Chapter 24: The Plea
The knocking at Cameron’s door wasn’t the firm rap of a delivery person or the friendly cadence of a neighbor. It was an irregular, intrusive tap-tap-tap-tap, like a woodpecker with a grudge. She paused, one leg extended in a warrior pose, her breath hanging in the quiet of her apartment. The city lights bled through the floor-to-ceiling windows, painting sharp geometric shadows across the polished concrete floor.
She knew who it was. Only one person knocked with that particular brand of impatient disregard.
Wiping her hands on her leggings, she went to the door and opened it the width of the security chain. The hallway’s fluorescent glare cut a slice across Gregory House’s face, highlighting the perpetual shadows under his eyes.
“Vogler’s gone,” he said without preamble, leaning heavily on his cane. “Resigned. Board forced him out. Something about inappropriate financial pressures. Funny how that works.”
Cameron didn’t unlock the chain. “What do you want, House?”
“I need you back.”
“That’s not enough.”
He shifted his weight, a faint grimace flickering across his face. His leg was bothering him more than usual. “Fine. I’ll raise your salary. Twenty percent. Better parking spot. Closer to the door. I’ll even spring for one of those fancy ergonomic chairs you like pretending makes you a better doctor.”
She felt the ghost of a smile touch her lips, but she didn’t let it surface. She kept her expression neutral, a skill she’d honed in his conference room. “That’s not enough either.”
A flash of irritation in his eyes. He was used to people being negotiable, their principles having price tags. Hers, he’d learned, were annoyingly durable. “What, you want a corner office? A named professorship? I can’t do that.”
“I don’t want a corner office.”
“Then what?” The question was a low grumble of frustration.
Cameron took a slow breath, the cool air of her apartment mixing with the stale hospital scent clinging to him. She met his gaze through the gap in the door. “A proper date. With Y/n.”
For a long moment, House just stared. His expression didn’t change, but something behind his eyes shifted, calculations whirring, scenarios playing out. He let out a short, humorless laugh that wasn’t quite disbelief. “You quit because I’m an ethical sinkhole, and your bargaining chip is… setting my sister up with you? That’s your grand moral stand? You’ve been watching too many rom-coms, Cameron. The brain rot is terminal.”
“She asked you to come here, didn’t she?”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. The slight tightening of his jaw was confirmation enough.
“This isn’t about morality. It’s about leverage,” Cameron said, her voice calm. “You need me back because whoever you’re interviewing can’t cut it. Y/n knows it, you know it. I’m your best option. And this is my condition.”
“Y/n doesn’t date,” House stated, as if reciting a fundamental law of physics.
“She might.”
“She won’t.”
“Then you have a problem.”
He leaned his shoulder against the wall opposite her door, a study of casual agony. The posture cost him; she could see the subtle strain in the line of his neck. “Even if I agreed—which is a monumentally stupid idea—I can’t force her to go on a date. She’s not a puppet. She’s… her. She’d tell me to go perform an anatomically impossible act on myself, and then she’d do something pointedly independent just to spite me.”
“You don’t force her. You ask her.” Cameron adjusted her grip on the door. “You tell her it’s part of the deal to get me back. She’ll understand it’s transactional. It takes the pressure off. No expectations.”
House’s eyebrows climbed. “Transaction. Right. Because my famously private, boundary-obsessed sibling will love being a commodity in a job negotiation. This isn’t a deal, Cameron. It’s a suicide mission with me as the messenger.”
“You’re a diagnostician. You’re good at finding the flaw in the system. Find a way to make it work. I get one date. A real one. Not coffee in the hospital cafeteria. Somewhere that doesn’t smell of antiseptic and regret.”
She could see him turning it over, dissecting it. He was, at his core, a problem solver. And this was now the problem standing between him and a functional team. The ethical quandary of buying an employee back with a personal favor was, to him, no quandary at all. It was just logistics.
“And if she says no?” he asked, his voice flat.
“Then you keep interviewing people who cry or walk out. And I start at General next Monday.” She let that hang in the sterile hallway air. “But I think she’ll say yes.”
“Why?”
“Because she likes the work. And she knows I’m good at it.” Cameron paused, her gaze steady. “And you’re wrong. She doesn’t not date. She’s just careful. This gives her a reason to be… less careful.”
House pushed off the wall, wincing as he straightened his leg. He looked past her, through the crack in the door, into the ordered serenity of her apartment. A sanctuary from the chaos he cultivated. He needed that order in his diagnostic machine. He hated that he needed it.
“This is blackmail,” he muttered, but the fight was bleeding out of his voice, replaced by weary acceptance of a bizarre new variable in the equation.
“It’s a negotiation. You taught me that everything has a cost.” A faint, genuine smirk finally touched her lips. “So? Do we have a deal?”
“You’ll come back to work if Y/n goes on a date with you?” House asked and Cameron looks at him with a sly grin repsonding
“Yes you know I like her and judging by your comments she likes me too and you’re just making up excuses. I quit because of how useless you made me feel. Your sister however talked to me about coming back the day I left, she told you to come here because of how poorly the interviews were.”
House looks at her before shaking her head “Yeah cause I actually need someone who puts up with me and that’s you, so if you want a date with Stone Cold Y/n then you got it.”
Cameron looks at him and goes “See you tomorrow morning.”
House responded “Don’t be late”