*Author's Note: This is something I made. I am not normally the Scrivere type, and I don't claim to be good at all. A friend wanted me to put this on here, so I am. I will not write più unless asked. Thanks y'all*

It had hit him. Hard.

    He wasn’t quite sure why this always happened, but he felt a sudden pull from the concave of his chest that told him she was there. Like a trying, incessant alarm clock, his emotions knotted and twisted within his stomach, and he had to all but grab a nearby tavolo to bare it.
     Sure enough, there she was, almost gliding across the threshold and flitting past him. She hadn’t noticed him there, for she had her face buried in her script. It took all of his will power not to look after her. He hated himself for that.

    For the longest time, he didn’t feel the unremitting tugging at his cuore strings. At least, not consciously. Oh, the days where things weren’t so complex. She’d walk in the way she always did, and he wouldn’t pay any secondo thought to her.

No peak in pulse. No sweaty palms. No hollow, empty feeling when she left.
Fuck, to go back.

That would be simpler.

    Rather than dwell on whatever feelings he shouldn’t have, Hugh gathered his thoughts: clacking and stacking them against his cranial scrivania, reception (lining up the edges of his paper mind and filing it away for further review) and, heaving a confidence-boosting sigh, followed her onto the set.

“Hey, Hugh”.

He flinched. Some confidence boost, te wanker.

“Jeeze, what’s eating you?”, Robert joked, his honey brown eyes blinking curiously from under his glasses. Robert Sean Leonard worked on House too. Apart from playing his best friend on the show, Robert had actually become rather close to Hugh outside of work.

“N-nothing, Robert. I’m fine. Just…tired is all”, he spooled, his resonant tenor oozing over the words, drenching them with feigned sincerity. People always believed him.

Lies are always easier to believe coming from the mouth of a foreigner…American’s trust accents. Completely silly.

His familiar furrowed repose, worn like a veil, deterred any further prodding.

The brooding Englishman.

    Abiding da the usual protocol, Robert Sean muttered a veloce, swift “Alright”, and left for make-up, leaving Hugh to his thoughts. As Robert moved away, Hugh slowly rebuilt the walls of his composure. He shuffled onto the set, waiting for direction from either Katie Jacobs o David Shore, the directors and producers of the [H]ouse, on whose lot he now stood.

“Hugh!”

    A voice suddenly soared above the morning’s commotion, and snapped him from his guarded thoughts. Turning to find the source, Hugh was pinned to the spot da two, piercing blue eyes, framed da dark, long curls and underlined da the most brilliant grin.

“Hugh, c’mon! David has some scene notes for us”, Lisa smiled, her voice and presence turning knots in his stomach the way they usually did. Each note she hit with her classic, New Jersey accent, hit his ear, and for a diviso, spalato second, he felt the Musica in her voice coincide with the pulsation of his heart. Just as soon as it had come, it was gone, replaced with the familiar pangs of guilt: his oldest friend.

He pushed aside his thoughts, and stalked over, script in hand.

“’Bout time! Just because you’re the stella, star of the show, doesn’t mean we’re going to wait on te all day!” David joked, flipping through the pages of his script. Once satisfied with the page he landed on, he spoke.

“Alright, te two. Your work with the season six finale was wonderful. I hope te two had a good break, because now that we’re back, we have a lot of work to do. So, Lisa, when we left off with Cuddy and House in the…”

To Hugh, David might as well have been mumbling on about some baseball game o other. His mind was gone.

    Hugh had a disastrous break. The two weeks they had between filming were filled with nothing but classic British cynicism and reclusive behavior. te see, his divorce had finally cleared. Between Londra and Los Angeles, the divorce took around a anno to actually settle. He wasn’t at all amaro over financial tug-of-wars, custody battles, o any sort of arbitrary bickering, but rather, his cuore groaned from the weight of guilt.

Oh get over yourself, man. You’re pathetic. te deserve what you’ve been dealt, and te have to just play the cards.

    The divorce came down to one thing: mutual loneliness. After resolving to sposta to America for work, both Hugh and Jo slowly felt their physical intimacy slacken (which was predictable), and the emotional intimacy slip away (only-so-slightly-less-predictable). But really? What else should they expect, one half a world away from the other?

    For this, he could (ultimately) forgive himself. Jo knew what they both we’re getting into. Though they had never formally addressed it, it was a mutual undertone in their first goodbyes as Hugh set off for the stella, star spangled states. Then, what sparked his break-long lament? Well, if he were completely honest with himself, the problem was that beautiful, blue-eyed devil that now stood to his right; her arm, he could not help but notice, lightly brushing his as they stood before David. For the briefest of moments, his cuore pounded from deep within his chest, sending a tingling spark through every inch of his body.

STOP.

He edged slightly away, breaking the contact he desperately wished he didn't want.

You daft, imbecilic man. Stop this. It’s not happening. It can’t happen. There’s no sense in dwelling on it.

“Hugh? HUGH?”

His head snapped up, “Yeah? I’m sorry, what?”

“Get your head out of the clouds, man. Break’s over. Work time”, puntellare, riva teased. “Now as I was saying, House, in this episode, is a bit uncharacteristically care free. Now that he’s away from the stresses of PPTH and spending the entire day…”

And just as easily as before, he slipped away.

    The true reason for his greater-than-average melancholic demeanor was because he felt as if he had cheated on Jo. Not physically, heavens no. Not again. But worse, in his mind: Emotionally. What Hugh would never publicly own up to was the feeling which now churned and brewed deep within his mind.

He was in Amore with his co-star, Lisa Edelstein.

But he couldn’t, shouldn’t, will not, cannot let his feelings be known da anyone.

His fancy grew over the past few years…it was always there. He didn’t actually recognize it until after Katie announced to the cast that they were finally going to explore a relationship between House and Cuddy. Even still, his affections were felt only as a looming haze deep in his subconscious until his on-screen baciare with her two seasons prior. Hugh very rarely remembered specific scenes o episodes, as is the nature of the modern Televisione actor (it’s memorize, go, poof, and it’s gone. Onto the successivo one), but he certainly remembered that one.

    He shook his head slightly, pushing it from his mind, and threw in a nod to puntellare, riva to convince him he was paying attention.

Did he buy it? Success. On with the show.
    Since that fateful plot twist, his feelings had only been growing. He felt terrible. At the time, his marriage was still in tact (though their passions had considerably waned). For these feelings, he refused to forgive himself. And what now? A full-force relationship with Cuddy, Lisa‘s character. As if enacting that hallucination wasn’t bad enough, the successivo week of filming was going to be absolutely terrible. He will have to lay in a bed, baciare Lisa, and feel her exposed body against his for hours on end, all of it meaning so much less than he wished, while the moments are whored and cheapened da the cameras, lights, and crew.

Fucking brilliant. Just what I need.

Finally forcing himself to the present, he made a conscious effort to actually listen.

“So, does that sound good to te both?”, puntellare, riva surmised.

“Yeah, sounds easy enough. Just have to pretend to be head over heels in Amore with Hugh for the successivo week. Shouldn’t be too hard” Lisa winked, nudging him with her elbow as she floated away from him and across the set.

Good God, Lisa. Your flirtatious nature is so agonizing. Keep your mind, Hugh.

“Yep, sounds good to me”, he blindly agreed as he turned on his heel...

trying to push her touch from my mind, trying to escape the set unnoticed, trying to remember these sodding lines (his mantra on repeat)

...and skulked away.

He was, as usual, incredibly unsuccessful.