poly_chromatic | ☤ eighty-seven

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house m.d. - allison cameron

☤ eighty-seven

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[After nearly four years in the City, one becomes adept at ignoring all sorts of unpleasant circumstances. It's a point of pride that Cameron rarely cancels her plans due to curse interference; doing so always feels like letting the City win, and she can't abide that.

Today, apart from work, she has a few errands to run; lunch at a café, a quick stop by the bakery. She's doing her best to avoid the scattered bunches of mistletoe, but no one can miss all of them...]

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Then I won't apologize for bringing it in with me.

[For something she hadn't meticulously planned-- deciding not to cancel dinner hardly counts-- this is going surprisingly not terribly. She's still near enough that either of them could close the distance in a heartbeat (and she may yet, if he doesn't pull away either); that sense of possibility is oddly comforting.]

[He'd known it was a risk, but it would be a lie if he tried to say that he hadn't hoped just a little for the excuse. If nothing else, the City has given him opportunities to soothe some of the ache of years of loneliness.]

Please don't.

[There's a certain satisfaction in turning the infliction of any curse into a pleasant opportunity. If getting flustered or frightened or angry is letting the so-called Deities win, surely this is ruining their game. Probably. Putting it in those terms, though, is just rationalization; intellectual distance from the underlying fact that she's attracted to him.

Though now, as always, she's at a bit of a loss on where to go next. She leans in again to brush lips-- just proving, possibly to herself, that she can and wants to-- before pulling back to a safer distance. It's a relaxation, not a retreat. After all, they still have dinner.]

I'm glad we didn't cancel.

[It is, perhaps, weirdly noncommittal, but that's how she functions. Besides, she is dimly aware that this is an objectively complicated-- if not terrible-- idea. Baby steps.]

I'm glad you're glad.

[It feels like a cop-out response for all that it's honest. He's spent years alone, and the past few months are barely taking the edge off of that. Curses inevitably leave him feeling lonelier, making this time all the more valuable to him.

Yeah, one of the great minds of his time. Right here, feeling like an idiot.]

Usually I like to start with dinner before the pre-nup.

[It can't be that bad a cop-out, because she smiles as she retrieves her spoon.]

I don't know, I think it's kind of comforting to know who gets the good china if things go south.

[There's something to be said for lonely people being lonely together, isn't there?]

You get the good china and a gold star.

[Glancing away to hide when he licks his lips, he tears off another piece of bread to dip in his broth.]

After all, I've talked to your boss.

You know, I've worked for him so long I sometimes forget why he rubs people the wrong way.

[Partly that's growing a thicker skin, partly it's glimpsing the reasoning behind the outrage. Mostly it's the same thing that keeps people sane in the City: inevitable adjustment to constant stimuli.]

I can take it. You run into your share of sharp tongues among physicists, too.

[Not to mention what he'd spent the earliest part of his youth with.]

Is he that good or just the only game in town?

Clever people and big egos? I can't be surprised.

[She glances away briefly, not avoiding, just thinking.]

House is an ass. If he can help it, he doesn't meet his patients. But the cases we see-- he's the best at what he does.

[And she doesn't say he doesn't care, though she won't say he does, mostly because he wouldn't want her to.]

Some of them would object to being called merely clever, even if they'll admit to the ego.

I can put up with a lot to work with the best. Have you met Tony Stark? Sometimes he's pretty hard to put up with, but he doesn't tiptoe. I doubt Dr. House does either.

I don't think I have. But-- that's how I feel, or at least a large part of it.

What's the rest?

[It takes a moment to find the fit way to phrase it.]

I like the work. Doing whatever it takes.

[Doing whatever it takes landed him in a world of trouble, but he understands nonetheless.]

How far do you go? Whatever it takes covers a lot of ground.

[She smiles at that, a little mischievous, a little nostalgic.]

Oh, the usual. Long nights, experimental treatments, a little breaking and entering.

Breaking and entering is the usual?

Looking for environmental factors. House's philosophy is, since everybody lies, there's no reason to ask.

Do you see things that way too? [It isn't so much believing that, it's being able to lie to yourself in order to set that aside to deal with people day to day...]

I think... we'd lose a lot more patients if House had a better bedside manner.

Which is a remarkably circuitous way of saying yes. Fair enough, if you have to break into my apartment to help me, I won't hold it against you.

[She laughs softly.]

I'll keep that in mind if it ever comes up.

I can tell you now you aren't going to find much of anything. A friend of mine compared my apartment to a monk's cell, which is... [he wrinkles his nose] ...mostly unfair.

[There's nothing wrong with being neat and uncluttered, she thinks.]

It's not always a matter of lying; sometimes people just don't realize what might be relevant.

But I'm not people. [Bruce, your ego s showing.]

[She doesn't dignify that with an answer, just a stern look and the hint of a repressed smile.]

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