29 October 2007 - Evening

[amber_v]

Amber refused to spend the weekend moping. Friday night, when she got back home, frozen and light-headed from the cosmopolitan she'd practically inhaled, she just stripped off her clothes and climbed into bed. She'd been running low on sleep, from days of solving a case and then staying up all night fucking Eric, so she went out quickly.

Saturday morning came with a low-level headache. But she plowed on anyway; an idle moment could lead to reminiscing and regretting what hadn't ever come to be, and Amber wouldn't put up with self-pity. There was plenty to do: laundry she'd been meaning to get around to for embarrassingly long, grocery shopping to replenish her emptying shelves, and a more thorough cleaning of the areas of her apartment she'd normally ignore. Chores kept her thankfully busy all day.

She'd hoped House would page her with a case that couldn't wait until Monday. That'd keep her mind off melodramatic woes. However, no urgent message of a diagnostic emergency came in to save her from her thoughts.

Sunday was worse. With her apartment spotless and all errands she could imagine done, Amber was taskless. Normally she’d appreciate a free moment to read or watch TV, but… it seemed too lonely, whiling away her time in her apartment. She took with her a number of medical journals—leaving behind any related to neurology—and spent a few hours at a café. Though she was still alone, at least she was surrounded by chatter.

By the time Monday rolled around, Amber hadn’t let herself indulge in thinking about Eric, even though her brain hadn’t cooperated. Eric might’ve been surprised to discover he’d become a pink elephant: he was a banned subject, but she couldn’t help remembering him. Everything seemed to lead back to him, even the soap bars she’d picked up at the supermarket (he’d had the same scent, after they’d showered together).

Amber walked into the classroom with a heavy heart. Normally she loved her work, with its constant promise of new challenges to conquer, but-- he’d be there. And—she just had to act cool. That was all. She was sure he’d do the same. He’d have no reason to tell everyone what had happened—unless he wanted House to fire her. But he wouldn’t do that, would he? Or maybe he would. It wouldn’t be out of line, from what she knew of him. If he was willing to string her along for a weekend just for his own fun, why wouldn’t he drop a few words that’d get rid of the unpleasant presence of an “ex”?

She sat primly in the center of the front row, not talking to any of the others. They made no effort to talk with her, either. Fortunately, House came in almost on time; he seemed unusually focused, introducing their new case as soon as he came in.

Listening carefully to every word out of House’s mouth, Amber wondered when Eric would come in.

Comments

[amber_v]

Amber's eyebrows shot up. There he was again, being all sentimental about having met her. Only his waxing positive had a weaker impact the second time around, after she'd humiliated herself following his sound suggestions.

He was so infuriatingly confusing, throwing direct and indirect flattery her way, but also getting in her face about her career choices and giving her flawed advice. It was like they were riding a roller coaster, hitting a few dubious highs at the sacrifice of much spinning around, and she wanted off the ride.

House, having neither perfected the art of mind-reading nor acquired the necessary background information, missed the alternative reading of Eric's-- Foreman's-- statement. "There aren't? And here I thought you'd left because becoming me was the worse thing possible. Did you change your mind? Do you want to be pure evil?" He slouched forward, his fingers lacing together.

Pure evil? What was that about? But Amber had to store that reference for later contemplation, what with E-- Foreman launching his own theory about their John Doe. He’d been imitating them? Yes, come to think of it, he had been. When he wasn’t slumped into a silent passivity, he’d taken on her own haughty, demanding attitude. But-- "No," Amber repudiated. She might not be able to get the right answer, but she could shoot down the wrong ones. And House did love it when they challenged one another. "With Munchausen's he’d be faking symptoms, not imitating our personalities. And he wasn't trying to get our attention-- in fact, he was passive when we weren't around. It can’t be Munchausen’s.”

She wouldn’t deny it. It felt good—no, fucking great-- to prove Foreman wrong.

[eric_foreman]

Foreman didn't have a chance to answer House's question before Amber interrupted. If she'd lost her footing momentarily, she'd regained it with barely a pause. Her points were on-target, and this time, for the first time, Foreman found himself raising his eyebrows, impressed. So far she'd been pumping him for information about House's game, trying to copy his ideas, maneuvering more than doctoring. She'd been competent with the patient and the lab tests, but anyone who was truly useless never would have made it this far--House wasn't that clueless about his candidates. But the way she'd smacked down his idea showed poise, intelligence, and a very unsurprising desire to go straight for his throat.

It really shouldn't have been that hot.

House blinked at Amber, taking in her argument with more seriousness than he'd shown yet today, and then looked back at Foreman. A smirk started to tug at the corner of his mouth. Foreman's stomach sank. House had clearly figured something out that amused the hell out of him, and that could only mean bad news for the rest of them. "Which one of you was he imitating?" he asked.

[amber_v]

"Me," Amber said without hardly a thought. Some of the things the patient said, the insistent way he'd made his demands and complaints, had sounded like they'd come straight from her mouth. But more interesting than the answer were the reasons for House's questions. Why would he want to know who the patient had been imitating? Why the glee? Was there any significance in who he mimicked--

Of course.

A slow, unstoppable grin spread across Amber's face. "Giovannini’s Mirror Syndrome," she said with all the elation of a kid who'd jumped the furthest in gym class. She even felt like jumping. But she stayed put in her seat, her gaze going straight to Foreman as her smile grew stronger. "He's a blank slate right now, so he's imitating whoever is around. Or, if there's more than one person, whoever has the dominant personality."

The weekend, Foreman's inconsistency, any future emotional entanglements: they'd all been worth it for this one moment of gloating. If nothing else, she had this definite proof that she had control over him. She could taken advantage of that. In fact, she should. Make him as miserable as he had her. Or do something that might bring her more satisfaction. What kind of power did she have over him, exactly?

“When did you let a girl get the best of you?” House asked, as amused as before, but nowhere near as much as Amber was. “You’ve gone soft on me. Not that you were hard before, big teddy bear that you are.” Amber laughed silently. “Is it her legs? Or,“ House’s tone dipped, his voice like it was whenever faced with a mystery to be dissected, “is there more?”

She stopped laughing abruptly, and why couldn’t she hide her feelings better?

[eric_foreman]

House's glee was spreading. Amber showed it too, a second after she'd answered his question, its significance seeming to hit her a moment later. Foreman glared at House, still catching up. By the time Amber blurted out mirror syndrome, Foreman had figured it out, and he could feel a blush heating his face. Fuck. Like he needed that spread around--it was bad enough that he felt that way. Amber had been the one to talk to him first, to ask him out to her bar, to take him back to her place, to--to fuck him, for Christ's sake, and then, a day later, to dump him the second she'd found out he might be standing in her way at work. This morning he'd been following her around like a kicked puppy, with apologies and flattery, as if he was begging her to reconsider, or at least not hate him for what he'd done.

Foreman couldn't help clenching his hands the more House taunted him. Every word served to show him what a dupe he'd been, a pathetic idiot acting like he had a hope--like he was the hero in some kind of bodice ripper, and things might improve if he just tried hard enough. Hadn't his life told him that didn't happen? He'd been smacked down too often in the last few weeks, but he'd thought he understood why, professionally, he was untouchable. He'd never had that kind of trouble romantically. With women he wanted. And it wasn't just that he wanted Amber--he knew she'd been interested too, that she cared, otherwise she wouldn't have dumped him so spectacularly on Friday. It was fucking unfair, but he thought he'd had a chance, however dim, of making it right. Obviously he didn't--he'd been mooning like a lovesick teenager, that was all. Act professional? He couldn't even stop himself from complimenting her, reacting to her, when they were in the middle of a fucking differential.

Now Amber was laughing at him too, and Foreman could see a smirk on Taub's face, Thirteen lowering her head to hid her smile, and Kutner grinning at him unabashedly, as if he was watching his favourite soap opera. Foreman was so pissed off he almost missed the change of House's expression, the sudden hungry, assessing stare as he leaned forward. Foreman still had his stony glare, and he could shut House up when he really needed to, but when Amber's laughter cut off abruptly, Foreman's attention went to her automatically, his eyes widening slightly. It was too late to warn her. House's gaze flicked to her quickly, and then he started grinning in earnest.

"Oh my God," he said, looking back and forth between them, gaping like he'd just heard the most astonishing, hilarious thing in his life. "Seriously?"

[amber_v]

The cat was out of the bag and meowing its existence to everyone. "This is absolutely shocking," House sounded like he’d just read on some stupid tabloid cover how a girl had slept with her twin sister's clone. "Was it the during the methacholine challenge? Our jogging amnesiac and all the lab instruments were just too hot for you to resist? Cuddy will be so disappointed her brand new set of eyes and ears were misbehaving on their very first day."

Amber flared up from the inside, like a sudden fire passing through her organs. How crazy; a few days ago she'd wanted the world to see her with her amazing catch of a date. Now she was blushing at the amusement they were all getting at her expense. How had she become the butt of the joke?

But she could turn a profit from this. If entertainment was what House wanted, then she'd delivered. And she could dish out even more.

With only a quick, almost apologetic, glance to Foreman, Amber flipped her hair. “We met on Thursday," she stated simply. "And slept together. It--" There were so many things she could say about their night. How they'd danced, how she'd melted in his arms, how she would've done him then and there. How he'd undone her with a few words: so fucking gorgeous. How alarmed he'd been when she tried to penetrate him, and how he'd let himself trust her. How good that'd been, for the both of them.

Amber looked at Eric again. He looked worse than when he'd realized where she'd meant to slip her fingers, angry and humiliated and scared. She couldn't do it. She couldn't kiss and tell, not even for this job. He'd trusted her, and she wouldn't ever make him regret that. Their night, anything they could've had together, was spoiled by the twist of fate that they both worked for House, but she wouldn't tarnish what they'd had. "It was a coincidence," Amber concluded. "We didn't know we were working in the same department."

She heard a snicker-- Kutner?-- and Thirteen was smirking in a way Amber had never seen. She could've made Eric the center of the laughter by throwing out embarrassing tidbits about him, but Amber felt this better this way. No one here might believe she had any kind of morals, but it was true. She did.

House mimed wiping his eyes, but if he had any tears to clear away, it’d be of mirth. "To a romantic like me," his voice dramatically welled with emotion, "there's no such thing as 'coincidence.' You were meant to meet!”

[eric_foreman]

Foreman had never been good at dealing with humiliation. This was worse. Mortification. He was a private person, and he'd never let House or anyone else work their way this deeply into his personal life. More than anything, he regretted that he'd let Amber see so much. That he'd trusted her. He was certain that she was going to break that trust now.

He wanted to blame Amber. That would at least make it simple. She was the one who'd caught House's attention. Made him start guessing. Fuck, at least Foreman could hide what he felt--if not from Amber, then from House. That bastard considered them all his toys, and Foreman had always been determined to give him as little satisfaction as he could, to make sure that House learned the least about him. The only times he'd broken that resolution were the moments when showing House some part of his personal life worked out so that Foreman could get the better of him. Show him up. Prove that House didn't have all the answers, that his fucking deductions weren't always on target.

Amber was the one who'd put them on the target this time. She'd made House curious, and there was nothing more dangerous than that. He'd be hounding them for days now, weeks, putting Foreman on the spot and asking, in his stupid insinuating voice, whether he liked strong women, whether he'd really slept with Amber or if she'd slipped a little something in his drink and taken advantage. Right now that was exactly what it felt like, that she'd taken advantage, but even as he thought it Foreman knew it was a lie. They'd both enjoyed themselves. It had been good. House would try his damnedest to ruin it, the way he ruined everything--Foreman's career included--but Foreman wasn't willing to let him. He wasn't willing to turn this into some Prisonner's Dilemma; he had more integrity than to start telling lurid stories about Amber for anyone's amusement, least of all House's. The problem was, he didn't know if Amber felt the same way. He suspected she'd be more than happy to let all the details spill out, catch House's prurient interest. Foreman stared at her, the laughter of the other candidates fading as he concentrated on her. He shook his head, as slightly as possible, wanting to ask her--to beg her, and fuck, she really was the one in control; Foreman had no power to influence anything she decided she wanted to do--he wanted her not to speak, not, for God's sake, to tell everyone in the room what she'd done to him. That would be tantamount to telling the whole fucking hospital. Foreman was miserable enough here as it was. He didn't need the snickers behind his back, people whispering that he took it up the ass. That he'd liked it. That felt like the biggest betrayal of all, from his own goddamn body.

Amber started speaking, and Foreman clenched his jaw, glaring down, waiting for House's scorn, the laughter from the rest of the candidates--the people he was supposed to be in charge of, as if they'd ever accept his authority now--but it didn't come. Foreman met Amber's eyes after she hesitated, anger still burning in his chest, but at least she hadn't said more than necessary. At least that.

It was still bad enough. House started in on the jokes immediately. Fury stopped Foreman from answering him, and he wasn't going to run out of the room as if he couldn't handle this. He needed an escape.

It came in the form of half a dozen pagers going off at once. Foreman unclipped his from his belt automatically. "The patient's crashing," he said. He looked up at the candidates, all of them clearly still hanging on the more amusing drama in front of them. "Get going," he snapped, and without waiting to see if they'd jump at his order, he stalked out of the room.

[amber_v]

Livid like a cornered snake, Eric seemed ready to strike back. She'd never seen him this furious, not even when they'd been arguing and she'd purposefully struck at weak points. Would keeping secret their intimate details be enough to stop him from being pissed at her? Not that his opinion mattered, it wasn't as if she meant to court his favor. And she hadn’t done anything wrong!

Still. What would he be like, angry and unleashed? And what was wrong with her, that she still longed to see him as he really was, genuine, without the social falsities he’d carefully constructed for himself?

Whatever chances Amber might've had of finding out more about Eric-- Foreman-- in this state was nullified by the chorus of pagers. She had to go. Not just because she had to prove her worth to House, but because the patient might need her. The others hadn't met him, they didn't know what he was like, and, in a pinch, they might not realize what he needed. If there was any chance only she could save him, then she had to go.

As she flocked out with everyone else, Amber cast a glance behind her. Eric had already left.