Fic: Hit and Run
Title: Hit and Run
Fandom: House
Rating: PG-13
Prompt #77 - Paralysis
Characters: House, Cuddy
Spoilers: None
Author's notes: This is answer #9 to the au100 challenge. You can find my complete table here.
His name was Jon without an H.
And she liked him instantly for it.
He was a cardiologist from NYU, with dark hair and brown eyes that concentrated on hers when she talked. He listened. He smiled, and laughed when she made a joke. He was polite and attentive. He was nice.
And she felt lightheaded, a combination of his imperfect row of teeth and her second glass of Pinot Noir.
It'd been a while since she met someone, let alone felt this way - exhilarated, dangerous, young. Beautiful. He hadn't told her she was, but she'd never had a problem appealing to men's physical preferences, and the way he was eying her cleavage, she knew he was interested. Of course, that was always the first test, one she always passed with flying colors. Telling him what she did for a living, really did for a living (she always opened with endocrinology to test the waters), announcing with that declaration Strong Woman In Charge! was an entirely different matter.
But so far, so good. A slow sip of wine, eyes on her lips as she did, dangerous half smile, and she knew she had him.
And then her smile waned slightly when she felt him (she didn't have to see him: his smell, his presence, was strong enough). Circling them like a shark calculating his move, and she wanted nothing more than to grab Jon without an H and get the hell out of there, but you don't out-swim a shark. You can't out-swim a shark. Best thing you can do is face the shark, head on, try to punch him in the nose to disorient it, pray that it swims away so you can swim to safety.
It's what her father always told her, anyway.
So instinctively, her right hand balled into a fist, and as he calculated his move she calculated hers. Jon without an H simply stood there, talking about his brother's charity work in Burma, unaware of what was about to happen; the clueless swimmer.
And it happened quick enough, so quickly it almost caught her off guard. House suddenly walked over, and her muscles tensed.
"'Scuse me," he said rudely, pushing in between Jon and Cuddy and grabbing a few napkins from the bar. Cuddy's smile soured and she looked down, bracing herself for it. When he was satisfied with the amount of napkins he'd taken, he merely stood there, looking at them in his hand, counting them over and over like a more retarded version of Rain Man (he didn't deserve the courtesy of political correctness).
She cleared her throat, trying to appear more collected than she actually was. "House," she called his attention.
He looked up at her and feigned surprise. "Dr. Cuddy," he exclaimed, smiling broadly, and then looking at the object of her latest fascination. Jon gave him a little unenthusiastic smile, and House ignored him and turned to Cuddy. "I've been looking for you all night. Got your test results. Good news, it's not the clap."
Her eyes narrowed, and she put her drink down. Her fist hardened.
"The bad news is we're back to the drawing board," House continued, and pretended to think hard as he looked at the ceiling, "itchiness, swelling, sores... what could it be?"
It didn't take Jon long. A mere glance from Cuddy to House, and back to Cuddy, and he got it, and Cuddy didn't know what hurt more: the fact that he gave up on her so quickly or that she knew he would. She tried to apologize (say a prayer and throw out a punch), but he put his drink down, smiled at her (apologetically, she knew - they all smiled at her like that when they met House) and walked away with a soft, "excuse me."
House watched him go, acting all innocent, and shrugged his shoulders. He threw the napkins on the bar again, feeling the exhilaration that came with a small but important victory, the small traces of jealousy being buried under a new avalanche of ease, reminiscent to the slow descend upon that hazy state of limbo that his Vicodin always provided.
She looked at him, her eyes on fire, and she wanted to push him back so he fell hard, to really hurt him, but quickly she contained herself, knowing she couldn't make a scene in front of prospective investors. "What is your problem?"
House looked at her and smiled, bowing slightly. "You're welcome."
Her frown hardened, confusion added to the mosaic of expressions on her face.
"That was me rescuing you from that bozo," he explained simply and bowed his head again. "You're welcome."
Her eyes narrowed a little more, and quickly they began to sting from rage and something new. "I didn't want you to rescue me."
His smile faded and he looked at her, confused (though she knew it was an act). "You were waving me over."
"I was waving at you to stay away," she said through clenched teeth.
House hummed and shrugged his shoulders. "Mm, I guess I got my signals crossed. See, we're gonna have to work on that."
The smile was creeping back into his face and he stood there, waiting for a clever retort (she knew that would satisfied him even more). But none came, and instead Cuddy looked down, the fire in her eyes quickly fading, his small smile along with it. She put her glass of wine down, and as he frowned slightly she nodded (he couldn't tell why) and walked away, disappearing into the crowd.
He stood there, satisfaction replaced by something else, like a microscopic shard of glass on the plant of your foot that doesn't hurt unless you move. And so he didn't move. She returned some time later, when one glass of scotch became two, and spent the night mingling with benefactors and other deans, smiling at them courteously, sometimes laughing, but only he caught the moments when her smile would fade, only to lighten up again when someone else paid attention. The thrill of free booze and food disappeared.
He added a dry Vicodin to the cocktail.
--
You don't hang out at the scene after committing a crime.
Mistake number one. You do, and you expose yourself to vulnerability. You get caught. You flee instead, hoping you didn't leave any witnesses behind.
Wilson didn't know the details, and he wasn't stupid enough to provide them. All he knew was that Cuddy was pissed and House was the reason, because House was always the reason, and Wilson was always the peacemaker.
And in the end he told himself he only went out into the balcony because he wanted Wilson to stop bitching like a menstruating teenager. It made Wilson feel better (and it made him quiet as an added bonus) and made that tiny shard of guilt stuck in the plant of his foot hurt much less (still he swallowed another Vicodin as a preemptive strike). He only wanted Wilson to stop bitching. He said it enough times to believe it.
Looking around the night, noting it was beginning to get chilly, he approached her and leaned forward, elbows on the railing. She didn't move and he hadn't expected her to -- her body always stilled when she reached this level of rage (so fierce it looped around into something else, and though he could take the rage he found he could barely stand the disappointment, the hurt). Her glass of wine rested on the cement railing, her index and thumb fingers forming a perfect oval around the base, and she stared at the liquid.
When you get caught at the scene of a crime, you don't turn yourself in. Fight or flight kicks in, and you place the blame on someone else. It might not work, but it dims the spotlight, gives you enough time to either attempt to run, or think of a better excuse.
"Ex is taking him to court for not paying child support," he said, because that, in his mind, made it all okay, that made him the hero, the knight in shining armor (and the fact that he would've done the same even if Jon without an H were a responsible father didn't really enter his mind because it wasn't relevant anyway).
She barely reacted, merely closed her eyes for just a second and her jaw stuck sideways slightly, something she did subconsciously when she was considering something important pertaining whatever stupid thing he'd done recently to anger her (or disappoint her, but he didn't like that word).
But that was it, and he found himself missing the anger. Simultaneously, he sighed and rolled his eyes. "Fine, I'll go back, find that idiot, and apologize. Go... date him, marry him, give him the perfect 2.4 kids he won't support. That what you want?"
Still the anger didn't come, and he considered spitting out a cheap comment about her physique to make it (because as the seconds passed he really wished it would, because anger was so much better than what he saw there instead).
But the wine had her enthralled, and she breathed in slowly but it took a while for the words to come out, and he concealed the anticipation well.
"I want to know why Stacy's with Mark," she said, and at this his brows furrowed slightly and he straightened up, only to let his shoulders hunch over once more when the surprise of her confession wore off, "and Cameron is with Chase," she continued, "and I'm here."
He didn't like the tone of her voice, or the way her eyes looked away, distant. It hit him with a pang of guilt, one he buried away well, and he tried to veer the conversation into lighter territory. Needed to. "Well, technically you're not--"
"I'm not amused, House," she said, and he couldn't remember a time when he heard her sound so... serious. It made him cast his eyes downward. "I'm so far over amused... I don't even know what to be anymore."
He didn't answer. He merely desperately wanted her to call him an asshole, slap him if she felt like it, and just walk away, let bygones be bygones and come to work the next day with extra clinic hours for him.
"So what I want," she continued instead, "is to know why Stacy and Cameron are allowed to move on and I'm still here."
He knew it was a rhetorical question, if only because she knew she wouldn't, or couldn't, get an answer. She'd known him long enough.
Jon without an H. Dark hair and brown eyes, mended broken hearts as his two children waited for daddy to call. Golfed during the weekends, and jumped from bar to bar every weeknight looking for a distraction he only found in bodies with an 80 proof label. Just as pathetic as they all were. Hid it better.
He sneered at the mere thought. "You think you're gonna be happy with that guy?"
She looked at him. "Am I gonna be happy with you?"
The answer appeared quickly in his mind, and just as quickly he pushed it away and another one came back and then another.
No.
Yes.
Maybe.
I could.
But I won't.
The nonexistent shard of glass sunk in deeper and he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and only then remembered the other leg couldn't take the weight and so he shifted back. And that was the point. And he wanted to somehow explain that. But people (Wilson, especially) kept telling him how screwed up he was, how fucked up his intentions had always been, and he knew if he attempted to explain she wouldn't get that she was, along with Wilson, and his good leg, a constant reminder that he was half broken but he was still half okay. And when the pain became unbearable and he thought it should all end soon he needed to remember that, just like he needed to feel his good leg and he needed Wilson's nagging and he needed her just because.
Because she was there when it all started, way before Stacy, way before Cameron and the ones before, after, and in between. She was there in the gap between Stacy and Cameron, the strips of solitude he endured as he moved on from one woman to the other (or not). She filled the gaps. She was the slightly bigger dot that connected the two ends of the string into a circle, and as he went round and round he passed her over and over again before she would push him away again into another round.
And he wanted to stop.
But he didn't know how, lived in fear that he would hit the breaks and crash or worse, hit a curve with his foot on the gas and lose control, spin out, wheels screaming, lights out.
And so he kept going at full speed, without a plan, without an end in sight but still he needed to know that stop was there, and would always be there. Still. He knew it was unfair, that she could barely move in any direction, with any body, but if his good leg broke he was out, and if Wilson stopped carrying him around he was dead, and if she moved, anywhere, he was lost.
It sounded simple enough in his mind, where it stayed.
When you're caught miles away from the scene of the crime, you don't go down without a fight. You get taken in, you face the good cop, the bad cop, claiming innocence, until that one surprise witness shows up, and the evidence begins to mount, and an offer is set on the table. You take it, because it's the only way out.
Back inside, her presence was requested over the microphone, and for a moment she didn't move.
He looked at her, and her eyes were on the wine and in the dark night they looked gray (reminded him the forecast called for rain that week). The black dress and sandals she wore made her look delicate and mystifying, and the word "beautiful" suddenly lingered at the tip of his tongue but before it could escape towards the atmosphere she moved, scaring it away, making him look down. Silently she removed her hands from the railing and walked away from him, her hand on her forehead, and he stayed behind, his good leg slightly shaking from the strain of his weight.
The untouched glass of wine kept him company for the rest of the night.
The End
Fandom: House
Rating: PG-13
Prompt #77 - Paralysis
Characters: House, Cuddy
Spoilers: None
Author's notes: This is answer #9 to the au100 challenge. You can find my complete table here.
His name was Jon without an H.
And she liked him instantly for it.
He was a cardiologist from NYU, with dark hair and brown eyes that concentrated on hers when she talked. He listened. He smiled, and laughed when she made a joke. He was polite and attentive. He was nice.
And she felt lightheaded, a combination of his imperfect row of teeth and her second glass of Pinot Noir.
It'd been a while since she met someone, let alone felt this way - exhilarated, dangerous, young. Beautiful. He hadn't told her she was, but she'd never had a problem appealing to men's physical preferences, and the way he was eying her cleavage, she knew he was interested. Of course, that was always the first test, one she always passed with flying colors. Telling him what she did for a living, really did for a living (she always opened with endocrinology to test the waters), announcing with that declaration Strong Woman In Charge! was an entirely different matter.
But so far, so good. A slow sip of wine, eyes on her lips as she did, dangerous half smile, and she knew she had him.
And then her smile waned slightly when she felt him (she didn't have to see him: his smell, his presence, was strong enough). Circling them like a shark calculating his move, and she wanted nothing more than to grab Jon without an H and get the hell out of there, but you don't out-swim a shark. You can't out-swim a shark. Best thing you can do is face the shark, head on, try to punch him in the nose to disorient it, pray that it swims away so you can swim to safety.
It's what her father always told her, anyway.
So instinctively, her right hand balled into a fist, and as he calculated his move she calculated hers. Jon without an H simply stood there, talking about his brother's charity work in Burma, unaware of what was about to happen; the clueless swimmer.
And it happened quick enough, so quickly it almost caught her off guard. House suddenly walked over, and her muscles tensed.
"'Scuse me," he said rudely, pushing in between Jon and Cuddy and grabbing a few napkins from the bar. Cuddy's smile soured and she looked down, bracing herself for it. When he was satisfied with the amount of napkins he'd taken, he merely stood there, looking at them in his hand, counting them over and over like a more retarded version of Rain Man (he didn't deserve the courtesy of political correctness).
She cleared her throat, trying to appear more collected than she actually was. "House," she called his attention.
He looked up at her and feigned surprise. "Dr. Cuddy," he exclaimed, smiling broadly, and then looking at the object of her latest fascination. Jon gave him a little unenthusiastic smile, and House ignored him and turned to Cuddy. "I've been looking for you all night. Got your test results. Good news, it's not the clap."
Her eyes narrowed, and she put her drink down. Her fist hardened.
"The bad news is we're back to the drawing board," House continued, and pretended to think hard as he looked at the ceiling, "itchiness, swelling, sores... what could it be?"
It didn't take Jon long. A mere glance from Cuddy to House, and back to Cuddy, and he got it, and Cuddy didn't know what hurt more: the fact that he gave up on her so quickly or that she knew he would. She tried to apologize (say a prayer and throw out a punch), but he put his drink down, smiled at her (apologetically, she knew - they all smiled at her like that when they met House) and walked away with a soft, "excuse me."
House watched him go, acting all innocent, and shrugged his shoulders. He threw the napkins on the bar again, feeling the exhilaration that came with a small but important victory, the small traces of jealousy being buried under a new avalanche of ease, reminiscent to the slow descend upon that hazy state of limbo that his Vicodin always provided.
She looked at him, her eyes on fire, and she wanted to push him back so he fell hard, to really hurt him, but quickly she contained herself, knowing she couldn't make a scene in front of prospective investors. "What is your problem?"
House looked at her and smiled, bowing slightly. "You're welcome."
Her frown hardened, confusion added to the mosaic of expressions on her face.
"That was me rescuing you from that bozo," he explained simply and bowed his head again. "You're welcome."
Her eyes narrowed a little more, and quickly they began to sting from rage and something new. "I didn't want you to rescue me."
His smile faded and he looked at her, confused (though she knew it was an act). "You were waving me over."
"I was waving at you to stay away," she said through clenched teeth.
House hummed and shrugged his shoulders. "Mm, I guess I got my signals crossed. See, we're gonna have to work on that."
The smile was creeping back into his face and he stood there, waiting for a clever retort (she knew that would satisfied him even more). But none came, and instead Cuddy looked down, the fire in her eyes quickly fading, his small smile along with it. She put her glass of wine down, and as he frowned slightly she nodded (he couldn't tell why) and walked away, disappearing into the crowd.
He stood there, satisfaction replaced by something else, like a microscopic shard of glass on the plant of your foot that doesn't hurt unless you move. And so he didn't move. She returned some time later, when one glass of scotch became two, and spent the night mingling with benefactors and other deans, smiling at them courteously, sometimes laughing, but only he caught the moments when her smile would fade, only to lighten up again when someone else paid attention. The thrill of free booze and food disappeared.
He added a dry Vicodin to the cocktail.
--
You don't hang out at the scene after committing a crime.
Mistake number one. You do, and you expose yourself to vulnerability. You get caught. You flee instead, hoping you didn't leave any witnesses behind.
Wilson didn't know the details, and he wasn't stupid enough to provide them. All he knew was that Cuddy was pissed and House was the reason, because House was always the reason, and Wilson was always the peacemaker.
And in the end he told himself he only went out into the balcony because he wanted Wilson to stop bitching like a menstruating teenager. It made Wilson feel better (and it made him quiet as an added bonus) and made that tiny shard of guilt stuck in the plant of his foot hurt much less (still he swallowed another Vicodin as a preemptive strike). He only wanted Wilson to stop bitching. He said it enough times to believe it.
Looking around the night, noting it was beginning to get chilly, he approached her and leaned forward, elbows on the railing. She didn't move and he hadn't expected her to -- her body always stilled when she reached this level of rage (so fierce it looped around into something else, and though he could take the rage he found he could barely stand the disappointment, the hurt). Her glass of wine rested on the cement railing, her index and thumb fingers forming a perfect oval around the base, and she stared at the liquid.
When you get caught at the scene of a crime, you don't turn yourself in. Fight or flight kicks in, and you place the blame on someone else. It might not work, but it dims the spotlight, gives you enough time to either attempt to run, or think of a better excuse.
"Ex is taking him to court for not paying child support," he said, because that, in his mind, made it all okay, that made him the hero, the knight in shining armor (and the fact that he would've done the same even if Jon without an H were a responsible father didn't really enter his mind because it wasn't relevant anyway).
She barely reacted, merely closed her eyes for just a second and her jaw stuck sideways slightly, something she did subconsciously when she was considering something important pertaining whatever stupid thing he'd done recently to anger her (or disappoint her, but he didn't like that word).
But that was it, and he found himself missing the anger. Simultaneously, he sighed and rolled his eyes. "Fine, I'll go back, find that idiot, and apologize. Go... date him, marry him, give him the perfect 2.4 kids he won't support. That what you want?"
Still the anger didn't come, and he considered spitting out a cheap comment about her physique to make it (because as the seconds passed he really wished it would, because anger was so much better than what he saw there instead).
But the wine had her enthralled, and she breathed in slowly but it took a while for the words to come out, and he concealed the anticipation well.
"I want to know why Stacy's with Mark," she said, and at this his brows furrowed slightly and he straightened up, only to let his shoulders hunch over once more when the surprise of her confession wore off, "and Cameron is with Chase," she continued, "and I'm here."
He didn't like the tone of her voice, or the way her eyes looked away, distant. It hit him with a pang of guilt, one he buried away well, and he tried to veer the conversation into lighter territory. Needed to. "Well, technically you're not--"
"I'm not amused, House," she said, and he couldn't remember a time when he heard her sound so... serious. It made him cast his eyes downward. "I'm so far over amused... I don't even know what to be anymore."
He didn't answer. He merely desperately wanted her to call him an asshole, slap him if she felt like it, and just walk away, let bygones be bygones and come to work the next day with extra clinic hours for him.
"So what I want," she continued instead, "is to know why Stacy and Cameron are allowed to move on and I'm still here."
He knew it was a rhetorical question, if only because she knew she wouldn't, or couldn't, get an answer. She'd known him long enough.
Jon without an H. Dark hair and brown eyes, mended broken hearts as his two children waited for daddy to call. Golfed during the weekends, and jumped from bar to bar every weeknight looking for a distraction he only found in bodies with an 80 proof label. Just as pathetic as they all were. Hid it better.
He sneered at the mere thought. "You think you're gonna be happy with that guy?"
She looked at him. "Am I gonna be happy with you?"
The answer appeared quickly in his mind, and just as quickly he pushed it away and another one came back and then another.
No.
Yes.
Maybe.
I could.
But I won't.
The nonexistent shard of glass sunk in deeper and he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and only then remembered the other leg couldn't take the weight and so he shifted back. And that was the point. And he wanted to somehow explain that. But people (Wilson, especially) kept telling him how screwed up he was, how fucked up his intentions had always been, and he knew if he attempted to explain she wouldn't get that she was, along with Wilson, and his good leg, a constant reminder that he was half broken but he was still half okay. And when the pain became unbearable and he thought it should all end soon he needed to remember that, just like he needed to feel his good leg and he needed Wilson's nagging and he needed her just because.
Because she was there when it all started, way before Stacy, way before Cameron and the ones before, after, and in between. She was there in the gap between Stacy and Cameron, the strips of solitude he endured as he moved on from one woman to the other (or not). She filled the gaps. She was the slightly bigger dot that connected the two ends of the string into a circle, and as he went round and round he passed her over and over again before she would push him away again into another round.
And he wanted to stop.
But he didn't know how, lived in fear that he would hit the breaks and crash or worse, hit a curve with his foot on the gas and lose control, spin out, wheels screaming, lights out.
And so he kept going at full speed, without a plan, without an end in sight but still he needed to know that stop was there, and would always be there. Still. He knew it was unfair, that she could barely move in any direction, with any body, but if his good leg broke he was out, and if Wilson stopped carrying him around he was dead, and if she moved, anywhere, he was lost.
It sounded simple enough in his mind, where it stayed.
When you're caught miles away from the scene of the crime, you don't go down without a fight. You get taken in, you face the good cop, the bad cop, claiming innocence, until that one surprise witness shows up, and the evidence begins to mount, and an offer is set on the table. You take it, because it's the only way out.
Back inside, her presence was requested over the microphone, and for a moment she didn't move.
He looked at her, and her eyes were on the wine and in the dark night they looked gray (reminded him the forecast called for rain that week). The black dress and sandals she wore made her look delicate and mystifying, and the word "beautiful" suddenly lingered at the tip of his tongue but before it could escape towards the atmosphere she moved, scaring it away, making him look down. Silently she removed her hands from the railing and walked away from him, her hand on her forehead, and he stayed behind, his good leg slightly shaking from the strain of his weight.
The untouched glass of wine kept him company for the rest of the night.
The End