house_femfest October prompt #55
Title: Winter
Author: Lil (gleam)
Rating: R/possibly NC-17
Pairing: House/Cuddy/Stacy
Prompt: #55 - Cuddy/Stacy/House: atonement, during House's recovery post-infarction.
Notes/Disclaimer: This would probably be considered AU.
The clock on the bedside table read 3:26 a.m. and Lisa knew she had to get out of there. It had been impossible for the past two hours from her precarious position between House’s masculine warmth and Stacy’s feminine slightness. But over the course of their slumber House had rolled onto his back, breathing deeply with the contentment of a child and Stacy had curled herself up tightly away from them both, her dark hair spread across the pillow. So Lisa had the perfect moment to slip out and away, and she knew she had to take it.
Carefully unwinding herself from the tangle of blankets Lisa crawled to the foot of the bed and stood, gathering her clothes from where they lay scattered about the room. During the two hours she had waited for her way out she had mentally noted the exact location of every article of clothing she’d worn, and was thankful it made her escape that much easier.
Five minutes later she was pulling on her jacket and hurrying down the hallway, her shoes in hand so they wouldn’t make telltale noises on the floorboards. House had always preferred his own unique lifestyle but Lisa didn’t want to admire it any more now than she had before. She wanted to get out, home to her own bed where none of the complications of this could follow her.
Of course, it really was her fault. They had been continuing this dance for months, all three of them in a secret, entwined infatuation that she would only call love in the realm of her most secret longings. When she had met and fallen for Gregory House during her undergraduate years in college she had exercised some of the most immature, unprofessional behavior she had remembered doing, and all but hated herself for buying into the lazy, confident speech he probably delivered to any freshman stupid enough to hear it. But that speech had stayed with her, the spiel of his almost abrasive seduction, and he had taken her to his bed that night, murmuring variations on the same words in a more intimate tone, calling her Lise and telling her she was beautiful.
She had felt beautiful then. The night had been beautiful, and when they made love as the sun rose, bathing his skin in a tormenting golden glow, he had been more exquisite than anything she had ever seen before.
But as most college affairs do theirs had ended, though on pleasant enough terms and a simple lack of time to see one another, and Lisa had pushed Gregory House to the back of her mind with high school boyfriends and casual dates she thought of on occasion. From there on her studies were her only relationships, and she filled her free time with casual outings with friends and a date once in awhile that she always ended before it could become more serious.
And when the doors to her sparkling new office in Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital had burst open during her first week of her job there, letting Gregory House walk through the door and back into her life the fragile dam that had been holding back Lisa’s emotions had strained threateningly. She had remained professional and was proud of it, but when she hired him onto her staff the effect of seeing him every day had begun to pour itself into her veins.
When he looked at her liquid heat rushed through her, forcing her heart into telltale palpitations, and it had been months before Lisa had trusted herself to run into him privately without blushing scarlet. He knew it, too, she was certain from the rakish grin that curved his mouth and the way he deliberately stared at her breasts when she spoke to him or undoubtedly at her ass when she left a room.
But nothing had come of it, not for quite some time. Then the infarction happened, and Lisa’s life was turned deliberately upside down, the fear of a day where Gregory House wasn’t in his office to make her life hell so terrifying that it nearly crippled her. She had fired the doctor that didn’t notice the infarction, though no one else knew that was the reason, and taken over House’s care herself without listening to anyone’s objections as to why.
It had been then she and Stacy became closer. They had always been close, engaging in the intimate conversations of girlfriends, sharing drinks, secrets, and the occasional cigarette that Greg never knew about because he’d never let either of them hear the end of it. They had always been friends. And during the darker hours of Greg’s hospitalization, after the surgery had taken place and he was bitterly awaiting recovery, it was Lisa who had gone to Stacy, curling up with her in the bed she shared with House, holding the other woman whose breath reeked of vodka and whose sobs shook her as she cried.
And it was one of those nights of which there had been many when Stacy had turned her face to Lisa’s and kissed her mouth, tasting of cigarettes, alcohol, and an unchecked desperation that would not relent. They had made love that night, not the mindless experimentation of two women and their curiosity but the desperate need of they who could not find what they needed any way other than in each other.
It had been a quiet affair but it had not ended when House was back on his feet, and while Lisa never breathed a word of it to anyone else she knew that he knew by the way he walked into her office. She had stood to ask him just what he wanted and he had bent his head, nudging her chin up with the bristled roughness of his face, kissing the sensitive place behind her ear without another thought. Her breath caught in her throat and while he was unsteady on the newfound step of his cane he had kissed her throat and the flushing curves of her cheeks, not relenting until she had buckled. And her arms had wrapped around his shoulders, he had shoved her back against her desk, and they had taken out years of unrecognized aggression and longing in the span of twenty minutes, breathless and unwilling to make a sound lest they be found out.
The next day Stacy had called her and when Lisa arrived three glasses were poured, the contents of which she still did not know. And House had been watching, his eyes glazed with unrestrained desire as Stacy moved self-assuredly across the room, pulling Lisa’s jacket from her shoulders and parting her lips into a kiss.
They had tumbled into bed, all three of them, and there was no awkwardness as they kissed and touched and explored each other again, every one knowing the touches of the other two but making no sound to stop this from happening. It was a haze of alcohol and sensuality and Lisa only remembered incoherent flashes of memory, the smoothness of Stacy’s inner thigh beneath her tongue, the coarseness of House’s stubble as he buried his face into the swell of her breasts, and later an explosion of sensation as House thrust into her relentlessly, Stacy’s teeth, tongue, and fingertips working somehow at her nipples and between her thighs at her clit all at once. She had slept between them then, Stacy’s arms around her and House pressed against her from behind, his face pillowed in her hair.
But months had passed since then, and though their liaison had continued something had subtly changed in their nights. Lisa had become the target of House’s attentions, Stacy seemingly lost to him even when he kissed her, and the times they actually made love were more and more infrequent. Every time they fell asleep Lisa was in the middle of them, the king sized bed easily fitting to the combined width of their bodies, but she was unable to rest soundly as that growing realization dawned on her.
Whatever was happening between House and Stacy was bad, and Lisa knew she couldn’t remedy it. She wanted to, wanted desperately to make things right. But she couldn’t. It had been Stacy’s call, by law if not by moral right, and because of this House would walk with a limp the rest of his life. But at least he would be living that life. Lisa couldn’t say that she would have done differently had she been in Stacy’s place, but she would never admit that to either Stacy or House. It was hard enough being caught in the middle.
It was worse loving them both.
As Lisa slipped out the front door and into the night she remembered all of this with a stunning rush of clarity, more than she had wanted to recall. Because she did love them both, more than she had ever wanted to admit. It was easy to love House in college and easier to love him now in the cool, reasoning light of their professions and obligations to the lives they had chose to lead. She could love him as a doctor during the day and as a man during the night when he took her into his arms and once again called her Lise, kissing the curve of her throat as his breath caressed her clavicle with a heat that made her shiver. And she could love him with raw desperation when he closed the door to her office in a way that commanded only one thing, one thing that brought her to her feet and him against her, clothes discarded as they made love - it was always making love with House in some sense - in the quiet confinement of her office, answering their personal and unrelenting desires with words that could never be spoken.
But she loved Stacy too, and loving her was easy as well as different. More times than she could count Lisa had stolen into Stacy’s office, thankful it had no windows, and they had come together as they had times before, kissing and caressing with insatiable longing that came from enduring the same known pain. They had both sat by House’s bed, watching him as pain overtook his arrogance and he had been wracked with spasms and screams, bathed his face with cool cloths to ease the tension, and shed countless tears in their own respective states of helplessness that would not go away. They wanted to help, and they couldn’t.
Lisa loved them both. She loved them so dearly, and they no longer loved each other. Their three person affair had broke apart into a dueling combat for her attentions, each trying to hurt the other in an inexplicable way that would leave scars long into uncounted months and years in the future. She knew it, had known it before, and after tonight she had to leave.
Tonight really hadn’t been that much different. Lisa had come to them after work and Stacy had kissed her, cigarettes on her breath once more as she drew her into the bedroom without waiting for confirmation or speech. And House had all but ripped the blouse from her shoulders, kissing a slow trail up her spine because he knew it made her shiver, his warm hands cradling her breasts because he knew she loved that feeling. They had taken her, the both of them, in a torrid rampage of desire and need, but it was as though she was not even there at all. Through her they were screaming at each other, the unspoken words singing through her skin from one’s lips to the other, and when Lisa came again and again she cried out for them both, wanting to sob from sheer helplessness and the onslaught of their pain.
There was no atonement, nor could there ever be. Stacy had made a choice and House would not forgive it. He would continue this course and slowly they would be driven apart, leaving Lisa caught in the middle between the two people she loved most in the world.
And she couldn’t let that happen.
The car door clicked closed behind her and Lisa started the engine, closing her eyes for a moment against the helpless wave of fatigue in her heart. When she looked up at the house once more she saw Stacy at the window, watching her through the glass. Her expression was unreadable save for the sadness in her eyes, and for a terrifying moment Lisa thought she’d turn off the car and run back inside, run back into bed with the both of them and pretend she’d never had any of these thoughts to begin with.
But she couldn’t. Stacy knew that she couldn’t, and that was why she wasn’t stopping her from leaving. Stacy knew that no matter how much they loved each other, no matter how deeply each had come to depend on the other for solace through this time, that it was necessary for it to end. And the time for it to end seemed to be now.
I love you, Lisa whispered in the cold silence of her car, and she knew that Stacy saw the formation of the words on her lips even if she could not hear the words. And when Lisa put the car into reverse and pulled out of House’s driveway into the bitter chill of the winter air’s embrace, she knew Stacy’s eyes were following her as far as possible.
The tears did not come until that time had passed.
Author: Lil (gleam)
Rating: R/possibly NC-17
Pairing: House/Cuddy/Stacy
Prompt: #55 - Cuddy/Stacy/House: atonement, during House's recovery post-infarction.
Notes/Disclaimer: This would probably be considered AU.
The clock on the bedside table read 3:26 a.m. and Lisa knew she had to get out of there. It had been impossible for the past two hours from her precarious position between House’s masculine warmth and Stacy’s feminine slightness. But over the course of their slumber House had rolled onto his back, breathing deeply with the contentment of a child and Stacy had curled herself up tightly away from them both, her dark hair spread across the pillow. So Lisa had the perfect moment to slip out and away, and she knew she had to take it.
Carefully unwinding herself from the tangle of blankets Lisa crawled to the foot of the bed and stood, gathering her clothes from where they lay scattered about the room. During the two hours she had waited for her way out she had mentally noted the exact location of every article of clothing she’d worn, and was thankful it made her escape that much easier.
Five minutes later she was pulling on her jacket and hurrying down the hallway, her shoes in hand so they wouldn’t make telltale noises on the floorboards. House had always preferred his own unique lifestyle but Lisa didn’t want to admire it any more now than she had before. She wanted to get out, home to her own bed where none of the complications of this could follow her.
Of course, it really was her fault. They had been continuing this dance for months, all three of them in a secret, entwined infatuation that she would only call love in the realm of her most secret longings. When she had met and fallen for Gregory House during her undergraduate years in college she had exercised some of the most immature, unprofessional behavior she had remembered doing, and all but hated herself for buying into the lazy, confident speech he probably delivered to any freshman stupid enough to hear it. But that speech had stayed with her, the spiel of his almost abrasive seduction, and he had taken her to his bed that night, murmuring variations on the same words in a more intimate tone, calling her Lise and telling her she was beautiful.
She had felt beautiful then. The night had been beautiful, and when they made love as the sun rose, bathing his skin in a tormenting golden glow, he had been more exquisite than anything she had ever seen before.
But as most college affairs do theirs had ended, though on pleasant enough terms and a simple lack of time to see one another, and Lisa had pushed Gregory House to the back of her mind with high school boyfriends and casual dates she thought of on occasion. From there on her studies were her only relationships, and she filled her free time with casual outings with friends and a date once in awhile that she always ended before it could become more serious.
And when the doors to her sparkling new office in Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital had burst open during her first week of her job there, letting Gregory House walk through the door and back into her life the fragile dam that had been holding back Lisa’s emotions had strained threateningly. She had remained professional and was proud of it, but when she hired him onto her staff the effect of seeing him every day had begun to pour itself into her veins.
When he looked at her liquid heat rushed through her, forcing her heart into telltale palpitations, and it had been months before Lisa had trusted herself to run into him privately without blushing scarlet. He knew it, too, she was certain from the rakish grin that curved his mouth and the way he deliberately stared at her breasts when she spoke to him or undoubtedly at her ass when she left a room.
But nothing had come of it, not for quite some time. Then the infarction happened, and Lisa’s life was turned deliberately upside down, the fear of a day where Gregory House wasn’t in his office to make her life hell so terrifying that it nearly crippled her. She had fired the doctor that didn’t notice the infarction, though no one else knew that was the reason, and taken over House’s care herself without listening to anyone’s objections as to why.
It had been then she and Stacy became closer. They had always been close, engaging in the intimate conversations of girlfriends, sharing drinks, secrets, and the occasional cigarette that Greg never knew about because he’d never let either of them hear the end of it. They had always been friends. And during the darker hours of Greg’s hospitalization, after the surgery had taken place and he was bitterly awaiting recovery, it was Lisa who had gone to Stacy, curling up with her in the bed she shared with House, holding the other woman whose breath reeked of vodka and whose sobs shook her as she cried.
And it was one of those nights of which there had been many when Stacy had turned her face to Lisa’s and kissed her mouth, tasting of cigarettes, alcohol, and an unchecked desperation that would not relent. They had made love that night, not the mindless experimentation of two women and their curiosity but the desperate need of they who could not find what they needed any way other than in each other.
It had been a quiet affair but it had not ended when House was back on his feet, and while Lisa never breathed a word of it to anyone else she knew that he knew by the way he walked into her office. She had stood to ask him just what he wanted and he had bent his head, nudging her chin up with the bristled roughness of his face, kissing the sensitive place behind her ear without another thought. Her breath caught in her throat and while he was unsteady on the newfound step of his cane he had kissed her throat and the flushing curves of her cheeks, not relenting until she had buckled. And her arms had wrapped around his shoulders, he had shoved her back against her desk, and they had taken out years of unrecognized aggression and longing in the span of twenty minutes, breathless and unwilling to make a sound lest they be found out.
The next day Stacy had called her and when Lisa arrived three glasses were poured, the contents of which she still did not know. And House had been watching, his eyes glazed with unrestrained desire as Stacy moved self-assuredly across the room, pulling Lisa’s jacket from her shoulders and parting her lips into a kiss.
They had tumbled into bed, all three of them, and there was no awkwardness as they kissed and touched and explored each other again, every one knowing the touches of the other two but making no sound to stop this from happening. It was a haze of alcohol and sensuality and Lisa only remembered incoherent flashes of memory, the smoothness of Stacy’s inner thigh beneath her tongue, the coarseness of House’s stubble as he buried his face into the swell of her breasts, and later an explosion of sensation as House thrust into her relentlessly, Stacy’s teeth, tongue, and fingertips working somehow at her nipples and between her thighs at her clit all at once. She had slept between them then, Stacy’s arms around her and House pressed against her from behind, his face pillowed in her hair.
But months had passed since then, and though their liaison had continued something had subtly changed in their nights. Lisa had become the target of House’s attentions, Stacy seemingly lost to him even when he kissed her, and the times they actually made love were more and more infrequent. Every time they fell asleep Lisa was in the middle of them, the king sized bed easily fitting to the combined width of their bodies, but she was unable to rest soundly as that growing realization dawned on her.
Whatever was happening between House and Stacy was bad, and Lisa knew she couldn’t remedy it. She wanted to, wanted desperately to make things right. But she couldn’t. It had been Stacy’s call, by law if not by moral right, and because of this House would walk with a limp the rest of his life. But at least he would be living that life. Lisa couldn’t say that she would have done differently had she been in Stacy’s place, but she would never admit that to either Stacy or House. It was hard enough being caught in the middle.
It was worse loving them both.
As Lisa slipped out the front door and into the night she remembered all of this with a stunning rush of clarity, more than she had wanted to recall. Because she did love them both, more than she had ever wanted to admit. It was easy to love House in college and easier to love him now in the cool, reasoning light of their professions and obligations to the lives they had chose to lead. She could love him as a doctor during the day and as a man during the night when he took her into his arms and once again called her Lise, kissing the curve of her throat as his breath caressed her clavicle with a heat that made her shiver. And she could love him with raw desperation when he closed the door to her office in a way that commanded only one thing, one thing that brought her to her feet and him against her, clothes discarded as they made love - it was always making love with House in some sense - in the quiet confinement of her office, answering their personal and unrelenting desires with words that could never be spoken.
But she loved Stacy too, and loving her was easy as well as different. More times than she could count Lisa had stolen into Stacy’s office, thankful it had no windows, and they had come together as they had times before, kissing and caressing with insatiable longing that came from enduring the same known pain. They had both sat by House’s bed, watching him as pain overtook his arrogance and he had been wracked with spasms and screams, bathed his face with cool cloths to ease the tension, and shed countless tears in their own respective states of helplessness that would not go away. They wanted to help, and they couldn’t.
Lisa loved them both. She loved them so dearly, and they no longer loved each other. Their three person affair had broke apart into a dueling combat for her attentions, each trying to hurt the other in an inexplicable way that would leave scars long into uncounted months and years in the future. She knew it, had known it before, and after tonight she had to leave.
Tonight really hadn’t been that much different. Lisa had come to them after work and Stacy had kissed her, cigarettes on her breath once more as she drew her into the bedroom without waiting for confirmation or speech. And House had all but ripped the blouse from her shoulders, kissing a slow trail up her spine because he knew it made her shiver, his warm hands cradling her breasts because he knew she loved that feeling. They had taken her, the both of them, in a torrid rampage of desire and need, but it was as though she was not even there at all. Through her they were screaming at each other, the unspoken words singing through her skin from one’s lips to the other, and when Lisa came again and again she cried out for them both, wanting to sob from sheer helplessness and the onslaught of their pain.
There was no atonement, nor could there ever be. Stacy had made a choice and House would not forgive it. He would continue this course and slowly they would be driven apart, leaving Lisa caught in the middle between the two people she loved most in the world.
And she couldn’t let that happen.
The car door clicked closed behind her and Lisa started the engine, closing her eyes for a moment against the helpless wave of fatigue in her heart. When she looked up at the house once more she saw Stacy at the window, watching her through the glass. Her expression was unreadable save for the sadness in her eyes, and for a terrifying moment Lisa thought she’d turn off the car and run back inside, run back into bed with the both of them and pretend she’d never had any of these thoughts to begin with.
But she couldn’t. Stacy knew that she couldn’t, and that was why she wasn’t stopping her from leaving. Stacy knew that no matter how much they loved each other, no matter how deeply each had come to depend on the other for solace through this time, that it was necessary for it to end. And the time for it to end seemed to be now.
I love you, Lisa whispered in the cold silence of her car, and she knew that Stacy saw the formation of the words on her lips even if she could not hear the words. And when Lisa put the car into reverse and pulled out of House’s driveway into the bitter chill of the winter air’s embrace, she knew Stacy’s eyes were following her as far as possible.
The tears did not come until that time had passed.