Title: Good Golly Miss Molly
Fandom: House MD
Pairing: House/Ali [kind of]
Challenge/Prompt: 100moods, 032. Embarrassed
Rating: PG
Genre: Het
Copyright: Title taken from the [excellent] song by Little Richard.
Summary: Ali’s legal. But does that make anything better?
Author’s Notes: I loved Ali. I would totally stalk House. Not one of my best or shiniest works, but I just wanted to write it. So I did :) I listened to too much rock & roll while writing this *points at title* But there is one line that I am obscenely proud of, so all is not lost.



She’s cut her hair and she’s wearing a little more clothing than he’s used to seeing on her, but, in six months, Ali hasn’t changed a bit.

House lingers a moment or five too long near the glass doors of the clinic trying to figure out whether he should go in, or stay hiding like a teenager.

But he is House and that means he’s not afraid of anyone and definitely not afraid of a skinny young girl, even if she’s legally a woman now, and he pushes through the throngs of irritatingly sick people on his way to whatever exam room of torture Cuddy wants to push him into.

Ali’s lipglossed smile sends a jolt of something-or-other through him. House forcibly reminds himself that Ali only made a move on him in the first place because she had spores in her brain. And that’s a lovely comforting thought; the only offer of sex he’s had recently is from a brain-damaged girl (unless you count Cameron’s puppy-dog eyes or Cuddy’s low-cut blouses, and it turns out it’s just wishful thinking on both those counts).

“I took the full course of drugs,” she tells him.

“Good,” he mutters.

“I still think you’re hot.”

Teenage girls. Can’t live with them, that’ll get you sent right to jail, can’t kill them, you’ll wind up in the same place.

“Go home,” he tells her firmly, and tears his eyes away from her pout before he does something stupid.

“I have seen Casablanca, you know,” she adds, following him into the exam room and shutting the door behind her with a definite click.

“You looked it up on imdb,” he mutters, “Good for you. Go home.”

“I haven’t been near any earthquakes,” she adds in that wide-eyed innocent way, “And I took all the drugs. And I’m legal.”

“You’re young,” he tells her, “You’re stupid.”

Ali flushes. House focuses on making this not happen, because someone has to be the responsible adult, and since Wilson isn’t around and Ali is legally an adult but still unsettlingly young and unsettlingly naïve, it looks like he’s got to take some kind of decisive action.

“You don’t have to keep pushing me away,” she persists, twisting a lock of blonde around her finger. “It’s ok.”

It really, really isn’t.

House considers asking her if she sustained some kind of serious head injury in the earthquake, and if Ali would take offence at the suggestion. He’s got no illusions. He’s not bad looking by any means, but Ali really should be swooning over someone else. No good can come of her weird little crush.

“You know,” he begins, with no idea where he’s going with this, “You should try Dr Chase. He’s single at the moment, and all the other jailbait girls go for him.”

Ali rolls her eyes.

“I’m not ‘all the girls’,” she informs him in a slightly lofty tone.

“I could be your father,” House reminds her, or possibly reminds himself, because Ali is young and blonde and pretty and apparently has a thing for older men. Much, much older men. Also, She Had Spores In Her Brain. That’s almost as bad a beginning for a relationship as blackmailing someone into a date or meeting in a strip club.

Ali is pouting. It’s a little distracting.

“You really, really need to go,” House orders, trying to ignore the faint edge of desperation entering his tone. “Go away and find yourself a quarterback to take you to the movies and grope you in the back row. Come back in a few months asking for an STD test. Just leave.”

“I don’t want a quarterback,” Ali protests. “All the guys at school – they’re such jerks.”

“Then… go have an ill-advised affair with your teacher,” House suggests, wondering if she’d leap on him if he tried to just walk out on her. “You’ll get good grades into the bargain. What’re you flunking at the moment?”

Ali apparently has something seriously wrong with her ears (she should get that checked out sometime), because she isn’t listening to him. Her shoes click on the floor as she steps closer.

House wonders what it says about him that Vogler and Stacy and Tritter did their best but couldn’t really worry him, but one teenaged girl with a scarily sultry smile on her lips can induce a full-scale panic attack. He takes an awkward step back, feels the cabinets against his back, and realises that unless he actually attacks Ali with the cane, he is now incapable of escaping. Real smart.

“Don’t worry,” Ali murmurs, a split second before she steps in and completely invades his personal space. House barely has time to think: that’s definitely too close before she curls one hand around the back of his neck, and kisses him.

House decides that this is what going insane feels like. Her eyelashes flutter against his face as they close and her mouth is warm and soft and he clenches his hands into fists because there is no way on Earth that he can touch her and this has got to stop now, before it gets any crazier.

Besides, he thinks that even Cameron wouldn’t wear cherry flavoured lipgloss.

“Stop it,” he orders, managing to put a hand on her shoulder and push her back. She stumbles a little, a scowl spreading over her face.

“You don’t want-”

“I really don’t want,” House assures her. He can still taste synthetic cherries, sticky and ever so slightly plastic-y in his mouth, and this whole situation is completely and utterly stupid. It is almost too stupid to be allowed to happen.

Ali is scowling in an aesthetically pleasing way, but House doesn’t care. She needs to be gone, and he needs to go and drink a gallon of coffee to bleach this taste out of his mouth.

“Go.” He points at the door. “If you want to do something crazily inappropriate, that’s fine, just go do it somewhere that isn’t here. Ok?”

Ali is still glaring at him, but she’s wearing too much mascara and she’s got so much left to learn. House tries to offer her a smile, but it doesn’t work properly and Ali just looks angry. Angry and disappointed. And she slams the door behind her when she leaves.

House waits what he judges to be a safe amount of time before he goes upstairs to talk to Wilson.

“What would you do if a teenage girl who is just about legal and also very blonde came and threw herself at you?” he enquires brightly, sticking his head around Wilson’s office door (knocking is for the weak). Wilson sighs heavily, but knows better than to try and resist.

“Are we talking literally or hypothetically?” he asks in a long-suffering tone, laying down his pen.

House shrugs.

“Are you thinking of adding ‘getting beaten up by the fathers of young girls I’ve taken advantage of’ to your repertoire?” Wilson adds. “Because I think you’ve probably done enough damage this year without adding that into the mix.”

“I thought it’d be more interesting than ‘getting beaten up by the husbands of women I’ve persuaded to cheat’,” House shrugs. “Wouldn’t want to steal your specialty, Jimmy.”

Wilson is sending him an I only did that once and would you stop going on about it death glare, and House sighs, because his mouth still has vestiges of lipgloss clinging to it and he’s irrationally tired.

“Is Ali back?” Wilson asks eventually, obviously putting two and two together.

“She came back,” House clarifies. “She’s gone now.”

“You did the right thing.”

House knows that. Still, it’s not every day you get nubile young blonde things throwing themselves at you.

“Besides,” Wilson continues, suddenly looking much more cheerful, “You wouldn’t want to cheat on the lovely octogenarian who still sends you love poems.”

“And Cuddy wonders why I hate doing clinic duty.”

Wilson starts laughing (because he is a sadistic and ever-so-slightly smug bastard) and House thinks that a lot of this situation isn’t funny at all, it’s terrifying and strange and kind of embarrassing, but he finds himself joining in anyway.