Arms of a Woman 1/2

Pairing: House/Cameron, slight House/Stacy

Summary: One by one the obstacles fall away, until there's nothing left but the two of you.

This fic is for: lj user="dahlin_zermott"

She asked for: House taking care of sick!Cameron, angst, a teddy bear

Disclaimer: Never have owned House and company, never will.

Beta: lj user="blueheronz" Thanks so much, my friend.

A/N: I took some liberties with the sick!Cameron part, but I hope Izza is okay with this. She wanted angst, she got angst. Set in season two with a few nods to canon (iAutopsy/i and iFailure to Communicate/i), but otherwise sorta AU. If you're a canon purist, you should probably skip this one.

A/N 2 I couldn't think of a title, and since this was inspired, in part, by Amos Lee's iArms of a Woman/i, I just went with that.

A/N 3 This sort of randomly vacillates between Cam's POV and House's (written in second person no less), because that's just how it came out. But I separated parts and hopefully I made it clear who's POV it is within the first sentence or two.

1.

You slept together.

More accurately, you had sex. Once. In the morgue. You found him there after Andi died, drawing the sheet over her ashen figure, hardened in death as it never had been in life.

On his face, lines, like tally marks of grief, stood out in stark contrast to the watered down blue of his eyes. In the harsh fluorescent light, his skin was as pale as Andi's corpse. He was nearly folded in half, stooped so low over her body that you feared he might fall over, and you clenched and barely refrained from rushing to him.

Unnoticed, you stood in the shadow of the doorway and marveled at the absence of mockery and arrogance that he usually wore as naturally as his well-fitting t-shirts. It was as if you were seeing him, really seeing him for the first time and you realized you didn't know him as well as you thought.

But it didn't matter. His grief drew you in like a tractor beam. You went to him, intent on offering whatever comfort you could.

Your words disappeared into the mist of his eyes. His only reaction to your presence was to grab you and pull you roughly into his arms, burying his face in your neck for a moment, like a child seeking comfort. And the next thing you knew, your clothes were strewn across the gleaming metal table and he was sliding in and out of you erratically, like a man driven. You weren't sure if his aim was comfort, absolution, or merely distraction. You just knew that you would never think of the morgue the same again.

In a room full of death, he brought your body to life.

Once it was over, he'd zipped up his jeans, handed you your blouse with barely a glance at your face, and walked out without a word. You knew then that you would both pretend it never happened.

Alone in the morgue, you'd buttoned up your blouse regretfully, sure that you could never wear it again without remembering the way his slender fingers unbuttoned it and slid it off your shoulders before tossing it away. You would never forget the way his eyes held you more intimately than his arms, or the way he sighed your name so softly you almost missed it.

And now, three weeks later, you've missed your period and he, well he is suddenly preoccupied with the unexpected return of Stacy in his life.

2.

In the silence of his office your words sound even more momentous, if that's possible.

"I'm pregnant," you tell him, soft yet defiant. You expect nothing from him, and that is exactly what you get.

He pauses, scowls and says, "Get rid of it," in no uncertain terms. Whatever softness you saw (imagined?) in him is gone, like he has petrified right before your eyes.

"I can't. You know I can't. You don't have to be a part of it. I don't expect you to. I just need to know if you can deal with me here or if I should start looking for another job."

He falters a bit at that and you know he hates change enough to want you to stay. His eyes narrow and he looks at your still flat abdomen. "What are you gonna say when people start asking who the father is?"

It's no surprise he doesn't want anyone to know it's his. Without hesitation you tell him the response you've practiced in your head countless times. "I'll tell them I did something stupid one night after we lost a patient. And now I'm dealing with the consequences."

It isn't the whole truth, but it isn't a lie either. The rest is none of their business. You've had lots of practice at withholding private information over the years, so this won't be a challenge at all.

You start to leave his office when he stops you with, "Don't expect special treatment, just because you've got a parasite."

"I don't," is your unequivocal retort, and you shake your head on the way out.

He is so predictable sometimes.

3.

He is so preoccupied with Stacy that he vacillates between ignoring your very existence and treating you like gunk to be scraped off his shoe. His promise of no special treatment was no joke. He assigns all his clinic hours to you, makes you do all the charting before you leave each day, and cruelly mocks every idea you have during differentials.

It's nothing less than you expected, but that doesn't make it any easier to take. You keep your chin up and your spine as straight as a steel rod and you tell yourself he wouldn't be so cruel if you didn't matter to him in some way. (He hasn't excised the Freudian theories from you completely.)

But underneath your cool and indifferent exterior you are breaking. You think of precious metal in the refining fire and hope (know) you will come out stronger in the end. The hardest thing is watching House pine for Stacy and knowing that he won't ever be yours. It might have been easier if you'd never slept with him, never come to know how gentle he can be, what it feels like to have his hands on you, his lips on your skin, his gaze resting on you so tenderly and your name coming from his mouth like a prayer.

You should be happy to learn that he is capable of loving, even if it's not you he loves. Jealousy is not your thing. You don't hate Stacy. You just wish he felt for you even a fraction of what he feels for her. But you've never really believed that dreams come true no matter how much you want to (or pretend). You're having his baby and that's as close to having him as you're ever going to get.

And then, after a late night at work you begin to bleed heavily, life poring out of you in a crimson waterfall. Medically, there is nothing you can do about it. You curl up into a ball on your bed and weep for the child you will never have.

The next morning you get up and go to work as usual.

4.

Your new patient is an unusually large man; not fat so much as bulky and muscular and very tall, with sudden paralysis as one of his symptoms. Moving him is a Herculean task even with the help of the nursing staff.

Chase and Foreman have gone to check his apartment and workplace for toxins, and you are assigned to draw more blood and do a lumbar puncture.

In a moment of foolishness, you protest, asking House if you can wait until the guys get back to help. You should know better.

"If you can't do the job, then why should I keep you around?" He glances around you toward the hall, distracted, and you turn and see Stacy out there and you know you are forgotten. "Do your damn job!" he mutters, dismissing you disdainfully.

You should've known that he wouldn't cut you any slack. Shoulders squared, you march out of his office, brushing past Stacy with a pasted on smile to cover your regret.

Enlisting the help of three of the nurses, you manage to roll the patient on his side, and just as you're about to insert the needle, he begins seizing, escaping the hold of the nurses, limbs flailing in every direction.

A fist makes contact with your temple. You are airborne for a second before you collide with a crash cart and then the floor, aware only of the frenzy of medical personnel trying to restrain him. The world goes black for a minute and then spins slowly back into place.

Two Wilsons stand before you with hands outstretched. You shake your head until they merge into one and then you allow him to help you to your feet.

"I'm fine," you tell him, brushing off his concern and moving back toward the now sedated patient to finish what you started. You are being stubborn, you know, but there is no way in hell you'll let someone else do the job you've been ordered to do. Not when that would only give House more ammo against you.

"Cameron, let the nurses do that. I need to check your eye," Wilson insists.

For the first time, you realize blood is trickling from your head and you can feel your left eye starting to swell. Your shoulder and ribcage are also sore, which you find strange because you don't remember how that happened.

"I'm fine," you repeat, and finish the LP before he manages to pull you away and push you gently down on a stool.

5.

A couple of stitches and some pain relievers later and you are in the lab running tests, doing your job. You assume Wilson will tell House about your run-in with the patient, which is fine by you. You really aren't in the mood to deal with him at the moment.

You turn as you hear the whoosh of the lab door and there he is, leaning on his cane and staring you down. His face is unreadable, a page written in a language you don't know. You look away, eyes focused on your work, wondering if he has some sort of radar that alerts him to your desire to be left alone.

"You get checked out?" he asks, tapping his cane on the floor.

"Few stitches and a bruise. Diagnostically boring. I'm fine," you answer, tired of repeating yourself.

"But did you get checked out?" he persists, waving toward your abdomen, and you suddenly take his meaning.

"I had a miscarriage three days ago," you mutter with a shrug, and a moment later you hear the door whoosh again as he exits the lab.

You don't want to think about the relief he's probably feeling.

6.

You limp your way back to the office and flop down in your office chair. There is a strange knot in your stomach at the thought of Cameron's miscarriage. You didn't even want the kid, so there's no reason you should feel as if you've lost something. Yet there it is, like a piece of you has been cut out against your will. You know that feeling well.

She barely looked at you, but that didn't keep you from seeing the ugly bruise on her face that you might as well have put there yourself, or the neat row of stitches along her temple. She's never shirked her duties with a patient before, and you wish now that you would have listened to her. You're not even sure why you've been such a bastard to her since...well, since you screwed her in the morgue. You were angry when it was over because she got to you, not just physically.

She's comfort personified. Living, breathing chicken soup for the soul, you think wryly.

When she found you in the morgue that day, you were feeling like a failure, angry at the loss of another life. Not just any anonymous patient, but Andi. And then Cameron was there, so earnest and beautiful and full of empathy and heartbreak and hope. Maybe you thought you could steal a little of that hope from her if you touched her, or maybe it was just a moment of insanity. All you remember was that you had to have her right there, right then.

You always thought she was fragile, but you are learning that she is the strongest person you've ever known, and maybe that's what puzzles you the most about her. She doesn't run, even when you throw your worst at her. She is like a mirror to you, because when you look at her all you see are your own weaknesses and failures reflected back at you in the face of her strength. You're both damaged, but like Andi, she has the courage to live her life without wallowing in misery.

You turn your focus to Stacy instead, because although it's just as painful to think about what you had and what might have been and what you could have again if you play your cards right, it's a familiar kind of pain. You've never denied that you are a bit of a masochist, at least not to yourself. But you prefer the devil you know to the one you don't.

The afternoon light is fading fast, casting the office in shadow. You hunker down in your chair, thinking this is where you belong, in darkness and shadow. But you can't stop thinking about... You can't stop thinking. You never could.

You lean forward and put your hand on the windowpane, feeling the cold seep into your palm. It's supposed to snow tomorrow, but you'll be in Baltimore with Stacy so you really don't care.

You really don't care.

7.

You're snowed in here and Stacy has invited you up to her hotel room and you know what is coming. It's what you've been chasing since she came back into your life, and yet, you're conflicted about it.

She kisses you once, and then her cell phone rings and she's handing it to you with an impatient sigh.

Wilson is on the line telling you that Cameron solved the aphasia case, pretty much single-handedly. And then Stacy kisses you again, despite the fact that you're still on the phone. Her lips are demanding and so unlike the life and warmth, the yielding of Cameron's, and you really shouldn't be making this comparison right now, but you can't help it.

There's a bed right there, just a few feet away, and you could easily have what you've been after for so long. Stacy's kissing you, pressing her willing body to yours with Wilson's voice yammering away in your ear and it's all wrong. Not just ethically or morally, but chemically wrong.

It's not the same. Not familiar. Not comfortable. Not sexy. Not... Cameron. The thought hits you like a Louisville Slugger to the solar plexus.

Stacy is not Cameron. Cameron is not Stacy.

And you know now which one you want and it's not the one standing before you about to commit adultery because she had a fight with her husband. Betrayal comes too easily to her and forgiveness doesn't come easily enough to you. She took a chunk of your leg and left with a chunk of your heart.

Trust is Cameron's God. She worships at its feet, bows at the altar of doing what is morally right. In her care, you'd either be dead or whole, like you wanted. With an emotional clarity you haven't felt in a long time, you know you want her. Need her.

You love her.

Pulling away from Stacy, you watch as she flops on the bed, expectant.

"Where's Cameron?" you ask, interrupting Wilson's story about polar bears or something you're only half listening to.

"She left early," he tells you. "Said she had an appointment."

"Right," you acknowledge, because you remember she told you yesterday. Follow up with her gynecologist after her miscarriage.

Grabbing your cane and heading for the door, you mumble to Stacy that you're borrowing her phone. On her face, in her eyes, defeat replaces desire. But you feel nothing but embarrassment and regret for the weeks you've wasted chasing after her instead of facing what you really wanted.