FIC: something worthwhile to think of each morning, House, House/Cuddy
Title: something worthwhile to think of each morning
Fandom: House, M.D.
Pairing: House/Cuddy
Rating: R for mild sex
Spoilers: None
Summary: Love is knowing all about someone, and still wanting to be with them more than any other person...
Disclaimer: The characters are not mine. The words are.
A/N: Written for cuddy_fest. Prompt 134. Cuddy/House. Five things you never would have known about each other. Title from "I Can Do Better Than That" from The Last Five Years.
1.) Freckles dance across her back. Not a spattering like what appears on the bridge of her nose by the end of summer. Just once in a while, a freckle: beneath the curve of her right scapula, a clustering to the left of her C-3 vertebra, one just above her left hip.
Before all this happened-when he was just her annoying employee instead of her annoying employee who spent most nights in her bed-he prided himself in knowing her body. He did know it-the curve of jaw and the swell of her breasts, the way her hips swung when she walked. He even knew the scar on her elbow from a bicycle accident and the one on the inside of her knee from his sister pushing her off a rock.
But now he knows so much more. He knows her body shy in a new bra and panty set she wasn’t sure he’d like (he did). He knows her body angry in a bathrobe when he hid her clothes one morning. Her glare was enough to make him forget sex and give the clothes back sulkily. And he knows her body like this, at ease and sleeping, naked because he’d just undress her in the morning if she weren’t. She’s sleeping with her back to him, legs tangled in the sheets. He traces a finger from freckle to freckle and kisses her neck until she rolls over with a sleepy half-moan.
2.) She’s had two miscarriages. Once during in vitro. Once was…his. They hadn’t necessarily been trying to get pregnant, but they hadn’t not. She doesn’t even tell him she was pregnant until he gets paged to her office one day. All the blinds are closed and he smirks, wonders if she’s going to yell at him or jump him.
But when he saunters through the door, she isn’t behind the desk. Muffled sobs come from the bathroom. House considers bolting, doesn’t.
“Cuddy?"
He can tell she immediately tries to silence her crying, but still the occasional hiccup sob breaks through.
House moves to the closed bathroom door. “Cuddy, what’s going on?”
The door opens a crack and he can hear her move away. He thinks that’s an invitation to enter, and pushes the door open slowly, reconsidering the benefits of running away.
Cuddy’s leaning against the counter, mascara tracks down her cheeks. House isn’t used to seeing her cry; he stays on the other side of the bathroom. She doesn’t look at him until finally he can’t take it anymore.
“What’s going on?”
She looks at him, just a glance, then back to her hands, picking at her fingernails. “I’m bleeding.”
“What? Where?”
She barks out a laugh and repeats, “I’m bleeding. I was pregnant, and now I’m not.”
He stands there for a moment, confused and stunned and not a little angry. She was either pregnant with his baby and didn’t tell him, or sleeping with someone else and didn’t tell him.
“What are you talking about?” he snaps. “Did you see the OB? How do you know it’s a miscarriage?”
She looks at him like he just slapped her and he feels a twinge of guilt. She stands up straight, trying to look strong but tears are still sliding down her cheeks.
“Yes, I’ve seen the OB. Yes, she says it’s a miscarriage. I would have known anyway-it’s just like last time.”
He swallows. “So you’ve had one before?”
“With in vitro,” she nods. “And now with you. I didn’t tell you because I knew-”
“Shut up.”
She glares at him, gearing up for a fight. But he just goes to her side and smoothes her hair and kisses her forehead.
“Shut up,” he says again. “You don’t have to explain yourself. I know I’m an ass.” She smiles at that. “What can I do?”
They end up staging a screaming match of epic proportions. Big enough that when she huffs, “I’m taking the rest of the day off,” to Brenda before storming out, it isn’t questioned.
He broods in his office for a while, trying to figure out what the hell he’s supposed to do. And when he leaves at three o'clock, it’s not anything out of the ordinary.
3.) The best way to relax her after a rough day is a massage that doesn’t necessarily lead to sex (but it usually does). He starts at a different body part each time-the neck or the shoulders or the lower back, often the feet that have been jammed into peep toe heels all day. She was wary about him at first, certain he had some ulterior motive, but now she sinks into his hands, lets him knead at knots until she hisses through them, until her muscles ease and relax and she forgets the annoyances of her day.
Of course, if he was one of those annoyances, he knows better than to try to touch her. Those days it’s best to use frozen yogurt and black tea to get back into her good graces. Days-or weeks-when he is a particularly sharp thorn in her side, he stocks her freezer and her tea cupboard then avoids her house. Shows up to work before even she gets there to break into her office and drop a scone on her desk. He waits for her to come to him, a smile or a whispered thanks or a hand on his arm, before he goes back to her place.
4.) When she’s close, so. close., but he won’t let her come, she wiggles her toes.
He loves her like that: over him or below him, wrapped around him or trapped between his fingers. He doesn’t always keep her there, sometimes he lets her come immediately-because he wants to or because he can’t help himself. But sometimes, he holds her there, hangs her over the edge and pulls her back, over and over and over.
She makes a growl in the back of her throat and tries to grind herself against him. He laughs at her. She wiggles her toes.
“Housssssssse,” she begins as a demand and ends as a moan.
Somewhere along the line their relationship turned from banter and barbs to sweat and skin. Of course the sex is good. It was good the only time they’d done it earlier, and their bodies may be older but their fingers and tongues are just as nimble. The first time he slides inside her, he thanks God for her years of celibacy; she holds him like a vise and he can’t move for a moment. Eventually they find each other’s sensitive spots and tender places. He presses kisses to the pressure point behind her ear and she shivers. She brushes the edges of his scar right before her mouth rips an orgasm from him-even he didn’t know how much he’d like that; everyone had been so wary of his leg.
Sometimes he’ll fuck her so hard she doesn’t wear heels the next day-it’s hard enough to walk as it is. And sometimes he’s gentle, quiet kisses belying his gruff exterior. She’s not the dominatrix he always expected, but they have their days when she’s in charge.
Everything in their relationship comes back to sex-fights played out through fingernails down his back and a nipple twisted a little too hard; feelings admitted through caresses instead of compliments.
5.) He’s really quite sweet.
She doesn’t tell anyone. It feels like a secret that only she knows, something the world didn’t know existed until she found it. She holds it to her heart and lets the nurses hate him.
But he is sweet, and he does love her, even if it’s not something they’ll ever admit. She knows because he’s nice to her, actually nice to her, like he’s a normal human being, and she knows him well enough to know that means he loves her.
He never says it, but it’s there in the way he traces marks on her body-scars and bruises and freckles. His fingers brush over them, feather light, until she’s so focused on not flinching under his touch that she wiggles her toes. He laughs at her, a big, unguarded laugh, and she loses herself in his smile.
-
The love is there in the way he reacts to the miscarriage. She hadn’t told him she was pregnant; it was so important to her, and she knew he’d run or hide or insult her until she didn’t want his kid. She hadn’t told him anything, was torn between worrying about getting through the first twelve weeks and worrying about telling him, and then she was bleeding.
She thinks of Wilson, when the OB tells her she’s sorry, the lines of worry and caring etched in the OB’s face too similar to her head of oncology. She smiles and nods and says she’s fine, says she has someone who can take her home, says not to worry about it.
She barely makes it to her office before the sobs start.
Her fingers shake as she dials House’s pager number. It’s the only thing she can think of to do.
She almost laughs in the middle of their staged fight; it’s over something ridiculous and she realizes this is what they’re actually like, what they actually do on a regular basis, and she’s in the middle of a miscarriage and there’s so many more important things in life.
The house is too quiet when she gets there. She can’t get visions of babies with blue eyes out of her head. When House comes over, it’s the first time she’s thought of her house as a home. He draws her a bath and pours her a glass of red wine and makes her chicken noodle soup. He wipes her face and gives her a massage. Kneads her tears into her skin.
He’s not there when she wakes up the next morning, but there’s a note-“I went to work on time and you’re taking the day off” and a loopy smiley face that is so very not House-and her cupboard is full of black tea, her freezer full of frozen yogurt. He got fifteen different kinds. She tries all of them and doesn’t cry once all day.
-
The love is there in the way he pushes her into the bed and kisses her until she can’t breathe. In the way he makes her come three times before he lets her even touch him. In the way he explores her body, and the way he lets her explore his. In tender kisses in her living room and feverish minutes behind the closed blinds of her office, fingers sliding between her legs.
-
He’s human, in the end, though still completely House. What was, before they were together, his annoying need to know everything he could about her is now his ability to remember it all, to remember how to make her moan or make her come or just make her smile. He remembers her favorite thing on the menu at ten different take out places and remembers her favorite place to go when she wants more than take out. He remembers black tea and frozen yogurt and scones.
He remembers something she can’t remember when she forgot; he remembers how to make her happy.
Fandom: House, M.D.
Pairing: House/Cuddy
Rating: R for mild sex
Spoilers: None
Summary: Love is knowing all about someone, and still wanting to be with them more than any other person...
Disclaimer: The characters are not mine. The words are.
A/N: Written for cuddy_fest. Prompt 134. Cuddy/House. Five things you never would have known about each other. Title from "I Can Do Better Than That" from The Last Five Years.
1.) Freckles dance across her back. Not a spattering like what appears on the bridge of her nose by the end of summer. Just once in a while, a freckle: beneath the curve of her right scapula, a clustering to the left of her C-3 vertebra, one just above her left hip.
Before all this happened-when he was just her annoying employee instead of her annoying employee who spent most nights in her bed-he prided himself in knowing her body. He did know it-the curve of jaw and the swell of her breasts, the way her hips swung when she walked. He even knew the scar on her elbow from a bicycle accident and the one on the inside of her knee from his sister pushing her off a rock.
But now he knows so much more. He knows her body shy in a new bra and panty set she wasn’t sure he’d like (he did). He knows her body angry in a bathrobe when he hid her clothes one morning. Her glare was enough to make him forget sex and give the clothes back sulkily. And he knows her body like this, at ease and sleeping, naked because he’d just undress her in the morning if she weren’t. She’s sleeping with her back to him, legs tangled in the sheets. He traces a finger from freckle to freckle and kisses her neck until she rolls over with a sleepy half-moan.
2.) She’s had two miscarriages. Once during in vitro. Once was…his. They hadn’t necessarily been trying to get pregnant, but they hadn’t not. She doesn’t even tell him she was pregnant until he gets paged to her office one day. All the blinds are closed and he smirks, wonders if she’s going to yell at him or jump him.
But when he saunters through the door, she isn’t behind the desk. Muffled sobs come from the bathroom. House considers bolting, doesn’t.
“Cuddy?"
He can tell she immediately tries to silence her crying, but still the occasional hiccup sob breaks through.
House moves to the closed bathroom door. “Cuddy, what’s going on?”
The door opens a crack and he can hear her move away. He thinks that’s an invitation to enter, and pushes the door open slowly, reconsidering the benefits of running away.
Cuddy’s leaning against the counter, mascara tracks down her cheeks. House isn’t used to seeing her cry; he stays on the other side of the bathroom. She doesn’t look at him until finally he can’t take it anymore.
“What’s going on?”
She looks at him, just a glance, then back to her hands, picking at her fingernails. “I’m bleeding.”
“What? Where?”
She barks out a laugh and repeats, “I’m bleeding. I was pregnant, and now I’m not.”
He stands there for a moment, confused and stunned and not a little angry. She was either pregnant with his baby and didn’t tell him, or sleeping with someone else and didn’t tell him.
“What are you talking about?” he snaps. “Did you see the OB? How do you know it’s a miscarriage?”
She looks at him like he just slapped her and he feels a twinge of guilt. She stands up straight, trying to look strong but tears are still sliding down her cheeks.
“Yes, I’ve seen the OB. Yes, she says it’s a miscarriage. I would have known anyway-it’s just like last time.”
He swallows. “So you’ve had one before?”
“With in vitro,” she nods. “And now with you. I didn’t tell you because I knew-”
“Shut up.”
She glares at him, gearing up for a fight. But he just goes to her side and smoothes her hair and kisses her forehead.
“Shut up,” he says again. “You don’t have to explain yourself. I know I’m an ass.” She smiles at that. “What can I do?”
They end up staging a screaming match of epic proportions. Big enough that when she huffs, “I’m taking the rest of the day off,” to Brenda before storming out, it isn’t questioned.
He broods in his office for a while, trying to figure out what the hell he’s supposed to do. And when he leaves at three o'clock, it’s not anything out of the ordinary.
3.) The best way to relax her after a rough day is a massage that doesn’t necessarily lead to sex (but it usually does). He starts at a different body part each time-the neck or the shoulders or the lower back, often the feet that have been jammed into peep toe heels all day. She was wary about him at first, certain he had some ulterior motive, but now she sinks into his hands, lets him knead at knots until she hisses through them, until her muscles ease and relax and she forgets the annoyances of her day.
Of course, if he was one of those annoyances, he knows better than to try to touch her. Those days it’s best to use frozen yogurt and black tea to get back into her good graces. Days-or weeks-when he is a particularly sharp thorn in her side, he stocks her freezer and her tea cupboard then avoids her house. Shows up to work before even she gets there to break into her office and drop a scone on her desk. He waits for her to come to him, a smile or a whispered thanks or a hand on his arm, before he goes back to her place.
4.) When she’s close, so. close., but he won’t let her come, she wiggles her toes.
He loves her like that: over him or below him, wrapped around him or trapped between his fingers. He doesn’t always keep her there, sometimes he lets her come immediately-because he wants to or because he can’t help himself. But sometimes, he holds her there, hangs her over the edge and pulls her back, over and over and over.
She makes a growl in the back of her throat and tries to grind herself against him. He laughs at her. She wiggles her toes.
“Housssssssse,” she begins as a demand and ends as a moan.
Somewhere along the line their relationship turned from banter and barbs to sweat and skin. Of course the sex is good. It was good the only time they’d done it earlier, and their bodies may be older but their fingers and tongues are just as nimble. The first time he slides inside her, he thanks God for her years of celibacy; she holds him like a vise and he can’t move for a moment. Eventually they find each other’s sensitive spots and tender places. He presses kisses to the pressure point behind her ear and she shivers. She brushes the edges of his scar right before her mouth rips an orgasm from him-even he didn’t know how much he’d like that; everyone had been so wary of his leg.
Sometimes he’ll fuck her so hard she doesn’t wear heels the next day-it’s hard enough to walk as it is. And sometimes he’s gentle, quiet kisses belying his gruff exterior. She’s not the dominatrix he always expected, but they have their days when she’s in charge.
Everything in their relationship comes back to sex-fights played out through fingernails down his back and a nipple twisted a little too hard; feelings admitted through caresses instead of compliments.
5.) He’s really quite sweet.
She doesn’t tell anyone. It feels like a secret that only she knows, something the world didn’t know existed until she found it. She holds it to her heart and lets the nurses hate him.
But he is sweet, and he does love her, even if it’s not something they’ll ever admit. She knows because he’s nice to her, actually nice to her, like he’s a normal human being, and she knows him well enough to know that means he loves her.
He never says it, but it’s there in the way he traces marks on her body-scars and bruises and freckles. His fingers brush over them, feather light, until she’s so focused on not flinching under his touch that she wiggles her toes. He laughs at her, a big, unguarded laugh, and she loses herself in his smile.
-
The love is there in the way he reacts to the miscarriage. She hadn’t told him she was pregnant; it was so important to her, and she knew he’d run or hide or insult her until she didn’t want his kid. She hadn’t told him anything, was torn between worrying about getting through the first twelve weeks and worrying about telling him, and then she was bleeding.
She thinks of Wilson, when the OB tells her she’s sorry, the lines of worry and caring etched in the OB’s face too similar to her head of oncology. She smiles and nods and says she’s fine, says she has someone who can take her home, says not to worry about it.
She barely makes it to her office before the sobs start.
Her fingers shake as she dials House’s pager number. It’s the only thing she can think of to do.
She almost laughs in the middle of their staged fight; it’s over something ridiculous and she realizes this is what they’re actually like, what they actually do on a regular basis, and she’s in the middle of a miscarriage and there’s so many more important things in life.
The house is too quiet when she gets there. She can’t get visions of babies with blue eyes out of her head. When House comes over, it’s the first time she’s thought of her house as a home. He draws her a bath and pours her a glass of red wine and makes her chicken noodle soup. He wipes her face and gives her a massage. Kneads her tears into her skin.
He’s not there when she wakes up the next morning, but there’s a note-“I went to work on time and you’re taking the day off” and a loopy smiley face that is so very not House-and her cupboard is full of black tea, her freezer full of frozen yogurt. He got fifteen different kinds. She tries all of them and doesn’t cry once all day.
-
The love is there in the way he pushes her into the bed and kisses her until she can’t breathe. In the way he makes her come three times before he lets her even touch him. In the way he explores her body, and the way he lets her explore his. In tender kisses in her living room and feverish minutes behind the closed blinds of her office, fingers sliding between her legs.
-
He’s human, in the end, though still completely House. What was, before they were together, his annoying need to know everything he could about her is now his ability to remember it all, to remember how to make her moan or make her come or just make her smile. He remembers her favorite thing on the menu at ten different take out places and remembers her favorite place to go when she wants more than take out. He remembers black tea and frozen yogurt and scones.
He remembers something she can’t remember when she forgot; he remembers how to make her happy.