FIC: Chocolate, Caramel and Strawberry Topping (House, House/Cuddy college!fic, R)
Title: Chocolate, Caramel and Strawberry Topping
Fandom: House
Rating: R
Character/Pairing: House/Cuddy
Spoilers: None.
Warnings: Sex, alcohol and marijuana use.
Summary: Written for a long-ago cuddy_fest. Prompt 101. Cuddy House: The Adventures of Partypants and Sweetsauce
Notes: Characters are not mine. Comments, criticism and favorite lines are always welcomed.
He’s at the counter, mixing chocolate and caramel syrups and strawberry sauce. He had buried the ice cream under frozen peas-knowing no one would ever think to look there. So now that the party has dwindled to twenty or so people, eight of whom are tangled in a hot tub and at least seven of whom have found bedrooms or soft ground and are thus just as naked as those in the tub, he’s ready for his ice cream.
Or maybe it has nothing to do with the amount of people left at the party. Maybe it’s just that he’s fucking high and isn’t this exactly what he put the ice cream there for?
He just got to Michigan earlier this week, but the name Greg House has already started being whispered across campus. Even tonight, someone at the party had mentioned him. People talked about seeing him-said he was six-six and all muscle, said no he was only five-eight, but still totally intimidating-talked about talking to him-“He’s got a British accent, but it’s obviously fake”-talked about talking about him, and he just sat there in a haze laughing in his head.
“I bet he’s a total douche,” he had said and others nodded.
He hears someone behind him in the kitchen and spins around, protective though his dessert is still hidden under the peas.
It’s a girl who he saw downing five shots in about as many minutes. She had probably had a lot more. He wonders if he’s too high to take advantage of her before realizing she’s still surprisingly steady on her feet.
“Hey,” he says.
She beams at him. He stares at her chest. His pupils are too dilated.
“Hey,” she’s got half a giggle that is feminine without being annoyingly girly. There’s a gleam in her eyes that almost makes him forget his ice cream. “Whatcha making?”
He glances suspiciously between the girl and the goo in the bowl on the counter, protective again.
“Nothing.”
She laughs-no trace of a giggle this time-and leans against the counter. “Share.”
He wrinkles his forehead. “That’s a little demanding.”
She nods, not caring in the least. He yawns, and she seizes his lack of vigilance and dips a finger into his concoction.
“Hey!” he complains, but then she’s licking her finger and his pupils are still dilated.
“Where’s the ice cream?”
“Who says it’s going on ice cream?”
She opens the freezer and stares for a moment, before immediately moving the peas and pulling out the ice cream. He hates her a little.
“You know, Sweet Sauce,” she’s getting spoons, which he’s a little thankful for, having never before been in the house, “I know who you are.”
Her eyes flash to him then slip back to the spoons just as quickly. His mouth is dry.
“Do you?” he asks. “Where are glasses?”
“Cotton mouth?”
“Who says I’m high?”
He’s not really sure why he keeps asking “who says” things, or why he would ever deny he was high. His pupils are dilated and his mouth is dry and he probably reeks. She hands him a glass of water and gestures to the bowls on the counter.
“Serve up, Sweet Sauce. You can decide how much I get.”
He’s already finished the water, so he grabs a spoon and heaps ice cream into the bowls. He lets her have as much as he’s having. He’s looking forward to watching her lick the sweet stickiness from her spoon or her hands or anywhere it might happen to land. He’s considering spilling it all over himself.
“Let’s go outside.”
“Front,” she says. “Hot tub and fucking in bushes in the back.”
“We could always join them.”
“Not in the mood for a gangbang. Some other time.”
He follows her swaying hips and doesn’t want to share her with anyone.
They’re on the porch and she’s attacked the ice cream with a vengeance and he suddenly thinks she’s cute. She’s hot, gorgeous, sexy, all that stuff. But he thinks she’s cute too. That doesn’t happen a lot. His eyes roll around in their sockets and he realizes he doesn’t know her name.
“Greg,” he says suddenly, holding out a hand.
She smirks because she knew it. “Lisa.”
She’s got a strong handshake, but it’s short, and she immediately goes back to the ice cream. He takes a bite of his. It’s sickly sweet and absolutely perfect.
“So Sweet Sauce, are you really a douche bag?”
“Yes,” he replies immediately. “But I’m sharing my ice cream.”
“And your sweet sauce, for that matter.”
He considers telling her he’ll share a different kind of sweet sauce with her but decides against it.
“If I have a nickname you should have a nickname.”
She doesn’t reply. He looks her up and down, his eyes settling on her white shorts that must only be just longer than her underwear.
“Partypants.”
She follows his eyes. “They’re called hot pants.”
“Yeah, but my nickname has alliteration. I wanted you to match.”
She laughs and steals some of his ice cream. He can’t believe how good she is at catching him off guard. He can’t believe how quickly she finished her bowl.
“You downed that ice cream pretty quick. You sure you’re not high too?”
“Probably from the fumes still radiating off of you.”
“Didn’t your mother teach you if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all?”
“This coming from the infamous Greg House?”
He glances around to make sure no one heard. “Shut up. My name’s Sweet Sauce.”
She looks at him. He’s not comfortable under her studying stare.
“It’s just nice to get away from the legend for a while, okay? Leave me alone, Partypants.”
“Don’t worry, as soon as everyone finds out who you are, as soon as you start acting like the legend, I’m not going to want to be anywhere near you. If you’re anything like they say, Sweet Sauce, you’re definitely not my type.”
He’s a little hurt by that and hopes he’s not like they say.
But later that week people figure out who he is and he falls into his role of brilliant asshole and doesn’t see her for months.
---
“Don’t even think about lighting that, Sweet Sauce. I want to know what you’re like when you’re sober.”
“I think I’ve had a little too much alcohol to be considered sober,” he calls back without looking at her, trying to put weight back into his body. He heard her voice and his heart got light and his stomach did a somersault. It’s so teenage he wants to be disgusted, but then she’s next to him and he doesn’t think about it anymore.
“Haven’t seen you in a while,” he says.
“You got all legendary. I told you you wouldn’t be my type,” she takes a drag off a cigarette and looks perfect.
“And yet, you’re here.”
He steals the cigarette from her hand to have a taste.
“Aren’t you going to be a doctor?” she asks. “Shouldn’t you know better?”
“Aren’t you?”
She shrugs and takes another drag. “I show up at parties where people are already too drunk to mind that I’m not the stubborn, annoyingly ambitious doctor wannabe.”
He breathes in the smoke she breathes out and it somehow doesn’t feel like tobacco. Their shoulders brush together as they lean against the porch railing. He wants to smile.
“I show up at parties where people are too drunk to mind that I’m not really the legend, and I hope you show up so I’m your type again.”
She laughs, her dark brown curls bouncing behind her. “I never said you were my type to begin with-I just said as a legend, you weren’t.”
“I don’t think you have a type,” he turns around and leans against the railing, watching her.
“Because you know me so well.”
He doesn’t really get it, how she can seem this way. She seems so much older than he is. She seems brilliant and mysterious and experienced in the ways his best friends’ moms used to seem. She isn’t that old, clearly, but she does seem older, though he knows he has about four years on her. Four years is a long time at that age-she’s somewhere around 18 while he’s 22. But she has him confused and interested in a way that’s far beyond her years.
“You wanna get out of here?” she asks.
He’s honestly a little disappointed. He doesn’t want her to do this, doesn’t want her to be like the other girls, to lose her mystery.
He follows her anyway, and she hardly is like the other girls.
Half an hour later and they are not half naked in one of their apartments, not half naked in the nearest privacy they can find. No, they’re on a playground, fully clothed, and she’s swinging.
He’s standing just out of the reach of her feet as she flies back and forth past him. He can see their breath.
“You should swing.”
“I think I’m a little too old for swinging.”
“I think anyone who has that attitude has a bad outlook on life. That’s like saying you’re too old to climb trees.”
He chuckles. “I’d agree with that statement too.”
“Hm. Guess you’re not even my type when you’re not being the legend.”
Fuck. And he doesn’t want to hop on the swing like some lovesick teenager trying to prove that he is her type, but he does want to be her type. He wants to know what her type is.
“How is swinging your type?” he asks, then arches an eyebrow when he realizes what he said.
She rolls her eyes at him. “Seriously, Greg, get on the fucking swing.”
It’s the first time she’s ever called him Greg, he realizes. He ducks her feet and gets on the swing next to her. His legs are longer, and he’s soon swinging higher and faster than she is. He hates to admit it, but it’s exhilarating.
“See?” she says without asking him how he likes it. “It’s good. You’re not too old for it.”
He doesn’t reply. He can’t think of anything to say.
“I think about sleeping with you, but then I think about people knowing I’ve slept with you, and it doesn’t sound so appealing.”
He actually laughs at this; he doesn’t know what else to do. How is he supposed to respond to that?
“Who says people would know?”
She stops pumping her legs. “I suppose that’s true. I mean, you do have a big ego, but it could be the girls who spread it about themselves. You don’t share anything with anyone anyway.”
“There were a lot of anys in that sentence.”
She nods, slowing almost completely to a stop.
Is he supposed to try to convince her? He’s not one to turn down sex, but he’s not sure what to do with this.
She takes out another cigarette and he pulls it out of her hand.
“Stop it,” he says. “It’s bad for you and it doesn’t make you cool.”
“Well, you would be the expert in both those things, huh, Sweet Sauce?”
He just looks at her. She’s got the most amazing blue eyes, and he can’t remember the last time he noticed the color of a girl’s eyes.
“There’s something else you should take into account before deciding whether you want to sleep with me,” he says, breaking eye contact and kicking sand over the discarded cigarette.
She brushes the sand away and picks it up. “Don’t litter.”
“You’re not one night stand material.”
She looks at him again and he’s never had so much trouble keeping eye contact.
“You’re saying you want a relationship?”
“I’m saying I couldn’t fuck you once and leave you. You interest me.”
“I thought the only things that interested Greg House were medical mysteries.”
“Who says you’re not a mystery?”
They end up kissing hard. It’s a little uncomfortable because they’re both still in their swings, twisting to reach lips and tongues and skin. He’s not sure who’s in control and it’s the first time he hasn’t overpowered a girl in as long as he can remember. She’s the one who pulls away.
“Not tonight,” she whispers, and heads off, stopping at a trashcan to pull the pack of cigarettes out of her pocket and dump it in.
He doesn’t follow her.
---
It’s only the next weekend and they’re at the same party again.
She tugs on his sleeve on the way out, and this time he follows her.
This time there’s an apartment, no playground, no swing sets. She hasn’t said anything since they left the party but she’s unlocking her door and his pupils are dilating. She’s wearing tight, dark jeans and boots that aren’t made for Michigan winters. She has a black jacket pulled over a bright red shirt, but her cheeks are still flushed with the cold. He rubs warmth back into his ears and follows her inside.
She doesn’t turn on any lights.
Her hand finds his as they stand just inside her dark apartment. He brushes his thumb over the back of her hand. She shivers.
“You don’t have heat?” his voice shatters their silence.
“I’m a poor college student.”
“It’s too easy to say we could make our own.”
“And yet, that’s the plan.”
And she kisses him.
Skin on skin is so much hotter. He thinks of physics class and specific heat. And then he can’t think anymore but it’s still science, all friction and magnetism and sweat glands. They come together like their bodies’ responses-something they can’t consciously control and yet it runs completely smoothly. His pupils dilate as her shirt comes off; her pulse skyrockets as his hands skim down her sides. Blood gathers in their centers and their arteries constrict. He’s inside her like the epinephrine pumping through their veins and it feels right.
And after, the parasympathetic takes over. Breathing slows, sweat evaporates and it’s cold again. He had a sweatshirt, but it’s suddenly hanging over her bare breasts and past her fingertips.
“I got ice cream.” He can tell she’s grinning even in the dark.
“Sex and dessert? A girl after my own heart.”
“Not so fast, Sweet Sauce. You have to make the topping.”
He groans. “Ah, work? I don’t know.”
“I want my sweet sauce dammit.”
He laughs and cocks an eyebrow at her. “I think you just got it.”
She hits him and rolls out of the bed, her bare feet pattering quietly to the kitchen. He pulls his boxers on and follows. It’s freezing in her apartment, but he’s mixing the caramel and chocolate and real strawberries this time and she’s scooping ice cream. The lights are still off and they’re both still half naked and he has trouble paying attention to the sauce when her legs are bare and smooth next to him, her feet moving like music is playing somewhere. He keeps kissing her and she keeps laughing at him and telling him to focus.
They eat their ice cream, still half naked, sitting cross-legged on her bed, grinning at each other. She drags her finger along his cheek, collecting spills, and licks it.
“That was mine,” he whines.
“You really must learn to share, Sweet Sauce.”
He does eventually. He shares the covers that night. They sleep half naked, legs tangled and he pretends it’s to keep warm. Except they wake up every once in a while almost already kissing, so maybe there are other benefits.
---
Rumors of the girls he’s slept with still fly, but her name is never mentioned. She thinks it’s rather funny, as he spends every night at her place. He’s already getting an absurd amount of sex, but she supposes the rumors might be true. Maybe he really is getting a little afternoon delight from Sarah Cochran.
Except he’s starting to complain to her-“That girl’s an Amazon-how does anyone really believe I’d want that?”-it’s not a declaration of love, but she thinks it’s as close as he’s ever come to one.
Winter fades ever so slowly into spring, as it always does in Michigan. The groundhog dives back into his hole-there’s still five inches on the ground February 2; they expect much more than six weeks of winter. Eventually the lack of heating doesn’t matter, though he’ll never admit he misses huddling for warmth.
April comes and people are talking about finals. He helps her study as he lazily plays the keyboard he brought over-“It’s not a baby grand, but I need something.”-but she doesn’t much need his help when she’s got a brain and an ambition like she does. He likes to tell her that he probably pulls her exam grade from a 98 to a 99. She blushes and generally ignores him. Finals week he makes her coffee at two a.m. and she doesn’t thank him-“Why haven’t you been studying? Don’t you have exams?” she snaps instead. He just looks at her and she apologizes and he convinces her to give up for the night. Instead he explains gene sequencing as he plays Bach on her back, easing out the muscles. Ten minutes later he has every muscle in her body clenched and she’s so easy tonight.
“When are you going home?” she asks after her third final-which she swears she failed.
“I got an apartment,” he’s looking in the fridge, not at her. “I’m doing research in Bodie’s lab.”
She gives him the half-giggle from the night they met. He eyes her, still leaning into the cool air of the refrigerator.
“What?”
“I’m doing research in Bodie’s lab.”
He throws her a grin over his shoulder and grabs the milk. “A new lab to have sex in. One more checked of the list.”
She laughs, throwing a dishtowel at him. “So presumptuous.”
But of course they do have sex there. They have sex everywhere that summer. The privacy without 20,000 students is amazing. Though there are a few others doing research, so when school starts in the fall everyone knows. The rumors of other girls stop and she doesn’t get the wolf-whistles and bad pick-up lines she used to.
They live in his apartment for the year. He’s got a real piano and he plays her anything he can think of. He makes her come to Beethoven and Mozart and a few originals. She still can only play Chopsticks.
---
When he leaves for his residency the next spring, he tells her he loves her. She pulls out a cigarette.
“For old time’s sake.”
They smoke it together and she kisses him until they can’t taste the tobacco anymore.
She doesn’t say I love you back.
He rides off on a motorcycle, all his possessions-save the piano being shipped-in his sidecar. It isn’t until he gets to Chicago that he discovers the chocolate, caramel and strawberry topping she buried in his bag.
Fandom: House
Rating: R
Character/Pairing: House/Cuddy
Spoilers: None.
Warnings: Sex, alcohol and marijuana use.
Summary: Written for a long-ago cuddy_fest. Prompt 101. Cuddy House: The Adventures of Partypants and Sweetsauce
Notes: Characters are not mine. Comments, criticism and favorite lines are always welcomed.
He’s at the counter, mixing chocolate and caramel syrups and strawberry sauce. He had buried the ice cream under frozen peas-knowing no one would ever think to look there. So now that the party has dwindled to twenty or so people, eight of whom are tangled in a hot tub and at least seven of whom have found bedrooms or soft ground and are thus just as naked as those in the tub, he’s ready for his ice cream.
Or maybe it has nothing to do with the amount of people left at the party. Maybe it’s just that he’s fucking high and isn’t this exactly what he put the ice cream there for?
He just got to Michigan earlier this week, but the name Greg House has already started being whispered across campus. Even tonight, someone at the party had mentioned him. People talked about seeing him-said he was six-six and all muscle, said no he was only five-eight, but still totally intimidating-talked about talking to him-“He’s got a British accent, but it’s obviously fake”-talked about talking about him, and he just sat there in a haze laughing in his head.
“I bet he’s a total douche,” he had said and others nodded.
He hears someone behind him in the kitchen and spins around, protective though his dessert is still hidden under the peas.
It’s a girl who he saw downing five shots in about as many minutes. She had probably had a lot more. He wonders if he’s too high to take advantage of her before realizing she’s still surprisingly steady on her feet.
“Hey,” he says.
She beams at him. He stares at her chest. His pupils are too dilated.
“Hey,” she’s got half a giggle that is feminine without being annoyingly girly. There’s a gleam in her eyes that almost makes him forget his ice cream. “Whatcha making?”
He glances suspiciously between the girl and the goo in the bowl on the counter, protective again.
“Nothing.”
She laughs-no trace of a giggle this time-and leans against the counter. “Share.”
He wrinkles his forehead. “That’s a little demanding.”
She nods, not caring in the least. He yawns, and she seizes his lack of vigilance and dips a finger into his concoction.
“Hey!” he complains, but then she’s licking her finger and his pupils are still dilated.
“Where’s the ice cream?”
“Who says it’s going on ice cream?”
She opens the freezer and stares for a moment, before immediately moving the peas and pulling out the ice cream. He hates her a little.
“You know, Sweet Sauce,” she’s getting spoons, which he’s a little thankful for, having never before been in the house, “I know who you are.”
Her eyes flash to him then slip back to the spoons just as quickly. His mouth is dry.
“Do you?” he asks. “Where are glasses?”
“Cotton mouth?”
“Who says I’m high?”
He’s not really sure why he keeps asking “who says” things, or why he would ever deny he was high. His pupils are dilated and his mouth is dry and he probably reeks. She hands him a glass of water and gestures to the bowls on the counter.
“Serve up, Sweet Sauce. You can decide how much I get.”
He’s already finished the water, so he grabs a spoon and heaps ice cream into the bowls. He lets her have as much as he’s having. He’s looking forward to watching her lick the sweet stickiness from her spoon or her hands or anywhere it might happen to land. He’s considering spilling it all over himself.
“Let’s go outside.”
“Front,” she says. “Hot tub and fucking in bushes in the back.”
“We could always join them.”
“Not in the mood for a gangbang. Some other time.”
He follows her swaying hips and doesn’t want to share her with anyone.
They’re on the porch and she’s attacked the ice cream with a vengeance and he suddenly thinks she’s cute. She’s hot, gorgeous, sexy, all that stuff. But he thinks she’s cute too. That doesn’t happen a lot. His eyes roll around in their sockets and he realizes he doesn’t know her name.
“Greg,” he says suddenly, holding out a hand.
She smirks because she knew it. “Lisa.”
She’s got a strong handshake, but it’s short, and she immediately goes back to the ice cream. He takes a bite of his. It’s sickly sweet and absolutely perfect.
“So Sweet Sauce, are you really a douche bag?”
“Yes,” he replies immediately. “But I’m sharing my ice cream.”
“And your sweet sauce, for that matter.”
He considers telling her he’ll share a different kind of sweet sauce with her but decides against it.
“If I have a nickname you should have a nickname.”
She doesn’t reply. He looks her up and down, his eyes settling on her white shorts that must only be just longer than her underwear.
“Partypants.”
She follows his eyes. “They’re called hot pants.”
“Yeah, but my nickname has alliteration. I wanted you to match.”
She laughs and steals some of his ice cream. He can’t believe how good she is at catching him off guard. He can’t believe how quickly she finished her bowl.
“You downed that ice cream pretty quick. You sure you’re not high too?”
“Probably from the fumes still radiating off of you.”
“Didn’t your mother teach you if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all?”
“This coming from the infamous Greg House?”
He glances around to make sure no one heard. “Shut up. My name’s Sweet Sauce.”
She looks at him. He’s not comfortable under her studying stare.
“It’s just nice to get away from the legend for a while, okay? Leave me alone, Partypants.”
“Don’t worry, as soon as everyone finds out who you are, as soon as you start acting like the legend, I’m not going to want to be anywhere near you. If you’re anything like they say, Sweet Sauce, you’re definitely not my type.”
He’s a little hurt by that and hopes he’s not like they say.
But later that week people figure out who he is and he falls into his role of brilliant asshole and doesn’t see her for months.
---
“Don’t even think about lighting that, Sweet Sauce. I want to know what you’re like when you’re sober.”
“I think I’ve had a little too much alcohol to be considered sober,” he calls back without looking at her, trying to put weight back into his body. He heard her voice and his heart got light and his stomach did a somersault. It’s so teenage he wants to be disgusted, but then she’s next to him and he doesn’t think about it anymore.
“Haven’t seen you in a while,” he says.
“You got all legendary. I told you you wouldn’t be my type,” she takes a drag off a cigarette and looks perfect.
“And yet, you’re here.”
He steals the cigarette from her hand to have a taste.
“Aren’t you going to be a doctor?” she asks. “Shouldn’t you know better?”
“Aren’t you?”
She shrugs and takes another drag. “I show up at parties where people are already too drunk to mind that I’m not the stubborn, annoyingly ambitious doctor wannabe.”
He breathes in the smoke she breathes out and it somehow doesn’t feel like tobacco. Their shoulders brush together as they lean against the porch railing. He wants to smile.
“I show up at parties where people are too drunk to mind that I’m not really the legend, and I hope you show up so I’m your type again.”
She laughs, her dark brown curls bouncing behind her. “I never said you were my type to begin with-I just said as a legend, you weren’t.”
“I don’t think you have a type,” he turns around and leans against the railing, watching her.
“Because you know me so well.”
He doesn’t really get it, how she can seem this way. She seems so much older than he is. She seems brilliant and mysterious and experienced in the ways his best friends’ moms used to seem. She isn’t that old, clearly, but she does seem older, though he knows he has about four years on her. Four years is a long time at that age-she’s somewhere around 18 while he’s 22. But she has him confused and interested in a way that’s far beyond her years.
“You wanna get out of here?” she asks.
He’s honestly a little disappointed. He doesn’t want her to do this, doesn’t want her to be like the other girls, to lose her mystery.
He follows her anyway, and she hardly is like the other girls.
Half an hour later and they are not half naked in one of their apartments, not half naked in the nearest privacy they can find. No, they’re on a playground, fully clothed, and she’s swinging.
He’s standing just out of the reach of her feet as she flies back and forth past him. He can see their breath.
“You should swing.”
“I think I’m a little too old for swinging.”
“I think anyone who has that attitude has a bad outlook on life. That’s like saying you’re too old to climb trees.”
He chuckles. “I’d agree with that statement too.”
“Hm. Guess you’re not even my type when you’re not being the legend.”
Fuck. And he doesn’t want to hop on the swing like some lovesick teenager trying to prove that he is her type, but he does want to be her type. He wants to know what her type is.
“How is swinging your type?” he asks, then arches an eyebrow when he realizes what he said.
She rolls her eyes at him. “Seriously, Greg, get on the fucking swing.”
It’s the first time she’s ever called him Greg, he realizes. He ducks her feet and gets on the swing next to her. His legs are longer, and he’s soon swinging higher and faster than she is. He hates to admit it, but it’s exhilarating.
“See?” she says without asking him how he likes it. “It’s good. You’re not too old for it.”
He doesn’t reply. He can’t think of anything to say.
“I think about sleeping with you, but then I think about people knowing I’ve slept with you, and it doesn’t sound so appealing.”
He actually laughs at this; he doesn’t know what else to do. How is he supposed to respond to that?
“Who says people would know?”
She stops pumping her legs. “I suppose that’s true. I mean, you do have a big ego, but it could be the girls who spread it about themselves. You don’t share anything with anyone anyway.”
“There were a lot of anys in that sentence.”
She nods, slowing almost completely to a stop.
Is he supposed to try to convince her? He’s not one to turn down sex, but he’s not sure what to do with this.
She takes out another cigarette and he pulls it out of her hand.
“Stop it,” he says. “It’s bad for you and it doesn’t make you cool.”
“Well, you would be the expert in both those things, huh, Sweet Sauce?”
He just looks at her. She’s got the most amazing blue eyes, and he can’t remember the last time he noticed the color of a girl’s eyes.
“There’s something else you should take into account before deciding whether you want to sleep with me,” he says, breaking eye contact and kicking sand over the discarded cigarette.
She brushes the sand away and picks it up. “Don’t litter.”
“You’re not one night stand material.”
She looks at him again and he’s never had so much trouble keeping eye contact.
“You’re saying you want a relationship?”
“I’m saying I couldn’t fuck you once and leave you. You interest me.”
“I thought the only things that interested Greg House were medical mysteries.”
“Who says you’re not a mystery?”
They end up kissing hard. It’s a little uncomfortable because they’re both still in their swings, twisting to reach lips and tongues and skin. He’s not sure who’s in control and it’s the first time he hasn’t overpowered a girl in as long as he can remember. She’s the one who pulls away.
“Not tonight,” she whispers, and heads off, stopping at a trashcan to pull the pack of cigarettes out of her pocket and dump it in.
He doesn’t follow her.
---
It’s only the next weekend and they’re at the same party again.
She tugs on his sleeve on the way out, and this time he follows her.
This time there’s an apartment, no playground, no swing sets. She hasn’t said anything since they left the party but she’s unlocking her door and his pupils are dilating. She’s wearing tight, dark jeans and boots that aren’t made for Michigan winters. She has a black jacket pulled over a bright red shirt, but her cheeks are still flushed with the cold. He rubs warmth back into his ears and follows her inside.
She doesn’t turn on any lights.
Her hand finds his as they stand just inside her dark apartment. He brushes his thumb over the back of her hand. She shivers.
“You don’t have heat?” his voice shatters their silence.
“I’m a poor college student.”
“It’s too easy to say we could make our own.”
“And yet, that’s the plan.”
And she kisses him.
Skin on skin is so much hotter. He thinks of physics class and specific heat. And then he can’t think anymore but it’s still science, all friction and magnetism and sweat glands. They come together like their bodies’ responses-something they can’t consciously control and yet it runs completely smoothly. His pupils dilate as her shirt comes off; her pulse skyrockets as his hands skim down her sides. Blood gathers in their centers and their arteries constrict. He’s inside her like the epinephrine pumping through their veins and it feels right.
And after, the parasympathetic takes over. Breathing slows, sweat evaporates and it’s cold again. He had a sweatshirt, but it’s suddenly hanging over her bare breasts and past her fingertips.
“I got ice cream.” He can tell she’s grinning even in the dark.
“Sex and dessert? A girl after my own heart.”
“Not so fast, Sweet Sauce. You have to make the topping.”
He groans. “Ah, work? I don’t know.”
“I want my sweet sauce dammit.”
He laughs and cocks an eyebrow at her. “I think you just got it.”
She hits him and rolls out of the bed, her bare feet pattering quietly to the kitchen. He pulls his boxers on and follows. It’s freezing in her apartment, but he’s mixing the caramel and chocolate and real strawberries this time and she’s scooping ice cream. The lights are still off and they’re both still half naked and he has trouble paying attention to the sauce when her legs are bare and smooth next to him, her feet moving like music is playing somewhere. He keeps kissing her and she keeps laughing at him and telling him to focus.
They eat their ice cream, still half naked, sitting cross-legged on her bed, grinning at each other. She drags her finger along his cheek, collecting spills, and licks it.
“That was mine,” he whines.
“You really must learn to share, Sweet Sauce.”
He does eventually. He shares the covers that night. They sleep half naked, legs tangled and he pretends it’s to keep warm. Except they wake up every once in a while almost already kissing, so maybe there are other benefits.
---
Rumors of the girls he’s slept with still fly, but her name is never mentioned. She thinks it’s rather funny, as he spends every night at her place. He’s already getting an absurd amount of sex, but she supposes the rumors might be true. Maybe he really is getting a little afternoon delight from Sarah Cochran.
Except he’s starting to complain to her-“That girl’s an Amazon-how does anyone really believe I’d want that?”-it’s not a declaration of love, but she thinks it’s as close as he’s ever come to one.
Winter fades ever so slowly into spring, as it always does in Michigan. The groundhog dives back into his hole-there’s still five inches on the ground February 2; they expect much more than six weeks of winter. Eventually the lack of heating doesn’t matter, though he’ll never admit he misses huddling for warmth.
April comes and people are talking about finals. He helps her study as he lazily plays the keyboard he brought over-“It’s not a baby grand, but I need something.”-but she doesn’t much need his help when she’s got a brain and an ambition like she does. He likes to tell her that he probably pulls her exam grade from a 98 to a 99. She blushes and generally ignores him. Finals week he makes her coffee at two a.m. and she doesn’t thank him-“Why haven’t you been studying? Don’t you have exams?” she snaps instead. He just looks at her and she apologizes and he convinces her to give up for the night. Instead he explains gene sequencing as he plays Bach on her back, easing out the muscles. Ten minutes later he has every muscle in her body clenched and she’s so easy tonight.
“When are you going home?” she asks after her third final-which she swears she failed.
“I got an apartment,” he’s looking in the fridge, not at her. “I’m doing research in Bodie’s lab.”
She gives him the half-giggle from the night they met. He eyes her, still leaning into the cool air of the refrigerator.
“What?”
“I’m doing research in Bodie’s lab.”
He throws her a grin over his shoulder and grabs the milk. “A new lab to have sex in. One more checked of the list.”
She laughs, throwing a dishtowel at him. “So presumptuous.”
But of course they do have sex there. They have sex everywhere that summer. The privacy without 20,000 students is amazing. Though there are a few others doing research, so when school starts in the fall everyone knows. The rumors of other girls stop and she doesn’t get the wolf-whistles and bad pick-up lines she used to.
They live in his apartment for the year. He’s got a real piano and he plays her anything he can think of. He makes her come to Beethoven and Mozart and a few originals. She still can only play Chopsticks.
---
When he leaves for his residency the next spring, he tells her he loves her. She pulls out a cigarette.
“For old time’s sake.”
They smoke it together and she kisses him until they can’t taste the tobacco anymore.
She doesn’t say I love you back.
He rides off on a motorcycle, all his possessions-save the piano being shipped-in his sidecar. It isn’t until he gets to Chicago that he discovers the chocolate, caramel and strawberry topping she buried in his bag.