combinatorial mathematics
title: combinatorial mathematics
author: phinnia
rating: r-ish
pairings: house/wilson, house/cuddy, wilson/cuddy, house/wilson/cuddy
disclaimer: a wandering minstrel i, a thing of shreds and patches. I own nothing.
prompt: cuddy_fest: house/cuddy/wilson - morning routines
author's note: Sequel to/set in the Gradual Addition 'verse. many thanks to my first readers who assured me that my anxiety is unwarranted.
Monday.
Tangled sheets, much-washed striped Egyptian cotton (from Wilson's second marriage). House sleeps fetally, body one long curve around his broken thigh muscle; his thinning hair is an unruly mess against the pillow.
Wilson wakes first, always, drifting from a calm untangled sleep into wakefulness about five minutes before the first alarm goes off. On this day it's snowing, giant white flakes drifting silent against a dull backlit sky. He stretches, runs hands through his hair; his head is heavy with the sluggish grit of leftover dreams. so he's still for a few minutes. He watches House sleep.
From here his morning can take one of two paths. Some days he's up and out of bed after those ten minutes; shower, hair preened and product-ed, he's out the door in a swirl of suit and coffee and carefully pressed shirt, leaving only a pot of coffee and a vapor trail of aftershave behind him. But today is slow and he doesn't have anything until ten, and that leaves him free to take the second option.
His hands trail down House's back and he watches his lover unfold, a process which reminds him of time-lapse flowers on old PBS movies. It's a comforting thought, if a strange one. House murmurs something in a sleep-thick voice and turns; Wilson positions him carefully, stroking and caressing warm-damp muscles with his hands and his mouth, and then dives under the covers, tracing a cool, wet path down the treasure trail below House's navel.
He loves feeling House wake under his ministrations; muscles stretch, soft becomes hard under the sweeping playfulness of his tongue and teeth, grogginess is shaken away and replaced with soft moans and stammered, breathy declaratiions; and when House wakes enough to notice Wilson's hardness aching for more friction as it rubs against his chest hair, he takes the situation in hand (and mouth, lips and tongue and talented fingers) and they both start their mornings with sated smiles and lazy kisses.
Wednesday:
Tuesday nights Wilson has his cake decorating class, so House, always in need of constant stimulation, escapes to Cuddy's after work; they watch Norm Abram, eat something frozen and fool around, and he'll never admit it, but she knows he falls asleep with his face buried in her mess of sweat-damp curls.
The next morning House is often up early - too early, prowling the depths of late night television for Wilson's Chanukah gifts, because everyone needs another radish-rose-maker on one of those candle-tinted eight nights - but he comes back to bed before her alarm, dragging the newspaper from her doorstep behind him like a child with a favorite toy. Those are the mornings she wakes to the scratch of a pen and the absent-minded murmur of clues.
She forsakes her morning run and wraps around his long, lanky body, enjoys his quest for the answer even in leisure and his unfailing belief in his own competence - he always does them in ink. And when he notices her awake, he shares the puzzle with her, rewarding her with kisses when she gets one right, teasing her about the holes in her knowledge. And sometimes, when the ratio of kisses to teases swings heavily to the left, she is left with the imprints of beard burn on her thighs to remind her of that morning's test of wits and the delicious aftermath.
On other nights she smiles at the inky fingerprints he's left behind him, traces them with her own smaller hands. He leaves his mark on everything. She's never sure if he knows.
Thursday:
There are not infrequent nights when House is at the hospital waiting for the perfect words to pull a diagnostic miracle out of his glass-walled magical box; on those nights Wilson, who sheepishly confesses that he can't sleep alone, uses Cuddy as his teddy bear.
(And if he playfully calls her Cuddy-bear on some of those nights, neither of them mention it in the presence of their absent third.)
Wilson sneaks over to her place at lunch in order to put things in a crock-pot just to see those tiny stress lines fade around her smile. Beef stroganoff, chicken and dumplings, pasta sauce - an embarassment of culinary riches. She jokes to House that this is the most Jewish thing about him, this tendency to show love through food.
To the uninitiated, he is more outwardly charming than House; the constant romantic, the so-called perfect man. She laughs at this thread of the hospital gossip, knowing as she does his kinks and peculiarities; he is by no means selfish in bed, but he's hardly the princess-centered paladin rumors paint him to be, just as House isn't the ogre of the fourth floor.
(Unless most paladins have a tendency to dominate and are not unfamiliar with the intricacies of rope bondage, that is, and ogres are cuddle-crazy when the world turns away.)
They watch old movies together, talk about common threads that go back as far as childhood - medical school, Jewish parents, House. In bed he calls her Lisa and purrs over the graceful arcs and curves of her breasts.
And in the morning, sometimes she makes waffles and brings them to bed, feeding him sticky pastry - because she speaks this language better than any of his other lovers, because she knows House won't, because she loves the look he gets on his face when she taunts him with syrup.
Sunday:
Saturday nights are for dinner and a carefully selected compromise that more often than not plays out the last hour unwatched. The boys' new bed is a king-size and they love testing its limits.
Mornings, she thinks, are not unlike waking with Abbott and Costello - assuming they bartered with sexual favors, that is:
"I want breakfast."
"You don't really."
"What d'you--oh"
"I don't know, Lisa, what do you think - is that the face of a man who wants breakfast?"
And she laughs, and pins both of them down with a throaty purr, and no one has breakfast until well past noon.
author: phinnia
rating: r-ish
pairings: house/wilson, house/cuddy, wilson/cuddy, house/wilson/cuddy
disclaimer: a wandering minstrel i, a thing of shreds and patches. I own nothing.
prompt: cuddy_fest: house/cuddy/wilson - morning routines
author's note: Sequel to/set in the Gradual Addition 'verse. many thanks to my first readers who assured me that my anxiety is unwarranted.
Monday.
Tangled sheets, much-washed striped Egyptian cotton (from Wilson's second marriage). House sleeps fetally, body one long curve around his broken thigh muscle; his thinning hair is an unruly mess against the pillow.
Wilson wakes first, always, drifting from a calm untangled sleep into wakefulness about five minutes before the first alarm goes off. On this day it's snowing, giant white flakes drifting silent against a dull backlit sky. He stretches, runs hands through his hair; his head is heavy with the sluggish grit of leftover dreams. so he's still for a few minutes. He watches House sleep.
From here his morning can take one of two paths. Some days he's up and out of bed after those ten minutes; shower, hair preened and product-ed, he's out the door in a swirl of suit and coffee and carefully pressed shirt, leaving only a pot of coffee and a vapor trail of aftershave behind him. But today is slow and he doesn't have anything until ten, and that leaves him free to take the second option.
His hands trail down House's back and he watches his lover unfold, a process which reminds him of time-lapse flowers on old PBS movies. It's a comforting thought, if a strange one. House murmurs something in a sleep-thick voice and turns; Wilson positions him carefully, stroking and caressing warm-damp muscles with his hands and his mouth, and then dives under the covers, tracing a cool, wet path down the treasure trail below House's navel.
He loves feeling House wake under his ministrations; muscles stretch, soft becomes hard under the sweeping playfulness of his tongue and teeth, grogginess is shaken away and replaced with soft moans and stammered, breathy declaratiions; and when House wakes enough to notice Wilson's hardness aching for more friction as it rubs against his chest hair, he takes the situation in hand (and mouth, lips and tongue and talented fingers) and they both start their mornings with sated smiles and lazy kisses.
Wednesday:
Tuesday nights Wilson has his cake decorating class, so House, always in need of constant stimulation, escapes to Cuddy's after work; they watch Norm Abram, eat something frozen and fool around, and he'll never admit it, but she knows he falls asleep with his face buried in her mess of sweat-damp curls.
The next morning House is often up early - too early, prowling the depths of late night television for Wilson's Chanukah gifts, because everyone needs another radish-rose-maker on one of those candle-tinted eight nights - but he comes back to bed before her alarm, dragging the newspaper from her doorstep behind him like a child with a favorite toy. Those are the mornings she wakes to the scratch of a pen and the absent-minded murmur of clues.
She forsakes her morning run and wraps around his long, lanky body, enjoys his quest for the answer even in leisure and his unfailing belief in his own competence - he always does them in ink. And when he notices her awake, he shares the puzzle with her, rewarding her with kisses when she gets one right, teasing her about the holes in her knowledge. And sometimes, when the ratio of kisses to teases swings heavily to the left, she is left with the imprints of beard burn on her thighs to remind her of that morning's test of wits and the delicious aftermath.
On other nights she smiles at the inky fingerprints he's left behind him, traces them with her own smaller hands. He leaves his mark on everything. She's never sure if he knows.
Thursday:
There are not infrequent nights when House is at the hospital waiting for the perfect words to pull a diagnostic miracle out of his glass-walled magical box; on those nights Wilson, who sheepishly confesses that he can't sleep alone, uses Cuddy as his teddy bear.
(And if he playfully calls her Cuddy-bear on some of those nights, neither of them mention it in the presence of their absent third.)
Wilson sneaks over to her place at lunch in order to put things in a crock-pot just to see those tiny stress lines fade around her smile. Beef stroganoff, chicken and dumplings, pasta sauce - an embarassment of culinary riches. She jokes to House that this is the most Jewish thing about him, this tendency to show love through food.
To the uninitiated, he is more outwardly charming than House; the constant romantic, the so-called perfect man. She laughs at this thread of the hospital gossip, knowing as she does his kinks and peculiarities; he is by no means selfish in bed, but he's hardly the princess-centered paladin rumors paint him to be, just as House isn't the ogre of the fourth floor.
(Unless most paladins have a tendency to dominate and are not unfamiliar with the intricacies of rope bondage, that is, and ogres are cuddle-crazy when the world turns away.)
They watch old movies together, talk about common threads that go back as far as childhood - medical school, Jewish parents, House. In bed he calls her Lisa and purrs over the graceful arcs and curves of her breasts.
And in the morning, sometimes she makes waffles and brings them to bed, feeding him sticky pastry - because she speaks this language better than any of his other lovers, because she knows House won't, because she loves the look he gets on his face when she taunts him with syrup.
Sunday:
Saturday nights are for dinner and a carefully selected compromise that more often than not plays out the last hour unwatched. The boys' new bed is a king-size and they love testing its limits.
Mornings, she thinks, are not unlike waking with Abbott and Costello - assuming they bartered with sexual favors, that is:
"I want breakfast."
"You don't really."
"What d'you--oh"
"I don't know, Lisa, what do you think - is that the face of a man who wants breakfast?"
And she laughs, and pins both of them down with a throaty purr, and no one has breakfast until well past noon.