Julie | Fanfic | House

Aftermath
by Julie Barrett

She's gone.

Greg House stared at the door. It wasn't as though he expected it to suddenly start doing tricks – flapping on its hinges and banging out a rendition of a Sousa march, perhaps. No, he would just settle for Cameron to return, announcing that she'd changed her mind.

She wasn't going to do that. Her goodbye was final, and that was that. House balled his left hand into a fist and slammed it into the back of a nearby chair, knuckles vanishing into the soft leather. It didn't hurt nearly enough.

“Go away,” he growled through clenched teeth as his telephone rang yet again.

“I'm not here,” his answering machine responded. “Leave a message.”

After the beep, a sharp intake of breath and a pause. “House . . . Greg. Pick up the phone.” It was Wilson. His voice managed to convey both worry and a sense of being royally pissed off. Another pause. A sigh. “Call me sometime,” followed by the soft click of the receiver on the other end. Greg House leaned on his cane and closed his eyes. Damn it, it seemed that Wilson knew him better than he knew himself. His own days went by in a haze of Vicodin and runny noses, interspersed with the occasional interesting case. It left little opportunity for introspection, and that was how he liked it. Introspection hurt.

Now his cell phone chirped insistently with a very businesslike tone - the ringer he had attached to the hospital hotline. This was one call he had to take. As he pressed the talk button he briefly wondered if it might be Vogler. Too late. “Yeah.”

“Dr. House? I'm Gloria Hudson, PA. Sorry to have to bother you.” House muttered some dry platitude. “We're preparing the discharge papers for Senator Wright. Just wanted to double-check his prescriptions.”

It was as if a switch clicked. House was all business. “Read it back to me.” He knew what he'd prescribed, but there was the possibility that Foreman had adjusted the meds. Since he had taken off early to polish his speech – or so he told Cuddy – he wouldn't have known about any changes. The PA read off the list of prescriptions for the senator while House listened carefully. “That's correct. Give him a seven day supply on each, and schedule a follow-up for sometime next week at the clinic – say, four to six days.”

“Thanks. Oh, and Dr. House?”

Sigh. “Yeah.”

“We heard about the speech. Someone needed to take that jerk down a notch.”

Something resembling a flicker of a smile briefly twitched at the doctor's mouth. “Tell the senator to take it easy until his follow-up. Not that he will.”

House tossed the cell phone in the direction of the coffee table and turned back to the piano, where he absently played something morose, possibly a dirge. The back of his brain knew, but the greater part of his mind was turning over the evening's series of events.

Vogler was livid. At least four of the twelve – now thirteen, but who was counting – messages on his machine were from the top man himself, his smooth voice covering a barely disguised rage. Two of the messages were already waiting when he had arrived home, and he had refused to listen. Ignoring them was convenient. Of the other messages since, two were from Cuddy, asking why the hell had he given that speech, and warning him to watch out for Vogler. He gave that speech because it was the truth.

Yes, it was the right thing to do.

Cameron had worked House for less than a year, and sometimes it seemed that she knew him almost as well as Wilson. She probably rescued puppy dogs when she wasn't saving lives. No, that wasn't fair. Yes, it was. How in God's name could he have feelings for someone like that? House had never been a man to go in for fluffy sentimentality. Hearts and flowers just didn't cut it with him. Nor did kittens and puppies.

When he was a kid, the family had a calico cat. The cat was okay; she didn't demand much except food, a clean litter box, and the occasional petting session. One evening she screamed in agony. His mother rushed the pet to the vet's office, Greg holding the cat in a towel on his lap in the back seat, trying to pet the animal and reassure her. The verdict was chronic renal failure. The cat held out a few more months, but it was difficult to watch her die. A few days later his mother brought home a new kitten. Greg did not want to form an attachment to the pet for fear he would have to invest too much when the new cat died.

The feline was still alive and healthy when he went off to med school. Damn thing lived twenty years. If he saw a sick animal at the side of the road today, he probably wouldn't stop.

Probably.

Six months ago he would definitely have left the animal to its own devices. Perhaps Wilson was right: Cameron's good nature was rubbing off on him.

The hell of the matter was that he really did like Cameron. But he couldn't let anyone get close. Not now, with Vogler and his little spies passing him hot and cold running information, some of which was undoubtedly highly suspect. No, Chase wasn't the only one providing details; Vogler had managed to set up an entire supply system in a few short weeks. Greg had no doubt that he could deal with a hint of an office romance, but Cameron would be crushed like a bug – not by God, but by Edward Vogler, who had his own peculiar form of vengeance. House cocked an eyebrow and idly ran the fingers of his left hand down the piano keys, producing a dissonant series of tones.

Then there was the other reason he could not let Cameron get close. Not under any circumstances. Especially not after . . .

The telephone rang again. No message. “I don't need to have my carpets cleaned or my debts erased anyway,” Greg announced to the empty room as he made his way to the cabinet he called the bar and poured himself a good three fingers of whatever his hand landed on first. He contemplated the glass for a brief moment before adding two fingers more and sinking down into the couch.

House took a sip and winced. Perhaps he should have taken the time to look for the really good stuff. This was the whiskey he brought out when he wanted to drown his sorrows, or drive company away. Not bad, but not particularly good either. It got him just as drunk as the expensive brand, but faster because he didn't feel any particular obligation to take the time to savor every sip.

He shrugged, downed the contents of the glass in three gulps, and returned to the cabinet to pour out a decent measure of the good stuff. After refreshing his glass he punched the play button on his CD changer and picked up its remote. Settling down in his leather chair, he groaned slightly as he swung his legs up on top of the ottoman. Greg House leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes, letting the music carry him away.

Music had always been his refuge. Late night study sessions were fueled by driving heavy metal and progressive jazz beats. He discovered Miles Davis after he had broken up with his first serious girlfriend in college. House glanced over to the bookcases. The bottom shelf of one was filled with LPs from those days. Although he had replaced much of the collection with CDs, there were still a few precious albums that had never been released on digital media.

; His mind drifted back to Cameron. House had glanced at her once during the speech; he couldn't tell whether she was embarrassed or shocked or a combination of the two. Not that it mattered much at the time. What mattered was that he didn't back down and follow Vogler's perverse plan. Senator Wright had a point: Sometimes making a statement was more important than winning. And here he was, taking the advice of a politician. What had the world come to?

It had, unfortunately, come down to the fact that Cameron had packed up her toys and left. The hell of it was that she hadn't gone out of some misguided sense of altruism, but because she felt that she had to protect herself. From what? From whom, would be the proper question, and the answer was sitting in the half-darkened room, thinking about getting as plastered as humanly possible.

House took a large sip of his drink and let it roll around in his mouth for a few seconds before taking a swallow. Damn it, he couldn't even bring himself to look at Cameron, because she was right. He was attracted to her. He did like her – a lot. Perhaps too much. And that was the problem. Once he let another warm and fuzzy being worm its way into his life, he was just setting the stage for disaster. Oh, it was easy to say that he was doing this to protect her, because it was true. A far deeper truth was that he was doing it to protect himself.

The toys, the constant verbal jibes, the Vicodin, and even the cane helped him to build a protective barrier that told the world to back off. The only person he had ever let penetrate that fortress was Wilson, and here he was, ignoring even his best – hell, his only – friend.

Another drink. Another wince. Good whiskey shouldn't be tossed down the gullet like tap water. Oh, what the hell. He finished the glass and stared at his liquor cabinet. What this time? The good stuff, the cheap stuff, the exotic crap some misguided colleague had given him as a gift? Whatever he chose, the end result would be the same: A mind-numbing haze induced to help him deal with the pain.

Easing his legs down to the floor, House stood. Slowly. It wasn't just the drink; his right leg throbbed as he tried to put his weight on it. Briefly, he contemplated taking a Vicodin. No, one pain at a time. Leaving the cane behind, he slowly made his way to the cabinet. More of the cheap booze, he decided. The sooner he was unable to think the better it would be.

On his return to the chair his left foot brushed against his cell phone, on the rug where it had fallen when he had tossed it away earlier. He picked it up and placed it on the table next to his chair along with the glass of whiskey. The remote control lay next to the phone. After he settled into a reclining position House picked up the remote and turned up the level on the music. Exchanging the device for his drink, he took a long sip and then closed his eyes, cradling the glass against his belly.

One part of him wanted to spend the entire weekend in an alcoholic stupor. Another part actually hoped for a case, if only to distract his mind from recent events.

There was a third possibility.

House cocked an eye open and glanced at his mobile phone. His right hand reached for it, fingers playing nervously over the surface. They hovered over the instrument for a moment, and then moved to the remote control. House switched to a Miles Davis CD and cranked up the volume. The remote dropped in his lap as he closed his eyes, both hands grasping his drink.

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