Gift of Screws, Chapter Seventeen
Title: Gift of Screws, Chapter Seventeen
Author: Duckie Nicks
Rating: NC-17 for sex
Characters: House, Cuddy, Rachel Cuddy
Author's Note: This piece takes place in the future when Rachel is five; House and Cuddy are in an established relationship.
Warning: This fic also contains sex. If that bothers you, don't read.
Summary: For a price, House agrees to celebrate Purim with Cuddy and Rachel. But although he's getting all the sex he wants, he's still not sure he'll be able to last the weekend. Established relationship, contains sexual situations.
Previous Chapters: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9 (Part 1), Chapter 9 (Part 2), Chapter 9 (Part 3), Chapter 9 (Part 4), Chapter 10 (Part 1), Chapter 10 (Part 2), Chapter 10 (Part 3), Chapter 11, Chapter 12 (Part 1), Chapter 12 (Part 2), Chapter 13, Chapter 14, Chapter 15, Chapter 16
Disclaimer: I don't own it.
"Essential oils are wrung:
The attar from the rose
Is not expressed by suns alone,
It is the gift of screws." - Emily Dickinson
Selfishly time pushed onward, seconds funneling into multiple minutes of silence. House would have liked to believe that, upon him seeing Kutner's name, everything stopped. But it was clear that it did not.
Rachel squirmed impatiently on the couch beside him. A clock Cuddy had received decades ago from her great uncle ticked at uneven intervals on the fireplace hearth. A snowplow barreled noisily down the street outside as more snow and ice fell from the sky. Everything should have stopped, but in reality, they simply continued unimpeded.
Yet House hardly noticed.
He was aware of what was going on around him, yes. But actually paying attention to it? No, he couldn't say he was doing that. He wouldn't, because he was far too focused on the name in front of him.
Really, he thought he should have known this was coming. Of all the people he knew who would give kids books about taking a dump, Kutner would have been at the top of that list. Actually, Kutner might have been the only person on that list. Either way though, it all amounted to the same undeniable fact: House should have seen this coming.
But he hadn't. And maybe it was just the shock making him think this, but he couldn't help but feel as though his surprise didn't matter all that much. Perhaps he should have known this was going to happen; however, it didn't matter in the end. Whether he'd known or not, this moment would still make him feel just as off balance and stricken and repulsed.
The emotions cut too deeply to allow for any other reaction.
There was no avoiding it, no suppressing it. Pride demanded that he continue on with the story he'd set out to tell; Rachel pressed her hands impatiently on the book in his grasp as if to guide him to the set of behavior she wanted from him. He absolutely could not do that though. No matter how much he would have liked to - and what the hell did it say about him that he wanted to read to Rachel right now? - he was helpless against the onslaught of painful memory.
It came at him all of a sudden, the emotions he'd felt then. Thanks to his insistence on discovering "the truth," it was hard now to recall specifics of that time around Kutner's death. The precise words he'd said, the patients he'd treated - all of that had faded in his mind. Gone were the details he'd agonized over while searching for an explanation. With the exception of a red skirt clinging to Cuddy's hips, browning blood drying on hard wood, and a picture of Kutner House had found, little about those weeks seemed clear to him these days.
And maybe that wasn't surprising. Maybe when you reached a certain point in your life, happy or content enough with the direction it had taken anyway, you stopped looking back and obsessing over all the things that had gone wrong. But he was pretty sure that wasn't the case. Because while that might have been true for an isolated incident of tragedy, Kutner's death had been anything but.
That event had bled into the other areas of House's life.
It had driven him insane.
And seeing Kutner's name in red ink now was a reminder of all of that.
The confusion his death had created.
The desperate search for an answer.
The realization that none would ever come.
The madness that had followed, that House had been unable to avoid, unable to forget.
That came at him with frightening clarity.
And though Rachel whined, "Start reading the story," he couldn't. She was even using that high-pitched screech she usually used when she wanted something to be done immediately - a sound he normally hated. But today it had no effect on him; he barely even heard her.
Blinking slowly he swore he could see Kutner's name even behind his closed eyelids. And at that moment, House was sure he would never escape that part of his life. No matter how much time passed, no matter how happy he was or tried to be, this would never leave him alone. He would never be free.
As though his body rebelled against the idea, he found himself shoving the book onto Rachel's lap.
"No!" she screamed as he stood up. "You say you would read! You promised!" He heard the pages of the book flapping about as she threw it at him. The book hit him in the middle of his back before falling to the ground. "You lie! You lie! I hate you!"
She was shrieking as loudly as she could, doing everything she could think of to get his attention. But he didn't look back at her as he slipped down the hallway.
In the back of his mind, House recognized that this moment would set them back. Whatever headway they'd been making in terms of having a… relationship, this instant had undone all of it. And though that wasn't exactly what he wanted, he recognized that there was no avoiding it. The only way to do that was to turn right back around, apologize, and start reading to her.
But he couldn't do that.
Even if he'd wanted to, his body refused to behave. And instead of going back to Rachel, he found himself retreating in the hall bathroom.
At that point he didn't doubt that Rachel would stay away. She'd rather throw a fit than follow him. But he locked the door behind him nevertheless. He didn't want her barging in on him. Again, he doubted that she would even attempt to do so. Yet he felt relief course through his body when he heard the latch lock the door shut.
Alone at last, he thought with bitterness.
As he moved away from the door, he caught sight of himself in the bathroom mirror. He looked awful.
His eyes were enlarged, wild with intense fear and surprise. He seemed older then, every age-weary line prominent and impossible to miss. And truth be told, it shocked him. He hadn't expected to see that. All of the emotions he'd been feeling on display - no, he hadn't anticipated that. But there it was: terror and disbelief for all to see.
Immediately he looked down. At least he wouldn't be able to see his reflection in the porcelain sink.
Just thinking that though made him feel pathetic, ridiculous. He recognized that he'd been largely powerless to stop the emotions that had driven him to this point. He couldn't and wouldn't act as though he'd been able to control his reaction to seeing Kutner's name.
He hadn't been.
However, as House got further away from that initial moment of surprise, the more absurd his reaction felt. So he hadn't expected to see Kutner's name; so it had shocked him and forced him to confront all sorts of painful truths he tried to ignore. Was he really going to hide in Cuddy's bathroom like a dumb ass? That was really going to be how he handled this?
He exhaled loudly, a chuckle getting mixed in the rush of air. He was hardly over what had just happened, but realizing how silly all of it was helped calm him. He didn't understand why that was particularly. Perhaps the self-deprecation simply replaced some of the frenetic anxiety that had been controlling him.
But whatever the reason, House let himself relish in the feeling. It was, after all, better to consider yourself foolish than on the precipice of losing your mind. So he gave himself permission to berate his own behavior mentally.
And doing that was hardly difficult. It was easy to see the idiocy of his behavior. He was hiding in a bathroom. Because Everybody Poops had taken him by surprise.
A book about shitting had put him in this position.
At that thought, he found himself laughing earnestly.
This entire weekend had been strange, but this moment definitely seemed odder than the rest. And that was certainly saying something. He'd thought - assumed really - that the lowest point would have been Rachel walking in on Cuddy blowing him.
But no!
That had ended up being just one instant in a quick succession of bad moments. In the back of his mind, at that point, he felt there was a quip to be made about Cuddy deep throating him being the tip of the iceberg. But he couldn't get the wording right in his head, so he simply let the matter go. He probably would have figured out what he wanted to say eventually, but that was a minor point, the main one being that this weekend had been so screwed up.
So screwed up.
(He felt the need to repeat that part for emphasis.)
He'd grabbed Rachel and hurt her. He'd gotten into more petty fights with Cuddy than he could count and had sex with her at least twice as much. He'd foolishly believed she was trying to get pregnant and had to listen to Rachel confess that she really did care about him. And after that… he'd hurt Cuddy and Rachel in return.
He'd bitten Cuddy, which was nothing compared to the fact that he'd said she was willing to be treated like a whore. For hours now, he hadn't felt all that guilty about the second part. But now that he'd screwed things up with Rachel again, he couldn't help but regret his earlier accusations.
There was no denying that he was right. That dick gave her money, because he thought it would eventually lead to her falling in love with him. And she was too smart to refuse cash that came without professional concessions on her part. However, House thought he shouldn't have gone down that road. He might have hated that relationship, but he shouldn't have said anything.
Honestly, doing that had been one of the dumber things he'd done this weekend. He should have known from the start that any condemnation would be ignored or denounced. Any attempt at keeping her away from John Kelley would just make her stubbornly push ahead with her plan. In mentioning his objections, the only thing House would accomplish was pissing her off. It was the only thing he had accomplished.
He'd said those things, and she'd left angrily with those words in her head. And he'd done his best to pretend like it didn't matter, like he hadn't said anything that awful. But he knew he had.
Or rather, he knew that what he'd said would only make it harder for him to make this debacle up to her.
Oh yeah. She'd be pissed about this. She'd give him that look like, "Why can't you spend any time with Rachel without making things worse?" And as always, he would have no answer to that unspoken question.
Under the best of circumstances, perhaps she would have been willing to brush his ineptitude off. Maybe she would have been willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. After this morning though? Yeah, he doubted she was going to be that forgiving.
Well, all right, she'd probably forgive. But in order to get her there, he'd have to grovel like his life depended on it. He'd have to make all sorts of promises and concessions. Clinic duty, babysitting, dinners with her mother - he'd be saying yes to all of it, and he would still hear about the time he'd freaked out over a book and upset Rachel long after the fact. Cuddy was too much of a manipulative bitch to let it go that easily.
Which normally he thought was kind of hot; a girlfriend who liked to play as roughly as he did, what wasn't to like about that? There was nothing to despise - not under normal circumstances anyway. But when he'd done something wrong, that part of her personality never made things easier. He doubted it would any different for him now.
But it was right as he thought that that he realized he would soon learn just how true that was. Because it was at that moment that he heard the garage door begin to open, and he knew: Cuddy was home.
At first he thought (or more like hoped) that he was simply hearing things. Surely her timing couldn't be that good. Surely it would be more believable for the noise to be a snowplow moving through the streets again. On the other hand, given his luck, it was probably more likely at this point for Cuddy to be home. And after listening for a few seconds, he could tell that she was. The sound was too quiet, too short to be a plow.
Unfortunately.
Of course, it would have been moronic to think he would never have to face her. It went without saying that he knew she would have come back eventually and he would be forced to explain himself. He'd simply hoped he'd have time to come up with some sort of plan.
Apparently though, he wouldn't.
Realizing that, House knew he needed to create a plan of action quickly. There wouldn't be enough time to smooth things over with Rachel. Shutting her up would be next to impossible, so that was out. And if he couldn't make her happy or keep her quiet, he guessed the only thing to do was to minimize the damage. If Rachel was going to say something no matter what, what other choice did he really have?
He couldn't avoid the problem, couldn't deny that there'd been one. So all he could do was state upfront that he'd screwed up. However, if he were going to do that, he immediately understood he needed to get to Cuddy first. It would be easier to control her reaction that way. If she saw Rachel screaming and [at this point, probably] crying, it would be that much harder for him to convince Cuddy of anything. She'd take one look at the kid and cease to listen to whatever explanation he had.
Thanks to his behavior earlier, there would be no benefit of the doubt, no attempt at hearing his side of things. Chances were, she was pissed already, and she'd just use this incident as a reason to yell at him.
So he needed to get to her first, he realized. She'd be mad no matter what, but if he beat Rachel to her, then she would at least be forced to hear him out.
Obviously though, in order to do that, he would have to move now. If he waited any longer, he would be too late.
As he pulled open the bathroom door, he realized that he had no idea what he wanted to say. He knew what he had to do - just not exactly how to explain what had happened. But again, if he got to her first, his explanation and subsequent apology wouldn't need to be perfect. In that case, he could make as many mistakes with his delivery as possible, and as long as he came across as sincere, he'd be fine. But again: he needed to get there first.
And for that, for perhaps the first time that day, he had luck on his side. Or rather, he had geography on his side.
From his perspective, chances were, Rachel hadn't heard the garage door open. She was too busy throwing a fit (which he could hear through the bathroom door) to notice. But even if she had, thanks to the way the house had been designed, he was closer to the garage anyway.
Cuddy had always lamented that part of the layout, that the door from the house to the garage was awkwardly placed in the hallway. At this particular moment though, he couldn't help but be grateful for poor design. Because it meant that, even if Rachel had heard something, he'd still get there sooner. And since that was the whole point - to get there first - he was almost willing to forgive himself for hiding in the bathroom.
Yet, if the goal had been to confess to an angry Cuddy, he quickly realized things weren't going to go as planned.
As he opened the door that connected the hall to the garage, he could immediately see something wasn't right.
Cuddy was just sitting there.
She'd had plenty of time to park the car and get out, but she hadn't. She hadn't even turned the car off. And maybe that wouldn't be so odd if she were rummaging around the car for something she wanted; if she were doing something, anything, maybe that would all seem normal.
But as House quietly shut the door behind him, he noticed that she wasn't doing any of that. She wasn't looking for something; she wasn't in the process of turning the car off and getting out. She was just sitting there. As though she didn't even realize she was home, she sat in the car with her gaze straight ahead.
In fact, he doubted she even knew he was there until he tapped lightly on the window next to her.
Cuddy blinked in surprise, but she was slow to turn and face him.
Driving home, she'd known she would have to tell him what had happened. But every time she tried to think of the wording, every time she considered her explanation, she felt sick to her stomach. Her muscles would clench tightly; her throat would constrict, and though blood was surely getting to her brain, she would become dizzy. And since she'd still had to stop at the drycleaners and get home, she'd forced herself not to think about what had happened. She'd just paid attention to what was ahead of her - literally.
Now though, he was standing right by the car. As though he already knew what had happened, he stood there, waiting for an explanation.
And she had none to give.
At that thought, he knocked again. This time though he was a little more persistent, louder.
She didn't want to open the door. She didn't want to talk to him, confess what she had done.
But keeping it from him was not an option.
As sick as all of this made her feel, she had to tell him the truth. Keeping it from him would be wrong; it would make her feel even sicker than she already did. And if she could lie to his face, then it would be as though she had wanted John to kiss her.
It would make her complicit in what he had done.
Just the idea of that was enough to force her to open the door. Her fingers shook as she reached for the handle; she didn't push it open very far, her resolve not that strong. But it was more than enough of an opening for House.
Quickly he pushed the door to the side, so he could get a better view of Cuddy. He wasn't sure what was wrong; there weren't any immediate signs of an accident or anything like that. Yet he could tell that things weren't as they should have been.
"Cuddy?" he asked tentatively. He could tell that she had heard him, but she made no move to respond. She just sat there.
He repeated her name. "Cuddy." The word came out louder this time with more assertion. But it didn't seem to have any effect on her.
Not that he really expected it to, he realized. She could clearly hear him. The problem was not in his estimation the fact that his voice hadn't been loud enough before. So he guessed there hadn't been a reason to say her name again. Having done it anyway, however, he felt even more troubled by her current silence.
Again, he hadn't expected her to suddenly snap out of whatever mood she was in. He'd figured she wouldn't; whatever was bothering her, he knew, wouldn't suddenly disappear. But acknowledging and expecting that didn't make it any better to experience.
If anything, seeing that suspicion played out just made him feel even less at ease. Right as he was, it didn't feel like a victory.
He didn't feel good when he quietly ducked his head into the car to turn it off. He was simply concerned, disturbed by her behavior.
"Hey," he said gently, pulling the keys out of the ignition. Still she said nothing, but he could see her body shift slightly. It was at least something something.
When he went to undo her seatbelt, he asked her, "You gonna get out?"
She blinked as the clicking sound of the seatbelt reached her ears. In her silence, the noise seemed deafening, and she knew she couldn't afford to be quiet any longer. She might have wanted to, but now was the time to confess; that much was clear to her.
"Yeah," she rasped after some time.
House motioned to help her out of the car. His fingers carefully guided the seatbelt away from her before reaching for her hands. But she didn't take hold of him. She felt like she didn't know how.
Immediately hating how stupid that sounded, she corrected herself: she felt like… reaching for him would be wrong. Although she doubted he would ever remember this moment - especially after she told him the truth - Cuddy didn't feel right depending on him now.
That just seemed to frustrate him though.
"Here's the thing," he told her, as he pulled his own body out of the car. "Generally getting out of the car means moving your body. And while I'm sure it's hard to move an ass that big without some sort of hydraulics -"
A cry she'd been trying to stifle slipped between her lips. Too loud to be a whimper, too showy for her to look composed, it immediately shut him up. The sentence left hanging in the air, he suddenly seemed more focused on her.
Oh, Cuddy realized he'd been intensely interested in her behavior before. She'd heard the tentativeness in his voice when he spoke to her. She'd seen the way he'd ducked into the car and gently undid her seatbelt. And since neither caution nor subtlety were House's strong suits, she'd known that he was only acting that way because of her behavior. So she was aware that he had, from almost the beginning, been curious about her.
But with that one sound escaping her throat, she'd single handedly increased that curiosity exponentially. And it wasn't surprising that he responded to her quickly by insistently asking, "What happened?"
"I did something," she said in a rush of words. "Awful."
The slightest hint of a confession made her body thrum with nervous energy. She could feel the muscles in her begin to shake. The back of her throat burned with bile, and she found herself shifting her body out of the car to satisfy the energy inside her.
When she'd managed to swing her legs out, he asked, "You gonna tell me what happened?"
He wasn't being accusatory. It felt that way, but rationally Cuddy could tell that he was simply asking the question.
"Okay," he said with impatience. Apparently she hadn't answered him quickly enough. "All right, let me guess." His nose crinkled with concentration.
"I kissed John Kelley," she admitted, blurting the words out as fast as she knew how. In the back of her mind, she understood that saying it in a rush wouldn't make it any easier for House to hear. But she figured that it would help her confess to get through it with as little hesitation as possible.
And yet… doing things that way, she realized, was hardly a good idea. Because as soon as she'd spoken the words, she could see that what she'd said hadn't really been a reflection of what had happened. She'd made it sound like she'd chosen to kiss him.
"I mean," she quickly corrected. "He kissed me."
Her stomach clenched painfully at the admittance; the air in her lungs seemed to burn with each inhale, and she didn't even realize she was teary-eyed until she felt a few slipping down the apple of her cheek.
Instantly she wanted to take it all back. As soon as the words had come out of her mouth, she wanted to say none of it had happened. If it was hurting her already to have spoken that much, how would she feel when House finally realized what she was saying?
Unbidden, her gaze cast upward at him. She didn't want to know what he was thinking. She really didn't. But she had to see what he looked like, had to gage his reaction - even if it pained her to do so.
Looking at him though, Cuddy didn't think he seemed angry. Maybe that was wishful thinking, but to her, he just appeared… confused.
And it was that appearance that turned out to be a reality when he cocked his head to the side and asked, "Which is it?" She must have looked equally lost, because he quickly explained, "You said you kissed him. Then you said he kissed you. Which is it?"
There was no time for hesitation. Having to say the words again wasn't exactly something she wanted to do, but pausing would only make him suspicious.
"He kissed me," she told him, her voice breaking as she repeated herself.
House wasn't sure how to react to what he was hearing. His instinct was to believe she was screwing around with him. It would be what he deserved after the things he'd said that morning. But just one look at her said that that was foolish thinking at best. She clearly meant every word she was saying.
Someone else had kissed her.
Someone had kissed his girlfriend.
The described act slowly seeping into his mind, he began to picture it. He didn't want to, but the image played out in his head before he could stop himself. That cock making out with his girlfriend - that was all he could see: lips brushing against lips, his tongue moving in her mouth….
It disgusted House.
He was repulsed.
"I'm sorry," Cuddy murmured, cutting across his anger. Her face buried beneath her fingers, she repeated herself. "I'm sorry. So sorry." She wasn't crying; he'd caught sight of a few stray tears over the past few minutes, but she wasn't sobbing.
And yet he could tell: she was close to reaching that point. Which meant one of two things. Either she hadn't wanted to be kissed at all and had been taken by surprise, or she had wanted to kiss John, and she felt guilty now that she had.
There was no doubt in House's mind what had happened.
Sure, she was sitting in the car in front of him with as much guilt on her features as she could muster. Yes, she was apologizing as though she had committed the crime willingly.
But House knew better.
With Cuddy, guilt was a sign of… well, her being alive. There wasn't much she did that didn't evoke feelings of guilt in her. Did she get to work late? Guilt. Did she let Rachel have an extra cookie? Guilt. Did she accidentally run over a stray dog (which, to be accurate, turned out to be a giant stuffed animal and not an actual animal)? Guilt - even though he had told her repeatedly that she hadn't killed anything.
Truthfully, it was her default position in life. If something went wrong, she automatically assigned blame to herself, whether doing so was warranted or not. And he wasn't sure how much guilt she should feel for what happened with John.
But House was absolutely convinced that he didn't have it within himself to make her feel worse.
She was already upset, already more guilty than she needed to be. Even if she'd led John on earlier, even if she'd been leading him on for years, she clearly hadn't wanted this. And to punish her for that when she was already doing that to herself was not something House could do.
Admittedly, there had been a time where he would have behaved differently. Had this happened two, three years ago, he would have tried to make her feel as badly as possible. Considering how unhappy it made him to hear her say she'd kissed someone else, it would have been incredibly tempting to make her similarly displeased. And back then, he wouldn't have been able to resist said temptation. Hell, even now, he could feel a very small part of him itching to hurt her. As ugly and awful as that was, there still remained a piece of him that said she deserved to feel just as badly as he did.
But unlike then, he wouldn't listen to that voice inside of himself now. He didn't need to. She was already clearly in pain, and for him, that was enough.
Okay, maybe that wasn't how he wanted to put it. Her tears hardly satiated him. He wouldn't be satisfied until he confronted Dicki Minaj and then beat the hell out of him. When the room around them looked like an ode to Black Friday, then House would think that was enough, cause his girlfriend being upset definitely wasn't.
However, he could think clearly enough through his homicidal haze to know that hurting Cuddy wouldn't make him feel any better. Yelling at her, making her feel worse than she already did - it wouldn't do anything for him. It would leave him wanting and, if he pushed her too far, in want of a relationship.
And so he was cautious with his response. Because as angry as he was, he was determined to protect what he had with Cuddy. Rage silently churned inside of him, but he would not let John Kelley come between them. House had worked too long and too hard at this to let some pencil dick nose his way in.
Treating Cuddy too harshly would easily make that happen, so he was determined not to behave that way.
"It's - it's okay," he said, totally hearing how lame it sounded. One of his hands reaching out to her, he gently let his fingers bury in her hair. As he stroked her, dark curls softly slid over his knuckles. "I'm not mad."
He felt her scoff and wasn't surprised when she looked up in disbelief.
"Really," he told her before she could object.
But that didn't make her feel any better.
In Cuddy's mind, what she had done was… horrible. And she said that all the while knowing that that word couldn't even begin to describe what she'd done. She said that knowing that what she did was unforgivable, so she couldn't believe that he was okay. She wouldn't believe it.
In fact, if he was saying that he wasn't mad, she could only think that he was toying with her. Because there was no way he wasn't angry with her - of that she was sure. And so if he was pretending otherwise, then she had to conclude that he was playing her; he was lulling her into a false sense of security before unleashing the rage he surely felt. She'd been with him too long to not know how he would react.
And frankly, she simply had no interest in indulging in his games. Usually she didn't mind it, didn't care about participating in his version of fun.
But not today.
Not with this.
If he was going to be mad, she didn't want to pretend otherwise. As hard as facing his ire would be, she preferred the honesty. She would rather have him yell and scream and say all sorts of awful things about her than to hear him say that everything would be okay.
So she shook her head and told him, "Don't do this."
"Do what?" He seemed genuinely shocked, but he had always been a better liar than her.
"You know what."
"I -"
"Oh stop it," she snapped. Forcing herself to get out of the car, she stood up. She didn't like how he towered over her, but even at her full height, he still did. The fact that she was wearing heels barely helped, but at least she was closer to meeting him eye to eye.
"Sorry," House replied sarcastically. "I left my Crazy-to-English dictionary in the house, so you're going to have to -"
"Another man kissed me," she interrupted loudly. "And you want me to believe that you're not mad at me?" She shook her head in disbelief.
He shrugged. "Why would I be?"
He could tell his question was upsetting her. As soon as the words had left his mouth, he could see the anger flash in her eyes. And he wasn't surprised by the way she responded with irritation.
"Oh, don't be an idiot. And don't treat me like I'm one," she said, practically growling. "For years you've been telling me that John's been interested, and I didn't listen. Don't act like -"
"Yeah." He gave an exaggerated nod of the head. "You were wrong." House considered pointing out that being wrong was hardly a novelty when it came to her; at work, she was always telling him no, why something was too dangerous or too illegal. And when he ignored her and saved his patient, which he usually did, she was wrong then. So he hoped she realized that being wrong wasn't exactly unusual for her.
However, she seemed agitated enough that telling her that probably wasn't in his best interests.
Instead, he simply pointed out, "Normally I like that."
"I've noticed," she said with a pinch of darkness.
"What can I say? Mocking you is fun." He resisted pointing out how often she was worthy of being mocked, once again realizing that saying that was not in his best interests. "But in this case, doesn't seem like I really need to." He could see the question in her eyes and therefore didn't bother giving her a chance to ask it. "You were wrong about him. He kissed you." House shrugged. "Seems like punishment enough for me."
As soon as he'd said it, he regretted the words. Although he didn't think he'd said anything bad, the rage he saw in Cuddy's face was making him reconsider.
"You are such an ass," she said through gritted teeth.
Abruptly she turned away from him. Ducking back into the car, she grabbed her purse. "How does this go in your head exactly?" she asked as she spun around once more. "He kisses me, but at least I was wrong, so that's all that matters."
He looked at her like she was crazy, which just pissed her off more. "Is that what I said?" he asked mockingly. "Cause I'm pretty sure I didn't say that at all."
Cuddy ignored him. "I didn't ask for him to -"
"Didn't say that either," he interrupted calmly.
Out of frustration, she sighed. But he was quick to reach for her hand before she could talk.
"That's not what I meant," he said in a reassuring voice. "What I meant was you're clearly upset."
She bristled at the adjective. He wasn't wrong, of course, but she didn't like hearing him say it. Far too often that word in too many men's vocabularies had been code for women behaving emotionally, which was every sexist's worst nightmare. And Cuddy understood that he didn't mean it that way, but she couldn't suppress her instinctual response to the word.
If House noticed her reaction, he didn't point it out. Rather, he explained, "I don't need to make you feel worse."
She remained doubtful. "You wouldn't need to, no. But if you blame me -"
"And why would I do that?" His tone was even, kind, and in the face of it, she was taken aback.
He was supposed to be mad. He was mad; he must have been, she thought. She had kissed another man. There was no way he wasn't furious about that. … Right? He couldn't possibly be as forgiving as he appeared to be.
That just wasn't an option… right?
Cuddy shook her head a little. "I-I don't…." She rubbed her hand along her forehead. With exasperation, she asked, "Why are you doing this? Why aren't you mad?"
He smirked, but there was no humor in his features. "Another man kissed my girlfriend. Anger doesn't begin to cover how I feel about that," he said in all seriousness. His voice stern and cold, he added, "Believe me: that's not something I'm going to forget any time soon."
"I'm sorry," she murmured, looking away from him. As much as she anticipated his fury, it killed her to hear him say he would remember this for a long time; she could understand his ire, but selfishly, she wished she didn't have to see it.
And yet she was also fully aware that when he'd been relaxed and sympathetic, she hadn't liked that either. She'd yearned for his outrage, even as it nauseated her to be a witness to it. Which really only meant one thing:
She had no idea how she wanted him to react to her.
None.
She didn't know if she wanted his anger or his support, his disgust or his understanding. And rationally she recognized that because of that, no response he gave would make her feel better. She could concoct the perfect reaction in her mind; she could envision a scenario she wanted him to play out. But the second he were to act it out, it would suddenly become the one thing she didn't want to hear.
Cuddy couldn't explain why or how that was possible. Even though she could tell that she was behaving that way, she had no idea why. However, she supposed the reason didn't matter. Even if she could point to one, it wouldn't change things. She would still be unhappy, conflicted…
Guilty of cheating on her boyfriend.
He must have seen a flash of pain that she felt, because at that moment, he pulled her close. His arms wrapping around her, she could feel the warmth of his body even through her wool coat.
Awkwardly she moved into his embrace. He was being kind, sweet really, but she was uncomfortable with the display of affection.
Of course, she wanted to relax against him, wanted to surrender to the comfort he was offering her. Of course that was what she wanted. But she found herself unable to trust the moment. Whether she felt this was too out of character for him or too nice for someone in her position was unclear. And ultimately unimportant, she thought as her body tensed against his.
"I know you are," he said in a convinced manner. "You've been crying, and you smell like puke. If you didn't feel bad, you probably wouldn't have barfed," he pointed out, the words whispered warmly against her ear. "Of course, it might be there if you kissed him and then felt bad for enjoying -"
"I didn't," she said so hastily that it sounded like a lie.
Still he didn't push her away in anger. He simply agreed with her. "I know."
Cuddy was reluctant to believe him. "Do you?"
She felt him shrug. "I admit… I've been suspicious of his motives. And whether you admit it or not, I think some part of you enjoys that attention."
"I don't -"
"You do," he interrupted firmly. "And why shouldn't you? It's nice - some beefcake thinks you're hot. It's flattering."
"I didn't ask -"
"I know." House tried to sound as understanding of that fact as possible. Part of him felt that that was hard to do, because he was so annoyed at John's behavior and because House had said those exact words over and over. But in case he hadn't succeeded in being understanding, he repeated once more, "Cuddy. I know."
When he felt her chin bump against his chest lightly, he realized that she was nodding her head in agreement. At least, he thought with relief, she believed that.
"I also know that you… kinda have a thing for me."
He swore he could feel her stifle a laugh. Which was a good sign, he felt; she wasn't so upset that she couldn't appreciate the humor. So he pushed it further.
"The technical term for someone like you? Dickmatized."
She tried to pull away a little, but he wouldn't let her go. Given John's behavior, House felt the need to keep her close to him.
"What?" she asked in confusion.
"Dickmatized," he repeated matter of factly. Feeling her shift on her feet, he told her in a patronizing voice, "It's all right. Nothing to be ashamed of. Plenty of women suffer from the same condition."
She looked up at him as best as she could. "I'm sure I'm going to regret asking this," she murmured. "But… 'condition'?"
"Oh yeah," he said with all seriousness. His arms tightened around her instinctively at that moment. He would need to explain, but he realized that she would bolt in outrage if he didn't keep a hold of her. "When a woman is willing to overlook a host of problems so she can keep having sex with the penis giving her orgasms -"
"That is the dumbest thing I've ever heard," she snapped, predictably trying to pull back.
"You think? Let's look at the evidence."
She rolled her eyes.
"We've been together for years now. You've had plenty of time to realize I'm hardly a good choice for you."
The conversation easily could have been a serious one. Maybe it even should have been a sober one. But at the moment, House wasn't trying to broach that reality of theirs. He was touching on it, sure, but more than anything, he was using that point to make a different one. And so he kept his tone casual, conversational.
"I've screwed up thousands of ways, but here we are," he said calmly. "Obviously it's not my personality and selflessness keeping you here. So I can only assume I'm laying pipe so good you're blinded with penis. Nine-foot-five Greg is really putting in work for -"
"That's the most idiotic thing I've ever heard," she interrupted at that point.
He gave her an incredulous look. "Is it?" Before she could answer, he posed a pointed question. "How many times have we had sex this weekend?"
"Sex with you is great. But I am not…."
She couldn't finish the sentence, which prompted him to ask, "You can't say the word?"
"Dickmatized is not a word," she said with a smirk. "And even if it were, I'm not."
His response was to simply shoot her a look of disbelief.
"I'm not," she repeated insistently. "Your penis is only a small -"
"Hey!" He quickly wiped the smile off his face.
But she continued talking unimpeded. "Part of why I'm with you. Although it is considerably difficult when you say things like dickmatized to remember why, I am sure I'm with you for other reasons."
"Exactly," he said, as though this had been his point all along.
Truthfully, Cuddy wasn't sure how true that was. Had he really been guiding her to this overall point - that she was with him for very specific reasons - this whole time? Or had he seen a good place to end this conversation, to avoid getting into a fight with her, and seized the opportunity?
She guessed it didn't matter. But the fact that he was making that point at all took her by surprise.
"You've had plenty of opportunities to dump me and go for someone like him," House said, interrupting her thoughts. "You haven't, which is why I know you didn't want to kiss him today."
She understood what he was saying, but she felt the need to say, "If I had known…." She shook her head a little. Looking back at it now, she thought how blatant John had been all this time.
And she hadn't seen it.
Because if the thought had entered her mind, if she'd really considered him to be a threat to her relationship, she would have been smarter all of these years. House had said she liked the attention but -
"Well, I don't know why you're dating me," he told her, ending the thought before she had a chance to finish it herself. "But I'm definitely not dating you for your brains." At that one of his hands slid down her back and grabbed her ass.
As he squeezed her, she understood that he wasn't being serious. But it annoyed her anyway. In her estimation, he shouldn't have been so good-natured about all of this. Regardless of how much he planned on blaming her, she felt he shouldn't have been so jovial.
Pushing him away as best as she could, she said dryly, "You're taking this remarkably well. I'm glad this hasn't prevented you from making jokes about my ass."
"Your ass?" He pretended to be surprised by this. "I was talking about the fact that you still went to the drycleaners after all this happened," he told her, gesturing to the neat plastic bag with his suit in it hanging in the back.
"Oh." Her surprise was more genuine than his had been. But her confusion over his behavior, he felt, was equally matched to his own.
As she turned to grab his freshly cleaned suit, he couldn't help but contemplate her observation. He was taking this well - better than he should have, really.
Again, he recognized that this was easier to deal with since he knew Cuddy would have never kissed someone else willingly. But even then, he wasn't nearly as angry as he should have been.
At least he didn't think so. He was joking and forgiving, and only in the back of his mind did he consider how much of an affront all of this was to him personally.
And that was not normal.
What was normal was for him to be angry, hurt. Par for the course in this situation was for him to turn against Cuddy, for him to wield his feelings of betrayal like a weapon.
Under normal circumstances, it wasn't enough for her to feel bad. She had to feel awful.
And sure, he'd felt that kind of rage for a nanosecond the minute she'd told him. But he'd been able to stop those feelings.
Why?
He'd originally framed this deviation in behavior as a change within himself. But the longer he stayed in the garage with her, the more that seemed like wishful thinking. Because for all of the murderous feelings he had for John, for all of the forgiveness and protectiveness he was willing to give Cuddy, more than anything, House felt relieved.
He hadn't realized it at first, but the more he thought about it, the more he could identify the feeling inside of him.
It was relief.
As though he'd suddenly been saved from something bad happening, it felt like his entire body had exhaled in satisfaction.
But that made no sense, he thought. What did he have to be relieved about? That Cuddy had been tempted to cheat on him and she'd refused? That didn't work. As he'd said to her, she'd been with him long enough that any desire to leave him would have already made itself known by now; if there'd been an inkling in her mind that she could do better, that she deserved better, she would have cut ties with him the second things had become difficult. Yet she had stayed, and in his mind, that made him fairly convinced - at this point anyway - that she wouldn't cheat on him. Leave him? Yes. Probably eventually she would figure out she deserved better and break up with him. But he didn't think she would cheat; that just wasn't her style.
However, if he didn't feel relief over her fidelity to him... then what exactly was making him feel that way?
Watching Cuddy bend over and grab his suit, he wasn't sure where any of this was coming from. What had happened that would make him feel that way?
As though asking the question had automatically given him the answer, he felt himself smile. Of course, he thought, it would be that easy. The reason for his relief would be that obvious.
It was Rachel.
More specifically, it was the fact that Cuddy's screw up meant that she couldn't possibly be that angry over his mistake. Whereas he had been terrified before, he now confidently thought that she would have to be tolerant of his shortcomings. She would have to think, no matter how unhappy she was, that he'd treated her so nicely after her little tongue-wrestling match with Colonel Cock Butter. And House knew she would be, in kind, no matter how much she wanted to be otherwise, nice to him.
Regardless of how Rachel tried to manipulate her mother, he had a pass for this, another chance.
And maybe that wasn't right; maybe that was actually pretty awful. But it was true.
"Why are you smiling?" Cuddy asked suddenly as she turned back around to face him.
He pretended not to understand the question. "What?"
"You're smiling." She looked disturbed by that fact.
"I don't smile? Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens don't -"
"You look like the Grinch when he realizes he can steal Christmas."
House was tempted to say that he was sure her mother wouldn't appreciate the Christmas-related reference, but he decided against it. Mentioning Arlene was a good way to irritate Cuddy, but he didn't think it would necessarily be an effective method in changing the topic of conversation.
So he lied.
"It's nothing. I was just contemplating my options," he explained in an intentionally vague way.
Cuddy naturally took the bait. "Options for what?"
"Well, you kissed someone else. It's only fair that I get a similar allowance with the lady of my choice." He made it all sound very matter of fact. Not so secretly he enjoyed the irritation flashing in her eyes. "Tell me, he use tongue?"
Her jaw clenched. "You're not kissing anyone else."
"No?"
"House, if you kiss another woman," she said threateningly. Forcefully she shoved his suit into his arms. "I will iron your testicles in your sleep."
But if she'd meant for it to be a frightening warning, he clearly didn't take it that way. He simply smirked. "Now now, sweet pea, we both know you don't know how to iron."
She couldn't stifle her growl. Truth be told, she understood that he was just messing around with her. He wouldn't kiss another woman any more than Cuddy herself would. However... she wasn't exactly the kind of person who had no problem with her boyfriend looking at other women. In fact, she was as far from that type of woman as you could possibly get.
She was the jealous type... the very jealous type. And he was manipulating her obviously, but she still didn't appreciate being forced to think about him kissing a hypothetical woman.
"I will learn," she said firmly. "And if I can't, I will find some other way to make you suffer." She flashed him a grim smile.
"Given all the clinic duty you've forced upon me, I have no doubt."
Cuddy didn't say anything in response. Letting the conversation shift to clinic duty would be… a mistake. House didn't push the matter often; over the years he'd learned that she would never budge on this. But every once in a while, he'd bring it up in the hopes that she would have suffered from massive head trauma and would agree to letting him out of it permanently. And when that never worked, he tended to get whiny and she annoyed. Which tended to irritate him in turn. And when that happened, she would ask why he expected professional favors, and whatever his response… it was never good. It didn't turn into a big fight; they refused to let it get that far these days. But those moments did have the tendency of cooling things between them.
And they didn't need to have that happen today.
She was too exhausted to have that conversation.
"Let's not do this," she said suddenly, her voice sounding as tired as she felt.
House nodded calmly after a moment of contemplation. "All right."
She watched him shift the dry cleaning bag over to free one of his hands. The bag crinkled, and briefly Cuddy worried that he would wrinkle the freshly pressed clothes. But as he placed a warm hand on the small of her back, she decided she didn't care.
"I'm tired," she told him, feeling the adjective in every cell of her body.
Guiding her towards the door, he suggested, "You should lay down. I'll make you something to eat."
She shook her head. "I'm not hungry."
"You should eat something before this party, which I'm assuming we still have to go to."
There was a touch of complaint in his tone. But she was willing to ignore it. As he held open the door for her, she thought that it was the least she could do.
However, even if she'd planned on responding, she would have never gotten the chance. The second House opened the door, her attention shifted completely. Because the minute the door was open, it was impossible to miss the sound of Rachel shouting.
Screaming.
Cuddy could tell just from the sound that Rachel wasn't in pain. It didn't sound like she was crying from being hurt. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how Cuddy looked at it), Rachel seemed to be throwing a tantrum.
Immediately, Cuddy glanced at House questioningly. Although he would no doubt disagree, she wasn't accusing him of anything. She just wondered what the hell had happened to make Rachel upset.
But all he said was, "We had some problems."
Cuddy didn't bother to ask what that meant. Given how young Rachel was, the so-called problem could have been anything - from "House didn't let me have cake for lunch" to "I don't have a puppy." Cuddy didn't mean to make it sound as though her child were bratty; she wasn't at all. It was just simply a fact: five year olds could find fault in nearly anything. And frankly, when House and Rachel were together, they played off one another in the worst sort of way, creating plenty to complain about.
Whether those complaints were valid or not, Cuddy wasn't sure at this point. House wasn't elaborating, and she didn't know if that were a good or bad thing.
"Great," she muttered.
"Go lay down," he suggested. "I'll deal with this."
But she shook her head. Even if she believed he could handle things, she was too… resigned to the fact that she was going to have a terrible day. Really, she should have known it was going to be like since after breakfast. But she hadn't. And now that she was aware, she could only accept that lying down, having House take care of her… none of it would actually make her feel better.
"No," she said eventually. "I'll handle it."
"You sure?"
Looking at him, she thought he seemed almost reluctant to hand over control. She wasn't sure if that was because he had done something or because his attempt at being Wilson (and therefore sympathetic and helpful) wasn't over.
Well, either way, she wasn't going to hand this off to him.
"I'm sure," she told him firmly. "I'll take care of it."
She didn't bother to see if he followed her as she walked away. She hoped he hadn't; she would have preferred to deal with this on her own. But she didn't really care either way. Once again, she was resigned to having an awful day, and so she headed towards the living room without a glance back. She didn't expect him to follow or object, help or hinder.
But as she caught sight of Rachel, Cuddy couldn't help but think he'd already done something: he'd made things worse.
She didn't know what had happened, of course; she had no idea what was wrong. But there was no denying something was wrong when she caught sight of Rachel.
The little girl was beet red with effort and anger, jumping on the couch. Or rather, she was jumping on some sort of blue stuffed animal Cuddy couldn't identify from this small distance. But that was a detail she barely noticed.
It was the fact that Rachel was screaming, "I hate you," over and over that caught Cuddy's attention. She shouted the angry words with each leap into the air. Every time she came down, the sofa springs echoed her rage with a harsh squeak.
Suddenly faced with the possibility of the couch breaking, Cuddy admonished her quickly. "Rachel, stop jumping on the couch. Now."
Rachel fumbled, her feet awkwardly landing when she realized she'd been caught. And obviously afraid of being trouble, she immediately hopped to the ground. One cautious glance at her mother, and she ran away as fast as her legs could carry her.
Cuddy understood that, if she wanted to get to the bottom of all of this, she would have to follow her. But for that brief moment, Cuddy was frozen. Dumbfounded, she couldn't help but wonder:
What the hell had happened while she was gone?
Continue on to the next chapter
Author: Duckie Nicks
Rating: NC-17 for sex
Characters: House, Cuddy, Rachel Cuddy
Author's Note: This piece takes place in the future when Rachel is five; House and Cuddy are in an established relationship.
Warning: This fic also contains sex. If that bothers you, don't read.
Summary: For a price, House agrees to celebrate Purim with Cuddy and Rachel. But although he's getting all the sex he wants, he's still not sure he'll be able to last the weekend. Established relationship, contains sexual situations.
Previous Chapters: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9 (Part 1), Chapter 9 (Part 2), Chapter 9 (Part 3), Chapter 9 (Part 4), Chapter 10 (Part 1), Chapter 10 (Part 2), Chapter 10 (Part 3), Chapter 11, Chapter 12 (Part 1), Chapter 12 (Part 2), Chapter 13, Chapter 14, Chapter 15, Chapter 16
Disclaimer: I don't own it.
"Essential oils are wrung:
The attar from the rose
Is not expressed by suns alone,
It is the gift of screws." - Emily Dickinson
Selfishly time pushed onward, seconds funneling into multiple minutes of silence. House would have liked to believe that, upon him seeing Kutner's name, everything stopped. But it was clear that it did not.
Rachel squirmed impatiently on the couch beside him. A clock Cuddy had received decades ago from her great uncle ticked at uneven intervals on the fireplace hearth. A snowplow barreled noisily down the street outside as more snow and ice fell from the sky. Everything should have stopped, but in reality, they simply continued unimpeded.
Yet House hardly noticed.
He was aware of what was going on around him, yes. But actually paying attention to it? No, he couldn't say he was doing that. He wouldn't, because he was far too focused on the name in front of him.
Really, he thought he should have known this was coming. Of all the people he knew who would give kids books about taking a dump, Kutner would have been at the top of that list. Actually, Kutner might have been the only person on that list. Either way though, it all amounted to the same undeniable fact: House should have seen this coming.
But he hadn't. And maybe it was just the shock making him think this, but he couldn't help but feel as though his surprise didn't matter all that much. Perhaps he should have known this was going to happen; however, it didn't matter in the end. Whether he'd known or not, this moment would still make him feel just as off balance and stricken and repulsed.
The emotions cut too deeply to allow for any other reaction.
There was no avoiding it, no suppressing it. Pride demanded that he continue on with the story he'd set out to tell; Rachel pressed her hands impatiently on the book in his grasp as if to guide him to the set of behavior she wanted from him. He absolutely could not do that though. No matter how much he would have liked to - and what the hell did it say about him that he wanted to read to Rachel right now? - he was helpless against the onslaught of painful memory.
It came at him all of a sudden, the emotions he'd felt then. Thanks to his insistence on discovering "the truth," it was hard now to recall specifics of that time around Kutner's death. The precise words he'd said, the patients he'd treated - all of that had faded in his mind. Gone were the details he'd agonized over while searching for an explanation. With the exception of a red skirt clinging to Cuddy's hips, browning blood drying on hard wood, and a picture of Kutner House had found, little about those weeks seemed clear to him these days.
And maybe that wasn't surprising. Maybe when you reached a certain point in your life, happy or content enough with the direction it had taken anyway, you stopped looking back and obsessing over all the things that had gone wrong. But he was pretty sure that wasn't the case. Because while that might have been true for an isolated incident of tragedy, Kutner's death had been anything but.
That event had bled into the other areas of House's life.
It had driven him insane.
And seeing Kutner's name in red ink now was a reminder of all of that.
The confusion his death had created.
The desperate search for an answer.
The realization that none would ever come.
The madness that had followed, that House had been unable to avoid, unable to forget.
That came at him with frightening clarity.
And though Rachel whined, "Start reading the story," he couldn't. She was even using that high-pitched screech she usually used when she wanted something to be done immediately - a sound he normally hated. But today it had no effect on him; he barely even heard her.
Blinking slowly he swore he could see Kutner's name even behind his closed eyelids. And at that moment, House was sure he would never escape that part of his life. No matter how much time passed, no matter how happy he was or tried to be, this would never leave him alone. He would never be free.
As though his body rebelled against the idea, he found himself shoving the book onto Rachel's lap.
"No!" she screamed as he stood up. "You say you would read! You promised!" He heard the pages of the book flapping about as she threw it at him. The book hit him in the middle of his back before falling to the ground. "You lie! You lie! I hate you!"
She was shrieking as loudly as she could, doing everything she could think of to get his attention. But he didn't look back at her as he slipped down the hallway.
In the back of his mind, House recognized that this moment would set them back. Whatever headway they'd been making in terms of having a… relationship, this instant had undone all of it. And though that wasn't exactly what he wanted, he recognized that there was no avoiding it. The only way to do that was to turn right back around, apologize, and start reading to her.
But he couldn't do that.
Even if he'd wanted to, his body refused to behave. And instead of going back to Rachel, he found himself retreating in the hall bathroom.
At that point he didn't doubt that Rachel would stay away. She'd rather throw a fit than follow him. But he locked the door behind him nevertheless. He didn't want her barging in on him. Again, he doubted that she would even attempt to do so. Yet he felt relief course through his body when he heard the latch lock the door shut.
Alone at last, he thought with bitterness.
As he moved away from the door, he caught sight of himself in the bathroom mirror. He looked awful.
His eyes were enlarged, wild with intense fear and surprise. He seemed older then, every age-weary line prominent and impossible to miss. And truth be told, it shocked him. He hadn't expected to see that. All of the emotions he'd been feeling on display - no, he hadn't anticipated that. But there it was: terror and disbelief for all to see.
Immediately he looked down. At least he wouldn't be able to see his reflection in the porcelain sink.
Just thinking that though made him feel pathetic, ridiculous. He recognized that he'd been largely powerless to stop the emotions that had driven him to this point. He couldn't and wouldn't act as though he'd been able to control his reaction to seeing Kutner's name.
He hadn't been.
However, as House got further away from that initial moment of surprise, the more absurd his reaction felt. So he hadn't expected to see Kutner's name; so it had shocked him and forced him to confront all sorts of painful truths he tried to ignore. Was he really going to hide in Cuddy's bathroom like a dumb ass? That was really going to be how he handled this?
He exhaled loudly, a chuckle getting mixed in the rush of air. He was hardly over what had just happened, but realizing how silly all of it was helped calm him. He didn't understand why that was particularly. Perhaps the self-deprecation simply replaced some of the frenetic anxiety that had been controlling him.
But whatever the reason, House let himself relish in the feeling. It was, after all, better to consider yourself foolish than on the precipice of losing your mind. So he gave himself permission to berate his own behavior mentally.
And doing that was hardly difficult. It was easy to see the idiocy of his behavior. He was hiding in a bathroom. Because Everybody Poops had taken him by surprise.
A book about shitting had put him in this position.
At that thought, he found himself laughing earnestly.
This entire weekend had been strange, but this moment definitely seemed odder than the rest. And that was certainly saying something. He'd thought - assumed really - that the lowest point would have been Rachel walking in on Cuddy blowing him.
But no!
That had ended up being just one instant in a quick succession of bad moments. In the back of his mind, at that point, he felt there was a quip to be made about Cuddy deep throating him being the tip of the iceberg. But he couldn't get the wording right in his head, so he simply let the matter go. He probably would have figured out what he wanted to say eventually, but that was a minor point, the main one being that this weekend had been so screwed up.
So screwed up.
(He felt the need to repeat that part for emphasis.)
He'd grabbed Rachel and hurt her. He'd gotten into more petty fights with Cuddy than he could count and had sex with her at least twice as much. He'd foolishly believed she was trying to get pregnant and had to listen to Rachel confess that she really did care about him. And after that… he'd hurt Cuddy and Rachel in return.
He'd bitten Cuddy, which was nothing compared to the fact that he'd said she was willing to be treated like a whore. For hours now, he hadn't felt all that guilty about the second part. But now that he'd screwed things up with Rachel again, he couldn't help but regret his earlier accusations.
There was no denying that he was right. That dick gave her money, because he thought it would eventually lead to her falling in love with him. And she was too smart to refuse cash that came without professional concessions on her part. However, House thought he shouldn't have gone down that road. He might have hated that relationship, but he shouldn't have said anything.
Honestly, doing that had been one of the dumber things he'd done this weekend. He should have known from the start that any condemnation would be ignored or denounced. Any attempt at keeping her away from John Kelley would just make her stubbornly push ahead with her plan. In mentioning his objections, the only thing House would accomplish was pissing her off. It was the only thing he had accomplished.
He'd said those things, and she'd left angrily with those words in her head. And he'd done his best to pretend like it didn't matter, like he hadn't said anything that awful. But he knew he had.
Or rather, he knew that what he'd said would only make it harder for him to make this debacle up to her.
Oh yeah. She'd be pissed about this. She'd give him that look like, "Why can't you spend any time with Rachel without making things worse?" And as always, he would have no answer to that unspoken question.
Under the best of circumstances, perhaps she would have been willing to brush his ineptitude off. Maybe she would have been willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. After this morning though? Yeah, he doubted she was going to be that forgiving.
Well, all right, she'd probably forgive. But in order to get her there, he'd have to grovel like his life depended on it. He'd have to make all sorts of promises and concessions. Clinic duty, babysitting, dinners with her mother - he'd be saying yes to all of it, and he would still hear about the time he'd freaked out over a book and upset Rachel long after the fact. Cuddy was too much of a manipulative bitch to let it go that easily.
Which normally he thought was kind of hot; a girlfriend who liked to play as roughly as he did, what wasn't to like about that? There was nothing to despise - not under normal circumstances anyway. But when he'd done something wrong, that part of her personality never made things easier. He doubted it would any different for him now.
But it was right as he thought that that he realized he would soon learn just how true that was. Because it was at that moment that he heard the garage door begin to open, and he knew: Cuddy was home.
At first he thought (or more like hoped) that he was simply hearing things. Surely her timing couldn't be that good. Surely it would be more believable for the noise to be a snowplow moving through the streets again. On the other hand, given his luck, it was probably more likely at this point for Cuddy to be home. And after listening for a few seconds, he could tell that she was. The sound was too quiet, too short to be a plow.
Unfortunately.
Of course, it would have been moronic to think he would never have to face her. It went without saying that he knew she would have come back eventually and he would be forced to explain himself. He'd simply hoped he'd have time to come up with some sort of plan.
Apparently though, he wouldn't.
Realizing that, House knew he needed to create a plan of action quickly. There wouldn't be enough time to smooth things over with Rachel. Shutting her up would be next to impossible, so that was out. And if he couldn't make her happy or keep her quiet, he guessed the only thing to do was to minimize the damage. If Rachel was going to say something no matter what, what other choice did he really have?
He couldn't avoid the problem, couldn't deny that there'd been one. So all he could do was state upfront that he'd screwed up. However, if he were going to do that, he immediately understood he needed to get to Cuddy first. It would be easier to control her reaction that way. If she saw Rachel screaming and [at this point, probably] crying, it would be that much harder for him to convince Cuddy of anything. She'd take one look at the kid and cease to listen to whatever explanation he had.
Thanks to his behavior earlier, there would be no benefit of the doubt, no attempt at hearing his side of things. Chances were, she was pissed already, and she'd just use this incident as a reason to yell at him.
So he needed to get to her first, he realized. She'd be mad no matter what, but if he beat Rachel to her, then she would at least be forced to hear him out.
Obviously though, in order to do that, he would have to move now. If he waited any longer, he would be too late.
As he pulled open the bathroom door, he realized that he had no idea what he wanted to say. He knew what he had to do - just not exactly how to explain what had happened. But again, if he got to her first, his explanation and subsequent apology wouldn't need to be perfect. In that case, he could make as many mistakes with his delivery as possible, and as long as he came across as sincere, he'd be fine. But again: he needed to get there first.
And for that, for perhaps the first time that day, he had luck on his side. Or rather, he had geography on his side.
From his perspective, chances were, Rachel hadn't heard the garage door open. She was too busy throwing a fit (which he could hear through the bathroom door) to notice. But even if she had, thanks to the way the house had been designed, he was closer to the garage anyway.
Cuddy had always lamented that part of the layout, that the door from the house to the garage was awkwardly placed in the hallway. At this particular moment though, he couldn't help but be grateful for poor design. Because it meant that, even if Rachel had heard something, he'd still get there sooner. And since that was the whole point - to get there first - he was almost willing to forgive himself for hiding in the bathroom.
Yet, if the goal had been to confess to an angry Cuddy, he quickly realized things weren't going to go as planned.
As he opened the door that connected the hall to the garage, he could immediately see something wasn't right.
Cuddy was just sitting there.
She'd had plenty of time to park the car and get out, but she hadn't. She hadn't even turned the car off. And maybe that wouldn't be so odd if she were rummaging around the car for something she wanted; if she were doing something, anything, maybe that would all seem normal.
But as House quietly shut the door behind him, he noticed that she wasn't doing any of that. She wasn't looking for something; she wasn't in the process of turning the car off and getting out. She was just sitting there. As though she didn't even realize she was home, she sat in the car with her gaze straight ahead.
In fact, he doubted she even knew he was there until he tapped lightly on the window next to her.
Cuddy blinked in surprise, but she was slow to turn and face him.
Driving home, she'd known she would have to tell him what had happened. But every time she tried to think of the wording, every time she considered her explanation, she felt sick to her stomach. Her muscles would clench tightly; her throat would constrict, and though blood was surely getting to her brain, she would become dizzy. And since she'd still had to stop at the drycleaners and get home, she'd forced herself not to think about what had happened. She'd just paid attention to what was ahead of her - literally.
Now though, he was standing right by the car. As though he already knew what had happened, he stood there, waiting for an explanation.
And she had none to give.
At that thought, he knocked again. This time though he was a little more persistent, louder.
She didn't want to open the door. She didn't want to talk to him, confess what she had done.
But keeping it from him was not an option.
As sick as all of this made her feel, she had to tell him the truth. Keeping it from him would be wrong; it would make her feel even sicker than she already did. And if she could lie to his face, then it would be as though she had wanted John to kiss her.
It would make her complicit in what he had done.
Just the idea of that was enough to force her to open the door. Her fingers shook as she reached for the handle; she didn't push it open very far, her resolve not that strong. But it was more than enough of an opening for House.
Quickly he pushed the door to the side, so he could get a better view of Cuddy. He wasn't sure what was wrong; there weren't any immediate signs of an accident or anything like that. Yet he could tell that things weren't as they should have been.
"Cuddy?" he asked tentatively. He could tell that she had heard him, but she made no move to respond. She just sat there.
He repeated her name. "Cuddy." The word came out louder this time with more assertion. But it didn't seem to have any effect on her.
Not that he really expected it to, he realized. She could clearly hear him. The problem was not in his estimation the fact that his voice hadn't been loud enough before. So he guessed there hadn't been a reason to say her name again. Having done it anyway, however, he felt even more troubled by her current silence.
Again, he hadn't expected her to suddenly snap out of whatever mood she was in. He'd figured she wouldn't; whatever was bothering her, he knew, wouldn't suddenly disappear. But acknowledging and expecting that didn't make it any better to experience.
If anything, seeing that suspicion played out just made him feel even less at ease. Right as he was, it didn't feel like a victory.
He didn't feel good when he quietly ducked his head into the car to turn it off. He was simply concerned, disturbed by her behavior.
"Hey," he said gently, pulling the keys out of the ignition. Still she said nothing, but he could see her body shift slightly. It was at least something something.
When he went to undo her seatbelt, he asked her, "You gonna get out?"
She blinked as the clicking sound of the seatbelt reached her ears. In her silence, the noise seemed deafening, and she knew she couldn't afford to be quiet any longer. She might have wanted to, but now was the time to confess; that much was clear to her.
"Yeah," she rasped after some time.
House motioned to help her out of the car. His fingers carefully guided the seatbelt away from her before reaching for her hands. But she didn't take hold of him. She felt like she didn't know how.
Immediately hating how stupid that sounded, she corrected herself: she felt like… reaching for him would be wrong. Although she doubted he would ever remember this moment - especially after she told him the truth - Cuddy didn't feel right depending on him now.
That just seemed to frustrate him though.
"Here's the thing," he told her, as he pulled his own body out of the car. "Generally getting out of the car means moving your body. And while I'm sure it's hard to move an ass that big without some sort of hydraulics -"
A cry she'd been trying to stifle slipped between her lips. Too loud to be a whimper, too showy for her to look composed, it immediately shut him up. The sentence left hanging in the air, he suddenly seemed more focused on her.
Oh, Cuddy realized he'd been intensely interested in her behavior before. She'd heard the tentativeness in his voice when he spoke to her. She'd seen the way he'd ducked into the car and gently undid her seatbelt. And since neither caution nor subtlety were House's strong suits, she'd known that he was only acting that way because of her behavior. So she was aware that he had, from almost the beginning, been curious about her.
But with that one sound escaping her throat, she'd single handedly increased that curiosity exponentially. And it wasn't surprising that he responded to her quickly by insistently asking, "What happened?"
"I did something," she said in a rush of words. "Awful."
The slightest hint of a confession made her body thrum with nervous energy. She could feel the muscles in her begin to shake. The back of her throat burned with bile, and she found herself shifting her body out of the car to satisfy the energy inside her.
When she'd managed to swing her legs out, he asked, "You gonna tell me what happened?"
He wasn't being accusatory. It felt that way, but rationally Cuddy could tell that he was simply asking the question.
"Okay," he said with impatience. Apparently she hadn't answered him quickly enough. "All right, let me guess." His nose crinkled with concentration.
"I kissed John Kelley," she admitted, blurting the words out as fast as she knew how. In the back of her mind, she understood that saying it in a rush wouldn't make it any easier for House to hear. But she figured that it would help her confess to get through it with as little hesitation as possible.
And yet… doing things that way, she realized, was hardly a good idea. Because as soon as she'd spoken the words, she could see that what she'd said hadn't really been a reflection of what had happened. She'd made it sound like she'd chosen to kiss him.
"I mean," she quickly corrected. "He kissed me."
Her stomach clenched painfully at the admittance; the air in her lungs seemed to burn with each inhale, and she didn't even realize she was teary-eyed until she felt a few slipping down the apple of her cheek.
Instantly she wanted to take it all back. As soon as the words had come out of her mouth, she wanted to say none of it had happened. If it was hurting her already to have spoken that much, how would she feel when House finally realized what she was saying?
Unbidden, her gaze cast upward at him. She didn't want to know what he was thinking. She really didn't. But she had to see what he looked like, had to gage his reaction - even if it pained her to do so.
Looking at him though, Cuddy didn't think he seemed angry. Maybe that was wishful thinking, but to her, he just appeared… confused.
And it was that appearance that turned out to be a reality when he cocked his head to the side and asked, "Which is it?" She must have looked equally lost, because he quickly explained, "You said you kissed him. Then you said he kissed you. Which is it?"
There was no time for hesitation. Having to say the words again wasn't exactly something she wanted to do, but pausing would only make him suspicious.
"He kissed me," she told him, her voice breaking as she repeated herself.
House wasn't sure how to react to what he was hearing. His instinct was to believe she was screwing around with him. It would be what he deserved after the things he'd said that morning. But just one look at her said that that was foolish thinking at best. She clearly meant every word she was saying.
Someone else had kissed her.
Someone had kissed his girlfriend.
The described act slowly seeping into his mind, he began to picture it. He didn't want to, but the image played out in his head before he could stop himself. That cock making out with his girlfriend - that was all he could see: lips brushing against lips, his tongue moving in her mouth….
It disgusted House.
He was repulsed.
"I'm sorry," Cuddy murmured, cutting across his anger. Her face buried beneath her fingers, she repeated herself. "I'm sorry. So sorry." She wasn't crying; he'd caught sight of a few stray tears over the past few minutes, but she wasn't sobbing.
And yet he could tell: she was close to reaching that point. Which meant one of two things. Either she hadn't wanted to be kissed at all and had been taken by surprise, or she had wanted to kiss John, and she felt guilty now that she had.
There was no doubt in House's mind what had happened.
Sure, she was sitting in the car in front of him with as much guilt on her features as she could muster. Yes, she was apologizing as though she had committed the crime willingly.
But House knew better.
With Cuddy, guilt was a sign of… well, her being alive. There wasn't much she did that didn't evoke feelings of guilt in her. Did she get to work late? Guilt. Did she let Rachel have an extra cookie? Guilt. Did she accidentally run over a stray dog (which, to be accurate, turned out to be a giant stuffed animal and not an actual animal)? Guilt - even though he had told her repeatedly that she hadn't killed anything.
Truthfully, it was her default position in life. If something went wrong, she automatically assigned blame to herself, whether doing so was warranted or not. And he wasn't sure how much guilt she should feel for what happened with John.
But House was absolutely convinced that he didn't have it within himself to make her feel worse.
She was already upset, already more guilty than she needed to be. Even if she'd led John on earlier, even if she'd been leading him on for years, she clearly hadn't wanted this. And to punish her for that when she was already doing that to herself was not something House could do.
Admittedly, there had been a time where he would have behaved differently. Had this happened two, three years ago, he would have tried to make her feel as badly as possible. Considering how unhappy it made him to hear her say she'd kissed someone else, it would have been incredibly tempting to make her similarly displeased. And back then, he wouldn't have been able to resist said temptation. Hell, even now, he could feel a very small part of him itching to hurt her. As ugly and awful as that was, there still remained a piece of him that said she deserved to feel just as badly as he did.
But unlike then, he wouldn't listen to that voice inside of himself now. He didn't need to. She was already clearly in pain, and for him, that was enough.
Okay, maybe that wasn't how he wanted to put it. Her tears hardly satiated him. He wouldn't be satisfied until he confronted Dicki Minaj and then beat the hell out of him. When the room around them looked like an ode to Black Friday, then House would think that was enough, cause his girlfriend being upset definitely wasn't.
However, he could think clearly enough through his homicidal haze to know that hurting Cuddy wouldn't make him feel any better. Yelling at her, making her feel worse than she already did - it wouldn't do anything for him. It would leave him wanting and, if he pushed her too far, in want of a relationship.
And so he was cautious with his response. Because as angry as he was, he was determined to protect what he had with Cuddy. Rage silently churned inside of him, but he would not let John Kelley come between them. House had worked too long and too hard at this to let some pencil dick nose his way in.
Treating Cuddy too harshly would easily make that happen, so he was determined not to behave that way.
"It's - it's okay," he said, totally hearing how lame it sounded. One of his hands reaching out to her, he gently let his fingers bury in her hair. As he stroked her, dark curls softly slid over his knuckles. "I'm not mad."
He felt her scoff and wasn't surprised when she looked up in disbelief.
"Really," he told her before she could object.
But that didn't make her feel any better.
In Cuddy's mind, what she had done was… horrible. And she said that all the while knowing that that word couldn't even begin to describe what she'd done. She said that knowing that what she did was unforgivable, so she couldn't believe that he was okay. She wouldn't believe it.
In fact, if he was saying that he wasn't mad, she could only think that he was toying with her. Because there was no way he wasn't angry with her - of that she was sure. And so if he was pretending otherwise, then she had to conclude that he was playing her; he was lulling her into a false sense of security before unleashing the rage he surely felt. She'd been with him too long to not know how he would react.
And frankly, she simply had no interest in indulging in his games. Usually she didn't mind it, didn't care about participating in his version of fun.
But not today.
Not with this.
If he was going to be mad, she didn't want to pretend otherwise. As hard as facing his ire would be, she preferred the honesty. She would rather have him yell and scream and say all sorts of awful things about her than to hear him say that everything would be okay.
So she shook her head and told him, "Don't do this."
"Do what?" He seemed genuinely shocked, but he had always been a better liar than her.
"You know what."
"I -"
"Oh stop it," she snapped. Forcing herself to get out of the car, she stood up. She didn't like how he towered over her, but even at her full height, he still did. The fact that she was wearing heels barely helped, but at least she was closer to meeting him eye to eye.
"Sorry," House replied sarcastically. "I left my Crazy-to-English dictionary in the house, so you're going to have to -"
"Another man kissed me," she interrupted loudly. "And you want me to believe that you're not mad at me?" She shook her head in disbelief.
He shrugged. "Why would I be?"
He could tell his question was upsetting her. As soon as the words had left his mouth, he could see the anger flash in her eyes. And he wasn't surprised by the way she responded with irritation.
"Oh, don't be an idiot. And don't treat me like I'm one," she said, practically growling. "For years you've been telling me that John's been interested, and I didn't listen. Don't act like -"
"Yeah." He gave an exaggerated nod of the head. "You were wrong." House considered pointing out that being wrong was hardly a novelty when it came to her; at work, she was always telling him no, why something was too dangerous or too illegal. And when he ignored her and saved his patient, which he usually did, she was wrong then. So he hoped she realized that being wrong wasn't exactly unusual for her.
However, she seemed agitated enough that telling her that probably wasn't in his best interests.
Instead, he simply pointed out, "Normally I like that."
"I've noticed," she said with a pinch of darkness.
"What can I say? Mocking you is fun." He resisted pointing out how often she was worthy of being mocked, once again realizing that saying that was not in his best interests. "But in this case, doesn't seem like I really need to." He could see the question in her eyes and therefore didn't bother giving her a chance to ask it. "You were wrong about him. He kissed you." House shrugged. "Seems like punishment enough for me."
As soon as he'd said it, he regretted the words. Although he didn't think he'd said anything bad, the rage he saw in Cuddy's face was making him reconsider.
"You are such an ass," she said through gritted teeth.
Abruptly she turned away from him. Ducking back into the car, she grabbed her purse. "How does this go in your head exactly?" she asked as she spun around once more. "He kisses me, but at least I was wrong, so that's all that matters."
He looked at her like she was crazy, which just pissed her off more. "Is that what I said?" he asked mockingly. "Cause I'm pretty sure I didn't say that at all."
Cuddy ignored him. "I didn't ask for him to -"
"Didn't say that either," he interrupted calmly.
Out of frustration, she sighed. But he was quick to reach for her hand before she could talk.
"That's not what I meant," he said in a reassuring voice. "What I meant was you're clearly upset."
She bristled at the adjective. He wasn't wrong, of course, but she didn't like hearing him say it. Far too often that word in too many men's vocabularies had been code for women behaving emotionally, which was every sexist's worst nightmare. And Cuddy understood that he didn't mean it that way, but she couldn't suppress her instinctual response to the word.
If House noticed her reaction, he didn't point it out. Rather, he explained, "I don't need to make you feel worse."
She remained doubtful. "You wouldn't need to, no. But if you blame me -"
"And why would I do that?" His tone was even, kind, and in the face of it, she was taken aback.
He was supposed to be mad. He was mad; he must have been, she thought. She had kissed another man. There was no way he wasn't furious about that. … Right? He couldn't possibly be as forgiving as he appeared to be.
That just wasn't an option… right?
Cuddy shook her head a little. "I-I don't…." She rubbed her hand along her forehead. With exasperation, she asked, "Why are you doing this? Why aren't you mad?"
He smirked, but there was no humor in his features. "Another man kissed my girlfriend. Anger doesn't begin to cover how I feel about that," he said in all seriousness. His voice stern and cold, he added, "Believe me: that's not something I'm going to forget any time soon."
"I'm sorry," she murmured, looking away from him. As much as she anticipated his fury, it killed her to hear him say he would remember this for a long time; she could understand his ire, but selfishly, she wished she didn't have to see it.
And yet she was also fully aware that when he'd been relaxed and sympathetic, she hadn't liked that either. She'd yearned for his outrage, even as it nauseated her to be a witness to it. Which really only meant one thing:
She had no idea how she wanted him to react to her.
None.
She didn't know if she wanted his anger or his support, his disgust or his understanding. And rationally she recognized that because of that, no response he gave would make her feel better. She could concoct the perfect reaction in her mind; she could envision a scenario she wanted him to play out. But the second he were to act it out, it would suddenly become the one thing she didn't want to hear.
Cuddy couldn't explain why or how that was possible. Even though she could tell that she was behaving that way, she had no idea why. However, she supposed the reason didn't matter. Even if she could point to one, it wouldn't change things. She would still be unhappy, conflicted…
Guilty of cheating on her boyfriend.
He must have seen a flash of pain that she felt, because at that moment, he pulled her close. His arms wrapping around her, she could feel the warmth of his body even through her wool coat.
Awkwardly she moved into his embrace. He was being kind, sweet really, but she was uncomfortable with the display of affection.
Of course, she wanted to relax against him, wanted to surrender to the comfort he was offering her. Of course that was what she wanted. But she found herself unable to trust the moment. Whether she felt this was too out of character for him or too nice for someone in her position was unclear. And ultimately unimportant, she thought as her body tensed against his.
"I know you are," he said in a convinced manner. "You've been crying, and you smell like puke. If you didn't feel bad, you probably wouldn't have barfed," he pointed out, the words whispered warmly against her ear. "Of course, it might be there if you kissed him and then felt bad for enjoying -"
"I didn't," she said so hastily that it sounded like a lie.
Still he didn't push her away in anger. He simply agreed with her. "I know."
Cuddy was reluctant to believe him. "Do you?"
She felt him shrug. "I admit… I've been suspicious of his motives. And whether you admit it or not, I think some part of you enjoys that attention."
"I don't -"
"You do," he interrupted firmly. "And why shouldn't you? It's nice - some beefcake thinks you're hot. It's flattering."
"I didn't ask -"
"I know." House tried to sound as understanding of that fact as possible. Part of him felt that that was hard to do, because he was so annoyed at John's behavior and because House had said those exact words over and over. But in case he hadn't succeeded in being understanding, he repeated once more, "Cuddy. I know."
When he felt her chin bump against his chest lightly, he realized that she was nodding her head in agreement. At least, he thought with relief, she believed that.
"I also know that you… kinda have a thing for me."
He swore he could feel her stifle a laugh. Which was a good sign, he felt; she wasn't so upset that she couldn't appreciate the humor. So he pushed it further.
"The technical term for someone like you? Dickmatized."
She tried to pull away a little, but he wouldn't let her go. Given John's behavior, House felt the need to keep her close to him.
"What?" she asked in confusion.
"Dickmatized," he repeated matter of factly. Feeling her shift on her feet, he told her in a patronizing voice, "It's all right. Nothing to be ashamed of. Plenty of women suffer from the same condition."
She looked up at him as best as she could. "I'm sure I'm going to regret asking this," she murmured. "But… 'condition'?"
"Oh yeah," he said with all seriousness. His arms tightened around her instinctively at that moment. He would need to explain, but he realized that she would bolt in outrage if he didn't keep a hold of her. "When a woman is willing to overlook a host of problems so she can keep having sex with the penis giving her orgasms -"
"That is the dumbest thing I've ever heard," she snapped, predictably trying to pull back.
"You think? Let's look at the evidence."
She rolled her eyes.
"We've been together for years now. You've had plenty of time to realize I'm hardly a good choice for you."
The conversation easily could have been a serious one. Maybe it even should have been a sober one. But at the moment, House wasn't trying to broach that reality of theirs. He was touching on it, sure, but more than anything, he was using that point to make a different one. And so he kept his tone casual, conversational.
"I've screwed up thousands of ways, but here we are," he said calmly. "Obviously it's not my personality and selflessness keeping you here. So I can only assume I'm laying pipe so good you're blinded with penis. Nine-foot-five Greg is really putting in work for -"
"That's the most idiotic thing I've ever heard," she interrupted at that point.
He gave her an incredulous look. "Is it?" Before she could answer, he posed a pointed question. "How many times have we had sex this weekend?"
"Sex with you is great. But I am not…."
She couldn't finish the sentence, which prompted him to ask, "You can't say the word?"
"Dickmatized is not a word," she said with a smirk. "And even if it were, I'm not."
His response was to simply shoot her a look of disbelief.
"I'm not," she repeated insistently. "Your penis is only a small -"
"Hey!" He quickly wiped the smile off his face.
But she continued talking unimpeded. "Part of why I'm with you. Although it is considerably difficult when you say things like dickmatized to remember why, I am sure I'm with you for other reasons."
"Exactly," he said, as though this had been his point all along.
Truthfully, Cuddy wasn't sure how true that was. Had he really been guiding her to this overall point - that she was with him for very specific reasons - this whole time? Or had he seen a good place to end this conversation, to avoid getting into a fight with her, and seized the opportunity?
She guessed it didn't matter. But the fact that he was making that point at all took her by surprise.
"You've had plenty of opportunities to dump me and go for someone like him," House said, interrupting her thoughts. "You haven't, which is why I know you didn't want to kiss him today."
She understood what he was saying, but she felt the need to say, "If I had known…." She shook her head a little. Looking back at it now, she thought how blatant John had been all this time.
And she hadn't seen it.
Because if the thought had entered her mind, if she'd really considered him to be a threat to her relationship, she would have been smarter all of these years. House had said she liked the attention but -
"Well, I don't know why you're dating me," he told her, ending the thought before she had a chance to finish it herself. "But I'm definitely not dating you for your brains." At that one of his hands slid down her back and grabbed her ass.
As he squeezed her, she understood that he wasn't being serious. But it annoyed her anyway. In her estimation, he shouldn't have been so good-natured about all of this. Regardless of how much he planned on blaming her, she felt he shouldn't have been so jovial.
Pushing him away as best as she could, she said dryly, "You're taking this remarkably well. I'm glad this hasn't prevented you from making jokes about my ass."
"Your ass?" He pretended to be surprised by this. "I was talking about the fact that you still went to the drycleaners after all this happened," he told her, gesturing to the neat plastic bag with his suit in it hanging in the back.
"Oh." Her surprise was more genuine than his had been. But her confusion over his behavior, he felt, was equally matched to his own.
As she turned to grab his freshly cleaned suit, he couldn't help but contemplate her observation. He was taking this well - better than he should have, really.
Again, he recognized that this was easier to deal with since he knew Cuddy would have never kissed someone else willingly. But even then, he wasn't nearly as angry as he should have been.
At least he didn't think so. He was joking and forgiving, and only in the back of his mind did he consider how much of an affront all of this was to him personally.
And that was not normal.
What was normal was for him to be angry, hurt. Par for the course in this situation was for him to turn against Cuddy, for him to wield his feelings of betrayal like a weapon.
Under normal circumstances, it wasn't enough for her to feel bad. She had to feel awful.
And sure, he'd felt that kind of rage for a nanosecond the minute she'd told him. But he'd been able to stop those feelings.
Why?
He'd originally framed this deviation in behavior as a change within himself. But the longer he stayed in the garage with her, the more that seemed like wishful thinking. Because for all of the murderous feelings he had for John, for all of the forgiveness and protectiveness he was willing to give Cuddy, more than anything, House felt relieved.
He hadn't realized it at first, but the more he thought about it, the more he could identify the feeling inside of him.
It was relief.
As though he'd suddenly been saved from something bad happening, it felt like his entire body had exhaled in satisfaction.
But that made no sense, he thought. What did he have to be relieved about? That Cuddy had been tempted to cheat on him and she'd refused? That didn't work. As he'd said to her, she'd been with him long enough that any desire to leave him would have already made itself known by now; if there'd been an inkling in her mind that she could do better, that she deserved better, she would have cut ties with him the second things had become difficult. Yet she had stayed, and in his mind, that made him fairly convinced - at this point anyway - that she wouldn't cheat on him. Leave him? Yes. Probably eventually she would figure out she deserved better and break up with him. But he didn't think she would cheat; that just wasn't her style.
However, if he didn't feel relief over her fidelity to him... then what exactly was making him feel that way?
Watching Cuddy bend over and grab his suit, he wasn't sure where any of this was coming from. What had happened that would make him feel that way?
As though asking the question had automatically given him the answer, he felt himself smile. Of course, he thought, it would be that easy. The reason for his relief would be that obvious.
It was Rachel.
More specifically, it was the fact that Cuddy's screw up meant that she couldn't possibly be that angry over his mistake. Whereas he had been terrified before, he now confidently thought that she would have to be tolerant of his shortcomings. She would have to think, no matter how unhappy she was, that he'd treated her so nicely after her little tongue-wrestling match with Colonel Cock Butter. And House knew she would be, in kind, no matter how much she wanted to be otherwise, nice to him.
Regardless of how Rachel tried to manipulate her mother, he had a pass for this, another chance.
And maybe that wasn't right; maybe that was actually pretty awful. But it was true.
"Why are you smiling?" Cuddy asked suddenly as she turned back around to face him.
He pretended not to understand the question. "What?"
"You're smiling." She looked disturbed by that fact.
"I don't smile? Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens don't -"
"You look like the Grinch when he realizes he can steal Christmas."
House was tempted to say that he was sure her mother wouldn't appreciate the Christmas-related reference, but he decided against it. Mentioning Arlene was a good way to irritate Cuddy, but he didn't think it would necessarily be an effective method in changing the topic of conversation.
So he lied.
"It's nothing. I was just contemplating my options," he explained in an intentionally vague way.
Cuddy naturally took the bait. "Options for what?"
"Well, you kissed someone else. It's only fair that I get a similar allowance with the lady of my choice." He made it all sound very matter of fact. Not so secretly he enjoyed the irritation flashing in her eyes. "Tell me, he use tongue?"
Her jaw clenched. "You're not kissing anyone else."
"No?"
"House, if you kiss another woman," she said threateningly. Forcefully she shoved his suit into his arms. "I will iron your testicles in your sleep."
But if she'd meant for it to be a frightening warning, he clearly didn't take it that way. He simply smirked. "Now now, sweet pea, we both know you don't know how to iron."
She couldn't stifle her growl. Truth be told, she understood that he was just messing around with her. He wouldn't kiss another woman any more than Cuddy herself would. However... she wasn't exactly the kind of person who had no problem with her boyfriend looking at other women. In fact, she was as far from that type of woman as you could possibly get.
She was the jealous type... the very jealous type. And he was manipulating her obviously, but she still didn't appreciate being forced to think about him kissing a hypothetical woman.
"I will learn," she said firmly. "And if I can't, I will find some other way to make you suffer." She flashed him a grim smile.
"Given all the clinic duty you've forced upon me, I have no doubt."
Cuddy didn't say anything in response. Letting the conversation shift to clinic duty would be… a mistake. House didn't push the matter often; over the years he'd learned that she would never budge on this. But every once in a while, he'd bring it up in the hopes that she would have suffered from massive head trauma and would agree to letting him out of it permanently. And when that never worked, he tended to get whiny and she annoyed. Which tended to irritate him in turn. And when that happened, she would ask why he expected professional favors, and whatever his response… it was never good. It didn't turn into a big fight; they refused to let it get that far these days. But those moments did have the tendency of cooling things between them.
And they didn't need to have that happen today.
She was too exhausted to have that conversation.
"Let's not do this," she said suddenly, her voice sounding as tired as she felt.
House nodded calmly after a moment of contemplation. "All right."
She watched him shift the dry cleaning bag over to free one of his hands. The bag crinkled, and briefly Cuddy worried that he would wrinkle the freshly pressed clothes. But as he placed a warm hand on the small of her back, she decided she didn't care.
"I'm tired," she told him, feeling the adjective in every cell of her body.
Guiding her towards the door, he suggested, "You should lay down. I'll make you something to eat."
She shook her head. "I'm not hungry."
"You should eat something before this party, which I'm assuming we still have to go to."
There was a touch of complaint in his tone. But she was willing to ignore it. As he held open the door for her, she thought that it was the least she could do.
However, even if she'd planned on responding, she would have never gotten the chance. The second House opened the door, her attention shifted completely. Because the minute the door was open, it was impossible to miss the sound of Rachel shouting.
Screaming.
Cuddy could tell just from the sound that Rachel wasn't in pain. It didn't sound like she was crying from being hurt. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how Cuddy looked at it), Rachel seemed to be throwing a tantrum.
Immediately, Cuddy glanced at House questioningly. Although he would no doubt disagree, she wasn't accusing him of anything. She just wondered what the hell had happened to make Rachel upset.
But all he said was, "We had some problems."
Cuddy didn't bother to ask what that meant. Given how young Rachel was, the so-called problem could have been anything - from "House didn't let me have cake for lunch" to "I don't have a puppy." Cuddy didn't mean to make it sound as though her child were bratty; she wasn't at all. It was just simply a fact: five year olds could find fault in nearly anything. And frankly, when House and Rachel were together, they played off one another in the worst sort of way, creating plenty to complain about.
Whether those complaints were valid or not, Cuddy wasn't sure at this point. House wasn't elaborating, and she didn't know if that were a good or bad thing.
"Great," she muttered.
"Go lay down," he suggested. "I'll deal with this."
But she shook her head. Even if she believed he could handle things, she was too… resigned to the fact that she was going to have a terrible day. Really, she should have known it was going to be like since after breakfast. But she hadn't. And now that she was aware, she could only accept that lying down, having House take care of her… none of it would actually make her feel better.
"No," she said eventually. "I'll handle it."
"You sure?"
Looking at him, she thought he seemed almost reluctant to hand over control. She wasn't sure if that was because he had done something or because his attempt at being Wilson (and therefore sympathetic and helpful) wasn't over.
Well, either way, she wasn't going to hand this off to him.
"I'm sure," she told him firmly. "I'll take care of it."
She didn't bother to see if he followed her as she walked away. She hoped he hadn't; she would have preferred to deal with this on her own. But she didn't really care either way. Once again, she was resigned to having an awful day, and so she headed towards the living room without a glance back. She didn't expect him to follow or object, help or hinder.
But as she caught sight of Rachel, Cuddy couldn't help but think he'd already done something: he'd made things worse.
She didn't know what had happened, of course; she had no idea what was wrong. But there was no denying something was wrong when she caught sight of Rachel.
The little girl was beet red with effort and anger, jumping on the couch. Or rather, she was jumping on some sort of blue stuffed animal Cuddy couldn't identify from this small distance. But that was a detail she barely noticed.
It was the fact that Rachel was screaming, "I hate you," over and over that caught Cuddy's attention. She shouted the angry words with each leap into the air. Every time she came down, the sofa springs echoed her rage with a harsh squeak.
Suddenly faced with the possibility of the couch breaking, Cuddy admonished her quickly. "Rachel, stop jumping on the couch. Now."
Rachel fumbled, her feet awkwardly landing when she realized she'd been caught. And obviously afraid of being trouble, she immediately hopped to the ground. One cautious glance at her mother, and she ran away as fast as her legs could carry her.
Cuddy understood that, if she wanted to get to the bottom of all of this, she would have to follow her. But for that brief moment, Cuddy was frozen. Dumbfounded, she couldn't help but wonder:
What the hell had happened while she was gone?
Continue on to the next chapter