What was the question?
Disclaimer: I don't own House, MD, much as I would like to. However, as one neurotic, first-time fanfic writer, I would appreciate it if you wouldn't kidnap my modest homage to the show, either. Kudos to Devoted and all the wonderful people I've befriended there for giving the support, compliments, and suggestions. Kudos to Malaquent for a copy of the TB transcript, which I've used time and again to pace myself. Many thanks to lafuego for introducing and inuring me to the wonderful and insane world of fan fiction writing.
(This takes place during the episode TB or Not TB. I got the inspiration in writing this fan fiction in the scene where House threw a tantrum of sorts in Sebastian's room after seeing him and Cameron hold hands. With this piece, I was working on my hypothesis that House is masking some deeper emotions for his underling.)
Dr. Gregory House, one of the world's best diagnosticians, is not known for his people skills. Dr. Allison Cameron, a beautiful immunologist under House's department, looks beyond the illness and into the person. A match made in heaven? Very unlikely. Ever the optimist, Cameron thought there might be a chance for them, maybe even finding in one what the other was looking for.
Considering her past, Cameron should have known that such hopes are fragile and easy to crush, particularly by the person you heaped it all on. In the months that followed after the disastrous date she managed to coerce House into, Cameron went on an emotional roller-coaster ride, which she was forced to handle on her own when Stacy Warner came back into House's life. Romance placed on the back burner.
Then, like some moments in House's favorite soap opera, a new patient comes through the doors of Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital who would place a significant impact into their lives and view of the world.
Dr. Sebastian Charles—to the people working in Princeton Plainsboro—is the anti-House. A world-renowned immunologist working non-stop to give medical and world attention to the plight of the people in Africa, he collapsed in the middle of convincing pharmaceutical company bigwigs to do their share. To avoid negative media exposure, these bigwigs were able to find something else in their hearts—rush the famous doctor to PPTH for treatment.
Great.
It wasn't the first time that Dr.Lisa Cuddy has turned over a patient with a series of mysterious and seemingly undiagnosable ailments to House. More often than not, she forces them down his throat the way he dry-swallows his favorite painkiller. What was unique about this case was how Cuddy introduced it to him—a copy of Newsweek with his future patient on the cover.
"Selling subscriptions? I heard that if you sell twenty, you get a free bike…"
Dr. Sebastian Charles descended from the elevator and strode purposefully through the hallway, looking to the left as the nurse at the lobby had kindly instructed him.
Room with glass walls, segregated into a conference room and the office of the Head of Diagnostic Medicine. Look for the door with "Dr. Gregory House, MD" on it. It would be easier to spot if the glass walls would show him a tall man with a two-day old beard and a cane.
He found the room with the glass walls. From the set up, Dr. Charles surmised—quite rightly—that he had come across the conference room the lobby nurse mentioned. The room contained two men and a woman, all huddled over some folders. Neither of the two men seems to have any need for a cane, which means that Dr. House isn't in yet.
Dr. Charles knew they're doctors—the Diagnostics team of Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, one of the best in the medical business. He mentally calculated how much more lives would have been saved if he had even one of these specialists on the field with him…
One of the men looked up from the huddle and spotted Dr. Charles standing in the hallway. His blue eyes became wide and he said something to his colleagues, who turned around at the source of his surprise. The lone woman in the group suddenly jumped up from her seat and opened the door to the conference room.
"Dr. Charles! What are you doing here? Is something wrong?"
Dr. Charles blinked. He was surprised, not by how much she said in one breath, but by how attractive she is. It's been a while since he stopped to smell the roses, much less rendered speechless by a pretty face, one with a brain, in fact. He almost forgot why he was looking for her office for a moment.
The pretty doctor seemed to sense his loss of speech. She smiled at him—is it possible that an angel could be found in New Jersey?—and raised a hand for him to shake.
"I'm Dr. Allison Cameron," she said. "I'm working with Dr. House on your case."
Dr. Charles gave himself a mental shake from his shock and forced himself to be serious—or at least part of her world—this world.
Dr. Allison Cameron had that funny feeling again. She was very aware of the large, callused hand that enclosed hers in a handshake between professionals. Dr. Charles looked disheveled in his gray shirt, shorts, and thin robe, his face sporting a bit of stubble, which didn't completely hide the dimple in his left cheek. His unkempt state of dress didn't cover the confidence and intensity of his character, or his affability.
Not again, Allison.
It has been a while since she thought about being part of a romantic relationship. After that—"thing" she and House went through, she placed those hopes in the back of her mind and tried to place all her attention on her job. So far, so good. She and House had been silent about the true nature of that date and never discussed about it, not even when she tried to force him into seeing the dying girl and giving an alternative diagnosis.
Cameron was pulled out of her reverie by someone clearing his throat.
"Speaking of my case," said Dr. Charles, "I'd like to sit in on the differential. Is Dr. House running late?"
"Kind of," Cameron answered a little sheepishly, like a giggly sophomore. "He's meeting with Dr. Cuddy first before he comes up here. Won't you come in? I'll introduce you to the rest of the team…"
"Patients aren't usually part of the diagnostic process."
Dr. Charles turned around at the sound of the acerbic tone. Dr. Gregory House has finally made an appearance.
He offered a hand to shake. "Dr. House, I'm Sebastian Charles."
Like I care, Doc Africa.
In the few painful strides he made in crossing the conference room, House sensed a change in the atmosphere of the conference room, and it wasn't because they had a visitor. When he reached the whiteboard, he popped a Vicodin into his mouth and surveyed his domain, searching for something among his underlings.
Can't be Foreman—dog's still in the game. Even snarked about Chase's rich boy status to Dr. Charles as their patient handed out photos and descriptions like a well-trained car salesman—if there ever was one.
Can't be Chase—he may be a suck-up pretty boy, but a suck-up pretty boy with priorities. The intensivist from down under didn't make any attempts to make a good impression with the immunologist from the Congo.
That left Cameron—and his round blue eyes narrowed a bit when the beautiful doctor rushed to tell Charles about her contribution to his charity.
How so like Cameron to make the patient feel comfortable.
Good! Her concern and hero-worship were getting nauseating, like Kryptonite to Superman. Months ago, House suspected it was her way of making him "feel better"—her way of telling him that he needed it from her, who had so much to give. He confirmed it on their one and only date—they had an unspoken agreement never to breathe the actual outcome of it to another soul.
Damn it.
House should've had Cameron's head checked when his barb hit the proverbial bull's eye.
He took a deep breath and nearly gagged as the smell finally penetrated his sinuses. Apparently, their patient did stir something up—something foul.
"What is that?"
Dr. James Wilson is amused.
He was looking at a 40-somethingyear old man prowling inside his office with a limp and a chip on his shoulder. Wilson couldn't be sure if he was asked, but he could've sworn he heard House mutter that some "big-headed charity case" was "putting the moves" on the "gullible little immunologist".
"…too good for her, the idiot!"
Wilson raised a dark eyebrow at that and a dimple appeared on his left cheek. Time to do the grouch test.
"I'm sorry, I didn't catch that," he inquired as innocently as he could. Unlike House, Wilson couldn't mask his humor that well when the situation called for it. He was thankful that "Dr. Scrooge" didn't pickup on the scent of sarcasm—yet. "Who's too good for whom?"
House halted mid-prowl and turned on his heel to face the oncologist, who was looking at him with a funny look on his face—as though he was trying hard not to laugh and stay serious at the same time.
"What do you have, Wilson? Constipation?" he growled.
Wilson shook his head and shoulders in silent laughter.
"I'm feeling pretty good at the moment, thank you," he said. "Seeing how Sebastian Charles gets under your skin since he caught Cameron's eye…"
House snorted. "Like hell he does." He limped to the office windows and sent a brooding stare into the New Jersey skyline. Wilson moved around his desk and sat on the chair where the patients usually are, waiting for House to say something.
He didn't have to wait too long.
House whirled around to face Wilson with astonishing speed. Wilson wondered how his friend managed to keep his balance after such speedy spinning.
"Cameron is attracted to sick men like—"
"You are addicted to Vicodin?" Wilson supplied innocently.
"Nah-uh!" House shot back like a prom queen. "Beside the point; what's this guy got that I don't?"
Wilson pretended to think about it seriously for ten seconds before replying with, "Well for starters, he's better-looking than you, nicer, thinks more about the good of mankind…"
"For starters, wonder boy!" House growled as he tried to jab Wilson on the chest with his cane, which the oncologist deftly avoided by kicking against his desk and letting the chair move across the room on its own. "I don't need a recommendation from you, since you're biased and you've left out arrogant and stupid."
Wilson snorted. "Gee, what a surprise! Everyone is stupid next to you."
"Naturally—and I happen to have bluer eyes and better B.O.—did you get a good whiff off him when he got here?" House emphasized the last by sticking out his tongue and putting his index finger to it as though inducing vomiting.
"Nauseating," Wilson drawled. "Yet, he's got one-up on you, though."
"Oh yeah? What?"
"Dr. Cameron's affections."
It was House's turn to snort, which was more impressively sardonic than Wilson's. "He's welcome to them for as long as he's confined here. The moment he's discharged and shipped off to Africa, Cameron'll forget about him. Don't forget, she's one of my biggest fans!"
"I don't think so, House," said Wilson, fighting off an urge to snigger. He noticed how House's knuckles were whitening as he gripped his cane. "From the look of things, she's revoking her membership from your measly fan club."
"Don't patronize me, Wil—what do you mean by that!" House's eye narrowed into electric blue slits.
"She's supporting his diagnosis, for one…"
"Charles is an idiot 'coz that's the only disease he remembered from med school. As for her agreeing with him, well, its making me wonder—"
"She smiles more when he's around…"
"You couldn't separate a smile from a gag reflex?" House let out a bark of laughter. "He's still using his shit-powder if he hasn't found a guano-based deodorant."
"And her blouse is more revealing today…"
"WHAT?"
Wilson's eyes opened wide at that. He edged away from House as the man stormed out of the room and slammed the door behind him.