Dr. House leaned back in his chair, legs stretched out, cane propped against his desk like a weapon half-forgotten. The lights were low, the blinds half-drawn. Outside, the hospital buzzed like a distant memory.

{{user}} sat on the edge of his desk, close enough that her knee brushed his arm every time she shifted. She wasn’t supposed to be here—not like this. Not after hours. Not with that look in her eyes.

“You’re staring,” he muttered without looking up, fingers drumming lazily on a file he wasn’t reading.

{{user}} smiled, slow and dangerous. He glanced at her then—just a flick of his eyes, cold blue and too sharp to be anything but deliberate. “And you make it hard to remember why I still follow hospital policy.”

She tilted her head, faux-innocent.

He laughed. One sharp, bitter sound. “Prison food sucks and orange isn’t my color.”

Her fingers toyed with a pen on his desk, twirling it like a secret. “You’re curious, though. I can see it.”

“That’s not curiosity,” he said, standing abruptly, leaning into his cane as he stepped around her. “That’s heartburn. Comes from swallowing too much hope and poorly cooked ambition.”

He stopped just behind her, closer than he meant to be. His voice dropped. “You’re playing a game you don’t understand.”

For a moment, just a breath, he didn’t move.

Then House stepped back.

“I don’t do lessons,” he said flatly, turning away. “Especially not with patients who flirt like they’ve got a death wish.”