Post-Ep House/Cuddy fic!
Title: When Cuddy Woke Up
Characters: House/Cuddy
Rating: PG 13
Word Count: 2,190
Summary: Another finale post-ep fic.
Author's Note: My contribution to the post-ep fic goodness! I'd started writing this right after the ep, but recently redid it when the drabble I whipped up for the Huddy in 100 words or less challenge showed me a new way to look at it. So if the beginning of this seems familiar, that's why. :P
When Cuddy woke up, it was with bleary eyes. She didn't immediately remember where she was or when she'd fallen asleep. All she could recall were the feelings of anxiety and tension from the day before, jumbled together with a weary kind of content. And then she felt something shift halfway under her-under her arm, her thigh, the side of her stomach-effectively confusing her and jolting her the rest of the way awake.
"You're on my leg," it grimaced, wrapping an arm around her waist. She felt fingers trip up under the hem of her scrubs and lightly grip the flesh of her hip.
House rolled over to his side and she slipped gently off his chest and came to rest beside him on the dusty leather couch, tucked against his warm body. He threw his bad thigh over one of her legs, and she didn’t mind. His leg was warm and she liked being able to feel his feet just below hers if she stretched out her toes. His hand left her hip and came to rest quietly on his own side, leaving behind goosebumps on the exposed skin where her shirt had crumpled up on her stomach.
“Your breath stinks,” he grumbled as he propped his head up on an elbow to look at her.
“And yours smells like spring flowers.”
“Basically.”
She smiled a little, and he did too.
She could hear the television humming in the background and if she looked out over his head she could see the morning sun trying to stream past his tightly drawn shades. Somewhere down the hall there was a bathroom, a shattered mirror still quietly collecting light from inside the tub. Cuddy had picked up a few of the larger shards the night before, after House had slipped his hand out of hers with a hoarse, “I’m gonna change,” on the way to his bedroom.
She thought about trashing the pills when her hand stumbled into them while picking up glass, but she wasn’t here to flush his drugs away or dig through shoeboxes for more-she wasn’t here to be his savior, she was just here. So she’d scooped them up and popped them right back into the orange canister in the sink and left them on the tub’s edge for him to deal with in the morning.
She found him in the kitchen afterwards, washing blood and grit off his face in a sink littered with old cereal bowls. He’d ditched his dusty jacket and his tattered shirt and stood in his old jeans and socks with a plain pajama shirt tossed over his shoulder.
She grabbed her medical kit from his coffee table.
“I do need to clean that before you bleed all over your apartment.”
“Shame. I was thinking about redecorating,” he joked tiredly, but handed her a kitchen towel and stood still while she cleaned his shoulder. She steadied herself with a palm against his chest as he leaned against the counter top just watching, patiently for once. “Does it hurt much?” she asked.
“Not really,” he muttered absently, and she could see from the corner of her eye the way his hand clutched at his thigh and paled his knuckles. Of course his shoulder didn’t hurt, not when his leg did. She took her time with his shoulder just in case. An infection certainly wouldn’t help his pain, she figured, and anyway she was neurotically meticulous and couldn’t help it if she tried. But he knew that already, and he didn’t mind. When she finished applying a new bandage to the wound she didn’t immediately remove her hand from his chest; his heart beat languid and warm against her fingers and it made her heart beat a little bit faster in return.
“Can’t get enough of me?” He smirked at her.
“Oh, please.” She smacked his arm with the towel but didn’t exactly deny it as he slid his fresh shirt on.
“Come on, I’ll make some coffee.”
She seated herself at the kitchen island, yawning and rubbing her eyes as the true weight of the day began to set in. The pot was half-full of old coffee from the morning, which House dumped into two mismatched mugs from his cupboard and reheated in the microwave. Instead of milk or sugar he poured brandy into his mug, a gesture he tried to hide behind hunched shoulders, but that Cuddy didn’t miss. He moved to put the little bottle away but Cuddy cleared her throat and looked purposefully at the mug meant for her. He was almost-almost-surprised by it, and raised an eyebrow in her direction. She raised one back.
“It was a long day for both of us,” she reminded him, and so he obliged with a throaty, tired chuckle.
She wasn’t sure how long they sat across from each other in his dim kitchen, sipping stale java that tasted more like alcohol than anything resembling “Italian Roast” like the bag of beans on his counter proclaimed. She expected him to drill her on Lucas-the details of their breakup, the hour and minute exactly when she’d realized she was unhappy with him-but none of that came. They sat in silence, trading yawns and tired, curious glances over their cups. Neither of them really wanted to talk at all, not about Lucas, not about Hannah, not about the day. Not now. There would be time for that later, Cuddy thought, and her stomach jittered at the idea of later, that they had a later.
The noises from the street leaked through the cracks of the walls and into the kitchen, and for a while it seemed like House was trying to listen to them. A siren whaled past on some nearby block and he cocked his head at it, his cracked lips hovering over the rim of his mug. But then his eyes turned to Cuddy and held her gaze and it wasn’t the siren he was thinking about. His mug lowered a little and his lips opened a little and her breath hitched a little all in the same beat. He was about to say something, she could sense, something that he could only say in the dark and the quiet of whatever hour it was (neither of them knew) tonight in his dusty clothes in his dusty apartment with a woman across from him who was, for once, for just a little bit, almost as tired and vulnerable as he was.
He hesitated and she leaned imperceptibly forward and as soon as she did she knew it was wrong and the moment was lost. His eyes dropped to the table a split second and when they looked back up it was gone. She was angry with herself, and frustrated, and sorry all at once but she knew this was House, and none of this would be easy.
“Hi,” he rasped quietly instead of whatever his thought had been. His voice was raw, exhausted, and the word carried with it all the emotion of the last 32 hours.
“Hi,” she said and reached across the counter to brush her fingers against the skin of his forearm. I’m not going anywhere, her touch said, not tonight. The muscle in his arm relaxed and he sipped his coffee.
At some point they’d moved to the couch-Cuddy couldn’t remember when. Her vision was blurry and the yawns kept barreling up her chest, one after another, until she slunk into the soft cushions by House’s side. The indistinct noises of the TV blurred into the quiet voices of her dreams, and somewhere she thought she heard House ask, “So, was he good in bed?” But she ignored it and muttered, pointedly, “Goodnight, House.”
She fell asleep to the sound of his rumbling chuckle.
He watched her now, lazily, from where they were squashed on his couch. She noticed his shoulder had bled through his clean shirt and left little splotches of rust across the fabric. He was keeping his space without keeping his space because even though their legs were tangled comfortably together, he kept his hands hesitantly to himself. This closeness was new for the both of them, and neither knew quite what to do with it.
Cuddy reached up before she could stop herself and traced her hand down the side of his face, through the scratchy stubble on his cheek and over the edge of his sharp jaw. His eyes followed her hand and she noticed that his chest stopped moving for just the single sharp moment her hand connected with his face.
“Hi,” she was the one to say this time, her fingers hovering just above his dented cheek.
“Cuddy,” he hummed, his eyes searching hers for something she would gladly give him if she only knew what it was he was looking for. “Last night,” he said slowly, and she listened. “Last night in the bathroom, when you said-”
“That I love you?” she finished for him. She didn’t avert her eyes when she said it this time. He blinked slowly, like a cat, and simply nodded.
“I know it’s ridiculous,” she sighed, “And trust me I’ve been over that plenty of times with myself, but the fact of it isn’t going to change. Loved you last night, love you this morning, will probably still love you even when you’re late to work tomorrow.”
His face was unreadable and for a split second Cuddy panicked. Maybe that’s not what he’d wanted to hear-maybe the man who was usually all-in was suddenly all-out, and that was the problem. She bit her lip and withdrew her leg out from between his. Almost as soon as she did he slid closer, pressing her against the back of the couch with his weight and extinguishing all the space that had been between them for years. “Oh!” she gasped lightly, but his lips muffled the noise and it was lost in his warm mouth. He pressed a hand against her face and another into the cool part of her hip and she relaxed into him.
Her toes stretched out to find his feet and he pulled back for a second. “Me too,” he muttered.
Her eyebrows slid together. “You too…?”
He gave her the are you stupid? look she was used to having to fend off on a weekly basis, his breath heavy, and though it took her a second the meaning of his statement eventually hit her like a freight train. “You too,” she reaffirmed to his accompanying nod.
This time when their lips met, it was more of a crash. It was all the need and want of an entire decade, wrapped up with anguish and hope and a new feeling neither of them could quite articulate the way normal people could. He crushed her into the couch cushions and she wrapped her arms around his neck like a lifeline, her fingers entangled in his salt and pepper hair. His fingers pushed up her shirt and slid across her sides, her stomach, and it took most of her willpower to remember how to breathe.
“Cuddy,” he muttered into her mouth.
“House,” she groaned quietly into the side of his neck as he kissed her ear, and it felt so good to say it like that.
“No, Cuddy,” he whispered, and with slight embarrassment she realized he actually had something to say. He sat up, smirking like the devil. “About the whole late for work thing…”
“Oh, please just shut up-”
“-You’re late.”
She sat bolt upright, nearly throwing him off the couch in the process, and looked frantically around the room. He propped his head back up on his elbow. “What time is it?” she demanded.
“Judging by the amount of sun coming through the window and the time my biological clock usually gets me up… I’d say eight, maybe nine.”
“Son of a bitch!” She scrambled over him (he protectively shielded his leg from her wrath) and began to scour the floor for her shoes.
He laughed and rolled himself up to prop his feet on the coffee table and watch.
“You jackass! Why didn’t you say something? Wake me up sooner?”
House stuck his nose into a coffee mug from last night and tipped the last few drops into his mouth. “Dunno.”
She slipped her shoes onto her feet and adjusted her ponytail as best she could. “I’m going to kill you,” she growled.
He cleared his throat, “Quote, ‘And I’ll probably still love you even when-’”
“House.”
Cuddy had her boss voice back on so House simply lifted his hands in defeat. It was a gesture that only served to remind Cuddy that, once again, he had won. She rolled her eyes on her rush to the door.
“No goodbye sex?” he called after her, but she ignored it.
“Angry sex?” he shouted, knowing full well that she was already in the hall and not going to respond.
“You’ll be back!”
The door slammed angrily and he could practically hear her seething the rest of the way out the building. He wondered how long it would take her to realize that it was actually almost eleven.
Characters: House/Cuddy
Rating: PG 13
Word Count: 2,190
Summary: Another finale post-ep fic.
Author's Note: My contribution to the post-ep fic goodness! I'd started writing this right after the ep, but recently redid it when the drabble I whipped up for the Huddy in 100 words or less challenge showed me a new way to look at it. So if the beginning of this seems familiar, that's why. :P
When Cuddy woke up, it was with bleary eyes. She didn't immediately remember where she was or when she'd fallen asleep. All she could recall were the feelings of anxiety and tension from the day before, jumbled together with a weary kind of content. And then she felt something shift halfway under her-under her arm, her thigh, the side of her stomach-effectively confusing her and jolting her the rest of the way awake.
"You're on my leg," it grimaced, wrapping an arm around her waist. She felt fingers trip up under the hem of her scrubs and lightly grip the flesh of her hip.
House rolled over to his side and she slipped gently off his chest and came to rest beside him on the dusty leather couch, tucked against his warm body. He threw his bad thigh over one of her legs, and she didn’t mind. His leg was warm and she liked being able to feel his feet just below hers if she stretched out her toes. His hand left her hip and came to rest quietly on his own side, leaving behind goosebumps on the exposed skin where her shirt had crumpled up on her stomach.
“Your breath stinks,” he grumbled as he propped his head up on an elbow to look at her.
“And yours smells like spring flowers.”
“Basically.”
She smiled a little, and he did too.
She could hear the television humming in the background and if she looked out over his head she could see the morning sun trying to stream past his tightly drawn shades. Somewhere down the hall there was a bathroom, a shattered mirror still quietly collecting light from inside the tub. Cuddy had picked up a few of the larger shards the night before, after House had slipped his hand out of hers with a hoarse, “I’m gonna change,” on the way to his bedroom.
She thought about trashing the pills when her hand stumbled into them while picking up glass, but she wasn’t here to flush his drugs away or dig through shoeboxes for more-she wasn’t here to be his savior, she was just here. So she’d scooped them up and popped them right back into the orange canister in the sink and left them on the tub’s edge for him to deal with in the morning.
She found him in the kitchen afterwards, washing blood and grit off his face in a sink littered with old cereal bowls. He’d ditched his dusty jacket and his tattered shirt and stood in his old jeans and socks with a plain pajama shirt tossed over his shoulder.
She grabbed her medical kit from his coffee table.
“I do need to clean that before you bleed all over your apartment.”
“Shame. I was thinking about redecorating,” he joked tiredly, but handed her a kitchen towel and stood still while she cleaned his shoulder. She steadied herself with a palm against his chest as he leaned against the counter top just watching, patiently for once. “Does it hurt much?” she asked.
“Not really,” he muttered absently, and she could see from the corner of her eye the way his hand clutched at his thigh and paled his knuckles. Of course his shoulder didn’t hurt, not when his leg did. She took her time with his shoulder just in case. An infection certainly wouldn’t help his pain, she figured, and anyway she was neurotically meticulous and couldn’t help it if she tried. But he knew that already, and he didn’t mind. When she finished applying a new bandage to the wound she didn’t immediately remove her hand from his chest; his heart beat languid and warm against her fingers and it made her heart beat a little bit faster in return.
“Can’t get enough of me?” He smirked at her.
“Oh, please.” She smacked his arm with the towel but didn’t exactly deny it as he slid his fresh shirt on.
“Come on, I’ll make some coffee.”
She seated herself at the kitchen island, yawning and rubbing her eyes as the true weight of the day began to set in. The pot was half-full of old coffee from the morning, which House dumped into two mismatched mugs from his cupboard and reheated in the microwave. Instead of milk or sugar he poured brandy into his mug, a gesture he tried to hide behind hunched shoulders, but that Cuddy didn’t miss. He moved to put the little bottle away but Cuddy cleared her throat and looked purposefully at the mug meant for her. He was almost-almost-surprised by it, and raised an eyebrow in her direction. She raised one back.
“It was a long day for both of us,” she reminded him, and so he obliged with a throaty, tired chuckle.
She wasn’t sure how long they sat across from each other in his dim kitchen, sipping stale java that tasted more like alcohol than anything resembling “Italian Roast” like the bag of beans on his counter proclaimed. She expected him to drill her on Lucas-the details of their breakup, the hour and minute exactly when she’d realized she was unhappy with him-but none of that came. They sat in silence, trading yawns and tired, curious glances over their cups. Neither of them really wanted to talk at all, not about Lucas, not about Hannah, not about the day. Not now. There would be time for that later, Cuddy thought, and her stomach jittered at the idea of later, that they had a later.
The noises from the street leaked through the cracks of the walls and into the kitchen, and for a while it seemed like House was trying to listen to them. A siren whaled past on some nearby block and he cocked his head at it, his cracked lips hovering over the rim of his mug. But then his eyes turned to Cuddy and held her gaze and it wasn’t the siren he was thinking about. His mug lowered a little and his lips opened a little and her breath hitched a little all in the same beat. He was about to say something, she could sense, something that he could only say in the dark and the quiet of whatever hour it was (neither of them knew) tonight in his dusty clothes in his dusty apartment with a woman across from him who was, for once, for just a little bit, almost as tired and vulnerable as he was.
He hesitated and she leaned imperceptibly forward and as soon as she did she knew it was wrong and the moment was lost. His eyes dropped to the table a split second and when they looked back up it was gone. She was angry with herself, and frustrated, and sorry all at once but she knew this was House, and none of this would be easy.
“Hi,” he rasped quietly instead of whatever his thought had been. His voice was raw, exhausted, and the word carried with it all the emotion of the last 32 hours.
“Hi,” she said and reached across the counter to brush her fingers against the skin of his forearm. I’m not going anywhere, her touch said, not tonight. The muscle in his arm relaxed and he sipped his coffee.
At some point they’d moved to the couch-Cuddy couldn’t remember when. Her vision was blurry and the yawns kept barreling up her chest, one after another, until she slunk into the soft cushions by House’s side. The indistinct noises of the TV blurred into the quiet voices of her dreams, and somewhere she thought she heard House ask, “So, was he good in bed?” But she ignored it and muttered, pointedly, “Goodnight, House.”
She fell asleep to the sound of his rumbling chuckle.
He watched her now, lazily, from where they were squashed on his couch. She noticed his shoulder had bled through his clean shirt and left little splotches of rust across the fabric. He was keeping his space without keeping his space because even though their legs were tangled comfortably together, he kept his hands hesitantly to himself. This closeness was new for the both of them, and neither knew quite what to do with it.
Cuddy reached up before she could stop herself and traced her hand down the side of his face, through the scratchy stubble on his cheek and over the edge of his sharp jaw. His eyes followed her hand and she noticed that his chest stopped moving for just the single sharp moment her hand connected with his face.
“Hi,” she was the one to say this time, her fingers hovering just above his dented cheek.
“Cuddy,” he hummed, his eyes searching hers for something she would gladly give him if she only knew what it was he was looking for. “Last night,” he said slowly, and she listened. “Last night in the bathroom, when you said-”
“That I love you?” she finished for him. She didn’t avert her eyes when she said it this time. He blinked slowly, like a cat, and simply nodded.
“I know it’s ridiculous,” she sighed, “And trust me I’ve been over that plenty of times with myself, but the fact of it isn’t going to change. Loved you last night, love you this morning, will probably still love you even when you’re late to work tomorrow.”
His face was unreadable and for a split second Cuddy panicked. Maybe that’s not what he’d wanted to hear-maybe the man who was usually all-in was suddenly all-out, and that was the problem. She bit her lip and withdrew her leg out from between his. Almost as soon as she did he slid closer, pressing her against the back of the couch with his weight and extinguishing all the space that had been between them for years. “Oh!” she gasped lightly, but his lips muffled the noise and it was lost in his warm mouth. He pressed a hand against her face and another into the cool part of her hip and she relaxed into him.
Her toes stretched out to find his feet and he pulled back for a second. “Me too,” he muttered.
Her eyebrows slid together. “You too…?”
He gave her the are you stupid? look she was used to having to fend off on a weekly basis, his breath heavy, and though it took her a second the meaning of his statement eventually hit her like a freight train. “You too,” she reaffirmed to his accompanying nod.
This time when their lips met, it was more of a crash. It was all the need and want of an entire decade, wrapped up with anguish and hope and a new feeling neither of them could quite articulate the way normal people could. He crushed her into the couch cushions and she wrapped her arms around his neck like a lifeline, her fingers entangled in his salt and pepper hair. His fingers pushed up her shirt and slid across her sides, her stomach, and it took most of her willpower to remember how to breathe.
“Cuddy,” he muttered into her mouth.
“House,” she groaned quietly into the side of his neck as he kissed her ear, and it felt so good to say it like that.
“No, Cuddy,” he whispered, and with slight embarrassment she realized he actually had something to say. He sat up, smirking like the devil. “About the whole late for work thing…”
“Oh, please just shut up-”
“-You’re late.”
She sat bolt upright, nearly throwing him off the couch in the process, and looked frantically around the room. He propped his head back up on his elbow. “What time is it?” she demanded.
“Judging by the amount of sun coming through the window and the time my biological clock usually gets me up… I’d say eight, maybe nine.”
“Son of a bitch!” She scrambled over him (he protectively shielded his leg from her wrath) and began to scour the floor for her shoes.
He laughed and rolled himself up to prop his feet on the coffee table and watch.
“You jackass! Why didn’t you say something? Wake me up sooner?”
House stuck his nose into a coffee mug from last night and tipped the last few drops into his mouth. “Dunno.”
She slipped her shoes onto her feet and adjusted her ponytail as best she could. “I’m going to kill you,” she growled.
He cleared his throat, “Quote, ‘And I’ll probably still love you even when-’”
“House.”
Cuddy had her boss voice back on so House simply lifted his hands in defeat. It was a gesture that only served to remind Cuddy that, once again, he had won. She rolled her eyes on her rush to the door.
“No goodbye sex?” he called after her, but she ignored it.
“Angry sex?” he shouted, knowing full well that she was already in the hall and not going to respond.
“You’ll be back!”
The door slammed angrily and he could practically hear her seething the rest of the way out the building. He wondered how long it would take her to realize that it was actually almost eleven.