A/N: For everyone who likes to read short, choppy, poorly-written Hameron stories. I started this and then remembered that the reason I never write stories with plot is because I can't write stories with plot. Read at your own risk.

Disclaimer: You get the picture.

"All the people you know have their hearts all wrapped around someone who will never love them back."

Obsession
Chapter One:
By Secondhand Ragdoll

When the knock came House was standing at his window in the kitchen and watching dark ellipses form along the flat stonework of the streets as a fine rain came down over the city. Streetlight glanced off the harpshaped lid of a grand piano in the corner and lit the room faintly blonde. He raised the glass in his fingertips, a pinprick of light circling its rim as he tilted it toward him.

"It's open," he said aloud. He heard the door open inward and then close again. He turned around. "Anyone ever tell you that dress makes you look like a hooker?" he said.

"That's the idea," the call girl said. She had the calyx of a rose cupped in her palm, and its stem disappeared between her two middle fingers. She held it up and said, "I guess this is for you."

"Thanks," he said, "but I'm more of an anal bead kind of guy."

"It's not from me," she said. "Believe me, it's not from me. It was on your doorstep." Rainwater had gathered in the mouth of the rose, and when she laid it down it spilt out onto the table and thinned into the grain of the wood. "You mean to say you don't know who sent it?" she said.

"Don't know. Don't care." He picked up the bottle of bourbon off the counter and held his glass aloft and refilled it and then set the bottle back down again and said, "Let's have sex."

"You have such a way with women," she said.

"You should be glad," he said. He raised his eyebrows. "Repeat business."

She put her hand on the doorknob and bent down to undo the straps of her shoes. She said, "My name is Marilyn."

He was quiet for a while. The metronome on the piano clicked. Then at last he said, "No." He set the tumbler down. The whiskey made an openwork of color on the counter. He said, "Tonight your name is Cameron."

She looked up at him. He would not meet her stare. Overhead a plane went by with its taillights blinking along its undercarriage, and the sound of the engine made the plateware rattle in the sink. When it had gone, that hush returned.

When it had gone, the only thing left was the lonely sound of the rain as it gathered in the ronepipes outside.

Wilson was leant back in his chair dandling a pen between his thumb and his first two fingers when the rose landed atop his desk, flecking the open pages of his calfskin planner with water. "I'm sorry," he said into the mouthpiece of the telephone, uncrossing his feet from his desk to sit up straight. "I'm going to have to call you back." He put the receiver in its cradle and looked up across the room to where House was standing at the window with one hand in his hip pocket beneath the tails of his blazer.

"Gee honey," said Wilson. "I didn't get you anything."

House halfturned on the spot and pointed his cane at Wilson. "I know it was you," he said.

"What was me," said Wilson, picking up the rose by its stem. He wiped his planner dry with his elbow.

"A single red rose on the doorstep is sweet, but nothing says I love you like a box of chocolates."

"Someone left you a flower on your doorstep?"

"If by 'someone' you mean 'Wilson.'"

"Did it come with a note?" said Wilson.

House tilted his chin up and watched Wilson button the clasp of the planner closed. "What do you mean," he said.

Wilson raised his eyebrows. "You want me to paraphrase?"

House watched him. He didn't say anything.

"A note," said Wilson. "It's like a letter, only shorter."

House was quiet. After a long while, he said, "You mean it wasn't you."

"It wasn't me," said Wilson. "I think we're better as friends."

House turned back to the window. Outside a helicopter seed fell away from a maple and spiraled to the ground. A bank of cloud drifted slowly overhead.

"And it didn't come with a note," said Wilson. He leant back in his chair and put the heel of one foot atop the toes of his other on the desk and twined his fingers behind his head.

House stood his cane atop the register and rested his chin on the handle. "She'd be a lousy secret admirer if she had left a note," he said.

"How do you know it's a she?" Wilson waggled his eyebrows.

"You're right." House looked over his shoulder at Wilson. "Could be Cuddy."

Wilson smirked and looked out the windows to the side. After a while he looked back. "Are you worried?" he said.

"Leaving a flower at someone's door isn't exactly a hate crime."

Wilson leaned forward and got the rose off his desk and sat reclining with one hand still behind his head and the other rolling the stem of the rose between his fingers. "It could be a stalker," he said. "You never saw Fatal Attraction?"

"I'm not as big a fan of Michael Douglas as you are."

"You should be worried."

"You'll be the first to know if she starts sending me pillows made out of hair."

Wilson was still for a moment, and then he took his feet off the desk and sat forward. "What about Cameron?" he asked.

"It wasn't her."

"That's not what I meant." They exchanged a long look. At last House turned back to the window. "She's happy with Chase," he said.

"Are you? Happy?" He waited.

House didn't answer. A patient went by outside rolling her IV pole in front of her and the saline bag swung gently from its vane. He didn't say anything. His hand gripping the handle of his cane was white. After a long time, he simply turned and limped away.

He could see her sitting beneath the cottonwood with her face sunlit between a latticework of sapling shadows. She had on a pair of reading glasses and from the tips of the earpieces a thin gold chain dangled. He came up behind her and let his tray down on the table with a clatter and watched her sit up straight.

"Jesus, House," she said. She took off her glasses and touched the back of her hand to her eyes and then let the glasses hang down from the chain. The lenses made transparent shadows over her breastbone. "You gave me a scare," she said.

He hooked the handlepart of his cane over a chair backing and sat. "Nice chain," he said. He put his hand on the seat of the chair between his legs and scooted it forward. "It makes you look like a grandma."

"Nice cane. Makes you look like a cripple," she said. She took the folder by its edge and tossed it onto the table and then leant back in her seat and put her arm over the backrest. "What is that?" she said. She nodded her chin at his tray.

"It's a flower," said House.

"I mean, what is it doing in your tray."

He shucked his straw up out of the wrapper and put it to his lips and blew the wrapper at her. It landed between them. "Someone left it at my door last night," he said. He put his hand over the lid of his drink and lifted it and took a sip. She watched a clear line of water move up through the straw. She waited.

"You don't know who?" she said at last.

"Nope." He reached across the table and picked up one of her French fries off the Styrofoam plate. "Are you finished with that yet?"

She pushed her tray across the table and waved her hand as she leaned back against the chair. "Go ahead," she said.

He ate the fry and then rubbed his hands together and said, "Actually I was talking about him." He pointed over her shoulder.

She turned to look as Chase came up behind her. He set down his tray and then put a hand on her shoulder and leant down to kiss her. "Hey," he said. He pulled out a chair and sat.

'Where's my kiss?" said House.

"Your love life is complicated enough," Chase said. "What's this I hear you have a stalker now?"

"An admirer."

Chase took the lid off his coffee cup. "Didn't you ever see Fatal Attraction?" he said, beating a sugar packet against the palm of his hand.

"I'll rent it," said House.

Chase glanced up at him as he stirred the sugar in. "She commits suicide and the police pick him up for murder one," he said. He tapped the stirstick against the rim and took a sip.

"I love a happy ending."

Cameron took out a wristwatch from the pocket of her coat and checked it. The sunlight glinting off the glass face made a pale spot that wavered against the skin of her collarbone. "I've got to run," she said. She got to her feet and picked up her tray.

"I wasn't done with that," House said after her.

"Already?" said Chase.

"I have to be somewhere," she said. She trailed her hand along his shoulder as she walked away, her metronome heels clicking against the blacktop. "I'll see you tonight."

House was quiet for a while. When she had gone, he said, "She's wearing a skirt today."

Chase looked over his shoulder at her. He turned back. "So?" he said.

"So the somewhere she has to be isn't the ER."

Chase picked up his coffee. "What's that supposed to mean?" he said. He drank.

House shook his head. He watched her open the glass door of the hospital and disappear inch by inch as the door fell slowly shut. He whispered. "I don't know." He said, "I don't know."

Overhead the sun beat down and made the tables and the wicker chairs hot and heat shimmered above the streets, and made it seem as if the sky were melting into the ground underfoot.

He got up and left.

A/N: I just don't feel this piece. I can't figure out whether or not I should scrap it, so I'm giving it a trial run to see if it's as poorly-written as I think it is.