The clock is ticking, ticking, ticking in the corner and he is watching with crystal hatred the narrow black hands that try to calculate the unfathomable, as if time can be contained in those small, pathetic numbers. Hours have crawled by, minutes have sauntered past, seconds have slipped away and he is still waiting for something he isn't quite sure of.

He can feel her eyes on him and he is afraid, and he hates that, he can feel her coming closer, closer, closer to him and invading everything he knows is his so that he doesn't know, isn't sure whether he loves her or hates her or both. He leans on his cane as a reminder of what he used to be, how he used to move so smoothly and perfectly like a well-oiled machine, how everything in him was connected and one and perfect, perfect, perfect, everything was just how he wanted it to be.

But now he sits down in his chair and closes his eyes and lets his head fall back, knowing the chair will catch him but secretly hoping it wouldn't, that he would just fall, fall, fall into the great black nothingness he runs from everyday.

"Dr. House," Her voice echoes in the canyons of his mind and he looks at her with a perfect façade, a perfect blue-eyed hatred, a perfect pretend reality she is too young and trusting to doubt.

"It's late." He says because that is all he can say because that is all he knows; the time that is ticking away so slowly and all he wants is to stop the clock and pretend that if he does he can stop the world as well.

His breath is ragged as she touches his skin and he feels her so acutely it is almost painful, her hand sliding up his shoulder to the base of his neck and he has never felt so old and weak and ugly as he does in this moment, touched by something so much better than himself.

"I know." She murmurs in his ear and he realizes how close she is, too close, and sits up suddenly and pulls away, face twisted in surreal disgust. Her eyes are dark and hurt and angry and she walks farther, farther, farther away until she is nothing but a shadow and a memory.

He is in his own home now, his own cage, a stylish apartment that is so unlike him it is him. The alcohol burns his throat and he loves it, reaching out and touching the perfect, porcelain keys on his piano and marvels at the melody that emerges.

At first he doesn't hear the knock, knock, knocking at the door, believes it is just rain humming and storming, hating him and trying to wash him away to nothing, held at bay by nothing more than a pane of glass.

He opens the door despite himself, a part of him that knows it's her because a part of him is in love with her but is overrun by the part that isn't. She smiles that shy, guilty smile and he can't help but think she doesn't know what is to be guilty and sorry, she really doesn't know.

He doesn't ask her why she's here because he doesn't care, knowing that she won't be here for long because no one is ever with him for long.

And it's hours later, staring at the clock with malice in his eyes, hating but needing the tick, tick, tick of his life sliding away, that he realizes that despite, or perhaps because, he hates time moving so slowly he has found away to make the world stop.