13/25
FanFic: Straight To Center: HouseFic50, music_fest, ss_huddy
Title: Straight To Center
Author: Catherine
Fandom: House, M.D
Character/Pairing: HouseCuddy
Prompt: 020: Acceptance; music_fest prompt Recessional, Vienna Teng.
Word Count: 5018
A/N: Because of an utter lack of ideas, I had to double up my music_fest and ss_huddy prompts. I'm really sorry about that. :-/
‘I didn’t think you’d come,’ she murmurs, her voice softer than it should be. Her breath makes patterns on the air and her ears are frozen but her hand against his chest is warm. She tugs his wool coat closed, fixes his collar, toys with the buttons. She meets his gaze.
He smirks slightly. ‘Yeah, you did.’
--
He's sitting on the edge of her bed, removing skirts and blouses from her suitcase. She sighs (lightly humored) and refolds the clothing; five minutes later he takes them out again.
'House.'
'It's a one-way ticket.'
'Yes.'
He frowns, fingering the sleeve of some cream colored thing he doesn't recognize, doesn't like.
'You should just buy clothes there.'
'I asked,' she reminds him and he nods, remembering the way he kissed her before she could say come with me.
'Yeah,' he mutters, and removes another shirt.
--
‘There are hospitals here,’ he says, leaning against her kitchen counter. ‘Big ones. With lots of dying people.’
She tilts her head, pours him a cup of coffee. ‘I know. I ran one for twenty-three years.’
It would have been longer, he thinks, but doesn’t remind her. He understands, but that doesn’t mean he has to like it, doesn’t mean he has to tell her.
‘And now you’re going to take the funbags and wreak administrative havoc on another continent.’
She sighs. ‘Doctor Randall is a friend of mine. He needs a little help getting things off the ground.’
‘And it’s not like you have anything better to do,’ he says, and if she closes her eyes there’s just a little bit of bitterness (regret?) in his words.
‘Like spend the next ten years of my life watching L-Word reruns with a cranky drug addict?’ she asks, eyebrows raised and he quirks a smile, looks away.
‘I shake it up a bit.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘There’s a Godzilla marathon on tonight.’
She smiles over the edge of her teacup (she hasn’t had coffee since- but he never brings that up either) and he stares back, daring her to say what she’s thinking.
‘You’re going to miss me,’ she says and he rolls his eyes, gestures.
‘I’ll miss the twins.’
She huffs, sets her cup down and moves through the hallway; he follows her, snakes his arm around her waist while she’s bent over the bed, loves the way she gasps when his breath tickles the skin just below her ear.
‘House,’ she protests, but there’s nothing behind it except air as the sharp stubble on his face grazes her jaw.
‘You’ll miss me more,’ he murmurs. She doesn’t confirm or deny, but she turns in his arms and meets his lips just the same.
--
The airport is crowded and bustling and he looks out of place, so tense and still and hunched over his cane. They’re standing near security and she can’t help but smile at how annoyed he looks, glowering at parting lovers and sweet reunions.
‘You didn’t have to come, you know,’ she says, with a little smile just dangling on the corners of her lips.
He shrugs distractedly. ‘Wouldn’t want to find out you’d actually skipped off to Tijuana with Alonzo, or whatever handy man you’ve replaced him with.’ He turns and leers slightly, eyes traveling over her slowly. ‘That’s way too much bikini action I’d be missing out on.’
‘It’s Alfredo,’ she says, rolling her eyes. ‘At least you got the first letter right.’
House makes an unimpressed noise in the back of his throat and Cuddy checks her watch. ‘Dying to escape?’ he taunts, and she ignores the undertones, treats it surface level like they always have, always will.
‘My flight leaves in less than an hour.’
He nods slowly. ‘You should go.’
‘Yeah,’ she murmurs, not as strong or confident as she’d have liked. ‘House.’
It’s only a word and it’s only his name but it makes him pause, makes everything pause so that there’s only her lips against his and her hand curled around the back of his neck and it really does feel like goodbye this time, even though it isn’t.
‘I’ll be back in a few months,’ she says against his cheek but he just nods, nudges her away.
‘I’ll think of you when I watch Girls Gone Wild.’
‘I’m sure you will.’
There’s a smile, a pause. House doesn’t offer any reassurance but there’s something in the way his lips thin and his eyes narrow that calms her, makes her think maybe, and then nothing else.
‘You should go,’ he says, and she nods.
--
The flight is quiet and dark and all she has are her thoughts and the cold window against her forehead. She tries not to wonder what he’s doing, what he’s thinking, where they’ve been and where they’re going and how and why and eventually she falls asleep, restless.
She dreams of cartoon dolphins with crowns of gardenias, heavy New York traffic, and the Skippy peanut butter House always keeps in his cupboard.
--
She spends a few days getting used to the culture, the language, the way everything moves simultaneously fast and slow. Dr. Randall helps her get settled and invites her to dinner; he shows her around the city, takes her on a tour of the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower.
They’re old friends and they talk easily about work and old residency memories. His accent is soft and low and cracks occasionally on certain words, makes her smile. He enjoys telling little anecdotes about his wife and kids and she doesn’t mind, smiles, asks him questions and always lets the conversation be about him, his life, his family, his hobbies.
He asks, sometimes, but quickly finds that he’s always met with a smile (polite, reserved, well-practiced) and ‘well, you know’ - but he frowns because really, he doesn’t at all. And so when people ask he says, ‘She’s a wonderful administrator. You’ll love her, I promise.’
Because she doesn’t want to talk about House. She doesn’t want to defend him, doesn’t want to judge him. She doesn’t want to talk about how they fought and fought (over his leg and clinic hours and pills and donors and everything serious and superfluous) until she stormed out and he followed her; until they were yelling across the parking lot about who was more miserable and who had less spine and sling after sling and shot after shot until she screamed, ‘Stop punishing me!’ in a high, hard way that made her voice crack and her body shake enough that she couldn’t move, enough to give him time to move in close.
‘I’m not punishing you,’ he said gruffly, honestly.
She sighed, her shoulders slumping and her words failing her, lost over the ringing in her own ears, the bitter taste in her mouth: ‘Then what do you want?’
But he had no answer, nothing other than to kiss her strongly, lips dry and chapped against hers as he pushed, put his hand against her spine and dared her to move away, to deny. But she could never lie to him, not like that and not well and so when he pulled back she let her head fall against his chest, barely registered his arm around her waist.
‘Cuddy,’ he murmured, like it explained everything between them, everything in existence.
‘I can’t-’ she started, choked. She felt him nod.
‘I know.’
She pushed back, eyes hard and unforgiving and damp against all this emotion, finally at surface level.
Accusatory: ‘Is that why? Why now?’
(Because she’s been trying, trying for years now and the one thing she wants she can’t have; the one thing she wants, he doesn’t and now that it’s out of the way, now that it’s over-)
But he shook his head, just barely, just enough.
‘No.’
--
She calls House the night before her first day and they talk about nothing. He mentions how whipped Wilson is with Potential Wife Numbre Quatre, and she briefly mentions Doctor Randall (‘Jeremy,’ he insists, and she smiles uncomfortably) and his practice.
‘You like him, this guy? Jaraldo?’
‘Jeremy,’ she says, ‘and yes, I do. He’s much easier to work with than some doctors I know.’
‘Aw, come on, Wilson’s not that bad. Sure he’s needy and pedantic, but-’
‘Actually I was referring to my lanky, crippled, felon doctor.’
Possessive, much? he wants to say, but instead deflects to, ‘So when’s the wedding? You know white’s not really your color-it doesn’t really go with the whole S&M theme you’ve been-’ and leaves off the bit about the fence and the dog and how many kids, just so he can hear her roll her eyes and huff:
‘We’re just colleagues.’
‘Paris is the city of lovers, Cuddy,’ he interrupts leaning back in his couch and narrowing his eyes at the muted TV set. ‘I wouldn’t expect you not to-’
‘House,’ she says, mildly amused under the sharp tones and frustration, ‘Shut up.’
--
The hospital is small and awkward and the moment she steps through the doors the smells, sounds, everything familiar sooths her skin, quiets her nerves.
‘It needs a lot of work,’ Jeremy says, running a hand nervously over the back of his neck. It’s a familiar gesture, one that makes her heartstrings pinch. ‘It was a mess before Dodson and then, well… I think the malpractice suits and red ink sort of speak for themselves.’
She smiles, then, despite herself, watching a nurse hurry from one end of the lobby to the other.
‘It’s beautiful.’
--
It got easier after he quit. After there was no board to answer to, no reason to pretend or lie or make excuses. Foreman took over the department but House still consulted, still called in and yelled at him over the phone, still fought tooth and nail for ‘cures, not treatments,’ he would say, arguing with her in the middle of his kitchen.
‘You quit!’
He shrugged. ‘You could rehire me.’
‘For one case?’ Hands on hips, lips pursed. As always.
He smirked, she sighed.
Foreman’s voice crackled through the speakerphone.
‘Still need a diagnosis!’
He would consult and she would cover and it was all so familiar, so normal; so different, when she would unlock his door and move through the darkness. When she would slip into bed beside him, and even her breathing to the sound of his heartbeat.
--
‘So how’s Cuddy?’ he asks when there’s a pause in the game.
‘So how’s Jenny?’ he shoots back, reaches for the remote.
‘She’s fine. She’s also not five-thousand miles away.’
‘Unfortunately.’
‘House.’
He turns up the volume.
Wilson smirks. ‘You miss her, don’t you?’
‘Parts of her.’
He tries to sound casual. ‘You should tell her.’
‘You should bite me.’
Wilson rolls his eyes and tries desperately to hide his grin.
--
It’s her old job, on a much smaller level and in a different currency. The hospital is a third the size of Princeton Plainsboro, but Jeremy has big plans. Wings to expand, clinics to repair;
‘I’d love to make a teaching hospital,’ he says. His excitement makes her smile.
‘Let’s worry about hiring staff and not cutting departments first.’
He nods, chuckles softly. They’re sitting on the floor in his office after hours, going over budgeting reports and expenses and highlighting and circling; she’s been planning a fundraiser for the past month to attract donors and patients and hopefully raise enough money to give the hospital a leg up.
‘It’s floundering financially,’ she says later that night, phone tucked against her chin. ‘I’m not even sure how it’s possible to spend that much money on absolutely nothing.’
‘Have you checked the expense reports? Hookers are generally a good-’
‘Not hookers,’ she says firmly.
‘No fun,’ he pouts, and she rolls her eyes.
It’s a typical conversation: she calls him every few nights, random enough not to be domestic, constant enough to keep the frayed line between them from breaking. She tells him about the fundraiser, about the people at work. About the art museums she sometimes goes to, the Seine and the view from the top of the Eiffel Tower and ‘I’ve been to Paris, Cuddy,’ he says, in that arrogant, know-it-all tone that makes her smile.
It’s been a month, melding into two and his voice is sharp and hers is soft and they’re quiet for a long time before he says, ‘You’re staying, aren’t you.’
She pauses, stares out the window of her little apartment over the drops of light, pointillism style against the dark, the comforting shadows of thin alleys. ‘They need me,’ she says.
‘And you need to feel needed.’ His scorn isn’t masked but isn’t as deep as she thought it would be, and she isn’t sure whether to feel disappointed by that or not.
‘I miss it,’ she admits, feels his slow nod on the other end, so many miles away.
I miss you, is what she needs to hear, but he says nothing. The silence crackles.
‘House-’
‘Gotta go. They’re doing a special on lesbian prisons.’
‘House-’
‘Night, Cuddy.’
A click, then silence, followed by dial tone as she keeps the phone pressed against her ear.
--
It wasn’t supposed to happen. She’d had all kinds of fertility tests, each one confirming the slim-to-none chance she had; they had.
Six months after he quit he was watching a baseball game on the sofa in her living room when she came home, dropped her stuff by the door and stood next to him for an awkward moment, then sighed, took a deep breath.
‘I’m pregnant.’
He blinked, looked up at her. ‘A little lead-in would have been nice. ‘So, Greg, you remember that one night, with the silk ties and the-’’
‘Shut up.’
‘Just saying.’
Silence. He could see the worry on her face, in her movements as she sat on the arm of couch.
‘Are you… okay? With this?’
He shrugged. ‘My guys managed to knock up the barren wasteland, it’s a great day for my ego.’
‘House.’
‘Cuddy,’ he acknowledged. She groaned and stood up, made to leave.
‘No Lamaze. No diaper changing. And I want an all-access pass to the funbags; they’re gonna be huge.’
She paused, turned. He rolled his head back against the couch and looked up at her.
‘Burping duty, partial-access, and you’re helping me assemble the crib.’
He smirked.
‘Deal.’
--
They rent out the first floor of a brand new art exhibit to hold the fundraiser. The artist is an old friend of Jeremy’s wife and it’s cheap and convenient and there’s room for food, for chairs, for a crowd of about five-hundred. Jeremy makes a welcoming speech in French, then in English. They both give brief summaries about the state of the hospital, its desperate need of funding; Cuddy speaks in English and he translates and it’s so calm and casual.
There’s a raffle for a painting, a car, a trip to Rome, all donated. There’s a small admission fee, but the food is free courtesy of the little bakery she shops at once a week; the band is good and the room is filled with the sound of wine glasses chinking and soft chatter.
‘I don’t want to know how many hours you spent on the phone trying to weasel things out of people,’ Jeremy says, suddenly appearing at her side.
She smiles, shrugs. ‘Let’s just hope it’s as successful as it looks.’
Jeremy nods back, grins. He introduces her to his wife and kids, several of his friends. He makes a big point of letting her talk with Alain, a tall, handsome man who owns a chain of restaurants in Lyon. She shakes his hand, makes small talk, smiles at his jokes and manages to procure a donation, then moves on. Jeremy gives him a helpless shrug.
‘You should have taken him home,’ House says later, after the party’s over and the donations gathered. She can hear the shrug in his voice. ‘You know what they say about Frenchmen in bed.’ He make a deep noise in the back of his throat and she almost laughs, hugs the phone tighter against her ear as if to amplify the sound, bring him closer.
It’s getting harder, she realizes. To not hear his voice, feel his hands on her skin. She doesn’t know if it’s the same for him, isn’t sure if she wants to know but she’s doing silly things to keep him on the phone longer, to make his one liners into monologues, just so she can memorize the sound of his voice.
She almost asks him to come, even for a week. Instead she says goodnight, and barely sleeps.
--
He turns up at the hospital every few weeks to pawn lunch off of Wilson. They sit and gossip and House steals his food. They talk about everything they talked about before, with nothing between them, nothing altered.
Every so often he tries to get him to talk about what happened. He’ll bring up the new dean, the changes that have been made. He’ll mention something about the maternity ward and House will give him a look, almost a warning.
Wilson knows the story. He knows what everyone else knows, the little extra, inside pieces. But he doesn’t understand, and House doesn’t want to explain.
He doesn’t want to talk about how one of the clinic nurses found her crumpled on the floor in her office between the desk and the couch. How he noticed her muscles were sore and her stomach hurt, noticed the way she winced; never acknowledges that she started to tell him (‘House, I think there’s something-’) and that he cut her off.
He did once, to Wilson, smoking a cigarette on the roof while she was in surgery. ‘It’s not your fault,’ he said, awkwardly, because he reassures patients and family members but not him, not people who don’t feel.
House stomped the light out with his cane and never told him it was his.
--
‘Mrs. Randall invited me over for Christmas dinner. Got a good wine recommendation?’
‘Manischewitz.’
She rolls her eyes. ‘Funny.’
‘I thought so.’
‘I’m thinking about a bottle of Sancerre. Or champagne. Do you drink champagne at Christmas?’
House wrinkles his nose. ‘How Jewish are you?’
She laughs, shakes her head. There’s a subtle, nervous undertone that House picks up on, notes, comes back to a few minutes later with:
‘You didn’t really call to ask me about wine.’
She sighs, leans against the doorframe and stares out the window. It was a bad cover - she’s been to enough holiday fundraisers and Christmas parties over the years to know, and House knows it too. Her hand curls tighter around the phone.
‘I called to say-’
‘I know what today is, Cuddy.’ He says it so softly she barely hears him.
She swallows tightly. ‘It would have been so different.’
He says nothing. They could talk about it - they could think about bassinets and little stuffed toys and cardboard books and mobiles. But she shouldn’t. And he won’t.
‘Cheval Blanc, ’67.’
‘What?’
‘Not perfect but, they’re French. Wine is their thing. Not much you can do to impress them.’
‘House…’ she sighs. ‘Yeah. Thanks.’
‘Cuddy,’ he says. ‘You can’t forgive someone when there’s nothing to forgive.’
‘Thank you,’ she murmurs, hangs up.
He listens to the dial tone.
--
He was standing at the window when she opened her eyes, blinked, took in the dark room, the steadily beeping monitor, and the vase of white flowers at her bedside.
He turned, but in the dark she could barely see his face, his eyes. ‘Hey.’ His voice was harsh, gravely. He’d been silent most of the day and the cigarette hadn’t helped. He crossed the room, took a penlight from his pocket and ran through all the ‘useless questions’ and procedures. She stopped him halfway though, her hand on his wrist. He looked down. Her skin was so pale.
‘What happened?’
‘You went into shock, passed out in your office. One of the nurses found you.’
She nodded slowly, looked away. Her hands were folded over her abdomen.
‘Surgery?’
‘Yeah. Barrowman. Removed the damage tube, stopped the bleeding, yadda yadda. You’re gonna be fine.’
‘Yeah.’
She stayed in the hospital overnight. House went home, came back two days later with a wheelchair and discharge papers.
‘Your chariot.’
She tried to smile at him. ‘I don’t need-’
He gave her a look.
She nodded slowly and he sighed and helped her into the wheelchair. ‘Isn’t this supposed to be the other way around?’ he muttered, dropped his cane in her lap. ‘Hold this.’
He drove her home in silence, pulled up to the curb and waited, watched as she stared out the window, at her hands.
‘Fertility medication increases the likelihood of tubal pregnancy,’ she murmured, like reading out of a textbook.
‘Cuddy-’
‘So do previous miscarriages. And age. And-’
‘This is not your fault,’ he said firmly.
She looked at him then, eyes wide and glossy and bloodshot.
‘Then whose fault is it?’ Her voice cracked and she looked away, out the window at her house. ‘I don’t…’
But there was nothing more she could say. He nodded.
‘Give me your keys.’
She frowned, protested slightly but handed them over. Five minutes later he came out with a bag that he tossed in the backseat.
‘Couldn’t find pajamas,’ he muttered, put the car in gear. ‘Hope you sleep in the nude.’
--
Just before she leaves for Christmas Eve dinner, she sends him an email confirming a plane ticket one week from the date. She doesn’t ask if he got it, doesn’t ask if he’ll use it. She goes to the party, listens to cheery Christmas music and helps Jeremy’s wife Cynthia in the kitchen. She brings a bottle of Cheval Blanc, and some chocolate-dipped madelines for the kids.
‘Jeremy says you’re a wonderful administrator; you’ve helped raise more money for the hospital in two months than the last one did in a year,’ she says, pulling plates out of the cupboard. ‘So, what made you leave Princeton-Plainsboro?’
Cuddy shrugs, helps her set the table. ‘Just time for a change, I guess,’ she says, knows it’s an offhanded answer.
Cynthia laughs. ‘And now you’re right back in it.’
‘I guess I wasn’t as ready for a new life as I thought,’ she says, smiling.
Because she doesn’t want to talk about that moment, three years after he quit, that she finally realized that there was nothing more she could do. She doesn’t want to talk about how she showed up on his doorstep an hour later, almost stunned:
‘I just handed in my two weeks notice.’
Instead, they talk about family, and friends; Cuddy tells her some stories about Jeremy during his residency and Cynthia talks about her mother and it’s so warm and personal and when they sit down to say grace she closes her eyes, lets all her wishes escape.
--
On the 31st of December she goes to the airport and waits outside security. She watches people come and people go until the last flight from Newark comes in; she waits, until there’s no chance, then goes home, and pretends it doesn’t mean anything.
--
She’s standing on the bridge, watching people and boats and city lights. There’s a low buzz of excitement, so many toothy grins. Old women and children and couples and mothers and fathers and she smiles, almost sadly, hugs her arms tighter around herself to ward off the cold. There’s a chilly breeze and a light snowfall and she closes her eyes, forces herself to enjoy the moment.
‘Only reason to wear a scarf like that, is as a beacon to identify you in a crowd.’
She freezes, opens her eyes. His voice is tired, rough, unmistakable, and when she turns he’s wearing the same smirk that goes all the way up to his eyes. He moves closer, almost pinning her against the wall and gives her a long once over. She’s older, softer but her eyes are still bright; her lips have curved up into a smile and he has a barely controllable urge to kiss it away.
She closes the distance between them, reaches out and touches him gently, like he’ll disappear; he can barely feel her fingers beneath her gloves and his coat, but the touch is the same anyway, and his smirk almost turns into a grin.
‘I didn’t think you’d come,’ she murmurs, closes his coat against the cold.
He rolls his eyes. ‘Yes you did. Otherwise you wouldn’t have waited at airport security for three hours.’
For a moment she looks surprised, then annoyed, then she shrugs, a smile tugging at her lips.
Someone bumps into him and he bumps into her and he rolls his eyes; she laughs. ‘How did you find me?’
‘Outgoing message to Jaraldo, said you’d be here.’
‘You hacked into my email?’
‘That surprises you?’
She tries to be offended but it’s just so familiar, so old.
He shifts, winces. The flight and the cold and she tries not to look at him worriedly.
‘Do you want to-’
‘No.’
She nods, turns. City lights and city sounds and his shoulder brushes hers, barely. She loops her arm through his and he rolls his eyes; the Eiffel Tower goes up in lights but all he’ll remember are the shadows on her face, and her smile.
--
They stay in Paris for three weeks. She shows him the hospital, her favorite café; she introduces him to Jeremy who looks more than shocked.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says, recovering. ‘I just thought that - I mean, you haven’t said - anyway.’ He extends his hand. House grimaces but takes it anyway, and she hides a smile. ‘Pleasure to meet you.’
She shows him the little art gallery where they held the first fundraiser, where they’ll be holding another one in a few weeks. He drags her out to Versailles, tries to cop a feel in the hallway of mirrors.
Wilson calls Cuddy five days later and asks with forced-calm if she’s heard from House. She rounds on him, smacks his chest with the phone. ‘You didn’t tell him?’
‘Hey, sorry, Jimmy, I’m a little busy being serviced right now, can I call you back?’
He hangs up over her protests, and silences them with kisses.
--
Jeremy takes them to the airport. He spends the entire ride thanking her for everything she’s done, for all the help and support and she can see House out of the corner of her eye going ‘blah blah blah,’ and making faces. She hides a smile and Jeremy remains oblivious. He tells them both to come back and visit any time, promises to keep her updated on how the hospital’s doing.
She nods, thanks him, gives him a quick hug. And then they’re lost in the crowd of people checking baggage and clearing customs and security and by the time they reach the gate she’s exhausted and his leg hurts and the woman at the desk informs them their flight has been delayed due to weather complications.
So they find empty seats and within an hour she’s asleep, her head against his shoulder, awkward angles and lines and her hair against his chest. It’s uncomfortable, really; his elbow against the armrest and his fingers curled around her hip.
Across from them is a young couple, tucked around each other; the man - kid, he thinks - smiles across the aisle at him, as if they have something in common.
She shifts, her nose bumping against his neck and her fingers curl against his leg, her hand sliding forward slightly.
‘Tease,’ he mutters, dips his head to look at her face. Her lips are parted, eyes closed and her breathing is so quiet, so reassuring beneath the noise and lights.
The crackling of the intercom breaks his calm as a woman announces that the weather is clearing, and that flight 2171 will be ready for boarding.
He nudges her side with his elbow. ‘Wakey wakey.’
--
She opens her eyes when he gets out of bed, falls instantly back asleep. She wakes up again an hour later, slips on her robe and follows the soft music into the living room. He’s hunched over the piano, bottle of pills and a glass of scotch and she doesn’t bother disapproving, just leans against the doorframe and watches. He plays Bach, Chopin, quiet, complicated pieces. His fingers barely touch the keys but it still sounds so beautiful, with the rain against the window as a percussive accompaniment. She closes her eyes and doesn’t open them until he shifts deftly from Liszt to Brick House.
She laughs softly and he turns, smirks. ‘How long have you been there?
‘How long have you known I was there?’
He shrugs, turns back to the piano. ‘Touche.’
She crosses the room, stands next to him as he plays, hears his voice in the notes, hears little things and little moments that mean so much, mean nothing.
She stays, until her body sways and her eyes keep closing. She squeezes his shoulder, moves away. He grabs her wrist gently as she passes, keeps his eyes fixed on the keys. She reaches up, cups his cheek in her hand and he turns, meets her gaze, gets distracted by the lines around her eyes, her cheeks; the way her hair is turning silver in patterns that match his grey.
‘Come to bed when you’re done,’ she says, slips out of his grasp. He nods, turns back to the piano and picks up the melody where he left off, soft and tinkering, more like a lullaby.
‘House.’ She pauses in the doorway; he stops playing, doesn’t turn. Her voice is soft. ‘I missed you, too.’
He waits, until her footsteps quiet and the bed creaks and there’s no other sound than the rain against the window, and the long, gentle notes he plays without thought or purpose; then he smiles.
Title: Straight To Center
Author: Catherine
Fandom: House, M.D
Character/Pairing: HouseCuddy
Prompt: 020: Acceptance; music_fest prompt Recessional, Vienna Teng.
Word Count: 5018
A/N: Because of an utter lack of ideas, I had to double up my music_fest and ss_huddy prompts. I'm really sorry about that. :-/
‘I didn’t think you’d come,’ she murmurs, her voice softer than it should be. Her breath makes patterns on the air and her ears are frozen but her hand against his chest is warm. She tugs his wool coat closed, fixes his collar, toys with the buttons. She meets his gaze.
He smirks slightly. ‘Yeah, you did.’
--
He's sitting on the edge of her bed, removing skirts and blouses from her suitcase. She sighs (lightly humored) and refolds the clothing; five minutes later he takes them out again.
'House.'
'It's a one-way ticket.'
'Yes.'
He frowns, fingering the sleeve of some cream colored thing he doesn't recognize, doesn't like.
'You should just buy clothes there.'
'I asked,' she reminds him and he nods, remembering the way he kissed her before she could say come with me.
'Yeah,' he mutters, and removes another shirt.
--
‘There are hospitals here,’ he says, leaning against her kitchen counter. ‘Big ones. With lots of dying people.’
She tilts her head, pours him a cup of coffee. ‘I know. I ran one for twenty-three years.’
It would have been longer, he thinks, but doesn’t remind her. He understands, but that doesn’t mean he has to like it, doesn’t mean he has to tell her.
‘And now you’re going to take the funbags and wreak administrative havoc on another continent.’
She sighs. ‘Doctor Randall is a friend of mine. He needs a little help getting things off the ground.’
‘And it’s not like you have anything better to do,’ he says, and if she closes her eyes there’s just a little bit of bitterness (regret?) in his words.
‘Like spend the next ten years of my life watching L-Word reruns with a cranky drug addict?’ she asks, eyebrows raised and he quirks a smile, looks away.
‘I shake it up a bit.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘There’s a Godzilla marathon on tonight.’
She smiles over the edge of her teacup (she hasn’t had coffee since- but he never brings that up either) and he stares back, daring her to say what she’s thinking.
‘You’re going to miss me,’ she says and he rolls his eyes, gestures.
‘I’ll miss the twins.’
She huffs, sets her cup down and moves through the hallway; he follows her, snakes his arm around her waist while she’s bent over the bed, loves the way she gasps when his breath tickles the skin just below her ear.
‘House,’ she protests, but there’s nothing behind it except air as the sharp stubble on his face grazes her jaw.
‘You’ll miss me more,’ he murmurs. She doesn’t confirm or deny, but she turns in his arms and meets his lips just the same.
--
The airport is crowded and bustling and he looks out of place, so tense and still and hunched over his cane. They’re standing near security and she can’t help but smile at how annoyed he looks, glowering at parting lovers and sweet reunions.
‘You didn’t have to come, you know,’ she says, with a little smile just dangling on the corners of her lips.
He shrugs distractedly. ‘Wouldn’t want to find out you’d actually skipped off to Tijuana with Alonzo, or whatever handy man you’ve replaced him with.’ He turns and leers slightly, eyes traveling over her slowly. ‘That’s way too much bikini action I’d be missing out on.’
‘It’s Alfredo,’ she says, rolling her eyes. ‘At least you got the first letter right.’
House makes an unimpressed noise in the back of his throat and Cuddy checks her watch. ‘Dying to escape?’ he taunts, and she ignores the undertones, treats it surface level like they always have, always will.
‘My flight leaves in less than an hour.’
He nods slowly. ‘You should go.’
‘Yeah,’ she murmurs, not as strong or confident as she’d have liked. ‘House.’
It’s only a word and it’s only his name but it makes him pause, makes everything pause so that there’s only her lips against his and her hand curled around the back of his neck and it really does feel like goodbye this time, even though it isn’t.
‘I’ll be back in a few months,’ she says against his cheek but he just nods, nudges her away.
‘I’ll think of you when I watch Girls Gone Wild.’
‘I’m sure you will.’
There’s a smile, a pause. House doesn’t offer any reassurance but there’s something in the way his lips thin and his eyes narrow that calms her, makes her think maybe, and then nothing else.
‘You should go,’ he says, and she nods.
--
The flight is quiet and dark and all she has are her thoughts and the cold window against her forehead. She tries not to wonder what he’s doing, what he’s thinking, where they’ve been and where they’re going and how and why and eventually she falls asleep, restless.
She dreams of cartoon dolphins with crowns of gardenias, heavy New York traffic, and the Skippy peanut butter House always keeps in his cupboard.
--
She spends a few days getting used to the culture, the language, the way everything moves simultaneously fast and slow. Dr. Randall helps her get settled and invites her to dinner; he shows her around the city, takes her on a tour of the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower.
They’re old friends and they talk easily about work and old residency memories. His accent is soft and low and cracks occasionally on certain words, makes her smile. He enjoys telling little anecdotes about his wife and kids and she doesn’t mind, smiles, asks him questions and always lets the conversation be about him, his life, his family, his hobbies.
He asks, sometimes, but quickly finds that he’s always met with a smile (polite, reserved, well-practiced) and ‘well, you know’ - but he frowns because really, he doesn’t at all. And so when people ask he says, ‘She’s a wonderful administrator. You’ll love her, I promise.’
Because she doesn’t want to talk about House. She doesn’t want to defend him, doesn’t want to judge him. She doesn’t want to talk about how they fought and fought (over his leg and clinic hours and pills and donors and everything serious and superfluous) until she stormed out and he followed her; until they were yelling across the parking lot about who was more miserable and who had less spine and sling after sling and shot after shot until she screamed, ‘Stop punishing me!’ in a high, hard way that made her voice crack and her body shake enough that she couldn’t move, enough to give him time to move in close.
‘I’m not punishing you,’ he said gruffly, honestly.
She sighed, her shoulders slumping and her words failing her, lost over the ringing in her own ears, the bitter taste in her mouth: ‘Then what do you want?’
But he had no answer, nothing other than to kiss her strongly, lips dry and chapped against hers as he pushed, put his hand against her spine and dared her to move away, to deny. But she could never lie to him, not like that and not well and so when he pulled back she let her head fall against his chest, barely registered his arm around her waist.
‘Cuddy,’ he murmured, like it explained everything between them, everything in existence.
‘I can’t-’ she started, choked. She felt him nod.
‘I know.’
She pushed back, eyes hard and unforgiving and damp against all this emotion, finally at surface level.
Accusatory: ‘Is that why? Why now?’
(Because she’s been trying, trying for years now and the one thing she wants she can’t have; the one thing she wants, he doesn’t and now that it’s out of the way, now that it’s over-)
But he shook his head, just barely, just enough.
‘No.’
--
She calls House the night before her first day and they talk about nothing. He mentions how whipped Wilson is with Potential Wife Numbre Quatre, and she briefly mentions Doctor Randall (‘Jeremy,’ he insists, and she smiles uncomfortably) and his practice.
‘You like him, this guy? Jaraldo?’
‘Jeremy,’ she says, ‘and yes, I do. He’s much easier to work with than some doctors I know.’
‘Aw, come on, Wilson’s not that bad. Sure he’s needy and pedantic, but-’
‘Actually I was referring to my lanky, crippled, felon doctor.’
Possessive, much? he wants to say, but instead deflects to, ‘So when’s the wedding? You know white’s not really your color-it doesn’t really go with the whole S&M theme you’ve been-’ and leaves off the bit about the fence and the dog and how many kids, just so he can hear her roll her eyes and huff:
‘We’re just colleagues.’
‘Paris is the city of lovers, Cuddy,’ he interrupts leaning back in his couch and narrowing his eyes at the muted TV set. ‘I wouldn’t expect you not to-’
‘House,’ she says, mildly amused under the sharp tones and frustration, ‘Shut up.’
--
The hospital is small and awkward and the moment she steps through the doors the smells, sounds, everything familiar sooths her skin, quiets her nerves.
‘It needs a lot of work,’ Jeremy says, running a hand nervously over the back of his neck. It’s a familiar gesture, one that makes her heartstrings pinch. ‘It was a mess before Dodson and then, well… I think the malpractice suits and red ink sort of speak for themselves.’
She smiles, then, despite herself, watching a nurse hurry from one end of the lobby to the other.
‘It’s beautiful.’
--
It got easier after he quit. After there was no board to answer to, no reason to pretend or lie or make excuses. Foreman took over the department but House still consulted, still called in and yelled at him over the phone, still fought tooth and nail for ‘cures, not treatments,’ he would say, arguing with her in the middle of his kitchen.
‘You quit!’
He shrugged. ‘You could rehire me.’
‘For one case?’ Hands on hips, lips pursed. As always.
He smirked, she sighed.
Foreman’s voice crackled through the speakerphone.
‘Still need a diagnosis!’
He would consult and she would cover and it was all so familiar, so normal; so different, when she would unlock his door and move through the darkness. When she would slip into bed beside him, and even her breathing to the sound of his heartbeat.
--
‘So how’s Cuddy?’ he asks when there’s a pause in the game.
‘So how’s Jenny?’ he shoots back, reaches for the remote.
‘She’s fine. She’s also not five-thousand miles away.’
‘Unfortunately.’
‘House.’
He turns up the volume.
Wilson smirks. ‘You miss her, don’t you?’
‘Parts of her.’
He tries to sound casual. ‘You should tell her.’
‘You should bite me.’
Wilson rolls his eyes and tries desperately to hide his grin.
--
It’s her old job, on a much smaller level and in a different currency. The hospital is a third the size of Princeton Plainsboro, but Jeremy has big plans. Wings to expand, clinics to repair;
‘I’d love to make a teaching hospital,’ he says. His excitement makes her smile.
‘Let’s worry about hiring staff and not cutting departments first.’
He nods, chuckles softly. They’re sitting on the floor in his office after hours, going over budgeting reports and expenses and highlighting and circling; she’s been planning a fundraiser for the past month to attract donors and patients and hopefully raise enough money to give the hospital a leg up.
‘It’s floundering financially,’ she says later that night, phone tucked against her chin. ‘I’m not even sure how it’s possible to spend that much money on absolutely nothing.’
‘Have you checked the expense reports? Hookers are generally a good-’
‘Not hookers,’ she says firmly.
‘No fun,’ he pouts, and she rolls her eyes.
It’s a typical conversation: she calls him every few nights, random enough not to be domestic, constant enough to keep the frayed line between them from breaking. She tells him about the fundraiser, about the people at work. About the art museums she sometimes goes to, the Seine and the view from the top of the Eiffel Tower and ‘I’ve been to Paris, Cuddy,’ he says, in that arrogant, know-it-all tone that makes her smile.
It’s been a month, melding into two and his voice is sharp and hers is soft and they’re quiet for a long time before he says, ‘You’re staying, aren’t you.’
She pauses, stares out the window of her little apartment over the drops of light, pointillism style against the dark, the comforting shadows of thin alleys. ‘They need me,’ she says.
‘And you need to feel needed.’ His scorn isn’t masked but isn’t as deep as she thought it would be, and she isn’t sure whether to feel disappointed by that or not.
‘I miss it,’ she admits, feels his slow nod on the other end, so many miles away.
I miss you, is what she needs to hear, but he says nothing. The silence crackles.
‘House-’
‘Gotta go. They’re doing a special on lesbian prisons.’
‘House-’
‘Night, Cuddy.’
A click, then silence, followed by dial tone as she keeps the phone pressed against her ear.
--
It wasn’t supposed to happen. She’d had all kinds of fertility tests, each one confirming the slim-to-none chance she had; they had.
Six months after he quit he was watching a baseball game on the sofa in her living room when she came home, dropped her stuff by the door and stood next to him for an awkward moment, then sighed, took a deep breath.
‘I’m pregnant.’
He blinked, looked up at her. ‘A little lead-in would have been nice. ‘So, Greg, you remember that one night, with the silk ties and the-’’
‘Shut up.’
‘Just saying.’
Silence. He could see the worry on her face, in her movements as she sat on the arm of couch.
‘Are you… okay? With this?’
He shrugged. ‘My guys managed to knock up the barren wasteland, it’s a great day for my ego.’
‘House.’
‘Cuddy,’ he acknowledged. She groaned and stood up, made to leave.
‘No Lamaze. No diaper changing. And I want an all-access pass to the funbags; they’re gonna be huge.’
She paused, turned. He rolled his head back against the couch and looked up at her.
‘Burping duty, partial-access, and you’re helping me assemble the crib.’
He smirked.
‘Deal.’
--
They rent out the first floor of a brand new art exhibit to hold the fundraiser. The artist is an old friend of Jeremy’s wife and it’s cheap and convenient and there’s room for food, for chairs, for a crowd of about five-hundred. Jeremy makes a welcoming speech in French, then in English. They both give brief summaries about the state of the hospital, its desperate need of funding; Cuddy speaks in English and he translates and it’s so calm and casual.
There’s a raffle for a painting, a car, a trip to Rome, all donated. There’s a small admission fee, but the food is free courtesy of the little bakery she shops at once a week; the band is good and the room is filled with the sound of wine glasses chinking and soft chatter.
‘I don’t want to know how many hours you spent on the phone trying to weasel things out of people,’ Jeremy says, suddenly appearing at her side.
She smiles, shrugs. ‘Let’s just hope it’s as successful as it looks.’
Jeremy nods back, grins. He introduces her to his wife and kids, several of his friends. He makes a big point of letting her talk with Alain, a tall, handsome man who owns a chain of restaurants in Lyon. She shakes his hand, makes small talk, smiles at his jokes and manages to procure a donation, then moves on. Jeremy gives him a helpless shrug.
‘You should have taken him home,’ House says later, after the party’s over and the donations gathered. She can hear the shrug in his voice. ‘You know what they say about Frenchmen in bed.’ He make a deep noise in the back of his throat and she almost laughs, hugs the phone tighter against her ear as if to amplify the sound, bring him closer.
It’s getting harder, she realizes. To not hear his voice, feel his hands on her skin. She doesn’t know if it’s the same for him, isn’t sure if she wants to know but she’s doing silly things to keep him on the phone longer, to make his one liners into monologues, just so she can memorize the sound of his voice.
She almost asks him to come, even for a week. Instead she says goodnight, and barely sleeps.
--
He turns up at the hospital every few weeks to pawn lunch off of Wilson. They sit and gossip and House steals his food. They talk about everything they talked about before, with nothing between them, nothing altered.
Every so often he tries to get him to talk about what happened. He’ll bring up the new dean, the changes that have been made. He’ll mention something about the maternity ward and House will give him a look, almost a warning.
Wilson knows the story. He knows what everyone else knows, the little extra, inside pieces. But he doesn’t understand, and House doesn’t want to explain.
He doesn’t want to talk about how one of the clinic nurses found her crumpled on the floor in her office between the desk and the couch. How he noticed her muscles were sore and her stomach hurt, noticed the way she winced; never acknowledges that she started to tell him (‘House, I think there’s something-’) and that he cut her off.
He did once, to Wilson, smoking a cigarette on the roof while she was in surgery. ‘It’s not your fault,’ he said, awkwardly, because he reassures patients and family members but not him, not people who don’t feel.
House stomped the light out with his cane and never told him it was his.
--
‘Mrs. Randall invited me over for Christmas dinner. Got a good wine recommendation?’
‘Manischewitz.’
She rolls her eyes. ‘Funny.’
‘I thought so.’
‘I’m thinking about a bottle of Sancerre. Or champagne. Do you drink champagne at Christmas?’
House wrinkles his nose. ‘How Jewish are you?’
She laughs, shakes her head. There’s a subtle, nervous undertone that House picks up on, notes, comes back to a few minutes later with:
‘You didn’t really call to ask me about wine.’
She sighs, leans against the doorframe and stares out the window. It was a bad cover - she’s been to enough holiday fundraisers and Christmas parties over the years to know, and House knows it too. Her hand curls tighter around the phone.
‘I called to say-’
‘I know what today is, Cuddy.’ He says it so softly she barely hears him.
She swallows tightly. ‘It would have been so different.’
He says nothing. They could talk about it - they could think about bassinets and little stuffed toys and cardboard books and mobiles. But she shouldn’t. And he won’t.
‘Cheval Blanc, ’67.’
‘What?’
‘Not perfect but, they’re French. Wine is their thing. Not much you can do to impress them.’
‘House…’ she sighs. ‘Yeah. Thanks.’
‘Cuddy,’ he says. ‘You can’t forgive someone when there’s nothing to forgive.’
‘Thank you,’ she murmurs, hangs up.
He listens to the dial tone.
--
He was standing at the window when she opened her eyes, blinked, took in the dark room, the steadily beeping monitor, and the vase of white flowers at her bedside.
He turned, but in the dark she could barely see his face, his eyes. ‘Hey.’ His voice was harsh, gravely. He’d been silent most of the day and the cigarette hadn’t helped. He crossed the room, took a penlight from his pocket and ran through all the ‘useless questions’ and procedures. She stopped him halfway though, her hand on his wrist. He looked down. Her skin was so pale.
‘What happened?’
‘You went into shock, passed out in your office. One of the nurses found you.’
She nodded slowly, looked away. Her hands were folded over her abdomen.
‘Surgery?’
‘Yeah. Barrowman. Removed the damage tube, stopped the bleeding, yadda yadda. You’re gonna be fine.’
‘Yeah.’
She stayed in the hospital overnight. House went home, came back two days later with a wheelchair and discharge papers.
‘Your chariot.’
She tried to smile at him. ‘I don’t need-’
He gave her a look.
She nodded slowly and he sighed and helped her into the wheelchair. ‘Isn’t this supposed to be the other way around?’ he muttered, dropped his cane in her lap. ‘Hold this.’
He drove her home in silence, pulled up to the curb and waited, watched as she stared out the window, at her hands.
‘Fertility medication increases the likelihood of tubal pregnancy,’ she murmured, like reading out of a textbook.
‘Cuddy-’
‘So do previous miscarriages. And age. And-’
‘This is not your fault,’ he said firmly.
She looked at him then, eyes wide and glossy and bloodshot.
‘Then whose fault is it?’ Her voice cracked and she looked away, out the window at her house. ‘I don’t…’
But there was nothing more she could say. He nodded.
‘Give me your keys.’
She frowned, protested slightly but handed them over. Five minutes later he came out with a bag that he tossed in the backseat.
‘Couldn’t find pajamas,’ he muttered, put the car in gear. ‘Hope you sleep in the nude.’
--
Just before she leaves for Christmas Eve dinner, she sends him an email confirming a plane ticket one week from the date. She doesn’t ask if he got it, doesn’t ask if he’ll use it. She goes to the party, listens to cheery Christmas music and helps Jeremy’s wife Cynthia in the kitchen. She brings a bottle of Cheval Blanc, and some chocolate-dipped madelines for the kids.
‘Jeremy says you’re a wonderful administrator; you’ve helped raise more money for the hospital in two months than the last one did in a year,’ she says, pulling plates out of the cupboard. ‘So, what made you leave Princeton-Plainsboro?’
Cuddy shrugs, helps her set the table. ‘Just time for a change, I guess,’ she says, knows it’s an offhanded answer.
Cynthia laughs. ‘And now you’re right back in it.’
‘I guess I wasn’t as ready for a new life as I thought,’ she says, smiling.
Because she doesn’t want to talk about that moment, three years after he quit, that she finally realized that there was nothing more she could do. She doesn’t want to talk about how she showed up on his doorstep an hour later, almost stunned:
‘I just handed in my two weeks notice.’
Instead, they talk about family, and friends; Cuddy tells her some stories about Jeremy during his residency and Cynthia talks about her mother and it’s so warm and personal and when they sit down to say grace she closes her eyes, lets all her wishes escape.
--
On the 31st of December she goes to the airport and waits outside security. She watches people come and people go until the last flight from Newark comes in; she waits, until there’s no chance, then goes home, and pretends it doesn’t mean anything.
--
She’s standing on the bridge, watching people and boats and city lights. There’s a low buzz of excitement, so many toothy grins. Old women and children and couples and mothers and fathers and she smiles, almost sadly, hugs her arms tighter around herself to ward off the cold. There’s a chilly breeze and a light snowfall and she closes her eyes, forces herself to enjoy the moment.
‘Only reason to wear a scarf like that, is as a beacon to identify you in a crowd.’
She freezes, opens her eyes. His voice is tired, rough, unmistakable, and when she turns he’s wearing the same smirk that goes all the way up to his eyes. He moves closer, almost pinning her against the wall and gives her a long once over. She’s older, softer but her eyes are still bright; her lips have curved up into a smile and he has a barely controllable urge to kiss it away.
She closes the distance between them, reaches out and touches him gently, like he’ll disappear; he can barely feel her fingers beneath her gloves and his coat, but the touch is the same anyway, and his smirk almost turns into a grin.
‘I didn’t think you’d come,’ she murmurs, closes his coat against the cold.
He rolls his eyes. ‘Yes you did. Otherwise you wouldn’t have waited at airport security for three hours.’
For a moment she looks surprised, then annoyed, then she shrugs, a smile tugging at her lips.
Someone bumps into him and he bumps into her and he rolls his eyes; she laughs. ‘How did you find me?’
‘Outgoing message to Jaraldo, said you’d be here.’
‘You hacked into my email?’
‘That surprises you?’
She tries to be offended but it’s just so familiar, so old.
He shifts, winces. The flight and the cold and she tries not to look at him worriedly.
‘Do you want to-’
‘No.’
She nods, turns. City lights and city sounds and his shoulder brushes hers, barely. She loops her arm through his and he rolls his eyes; the Eiffel Tower goes up in lights but all he’ll remember are the shadows on her face, and her smile.
--
They stay in Paris for three weeks. She shows him the hospital, her favorite café; she introduces him to Jeremy who looks more than shocked.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says, recovering. ‘I just thought that - I mean, you haven’t said - anyway.’ He extends his hand. House grimaces but takes it anyway, and she hides a smile. ‘Pleasure to meet you.’
She shows him the little art gallery where they held the first fundraiser, where they’ll be holding another one in a few weeks. He drags her out to Versailles, tries to cop a feel in the hallway of mirrors.
Wilson calls Cuddy five days later and asks with forced-calm if she’s heard from House. She rounds on him, smacks his chest with the phone. ‘You didn’t tell him?’
‘Hey, sorry, Jimmy, I’m a little busy being serviced right now, can I call you back?’
He hangs up over her protests, and silences them with kisses.
--
Jeremy takes them to the airport. He spends the entire ride thanking her for everything she’s done, for all the help and support and she can see House out of the corner of her eye going ‘blah blah blah,’ and making faces. She hides a smile and Jeremy remains oblivious. He tells them both to come back and visit any time, promises to keep her updated on how the hospital’s doing.
She nods, thanks him, gives him a quick hug. And then they’re lost in the crowd of people checking baggage and clearing customs and security and by the time they reach the gate she’s exhausted and his leg hurts and the woman at the desk informs them their flight has been delayed due to weather complications.
So they find empty seats and within an hour she’s asleep, her head against his shoulder, awkward angles and lines and her hair against his chest. It’s uncomfortable, really; his elbow against the armrest and his fingers curled around her hip.
Across from them is a young couple, tucked around each other; the man - kid, he thinks - smiles across the aisle at him, as if they have something in common.
She shifts, her nose bumping against his neck and her fingers curl against his leg, her hand sliding forward slightly.
‘Tease,’ he mutters, dips his head to look at her face. Her lips are parted, eyes closed and her breathing is so quiet, so reassuring beneath the noise and lights.
The crackling of the intercom breaks his calm as a woman announces that the weather is clearing, and that flight 2171 will be ready for boarding.
He nudges her side with his elbow. ‘Wakey wakey.’
--
She opens her eyes when he gets out of bed, falls instantly back asleep. She wakes up again an hour later, slips on her robe and follows the soft music into the living room. He’s hunched over the piano, bottle of pills and a glass of scotch and she doesn’t bother disapproving, just leans against the doorframe and watches. He plays Bach, Chopin, quiet, complicated pieces. His fingers barely touch the keys but it still sounds so beautiful, with the rain against the window as a percussive accompaniment. She closes her eyes and doesn’t open them until he shifts deftly from Liszt to Brick House.
She laughs softly and he turns, smirks. ‘How long have you been there?
‘How long have you known I was there?’
He shrugs, turns back to the piano. ‘Touche.’
She crosses the room, stands next to him as he plays, hears his voice in the notes, hears little things and little moments that mean so much, mean nothing.
She stays, until her body sways and her eyes keep closing. She squeezes his shoulder, moves away. He grabs her wrist gently as she passes, keeps his eyes fixed on the keys. She reaches up, cups his cheek in her hand and he turns, meets her gaze, gets distracted by the lines around her eyes, her cheeks; the way her hair is turning silver in patterns that match his grey.
‘Come to bed when you’re done,’ she says, slips out of his grasp. He nods, turns back to the piano and picks up the melody where he left off, soft and tinkering, more like a lullaby.
‘House.’ She pauses in the doorway; he stops playing, doesn’t turn. Her voice is soft. ‘I missed you, too.’
He waits, until her footsteps quiet and the bed creaks and there’s no other sound than the rain against the window, and the long, gentle notes he plays without thought or purpose; then he smiles.