Fic: Drowning (Just as fast as I can) House/Cameron ADULT
Drowning (Just as fast as I can)
by surreallis
pairing: house/cameron
rating: nc-17
category: angst, episode missing scene
warnings: graphic sex
spoilers: merry little christmas
A/N: For blueheronz. A very belated birthday present. I hope it's worth the wait. :)
Takes place between the time Cameron came back from House's place, when she bandaged him up, and the next day when he appears at the hospital and talks to Wilson. I tried to work the smut into the story without getting too unrealistic with his withdrawal and the effects of Vicodin.
+
Your sorry eyes; they cut through bone
They make it hard to leave you alone
Leave you here wearing your wounds
Waving your guns at somebody new
Baby, you’re lost
Baby, you’re lost
Baby, you’re a lost cause.
(lost cause - beck)
+
It isn’t that she feels guilty for cheating. The patients have always come first for her, and she grasps onto that with determined relief. She accepts that the dance between them is a strange one. Her feelings are always in flux, rising and falling with his moods and her tolerance. Sometimes she’s just too tired to care anymore, but he always digs in and drags more from her.
It’s a combination of the holiday, the weather, and his ability to lay them all low, despite their insistences that he’s a bastard. There’s little that affects her life the way he does. All their lives, really, although maybe the others don’t find themselves as caught as she does.
She glances up when a shadow catches the corner of her eye. Wilson watches her through the glass walls of the lab. She meets his brown eyes steadily, and then softens. Despite their obvious similarities, and the same dance they both play to, there has been a hard tension between them lately. She knows she’s been harsh with him, and he won’t back down.
The others see them as the weak links, but they’re wrong.
And they’re right.
Wilson gives her a nod to tell her Abigail is doing well. House’s diagnosis seems correct.
She returns the nod and then holds his gaze as he hesitates. There are long, tenuous connections between them that they don’t discuss. She’s not sure even now that she completely understands it all. But he acknowledges her in a way that tells her more than House ever did.
She watches Wilson walk away, and she feels his weariness in her own bones.
+
House calls her just before 10:30. She’s yawning but too hyped up on bad coffee to sleep. Cuddy told her to go home an hour ago, but she’s been procrastinating. Last year she enjoyed driving home late at night, gazing at the holiday lights blanketing the houses, the streets empty and quiet with new-fallen snow.
This year? His burden weighs them all down.
She pushes her cell phone to her ear. “Hello?”
“How’s the girl?”
She hates the awareness that sharpens her senses when it’s him. “Improving,” she says, quietly.
“Great. At least someone is.”
She sighs, torn between annoyance and sympathy, knowing neither of them will make him any more pleasant. “You know you can end this right now,” she says. She agreed to the party line with the others, but it’s hard to numb herself.
He’s quiet for a moment. She can hear the wet in his sinuses as he sniffles. “So can you,” he answers back, and his voice has gone as low as hers. She wonders if he’s tried this with everyone or if it’s only her that he sees as the most willing to break for him.
Maybe Wilson too.
She’s tired of him, and she says nothing, but she exhales long and slow and rubs at her forehead with her free hand. The thing is, she can’t not deal with him. It doesn’t matter how annoyed she gets, how angry, how tired, how beaten down; she can’t walk away from him. He finds a way to pull her back.
She’s aware of her own culpability in this.
“I can hear you breathing,” he says. “I know you didn’t hang up.”
“I’m not giving you Vicodin,” she says.
“Heroin would give me the same thing.”
“Sure,” she answers dryly, sounding more confident than she feels. “Heroin’s a lot better. Let me run down to the local crack house for you.”
She listens to him breathe and sniff and swallow.
“Come over,” he finally says, and his voice sounds pained.
She hesitates, resisting, even though there’s a part of her chest that’s already broken free and is tugging her forward. “Why?” she demands, softly.
“I want you to.”
It hurts to hear it. It aches like a lie, and it makes her tighten like manipulation. It freezes her and makes her feel warm. She hates how he can rend her with the careless flick of a finger.
She knows she holds some power over him, but he’s better at it than she is. He allows no pay-off.
“No,” she replies, and there’s a thickness to her voice that betrays her.
There’s a silence again while they listen to each other.
“You used to be on my side,” he says, and there’s a hard edge to his voice.
“I’m not that person anymore,” she finally says. A lie? But he doesn’t hear it. He hangs up as the words flow from her mouth.
+
She knocks at his door with a dry mouth.
The dull drone of music comes through, something slow and wailing. Bluesey. For some reason the name John Coltrane comes to mind, and she thinks she’s heard it before in his office.
There were holiday light strings up and down his street, and the cold wind managed to brush under her hair and along her neck. His building is quiet inside though, except for his music, and she feels alone. She feels guilty. And it intensifies as she shoves a hand into her coat pocket, fingers brushing the small, oblong, white pills.
She doesn’t know why she brought them. She can’t give them to him. Instinctually, she knows if she gives in to him now, she’ll have to give in to him forever. It will start her on a path she doesn’t want to take.
She should turn and go.
Instead, she knocks on his door again and calls his name. “House!” The music thumps on, and she adds, in a quieter voice. “I’m here.”
There’s nothing, and she sighs. She doesn’t know what it is that draws her to him. There are times she wishes she’d never met him. But thinking about that option also rigs up a ball of fear in her gut that astonishes her with its strength.
She’s so fucked.
When she tries the door, it opens, and she hesitates in the midst of her indecision. She shouldn’t be here. She agreed.
He isn’t in the living room, and the lights are turned low, but the music is loud enough to stop even the neighbors from sleeping. She pushes her gloves into her pocket, burying the Vicodin under one more layer. It helps somehow. And then she steps in and closes the door quietly behind her. She turns the stereo down to a manageable level.
“House?”
There’s still no answer, but she can hear the shower running now. She exhales, glancing around before deciding she’d better tell him she’s here so he doesn’t walk out naked in front of her. Or… shoot her or something.
When she knocks on the bathroom door, he mumbles at her. She frowns.
“It’s me,” she calls. “Are you okay?”
“Leave now.” His voice sounds strange.
The shower spray sounds odd. No splashing.
She opens the bathroom door and he’s sitting there on the side of the tub, still wearing his T-shirt and his pajama bottoms, soaking wet and shivering as the spray pounds down on him. She can feel the frigidity of the water temperature as she draws closer.
“House, for God’s sake!”
“Fuck him,” House swears between chattering teeth and a tight jaw. “Wh-What has he ever done for me?”
“Well, he certainly didn’t gift you with a charming personality,” she mutters, reaching over to turn the tap off. He glowers at her but says nothing. His whole body shudders from the cold.
She shrugs her coat off, throwing it onto the vanity and then grabs a towel.
He’s slow to rise, muscles stiff and trembling from the cold, and his soaked clothes stick to him. She throws the towel around him as he steps gingerly from the tub, his weight coming down heavily on his good leg.
“God, you’re an idiot sometimes,” she says softly.
“C-cold,” he says, with no sarcasm. “Numbs you. Hypothermia is a comfortable way to die. Painless and warm… th-the mind plays tricks.”
She rubs slightly at his hair to stop the water from dripping into his eyes and then grips his wrist with her hand. His skin is freezing. “Brilliant,” she mutters, annoyed.
He glances at her almost uncomfortably. “Victims are often found without clothes. They tear them off at the end thinking they’re burning to death.”
She slides her palm over his forearm. Her skin seems hot compared to his. He makes a soft, wordless sound, and he shivers and leans into her, almost against his will. “Death by cold shower?” she asks, dryly, and she rubs at his arms.
He shakes his head and glances at her with red-rimmed eyes. “Just trying to numb the pain." There's a flash of anger. "Don’t warm me up too much. It worked.” He’s already getting warmer though; his stuttering is nearly gone.
She takes her coat into the living room and paces, waiting, while he makes his way into his bedroom and changes out of his wet clothes.
When he limps slowly into the living room, face already showing signs of pain again, she speaks to him in her low, no-nonsense voice. “You can go into treatment right now, House. I’ll take you myself. It doesn’t have to be this way.”
“No, it doesn’t,” he snaps, brows furrowing in anger. “You could give me Vicodin and things can go right back to the way they were.”
She sighs. “Detective Tritter isn’t going to let that happen. It’s too late.”
He leans against the wall tiredly and gazes at her. “What did you tell him?” he asks, the anger dropping away.
She falls back onto his sofa and frowns at him. “Nothing.” She purposely leaves out the part about Tritter accusing her of being in love. Like it’s a horrible thing.
Or a sad thing.
Or a hopeless thing.
They all have their battles to fight.
“If I’d thought it would actually do you any good…” she starts, but then trails away.
He makes a sound, and when she glances up his jaw is tight, eyes squeezed shut, knuckles white with the way he grips his cane. She looks away from his agony.
She shouldn’t be here. Helping him, soothing him in any way is only going to keep him going longer. If Wilson knew…
They’re both enablers, and sometimes she wonders what it is exactly that they get from House that makes it so precious to them. That makes it so necessary. It isn’t always clear.
“If you aren’t going to give me what I need, then you can go,” he says, and his voice is sharp but sincere.
“That’s why you called me? Asked me to come over? Because you thought I’d break and finally bring you pills?” Her tone is dubious, and she tries not to think about what she slipped into her coat pocket before leaving the hospital. He’s always looked through her.
He looks away and doesn’t answer. His distance is telling. He struggles to hold on to the sarcasm and the guile, but he’s too worn down. Too fresh from the battle. The withdrawal is draining him.
She feels almost bad, as if she’s kicking him when he’s down. It’s an odd feeling to have when facing House. He’s too tired to fight, and she finally has freewill.
“It’s okay to need company,” she finally says, avoiding his gaze.
“If I needed company I have cash and the number of an escort service. And she might even come stocked with pills or coke.”
She looks up, and he lowers his eyes. And she wouldn’t give a shit about you, she thinks. And normally that might be just what he wants, but not tonight. For some reason he can’t tolerate that tonight, and maybe he’s lost too much already.
Maybe.
She stands up.
“Running away already?” he quips immediately, and there’s an odd quality to his voice.
She holds his gaze. “You don’t know me as well as you think you do.”
He snorts, and his eyes are momentarily sharp. He studies her, and when his gaze slides down over her body, it’s almost a palpable feeling.
She feels her own heart beating.
“I know enough,” he states, quietly. “Or you wouldn’t have gotten through the door.”
She thinks briefly of Cuddy coming back to the hospital, angry and at wit’s end when House simply shuts the door on her, forcing the fate of a patient between them. Desperate times had called for desperate measures, and all eyes had locked on Cameron.
She’d done what she needed to do, for the patient and for the hospital. But she hadn’t really felt the cost to her own soul until now. It didn’t matter how much of a miserable bastard House was.
“You’re bleeding,” she says, simply.
He looks oddly confused at first, oddly… startled. Like she’s just reached in and pulled a secret from his mind.
He’s so unguarded right now. And she can’t do it.
She motions at his arm, the one he carved up and she’d bandaged for him.
In his renewed warmth, a thin crimson rivulet winds its way over his bare wrist and drips from the tip of his thumb. He glances at it curiously.
“Sit down,” she orders, realizing she isn’t going anywhere as long as he’s actually leaking blood everywhere.
He sits quietly this time as she holds a towel over the cut meat of his arm. She tries not to look at him as she touches him. It wasn’t supposed to be this way for her. Caught in the sparks that surround him, despite his mess. She keeps burning herself, and she doesn’t learn. Or maybe she does learn, she just can’t stop. Sometimes it doesn’t make a difference.
“Why are you here?” he suddenly demands, and she feels those sparks ripple along her skin.
She peels the towel carefully away and wipes at the dried blood. “Because I’m an idiot,” she answers. “And you asked.”
She can hear his rough breath, and she can feel him staring at her. His knee is warm now and pressed against her side as she kneels in front of him. Again. His hand presses into the muscle of his thigh. He rocks a bit from time to time.
“Isn’t that against the rules?” he grumbles through gritted teeth as she plasters a piece of gauze over the cuts.
“Why did you ask me to come here?” She turns the tables on him. If she were going to give him pills she’d have done it earlier when she needed information from him. And he knows this.
His gaze lifts from her fingers to her eyes. And he leans forward.
She can smell his sweat and the underlying scent of the soap he keeps using to wash it away. His breath is faster than normal, and he’s so close it stirs the hair at her temple. She can feel his heat.
“Why do you think?” he rasps.
Her mouth runs dry and she glances away, unwilling to play this game with him. “House…”
He watches her for a moment and then snorts, tiredly. “Don’t flatter yourself,” he says, and his gaze darts away. “I couldn’t get it up right now if Carmen Electra and her clone showed up at my door wanting a threesome.”
He pushes past her to stand, and he nearly falls over as his bad leg gives. He grunts, and she grabs at him, standing, but he catches himself just in time. “I’m fine,” he growls, and he tries to walk away, but even one step brings him to a teeth-grinding halt, and Cameron grabs him around the waist.
He reaches for the wall, and they settle there. He has one arm still locked around her neck and the other takes his weight against the wall, his forehead pressed hard to his fist.
She doesn’t bother asking. There’s no point. He’s not okay, and there’s no way to make him okay short of giving him back his crutch.
He tilts his head slightly, gaze turning back toward her. His eyes hold hers.
She says nothing, but she glances down. He’s a constant struggle within her.
“What do you expect me to do?” he asks, softly, voice tight.
She still has her arms around his waist, and she loosens her hold. “Do what he wants, House,” she says, knowing she’s open to him at that moment. “Cut your losses.”
He stares at her for a long, long, silent moment, and she watches as he swallows his own pain again and again. Then he slowly shakes his head.
She feels that sharp, sad resignation and she exhales as if she’d been holding her breath. And then she looks anywhere except at him, accepting it. She won’t talk about this again. It’s his fight.
You’re such a selfish prick, she wants to tell him, and she wants to maybe let some tears out, but that’s a waste of salt and time. So she just waits for fate to whisper in her ear.
He winces then, hand going to his leg, fingers curling into muscle. He leans more heavily against the wall, and she frowns, wondering exactly how bad this is going to get. “House?”
He makes a frustrated, pained sound, but shakes his head. He shudders.
She feels his lean back under her fingers, the muscles flexing as he struggles to balance his weight off his bad leg and against the wall. She’s surrounded by his scent, the sound of his breath and the blatant truth of his addiction. “I wish I could hate you,” she murmurs, losing control for a moment and giving into fear.
His head turns, blue eyes searching hers out and holding her gaze from inches away. It’s much too close. She’s too wrapped up in him, but her hands won’t let go.
“You’re pathetic,” he says, but it lacks strength.
It pisses her off anyway. Because for the first time she really feels a bit pathetic. And he is too, but he’s never really tried to be anything except the worst that people expect from him. Even while extolling genius in cures and reprieves.
Another shudder runs through him, and his breath hitches. His muscles stiffening up so hard that her own nearly seize in sympathy. She can almost feel his pain. He jolts forward, trying to take the weight off his right leg and his fingers curl into the back of her shirt, pulling her in front of him. He leans his forehead on the wall behind her, trapping her between it and him. When he exhales, there’s the bare hint of a groan there.
It’s too much for her, and without thinking she grabs his bandaged forearm, digging her nails into the stained pad, twisting his wrist. He sucks in his breath sharply and jerks against her. She slips her free hand around his waist but holds his damaged arm firmly, until her fingers weaken and she has to let go.
He doesn’t pull away from her. He crowds closer, moans in near-relief, and then his legs give a bit. She holds him up while he pants against her neck, a distracted, disbelieving, breathless chuckle. The bandage on his arm is dark red as he brings it up and slides his arm around her.
“You do love me.” He exhales, a laugh sounding in his breath. His words tickle against her neck. “You can stay for a while.”
She grits her teeth against her tears and presses her mouth against his shoulder.
+
He sits in bed and leans back against his headboard while she re-bandages his arm. The stereo still plays and has moved on to something slow and smoky, although she has no idea who it is. He takes big gulps from a tumbler of straight scotch while she mops up the blood she spilled all over his skin. When she glances up he stares steadily into her eyes without looking away, and she drops her gaze. It’s always been unnerving to have his full attention.
“Does Cuddy know you’re here?” he asks when she finally sets the tape aside.
She looks at him and then away, licking her lips. She shakes her head silently.
He studies her with a furrowed brow and then glances away and sighs. They’re complicit in this. Always have been. It’s a hidden thing, despite their very public interactions. There are threads there that no one else is really aware of. Sometimes she thinks people suspect, but mostly they just think it’s all on her side.
She knows better.
He may call her pathetic, but he holds her in place as tightly as any chain could. And that isn’t her creation.
“You ever give Chase a massage?” he suddenly asks. He says Chase’s name as if there’s quotation marks around it. In a bad way.
Her head jerks up and she frowns at him, wondering where the hell this is going.
He shifts on the bed, hand kneading the leftover muscles in his thigh. She remembers that massage helps sometimes.
“I, uh… I don’t want to hurt you,” she says, glancing at his leg.
He snorts at that, but it sounds a little uncontrolled and exhausted. “Don’t disappoint me now.”
She gives him an annoyed look but she slides onto the bed on his right side and crosses her legs under her. He throws back the rest of his scotch and then leans back, throat working as he swallows.
He taps a place on his thigh, and she tentatively places her fingers there. She goes lightly at first, a little nervous about a lot of things, but he barks ‘Harder! Stop being such a girl.’ at her, and she rolls her eyes, tempted to squeeze hard enough to make him yell.
She can feel the long, narrow divot in his leg where the muscle is missing, and she avoids that, working in slow, heavy strokes, avoiding bone and soothing only tissue.
He exhales heavily and a little sharply, eyes closed tightly, and he seems to sag a bit back into the mattress. She takes that as a good sign and keeps on going, feeling oddly glad his eyes are closed.
It’s a precarious situation, she realizes, but not necessarily uncomfortable. There’s always been a strange intimacy between them that defies all other bonds.
“They use you against me.” His voice is rough, low, resigned.
She glances at him uneasily, surprised. The scotch must be working because he’s staring at her sleepily. “Stop being paranoid,” she replies.
“They send you when they want something from me. They know you’ll get it.”
“No, they send me when you’re being an ass and they’ve lost patience. A girl is dying here, House.”
His eyes meet hers, and his gaze is piercing. “That isn’t the point.”
She looks away. “This isn’t a war. We’re on the same side.”
When she looks back he’s staring directly at her, and she finally just gives up and sits there, meeting his eyes in silence.
It makes her feel like she’s stepped off a cliff into thin air.
After a long moment, he rests. “You have to leave?”
“I, uh…” She finally just shrugs.
He nods slightly, and closes his eyes. “Whatever.”
His breath is already deepening and slowing into sleep, so she doesn’t answer. He trusts her to take care of herself in whatever way she needs to, and she scrubs tiredly at her face before letting the weariness through her eyes as she watches him.
His brow relaxes in sleep, and his breaths carry the sound of a slight snore. And even unconscious he looks a little prickly and rough.
They use you against me.
All’s fair in love and war when it comes to House, and she’s only doing what he taught her. But she’s never been good at justifying it to herself. It makes him more human somehow, that he can be played. And that’s not even the right word, because she didn’t play him. She simply asked him for what she wanted, and he hemmed and hawed but then he gave her what she asked for, freely. And the fact that he might be a little soft when it came to her isn’t her fault. She’d had to fight and forge her armor against him just like everybody else.
She yawns and thinks about driving home. It doesn’t appeal. Maybe it’s just an excuse, but she’s too tired to argue with herself. She stretches out beside him and then curls on her side. It’s warm and she can hear the wind howling occasionally outside the windows. House breathes next to her, and the music is low from the next room.
It’s too easy to fall asleep.
It’s too easy to fall.
++
She wakes up to a hand gripping her shoulder, and when she opens her eyes she realizes where she is. House’s bedroom. House’s bed. The room seems darker though, and more silent. The stereo is quiet.
She turns onto her back toward the hand and House is on his side-his bad side-and looking down at her. His face is shadowed, but she can see the curve of his mouth and the glint of eye. He stares. The building creaks in the wind, and shadows of the bare tree branches outside move across his face.
“House…” she asks, softly, using his name as a question.
“What?” He sounds as if he doesn’t expect an answer.
She feels his thumb move across her bottom lip, slowly. She feels a little hazy in the first moments of wakefulness. But when he leans towards her, that feeling of stepping off into thin air swallows her again. He hesitates, his mouth just above hers, his eyes boring into hers, and she feels his warm breath against her lips. There’s no armor there, in his eyes, she realizes. Sometimes he strips it for her, and it’s always a heady thing.
He stays still when she lifts her head slightly, barely brushing his mouth with hers. He exhales though, a long, slow sound, and when she kisses him again, he follows her down. He doesn’t overwhelm her with his mouth, and that’s surprising to her in some ways. He kisses her without weight, his tongue sliding almost lazily against hers, and she feels his fingers tangle in her hair.
When she pulls her mouth back from him, he stares down at her with hooded, serious eyes. For a man so determined to joke away emotion from his life, he is amazingly sober with his reactions now. He breathes against her cheek, and there’s no hint of the sarcasm he uses as defense. Instead, he looks a little fierce.
“You seem better,” she says, softly, amazed. And he does.
He looks at her for a while, shadowed eyes dropping to her mouth. “Come here,” is all he says.
Then the kissing is harder, more urgent, and his fingers are dragging over her ribs, tugging at her clothes, and she slides her hands up the back of his shirt. He stops kissing her and his breath is hard against her neck as he slides his arms beneath her and then pulls her over on top of him so he can lie on his back.
She gazes down at him for a moment, trying to get her bearings, and he’s still guileless and almost grim, focused on her with an intensity she can almost feel between her legs.
He scares the hell out of her sometimes.
She’s sitting on his hips, his hands holding her from sliding toward his thigh. She leans forward slowly, and he watches her with sleepy, piercing eyes. He lets her kiss him gently, but then his hands hold her head and he tilts her chin up, brings her throat to his lips. The soft bristle on his jaw brushes her skin, and then his mouth comes in, warm and wet. She finds it difficult to catch her breath.
It’s a rush then, a tangle, of his mouth and hers, his tongue and even a hint of teeth. She can hear both of them breathing hard, and when she grabs his mouth again with hers, he makes a low sound. She’s shoving his shirt up, touching his chest, grinding down against him, and the way he’s looking at her, even his breathing, is making her wet.
His fingers are sliding under her sweater, under her bra, over her breasts, catching against her nipples, and then he’s tugging at her pants, and he means it. She has to climb off of him to slide it all off, and she straddles his good leg when he pulls her back.
She hesitates then, in the break between them. There’s no doubt this is a bad idea, but she crossed that line long ago. She doesn’t really know what it is that won’t let her walk away from him, but she’s pretty sure it’s going to drown her in the end.
“Cameron,” he murmurs at her, and when she looks at him he’s almost frowning. “Come back,” he says.
She’d been drifting away a bit, too focused on the doubt. She rests a hand on his belly, sliding her fingers in circles through the sparse hair there. “Are you sure? I mean, can you even…” She stumbles a bit.
He pauses, looking a little off-balance, and then he twists his mouth in a figurative shrug. “We’ll see.” He’s talking in a quiet tone that sends shivers down her spine.
She leans down to kiss him, and his hand cups the back of her head and holds her there, against his mouth. Even as she slides one hand down, dipping her fingers under the waistband of his pants. He’s not hard, but he’s not soft either. He shifts and exhales into her mouth as her hand closes around him.
She strokes slowly at first, and he definitely gets harder, but… not yet. She arches her back and presses her mouth to the space under his chin. He lies passive beneath her, hands still tangling in her hair, almost absently, as he takes deep, hard breaths.
She tries a light touch on his cock, and he swallows wetly, hands fisting in her hair. She goes with that then, and uses her free hand to shove his shirt higher, so she can swipe her tongue over one, flat nipple. His thigh lifts restlessly between her legs, and she smiles faintly and slides down his body. His hands follow her hair.
When she takes him in her mouth and circles her tongue silkily around him, he almost seems to stop breathing. She risks a glance, and, thankfully, he’s not looking at her. He’s shadowed, and his chest rises and falls, and he looks pained in a good way.
Jesus…
She uses her tongue more than anything, and between one moment and the next he seems bigger. When he finally pulls her back up, she keeps one hand on him, tight and hard.
He flexes beneath her as she kisses him again, and his hands pull her up onto his hips. He whispers something about being ‘so fucking hard’, and that’s about all she can take.
He slides inside of her and everything stops…
She can’t even look at him, so she closes her eyes, fingers digging into his chest as his cock pushes deep. She has to swallow a moan.
His hands loosen on her hips, but he tugs her down and pushes up, and when she opens her eyes his are closed, his head tilted back. His jaw is tight, but he’s exhaling hard through his nose, and finally his lips part.
She’s sort of gone then. She moves, and she feels almost too wound up. Like she might come, like she might not. He’s watching her as she starts sliding. It feels too good to move much, so she keeps it shallow, deep and slow. His fingers press dents into her skin, and he won’t look away from her. There’s that furrow between his brows that makes him look angry, and his eyes are piercing, but he’s slack-jawed now and feeling it.
When he groans quietly and tightens his grip on her hips, stopping her, she knows he’s close. She’s… not, but she feels groundless and a little like she’s drowning. It’s dark and it feels good, and she slips her own fingers down between her legs. He swallows and then slides his fingers under hers, and she gasps at the feel of him. He watches her until she sucks in her breath, and then his fingers find a steady rhythm, and she can’t watch him anymore as her whole body draws tight.
She nearly bites her lip as she comes, and in the silent room her own moans sound deafening. She isn’t all the way through it before he comes and suddenly pulls her down against his chest. He thrusts up, his arms like iron around her, his breath ragged.
It seems to take forever before he relaxes beneath her, and she can rest. She listens to his heart thudding rapidly in his chest. She’s not sure how she feels…
When his arms loosen, she slides to his side. He takes a breath and lifts his hands to his face. He looks beaten, and she still feels his weight and his presence inside of her. He’s heavier than ever.
When he seems to be drifting off to sleep again, she starts sliding off the bed. His hand closes around her wrist, and he holds tight. “Cameron.”
She turns to look at him.
“Come back.” He holds her gaze.
She hesitates. “This doesn’t mean I’m giving you Vicodin.”
He tugs. “I know.”
She stretches out beside him again in the dark, and his fingers relax around her wrist as he falls asleep. She wonders if there will ever be a time when she refuses to return to him, just because he asked.
It’s easier to sleep than to think about it.
+
His street is quiet just before dawn, and it snowed overnight. She doesn’t have to scrape the windshield.
She slides behind the wheel and starts the car, flipping the wiper blades on. They plow through the light layer of snow and shift it aside. She huddles there a moment, waiting for the engine to warm up. She isn’t quite sure how things are going to go from now on. She thinks that probably things won’t change. Because House doesn’t change.
And she’s not that idealistic rookie anymore.
She slides her hand into her pocket to grab her gloves. Her nails scrape against the empty lining, and she pauses. She pulls the gloves slowly out and then searches the pocket with careful fingers.
It’s a curious, falling sensation when she realizes it’s empty.
She slowly leans her head back against her seat and watches as a new flurry of snow starts outside.
It’s going to be a long, cold winter, before she can clear a path and start again.
+
~e~
by surreallis
pairing: house/cameron
rating: nc-17
category: angst, episode missing scene
warnings: graphic sex
spoilers: merry little christmas
A/N: For blueheronz. A very belated birthday present. I hope it's worth the wait. :)
Takes place between the time Cameron came back from House's place, when she bandaged him up, and the next day when he appears at the hospital and talks to Wilson. I tried to work the smut into the story without getting too unrealistic with his withdrawal and the effects of Vicodin.
+
Your sorry eyes; they cut through bone
They make it hard to leave you alone
Leave you here wearing your wounds
Waving your guns at somebody new
Baby, you’re lost
Baby, you’re lost
Baby, you’re a lost cause.
(lost cause - beck)
+
It isn’t that she feels guilty for cheating. The patients have always come first for her, and she grasps onto that with determined relief. She accepts that the dance between them is a strange one. Her feelings are always in flux, rising and falling with his moods and her tolerance. Sometimes she’s just too tired to care anymore, but he always digs in and drags more from her.
It’s a combination of the holiday, the weather, and his ability to lay them all low, despite their insistences that he’s a bastard. There’s little that affects her life the way he does. All their lives, really, although maybe the others don’t find themselves as caught as she does.
She glances up when a shadow catches the corner of her eye. Wilson watches her through the glass walls of the lab. She meets his brown eyes steadily, and then softens. Despite their obvious similarities, and the same dance they both play to, there has been a hard tension between them lately. She knows she’s been harsh with him, and he won’t back down.
The others see them as the weak links, but they’re wrong.
And they’re right.
Wilson gives her a nod to tell her Abigail is doing well. House’s diagnosis seems correct.
She returns the nod and then holds his gaze as he hesitates. There are long, tenuous connections between them that they don’t discuss. She’s not sure even now that she completely understands it all. But he acknowledges her in a way that tells her more than House ever did.
She watches Wilson walk away, and she feels his weariness in her own bones.
+
House calls her just before 10:30. She’s yawning but too hyped up on bad coffee to sleep. Cuddy told her to go home an hour ago, but she’s been procrastinating. Last year she enjoyed driving home late at night, gazing at the holiday lights blanketing the houses, the streets empty and quiet with new-fallen snow.
This year? His burden weighs them all down.
She pushes her cell phone to her ear. “Hello?”
“How’s the girl?”
She hates the awareness that sharpens her senses when it’s him. “Improving,” she says, quietly.
“Great. At least someone is.”
She sighs, torn between annoyance and sympathy, knowing neither of them will make him any more pleasant. “You know you can end this right now,” she says. She agreed to the party line with the others, but it’s hard to numb herself.
He’s quiet for a moment. She can hear the wet in his sinuses as he sniffles. “So can you,” he answers back, and his voice has gone as low as hers. She wonders if he’s tried this with everyone or if it’s only her that he sees as the most willing to break for him.
Maybe Wilson too.
She’s tired of him, and she says nothing, but she exhales long and slow and rubs at her forehead with her free hand. The thing is, she can’t not deal with him. It doesn’t matter how annoyed she gets, how angry, how tired, how beaten down; she can’t walk away from him. He finds a way to pull her back.
She’s aware of her own culpability in this.
“I can hear you breathing,” he says. “I know you didn’t hang up.”
“I’m not giving you Vicodin,” she says.
“Heroin would give me the same thing.”
“Sure,” she answers dryly, sounding more confident than she feels. “Heroin’s a lot better. Let me run down to the local crack house for you.”
She listens to him breathe and sniff and swallow.
“Come over,” he finally says, and his voice sounds pained.
She hesitates, resisting, even though there’s a part of her chest that’s already broken free and is tugging her forward. “Why?” she demands, softly.
“I want you to.”
It hurts to hear it. It aches like a lie, and it makes her tighten like manipulation. It freezes her and makes her feel warm. She hates how he can rend her with the careless flick of a finger.
She knows she holds some power over him, but he’s better at it than she is. He allows no pay-off.
“No,” she replies, and there’s a thickness to her voice that betrays her.
There’s a silence again while they listen to each other.
“You used to be on my side,” he says, and there’s a hard edge to his voice.
“I’m not that person anymore,” she finally says. A lie? But he doesn’t hear it. He hangs up as the words flow from her mouth.
+
She knocks at his door with a dry mouth.
The dull drone of music comes through, something slow and wailing. Bluesey. For some reason the name John Coltrane comes to mind, and she thinks she’s heard it before in his office.
There were holiday light strings up and down his street, and the cold wind managed to brush under her hair and along her neck. His building is quiet inside though, except for his music, and she feels alone. She feels guilty. And it intensifies as she shoves a hand into her coat pocket, fingers brushing the small, oblong, white pills.
She doesn’t know why she brought them. She can’t give them to him. Instinctually, she knows if she gives in to him now, she’ll have to give in to him forever. It will start her on a path she doesn’t want to take.
She should turn and go.
Instead, she knocks on his door again and calls his name. “House!” The music thumps on, and she adds, in a quieter voice. “I’m here.”
There’s nothing, and she sighs. She doesn’t know what it is that draws her to him. There are times she wishes she’d never met him. But thinking about that option also rigs up a ball of fear in her gut that astonishes her with its strength.
She’s so fucked.
When she tries the door, it opens, and she hesitates in the midst of her indecision. She shouldn’t be here. She agreed.
He isn’t in the living room, and the lights are turned low, but the music is loud enough to stop even the neighbors from sleeping. She pushes her gloves into her pocket, burying the Vicodin under one more layer. It helps somehow. And then she steps in and closes the door quietly behind her. She turns the stereo down to a manageable level.
“House?”
There’s still no answer, but she can hear the shower running now. She exhales, glancing around before deciding she’d better tell him she’s here so he doesn’t walk out naked in front of her. Or… shoot her or something.
When she knocks on the bathroom door, he mumbles at her. She frowns.
“It’s me,” she calls. “Are you okay?”
“Leave now.” His voice sounds strange.
The shower spray sounds odd. No splashing.
She opens the bathroom door and he’s sitting there on the side of the tub, still wearing his T-shirt and his pajama bottoms, soaking wet and shivering as the spray pounds down on him. She can feel the frigidity of the water temperature as she draws closer.
“House, for God’s sake!”
“Fuck him,” House swears between chattering teeth and a tight jaw. “Wh-What has he ever done for me?”
“Well, he certainly didn’t gift you with a charming personality,” she mutters, reaching over to turn the tap off. He glowers at her but says nothing. His whole body shudders from the cold.
She shrugs her coat off, throwing it onto the vanity and then grabs a towel.
He’s slow to rise, muscles stiff and trembling from the cold, and his soaked clothes stick to him. She throws the towel around him as he steps gingerly from the tub, his weight coming down heavily on his good leg.
“God, you’re an idiot sometimes,” she says softly.
“C-cold,” he says, with no sarcasm. “Numbs you. Hypothermia is a comfortable way to die. Painless and warm… th-the mind plays tricks.”
She rubs slightly at his hair to stop the water from dripping into his eyes and then grips his wrist with her hand. His skin is freezing. “Brilliant,” she mutters, annoyed.
He glances at her almost uncomfortably. “Victims are often found without clothes. They tear them off at the end thinking they’re burning to death.”
She slides her palm over his forearm. Her skin seems hot compared to his. He makes a soft, wordless sound, and he shivers and leans into her, almost against his will. “Death by cold shower?” she asks, dryly, and she rubs at his arms.
He shakes his head and glances at her with red-rimmed eyes. “Just trying to numb the pain." There's a flash of anger. "Don’t warm me up too much. It worked.” He’s already getting warmer though; his stuttering is nearly gone.
She takes her coat into the living room and paces, waiting, while he makes his way into his bedroom and changes out of his wet clothes.
When he limps slowly into the living room, face already showing signs of pain again, she speaks to him in her low, no-nonsense voice. “You can go into treatment right now, House. I’ll take you myself. It doesn’t have to be this way.”
“No, it doesn’t,” he snaps, brows furrowing in anger. “You could give me Vicodin and things can go right back to the way they were.”
She sighs. “Detective Tritter isn’t going to let that happen. It’s too late.”
He leans against the wall tiredly and gazes at her. “What did you tell him?” he asks, the anger dropping away.
She falls back onto his sofa and frowns at him. “Nothing.” She purposely leaves out the part about Tritter accusing her of being in love. Like it’s a horrible thing.
Or a sad thing.
Or a hopeless thing.
They all have their battles to fight.
“If I’d thought it would actually do you any good…” she starts, but then trails away.
He makes a sound, and when she glances up his jaw is tight, eyes squeezed shut, knuckles white with the way he grips his cane. She looks away from his agony.
She shouldn’t be here. Helping him, soothing him in any way is only going to keep him going longer. If Wilson knew…
They’re both enablers, and sometimes she wonders what it is exactly that they get from House that makes it so precious to them. That makes it so necessary. It isn’t always clear.
“If you aren’t going to give me what I need, then you can go,” he says, and his voice is sharp but sincere.
“That’s why you called me? Asked me to come over? Because you thought I’d break and finally bring you pills?” Her tone is dubious, and she tries not to think about what she slipped into her coat pocket before leaving the hospital. He’s always looked through her.
He looks away and doesn’t answer. His distance is telling. He struggles to hold on to the sarcasm and the guile, but he’s too worn down. Too fresh from the battle. The withdrawal is draining him.
She feels almost bad, as if she’s kicking him when he’s down. It’s an odd feeling to have when facing House. He’s too tired to fight, and she finally has freewill.
“It’s okay to need company,” she finally says, avoiding his gaze.
“If I needed company I have cash and the number of an escort service. And she might even come stocked with pills or coke.”
She looks up, and he lowers his eyes. And she wouldn’t give a shit about you, she thinks. And normally that might be just what he wants, but not tonight. For some reason he can’t tolerate that tonight, and maybe he’s lost too much already.
Maybe.
She stands up.
“Running away already?” he quips immediately, and there’s an odd quality to his voice.
She holds his gaze. “You don’t know me as well as you think you do.”
He snorts, and his eyes are momentarily sharp. He studies her, and when his gaze slides down over her body, it’s almost a palpable feeling.
She feels her own heart beating.
“I know enough,” he states, quietly. “Or you wouldn’t have gotten through the door.”
She thinks briefly of Cuddy coming back to the hospital, angry and at wit’s end when House simply shuts the door on her, forcing the fate of a patient between them. Desperate times had called for desperate measures, and all eyes had locked on Cameron.
She’d done what she needed to do, for the patient and for the hospital. But she hadn’t really felt the cost to her own soul until now. It didn’t matter how much of a miserable bastard House was.
“You’re bleeding,” she says, simply.
He looks oddly confused at first, oddly… startled. Like she’s just reached in and pulled a secret from his mind.
He’s so unguarded right now. And she can’t do it.
She motions at his arm, the one he carved up and she’d bandaged for him.
In his renewed warmth, a thin crimson rivulet winds its way over his bare wrist and drips from the tip of his thumb. He glances at it curiously.
“Sit down,” she orders, realizing she isn’t going anywhere as long as he’s actually leaking blood everywhere.
He sits quietly this time as she holds a towel over the cut meat of his arm. She tries not to look at him as she touches him. It wasn’t supposed to be this way for her. Caught in the sparks that surround him, despite his mess. She keeps burning herself, and she doesn’t learn. Or maybe she does learn, she just can’t stop. Sometimes it doesn’t make a difference.
“Why are you here?” he suddenly demands, and she feels those sparks ripple along her skin.
She peels the towel carefully away and wipes at the dried blood. “Because I’m an idiot,” she answers. “And you asked.”
She can hear his rough breath, and she can feel him staring at her. His knee is warm now and pressed against her side as she kneels in front of him. Again. His hand presses into the muscle of his thigh. He rocks a bit from time to time.
“Isn’t that against the rules?” he grumbles through gritted teeth as she plasters a piece of gauze over the cuts.
“Why did you ask me to come here?” She turns the tables on him. If she were going to give him pills she’d have done it earlier when she needed information from him. And he knows this.
His gaze lifts from her fingers to her eyes. And he leans forward.
She can smell his sweat and the underlying scent of the soap he keeps using to wash it away. His breath is faster than normal, and he’s so close it stirs the hair at her temple. She can feel his heat.
“Why do you think?” he rasps.
Her mouth runs dry and she glances away, unwilling to play this game with him. “House…”
He watches her for a moment and then snorts, tiredly. “Don’t flatter yourself,” he says, and his gaze darts away. “I couldn’t get it up right now if Carmen Electra and her clone showed up at my door wanting a threesome.”
He pushes past her to stand, and he nearly falls over as his bad leg gives. He grunts, and she grabs at him, standing, but he catches himself just in time. “I’m fine,” he growls, and he tries to walk away, but even one step brings him to a teeth-grinding halt, and Cameron grabs him around the waist.
He reaches for the wall, and they settle there. He has one arm still locked around her neck and the other takes his weight against the wall, his forehead pressed hard to his fist.
She doesn’t bother asking. There’s no point. He’s not okay, and there’s no way to make him okay short of giving him back his crutch.
He tilts his head slightly, gaze turning back toward her. His eyes hold hers.
She says nothing, but she glances down. He’s a constant struggle within her.
“What do you expect me to do?” he asks, softly, voice tight.
She still has her arms around his waist, and she loosens her hold. “Do what he wants, House,” she says, knowing she’s open to him at that moment. “Cut your losses.”
He stares at her for a long, long, silent moment, and she watches as he swallows his own pain again and again. Then he slowly shakes his head.
She feels that sharp, sad resignation and she exhales as if she’d been holding her breath. And then she looks anywhere except at him, accepting it. She won’t talk about this again. It’s his fight.
You’re such a selfish prick, she wants to tell him, and she wants to maybe let some tears out, but that’s a waste of salt and time. So she just waits for fate to whisper in her ear.
He winces then, hand going to his leg, fingers curling into muscle. He leans more heavily against the wall, and she frowns, wondering exactly how bad this is going to get. “House?”
He makes a frustrated, pained sound, but shakes his head. He shudders.
She feels his lean back under her fingers, the muscles flexing as he struggles to balance his weight off his bad leg and against the wall. She’s surrounded by his scent, the sound of his breath and the blatant truth of his addiction. “I wish I could hate you,” she murmurs, losing control for a moment and giving into fear.
His head turns, blue eyes searching hers out and holding her gaze from inches away. It’s much too close. She’s too wrapped up in him, but her hands won’t let go.
“You’re pathetic,” he says, but it lacks strength.
It pisses her off anyway. Because for the first time she really feels a bit pathetic. And he is too, but he’s never really tried to be anything except the worst that people expect from him. Even while extolling genius in cures and reprieves.
Another shudder runs through him, and his breath hitches. His muscles stiffening up so hard that her own nearly seize in sympathy. She can almost feel his pain. He jolts forward, trying to take the weight off his right leg and his fingers curl into the back of her shirt, pulling her in front of him. He leans his forehead on the wall behind her, trapping her between it and him. When he exhales, there’s the bare hint of a groan there.
It’s too much for her, and without thinking she grabs his bandaged forearm, digging her nails into the stained pad, twisting his wrist. He sucks in his breath sharply and jerks against her. She slips her free hand around his waist but holds his damaged arm firmly, until her fingers weaken and she has to let go.
He doesn’t pull away from her. He crowds closer, moans in near-relief, and then his legs give a bit. She holds him up while he pants against her neck, a distracted, disbelieving, breathless chuckle. The bandage on his arm is dark red as he brings it up and slides his arm around her.
“You do love me.” He exhales, a laugh sounding in his breath. His words tickle against her neck. “You can stay for a while.”
She grits her teeth against her tears and presses her mouth against his shoulder.
+
He sits in bed and leans back against his headboard while she re-bandages his arm. The stereo still plays and has moved on to something slow and smoky, although she has no idea who it is. He takes big gulps from a tumbler of straight scotch while she mops up the blood she spilled all over his skin. When she glances up he stares steadily into her eyes without looking away, and she drops her gaze. It’s always been unnerving to have his full attention.
“Does Cuddy know you’re here?” he asks when she finally sets the tape aside.
She looks at him and then away, licking her lips. She shakes her head silently.
He studies her with a furrowed brow and then glances away and sighs. They’re complicit in this. Always have been. It’s a hidden thing, despite their very public interactions. There are threads there that no one else is really aware of. Sometimes she thinks people suspect, but mostly they just think it’s all on her side.
She knows better.
He may call her pathetic, but he holds her in place as tightly as any chain could. And that isn’t her creation.
“You ever give Chase a massage?” he suddenly asks. He says Chase’s name as if there’s quotation marks around it. In a bad way.
Her head jerks up and she frowns at him, wondering where the hell this is going.
He shifts on the bed, hand kneading the leftover muscles in his thigh. She remembers that massage helps sometimes.
“I, uh… I don’t want to hurt you,” she says, glancing at his leg.
He snorts at that, but it sounds a little uncontrolled and exhausted. “Don’t disappoint me now.”
She gives him an annoyed look but she slides onto the bed on his right side and crosses her legs under her. He throws back the rest of his scotch and then leans back, throat working as he swallows.
He taps a place on his thigh, and she tentatively places her fingers there. She goes lightly at first, a little nervous about a lot of things, but he barks ‘Harder! Stop being such a girl.’ at her, and she rolls her eyes, tempted to squeeze hard enough to make him yell.
She can feel the long, narrow divot in his leg where the muscle is missing, and she avoids that, working in slow, heavy strokes, avoiding bone and soothing only tissue.
He exhales heavily and a little sharply, eyes closed tightly, and he seems to sag a bit back into the mattress. She takes that as a good sign and keeps on going, feeling oddly glad his eyes are closed.
It’s a precarious situation, she realizes, but not necessarily uncomfortable. There’s always been a strange intimacy between them that defies all other bonds.
“They use you against me.” His voice is rough, low, resigned.
She glances at him uneasily, surprised. The scotch must be working because he’s staring at her sleepily. “Stop being paranoid,” she replies.
“They send you when they want something from me. They know you’ll get it.”
“No, they send me when you’re being an ass and they’ve lost patience. A girl is dying here, House.”
His eyes meet hers, and his gaze is piercing. “That isn’t the point.”
She looks away. “This isn’t a war. We’re on the same side.”
When she looks back he’s staring directly at her, and she finally just gives up and sits there, meeting his eyes in silence.
It makes her feel like she’s stepped off a cliff into thin air.
After a long moment, he rests. “You have to leave?”
“I, uh…” She finally just shrugs.
He nods slightly, and closes his eyes. “Whatever.”
His breath is already deepening and slowing into sleep, so she doesn’t answer. He trusts her to take care of herself in whatever way she needs to, and she scrubs tiredly at her face before letting the weariness through her eyes as she watches him.
His brow relaxes in sleep, and his breaths carry the sound of a slight snore. And even unconscious he looks a little prickly and rough.
They use you against me.
All’s fair in love and war when it comes to House, and she’s only doing what he taught her. But she’s never been good at justifying it to herself. It makes him more human somehow, that he can be played. And that’s not even the right word, because she didn’t play him. She simply asked him for what she wanted, and he hemmed and hawed but then he gave her what she asked for, freely. And the fact that he might be a little soft when it came to her isn’t her fault. She’d had to fight and forge her armor against him just like everybody else.
She yawns and thinks about driving home. It doesn’t appeal. Maybe it’s just an excuse, but she’s too tired to argue with herself. She stretches out beside him and then curls on her side. It’s warm and she can hear the wind howling occasionally outside the windows. House breathes next to her, and the music is low from the next room.
It’s too easy to fall asleep.
It’s too easy to fall.
++
She wakes up to a hand gripping her shoulder, and when she opens her eyes she realizes where she is. House’s bedroom. House’s bed. The room seems darker though, and more silent. The stereo is quiet.
She turns onto her back toward the hand and House is on his side-his bad side-and looking down at her. His face is shadowed, but she can see the curve of his mouth and the glint of eye. He stares. The building creaks in the wind, and shadows of the bare tree branches outside move across his face.
“House…” she asks, softly, using his name as a question.
“What?” He sounds as if he doesn’t expect an answer.
She feels his thumb move across her bottom lip, slowly. She feels a little hazy in the first moments of wakefulness. But when he leans towards her, that feeling of stepping off into thin air swallows her again. He hesitates, his mouth just above hers, his eyes boring into hers, and she feels his warm breath against her lips. There’s no armor there, in his eyes, she realizes. Sometimes he strips it for her, and it’s always a heady thing.
He stays still when she lifts her head slightly, barely brushing his mouth with hers. He exhales though, a long, slow sound, and when she kisses him again, he follows her down. He doesn’t overwhelm her with his mouth, and that’s surprising to her in some ways. He kisses her without weight, his tongue sliding almost lazily against hers, and she feels his fingers tangle in her hair.
When she pulls her mouth back from him, he stares down at her with hooded, serious eyes. For a man so determined to joke away emotion from his life, he is amazingly sober with his reactions now. He breathes against her cheek, and there’s no hint of the sarcasm he uses as defense. Instead, he looks a little fierce.
“You seem better,” she says, softly, amazed. And he does.
He looks at her for a while, shadowed eyes dropping to her mouth. “Come here,” is all he says.
Then the kissing is harder, more urgent, and his fingers are dragging over her ribs, tugging at her clothes, and she slides her hands up the back of his shirt. He stops kissing her and his breath is hard against her neck as he slides his arms beneath her and then pulls her over on top of him so he can lie on his back.
She gazes down at him for a moment, trying to get her bearings, and he’s still guileless and almost grim, focused on her with an intensity she can almost feel between her legs.
He scares the hell out of her sometimes.
She’s sitting on his hips, his hands holding her from sliding toward his thigh. She leans forward slowly, and he watches her with sleepy, piercing eyes. He lets her kiss him gently, but then his hands hold her head and he tilts her chin up, brings her throat to his lips. The soft bristle on his jaw brushes her skin, and then his mouth comes in, warm and wet. She finds it difficult to catch her breath.
It’s a rush then, a tangle, of his mouth and hers, his tongue and even a hint of teeth. She can hear both of them breathing hard, and when she grabs his mouth again with hers, he makes a low sound. She’s shoving his shirt up, touching his chest, grinding down against him, and the way he’s looking at her, even his breathing, is making her wet.
His fingers are sliding under her sweater, under her bra, over her breasts, catching against her nipples, and then he’s tugging at her pants, and he means it. She has to climb off of him to slide it all off, and she straddles his good leg when he pulls her back.
She hesitates then, in the break between them. There’s no doubt this is a bad idea, but she crossed that line long ago. She doesn’t really know what it is that won’t let her walk away from him, but she’s pretty sure it’s going to drown her in the end.
“Cameron,” he murmurs at her, and when she looks at him he’s almost frowning. “Come back,” he says.
She’d been drifting away a bit, too focused on the doubt. She rests a hand on his belly, sliding her fingers in circles through the sparse hair there. “Are you sure? I mean, can you even…” She stumbles a bit.
He pauses, looking a little off-balance, and then he twists his mouth in a figurative shrug. “We’ll see.” He’s talking in a quiet tone that sends shivers down her spine.
She leans down to kiss him, and his hand cups the back of her head and holds her there, against his mouth. Even as she slides one hand down, dipping her fingers under the waistband of his pants. He’s not hard, but he’s not soft either. He shifts and exhales into her mouth as her hand closes around him.
She strokes slowly at first, and he definitely gets harder, but… not yet. She arches her back and presses her mouth to the space under his chin. He lies passive beneath her, hands still tangling in her hair, almost absently, as he takes deep, hard breaths.
She tries a light touch on his cock, and he swallows wetly, hands fisting in her hair. She goes with that then, and uses her free hand to shove his shirt higher, so she can swipe her tongue over one, flat nipple. His thigh lifts restlessly between her legs, and she smiles faintly and slides down his body. His hands follow her hair.
When she takes him in her mouth and circles her tongue silkily around him, he almost seems to stop breathing. She risks a glance, and, thankfully, he’s not looking at her. He’s shadowed, and his chest rises and falls, and he looks pained in a good way.
Jesus…
She uses her tongue more than anything, and between one moment and the next he seems bigger. When he finally pulls her back up, she keeps one hand on him, tight and hard.
He flexes beneath her as she kisses him again, and his hands pull her up onto his hips. He whispers something about being ‘so fucking hard’, and that’s about all she can take.
He slides inside of her and everything stops…
She can’t even look at him, so she closes her eyes, fingers digging into his chest as his cock pushes deep. She has to swallow a moan.
His hands loosen on her hips, but he tugs her down and pushes up, and when she opens her eyes his are closed, his head tilted back. His jaw is tight, but he’s exhaling hard through his nose, and finally his lips part.
She’s sort of gone then. She moves, and she feels almost too wound up. Like she might come, like she might not. He’s watching her as she starts sliding. It feels too good to move much, so she keeps it shallow, deep and slow. His fingers press dents into her skin, and he won’t look away from her. There’s that furrow between his brows that makes him look angry, and his eyes are piercing, but he’s slack-jawed now and feeling it.
When he groans quietly and tightens his grip on her hips, stopping her, she knows he’s close. She’s… not, but she feels groundless and a little like she’s drowning. It’s dark and it feels good, and she slips her own fingers down between her legs. He swallows and then slides his fingers under hers, and she gasps at the feel of him. He watches her until she sucks in her breath, and then his fingers find a steady rhythm, and she can’t watch him anymore as her whole body draws tight.
She nearly bites her lip as she comes, and in the silent room her own moans sound deafening. She isn’t all the way through it before he comes and suddenly pulls her down against his chest. He thrusts up, his arms like iron around her, his breath ragged.
It seems to take forever before he relaxes beneath her, and she can rest. She listens to his heart thudding rapidly in his chest. She’s not sure how she feels…
When his arms loosen, she slides to his side. He takes a breath and lifts his hands to his face. He looks beaten, and she still feels his weight and his presence inside of her. He’s heavier than ever.
When he seems to be drifting off to sleep again, she starts sliding off the bed. His hand closes around her wrist, and he holds tight. “Cameron.”
She turns to look at him.
“Come back.” He holds her gaze.
She hesitates. “This doesn’t mean I’m giving you Vicodin.”
He tugs. “I know.”
She stretches out beside him again in the dark, and his fingers relax around her wrist as he falls asleep. She wonders if there will ever be a time when she refuses to return to him, just because he asked.
It’s easier to sleep than to think about it.
+
His street is quiet just before dawn, and it snowed overnight. She doesn’t have to scrape the windshield.
She slides behind the wheel and starts the car, flipping the wiper blades on. They plow through the light layer of snow and shift it aside. She huddles there a moment, waiting for the engine to warm up. She isn’t quite sure how things are going to go from now on. She thinks that probably things won’t change. Because House doesn’t change.
And she’s not that idealistic rookie anymore.
She slides her hand into her pocket to grab her gloves. Her nails scrape against the empty lining, and she pauses. She pulls the gloves slowly out and then searches the pocket with careful fingers.
It’s a curious, falling sensation when she realizes it’s empty.
She slowly leans her head back against her seat and watches as a new flurry of snow starts outside.
It’s going to be a long, cold winter, before she can clear a path and start again.
+
~e~