Fic: Nothing Else (I Can Say) (House/Cuddy)
I wrote some smut, y'all. Kinda.
Title: Nothing Else (I Can Say)
Character/s: Lisa Cuddy, Greg House, Lucas (boo)
Warning: NC-17, I think. I suck at ratings. Hence: SMUT ALERT. Poetic, romantic smut, but smut nonetheless.
Spoilers: CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR SPOILERS.
Word Count: 2000
Disclaimer: I don’t own anything, except 11 different mp3 versions of ‘Eh Eh‘, and Lucas’s broken heart. And, perhaps, the side table in Cuddy’s entrance hall.
Summary: Returning to NJ, Cuddy is faced with the prospect of breaking Lucas’s heart, and handing her own on a silver platter to one Greg House. Scary stuff indeed!
A/N: Part three of my continuing Season 6 spoiler interpretation-fic universe, lol. This is for the brave adventurer missbuterfly , who made me some (more) beautiful art, and requested smut in return. Ty, darling!
Lady Gaga - Eh Eh (Live @ Taratata, France)
Get it here.
It's completely worth the DL, even if for no other reason than to hear Gaga say 'Taratata!' like it's a spell from HP.
“Is this about House?’
The millstone weight of guilt drops to the pit of her stomach, and Lucas is not stupid enough to miss the effect of the name upon her. He’s never missed it, really - not once - and violent, bitter resentment seems to emanate from him now in waves; his open, usually-kind face suffused with rage. The setting sun pours through the French windows behind him, and he is silhouetted in shades of orange and pink. She bites her lip.
“Lucas, this has nothing to do with anyone else. This is about me. It’s not… it’s not about House.”
The laugh that escapes his twisting mouth is harsh; dark with spite and disbelief. She winces, resigning herself like a martyr to his anger, her willingness to continue the lie ebbing quietly away. Lucas drags a hand through his hair, and she is struck, out of the blue, by just how long it has grown. Her mind begins to wander, and it is so cruel of her - allowing herself to become distracted even as his heart is breaking right before her eyes - but somehow the recent changes in his appearance have just now leaped to her attention, as if she has barely looked at him at all, over the last few months.
She hasn’t, if she is to tell herself the truth.
His hair is long, long enough to hang in dirty-blond tangles in his eyes. A fortnight’s worth of stubble is the colour of gold coins upon the gentle lines of his jaw, and the jacket is new too; the black leather soft and gleaming and devoid of the scuff-marks which would betray a lifetime’s worth of wear. Uneasiness begins to coil like a vine around her stomach, and she takes an almost involuntary step backward, even as his bright eyes fill with tears.
“Lisa… please…”
He’s changed.
He never used to neglect shaving, his hair used to be shorter, neater. She’s never seen him in black leather before. He doesn’t look like himself, and it is astounding, and alarming, that she has not noticed before now.
He looks like House.
He couldn’t ever actually resemble House, of course - he doesn’t have the height, the bone structure or, in all honesty, the presence - but it is clear, painfully obvious that the changes in his appearance are all emulated, all modeled upon the man who has undeniably, inevitably become the elephant in the room. The thought, the realisation that Lucas has chosen to dress like House, to adopt his elegantly dishevelled anti-style, makes her feel nauseous, and newly unsteady on her feet. Her own voice sounds tremulous and haunted, and the tears have begun to slip from Lucas’s eyes, now.
“Lucas, I’m sorry. I just can’t do this anymore, I can’t… I just don’t feel the same way as you do. It’s… it’s not about House.”
She is lying, and they both know it.
“It’s always about House, Lise. With you… it’s always about him.”
“I’m sorry. Lucas… I’m so sorry.”
It’s wrong, just how utterly detached she feels; and the same old fear rears like a wild horse within her. A normal person would be upset, right now; a normal person - someone who did not have a crazy father and an almost genetic predisposition for denial - would be crying alongside him, instead of merely staring out, away, over his shoulder and through the windows, to the quiet street and the setting sun. A normal person would be trying to comfort him, to console him and reassure him with murmured kindnesses and gentle, effortless half-truths, instead of watching the bike that is pulling to a stop outside, and the tall, scowling disaster crossing the lawn in halting strides.
A normal person would be paying more attention to her broken-hearted boyfriend, instead of quivering with anticipation at the approach of another man.
House doesn’t knock, and she can’t honestly say she is surprised.
Lucas whips around at the sound of his off-kilter footsteps, and a fierce battle begins to pitch within her chest; guilt, terrible and choking, stands on guard, ready for the approaching metaphorical face-off against the most violent, intoxicating, hopeful joy that she has ever felt.
It’s good against bad, dark against light, fate against self-deception; and she finds herself, yet again, rooting for the dark side, while the good guy wipes away his tears.
House looms like a stormfront in the shadows of her entrance hall, his sharply handsome face characteristically formidable and unsmiling, and his eyes move in a quick, heart-clenching sweep, from her face, to Lucas, and back again. The gold light of the lingering sunset glows around Lucas like a halo, and she could smile, or laugh, if she let herself; because she has never, ever been a girl willing to side with the angels when a handsome devil has looked her way.
“What’s goin’ on?”
The question is directed at her, but House’s eyes have shifted to pierce like glass into Lucas, who no longer looks upset, but is beginning to shake with the force of barely-restrained anger. She bites down hard into the plumpest part of her lip, and does her best to quell the fierce rush of desire that quakes through her, as House turns his blue sky eyes back to hers.
“Okay. I get it. I get it, Lise.”
Lucas forfeits, palms raised in surrender, and the complete absence of regret or sorrow in the kaleidoscope of her emotions is a horribly cruel thing, but there is little point denying it now, when time has failed so absolutely at tempering her true desire. It wasn’t Lucas, it was another one-date boyfriend - a man whose name she can’t quite seem to remember - who was the first to say it, point-blank, to her face.
You should see yourself when you’re talking to him. When you’re with him, there’s nothing else that matters. The whole world disappears, Lisa, when you’re with him.
Don, his name was Don, and he was right. Lucas fades into a pale nothingness, even with the colours of the sun falling upon him, and her eyes narrow to tunnel-vision, as House moves like a hurricane toward her.
“You all right?”
His voice is made of gravel and Scotch and minor chords, and it runs like a river, or a blade, right through her, as Lucas makes his retreat, unnoticed by either of them now, and the slam of the front door against its frame barely registers in her overheated, scarlet-and-crimson brain.
“I’m okay.”
She couldn’t wrench her eyes away from his even if she tried, even if she wanted to, and he advances, hard gaze drilling stinging little holes right through her skull to penetrate, invade and conquer her very mind, and she feels suddenly more intoxicated than she did the night before, when Wilson was bogarting the vodka and atrocious 80’s music slammed like a heartbeat through her precariously balanced skeleton. She’s intoxicated, again; drunk and unsteady on his presence, swaying like an addict under his tidal influence, and he doesn’t seem to want to stop staring right into her soul, like he always does.
His hands are rough, where they tangle in her hair and snag on her clothes.
Everything about him is sharp; his cut-glass eyes, the stubble on his jaw, the snip and bite of his teeth at her lip.
Everything about him is familiar.
It’s been almost ten years, but the force with which he shoves her backwards, slamming her bodily into the side table, is the same as it always was, and the way his hands lift her right off her feet and set her down again, perched on the edge of the table and sanity all at once, is exactly like he used to, when they were young and not yet so damaged, nor so desperate.
He was always a great lover, always fierce and impassioned and capable of liquefying her with minimal effort and no words at all. She sags, molten and boneless and blind against his chest, yielding to his grip with little protest beyond a breathless, endless sigh, and it feels like she is being broken, split in half and carved in two as he moves to stand between her thighs, fingers tearing at the flimsy, horribly resilient layers of clothing still separating her skin from his. It’s torturous and delicious and undoing, and she just barely has the strength of body or will to lift her arms to twine them lazily around his neck, as his tongue and teeth set to work upon her throat.
Her name - her first name, not the aloof, detatched surname which she inherited from her father with little say in the matter - begins as a rumble somewhere in the pit of his stomach, and crawls up the cage of his ribs to escape his lips amidst the brambles of her hair, and it’s too much, it’s all too much; the heat, the desire, the utter nakedness of her soul beneath his touch. She gasps and gropes for air, and her skirt is bunched in accordion folds at her waist, his fingers already violating the helpless, defenseless barrier of lace and silk, and then there is no thought, no thought at all.
How they got to the bed, she cannot be certain.
How she managed not to drown, or suffocate, under the hot weight of lust, she hardly fathom, but it is over, and the fire of it has died down to a warm, hazy lull, and his arms are still tangled around her, his open mouth still pressed against the crimson skin of her neck. A bubble of joy - or hysteric relief, perhaps - threatens to burst within her chest, and she can’t help smiling, grinning like an idiot up at the glorious ceiling of her wonderful bedroom, and then his teeth snip into her clavicle, and she can feel his lips bared in a wolfish grin.
Laughter feels so incredibly good, the tension ebbing like the waning moon, and his bright, bright eyes find hers in the looming dark. He looks happy, happier than she has seen him in years, perhaps, and when he kisses her, and murmurs three tiny, bird-fragile words, right into her mouth, she knows - she understands, finally - that Don was right.
There is nothing else, in the whole world.
Nothing else in the world, and when sleep begins to tug like ribbons at her wrists she surrenders, feeling safer than she ever has, or so it feels, as his pulse beats like a metronome against the curve of her back. He doesn’t release her; his fingers and arms and even the hook of his ankle do not loosen at all, even as the murmur of his breath begins to fall in even, slowly rhythmic whispers against her shoulder. He doesn’t let go, and as her exhausted, exhilarated mind slips into the pastel pinks and purples of a dream, her last thought is little more than a wish; an unsaid prayer that he never, ever will.