A/N: This is from a prompt request I received on tumblr; posted there back in February and just now remembering to post it here. Enjoy the Hameron feels!

Of course they just happened to arrive to work at the same time. And of course, she didn't notice until they both reached for the door handle and their fingers bumped into each other, gloves muting the sensation because, well, it was winter in New Jersey…and he still rode that stupid motorcycle.

"Sorry," she muttered, eyes flicking to his and back down.

"You're apologizing for an unintentional, synchronistic movement of two people who, statistically, were not destined for this moment despite what Disney rots the minds of seven-year-old girls with?"

She rolled her eyes. "House…"

He pressed the panel for the handicap entrance with the tip of his cane. "That's pathetic."

"It's called being nice."

She'd just taken a step to go through the door when said cane jutted out and cut her off. She ran into it with an oof. When he started pushing her back out the door, she felt like a sheep being herded into its pen.

"Hey!"

He walked into the hospital, calling over his shoulder, "Didn't your mother ever teach you to let the cripple go first? Seems like your grasp on 'nice' really sucks."

She caught up to him halfway across the lobby.

"If you disapprove of my definition, then I'll take that as a compliment. I'd hate to know what yours is." She jabbed at the up button for the elevator. Great, she thought, removing her gloves and glancing at her watch, not even eight in the morning, and he'd already managed to burn through half of his daily allotment of her patience. This was going to be a long day. With a ding, the doors slid open. She looked over at him.

"After you," she said, pouring every ounce of sugar sweet sarcasm she could into the phrase, even waving him gallantly in first. Following him in, she immediately reached over to hit the floor button, but in a repeat of just a few minutes prior, their hands knocked against each other and fell away. She pointedly didn't apologize this time and lifted her finger again. His hand raised, too. They both pulled away.

She tried again.

So did he.

Again.

Again.

Like a mirror and its reflection.

When the elevator doors shut, that's when she'd had enough. "Okay, stop it!" She grabbed his hand to keep it still and to stop this…whatever it was.

"What?" he protested too, too innocently, and she knew she'd caught him. "I was just trying to push the button. I'm not an ass all the time."

"No, mostly you're an overgrown child, and you certainly know how to push buttons."

At that he smirked. "Well," he said, turning her hand in his so that they lay stacked, "you know what they say about the boy on the playground who picks on you the most…"

His gaze, bright and blue, caught hers and she tried to ignore the fluttering in her chest. Reasons a patient experiences premature ventricular contractions? Go! Myocardial infusion, smoking, hypothyroidism, potassium deficiency, heart attack, cocaine, too much caffeine, lack of sleep, sarcoidosis—

Her breath hitched as his smug smirk grew (Gregory House was nothing if not perceptive), and her mind instantly coupled the two symptoms and dumped a final explanation on her, an answer to both his riddle and her own.

"What?" A rusty word grinding against her throat. Dry mouth: (superfluous) symptom three.

Attraction.

She watched, dumbfounded, when he tugged her closer to the button panel, towards him, and lifting their joined hands, he slowly, gently curled her fingers into her palm. All except her index finger. Which seemed to need little persuasion beyond the brush of his fingertip to coax it upward. And closer, closer still he brought her until she could smell the leather of his jacket and the way the winter air still clung to it. She stared at the stubble along his jaw, his neck. She thought about how it would feel against her hypersensitive skin right now.

How long they had been standing like that, aligned in perfect symmetry from head to toe, she had no clue. But as she felt him lift their hands, and felt him press their fingers against the smooth plastic, she felt his answer building in the echoed, not-quite-steady breath he took.

"He's the one who doesn't care about playing nice."