Unprotected: 1
Title: Unprotected
Pairing, Characters: House/Cuddy established. The DDX team.
Warning: Explicit content in some chapters. It is always safe to assume some angst. References to child abuse in this chapter.
Summary: This one asks the question, what would the sharkverse House and Cuddy relationship be, without sex?
Comments welcome.
She was pulling a soft, clean sheet up over him and pressing her lips against his forehead.
She whispered his name, and from the strange place between dreams and wakefulness he felt a smile turn the corners of his mouth.
The bed dipped under her weight, and the fragrance of her conditioner, something woodsy, wafted near. House liked that. She had some odd compulsion that made her match the scents of her moisturizer and her soaps and bubble baths and hair products. He sometimes switched one of the bottles out, replacing Lavender lotion with Summer Grapefruit, Shea Blossom shampoo with Burnt Vanilla, to ensure that the way she smelled, like everything else about her, was complex, unique, something only he’d be able to categorize. If this annoyed her, she’d decided to put up with it; he liked that, too.
“House? Do you think you can keep some toast down?”
He grunted and turned toward the sound. One of her hands fanned over his bare chest. House had caressed and measured and massaged those hands, dainty and deft, embedded them into his long-term memory. The angle of her wrist, the hollow space between her scaphoid and the pad of her thumb, the fine bones of the phlanges, the crooked little scar on the inside of her left ring finger, the heft of her ring there, the tiny knob on her third finger formed by the way she gripped her pencil.
He’d memorized her handwriting, too, and the sharp, precise motions of her signature. There was a Catholic penmanship teacher somewhere in her past, whose influence even years of bureaucratic abuse hadn’t eroded into a physician scrawl. It showed in her capital Bs, Rs and Ps.
He opened one eye. “Did you ever wear a school uniform with a short plaid skirt and knee high socks?”
“Good morning to you, too.” Her hair was wet, and he hoped she’d let it air dry. Her natural waves were more like fractal angles than curls.
He sat up and accepted the four pills she proffered, ignoring the glass of cold water. She fussed with a coaster and put it on the bedside table.
“This,” he pronounced, settling back on the pillows she’d plopped down beside him, “sucks. And I mean that in the strictest metaphorical sense.”
“Gosh, it’s been ten days, and somehow that pun hasn’t gotten old yet,” she said sarcastically. “Should I reset the alarm for 9:30?”
“Give me half an hour and I’ll come in with you.” He clutched his abdomen. It felt like his stomach had been staple-gunned to his spine.
She hesitated, guilt crossing her face. “House, rest,” she commanded pleadingly.
“I will, at the hospital.”
“You were up for three hours before dawn this morning.”
He grappled with his thigh, positioning it over the edge of the bed. “And except for the fact that I spent two of them in the bathroom, this differs from my usual routine, how?”
She backed off. “Okay. I’ll go get Rachel ready.”
They took her vehicle; she didn’t fuss with helping him into it, although when he leaned with his hands on the passenger seat and took two deep breaths through a wave of nausea, it was plain that she thought about it.
“Is your starter still busted, House?” Rachel asked.
“You could say that,” Cuddy replied sardonically.
“Actually, the starter’s never been better. It’s the alternator that’s out of adjustment,” he contradicted.
Rachel didn’t see the miffed look her mother shot at him. Cuddy hated automotive metaphors. “What’s that do, House?” she chirped.
House observed Cuddy’s hand on the stickshift, the way her skirt rode up her thigh as she put it into reverse, focussing on the tight straight cords of her neck as she looked behind her. He couldn't look away from the competence of her movements as she backed out, her hand curved against the back of his seat.
She caught him eyeing her hungrily, and pressed her lips together, her eyes fixed on his. A spark passed between them and flared out. After a beat she dipped her head, a strand of wavy hair obscuring the plane of her cheekbone, and moved fluidly into traffic.
“It converts mechanical energy, from a magnetic field, into electrical,” House answered Rachel, not looking away from Cuddy. She was wearing a boxy jacket and a dark, high-necked blouse, but femininity came off her with such force that he felt as though he’d been hit by a Girly Grenade. “To keep the battery charged when the engine is running.”
“That’s very important,” Rachel said with authority.
“Damn skippy it is, Fang.”
“You really need to talk to Foreman,” she admonished, as she put on her signal to turn into PPTH’s lot.
“About my alternator?” he leered.
“Shut up,” she grumbled half-heartedly. “About the side effects of your meds. Why are you tripling up on the PEPs?”
“Oh, Cuddy, for God’s sake be a doctor.” He did not want to fight about this, or anything else, this morning. It took too much effort.
“I am,” she insisted. She pulled into his space in front of the hospital. Both of her hands gripped the steering wheel, her knuckles hard little stones against the rich soft leather. “And while we’re on the topic, what is it with you and that old jalopy of yours anyway?”
House lashed out, “It’s my car!”
“It’s an oil-drinking, broken down piece of crap,” she smiled dismissively. “Why don’t you quit trying to prove what a master mechanic you are and just get a decent car?”
“I drove that car to the golf course that day. Stacy left it there and they impounded it. Three months later she was talking about getting me a cripplemobile equipped with hand controls and I went in and claimed it and paid the storage fees and I drove it home. Because it’s my fucking car.”
He snatched up his pack, slammed the door behind him, and did not slow down or look back.
Up until the moment when Miss July told him to go fuck himself, House considered it to be, on the whole, a good and righteous day. He’d cut no member of his team, the nursing staff, the medical school student body, or the health-seeking public a single iota of slack; and he’d managed to avoid Cuddy, Wilson, and vomiting.
The potted plant sailing toward his head presented a bit of a distraction.
“I totally didn’t mean to do that,” Miss July sniffled sullenly, as a maintenance worker swept up the remains of what had been (oh, irony!) a peace lily.
“Accidents happen,” Maintenance Dude said. He patted her arm and produced a kleenex.
“Mmm hmmm. But next time aim better,” the fourth floor charge nurse suggested mildly, looking pointedly at House’s skull.
Chase and Foreman came out of the patient’s room, muttering about the patient’s third crisis in as many hours. “Where were we, before I was so rudely - and ineffectively -- assaulted?” House asked.
“We’ve got three theories.” Taub summarized. “The treatment for any one of which could be fatal. You were in the process of bullying April into deciding on a course of treatment by rolling a die.”
Chase jammed his hands into the pocket of his lab coat. “That amounts to aiming a gun which has two bullets in the chamber at the patient.”
“And making me pull the trigger,” Townsend finished resentfully. Maintenance Dude picked up one of the broken flowers on the floor and handed it to her, and she smiled weakly at him.
“Actually it amounts to picking up a weapon with one bullet in the chamber and aiming at an assassin who wants to kill the patient!” House yelled.
“Would y’all mind not using gunshot metaphors?” Shaeffer asked sharply.
“Do you mind not being a complete idiot?”
“And do you all mind, keeping your voices down?” Cuddy approached, murder in her eye. She looked at the broken pot and then at House. “That’s coming out of your paycheck.”
“Or my life insurance settlement.”
Her face turned to stone. “Take this differential somewhere private, Doctors,” she bit off. “Now.” With the ‘wait until you get home tonight’ look that had preceded the worst ass-blisterings he ever got from John House, she stalked off.
He walked right past Kristen as though she didn’t exist. Cuddy was twisting a rubber band as she sat at her desk, staring into space.
“Good work,” she said. In his head, House heard the sound of a belt being slipped from its loops and smacked against a heavy calloused palm.
“Credit to Townsend,” he said, and sat down across from her, waiting for the torture to start. “It was the fungus on the roots of that plant, increasing their surface area, that gave me the idea.”
“Speaking of Townsend, why are you terrorizing the poor girl this week?”
“She and the patient were getting … interested, in each other.”
“April’s healthy, young, intelligent, attractive, and just neurotic enough to be funny. Why shouldn’t she interest someone, and be interested in him? You still think she can’t care about the patient and be a good doctor?”
“As it happens, I know she can’t. Turns out, when she did the background check she found something about the guy’s identity, about where he came from, and kept it to herself, and that delayed the diagnosis.”
It would be interesting to see what Cuddy came up with for punishment, now that clinic duty was off the table and they weren’t having sex. Dinner with her mother, maybe, or some gawdawful medical student thing. He might even have to attend graduation, or fuck, a party. House groaned inwardly.
“What did she find out? He’s in the witness protection program?” She frowned skeptically. “On the run from the mafia?”
Nah, he decided, Cuddy wouldn’t dare put him in front of anyone she cared about impressing right now.
“Yeah, because if you want to hide from the mob, you should definitely move to New Jersey. Just drop it, Cuddy. Can we get to the ball-busting part of this conversation, now? Just yell at me about what a selfish bastard I am, tell me you wish you didn’t love me, throw all my problems and damages in my face, and sentence me to a million hours of boring paperwork and get it over with, already.”
She looked shocked and hurt, but she didn’t do any of those things. She did something much worse.
“I miss you,” she said, and she started to cry.
House’s bearing on her, on reality itself, took an odd turn.
“I’m right here,” he offered numbly.
“No you aren’t.” Her chin wavered and she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, smearing mascara everywhere. “I want to talk to my friend, House, my partner, the selfish bastard, about how scared I am. But he’s not taking my calls.”
“I’m right here.” He could not discern if this was standard-issue woman insanity, or Cuddy’s unique brand of crazy. The woman was addicted to stomach acid; when she couldn’t find something to stress about, that stressed her out. “You’re being ridiculous. The odds -“
“I swear on my life, House, if you quote statistics I will raffle off the chance to kill you.” She actually lowered her head into her hands, then, heaving great gasping sobs while he looked on helplessly.
This went on for so long that House was genuinely concerned she might dehydrate herself. He shifted in his chair, trying to decide how to get up and get her a glass of water without upsetting her more - if it was even possible to upset her any more.
When she finally looked up, the fury pouring off her was a welcome relief, like being pounded into the sand by an ocean wave on a hot day.
“What are the chances, House, that a man who’s never been sick a day in his life, an athlete in the prime of his life, will get a muscle cramp while golfing one afternoon and never walk unassisted again? What are the odds of that, do you think?
“What are the odds of lung flukes, House? Brain parasites? Sleeping sickness, Plummers Disease, Milroy’s, of a person having thirteen spleens, or porital cancer, any of the other things that you pull out of that medical search engine you call a brain at least once a month? What are those probabilities, huh, House?”
“Cuddy,” he started carefully, his guts twisting. “Lisa.”
“Don’t try to tell me the unlikely won’t happen, you son of a bitch! You live the unlikely! For God’s sake, a person of your IQ happens once out of every ten thousand births, you are the unlikely, and you goddamned well know that. If you can’t just be scared like a human being, you can at least be here for me because I am, AND I HAVE EVERY RIGHT TO BE!”
“Okay,” he conceded hastily. “Be insane. Be stupid. Live in terror of something you can’t control. Be my guest.” His entire arm participated in the sweeping gesture. “But if you want me to give you what you need, you’re going to have to spell it out for me, because I honestly have no idea what I’m supposed to say or do, here. I don’t want to hurt you. I want to do -- be -- the right thing, for you, I just do not have a clue what that is or how to be it.”
“You really don’t, do you?” She hiccupped miserably.
“Sorry.” House felt so exasperated and useless, for a second, he thought he might cry himself. “I wish I wasn’t such an idiot.”
“Me too.” Cuddy opened her desk drawer and pulled out a kleenex. She wiped her eyes and nose and straightened her shoulders. “Okay, then,” she said with a stiff nod. “I guess I’ll have to teach you. Emotionally Present and Supportive 101, coming up. First lesson, after dinner tonight.”
“Thank you.” The air left his lungs, and he got shakily to his feet. "I'll need to stop off at the auto-parts mart on the way home."
“Whatever. And House.”
"Yeah?" He was thinking about electrical current regulation, and the claw-pole field generators. The oppositely charged, interlocked, poles, twined together like the fingers of two hands, energized by a single winding source.
Opposites attract. Then they fight a lot.
She was all business again. “Get an assistant by the end of this week, or I’ll hire one for you.”
He winked at her. “I’ve missed you, too.”
2: Of ducks, in a row.
Pairing, Characters: House/Cuddy established. The DDX team.
Warning: Explicit content in some chapters. It is always safe to assume some angst. References to child abuse in this chapter.
Summary: This one asks the question, what would the sharkverse House and Cuddy relationship be, without sex?
Comments welcome.
She was pulling a soft, clean sheet up over him and pressing her lips against his forehead.
She whispered his name, and from the strange place between dreams and wakefulness he felt a smile turn the corners of his mouth.
The bed dipped under her weight, and the fragrance of her conditioner, something woodsy, wafted near. House liked that. She had some odd compulsion that made her match the scents of her moisturizer and her soaps and bubble baths and hair products. He sometimes switched one of the bottles out, replacing Lavender lotion with Summer Grapefruit, Shea Blossom shampoo with Burnt Vanilla, to ensure that the way she smelled, like everything else about her, was complex, unique, something only he’d be able to categorize. If this annoyed her, she’d decided to put up with it; he liked that, too.
“House? Do you think you can keep some toast down?”
He grunted and turned toward the sound. One of her hands fanned over his bare chest. House had caressed and measured and massaged those hands, dainty and deft, embedded them into his long-term memory. The angle of her wrist, the hollow space between her scaphoid and the pad of her thumb, the fine bones of the phlanges, the crooked little scar on the inside of her left ring finger, the heft of her ring there, the tiny knob on her third finger formed by the way she gripped her pencil.
He’d memorized her handwriting, too, and the sharp, precise motions of her signature. There was a Catholic penmanship teacher somewhere in her past, whose influence even years of bureaucratic abuse hadn’t eroded into a physician scrawl. It showed in her capital Bs, Rs and Ps.
He opened one eye. “Did you ever wear a school uniform with a short plaid skirt and knee high socks?”
“Good morning to you, too.” Her hair was wet, and he hoped she’d let it air dry. Her natural waves were more like fractal angles than curls.
He sat up and accepted the four pills she proffered, ignoring the glass of cold water. She fussed with a coaster and put it on the bedside table.
“This,” he pronounced, settling back on the pillows she’d plopped down beside him, “sucks. And I mean that in the strictest metaphorical sense.”
“Gosh, it’s been ten days, and somehow that pun hasn’t gotten old yet,” she said sarcastically. “Should I reset the alarm for 9:30?”
“Give me half an hour and I’ll come in with you.” He clutched his abdomen. It felt like his stomach had been staple-gunned to his spine.
She hesitated, guilt crossing her face. “House, rest,” she commanded pleadingly.
“I will, at the hospital.”
“You were up for three hours before dawn this morning.”
He grappled with his thigh, positioning it over the edge of the bed. “And except for the fact that I spent two of them in the bathroom, this differs from my usual routine, how?”
She backed off. “Okay. I’ll go get Rachel ready.”
They took her vehicle; she didn’t fuss with helping him into it, although when he leaned with his hands on the passenger seat and took two deep breaths through a wave of nausea, it was plain that she thought about it.
“Is your starter still busted, House?” Rachel asked.
“You could say that,” Cuddy replied sardonically.
“Actually, the starter’s never been better. It’s the alternator that’s out of adjustment,” he contradicted.
Rachel didn’t see the miffed look her mother shot at him. Cuddy hated automotive metaphors. “What’s that do, House?” she chirped.
House observed Cuddy’s hand on the stickshift, the way her skirt rode up her thigh as she put it into reverse, focussing on the tight straight cords of her neck as she looked behind her. He couldn't look away from the competence of her movements as she backed out, her hand curved against the back of his seat.
She caught him eyeing her hungrily, and pressed her lips together, her eyes fixed on his. A spark passed between them and flared out. After a beat she dipped her head, a strand of wavy hair obscuring the plane of her cheekbone, and moved fluidly into traffic.
“It converts mechanical energy, from a magnetic field, into electrical,” House answered Rachel, not looking away from Cuddy. She was wearing a boxy jacket and a dark, high-necked blouse, but femininity came off her with such force that he felt as though he’d been hit by a Girly Grenade. “To keep the battery charged when the engine is running.”
“That’s very important,” Rachel said with authority.
“Damn skippy it is, Fang.”
“You really need to talk to Foreman,” she admonished, as she put on her signal to turn into PPTH’s lot.
“About my alternator?” he leered.
“Shut up,” she grumbled half-heartedly. “About the side effects of your meds. Why are you tripling up on the PEPs?”
“Oh, Cuddy, for God’s sake be a doctor.” He did not want to fight about this, or anything else, this morning. It took too much effort.
“I am,” she insisted. She pulled into his space in front of the hospital. Both of her hands gripped the steering wheel, her knuckles hard little stones against the rich soft leather. “And while we’re on the topic, what is it with you and that old jalopy of yours anyway?”
House lashed out, “It’s my car!”
“It’s an oil-drinking, broken down piece of crap,” she smiled dismissively. “Why don’t you quit trying to prove what a master mechanic you are and just get a decent car?”
“I drove that car to the golf course that day. Stacy left it there and they impounded it. Three months later she was talking about getting me a cripplemobile equipped with hand controls and I went in and claimed it and paid the storage fees and I drove it home. Because it’s my fucking car.”
He snatched up his pack, slammed the door behind him, and did not slow down or look back.
Up until the moment when Miss July told him to go fuck himself, House considered it to be, on the whole, a good and righteous day. He’d cut no member of his team, the nursing staff, the medical school student body, or the health-seeking public a single iota of slack; and he’d managed to avoid Cuddy, Wilson, and vomiting.
The potted plant sailing toward his head presented a bit of a distraction.
“I totally didn’t mean to do that,” Miss July sniffled sullenly, as a maintenance worker swept up the remains of what had been (oh, irony!) a peace lily.
“Accidents happen,” Maintenance Dude said. He patted her arm and produced a kleenex.
“Mmm hmmm. But next time aim better,” the fourth floor charge nurse suggested mildly, looking pointedly at House’s skull.
Chase and Foreman came out of the patient’s room, muttering about the patient’s third crisis in as many hours. “Where were we, before I was so rudely - and ineffectively -- assaulted?” House asked.
“We’ve got three theories.” Taub summarized. “The treatment for any one of which could be fatal. You were in the process of bullying April into deciding on a course of treatment by rolling a die.”
Chase jammed his hands into the pocket of his lab coat. “That amounts to aiming a gun which has two bullets in the chamber at the patient.”
“And making me pull the trigger,” Townsend finished resentfully. Maintenance Dude picked up one of the broken flowers on the floor and handed it to her, and she smiled weakly at him.
“Actually it amounts to picking up a weapon with one bullet in the chamber and aiming at an assassin who wants to kill the patient!” House yelled.
“Would y’all mind not using gunshot metaphors?” Shaeffer asked sharply.
“Do you mind not being a complete idiot?”
“And do you all mind, keeping your voices down?” Cuddy approached, murder in her eye. She looked at the broken pot and then at House. “That’s coming out of your paycheck.”
“Or my life insurance settlement.”
Her face turned to stone. “Take this differential somewhere private, Doctors,” she bit off. “Now.” With the ‘wait until you get home tonight’ look that had preceded the worst ass-blisterings he ever got from John House, she stalked off.
He walked right past Kristen as though she didn’t exist. Cuddy was twisting a rubber band as she sat at her desk, staring into space.
“Good work,” she said. In his head, House heard the sound of a belt being slipped from its loops and smacked against a heavy calloused palm.
“Credit to Townsend,” he said, and sat down across from her, waiting for the torture to start. “It was the fungus on the roots of that plant, increasing their surface area, that gave me the idea.”
“Speaking of Townsend, why are you terrorizing the poor girl this week?”
“She and the patient were getting … interested, in each other.”
“April’s healthy, young, intelligent, attractive, and just neurotic enough to be funny. Why shouldn’t she interest someone, and be interested in him? You still think she can’t care about the patient and be a good doctor?”
“As it happens, I know she can’t. Turns out, when she did the background check she found something about the guy’s identity, about where he came from, and kept it to herself, and that delayed the diagnosis.”
It would be interesting to see what Cuddy came up with for punishment, now that clinic duty was off the table and they weren’t having sex. Dinner with her mother, maybe, or some gawdawful medical student thing. He might even have to attend graduation, or fuck, a party. House groaned inwardly.
“What did she find out? He’s in the witness protection program?” She frowned skeptically. “On the run from the mafia?”
Nah, he decided, Cuddy wouldn’t dare put him in front of anyone she cared about impressing right now.
“Yeah, because if you want to hide from the mob, you should definitely move to New Jersey. Just drop it, Cuddy. Can we get to the ball-busting part of this conversation, now? Just yell at me about what a selfish bastard I am, tell me you wish you didn’t love me, throw all my problems and damages in my face, and sentence me to a million hours of boring paperwork and get it over with, already.”
She looked shocked and hurt, but she didn’t do any of those things. She did something much worse.
“I miss you,” she said, and she started to cry.
House’s bearing on her, on reality itself, took an odd turn.
“I’m right here,” he offered numbly.
“No you aren’t.” Her chin wavered and she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, smearing mascara everywhere. “I want to talk to my friend, House, my partner, the selfish bastard, about how scared I am. But he’s not taking my calls.”
“I’m right here.” He could not discern if this was standard-issue woman insanity, or Cuddy’s unique brand of crazy. The woman was addicted to stomach acid; when she couldn’t find something to stress about, that stressed her out. “You’re being ridiculous. The odds -“
“I swear on my life, House, if you quote statistics I will raffle off the chance to kill you.” She actually lowered her head into her hands, then, heaving great gasping sobs while he looked on helplessly.
This went on for so long that House was genuinely concerned she might dehydrate herself. He shifted in his chair, trying to decide how to get up and get her a glass of water without upsetting her more - if it was even possible to upset her any more.
When she finally looked up, the fury pouring off her was a welcome relief, like being pounded into the sand by an ocean wave on a hot day.
“What are the chances, House, that a man who’s never been sick a day in his life, an athlete in the prime of his life, will get a muscle cramp while golfing one afternoon and never walk unassisted again? What are the odds of that, do you think?
“What are the odds of lung flukes, House? Brain parasites? Sleeping sickness, Plummers Disease, Milroy’s, of a person having thirteen spleens, or porital cancer, any of the other things that you pull out of that medical search engine you call a brain at least once a month? What are those probabilities, huh, House?”
“Cuddy,” he started carefully, his guts twisting. “Lisa.”
“Don’t try to tell me the unlikely won’t happen, you son of a bitch! You live the unlikely! For God’s sake, a person of your IQ happens once out of every ten thousand births, you are the unlikely, and you goddamned well know that. If you can’t just be scared like a human being, you can at least be here for me because I am, AND I HAVE EVERY RIGHT TO BE!”
“Okay,” he conceded hastily. “Be insane. Be stupid. Live in terror of something you can’t control. Be my guest.” His entire arm participated in the sweeping gesture. “But if you want me to give you what you need, you’re going to have to spell it out for me, because I honestly have no idea what I’m supposed to say or do, here. I don’t want to hurt you. I want to do -- be -- the right thing, for you, I just do not have a clue what that is or how to be it.”
“You really don’t, do you?” She hiccupped miserably.
“Sorry.” House felt so exasperated and useless, for a second, he thought he might cry himself. “I wish I wasn’t such an idiot.”
“Me too.” Cuddy opened her desk drawer and pulled out a kleenex. She wiped her eyes and nose and straightened her shoulders. “Okay, then,” she said with a stiff nod. “I guess I’ll have to teach you. Emotionally Present and Supportive 101, coming up. First lesson, after dinner tonight.”
“Thank you.” The air left his lungs, and he got shakily to his feet. "I'll need to stop off at the auto-parts mart on the way home."
“Whatever. And House.”
"Yeah?" He was thinking about electrical current regulation, and the claw-pole field generators. The oppositely charged, interlocked, poles, twined together like the fingers of two hands, energized by a single winding source.
Opposites attract. Then they fight a lot.
She was all business again. “Get an assistant by the end of this week, or I’ll hire one for you.”
He winked at her. “I’ve missed you, too.”
2: Of ducks, in a row.