Fault Lines, Chapter 7
Title: Fault Lines, chapter 7/8
Fandom: House, MD
Pairing: House/Cuddy, Wilson friendship
Warnings: Explicit content.
Summary: Post-season 6, continuation of “Coming to Terms.”
Disclaimer: Seriously? You do know I am not David Shore, right?
Criticism, reviews, suggestions, questions welcomed.
Several hours after tucking a nude and slightly drunken Cuddy into bed, House unlaced his fingers from hers, cautiously skimmed his hands over her shoulders and hip, kissed her elbow and crawled out of bed, undressing and putting on his pajamas in the dark.
This, another milestone, in a week of them: the first night they would spend together without having sex.
House had not predicted that the only part of sleeping with her that would not be easy and natural, would be the actual sleeping part. Subjecting a woman with a brutal schedule and a toddler to his insomnia and, to phrase it nicely, challenging, habits probably qualified as abuse.
He fully expected her to be asleep when he came back an hour later, but she sat up the moment he entered her bedroom.
“Hey,” she said. Light from the bathroom striped over the bed and exalted her breasts.
“Hey. How are you feeling?”
“Kind of relaxed and satisfied. But kind of unsure of myself too.”
“You?” The idea made him uncomfortable. “You weren’t that drunk.”
“Sexually, I mean. You’re doing most of the work, you seem to know exactly what you’re doing, you always do, and I’m not that experienced.”
He’d suspected for some time that she hadn’t had many generous partners, or many partners at all. “You might be a little more drunk than I thought. Neither of us is experienced,” he said. “Fortunately we can do something about that.” In contrast to the equal facts, that he was deformed, screwed-up and not a little handicapped; there was nothing to be done for any of that.
She touched her breasts, pinching the nipple between her fingers as she licked her lips, and he realized that maybe it wasn't time to scratch that "sleeping without sex" milestone off the list, yet. He stared at her, pulled his t-shirt over his head and crumpled clumsily down onto the bed, and she had scrambled to her knees by the time he reached it, her hands finding the elastic of his pajamas. Between them, they had him stripped in no time at all, and she slid her hand down his abdomen, caressing the inside of his thighs. Her thumbs brushed the heavy sac of his testicles.
He pulled his attention out of the spin cycle and lifted her hand to his cock, guiding her over the head, down the shaft, and she spontaneously rnoved her fingers to the thicket of hair at the base. Humiliated, but determined, he asked her for help, and together they spread his thighs, and she moved to kneel between them.
She pursed her lips, and kissed him there, and he made what he hoped were encouraging noises and focused on not falling apart. He moved his hand to her head and pushed her hair aside so he could see her face, and she opened her lips and took him into her mouth. His good thigh went rigid at the same time his brain caught fire, and he arched up off the mattress, moving deeper into the heat of her mouth as she wrapped her left hand around him.
She increased the suction holding him captive, and he tugged a little frantically on her hair in his hand, and his heart dropped in dread. He’d caught the thrilled look gleaming in her eyes, demure drop of her lashes notwithstanding, when she realized her instant and complete dominion over him, and it did not bode well.
Just when he was about to lose it, she released him, sat back on her knees between his legs, and stared at him. “You’re beautiful,” she lied, her breasts shadowed and erect. His own laugh surprised him; he’d been unaware of any air still remaining in his lungs.
She fell forward on her hands and licked her way up his body, until he grabbed her and hauled her forward by the back of her neck, much too roughly. She pressed herself against his chest, wrapping the small muscles of her arms around his neck, planted hungry kisses against his throat and his chest, and with a kick, he was holding her down onto the mattress, wanting nothing more than to be deep inside her.
He knew his leg was going to murder him for this, but he kept it hot and fast and the tension that had knotted through his mind and body all night, all the damned weekend, began to abate. She raked her hands over his back and surged her hips up into him, the wet heat at the core of her meeting his need for release, for escape, measure for measure. He failed to hold off, and he sighed his shamed apology into her neck.
“Greg.” Her voice was soft and husky, muted into his chest.
“I love you,” she said. And just like that, the tension was back with a vengeance.
Rachel wasn’t old enough yet to be told, let alone understand, that the only acceptable excuse for interrupting her mother’s shower or sleep involved bleeding or fire. House could hardly blame the kid; he woke up several times a night, too, and if he were incarcerated in a confined space with nothing but a mobile and a Busy Bears quilt to stare at, he’d wail just as loudly.
“You’re like a wolf,” he said down to the baby. “Only attacking when the prey is weak and exhausted. Or has soap in its eyes.”
“Up?” she asked hopefully.
“It’s traditional to sleep in on the Monday of a long weekend, you know.” He lowered the bars of the crib, and dealt with her diaper. The miracle of polymer: it weighed three pounds, but the kid was dry. “No respecter of conventions, are you, Fang?”
“No.”
“Why am I not surprised. Fortunately for your mom, my leg isn’t either.” Holding onto the crib with one hand, he picked her up with his other arm and crouched down until her feet hit the floor. “Do you want food? As of two hours ago, my patient’s not getting any deader, so I have time to make pancakes.”
“No.”
“All righty then. More for me.”
After breakfast he took Rachel, whose incoherent babbling was even easier to tune out than Wilson’s, into the next room and supervised as she climbed up onto a chair, cuddling a doll.
At any given time he had twenty to fifty resumes on file. Cuddy never had been able to clarify how any person who couldn’t properly interpret “is not accepting applications,” right beneath his name on the PPTH faculty website - or possibly even read it -- was worth his time, but he kept them, mostly to keep her from having yet another thing to yell at him about. He’d never looked at them until last night.
Procrastinating, and pushing away some unexamined anxiety, he sorted them again, moving aside all the ones with a specialty in neurology, surgery, nephrology, oncology, or infectious disease; between his team and Wilson he had that territory well covered. From these, he eliminated all the males; there were advantages in the way that certain patients interacted with or revealed themselves to women and not to men, that he could scarcely afford to not exploit.
Unable to avoid the task any longer, he spread the remaining ones out on the coffee table.
There were thirteen of them.
He hated symbolism. Irony. Foreshadowing, whatever the hell it was.
He yawned. It didn’t make sense that sharing a pillow (metaphorically only: the woman didn’t share pillows; she stole them, along with blankets and sheets, and on one irritating occasion that had baffled them both, his left sock) for the four to six hours per night the leg allowed him to be prone and resting, would be as intimate and complex as having sex, but as he explained to Rachel:
“Sometimes, you’re so busy looking over your shoulder at the forest sneaking up behind you, you let yourself get sideswiped by a tree. How about I just pick one of these randomly and get it over with?”
She pouted. “No.”
“Why not? They’re all idiots; the only choice here is the year, make and model of idiot.”
“No.”
“Keep that up, and you’re going to make Wilson obsolete.”
“Momma!” With an enthusiastic squeal, Rachel dropped the doll on its head and tottered over to her mother.
“I just fed you!” House faked outrage. “Jeez, Fang, I know she outranks me, but do you have to rub it in?”
“Who was on the phone?” Cuddy, her arms full of squirming child, was dressed and made up and curled and primped and looking very well laid. And a little dehydrated.
Wishing she’d been able to get at least a little more sleep, he picked up the resumes and stacked them. “Time of death was three a.m. We’ll have to go in to the hospital on your day off and make statements to the district attorney or somebody. Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize; you didn’t commit the assault this time, you just diagnosed it.”
“You need some cysteine and juice?”
“I’m not hung over,” she said, sounding hung over. “And considering what Mrs Bolton died of, I kind of feel it would be insensitive of me to be taking anti-alcohol drugs today anyway.”
“That’s stupid.”
“Isn’t it? But I can’t help it. Chalk it up to my guilt complex.”
“I can hook up an IV of C for you at the hospital.”
“Doctor House, that would be an unauthorized use of hospital resources.”
“No one’s going to be there.”
“I’m going to be there.”
“You’re so right, Doctor Cuddy; I don’t know what I was thinking, using a hospital resource to treat someone who’s feeling sick. Now that I’m dating the dean, I can never abuse hospital resources that way again; people - people with calculators -- might talk. And they might say you can’t keep your man in line.”
“Oh, they might, but ultimately there is no denying the truth: I control you with my magic vagina.” She sighed. “I guess I’ll have to take Rachel in with me.”
“Taub will be in for a couple of hours. Have him watch her while you’re busy. Or call Wilson and drag him in. He’s on your shit list, and he’d probably jump at the chance to get away from Sam.”
“Speaking of abuse of resources. Lunch?”
“I have to talk to the police.”
“I meant after that.”
“So do I. The guy who beat Lucas up was brought into the ER this morning with a gunshot wound. DOA.”
“Oh my God, they don’t think Lucas,”
House was shaking his head. “Of course not. Probably the guy’s wife. But Lucas, who had a little insight on why someone might want to kill this guy, and who that someone might be, just had to go and be all helpful. He gave them my name, and they’ll want to confirm where he’s been for the last couple of days.”
“So let me see if I have this straight: you’re a witness to two separate spouse-killings, on the same day? In Princeton? Seriously? House, that’s…”
“Some kind of sign, you think?” House took her hand and looked up into her eyes. “Let’s not get married.”
“I’d be delighted to not marry you. And I’ll take that cysteine now.”
“Doctor Wilson slept on a couch last night,” Taub said.
House looked up from his reading. After he wrote out his statement and explained the diagnosis in very small words, speaking very slowly, several times, to the nice law enforcement people, he’d taken his stuff down to Cuddy’s office and turned off his phone, to let Cuddy deal with them and whatever else. Rachel wasn’t fussy, but just about everyone in surgery, oncology, and the ER were fussy; they kept calling Cuddy or coming in to interrupt Rachel’s nap or break House’s concentration with their little problems, and it was either pawn Rachel off on Wilson and hide out down here in the cafeteria until they all went home, or go slam someone’s hand repeatedly in a car door.
“He’s been massaging his neck.” Taub put down his tray and slid into the seat across from House. “Not rubbing it, the way he does when he’s frustrated - usually during conversation with you - but massaging it.”
“Sometimes, I forget why I hired you.”
Taub unfolded his napkin.
“Now, being one of those times,” House added.
Implacable as ever, Taub pointed to the stack of resumes. “Are you … replacing Thirteen?”
“Thirteen is an employee of this hospital and a member of my team until I say she’s not,” House replied evenly. It sounded just a little bit rehearsed. “I’m being … pro-active.”
“You’ve never done that before. Does this have anything to do with your dating Cuddy?”
“God damn it,” House growled, and put his hands over his face. “How did you know?”
“My wife told me.”
“Seriously?” House was having the damnedest weekend of his entire life. “Your wife doesn’t know who you’re sleeping with, but she knows who I’m sleeping with?”
“I had a conversation with Thirteen.”
“About my sex life? No wonder your marriage is not a thing to buy shares in.”
House rolled his shoulders uncomfortably. He always hated the process of reading resumes, and he always hated discussing his personal life, but he was deliberately hating everything he could find to hate right now in order to avoid hating Huntington’s Chorea.
“This conversation was about Cuddy’s sex life,” Taub said. “This was when she was still dating Lucas. Chase had expressed some curiosity about why women like Cuddy -- who theoretically, being attractive intelligent and accomplished, could date anyone she chose -- settle for schmucks.”
“And you, of course, being an expert on that.”
Taub grimaced a smile at him. “And Thirteen said that Cuddy couldn’t actually exercise as much choice as it might seem, because most men are intimidated by her level of power and intelligence. Basically, she believes that half the human race are insecure and the other half are superficial.”
“She is very cynical, really, for one so young,” House agreed sardonically. Something pinged at him internally at the word “young.”
“I discussed this argument with my wife.”
“Not that I am actually interested in the way your mind works,” House said carefully, and cradled his face with one hand, “but how did you get from Thirteen’s politically correct feminazi crap to me doing the boss?”
“My wife agreed with Thirteen, and elaborated that the few men who are as bright and successful as Cuddy is aren’t intimidated by her, but they aren’t available, either, because they live their careers and have no use for relationships. When Cuddy broke off her engagement to the schmuck, I put ‘impossible to intimidate’ and ‘has no use for relationships’ together, and I naturally thought of you.”
“Naturally. That’s what’s painted on women’s bathroom walls all over the Mid-Atlantic region: ‘for an impossible to intimidate time, call Greg.’”
“And my hypothesis was confirmed two weeks later when I saw you and Cuddy together at Vees Thai. Why are you looking through resumes, if you aren’t planning on filling Thirteen’s place on the team?”
“I saw a notation on Cuddy’s calendar. It was in plain sight, right there under her insurance claims, in the bottom drawer of her desk. ‘SC for DDX’”
“Cryptic. SC meaning, Sam Carr. Wilson’s live-in girlfriend. That would appear to be an easy argument for you to win.”
“It’s an argument I will win,” House emphasized. “But it’s also an argument I would prefer not to have.”
House was just beginning to think that the day, one in a string of them full of death and shadows and tightrope-walking and worry, would never end, when finally, it did. He tossed the last used cortisol syringe into an empty milk jug and sank down into a chair - his chair, in his living room - with all the starch drained out of his spine.
“Big weekend for you, “ Lucas said, straightening up and rubbing the injection site. Exhaustion and stress had given his skin a grayish tinge. “Are we going to talk about the elephant in the living room, now?”
“Nope.”
“The way I see it,” Lucas said, talking about it anyway, “Is, if Sam hadn’t flirted with Wilson, Wilson would not have booted you to the curb, and Cuddy would not have had the opportunity to see you disintegrate and put yourself back together, or whatever the hell you did at that accident site, and I’d still be with her.”
House gathered this was not the first time the hooker had heard this theory. She didn’t seem to find it wholly plausible. Or in fact, all that interesting.
“Now, I know there’s no way to reverse it, because it’s reached, what do they call it, terminal velocity, but personally,” Lucas went on, “I blame Sam for all this. From now on, as far as I’m concerned, all elephants in all living rooms everywhere, are Sam’s.”
“I can’t argue with your logic. Now go home and get some rest.”
House slipped the hooker an extra hundred; she kissed him on the cheek as she left, then came back a few seconds later and tucked a business card into his pocket.
“Pretty sure I won’t be needing this,” he said.
“For James,” she said. “I'm pretty sure he will.”
Shaking his head, he put the card in his desk drawer.
He’d just finished putting clean sheets on the bed when Cuddy called from her car, on her way home.
“I love you,” she said, and she sounded tired and sweet. “Please go home.”
“Already one step ahead of you, Beautiful.” With a happy sigh, he dropped, spread-eagled, onto the bed, and he was glad she couldn’t see the warm grin on his face and tease him about it. “Any time you need me to stop living with you, I’m there for you.”
Chapter 8