Aaaah get it out of my head!

Title: The History of Being Wrong
Fandom: House M.D.
Character/Pairing: Cutthroat Bitch (Amber)/Thirteen (13)
Rating: R for cusses and hatesex
Summary: If you're afraid of failure, it's usually because you've done it before.
Spoilers/Warning: Through 4x09, "Games"
Notes: I don't know what's going on! I hate Thirteen! I never write femmeslash! I wrote Thirteen and femmeslash together! Aaaah! But um, yeah, since it's my first femmeslash ever, and I still feel like this is a bit disjointed, please let me know where I can improve? I was flying dead at the time. Thanks go to engima731 for looking this over and being tolerant of my constant ranting and raving. Story is heavily influenced by Fiona Apple's "The Way Things Are."
And yes, CTB's name actually is Amber. Awkward, huh? She's blonde and looks nothing like me, see icon! D:




so keep on calling me names, keep on, keep on
and I'll keep kicking the crap till it's gone
if you keep on killing, you could get me to settle
and as soon as I settle, I bet I'll be
able to move on


She's been known to give as good as she gets, but she ran out of truly biting insults somewhere back between "insipid little twat" and "cuntwhore." They all bear mental repetition anyway, permanent feedback loops running on rage and hurt, bitterness you can't wash away with all the seasonal peppermint mochas in the whole wide world.

And she thinks this would be a good time for heavy drinking, but she's not going to be another 8 pm statistic, she's not going to be the blonde chick sitting on the end of the bar with puffy eyes and a mojito, crying down her swizzle stick and acting like she's just been dumped. That's not who she is. That's not her way.

So Amber clears her throat and scrapes at the brown paper band they put around your coffee cup to make it less hot and hard to hold, and she thinks it's kind of stupid because your fingertips get burned anyway. Pad it any way you like - when there's a chance to hurt, you'll still feel its echo. Sometimes the pursuit of happiness hurts as much as falling down.

It's not her fault exactly, but she wants to blame it all on Thirteen because it's easier that way. Girls are cruel, deadly french manicures forged in the fires of adolescence and she trained with the best of them, she can tear down another woman with perfectly placed words, no problem. "Cutthroat Bitch" is just the latest successor to a long line of so many things that Amber's been called, and most of them have been true, or close.

She knows she has the kind of looks and demeanor that make people think she was one of the snotty prep crowd in high school, an overachiever, a mean-spirited backstabbing ice queen. But the truth is she just knew a lot of people, and the secrets passed through and around her until she had a catalogue of everything about everyone, and when the time came she could pull it out in front of her enemies and rend them through.

Because it's about being perfect, isn't it? For one moment, and then, if you can manage, the next, and then after that. There is nothing more powerful, more intoxicating than being right and having everyone know, and there's nothing worse than sitting in a stupid chair-desk trying not to cry, and yeah, she's done both enough to know for sure. You never forget the humiliation of having been wrong, and you can never let them know how much, how deeply you care.

What do you know, she thinks bitterly, tucking her left foot behind her right ankle and shifting, about being wrong? What do you know about me and failure? Being afraid to fail doesn't come from never having done it before.

Fucking bastard, she was the one he paged when he didn't think out his clever plan so thoroughly, he leaned on her and it was mentor-sexual, an odd twinge of hope and a moment of closeness she doesn't often allow; she actually doesn't like to be touched without her express permission.

And yet.

This job and these people, they got their fingers around her heart and now they're squeezing, and it would maybe be bearable if it weren't for that little dark pet, that doe-eyed little slut whose smug smile she can still see. House had the gall, he had the fucking ugly distended balls to say she needed to fail and then tell Thirteen he would have hired her just to make it clear, just to make it clear, that it was a completely personal and not professional choice. And what makes it so twisted and fucked up is that she's a thousand times more angry at Thirteen than House, or even Kutner and Taub for being the rotten victors.

It reminds her of a Cincinnati soccer field two decades ago, and the wind brushing past her cheek when she missed the winning goal, tiny tendrils of imperfection. When you were young, the coaches always had you do that demeaning line-up where you slapped hands with the winning team and muttered "good game," and it was meant to teach you not to be a poor loser. But what she always hated more was the idea of the "gracious winner," and when she rubs her thumb along the rim of her index finger, she thinks how fulfilling it would be to say "good game" and slap Thirteen in the face.

-

What would you know about being wrong? What would you know about caring?

So the patient was a loser and she hated him because he didn't care and she was jealous, so what. Caring and being wrong are all wrapped up in the same helix of her past, sides that never touch but are connected by alternating fragile bars of "if you didn't care, you wouldn't be wrong" and "it wouldn't be wrong if you didn't care." If only.

Failure is like resting your forehead on the toilet seat, sick and alone, while guys are lining up to hold your suitemate's hair back. It's the necklace your ex-boyfriend gave you breaking into a pile of useless glass beads in your hand (he said they were pearls and you fell for it), and you always remember down to your very core, and you never, never want to feel that acid touch again. It's always waiting for you to come home, find your beta fish is floating dead in the bowl and no messages on the machine for a whole week, and if you acknowledge it's presence, it will remind you that you can't ever forget the past; you've been here before.

In high school her drama teacher used to say, "Do it big or go home." Well she did it as big as she could, and she still has to go home, and what would he, she, what would anyone know about all the times she's been kicked off the stage.

-

Her ass is numb from sitting; her wrist is stiff from cupping her chin.

She stands up and slings her purse over her shoulder, tossing her half-full cup in the trash and it splashes a little, drops of coffee splattering around the edge and she can't help thinking "wet dark hole." How oddly fulfilling it would be to slam Thirteen up against a wall and bite into her tongue, scrape her lips raw, dig into her cunt -tight and plastic and forced like her face- with untrimmed nails and leave her legless, trembling half-way to orgasm and nothing further. (Amber's not lesbian but who isn't bisexual these days?) It would be a scripted scene from a film noir, she'd stand in the doorway with her Bacall blonde looks and say something like, "You know how to shoot yourself in the foot, don't you Thirteen? You just point downwards...and pull."

Gunsmoke, she mouths, and digs out the pack of cigarettes she's been carrying for nearly two weeks now, lighting one, inhaling, holding it for a moment so it fills the new hole in her chest. And then she purses her lips, pressing the smoke out between them in a long (perfect) plume.

It curls in waves like Dr. Chase's gorgeous accent (they could have bonded over their hair color, shared jokes about it and House); it smells like the afterburn of Kutner defibrillating himself into cardiac arrest (he wanted to fuck her, she could have lead him along for a good while); it feels tight like Dr. Cuddy's boutique blouses and elastic lacy thong (at least Amber’s ass is smaller).

Amber wishes she hadn't forgotten her gloves, and tucks her empty hand under her arm to keep it warm. She's holding the cigarette with what she knows is an affected poise as she looks down and watches herself put one foot in front of the other down the sidewalk, absently enjoying the important sound her heels make. They're such nice shoes, and she decides maybe she'll stop by Blockbuster on the way back to her sublet and rent "Sex and the City," watch someone else's failure while she starts looking for new job offers.

Her tongue touches the filter of the cigarette on the next pass and she snorts at the consideration of what Thirteen is doing; probably fucking herself Exorcist-style with an oversized Caduceus, other hand on the DVM while she shouts out diagnoses to herself. It's such an odd image that it makes her smile, makes her damp, and she licks her lower color-dried lip.

"You know nicotine is a drug."

She would freeze but she's midstep, so she stumbles. Speak to the devil, she thinks sourly, and she reappears.

"And it's addictive." Thirteen has her hands stuffed in her sassy little faux-vintage coat pockets, the strap of her messenger back crossing her heart like a warning. "I thought you hated drug addicts."

Amber's smile is tight, thin lips and no teeth.

"I decided I'd switch it up a little, and just concentrate on fulltime hating you." Amber flicks the butt with her thumb to tap off the ash, hoping that this is one more lesson in learning not to care. "Besides, I thought you loved them."

"Sorry, girls like you have never been my type."

"The feeling's mutual." She starts walking again, but Thirteen doesn't move. She looks at her with that mannequin expression and Amber reels back in disgust. "Oh, do you want a hug? Me to say, 'there there, you don't have to feel bad for being a simpering tease, I was wrong?' Just get out of my way so I can get to work on that whole 'never seeing you again' part."

Thirteen considers, the air from a door opening scattering a few strands of her across her face.

"I might have Huntington's." So that's the mystery; that's what it's been all along. Amber wants to laugh, maybe in amusement, maybe in shock at her pure fucking audacity, but Thirteen keeps talking, "What's your excuse?"

Amber considers, flicking the cigarette into the gutter and tucking both hands into her own pockets now, straightening to her full heigh.

"Could be that I just like being a bitch." And maybe that's true. Maybe it's all just about notches in the bedpost, scars across her heart, titles won and lost in every right and wrong answer. If you never let them know you keep track and still care, they can't hurt you where it counts.

"Sure. I'll buy that." Thirteen quirks up the side of her mouth, half-smiling. "You know I'm kind of going to miss you."

"Aw, really?" She cocks her head to the side, making as condescending a pouting face as she can. "You think we could've grown into the bestest friends?"

"I think we could have been bestest enemies," Thirteen says.

-

The Starbucks bathroom is too well-lit, and they stumble into the further of two stalls, ironically handicap accessible. She doesn't think of crotchety crippled doctors as they crash into the back wall and she pries open the other woman's legs with her knee.

The seam of Thirteen's pants cuts perfectly into her crotch, and Amber's fingers are long, scaling the distance back and forth like trying to start a fire. She knows there's not enough oxygen in the room for it to burn; they're swallowing it from each other's mouths back and forth in violating kisses and the aftertaste of coffee and hatred and not-quite tears.

Thirteen's own fingers are ice cold as she slides them up the inside of Amber's thigh, and she yelps slightly.

"Frigid little bitch," she gasps it into Thirteen's upper lip, and Thirteen snaps at her tongue, catching it with her teeth and managing, "Surprised you're wearing underwear."

There's nothing more to say beyond that. Thirteen's jeans come down enough for Amber to uncomfortably twist her hand inside them, scraping her nails through damp curls; she wonders if she should be thinking about her cup and the garbage can as she jams two fingers inside her, nearly giggling at the thought, Thirteen's little whimper, the absurdity of this situation and the meaning of wrong. There's a barely shaking thumb on her clit, pressing and slipping, a challenge she answers by grabbing Thirteen’s ponytail, tugging and kissing her as if (if only) she didn't care.

Caring and failure. A cool smooth palm under her sweatshirt, up her back, below her bra-strap. She thinks of how immensely satisfying it would be to throw Thirteen down on the dirty floor and straddle her (grind into her, fuck her, make her suck herself off my fingers) and how much House would pay to watch. She presses close, foot skidding slightly on the tile, and curves her fingers up until she hits her target perfectly and Thirteen hisses swearwords while Amber comes laughing.

This is what it feels like to be right.

-

They wash their hands in silence. Amber checks her make up, wipes a smear of mascara off her cheek. Thirteen seems somewhere between cocky and bewildered, drying her hands with an intensity usually reserved for chess games.

And when the automatic water shuts off, they look at each other in the mirror, and Amber feels the potentiality of failure rising behind them. She hates Thirteen and House and losing and any trite words this cunt who took her dreamjob might say now. If it's something soul-searching about being wrong and feelings, she really will slap her like she'd envisioned before, hit her with the same hand that just fucked her-

"Are you staying around town for a while?" Thirteen asks, and Amber decides that's not a horrible question, so she won't add another red mark to her already flushed face.

"I don't know, for a bit, I guess." She turns to her, upper lip curled in mockery. "Why? Do you want to hang out sometime? Go to dinner, see a movie, trade vibrators?"

Thirteen smiles and says nothing, just walks for the door, and that's as good an answer as any. She puts her hand on the bar and then pauses.

"What is it really? What's your special little secret?"

Amber is almost startled, nearly misses the trashcan with her papertowel. But not quite. Recovery is everything.

"Oh, I'm not interesting enough to have something like that, or House would have hired me. We both know how he just loves a mystery."

"If it's more important to you not to kill your pride than a patient, you've got some deep issues."

"Well I wouldn't know what it feels like to kill someone, care to enlighten me?"

The fluorescent lights hum menacingly above them.

"You're as weak as your orgasm." Thirteen says, lined eyes narrowing.

"You're as deep as your cunt." Amber smiles as sweetly as she can.

The stall door is slamming shut behind them again in fractions of instants, and this time coats come off, shirts come open, there are teeth on Amber's collarbone and fingers three knuckles deep inside Thirteen.

"Let's never be friends." Thirteen gasps angrily.

"I'm fine with that."

-

Outside Starbucks, they size each other up a final time, the end of a bad date or a good war. Almost in unison (they were never quite a team) they each turn and walk their separate ways, before Amber turns at the corner.

"Hey Thirteen!" she calls, and the other woman turns. "I-"

What can she say? How could anyone else ever know? Being wrong is like good but unfulfilling sex, and being right is worth getting scraped and going dry for that one moment of perfection. It's about what people think of you when you leave the room, and making sure they don't know how much you care.

"I missed the winning goal for a soccer championship when I was nine."

Thirteen is too far away for her to see her expression, but it's some kind of smirk.

"So you have a history of failure? I hope you learn to enjoy it."

"I hope you kill another patient!" Amber says brightly, and spins on her heel.

On the way to the car, she closes her eyes, she can taste Thirteen while she swallows down the knot that's been slowly tangling in the back of her throat. If there are tears now, they're just caused by the biting wind.

What would you know about how to be right, be perfect, she tosses her hair and gets out another cigarette, if you didn't know the cost of being wrong? It's wrong if you don't care, but not if you don't care that you're wrong.

That's not her movie ending, though. There aren't morals here, not after today, not after screwing in a public restroom. One more notch for one more night, and next time she'll be perfect. And she'll be that much closer to when she won't ever care.

Amber lights her cigarette, drags on it, puts her lips together, and blows.