It's been two weeks, three days and nearly eight hours since Stacey arrived in town and Cameron is only twenty-three minutes away from realising why she can't have House the way she wants him.

She catches traces of herself in the older woman, but never enough for it to matter. Stacey has the sharp edges and sharp wit needed to fight him and she will never have that. Maybe it's not ideal -- she and House are both too much alike to really get on -- but sometimes the soft touch really isn't enough. Sometimes it takes someone with a little more strength to tame someone as hard as House.

Cameron's too nice for that. Too young in her mind despite her tragedies. She's not dealing with damaged goods here. House is more than that. He's too aware for a girl who only knows what she knows no matter how she scrambles for more. That's just the way it is. Maybe he doesn't know everything, but he knows enough. The things that matter to her are trivial to him because he has already lived them and knows them to be irrelevant in the face of things Cameron can't even begin to comprehend. His philosophy on life is beyond her, just as House himself is.

It doesn't mean she doesn't go home at night and curl beneath her sheets with her hand between her legs. She closes her eyes and imagines times that will never happen. She imagines how it would be if he ever made love to her, but no matter how many times the scenarios shift, it's never quite right. Like a bad movie where the characters don't fit and the world around them is somehow wrong.

She gives up dreaming about it, but sometimes broken fragments flicker through like a guilty secret; flashes of him pressed against her, fingers hitching up her skirt, a lifetime of experience driving him until he's touching her in just the right way. He'll be the first to bring her to a climax she's only ever experienced alone and it will be so brilliant that she'll break right there. And instead of laughing at her, instead of cracking a smart remark, he'll hold her against him until her laboured breathing slows and she can stand again.

But she'll know, somehow, the way she knows him, that the one holding her up won't be House. He doesn't belong there and sometimes it hurts just knowing. Sometimes her chest hitches with the promise of sobs, but this is one tragedy that he will never drive out of her. One secret he will never use to taunt and to prod, to force her to grow up and face reality.

Reality hurts. When she walks down the halls she imagines them laughing at her. She waits for the day that her secrets will be painted across her face and all of her friends, all of her colleagues, will know.

She blushes when she sees Stacey. And when the older woman stops to talk to her she can't help but imagine her with House, her long fingers painting pictures on his chest with practiced ease. It makes Cameron want to cry when she realises how everything makes more sense with Stacey in the picture, even if that picture is fractured and damaged.

But it's not so much a picture as a mirror. It's been broken for far too long and Cameron can't get close enough to fix it without bleeding. Seven years bad luck and it's only been five since Stacey walked out of his life. Either way, that mirror will never be the same again. She's not sure what that means.

She'll get over this. She's been through worse, has fought even harder to piece together the ruins of a broken marriage and a broken heart. It's really not as bad as it sounds. It's not nearly as poetic, either.

It hasn't taken long for this to sink in. Two weeks, three days, eight hours. In two minutes time she'll arrive at work to find Stacey staring at a cold cup of coffee with House staring at her plaintively.

Six hours ago Stacey left her husband. Four hours ago House found out. Seconds after, Cameron was forgotten.

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