Work Text:
House is sick. He’s got a sickness deep in his bones and Cameron is symptomatic of everything that is wrong with him. He should have denied her, he should have turned her away, told her to fuck off, but then she sat in his chair, her huge eyes staring up at him, sucking his thumb, and logic went out the window.
He’s not told anyone. He can’t. It’s embarrassing. It’s so cliché—he’s old and gross and she’s young and hot—and it turns him on like nothing before.
You’ve got a real problem, she had said. As if they aren’t both knee deep in this shit.
She’s currently ignoring him, eyes forcibly strained forward. It’s a professional spat. He called her stupid because she had been. Now, her pride is wounded and she’s pouting. It’s driving him crazy. They haven’t even fucked in months. But sometimes he’ll push his mug over to her and she’ll drink from it, no questions asked. Sometimes he’ll tell her that he wishes she would wear her hair in a braid only for her to show up the following day with her hair braided. And sometimes when they’re standing close he’ll feel her hand, her fingers ghosting over his skin, and she’ll pinch him.
Her and Chase and Foreman are discussing their patient and the symptoms and House, the fool, is thinking of all the things he wants to do to her later. He’s looking at the shape of her nose, her lips, down her throat to her breasts, lets himself stare at the curve of her ass.
“House, when you’re done leering at Cameron, we’d all like to continue,” Foreman says. Half a year ago Cameron would have turned beet red but now she just whips her head towards him with narrow, scalding eyes. And the thing is that House has been a creep long before they started their thing so he can still get away with it.
“Jealous much?” he says in his best valley girl accent.
Foreman doesn’t dignify him with a response.
/
Now. It’s become complicated. More than it already is. Because Stacy’s here and Stacy’s got a husband and Cuddy just loves Stacy and Wilson thinks she’s great too. It’s all so Stacy Stacy Stacy.
House is partial to agree. Because Stacy is great. He loved her. And he knows that Stacy isn’t having sex with Mark and House isn’t getting any either. So, what’s the problem? he thinks when she’s handing him a cup of coffee in her kitchen.
“You make me meet you at your house. Your husband is conveniently absent.” He sounds sardonic but he’s trying to get a reaction out of her. The explanation that “Mark’s at physio” isn’t really cutting it for him so he puts it on a little thick, starts doing the dishes, and tells her that people can change when she’s surprised. She doesn’t look like she believes him.
Wilson tells him he’s trying to win Stacy back. He calls him a caveman.
House scoffs, “I’m not trying to win her back. I’m trying to get her to admit her feelings for me.” And then Cuddy can fire her and everything will go back to normal.
“Oh, please. Gregory House does not want normal. You wouldn’t know normal if it hit you in the face,” Wilson says. “Put us all out of our misery and talk to her. Or better yet, don’t. Cry yourself to sleep for a few weeks like the rest of us heartbroken simpletons.”
House grins and Wilson physically recoils. “I’ll talk to her.”
/
He isn’t subtle about it, the way he keeps showing up at Stacy’s door. He tells himself that she wants this too, because she invites him in every time. They sit closer than necessary, her shoulder brushing against his arm, her brown eyes looking at him with that spark of mischief he’s missed. It hurts to think too long about it.
“Do you think,” he starts, “that we could have salvaged it somehow?”
Stacy sighs. “I don’t know. We were both miserable in the end. You were so… angry, Greg. I didn’t know what to do with it.”
“I resented you for a hell of a long time.” For being able to walk, for having a body that did what it’s supposed to do.
There’s a pause between them, and he wants to reach over so badly, to touch and feel. It used to be so easy between them, they were able read each other effortlessly, and he’s looking at her face and he knows that once he would lean in and kiss her but now he doesn’t, because he doesn’t know, and it’s killing him.
“Past tense?” she asks.
The phone rings before he can answer.
“You should get that,” she says. “Might be the hospital.”
The patient has coughed blood into Cameron’s mouth and eyes.
“Yucky,” House says.
“She might have contracted HIV,” Foreman scowls.
“And she might not,” he shrugs.
It’s only when Cameron enters the room, deep eyebags, pale, with worried lines on her forehead, that something pangs in his chest. Chase puts a hand on her shoulder, tells her, “You should be at home.” But House knows her. He knows that she has to be here, that she has to see it through, he can practically taste the anger that simmers beneath her calm exterior. For the longest time he thought that her ‘good girl act’ was really just that; an act. But Cameron believes it. She lives it—she’s good and kind and polite and reasonable. Which is why it is so much more fun when the façade cracks.
He makes her do the biopsy solely because he wants to know what happens if she keeps interacting with the man who might have given her a life-altering illness. Something interesting, he’ll bet on that.
He finds her outside the hospital a few hours later.
“You shouldn’t smoke,” he says.
“Don’t tell me what to do,” she bites. It makes something like pride swell in his chest. The first fracture of the exterior.
The courtyard is dark around them, golden windows shining down and he can see into every hospital room, sees Wilson in his office, scribbling furiously, sees a nurse run into one room from another. His very own panopticon.
She looks at the cigarette pinched between her fingers. “It tastes terrible.”
“Yes, if only you had known.”
She cranes her head towards him and their eyes meet. “I’m trying new things.”
He sits down next to her. “I did too when I was sixteen and wanted to piss my dad off.”
“And did you?”
House laughs, once. “Well yeah, but mostly for a bunch of other things.”
“Like what?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t pay you to be my therapist. That’s what I get hookers for.”
Cameron smiles morosely. “Thank you… for not asking me how I am. Or if I’m fine.”
“Wouldn’t do anyone any good.”
She takes a drag from the cigarette and grimaces, blowing the smoke out in front of them. House thinks about how Stacy used to smoke, how she started two weeks after his surgery, first with menthols only and then she switched to the regulars. It helped him gauge her levels of misery. Cameron blinks away a tear and shudders. Before he can think about it, he grabs her by the chin and it’s stupid because they’re outside in the courtyard, but he has to.
“You’re not weak,” he tells her and forces her to look at him. “You will get through this. Don’t feel sorry for yourself, it doesn’t suit you. Do what you have to do, but don’t fucking sulk, don’t fucking cry, you’re better than that.”
Cameron’s lips part with a quiet exhale and she tilts her head back slightly. He wants to kiss her. Some part of him wants to fuck her into the bushes behind them and another part wants to hold her against his chest. He lets go of her and stands up.
She grabs him by the wrist and holds his fingers against her mouth. “I missed this,” she whispers. He presses his fingers past her teeth and neither of them moves. Her eyes flutter shut and she sighs contentedly. Then he leans down and kisses her violently, shoves his tongue into her mouth. Cameron moans, her hands coming up like claws to clutch at him. When he pulls back, he feels out of breath.
“We should head back,” he says and his voice sounds all wrong.
She nods slowly, dazed.
/
Stacy, of course, sees through his nice-guy act. “The dishes? The concern? The ‘acting like a human being’? This whole time you’ve been manipulating me?”
House can’t look at her. “You knew I had an angle the moment I poured soap onto a scrub brush,” he pushes back.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Stacy rounds her desk, puts space between them. “Aren’t you tired of this? The way we dance around each other?”
“We didn’t use to be like that.”
“No,” she sneers. “No, we didn’t. But people change, don’t they? We don’t know each other anymore. Maybe it’s time we both recognise that.”
“But I do know you, Stacy. Certainly more than Mark,” he derides.
“Jesus Christ. Are you even listening to yourself? You hated me. You hated that I had to take care of you—”
“Shut up.”
“—and you hated that I saw you as weak and vulnerable. You’ve said as much.”
He can’t breathe. He sees it; Stacy, laying out his pills in front of him. Stacy, preparing breakfast for him before she went to work. Stacy, helping him put on his fucking underwear.
“The moment you got off that operating table, we stopped knowing one another.”
Anger flares up. “So it’s my fault?”
Stacy lets out a long, pained breath. Putting her hands on her hips, she turns away from him and shakes her head. “No, Greg,” she says quietly. “We were both at fault.”
The anger sizzles out, wet and pathetic, just as fast as it came. He swallows down nothing. “But we know better now—”
“Fuck off,” she whips around to face him again. “Fuck off. We don’t. You! You did all these things you thought I’d want you to do. And I believed it even though deep down I knew it wasn’t you. Tell me, please, how that is ‘knowing better’.”
He doesn’t say anything which is enough of an answer in and of itself.
Stacy nods. “I’m going home. To my husband.”
He goes home too, angry. Plays the piano in the least graceful way he’s ever done, hammering down on the keys. He loses track of time, somewhat, and it’s almost midnight when there are frantic knocks on his door.
It’s Cameron. She pushes her way inside and smiles apologetically at him.
“What are you doing here?”
“I slept with Chase,” she says, words coming out too fast.
House’s immediate thought is I knew I should have fucked Stacy and he says, “Get the fuck out.” It’s a cruel impulse and he can’t help it. It’s also not what he wants at all.
Cameron looks away. She is sweaty and pale. Her hair sticks to her forehead and she smells slightly sour. Christ, did she run here immediately after fucking him? She opens her mouth like she wants to say something but then doesn’t. She runs a hand through her hair instead and House notices how it shakes.
“Are you on drugs?”
Her big eyes find his and they’re pleading. “Yes,” she stammers. House can’t stop the noise that leaves him because he had honestly expected her to deny it, at the very least.
“What kind?” The anger inside him isn’t justified, he knows, but he still wants to slam his fist into the wall.
She laughs, self-deprecatively. “I—it’s—look, I don’t—”
“Tell me.”
“Meth.”
It’s House’s turn to laugh, loud and boisterous. It’s not mean. He just can’t actually believe the words that came out of her mouth. “What, speed or ecstasy seemed too tame for you? You went straight for smack?”
Cameron has gone decidedly paler.
“Jesus Christ, don’t hurl on my floor. Come on,” he pulls her along to his bathroom and just in time, because Cameron drops to her knees and pukes down the toilet. House sighs, says, “Alright, there you go, let it all out,” as he’s holding her hair back. And if he’s stroking down her spine, well, isn’t he just a sweet guy? “You feeling any better?”
Cameron groans down into the bowl and she’s shivering and damp from sweat. She nods once. “Yeah.”
He closes his eyes and counts down from ten in his mind. “Okay. Strip.”
Cameron goes slack-mouthed. “What?”
“If you want to take a bath in your clothes be my guest, but I’m forcing you down the tub either way because you reek to the high heavens, young lady.” He waggles his finger in her face just to be extra patronising. She deserves it, anyway.
She eyes his bathtub carefully, mumbles to herself, and starts taking off her clothes with quivering hands. Meanwhile, he’s turned on the faucet and put some kind of bodywash in the amassing water. It’s only about a third filled when she steps in and it’s nothing he hasn’t seen before but the vulnerability of the moment still gets to him; the way her eyes are glassy and the way her lip trembles, fighting the tremors. She tucks her knees up to her chest and curls in on herself and House knows he’s made many jokes about Freud at her expense but now he’s looking at her sitting small and girlish in his tub and he’s a little afraid of what Freud might say about him. Hell, Nabokov wrote a book about him.
He’s been sliding around on his knees and it’s starting to hurt but he’s committed to this now. He puts a hand on her shoulder and maneuvers her so she’s more supine and he wets her hair. Water splashes over the side of the tub and onto his sleeves and pants. Frothing some of the shampoo between his palms, he sticks his fingers into her hair, massaging the soap into it. She makes an appreciative sound as he washes it out again.
“Thank you,” she mumbles.
“Don’t thank me yet. I could still let you drown.”
She rests her head on the lip of the tub and looks up at him. Colour is starting to appear in her cheeks again. Might just be from the damn near boiling water she’s sitting in. “How would that look, do you think? Young doctor found naked and dead in her employer's tub?”
House grins before he can help it. He leans over her and pulls the plug out, the water disappears, leaving her exposed to the cold air. He stands up and winces, stretching his legs. He takes a few deep breaths before he finds a towel and throws it at her. He watches her get up, drying her body, her cheeks are peach coloured, her lips pink. His chest seizes up and he leaves. She can dress herself.
He kicks off his wet pants and sits on the bed, massaging his thigh. A memory flashes in his mind; Stacy washing his back, House sitting in the tub, eyes wet and angry. He was so angry and humiliated. Stacy, helping him shower and go to the bathroom and get up from bed and he really couldn’t look her in the eyes that first month.
Cameron appears in his doorway, wrapped in the towel. “Am I staying?” she asks.
He should say no. He throws the cover to the side and pats the empty space next to him. She smiles, sly, and climbs into bed. House closes his eyes and counts down from twenty.
/
She’s sitting, watching him make eggs, sunny side up. The bread pops out the toaster.
“Have you gone non-verbal since last night?” he says. She hasn’t made a single sound the whole morning. He watched her get dressed earlier and combed her hair carefully. Ran his fingers down her spine, then pinched the small hickey she had on her chest. Chase, he thought bitterly. She whimpered as he did it.
“Why are you being so nice?”
He turns to look at her. “Well, I wouldn’t want you to drop dead and ruin my reputation, would I?”
She simply rolls her eyes. House plates the toast and eggs for both of them and sits down too.
“I’m not really hungry,” she says,
“Eat. I made this for you.”
Cameron breathes deeply, her chest rising, and she takes fork and knife in hand and starts slicing into her toast. She takes exactly two bites and then seems content watching House eat. He allows it, permitting himself to be watched, permitting her to stare so openly. He eats slowly, really chewing on each bite, and sips his coffee intermittently. When he’s done, he leans back into his chair, wipes his mouth with a paper towel, and gestures at her plate.
“Don’t insult me.”
She looks down at her food and looks back up at him. There’s a challenge. Wordlessly, he leans over the table, picks up her cutlery and cuts a piece of bread and egg out for her. She opens her mouth and he tips the fork forward, her lips closing around it, pulling the food into her mouth. House lets her chew and swallow. He gets some more egg onto the fork and her teeth puncture the membrane. Yolk drips down onto the plate. Drips down her chin. He places the fork against her skin to scoop the yolk into her mouth but it does nothing more than smear it all over her lips too. Cameron is breathing slow and steady, eyes closing briefly when he shoves another bite into her mouth until there’s nothing more than crumbs and orange stains left.
House is half-hard, just from this. From hand-feeding her. They’re both sick.
“Lick the plate,” he says.
She doesn’t protest, doesn’t even hesitate, just bends down, eyes locked on him, tongue darting out and licking the plate. One long stripe and another and another.
“Good,” he whispers. He can’t pretend he’s not affected by this. “Come here.”
Cameron slips down from the chair, landing on her knees and then she—Christ—then she crawls over to him. She crawls until she’s between his legs, sitting back on her calves, hands on his thighs.
“Thank you for breakfast,” she says, her voice soft and smooth. “I’m still hungry.”
House is undeniably hard but this—whatever she’s doing right now, whatever she wants right now, is hotter than any sex they could have. “Open up,” he orders.
She does; opens wide and sticks out her tongue. He grabs her chin, collects spit in his mouth, and lets it fall onto her tongue. Her eyes are closed, her face flushed.
“There you go. Swallow.”
Closing her mouth, House watches her throat bob.
“Mm,” she sighs. “Thank you.”
He keeps looking down at her and he’s at a loss for words, doesn’t know what to do with himself. He stands up. “Get up from there.” When she does, he walks her backwards into the kitchen counter, crowds her against it. He cradles her head, scratching slightly at her scalp. His lips brush against her hers and he hears her gasp. When he does kiss her, it feels like it’s been longer than it has been, since he’s had her like this. He wonders, infuriatingly, if Chase kissed her too.
He turns her around, she inhales sharply at his firm touch, he mouths at the back of her neck, bites her like an animal, and she arches against him, presses her ass against his dick. With one hand he shoves her down between her shoulder blades so her chest is flat against the counter, with the other hand he pulls her pants down.
“House,” she squirms.
“You want it.”
“Yeah. You know.”
He does know. He knows exactly how she likes it by now. He tugs at her hair once, just to hear her moan, and then grabs her ass with both hands, spreads her cheeks apart, and spits down. She whines. He rubs his thumb through it, circling her hole and he can see her pussy too, how wet she is.
“Chase do this to you?” he asks and presses inside just a bit.
“Oh God.”
“No? He doesn’t know how much you like it? He couldn’t give it to you the way you wanted it, could he?”
Her breath is trembling and she arches her back, inviting him for more. He obliges and groans as he watches his thumb disappear into her ass.
“Please,” she’s writhing underneath him so he takes mercy on her, undoes his belt and fly deftly. He slides a finger along her just to feel how wet she is—always is—for him, he thinks, and it drives him crazy.
He finds an old condom in his wallet in his back pocket and prays that the expiration date is still somewhere in the future. Then he sinks into her. Fucks her, curls over her, one hand busy with a finger inside her, the other uselessly grasping for her. Fucks her in both holes, moving his thumb in and out of her, spits down again when it starts feeling too dry. He breathes into the back of her neck, kisses the side of her face, and she moans. He loves the way she sounds, the way she writhes and paws at him.
“Did Chase fuck you like this?”
She shakes her head.
He fucks her as hard and as fast as his leg allows him, heat licking up his spine so that he hardly registers any pain. He grabs her hair, pulls her head backwards.
“Please,” she moans. “Please, God, I want it, I want it.” He feels the way she clenches around him and he realises she’s coming, like that.
He doesn’t go slow, shows no restraint, and she rears back to meet his every thrust. It’s feverish. Throbbing pleasure courses through him, down into his dick, and he pulls out, rips the condom off and jacks off across her ass. He comes between her cheeks, smears his cock through it and lets it catch on her rim. Presses forward just a bit, like he’d actually do it, here, now, like this.
She claws at the counter, her breathing staggered. House stumbles back, the haze of sex dissipating too fast. She’s leaning her forehead on the counter, her body rising and falling slowly.
He yanks some paper towels loose and cleans her too, murmuring, “Are you okay?” He doesn’t know what compels him to ask. He sits down on one of the chairs, tucking his dick away, stretching his leg outwards, the pain is slowly creeping up on him now.
She nods and chuckles. “Yeah.” Pulling her pants up, she turns around. Her face is red and her hair is a mess. He thinks she looks best like this. “I should go now,” she says, her voice a little hoarse.
“Sure.”
Neither of them moves and Cameron looks like she’s appraising him. Looking down at him. She steps towards him and leans down, grabs his t-shirt and wipes her mouth with it. House’s throat closes tight. She wipes her chin free from spit and the tiniest bit of yellow egg yolk that was still glued to her lips. The façade has cracked and it’s terrifying and wonderful all at once. She releases it and pats his chest, flattens his shirt against him, though the fabric is all wrung out now. She smiles, says, “Thank you.”
House sits as if anesthetized and hears her collect her things. For a second he’s convinced he’s having a heart attack. He isn’t, of course. Thinks about Stacy leaving him for work when he didn’t want to admit that he needed her.
Struck by a sudden determination, he hurries out into the hallway and catches her arm, pulls her close, seizes her, kisses her against the wall. Her mouth is soft and sweet against his, warm and pliant. She wraps her arms around him, kisses him back in equal measure. He gets a hand in her hair, leans his body against hers, until she turns her head and he’s kissing her cheek.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“What,” he asks, dumbly.
“Pretend that you care.” Cameron disentangles herself and gives him a smile. The sort of smile you’d give a waiter or the person at the gas station. “Come on, House,” she sighs. “This isn’t—” she shrugs and lets the rest of the sentence hang in the air.
He nods. He understands. It’s a mess, if anything could prove that it would be the last twenty-four hours.
“Cameron,” he wraps a hand around her wrist, feels her stuttering pulse; the come-down from the drugs. “You’re not weak.”
“What—”
“And I do care.”
Cameron leans against the door and closes her eyes. Her jaw clenches and unclenches. He steps forward until his nose brushes against her temple. She smells like his soap.
“You’re good,” he whispers into her skin.
“I’m good,” she repeats, though it doesn’t sound like she believes it. “I’m uptight. I’m boring.”
“And you’re insane,” he says and she laughs mirthlessly. “You don’t have to do meth, of all things, to prove something.”
He kisses her face, rubs his nose into her hair.
Cameron shivers. “Don’t,” she sighs, “don’t make me leave.”
“Get back into bed,” he says immediately. He’ll take care of her. He’ll wash her back again if need be. He’ll go out and buy Advil for her and groceries and he’ll wrap her blankets when she begins to shiver. He knows she’ll want it.