime, about all this hanging out, all right?”
I nod, solemnly. “Absolutely; did you bring snacks?”
She rattles a small plastic bag she has in her hands in answer to my question.
“Yeah.”
She pushes me away from her lightly, then grabs hold off the collar of my shirt and practically drags me toward the bedroom.
“I stopped to get some ice cream and I figure you’re all out of spoons,” she says, turning to give me a very brief, but very filthy look.
“Wow, you’re like psychic,” I reply as she passes me the bag so she can pull her shirt over her head.
I’m starting to really like hanging out with Cameron.