Fic: Seduction, In Six Courses (2/3) House/Cuddy
Title: Seduction, In Six Courses (Part 2 of 3)
Word Count: 1500 ish
Rating: PG 13 (it's all pretty innocent, really)
Spoilers: Up to and including 'Epic Fail'
Disclaimer: I do not own these gorgeous creatures.
Summary: House invites Cuddy over for dinner. But first, he must plan the menu.
A/N: I really liked foodie!House. Foodie!House really likes Cuddy, and he likes opera too, it seems.
A/N 2: Have just realised I've ripped off the title for this from my own Snape/Lily fic. Whoops.
ETA: I lied. It's three parts, after all. And I stole from Giacomo Puccini in this part, just for fun.
Summer is dying; fading into a pastel twilight, the first chill of the season settling gently over Wilson’s quiet street.
He watches, from the kitchen window, gazing expectantly down as her sleek, black car slides with a soft purr into place, snug against the curb. He watches, simmering toffee momentarily discarded, as she steps from the drivers side door, and in the long months he’s spent away from the hospital he’s forgotten just how very enticing her everyday outfits can be. A flash of scarlet, the whip of dark hair, and in half a heartbeat the buzzing of the intercom drags him from his reverie. He only just remembers to remove the toffee from the burner, before heading for the door.
She is beautiful, but this is nothing new.
Today it is her perfume, and the contrast of the red of her delicately frothy blouse against the impossibly pale pearlescence of her skin which renders him momentarily speechless, and in the flurry of warm movement as she presses a fleeting kiss to his cheek the only words which occur to him, floating absently sideways into his mind, is the incredibly inane combination of; ‘You smell nice.’
But she only smiles; that sweet, vaguely lopsided smile she seems to reserve solely for him, and surrenders her bag and suit jacket to the hat-stand, face suddenly obscured by a cloud of inky hair. He’s quickly nervous, and it’s stupid, because he’s forty-five, not fifteen, and he’s known her half his life. As long as she’s known him, after all, and she’s still here, standing in her high, high heels in his best friend’s apartment, looking pretty and ever so slightly amused. He manages to quirk his head, and doesn’t miss the way her fingertips brush like rain over his left shoulder blade, as she follows him into the kitchen.
“Where’s Wilson?” Her tone is light, breezy, but there is the slightest edge, a tiny little sharp corner in the way her voice pitches up, and the only reason he is able to recognise the off-kilter note as nerves is because he knows her so well, knows the music of her voice as well as his own.
He’s feeling indulgent, emotionally-speaking, and that in itself is slightly worrying.
“Wilson’s got a date.”
One perfect eyebrow tilts skyward, as she leans carefully with one angular hipbone jutting against the edge of the bench, and the knowing, eye-rolling smile they share sends a warm, toffee-textured wave right through him. It’s nice, being here with her, beyond the tugging lure of the hospital, of medicine and patients and work. Her eyes move like vapour over the assembled mess of his endeavours; the tiny kitchen resembles, strangely enough, the factory floor of the Wonka candy factory, minus Gene Wilder, or perhaps the carelessly regimented chaos of food, crockery, kitchen implements and assorted minutae could more accurately be compared to Dumbledore’s office, with all its spindly, unexplained instruments.
She’s still smiling, and Callas is pouring her heart out from the living room speakers. He sets the toffee aside to cool, and clears a miniscule space to begin plating up the starters, before the vague thought of ‘manners’ occurs in some distracted depth of his brain.
“Wanna get your drink on?”
That smile widens just a little, and the way her eyes dart from his face to her feet and back again sends another dessert-flavoured lurch through him. He pauses, standing in the open refrigerator doorway, as she finally looks back up at him again. Her eyes have grown sad, in the space of seven seconds.
“I thought you weren’t supposed to be drinking? Isn’t alcohol counter-productive to the whole ’narcotic addiction’ therapy thing?”
He’s only a little bit annoyed, and anyway, she looks more wistful than disapproving, so he merely shrugs, and retrieves a bottle of Pellegrino from the top shelf.
“Doesn’t mean you can’t drink.”
This would all be so much easier if she would, if they both could, but it isn’t possible, and to his quiet amazement he hasn’t even really missed drinking, truth be told. Especially not now, when she’s beautiful and delicate in his kitchen and he wants, desperately, to remember every little thing about her.
Maria, suicidal, curses the world from the stereo, and the tenuous moment dissolves. Cuddy smiles.
“Water is fine. Thank you.”
He shrugs, and fills a stemmed glass, and lets his fingers brush casually against hers as he hands it over. The faintest shade of petal pink begins to bloom along her cheekbones.
“So… who is Wilson dating?”
The next five minutes passes easily, as they thoroughly abuse Wilson, in his absence, for his appalling taste and terrible track record, and when she sets down her glass mid-chuckle and tucks her hair behind her ear, he is more than a little surprised.
“Tell me you’re not offering to help?! Your culinary skills are so not up to par, Cuddy. I mean, you’re lucky that you can make up for this failing with skills involving other rooms in the average household-”
“Do you want me to help or not?” She smirks, letting the ribald joke pass unconcernedly by, and this is what it used to be like, before Amber and Kutner and the hallucinations. Easy. Disarming. He grins, unable to nip his amused pleasure in the bud, apparently.
“Not. Just… stand there, and look pretty.”
He doesn’t add, you’re good at that, although he could. But speaking aloud is not necessary, it seems, because she blushes a deeper shade of rose, and takes a long, slow sip from her glass, smoke-coloured eyes fixed upon the pomegranate in his hands.
“What’re you making?”
“Ah! The six million dollar question! Kinda slow on the uptake tonight, aren’t ya, Cuddles?”
Those eyes flash, with mischief and something less easily defined, and he wonders briefly just how long it’s been since he’s used the old, old nickname. A hand juts rather daintily on one hip, and she’s smiling up at him, gazing up at him like he’s the whole world. Like she used to, once upon a time. He slides the blade of one of Wilson’s expensive knives through the tough flesh of the pomegranate, tendons flexing easily in his hands, nerves enjoying the very act of movement, of creating something from nothing. It is like music, this cooking, after all. She’s still smiling, and she’s close at his side, so close he can count each feathery, midnight eyelash where they flutter and dance against her pale cheeks. Time to concentrate.
“Six course degustation menu.”
He barely has to look at her to sense her surprise, and the pleasure that chases quickly at its heels.
“Personally designed for your culinary pleasure by moi. You could use a decent dinner, Cuddy.” He adds, poking with a stray spoon at the smooth plane of her belly, enjoying immensely the way she jumps and swats casually at his arm in response.
“So says you. I was under the impression you were about to lease out my ass for car parking space downtown.” She’s still smiling, wickedness alight in the sharp angles of her face, but just for a moment, for a tiny, brittle second, he hates himself, sickeningly. He sets the pomegranate down, and twirls the spoon in his fingers.
“Your ass is the finest piece of real estate on the Eastern Seaboard. I won’t hear a bad word against it.”
It’s the closest he’s come to a compliment in months, and this fact is not lost on her. The little chuckling sound she makes does nothing to dim the momentary shock in her eyes, and he wonders, for a brief, stupid moment, just how epic her reaction would be if he ever did actually say anything genuinely nice.
In the meantime, she changes the subject.
“So, what’s on this personally-designed menu of yours?”
He gives her the run-down; intentionally leaving out a lot of the best, most innovative bits, but it is enough to widen her eyes and leave her perfectly-shaped lips parted in surprise.
“House…”
“Hmmm?” He turns back to the bench-top, running the knife through a rainbow of white and yellow peaches, plump red nectarines and a solitary, heaven-scented mango. Her eyes are close, and burn hotly on the side of his face.
“What brought all this on? I’m pretty sure you’ve never so much as popped a bag of microwave popcorn in my honour before.”
She’s expecting an answer, but there is nothing he can say that will explain it, or let him off the hook without sounding like a total loser. Tosca has progressed, now, and Cavaradossi is despairing and beautifully eloquent through Wilson’s surprisingly high-end hi-fi system.
“E lucevan le stelle…” He mutters, more to distract her than anything, and it works.
“What?”
She is frowning, ever so slightly, when he lifts his eyes to look at her, the plates already piled elegantly with the elaborate concoction of fruit and fairy floss. He’s halfway through the dinner preparations, and he’s still nervous.
“The libretto. The words, what Cavaradossi’s saying… the stars are all shining-”
“And my dream of love is gone forever; yeah, I know. I know the story.”
Not so easily distracted, then. She’s still watching him like a Ravenclaw with those narrowed eyes, and beneath her silent interrogation he seizes the starters, and high-tails it into the dining room.
~