Fic: Four Times Lisa Cuddy Woke Up Beside Gregory House, and One Time She Didn't (House/Cuddy)
Title. Four Times Lisa Cuddy Woke Up Beside Gregory House, and One Time She Didn't
Author. trisana_mcgraw
Pairing. House/Cuddy under- and overtones abound.
Rating. heavy PG-13 for one part.
Word count. 3970
Spoilers. 3x09 "Finding Judas"
Author’s note. Had to speculate quite a bit on dates, but I was helped along by nekocatmanga's nifty House/Wilson timeline. The quotations can be attributed to, respectively, Robert Herrick, Ovid, Elizabeth Bishop, Dylan Thomas, and Joseph Conrad. This is only my second Housefic, and my first foray into both the “five things” style and Huddy, so any and all concrit is definitely welcome!
-- --- --
that age is best which is the first
3 February 1986
“Psst.” A pencil’s eraser end jabbed her shoulder. “Hey.” Another poke. “Pssst.” Suddenly, a sharp point pierced her skin, and Lisa shot up with a yelp. She whipped her head around in mild panic, but none of the students in her immediate vicinity seemed to have even noticed the disturbance.
“Hey, over here.” Rubbing her arm, Lisa slowly turned to her right. Brandishing a newly-sharpened pencil and a tight, mocking smile was Gregory House. Lisa took in her breath sharply, which only made his smile widen. Great, now not only did he see her embarrassment at being caught sleeping, but he also knew that she recognized him (then again, who hadn’t heard of the arrogant doctor-in-training who’d been kicked out of Hopkins for cheating?), and if the stories were any indicator, it’d only provide more fodder for his already-enormous ego.
“I didn’t realize Pokray was so engaging.” Greg smirked. “I’m sure he lives for students like you, sitting on the edge of your seat, hanging on his every word.”
“Plenty of people sleep through lectures,” Lisa retorted under her breath, nonetheless fluffing up the back of her hair so she wouldn’t look quite so accountable.
“But you want to be top of the class,” Greg responded without taking his eyes off Doctor Pokray, who continued to lecture on female bone density. “Told me so at the party last week.”
Her expression was mystified enough to warrant his attention, because next thing she knew he had slid those blue eyes over and locked them on hers - well, more appropriately, her cleavage, but she didn’t have the energy to call him on it right now. “What party?” she asked instead.
“Carver’s, in Bursley.” His eyes suddenly widened to saucer-size, and he hissed, complete with puppy-dog whine, “Are you saying that you don’t remember our night together?”
A few students glanced her way, snickering, and her cheeks flamed; but to her credit, she didn’t duck her head, and she noticed that Greg’s expression was tinged with appraisal.
“We didn’t sleep together,” she said in a quiet and even voice, ready to add thank God, but her traitor brain, only taking in those arms and those eyes, supplied too bad instead, and she bit her lip.
He didn’t even notice her pause. “Like I said, Lisa Cuddy wants -“
“I rated high enough for you to remember my name?” she asked despite herself, genuinely surprised.
“Bored me to tears with your twenty-year plan, but those two kept me interested.” He spoke this into her cleavage; she tightened her sweater, rolling her eyes. He grudgingly lifted his gaze back to hers. “Like I said, Lisa Cuddy wants to be top of her class. So, I’m guessing you probably don’t want to be known as the pretty girl who dozed off in Intro to the Female Anatomy.”
“Thanks for the advice,” she snapped. “Is that what you sat down next to me for?”
“Nope.” He was twirling the pencil between his fingers like a drumstick. “I need notes for the beginning of this semester. I hear Pokray lays it on thick in the first week.”
“What, too busy staring at girls’ breasts to take notes?”
This earned her a short laugh. “No, although if you keep treating us to tops like that one, there’ll be no need for notes.” She started to get to her feet, but he grabbed her wrist. Shocked, she moved to twist out of his grip, but the uncharacteristic seriousness (she couldn’t say how she recognized it as such) in his face froze her. “I’m a transfer.”
“Mr. House,” Doctor Pokray spoke from the floor; it seemed that even he had heard of Greg. Lisa’s blush deepened as everyone turned to look at them; Greg was still gripping her wrist. “I believe that this class is open only to those who signed up for it on time.”
Lisa’s head whipped around to stare at House. “You’re not even in this class?”
He shrugged. “Why waste my time? I know plenty about the female anatomy…and the male’s too, if the rumors are true.” He winked.
“Get out of here,” Lisa hissed under her breath. (Leave me alone is what she could've-would've-should've said.)
“Mr. House, if you are finished with your little soap opera…?” Pokray prompted tiredly.
“Meet me on the field at eleven, Sweetcheeks,” Greg said with a sugary smile, releasing her wrist and strolling out the auditorium; Lisa could have sworn he was whistling. Suddenly realizing that all eyes were on her, she sank back into her seat, resolutely fixing her eyes on her notes. (She had no way of knowing that this would be the first of numerous occasions that she would be left standing in Gregory House’s wake, and that by the time she had lost count of such occurrences, she would be staring his their audience in the face.)
-
of bodies chang’d to various forms, i sing
15 April 1994
Calloused hands gently peeled the coverlet from her skin; the rising goosebumps on her exposed flesh were quickly covered with warm kisses, but Lisa still shivered as the sensation sent heat slowly spiraling through her limbs. A sing-song “Wakey, wakey” swirled around her ear; when she didn’t immediately respond, the kisses were joined by the slightest graze of teeth - she moaned almost imperceptibly - and a more insistent “Liiisa, wake up - I’ve got rounds in five hours, and there is no way I’m dealing with those idiots if I haven’t had a little something-something to fantasize about when they inevitably ask stupid questions.”
She opened her eyes on pitch black, but when she turned her head to the side she was met with a pair of piercing blue eyes and a smug smile, the only details she could discern in the darkness. The edges of her lips curled upwards, and she murmured, “Never let it be said that you’re not a romantic,” even as she lifted a hand to stroke his chest lazily.
Greg had propped himself up on one arm; he reached out and twined a lock of her curly hair around one long finger. “You should wear your hair like this more often. I don’t know why you straighten it for the hospital.”
She cocked her head, mystified by the non sequitur. “What makes you think I do? You never see me at work.”
“I see you at functions and seminars. And I know that if you went around with your hair like this, you’d already have some guy madly in love with you. You wouldn’t be having one-night-stands with schmucks like me.”
“You’re not a schmuck.”
“I know.” His teeth flashed in the dark. “Wilson’s been helping me brush up on my Yiddish.”
“ ‘Jack of all trades,’” she responded dryly.
“Except that I’m the king, too.” She shook her head, smiling, but didn’t take the bait. “You always wore your hair curly at Michigan. Why don’t you bring back that crazy coed who probably made Girls Gone Wild millions of dollars over one rowdy spring break?” He waggled his eyebrows for emphasis.
“Then why don’t you try going unshaven more often?” she retorted, drawing a finger along the day’s worth of stubble on his chin. “Give people fair warning.”
He grinned. “But where’s the fun in that?”
She regarded him then, all sinewy limbs and tousled dark brown hair and clear blue eyes, and she knew it wouldn’t work out between them, not in the long run. Attentive as he’d proven to be when there was sufficient benefit for him, she couldn’t overlook that most of the time he proved himself to be an arrogant, self-serving jerk, in work and in life. She barely knew the man, but from the stories she’d heard - many of them from his own lips - already she was certain that she wouldn’t have the energy to deal with him on a day-to-day basis.
He didn’t leap to fill the silence like he usually did during their limited encounters; inwardly she marveled at Gregory House’s talent for observation. It was what made him such a brilliant doctor and commanding force. Finally, as she was rooting around in her mind for some light-hearted witticism to alleviate the ever-expanding stillness, he spoke, his words dripping with his trademark sarcasm (though in this setting it was softened somewhat) and the same facetious whine he’d teased her with eight years ago: “You won’t forget me, will you, Doctor Cuddy?”
Lisa laughed out loud, running her tongue over her slightly swollen lips. There was a bump forming on the base of her skull from when he had pressed her into the wall (or maybe she had pulled him flush against her…she couldn’t quite recall who had instigated it). She didn’t have to touch her thigh to feel the stubble burn there. Of course she would remember.
Greg grinned upon seeing her expression, but there was an unexpected tenderness - she knew that if she ever mentioned it, he’d quip about old age and the eyes being the first to go - as he leaned in to kiss her. She let him pull her close, intending to imprint into her memory the coarse hairs on his chest, the defined muscles of his arms. But his kisses were heated and deep, and all too soon she found herself curling her legs around his hips; he groaned and slid his tongue against hers.
She placed a hand on his chest to push him back a centimeter. “Condom,” she reminded him.
He drew back with a sigh. “Damn, you’ve foiled my evil plan to impregnate the future Dean of Medicine at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. Now I’ll never be able to force you to marry me so I can live off your massive wealth and esteem.”
Her lips twisted in a smile. “Assuming I make it to Dean.”
“You’ll get it,” he said dismissively as he leaned over to her bedside table; she took the (final) opportunity to admire the play of muscles beneath skin.
“You planning on ever having any little terrors to inherit the kingdom?” he teased as he rooted through her drawer.
“Of course,” she responded immediately, fighting the urge to laugh at the bizarre turn of their conversation. “But I can’t do both at once. Once I’ve settled in to…to being Dean, then I can think about being a mother. I have plenty of time.”
“Naïveté - how cute.” She swatted him, and he chuckled softly. “You’d make a good mother,” he said after a moment’s pause, voice a little quieter, as he rolled the condom over his length.
She couldn’t help but smile. “Thank you.” Satisfied that the conversation was over, she crawled on top of him, getting a little thrill out of the way his eyes darkened as she closed the space between their bodies. “But why are you and I talking about babies?”
His broad hands smoothed over her ass and trailed up her body, leaving her skin pulsing in their wake. “Why, indeed,” he murmured as he flicked his thumbs over her nipples. She suppressed a shudder and kissed him hungrily; his hand came up to cradle her head, fingers tangling in her hair.
Afterwards she lay with her back pressed against his chest, one of his arms draped around her waist. Greg murmured something appreciative into her shoulder and kissed the soft skin before leaning his head back on the pillow. In a few minutes he was dozing. Lisa closed her eyes, hoping that when she opened them again it would be to her empty bed and not his retreating figure.
-
these are the years and the walls of the ward
7 June 2000
“Dr. Cuddy?”
Lisa’s head snapped up, and she groaned at both the jolt of waking and the immediate dull ache that bloomed in the base of her skull; she had fallen asleep hunched over in a hard-backed chair. Squeezing the back of her neck and blinking the sleep out of her eyes, she turned to the doorway to see who had spoken.
Nurse Previn stood there in her customary pink scrubs, clutching a stack of files in one hand. “How’s he doing?” she asked.
Lisa glanced again at House, but he looked the same as when she had first drifted off hours (?) earlier: skin paler than she had ever seen it due to endless hours confined to this sterile room; hair dark with sweat and matted to his forehead; features contorted with the suffering that she knew in her gut would forever stain the lines of his face. Even in sleep - and she had sneaked a look that one night, years ago - he had never appeared this vulnerable; her gut twisted painfully, reflected in the tightening of her hands on the hem of her lab coat.
“There’s been no change,” she finally answered, swallowing against a throat dry from disuse.
“Where’s his girlfriend?”
“I don’t know,” Lisa answered honestly. She had seen Stacy only briefly; more accurately, Lisa had run into her as the lawyer had been fleeing House’s room, eyes rimmed with tears and the fingers of one hand clutching her crucifix. She had muttered something resembling an apology and that she “couldn’t stand to be here right now,” pushing past Lisa without another word.
Lisa wasn’t quite sure why she had ended up making a nighttime vigil by House’s bedside. Silly as it seemed, she hadn’t wanted him to be alone, though she knew that she’d be the second-most horrendous choice for him to lay eyes on when he awoke; the only thing worse than the lover who ordered your muscles hacked out was the colleague who made the formal decision to cripple you.
Nurse Previn’s normally severe expression had softened a degree. “Do you need anything?”
Lisa’s lips turned downward in a grimace. “No, thank you.” She turned her concentration back to House’s sleeping form. Her attention was immediately yanked back to the doorway a minute later, however, when James Wilson nearly flattened Nurse Previn into the wall in his haste to wrench open the sliding door.
Wilson raced into the room in a flurry of dark, half-open jacket and garish, flapping tie. “How is he?” he panted; before Lisa could even stand or open her mouth, he caught sight of House. “Oh God,” he moaned, rushing to the bedside and reflexively checking House’s stats. Turning away, he scrubbed his face with his hands. “I can’t believe I wasn’t here.”
“Here, James, sit down,” Lisa urged, directing him toward the chair from which she had just risen. Wilson obeyed, at the same time struggling to remove his jacket; he was shaking so badly that Lisa had to stand behind him and pull it off his shoulders.
“Can I get you something to drink?” she asked softly.
He shook his head. “No thank you, I’m fine.” He clasped his hands under his chin and expelled a heavy sigh that made his bangs flutter. “Muscle death. I can’t believe it. He was telling me for days that it hurt, but I thought, it’s House, he’s just bitching about something minor.”
Wilson had been dealing with House’s crap for years. The hospital - her hospital - had no such excuse. They had brushed off his pain based solely on his asshole attitude, leaving him to diagnose his own condition. He always did say he was a better diagnostician than the entire department. The thought should have made her laugh, but instead Lisa felt the beginnings of a shudder uncoil in her shoulders; she gripped the edge of the metal table in order to keep herself still - she feared that if she started to shake, she wouldn’t stop.
His gaze never wavering from House’s prone form, Wilson asked more questions about the infarction and the surgery; Lisa answered him as well as she could, striving for objectivity that was nowhere to be obtained. Finally, his eyes flicked up to hers, and much as she wanted to look away, she was snared. “How much pain is he in?”
“It’s bad,” was all Lisa could supply, feeling her chest constrict guiltily at the fact that she couldn’t even articulate the extent of House’s suffering. But Wilson didn’t regard her with any blame in his eyes; as a doctor, he knew that, barring amputation, it was the best thing she could have done (it would have been better if they’d caught it seventy-two hours earlier…). Yet his acceptance was only an infinitesimal comfort.
Wilson massaged the back of his neck. “Well, you’ve done so much already” - I haven’t done a goddamn thing, Lisa thought miserably - “I’ll take him off your hands.”
Lisa cast a glance at House. She’d never seen him look so old. “Honestly, he hasn’t been that bad.”
Wilson was on his feet, having already slipped into “caretaker” mode (Lisa wondered fleetingly if she had ever actually witnessed that first transformation that must have taken place years earlier). Now he looked over and fixed her with an incredulous stare. “You’ve been spending far too much time with him to say that.”
Actually, throughout the entire ordeal Lisa had been thinking the opposite, that if House were to die she’d possess barely enough evidence to call him a friend. She squeezed her clasped hands together in another impromptu thankyoui’msorryi’lldobetternow. Catholic guilt had nothing on her. “No, he’s just too doped up to be obnoxious,” she responded, succeeding in her attempt at levity with a halfhearted smile. “I don’t know, I kind of like him like this. Maybe we should make it a habit.”
The corner of Wilson’s mouth twitched, but his eyes, trained on House’s slowly rising and falling chest, were still dark with his own inner demons. Lisa touched his elbow gently before quietly making her way from the room, leaving the two of them alone.
-
their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay
10 March 2003
Something hard and blunt nudged her shoulder twice before drifting down to the opening of her blouse; without opening her eyes, Lisa grasped the end of the cane and gave it a light tug.
“Hey,” House protested, sneakers scuffing on the tiled floor. “Don’t make me spill this.” He lifted his left hand, indicating the coffee he carried. Lisa released his cane to grab the Styrofoam cup. Her right arm prickled back to awareness; she had dozed off supporting her head on it. At least, she reflected, they had passed out on the plush chairs; she knew House’s leg wouldn’t have been able to handle anything less forgiving for an entire night. Lifting the coffee close to her face, she gratefully inhaled the heady aroma; it was her favorite, Moroccan Blue. “Thank you.”
“Patient died.”
Lisa choked on her coffee, hissing in pain as some droplets dribbled down her chin. She wiped at the scalded skin with the back of her hand and swallowed a few times before attempting to speak again through her swollen tongue. “House, I’m so sorry.”
He cast her a withering look. “Why are you apologizing to me? You’re gonna have to save that nonsense for his family.”
Lisa set her jaw. “Would it kill you to show a little, oh, I don’t know, care for people?”
His gaze flicked to hers, and it was then that she noticed the purple smudges beneath his eyes. “Stevens is resigning.”
Lisa shelved her earlier rant, genuinely thrown. “And Chase isn’t?”
House’s expression registered momentary confusion; then he must have recalled the name of his own Fellow, because he responded, “Seems not. Guess Daddy’s hand scares him more than a few dead people.”
Lisa pursed her lips in exasperation. “You don’t know -“
“You’re right, beating is so Radio Flyer. Probably left him outside with the wallabies at night. Gotta give the Aussie props, though - he’s only been here a few months, and we haven’t scared him yet. Ah, just give him time - it took Stevens what, two years to break?”
“You’re going to have to hire someone to replace him,” she said, aware even without his long-suffering sigh that she was slipping into boss-mode. “Try looking for an immunologist, so a case like this one doesn’t happen again.”
“Fine. Just no girls that are gonna cry at the first unsolvable puzzle.”
“No, that’s just you,” she retorted, laser-quick, and he smirked. As she stood, feeling an all-too-familiar dread settle into her bones at the prospect of breaking the news to the patient’s family, she suddenly noticed that a lab coat had been tucked over her legs. Surprised, she looked at House again. He shrugged, expression blank. “Not like I use it, anyway.”
She handed it back to him. “Thank you.” She smoothed her hands over the wrinkles in her suit and attempted to finger-comb her hair, a process made easier by its straightened state. “How do I look?”
“Terrible.”
She shook her head and pushed past him to the elevator, her thoughts swimming with Mr. and Mrs. Wallace, I’m so sorry… and the resolute image of a scale in which Life outweighed Death.
-
we live as we dream, alone
25 November 2006
It was the cold that woke her first; even with her windows closed, it seeped through the glass and tiptoed over her exposed skin.
Or maybe it was her dream that had made her sit up with goosebumps: House, strutting around the hospital with chest puffed out on Tuesday, hunched back over his cane mere weeks later. House’s curious (but never cruel) eyes and his warm hand on her behind as he readied the injection. House - No, she wouldn’t go any further. She wasn’t thinking clearly; she was just a mess of hormones, and she didn’t (couldn’t) trust herself to process anything remotely relationship-related right now.
That was her last hazy thought before her world suddenly sharpened and then focused on the wetness seeping from her thighs and the stabbing ache in her uterus. A cry of surprisepainterror escaped her lips, and Lisa nearly threw herself out of the bed; her hand shot out and grabbed the headboard in time, sweaty fingers squeezing the wooden post as she panted, breaths struggling to catch up with her racing heartbeat.
She fumbled for the lamp one-handedly - her other arm had instinctively wrapped itself around her stomach - and a dark voice in the back of her head whispered that if she never moved from this position maybe it wouldn’t be real, maybe she would still be dreaming - but she already knew what she would find.
Yet, even with that unconscious knowledge and the litany of medical facts that began spilling into her brain, she couldn’t stop staring at the blood, stark against her cream sheets; couldn’t tear her gaze away until her vision blurred and her throat ached with unshed tears.
After a few minutes or an eternity, Lisa slowly pushed herself to her feet and stumbled into the bathroom. She wet a washcloth and methodically cleaned between her thighs, but her mind was moving too slowly to catch up, so that after five minutes she was still aimlessly passing the cloth over her skin. She dropped it to the floor without looking at it and padded back into her bedroom.
As she neared the bed, her legs suddenly buckled; the cry she gave as her knees struck the hard ground morphed into a single, pitiful sob that stripped her throat raw. She bent double over the edge of her bed, fingers gripping her soiled lace nightgown, as her wails turned ragged, rising in volume - there was no need to muffle them because, as she was all too keenly reminded, there was no one to hear them.
Author. trisana_mcgraw
Pairing. House/Cuddy under- and overtones abound.
Rating. heavy PG-13 for one part.
Word count. 3970
Spoilers. 3x09 "Finding Judas"
Author’s note. Had to speculate quite a bit on dates, but I was helped along by nekocatmanga's nifty House/Wilson timeline. The quotations can be attributed to, respectively, Robert Herrick, Ovid, Elizabeth Bishop, Dylan Thomas, and Joseph Conrad. This is only my second Housefic, and my first foray into both the “five things” style and Huddy, so any and all concrit is definitely welcome!
-- --- --
that age is best which is the first
3 February 1986
“Psst.” A pencil’s eraser end jabbed her shoulder. “Hey.” Another poke. “Pssst.” Suddenly, a sharp point pierced her skin, and Lisa shot up with a yelp. She whipped her head around in mild panic, but none of the students in her immediate vicinity seemed to have even noticed the disturbance.
“Hey, over here.” Rubbing her arm, Lisa slowly turned to her right. Brandishing a newly-sharpened pencil and a tight, mocking smile was Gregory House. Lisa took in her breath sharply, which only made his smile widen. Great, now not only did he see her embarrassment at being caught sleeping, but he also knew that she recognized him (then again, who hadn’t heard of the arrogant doctor-in-training who’d been kicked out of Hopkins for cheating?), and if the stories were any indicator, it’d only provide more fodder for his already-enormous ego.
“I didn’t realize Pokray was so engaging.” Greg smirked. “I’m sure he lives for students like you, sitting on the edge of your seat, hanging on his every word.”
“Plenty of people sleep through lectures,” Lisa retorted under her breath, nonetheless fluffing up the back of her hair so she wouldn’t look quite so accountable.
“But you want to be top of the class,” Greg responded without taking his eyes off Doctor Pokray, who continued to lecture on female bone density. “Told me so at the party last week.”
Her expression was mystified enough to warrant his attention, because next thing she knew he had slid those blue eyes over and locked them on hers - well, more appropriately, her cleavage, but she didn’t have the energy to call him on it right now. “What party?” she asked instead.
“Carver’s, in Bursley.” His eyes suddenly widened to saucer-size, and he hissed, complete with puppy-dog whine, “Are you saying that you don’t remember our night together?”
A few students glanced her way, snickering, and her cheeks flamed; but to her credit, she didn’t duck her head, and she noticed that Greg’s expression was tinged with appraisal.
“We didn’t sleep together,” she said in a quiet and even voice, ready to add thank God, but her traitor brain, only taking in those arms and those eyes, supplied too bad instead, and she bit her lip.
He didn’t even notice her pause. “Like I said, Lisa Cuddy wants -“
“I rated high enough for you to remember my name?” she asked despite herself, genuinely surprised.
“Bored me to tears with your twenty-year plan, but those two kept me interested.” He spoke this into her cleavage; she tightened her sweater, rolling her eyes. He grudgingly lifted his gaze back to hers. “Like I said, Lisa Cuddy wants to be top of her class. So, I’m guessing you probably don’t want to be known as the pretty girl who dozed off in Intro to the Female Anatomy.”
“Thanks for the advice,” she snapped. “Is that what you sat down next to me for?”
“Nope.” He was twirling the pencil between his fingers like a drumstick. “I need notes for the beginning of this semester. I hear Pokray lays it on thick in the first week.”
“What, too busy staring at girls’ breasts to take notes?”
This earned her a short laugh. “No, although if you keep treating us to tops like that one, there’ll be no need for notes.” She started to get to her feet, but he grabbed her wrist. Shocked, she moved to twist out of his grip, but the uncharacteristic seriousness (she couldn’t say how she recognized it as such) in his face froze her. “I’m a transfer.”
“Mr. House,” Doctor Pokray spoke from the floor; it seemed that even he had heard of Greg. Lisa’s blush deepened as everyone turned to look at them; Greg was still gripping her wrist. “I believe that this class is open only to those who signed up for it on time.”
Lisa’s head whipped around to stare at House. “You’re not even in this class?”
He shrugged. “Why waste my time? I know plenty about the female anatomy…and the male’s too, if the rumors are true.” He winked.
“Get out of here,” Lisa hissed under her breath. (Leave me alone is what she could've-would've-should've said.)
“Mr. House, if you are finished with your little soap opera…?” Pokray prompted tiredly.
“Meet me on the field at eleven, Sweetcheeks,” Greg said with a sugary smile, releasing her wrist and strolling out the auditorium; Lisa could have sworn he was whistling. Suddenly realizing that all eyes were on her, she sank back into her seat, resolutely fixing her eyes on her notes. (She had no way of knowing that this would be the first of numerous occasions that she would be left standing in Gregory House’s wake, and that by the time she had lost count of such occurrences, she would be staring his their audience in the face.)
-
of bodies chang’d to various forms, i sing
15 April 1994
Calloused hands gently peeled the coverlet from her skin; the rising goosebumps on her exposed flesh were quickly covered with warm kisses, but Lisa still shivered as the sensation sent heat slowly spiraling through her limbs. A sing-song “Wakey, wakey” swirled around her ear; when she didn’t immediately respond, the kisses were joined by the slightest graze of teeth - she moaned almost imperceptibly - and a more insistent “Liiisa, wake up - I’ve got rounds in five hours, and there is no way I’m dealing with those idiots if I haven’t had a little something-something to fantasize about when they inevitably ask stupid questions.”
She opened her eyes on pitch black, but when she turned her head to the side she was met with a pair of piercing blue eyes and a smug smile, the only details she could discern in the darkness. The edges of her lips curled upwards, and she murmured, “Never let it be said that you’re not a romantic,” even as she lifted a hand to stroke his chest lazily.
Greg had propped himself up on one arm; he reached out and twined a lock of her curly hair around one long finger. “You should wear your hair like this more often. I don’t know why you straighten it for the hospital.”
She cocked her head, mystified by the non sequitur. “What makes you think I do? You never see me at work.”
“I see you at functions and seminars. And I know that if you went around with your hair like this, you’d already have some guy madly in love with you. You wouldn’t be having one-night-stands with schmucks like me.”
“You’re not a schmuck.”
“I know.” His teeth flashed in the dark. “Wilson’s been helping me brush up on my Yiddish.”
“ ‘Jack of all trades,’” she responded dryly.
“Except that I’m the king, too.” She shook her head, smiling, but didn’t take the bait. “You always wore your hair curly at Michigan. Why don’t you bring back that crazy coed who probably made Girls Gone Wild millions of dollars over one rowdy spring break?” He waggled his eyebrows for emphasis.
“Then why don’t you try going unshaven more often?” she retorted, drawing a finger along the day’s worth of stubble on his chin. “Give people fair warning.”
He grinned. “But where’s the fun in that?”
She regarded him then, all sinewy limbs and tousled dark brown hair and clear blue eyes, and she knew it wouldn’t work out between them, not in the long run. Attentive as he’d proven to be when there was sufficient benefit for him, she couldn’t overlook that most of the time he proved himself to be an arrogant, self-serving jerk, in work and in life. She barely knew the man, but from the stories she’d heard - many of them from his own lips - already she was certain that she wouldn’t have the energy to deal with him on a day-to-day basis.
He didn’t leap to fill the silence like he usually did during their limited encounters; inwardly she marveled at Gregory House’s talent for observation. It was what made him such a brilliant doctor and commanding force. Finally, as she was rooting around in her mind for some light-hearted witticism to alleviate the ever-expanding stillness, he spoke, his words dripping with his trademark sarcasm (though in this setting it was softened somewhat) and the same facetious whine he’d teased her with eight years ago: “You won’t forget me, will you, Doctor Cuddy?”
Lisa laughed out loud, running her tongue over her slightly swollen lips. There was a bump forming on the base of her skull from when he had pressed her into the wall (or maybe she had pulled him flush against her…she couldn’t quite recall who had instigated it). She didn’t have to touch her thigh to feel the stubble burn there. Of course she would remember.
Greg grinned upon seeing her expression, but there was an unexpected tenderness - she knew that if she ever mentioned it, he’d quip about old age and the eyes being the first to go - as he leaned in to kiss her. She let him pull her close, intending to imprint into her memory the coarse hairs on his chest, the defined muscles of his arms. But his kisses were heated and deep, and all too soon she found herself curling her legs around his hips; he groaned and slid his tongue against hers.
She placed a hand on his chest to push him back a centimeter. “Condom,” she reminded him.
He drew back with a sigh. “Damn, you’ve foiled my evil plan to impregnate the future Dean of Medicine at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. Now I’ll never be able to force you to marry me so I can live off your massive wealth and esteem.”
Her lips twisted in a smile. “Assuming I make it to Dean.”
“You’ll get it,” he said dismissively as he leaned over to her bedside table; she took the (final) opportunity to admire the play of muscles beneath skin.
“You planning on ever having any little terrors to inherit the kingdom?” he teased as he rooted through her drawer.
“Of course,” she responded immediately, fighting the urge to laugh at the bizarre turn of their conversation. “But I can’t do both at once. Once I’ve settled in to…to being Dean, then I can think about being a mother. I have plenty of time.”
“Naïveté - how cute.” She swatted him, and he chuckled softly. “You’d make a good mother,” he said after a moment’s pause, voice a little quieter, as he rolled the condom over his length.
She couldn’t help but smile. “Thank you.” Satisfied that the conversation was over, she crawled on top of him, getting a little thrill out of the way his eyes darkened as she closed the space between their bodies. “But why are you and I talking about babies?”
His broad hands smoothed over her ass and trailed up her body, leaving her skin pulsing in their wake. “Why, indeed,” he murmured as he flicked his thumbs over her nipples. She suppressed a shudder and kissed him hungrily; his hand came up to cradle her head, fingers tangling in her hair.
Afterwards she lay with her back pressed against his chest, one of his arms draped around her waist. Greg murmured something appreciative into her shoulder and kissed the soft skin before leaning his head back on the pillow. In a few minutes he was dozing. Lisa closed her eyes, hoping that when she opened them again it would be to her empty bed and not his retreating figure.
-
these are the years and the walls of the ward
7 June 2000
“Dr. Cuddy?”
Lisa’s head snapped up, and she groaned at both the jolt of waking and the immediate dull ache that bloomed in the base of her skull; she had fallen asleep hunched over in a hard-backed chair. Squeezing the back of her neck and blinking the sleep out of her eyes, she turned to the doorway to see who had spoken.
Nurse Previn stood there in her customary pink scrubs, clutching a stack of files in one hand. “How’s he doing?” she asked.
Lisa glanced again at House, but he looked the same as when she had first drifted off hours (?) earlier: skin paler than she had ever seen it due to endless hours confined to this sterile room; hair dark with sweat and matted to his forehead; features contorted with the suffering that she knew in her gut would forever stain the lines of his face. Even in sleep - and she had sneaked a look that one night, years ago - he had never appeared this vulnerable; her gut twisted painfully, reflected in the tightening of her hands on the hem of her lab coat.
“There’s been no change,” she finally answered, swallowing against a throat dry from disuse.
“Where’s his girlfriend?”
“I don’t know,” Lisa answered honestly. She had seen Stacy only briefly; more accurately, Lisa had run into her as the lawyer had been fleeing House’s room, eyes rimmed with tears and the fingers of one hand clutching her crucifix. She had muttered something resembling an apology and that she “couldn’t stand to be here right now,” pushing past Lisa without another word.
Lisa wasn’t quite sure why she had ended up making a nighttime vigil by House’s bedside. Silly as it seemed, she hadn’t wanted him to be alone, though she knew that she’d be the second-most horrendous choice for him to lay eyes on when he awoke; the only thing worse than the lover who ordered your muscles hacked out was the colleague who made the formal decision to cripple you.
Nurse Previn’s normally severe expression had softened a degree. “Do you need anything?”
Lisa’s lips turned downward in a grimace. “No, thank you.” She turned her concentration back to House’s sleeping form. Her attention was immediately yanked back to the doorway a minute later, however, when James Wilson nearly flattened Nurse Previn into the wall in his haste to wrench open the sliding door.
Wilson raced into the room in a flurry of dark, half-open jacket and garish, flapping tie. “How is he?” he panted; before Lisa could even stand or open her mouth, he caught sight of House. “Oh God,” he moaned, rushing to the bedside and reflexively checking House’s stats. Turning away, he scrubbed his face with his hands. “I can’t believe I wasn’t here.”
“Here, James, sit down,” Lisa urged, directing him toward the chair from which she had just risen. Wilson obeyed, at the same time struggling to remove his jacket; he was shaking so badly that Lisa had to stand behind him and pull it off his shoulders.
“Can I get you something to drink?” she asked softly.
He shook his head. “No thank you, I’m fine.” He clasped his hands under his chin and expelled a heavy sigh that made his bangs flutter. “Muscle death. I can’t believe it. He was telling me for days that it hurt, but I thought, it’s House, he’s just bitching about something minor.”
Wilson had been dealing with House’s crap for years. The hospital - her hospital - had no such excuse. They had brushed off his pain based solely on his asshole attitude, leaving him to diagnose his own condition. He always did say he was a better diagnostician than the entire department. The thought should have made her laugh, but instead Lisa felt the beginnings of a shudder uncoil in her shoulders; she gripped the edge of the metal table in order to keep herself still - she feared that if she started to shake, she wouldn’t stop.
His gaze never wavering from House’s prone form, Wilson asked more questions about the infarction and the surgery; Lisa answered him as well as she could, striving for objectivity that was nowhere to be obtained. Finally, his eyes flicked up to hers, and much as she wanted to look away, she was snared. “How much pain is he in?”
“It’s bad,” was all Lisa could supply, feeling her chest constrict guiltily at the fact that she couldn’t even articulate the extent of House’s suffering. But Wilson didn’t regard her with any blame in his eyes; as a doctor, he knew that, barring amputation, it was the best thing she could have done (it would have been better if they’d caught it seventy-two hours earlier…). Yet his acceptance was only an infinitesimal comfort.
Wilson massaged the back of his neck. “Well, you’ve done so much already” - I haven’t done a goddamn thing, Lisa thought miserably - “I’ll take him off your hands.”
Lisa cast a glance at House. She’d never seen him look so old. “Honestly, he hasn’t been that bad.”
Wilson was on his feet, having already slipped into “caretaker” mode (Lisa wondered fleetingly if she had ever actually witnessed that first transformation that must have taken place years earlier). Now he looked over and fixed her with an incredulous stare. “You’ve been spending far too much time with him to say that.”
Actually, throughout the entire ordeal Lisa had been thinking the opposite, that if House were to die she’d possess barely enough evidence to call him a friend. She squeezed her clasped hands together in another impromptu thankyoui’msorryi’lldobetternow. Catholic guilt had nothing on her. “No, he’s just too doped up to be obnoxious,” she responded, succeeding in her attempt at levity with a halfhearted smile. “I don’t know, I kind of like him like this. Maybe we should make it a habit.”
The corner of Wilson’s mouth twitched, but his eyes, trained on House’s slowly rising and falling chest, were still dark with his own inner demons. Lisa touched his elbow gently before quietly making her way from the room, leaving the two of them alone.
-
their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay
10 March 2003
Something hard and blunt nudged her shoulder twice before drifting down to the opening of her blouse; without opening her eyes, Lisa grasped the end of the cane and gave it a light tug.
“Hey,” House protested, sneakers scuffing on the tiled floor. “Don’t make me spill this.” He lifted his left hand, indicating the coffee he carried. Lisa released his cane to grab the Styrofoam cup. Her right arm prickled back to awareness; she had dozed off supporting her head on it. At least, she reflected, they had passed out on the plush chairs; she knew House’s leg wouldn’t have been able to handle anything less forgiving for an entire night. Lifting the coffee close to her face, she gratefully inhaled the heady aroma; it was her favorite, Moroccan Blue. “Thank you.”
“Patient died.”
Lisa choked on her coffee, hissing in pain as some droplets dribbled down her chin. She wiped at the scalded skin with the back of her hand and swallowed a few times before attempting to speak again through her swollen tongue. “House, I’m so sorry.”
He cast her a withering look. “Why are you apologizing to me? You’re gonna have to save that nonsense for his family.”
Lisa set her jaw. “Would it kill you to show a little, oh, I don’t know, care for people?”
His gaze flicked to hers, and it was then that she noticed the purple smudges beneath his eyes. “Stevens is resigning.”
Lisa shelved her earlier rant, genuinely thrown. “And Chase isn’t?”
House’s expression registered momentary confusion; then he must have recalled the name of his own Fellow, because he responded, “Seems not. Guess Daddy’s hand scares him more than a few dead people.”
Lisa pursed her lips in exasperation. “You don’t know -“
“You’re right, beating is so Radio Flyer. Probably left him outside with the wallabies at night. Gotta give the Aussie props, though - he’s only been here a few months, and we haven’t scared him yet. Ah, just give him time - it took Stevens what, two years to break?”
“You’re going to have to hire someone to replace him,” she said, aware even without his long-suffering sigh that she was slipping into boss-mode. “Try looking for an immunologist, so a case like this one doesn’t happen again.”
“Fine. Just no girls that are gonna cry at the first unsolvable puzzle.”
“No, that’s just you,” she retorted, laser-quick, and he smirked. As she stood, feeling an all-too-familiar dread settle into her bones at the prospect of breaking the news to the patient’s family, she suddenly noticed that a lab coat had been tucked over her legs. Surprised, she looked at House again. He shrugged, expression blank. “Not like I use it, anyway.”
She handed it back to him. “Thank you.” She smoothed her hands over the wrinkles in her suit and attempted to finger-comb her hair, a process made easier by its straightened state. “How do I look?”
“Terrible.”
She shook her head and pushed past him to the elevator, her thoughts swimming with Mr. and Mrs. Wallace, I’m so sorry… and the resolute image of a scale in which Life outweighed Death.
-
we live as we dream, alone
25 November 2006
It was the cold that woke her first; even with her windows closed, it seeped through the glass and tiptoed over her exposed skin.
Or maybe it was her dream that had made her sit up with goosebumps: House, strutting around the hospital with chest puffed out on Tuesday, hunched back over his cane mere weeks later. House’s curious (but never cruel) eyes and his warm hand on her behind as he readied the injection. House - No, she wouldn’t go any further. She wasn’t thinking clearly; she was just a mess of hormones, and she didn’t (couldn’t) trust herself to process anything remotely relationship-related right now.
That was her last hazy thought before her world suddenly sharpened and then focused on the wetness seeping from her thighs and the stabbing ache in her uterus. A cry of surprisepainterror escaped her lips, and Lisa nearly threw herself out of the bed; her hand shot out and grabbed the headboard in time, sweaty fingers squeezing the wooden post as she panted, breaths struggling to catch up with her racing heartbeat.
She fumbled for the lamp one-handedly - her other arm had instinctively wrapped itself around her stomach - and a dark voice in the back of her head whispered that if she never moved from this position maybe it wouldn’t be real, maybe she would still be dreaming - but she already knew what she would find.
Yet, even with that unconscious knowledge and the litany of medical facts that began spilling into her brain, she couldn’t stop staring at the blood, stark against her cream sheets; couldn’t tear her gaze away until her vision blurred and her throat ached with unshed tears.
After a few minutes or an eternity, Lisa slowly pushed herself to her feet and stumbled into the bathroom. She wet a washcloth and methodically cleaned between her thighs, but her mind was moving too slowly to catch up, so that after five minutes she was still aimlessly passing the cloth over her skin. She dropped it to the floor without looking at it and padded back into her bedroom.
As she neared the bed, her legs suddenly buckled; the cry she gave as her knees struck the hard ground morphed into a single, pitiful sob that stripped her throat raw. She bent double over the edge of her bed, fingers gripping her soiled lace nightgown, as her wails turned ragged, rising in volume - there was no need to muffle them because, as she was all too keenly reminded, there was no one to hear them.