Fear of Fire, Chapter 2.1
Title: Fear of Fire Leaves You Cold, Chapter 2
Author: Duckie Nicks
Rating: NC-17 for sex
Characters: House, Cuddy, Rachel Cuddy, Wilson, Arlene, Julia, etc.
Author's Note: Since this piece is set post "Moving On," there are spoilers for that episode. Also please note that, while I plan on making this House/Cuddy, it's not going to be a quick thing. Given what House has done, it will take a while to work through all of those issues. If you're looking for an easy happy ending, this isn't the piece for you. Some chapters are split for length.
Warning: This fic also contains sex. If that bothers you, don't read.
Summary: After House crashes his car through Cuddy's home, both strive to rebuild their lives and deal with the consequences of their broken relationship.
Previous Chapters: Chapter 1
Disclaimer: The show is not mine.
"True passion is not a wisp-light - it is a consuming flame, and either it must find fruition or it will burn the heart in which it has been enkindled to dust and ashes." - William Winter
Her fingers shook against the frayed edges of the cash in her hand, but she did not feel fear. Emotion caught in the back of her throat, making it hard to breathe, but she was not afraid. Terror would have made sense, given what he had done. But cold, heart-stopping dread was the only thing creeping through her body at that moment, her thought singular:
She would never get away.
She had flown halfway across the world, and he was here. Whether he’d followed her or somehow coincidentally ended up in the same place, it didn’t matter. She couldn’t escape either way, regardless of what she did.
Yes, fear would have been a reasonable response, but all she felt then was keen dejection that rooted her to the spot as though the feeling had filled her with cement.
Her legs tingled with the desire to move, itched to rush over to where he was standing and grab Rachel. But Cuddy found herself frozen in place by what she saw, and even taking a step in that direction seemed impossible.
He must have sensed her staring at him, because at that moment, he looked from Rachel toward her direction. Their gazes meeting, Cuddy refused to turn her head. The desire was there, but she would not let him see how any of this had affected her. That might have been what he'd wanted the entire time, a reaction, but he wouldn't get it.
His response, however, was anything but hidden. His eyes were wide in surprise, which would shortly give way to hesitancy and wariness. But for that brief fraction of a second, when they looked at one another with equal parts cool hatred and heated intensity, he could not keep from her, not even from this distance, how he felt.
Cuddy did not feel victorious over that though. It could have been a triumph, but it was hollow, given what had had to happen in order for it to occur. He had withheld and withdrew during their relationship, and this was a definite change from that behavior, but it was no victory.
The thought left a bitter taste on her tongue, and she forced herself to turn away from him then. Busying herself, she paid for the necklace she planned on giving her mother. It bothered her even less now that Arlene would deride the jewelry for being made in poor taste and stow it away in a drawer for years. Cuddy had anticipated that behavior before, but now she was glad she would not have a reminder of this moment.
The vendor smiled at her as she overpaid for something she could have haggled for half the price, and she pretended not to notice the wolfish grin on his face as she tucked the necklace into her purse. In all honesty, she didn't care anyway. House had abused her good will for years. Why should she care about a stranger taking advantage of her?
Why should anyone care about using her?
Why should House?
As she turned to face him once more, she felt her thoughts trailing down a dark path. Walking towards him, she remembered all of the times she had let him get away with more than was reasonable. Why had she let him do dangerous procedures when her stomach clenched in the knowledge that it was the wrong thing to do? Why had she given him the Vicodin and her love as though he were capable of refraining from abusing either? Why had she chosen to lie under oath for him when he was a man who believed in behaving as selfishly as possible? What about him had made her selflessly give only to be rewarded with him taking all he could?
And then fear did come to her. Not because she was afraid of him. He had revealed every dark part of him the second he had driven his car through her home. There was nothing to learn about him, nothing left to see. She had seen into the very heart of him and learned that, in the end, he had none. He was selfish and cruel and destructive, and he had made all of that perfectly clear.
There was nothing to fear about him.
She was afraid anyway. In spite of all her suspicions over the years, that he would never ever really give her anything in return for all her kindness, she had supported him anyway. As rational and intelligent and scrutinizing as she was, she hadn't applied any of those qualities to her relationship with him. She had purposefully kept herself blind, hoping, waiting for some reason to justify all of her previous faith. And if she was terrified at all then, it was because she questioned her ability to stop that pattern.
He had been such a big part of her life for so long. He had been given the benefit of the doubt more times than she cared to count, for reasons that no longer made any sense. If she couldn't understand her motivation behind that, then how could she trust herself not to make the same mistake again?
She didn’t want to repeat that pattern. He deserved no consideration, no forgiveness from her. After what he’d done, she wasn't sure the law had a punishment comparable to what he deserved. But then, he'd never earned any of the support or love she had given him over the years, had he? It had never been about what he had deserved.
To be sure, she had never gotten what she had earned.
All of those reminders she’d made - "If you do this, we'll both be fired" - that had amounted to zero action from him.
All of those instances where she had nearly begged him to give her what she needed and he hadn’t.
What her loyalty entitled her to, he never gave her. No, she thought once more, he'd never deserved anything she had given him.
Yet she had freely given him what he wanted anyway. What could she tell herself to prove that now was going to be any different?
He had gone so far beyond anything she'd thought he were capable of, yes. But she had the vague notion in her head that this had all happened before. At some point in the past, he had crossed a line - many lines - and she'd forgiven; she'd become used to their new normal. She'd told herself that this was it, that he would back down, that giving him what he wanted would make him more appreciative. And all she'd really done was make him think that if he railed against her hard enough, he could make her do anything.
She wondered in terror if he was right.
And because of that, when she finally reached him, she didn't say anything to him.
"Mommy! It's House!" Rachel exclaimed excitedly.
But Cuddy didn't say anything to her either.
She simply picked her daughter up and walked away.
**************************************
It had felt like a dream. After being so angry and hurt for so long, after spending all that time and energy trying to keep that pain to himself, to not lash out at her and hurt her, he thought it hadn’t really happened. Memories of it came to him in fiery snippets that almost seemed unreal given how much effort he’d put into denying his rage.
But it was real.
He had done it.
And as much as he’d like to claim he wasn’t in control of his actions or didn’t know what he was doing, he had been; he had known. In that moment, when he’d seen Cuddy touching another man, he had come face to face with a truth he hadn’t been ready to accept:
Although House wanted to move on, he couldn’t. Although he had told her to, he didn’t want her to. He hadn’t been ready. After months of trying to act like she didn’t mean anything, like he would be better off without her, he’d been confronted with the knowledge that none of that was true.
He’d realized she had had no trouble convincing herself of any of those things. She had had no problem telling herself that he hadn’t meant anything, that she would be better off without him, because it was the truth.
She’d always been the better person in the relationship. She’d come into the couple knowing that he was someone she had to try with, but if it went wrong, it went wrong. She’d known that there was always someone better on paper out there for her where as he had known that no one else would ever want him. He’d come into the relationship knowing that, if he screwed up with Cuddy, he would never find happiness with anyone else. And what that had meant was… she hadn’t had to try as hard.
She hadn’t tried as hard to make things work. She’d been less forgiving, less interested in doing whatever it took to get through their problems. She’d said that he was the most incredible man she’d ever known, but half the time, it had felt like she’d also believed he was the biggest disappointment. A silly dalliance in her eyes, their relationship had been one she’d always been prepared to end.
And he understood why she would feel that way about him. It wasn’t like he couldn’t comprehend why she would always think in the back of her head that she could do better. He could. When he looked at her, he saw someone who should have had someone far better than him. When he looked at himself, he knew he wasn’t good enough to be with that.
But he had tried so hard to overcome that inevitable failure.
It had been the one thing he’d wanted to do, the only thing he’d truly strived for for months.
Yet he had failed to avoid the inevitable.
Part of him wanted to blame her for that, but it wasn’t her fault. She’d just done the one thing they both knew she was destined to do. She’d done the smart thing really.
But there weren’t words to describe the pain he felt upon seeing her move on while he remained completely entrenched in longing for her.
He had once felt the agony of his own body dying from the inside out. He had known what it was like to feel entire pieces of your body decay, to be permanently missing a part of itself because of that. And he thought that not even that could compare to the pain he felt upon witnessing Cuddy on what he could only assume had been a date.
It sounded all very dramatic, and he knew that. He knew that saying those words out loud would never earn him much sympathy, because people would assume he was exaggerating. But he was not lying. He would have given entire limbs to be with her, to get another chance to be with her. He'd said he'd wanted them to go back to the way things were before, and maybe that hadn't been a lie either. If he couldn't have her back, he'd wanted to pretend like the whole thing had never happened. But seeing her with that stranger, House had known that going back was no longer an option.
Having her back was not an option either.
And so... the only choice he felt he had in those agonizing moments was to destroy it all.
If she was going to move on, then he was going to force himself to do the same. He was going to make her feel the weight of that decision, so that he was no longer the only one bearing the brunt of their break up.
And afterwards, when he walked away, he didn't think it was wrong, because he couldn't even believe that he'd done it. It had felt like a dream, he thought once more. Walking away from her shattered home, he'd felt as though he were floating, wandering through a fantasy world that didn't actually exist. The pain in his leg should have halted him after a block of walking, but he'd effortlessly managed to go three or four blocks before he'd found a cab.
He'd been five minutes from his apartment when the scope of what he'd done had begun to hit him. As though it had been happening in front of him all over again, he'd heard the sound of the car hitting the window. He'd suddenly recalled the noise of shattering glass raining down on his roof, the soft pat of the hairbrush being placed into Cuddy's hands. He'd been confronted with the truth that this was no fantasy.
He had really done that.
He had driven his car through Cuddy's home.
And then... he had not fled, but he'd left. He'd known that she would be angry - furious - and he hadn't wanted to be around for her reaction. Perhaps... okay, it had been a cowardly move, definitely. But some part of him had thought, foolishly admittedly, that if he weren't there, she would more apt to... forgive him?
He didn't know what he expected, because as he stood there in the open market, as he watched her grab Rachel and leave, he didn't even know what he wanted. Truth be told, he hadn't anticipated seeing them here.
But they were here.
He'd been shocked to see Rachel, sickened by the surprise in seeing Cuddy looking at him. Cuddy hadn't said a single word to him before she'd snatched Rachel up. And even minutes after the fact, he wasn't sure how to react.
Was he upset she had walked away without a word?
Had he really wanted to talk to her?
He had intentionally put the metaphorical final nail in the coffin. He'd been caught up in his anger and feelings of rejection when he'd driven through her house, but he hadn't been stupid. He'd known on some level what he was doing, the damage it would cause. He'd fled for the space it would provide, but he wasn't sure what he wanted the space to do: did he think that she would forgive him if he stayed away? Or had he hoped that he would forget about his love for her entirely if he'd left for a while?
He didn't know.
And not knowing what he wanted from himself, much less from her, he let them walk away without a fight. He didn't chase after them. He didn't call out.
Turning in the opposite direction, House simply headed back towards his hotel.
**************************************
The vacation was over for her now.
Cuddy hated thinking that, despised knowing that it was true. Although she supposed having her faith thrown back in her face had obliterated any sense of pride she might have had, she still felt as though House still had the power to humiliate her. He had the ability to ruin things she deserved.
For her own sake, she would have liked to say that seeing him had meant nothing. She would have preferred to say that knowing he was here didn’t bother her, that her vacation was still in tact after being in the same area with him. More than anything, she would have liked any of that to be true.
But it wasn’t.
At all.
With heavy melancholy, she had admitted that there was no escaping him. Upon seeing him, she had known that he would haunt her no matter where she went, no matter what she did.
Foolishly though she still craved an escape. She needed one. His presence was suffocating, and knowing that he was mere yards from her, that he was lurking about on the island somewhere made her feel so vulnerable and unprotected that she could barely breathe.
Rachel, for her part, seemed equally tormented by his nearness. But where as Cuddy wished to be free of him entirely, Rachel was distraught with longing for the man she considered her friend. To have seen him but not be able to talk to him, hug him… it was something her tiny mind couldn’t understand, especially when her mother had been the one to encourage such a friendship in the beginning.
How short sighted that had been, Cuddy thought with self-disgust. Part of her had entered the relationship with House knowing that it could never work out, that she was doing this, because she would be tortured with what ifs if she married Lucas without seeing where this could go. But she had never believed fully that she would be with House five, ten years from now. That possibility had seemed so remote that she hadn’t ever entertained the idea, though she didn’t doubt he had.
Yet she’d allowed Rachel to get close to him anyway. Knowing House would never be dependable enough, she’d let them become friends. At the time, she’d thought that she’d had to let it happen. If she didn’t, House would have known just how scared and reluctant she was. He would have seen how much it terrified her to put trust in them as a family, and he would have taken that fear as a reflection of her feelings for him.
Maybe it had been.
She wished now that it obviously had been, the desire to hurt him strong. But she guessed it didn’t really matter. He’d been allowed to get close, and now Rachel was going to pay the price for it.
She hadn’t seen House drive his car through her home. She didn’t know anything about that, and though Cuddy had failed to protect her before, she was determined for her daughter to never know that truth. It had been bad enough that she’d caught glimpses of House’s insane attempts at self-surgery. It was bad enough that Rachel had any idea that this man in her life wasn’t reliable, dependable, safe to be around. Cuddy didn’t wish to let that mental picture become any more detailed or solidified with knowledge.
That had nothing to do with House. She had no desire to protect him any longer. In the past, she would have suggested discretely to others that, actually, the man wasn’t as bad as he seemed. Now, she not only knew just how wrong she was about that, she also didn’t care if others did either.
With the exception of her daughter.
House didn’t deserve any consideration. But Rachel was so innocent and sweet and perfect, and Cuddy wasn’t going to ruin that to spite him. He’d more than earned her ire; he hadn’t hurt her so badly that she would then in turn harm her child over him.
However, in protecting Rachel, Cuddy could see that her daughter was suffering in other ways. As they walked back to the villa they’d been staying in, Rachel kept squirming, kept saying that the man she’d been talking to was House - as though that were supposed to make everything better.
“I know it was him,” Cuddy conceded in as understanding a voice as she could muster. “But we can’t see him right now.”
“Why?” Rachel whined, her bright eyes imploring her mother for an answer.
“Because. He is… not well. And we can’t see him until he is. He’s too busy being reckless.”
Cuddy’s own gaze shifted to the sand and ocean then. Her explanation was as good as it was ever going to get. There was no better way to put it, because his behavior was so disgusting and wrong and inexplicable that there were no words available to her that would make any of this make sense.
He was sick. Yes.
He was so completely disturbed and ill that he had no idea how unhealthy he was. Cuddy held her daughter closer as the chilling question suddenly passed through her mind: what had he been doing here this whole time anyway? Had he just… tried to kill most of her family and then… what, decided now would be a good time to take those vacation days?
Instantly a vision of him flitted into her consciousness. Replacing the sight of him crashing into her home, she pictured him on the beach as she had been with Rachel. She imagined him with the only company he seemed to keep these days, prostitutes, which Cuddy doubted were in short supply on any vacation he took as of late. While she had been swimming with Rachel in the pool in their little holiday home, had he been elsewhere nearby, lying in a hammock? Had he sipped fruity drinks with little umbrellas, spent his evenings coming inside some young girl with no other options? Had he thought about his behavior at all, reflected on it with any sort of regret or shame? Cuddy didn’t wonder the question, because she looked for a reason to forgive. She just wanted to know if that were how he felt or if, when he looked back upon what he’d done, he was happy. Was he proud of that? She feared he was.
And somehow “sick” didn’t begin to describe what was wrong with him. There were no words for the amount of illness that had twisted his soul into something so evil. But “sick” was the word Rachel would best understand… or not.
“I wanna see him!” Rachel said on the verge of tears.
“We can’t. Not today.”
“When?”
Cuddy looked down at her daughter. “I don’t know. Now’s not a good time.”
Somehow Rachel understood what that meant. Maybe it wasn’t that difficult to deduce that Cuddy’s uncertainty meant they wouldn’t be seeing House for a very long time. Cuddy supposed that, when you went from being with someone nearly every day to never being in their company, it wasn’t hard to assume that the future held more of the same sort of absence.
Then again, perhaps Rachel just didn’t like hearing that she wasn’t going to be playing with House today. That was an unfortunate possibility, but Cuddy didn’t discount it. Because if one thing had become obvious in the aftermath of their break up, it was that House was in all probability Rachel’s best friend. He liked many of the same things she did: cartoons and pancakes and toys. He let her stay up later than she should, let her get away with more than anyone else would have let her. So it wasn’t insane to think that Rachel was simply upset she wouldn’t be able to spend time with her friend at that exact moment.
There was no denying though, Cuddy’s answer only seemed to make Rachel sadder. Maybe she didn’t understand that House was going to be gone from their lives for good, but she clearly knew that he wasn’t going to be with her today. And that just made her cry.
Sobbing, really, with kicking and screaming House’s name, and that was how Cuddy took her daughter back to their part of the resort.
Afterwards, nothing Cuddy did seemed to make it stop. Rachel didn’t want a snack; she didn’t want to swim in the pool or the ocean; she didn’t want to play in the beach or read a book or watch a movie. She wanted to cry and shout for someone Cuddy could never let answer.
And that was how Cuddy knew it was time to go home.
**************************************
He took his time walking back to his hotel. The manager had, for extra cash, promised that there would be a hooker waiting for him when he returned. House had paid willingly, of course, wanting the distraction that simply drinking and lounging on the beach could no longer provide. But having seen Cuddy, he was sure no woman was hot or perverted enough to make him forget that.
Sand sunk between his toes as he walked along the beach. The ocean seemed to thunder in his ears, the waves crashing against the coast with a force he swore he could feel in his bones. When he’d first arrived and looked upon the sea, he’d remembered what he’d done and smiled. But there had been no mirth in his grin.
All he could think when he gazed upon paradise was how beautiful it was in contrast to him. Volcanoes had once erupted to form this gorgeous, lush scenery; the government had for years closed the islands to tourists, feeling as though preserving the blues and greens of this archipelago was more important than making any money. And by comparison he was here on this verdant isle because he nearly ran over his best friend and destroyed his ex-girlfriend’s home. The distinction could not have been more obvious to him then.
But even now the dichotomy was painfully clear for him, the irony of it all impossible to ignore. He was here in this beautiful place, oddly enough with Cuddy. But he wasn’t with her. She was doing God only knew what with her daughter, telling Rachel who knew what about what he’d done. And he was walking back to his hotel, not to the woman he hated loving, but to a woman who meant absolutely nothing to him.
He'd wanted a few days away to... either kill all feelings he had for Cuddy or to ensure that he would come back to a woman who was magically ready to forgive him. He didn't know which outcome he'd really wanted. But in this moment, as he looked out at the vast ocean, he felt himself acknowledging heavily that neither ending was what he was going to get.
This trip hadn't destroyed his feelings for Cuddy. Severing those ties was, for him, an impossible feat; no matter how much he was frustrated with her, no matter how much he told himself he didn't want to be with her, in the end, he still wanted her. Nothing had changed that; he wanted her; he needed her, because being without her was sheer torture.
No, he hadn't found a way to move on.
But he also hadn't made Cuddy any more forgiving. She hated him, absolutely despised him. Of that much he was sure. He hadn't killed his own feelings, but whatever lingering love for him she'd had he'd absolutely extinguished.
Suddenly, the prostitute waiting for him didn’t seem like much of a distraction. And when he finally did return to his room, to this strange woman with dark hair and a smear of bright red lipstick on her tiny mouth, he knew it wasn’t going to work out for him. He’d paid good money to have someone offer him a fun time with no strings attached, but he knew that she wouldn’t be enough to take his mind off of what had happened.
Nothing would be.
And for that very reason, he was grateful to be leaving in the morning. He’d only planned for a couple days here anyway. But knowing that this island would offer him no escape from the problems haunting him, he was glad to be going home. At least at home, there wouldn’t be the sweet veneer of a vacation for him to deal with; things would be miserable, as would he, and that suited him just fine.
Things were awful, so why shouldn’t every inch of his life reflect that truth? It was far better than to have the lie, that he was in paradise, shoved down his throat.
“Something… is wrong?” the prostitute asked suddenly, the broken question interrupting his dark thoughts.
He refocused his gaze on her, realizing that he’d been staring at her unintentionally for the past several minutes. Appraising her once more, he thought again that she wasn’t going to provide much of a distraction. That wasn’t her fault, obviously. She was gorgeous. She had big brown eyes, soft cheeks he wouldn’t mind stroking. Delicate curves were stretched taught over olive, sun-kissed skin, and she had tiny hips he wanted grip tightly as he fucked her as roughly as he could.
Admittedly, she looked young. There was a fullness to her small shape that screamed youth, and he doubted that she was an adult. Best guess, she was sixteen, seventeen maybe, and the fact that he could note that but not care scared him. Legally, she was probably at the age of consent. If she were too young, he doubted it was by any more than a year, and being a prostitute, she was of no concern to anyone except to the man who had obviously pimped her out to him. And again, thinking that should have bothered House. Especially when using her would essentially do nothing to make himself feel better, he thought he should have sent her away. He should have been bothered enough to get rid of her.
But at that moment, he thought it didn’t matter. Cuddy already hated him. His flight was in the morning, but by the time he returned home, everyone would already believe he was beyond redemption anyway. He was a drug addict married to a prostitute. He was the jealous ex-boyfriend who’d destroyed a respected woman’s home. There was nothing he could say or do to regain anyone’s faith after that. Certainly, it wouldn’t matter to the people who he cared about. Cuddy hated him; Wilson would be mad. Fucking some girl no one would ever know or care about anyway was hardly the worst thing he’d done or could do.
He was screwed no matter what, thanks to his own behavior. Why not welcome the inevitable and deserved damnation?
Try as he might, he couldn’t come up with a reason.
“Nothing’s wrong,” he said, knowing that “lie” didn’t even begin to describe what he’d just said. “Take off your clothes.”
She wore a t-shirt and shorts, neither of which took more than a minute for her to remove. That had been all she’d worn. Naked in front of him, she looked amazing.
Her breasts were pert, small but with large, dark areolas that he felt the urge to lick. His gaze moving downward, he was slightly relieved to spot the thatch of dark hair between her legs. As she slinked over to him, he thought that at least she’d been through puberty. Not that that really made any of it better.
Standing in front of him, she reached up with a soft hand and stroked his cheek. He was ready to stop her, to pull away from her, but she was too quick for him. Before he could do that, without any hesitation, she kissed him. She was on her tiptoes, mouth on his, which was unlike any experience with a prostitute he’d had before. Normally they either didn’t kiss or demanded to be paid more for it.
And to be honest, he didn’t like it. He wasn’t the kind to believe that a kiss was intimate in a way sex was not. Sex could be just as meaningful and romantic as any make out session. In this case, he wasn’t looking for meaning or romance in either act anyway, not with her at least, and no matter what she did, kiss him or not, he didn’t feel as though she were crossing the line into intimacy. But he didn’t want her to kiss him. Or rather, he didn’t mind it, but it wasn’t doing anything for him either.
In fact, nothing she did seemed to turn him on, shut his mind down. She tentatively got down on her knees and unzipped his pants. That alone should have been enough to make him a little hard. But it didn’t. Her cool hands pulled him out of his shorts, and she started to stroke him.
She giggled in that way women did in porn as though she thought that would give him some pleasure. When it didn’t, he thought she kept the laughter going out of embarrassment.
House knew he should have been ashamed of his soft dick in her hands. He knew he should have been apologizing or searching for the Viagra he kept in his suitcase or something. But the truth was he didn’t care.
This young girl before him was attractive and surely capable of giving a good fuck, but she wasn’t Cuddy. Therefore, she was never going to give him what he needed, and his body must have known what his mind was telling him: there was no point in even trying to act like this was going to work. Having sex with this woman would offer him no reprieve from his feelings, from what he had done, so why bother?
Frankly even if he wanted to bother, at this point, it was clear that he wasn't going to be able to. No matter what she did, it wasn't working. She wasn't stroking him right, or maybe she was, but it just didn't feel good. And when he started to chafe (she was jerking him off that hard), he couldn't help but gently push her away from him.
She rocked back onto her ass and looked up at him with wide eyes. A hint of fear shined through the dark irises of her eyes; she was unsure what he meant to do.
Quickly he tucked himself back into his jeans. "This isn't going to work," he told her flatly. "You need to leave."
"I...." She didn't understand. But when he handed her her clothes, it was clear that she had understood the request. She just didn't get why he didn't want her.
It wasn't his job to make the prostitute feel better, and he didn't care if she was hurt. She'd gotten paid already, which was all that mattered.
"Just go," he said in a firm voice. "Go," he repeated more loudly when she hesitated.
Eagerly she got dressed and grabbed the money off the nightstand. Without a single word, she scurried out the door, and he was alone once more.
Silently he couldn't help but tell himself he couldn't get off this damn island fast enough.
**************************************
“Rachel, you have to stop screaming,” Cuddy snapped as they wandered through the Fijian airport to their terminal.
She had tried her best. She really had. She’d tried to be patient with her daughter who had only gotten increasingly upset as time passed. She had tried to pretend like House wasn’t on the island with her.
And as usual, Cuddy had failed. Rachel hadn’t been able to let it go, and in truth, neither had Cuddy. That chance encounter had been all they could think about, and she had decided, upon realizing that things weren’t going to get better, that it was time to go home.
She’d booked the earliest available flights the second Rachel had fallen asleep fitfully. There were only a handful of planes that bridged the distance between Fiji and Australia, and all of the direct flights had already sold out when Cuddy had called. Which meant that they would have to stop and change planes on a different island in Fiji before heading towards Sydney.
At least, from Australia to the U.S., it would be a direct flight, though the plane would land in L.A.X. to refuel, she had told herself in the middle of the night when she’d booked the flight.
Unfortunately that thinking didn’t make her feel any better, as she carried a kicking and screaming Rachel to their second flight of the day. And she snapped at her daughter out of frustration.
“Stop kicking me, Rachel.”
“Put me down!” Rachel shouted angrily.
Cuddy just held onto her tighter. “Listen to Mommy. I can’t put you down right now. We’re going to miss our flight if I do. We can play on the plane.”
“But House….”
She stopped moving so she could free her hand to rub her daughter’s back. “I know you want to see him. I know, honey. But we have to go home. You can see him some other time. Not right now though.”
She had said those words or some variation of them many times in the last twelve or so hours. They had become her mantra, a motto she had to turn to every moment Rachel seemed to think asking for House would work. But just as Rachel’s efforts had yet to pay off, so too had Cuddy’s. Because no matter how many times she said it, Rachel never seemed to believe that things would be all right.
“No,” Rachel said sadly, shaking her head.
“Yes,” Cuddy lied. “I promise. But right now we have to get on our plane, all right? We have to go home. Marina misses you so much. And Nana. And Julia.” She grabbed the handle of her carry on once more and started walking towards the terminal. It was wrong to trot out the names of other people Rachel loved in an attempt to distract her. But Cuddy had run out of empty promises, and she had no other tactics left.
Luckily it seemed to work… a little bit anyway. She would have had to have been a complete moron to think that this problem was solved and would go away. Rachel cared about House, and that was unfortunately not going to change any time soon. But Cuddy had bought herself a quiet plane ride from Fiji to Australia, and that was good enough for her. Really, after letting her daughter get close to House, she didn’t think she had the right to ask for more.
She had created this situation.
But all of that personal responsibility went right out the window ten minutes after they’d boarded their third flight of the day. Because it was then, after Cuddy had gotten Rachel in her seat, that she again was taken by surprise.
“Hi.”
Cuddy stood up abruptly as though she had been drenched in freezing cold water. Turning around, she came face to face once more with House.
**************************************
Although she would surely accuse him of otherwise, he had not seen her getting on the plane. Had he seen her, he would have canceled his flight and paid for a brand new ticket. Even if he’d had to spend another day in Australia, even if he’d had to sleep in the airport overnight, he would have preferred that than be on the same plane as her.
But he had been drinking at the bar and hadn’t heard the overhead announcement until they were about to close the gates, and he’d gotten on the flight without any clue as to what waited for him.
The second he saw her, he wanted to turn around and leave. When he noticed that she was in the same row that he would be, he wanted to run.
He didn’t though. It was the one thing he wanted to do, but he knew he couldn’t. There were a couple other stragglers behind him. If he wanted to leave, he would have to barrel through them, and he would have to hope that neither Rachel nor Cuddy herself noticed the commotion he would surely cause.
That would never happen.
He knew it wouldn’t.
And given the speed with which Rachel had run towards him yesterday, he also knew that, once he was spotted, he couldn’t leave. Cuddy would want him to, and he would definitely want to. But he doubted Rachel would allow that to happen, for she would surely throw a fit large enough to possibly get all of them thrown off the plane.
He hoped though that if he let his presence be known, if he paid lip service to Rachel, he could get away unscathed.
Glancing down at his ticket, he verified that this disaster was unavoidable. He was seated next to where Cuddy was placing her things.
Swallowing he forced the single word out. “Hi.”
She straightened up almost immediately. She hadn’t looked relaxed before, not in the slightest. But when she turned to look at him, she seemed even more tense.
Rachel on the other hand couldn’t contain her excitement the second she saw him. “House!”
When she tried to unbuckle herself from her seat, Cuddy reached down to stop her. “No, no, no. Remember what Mommy told you. You have to stay in your seat.” When Rachel kept trying, Cuddy’s voice became firmer. “No. You need to stay in your seat right now.”
House was not surprised that Rachel listened. She had never been spoken to that way, at least not in his presence. As stubborn and angry as Cuddy could be, she was unusually patient and kind towards her own child. Not that she shouldn’t have been, he mentally added quickly, but she had almost always handled Rachel with a certain amount of delicacy. And this was in all probability the most angry Rachel had ever seen her mother be towards her. Knowing that, he didn’t think it was that odd that Rachel stopped what she was doing and listened.
But that thought barely had any time to cross his mind before Cuddy turned to him once more. His guard instantly up once more, he waited for the ire she was just keeping contained to be let loose.
Her voice was calm however. Moving further into their section of seats, she let him step forward so other passengers could move behind him. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m supposed to be here.” He forced himself to sound equally nonchalant about the whole thing. Holding up his ticket for her to see, he explained, “This is where I’m sitting.”
She grabbed the piece of paper from his hand, her eyes instantly devouring every word they could read as quickly as possible. She wanted proof that he was lying - as though he had any interest in spending the next twenty-four hours sitting next to her. When she couldn’t find any evidence of that, she shoved the paper back into his hand.
“You have two choices,” she said in a low voice, probably so that Rachel couldn’t hear. “You can get off the plane or -”
But how she would finish that sentence, they would never know. At that moment a flight attendant interrupted, “Excuse me. We’re about to take off, and I’m going to need you both to take your seats. Would you like me to put your backpack in an overhead bin, sir?”
House wasn’t allowed to answer, because Cuddy interjected. “No, he can’t sit here.”
“I’m sorry,” the woman said in falsely sympathetic voice. “But the flight is full, and for security purposes, we can’t have people switching seats on us.”
Cuddy looked like she was about to lose what little control she had over herself. And in the back of his mind, he had half a mind to let her. If he were really interested in destroying every good feeling he had for her, he couldn’t protect her. Then again, if he wanted her forgiveness, he kind of had to. And the real kicker of course was that either way, she would be mad at him. If he did something, she would be pissed that he helped. If he said nothing, she would be furious with him and accuse him of being selfish.
Similarly, no matter what he did, he was giving the stewardess an invitation to remove him from the flight. If he said what he had done and agreed with Cuddy, he would be kicked off. If he didn’t and Cuddy ended up losing her mind with anger, they would both be tossed off the plane.
And he supposed that was why he ended up speaking up. Because if they were both taken off the flight, they would be spending the next several hours together in an airport. As much as he didn’t want to be stuck in the airport alone for who knew how long, it was still far better than being in the same airport with each other for an unknown period of time.
So he carefully inserted himself into the conversation. “She means she doesn’t want me on the flight at all.”
The flight attendant was unmoved. “I’m sorry, sir, but we’ve closed the gate. You can’t get off now.”
“He has to,” Cuddy insisted. “I’m uncomfortable spending the next twenty-four hours with him.” She stepped forward to put some distance between them and Rachel. “He vandalized my home and -”
“You two know each other?”
“Yes. And I do not want him on the same flight as me.”
House almost expected the stranger to do something. It would have been appropriate, of course. But instead she remained calm, her demeanor flat. “Ma’am, unless you have some reason to suspect that he plans on harming yourself or your fellow passengers, there’s nothing really I can do right now.” She turned to him. “Do you plan on harming her or the other passengers?”
“No.” He didn’t exactly want to stay on the flight, but being arrested for making terroristic threats was hardly a better alternative. “Of course not.”
“Good,” the flight attendant said, clapping her hands together. “Then I’m going to need you both to take your seats.”
Cuddy didn’t move. “But -”
“Please, ma’am. You need to take your seat… unless you would like to be removed from the flight.”
As though she’d been slapped in the face, Cuddy looked stunned. Her mouth opened and closed in shock, like she wanted to verbalize her reaction but didn’t know how to do so. When she did eventually speak, she merely offered a feeble, “O-oh. Okay.”
Awkwardly she sat down in her seat and buckled up. Numb with indecision House did not want to join her. Not even considering her feelings, he couldn’t help but think that this was not what he wanted. Spending the next day sitting next to someone who hated him hardly sounded good to him. To be by her side, to know the entire time that she wanted nothing to do with him, to be there, so close to her, and unable to touch her…
It would be torture.
“Sir,” the flight attendant prompted, pulling him from his dreary thoughts. “You need to take a seat.”
He was reluctant to do as she said. But if the only other option were to cause a scene and get arrested, he thought that he pretty much had to listen to her.
Quickly jamming his stuff under his chair, he plopped down unceremoniously. And Rachel, upon seeing him only one seat away from her, clapped her hands happily. As she began to chatter with him, he could only think:
At least one person was happy.
**************************************
She had not been afraid before. If House had inspired fear in her at all, it was because she was worried of the how she might respond to his presence. Now, having been with him for exactly two hours and five minutes, she could feel terror beginning to bleed through the anger and resentment.
It wasn’t for herself though. She had every right to be afraid of him of course. The idiotic flight attendant had made it seem as though she were foolish for even asking him to be removed from the plane, but the fact was: Cuddy had a right to be terrified.
But if she were starting to feel any fear at all, it was for Rachel.
In all fairness, Cuddy had known her daughter was close to House. She’d seen the way seeing him had made her baby react, and she would have had to have been completely moronic to think that that would disappear just because Cuddy wanted it to. She had known Rachel would be happy to see him, and when the plane had taken off, Cuddy had predicted a flight filled with moments where Rachel tried to talk to him.
What she had not anticipated was House being a willing participant. But he was. For the first hour of the flight, he had focused all of his attention on Rachel. Cuddy had sat between them, listening to them talk about that stupid pirate cartoon. The rock of the plane always made her slightly nauseous, but being witness to this had made the bile burn in the back of her throat. Because then she’d seen that it hadn’t just been Rachel who cared for House.
He cared for her.
And less than a week ago, he’d been so enraged that he’d nearly killed her mother.
That had been all Cuddy could think of as they’d sat there chatting. House had never had an easy time getting close to anyone. For as long as she'd known him, he'd shunned relationships and connections; he'd reviled them, as though friendships made a person weak. But he'd become close with Rachel. He'd opened his heart up to her, but he hadn't done the same thing for Cuddy herself. And after all that effort they'd put into making their relationship work, he'd hated her enough to try to murder her. Yet in spite of that, he'd still thought nothing of being close to her daughter. He had all the affection in the world for Rachel and saved all of his ire for the one person in charge of raising that little girl.
Suddenly, as though she'd never had any idea before, Cuddy had seen just how sick House was. She'd thought she'd known after he'd driven his car through her home. But clearly, he'd still had some surprises left in him.
Thinking that, she'd wanted to scream. She'd wanted to shout and kill him where he sat. She'd known though that that couldn't happen. Even if she'd had the legal right to do it, there'd been Rachel to think about. Rachel would see it, and Cuddy knew that her daughter didn't need to be a witness to any violence.
Her only other option had been to sit there and take it, to stay quiet and listen to this evil man talk to her daughter like they were the best of friends.
Nothing in her life had ever been as difficult. But she had forced herself to do it, for the sake of her daughter. And soon enough the excitement of seeing House got to Rachel, and she fell asleep.
Now, two hours and five minutes into the flight, there was finally silence. But what she had seen left Cuddy terrified.
She didn’t dare close her eyes. Sleep, which she was in desperate need of, would have helped pass the time, but she didn’t trust him. Being around him set her on edge, and the very idea of being unconscious and not keeping an eye on him made her uncomfortable.
Even if that weren’t the case, House seemed to think she could put her time to better use. His fingers lightly and briefly touching the back of her hand, her head snapped towards his direction.
“Don’t do that,” she said in a firm, unwavering voice.
Dramatically he pulled the hand away as if to show that he hadn’t meant any harm. He probably hadn’t, she thought, not then anyway.
“I just thought that, since she’s asleep,” he told her calmly. “Maybe we should talk.”
She chuckled without any joy. “I don’t think so.”
At that moment, she lamented not having seats on either side of the plane. Having had to buy tickets at the last minute, she’d been stuck in the middle row of seats in business class, and as such, the nearest window was still feet away from her. So when she looked away from him, she didn’t really have something to focus her gaze on. Eventually she settled for looking at two of the flight attendants pushing a drink cart around.
House didn’t give up that easily though. “You just want to sit here and pretend like we don’t know each other?”
“That’s exactly what I want.”
Continue on to the rest of the chapter
Author: Duckie Nicks
Rating: NC-17 for sex
Characters: House, Cuddy, Rachel Cuddy, Wilson, Arlene, Julia, etc.
Author's Note: Since this piece is set post "Moving On," there are spoilers for that episode. Also please note that, while I plan on making this House/Cuddy, it's not going to be a quick thing. Given what House has done, it will take a while to work through all of those issues. If you're looking for an easy happy ending, this isn't the piece for you. Some chapters are split for length.
Warning: This fic also contains sex. If that bothers you, don't read.
Summary: After House crashes his car through Cuddy's home, both strive to rebuild their lives and deal with the consequences of their broken relationship.
Previous Chapters: Chapter 1
Disclaimer: The show is not mine.
"True passion is not a wisp-light - it is a consuming flame, and either it must find fruition or it will burn the heart in which it has been enkindled to dust and ashes." - William Winter
Her fingers shook against the frayed edges of the cash in her hand, but she did not feel fear. Emotion caught in the back of her throat, making it hard to breathe, but she was not afraid. Terror would have made sense, given what he had done. But cold, heart-stopping dread was the only thing creeping through her body at that moment, her thought singular:
She would never get away.
She had flown halfway across the world, and he was here. Whether he’d followed her or somehow coincidentally ended up in the same place, it didn’t matter. She couldn’t escape either way, regardless of what she did.
Yes, fear would have been a reasonable response, but all she felt then was keen dejection that rooted her to the spot as though the feeling had filled her with cement.
Her legs tingled with the desire to move, itched to rush over to where he was standing and grab Rachel. But Cuddy found herself frozen in place by what she saw, and even taking a step in that direction seemed impossible.
He must have sensed her staring at him, because at that moment, he looked from Rachel toward her direction. Their gazes meeting, Cuddy refused to turn her head. The desire was there, but she would not let him see how any of this had affected her. That might have been what he'd wanted the entire time, a reaction, but he wouldn't get it.
His response, however, was anything but hidden. His eyes were wide in surprise, which would shortly give way to hesitancy and wariness. But for that brief fraction of a second, when they looked at one another with equal parts cool hatred and heated intensity, he could not keep from her, not even from this distance, how he felt.
Cuddy did not feel victorious over that though. It could have been a triumph, but it was hollow, given what had had to happen in order for it to occur. He had withheld and withdrew during their relationship, and this was a definite change from that behavior, but it was no victory.
The thought left a bitter taste on her tongue, and she forced herself to turn away from him then. Busying herself, she paid for the necklace she planned on giving her mother. It bothered her even less now that Arlene would deride the jewelry for being made in poor taste and stow it away in a drawer for years. Cuddy had anticipated that behavior before, but now she was glad she would not have a reminder of this moment.
The vendor smiled at her as she overpaid for something she could have haggled for half the price, and she pretended not to notice the wolfish grin on his face as she tucked the necklace into her purse. In all honesty, she didn't care anyway. House had abused her good will for years. Why should she care about a stranger taking advantage of her?
Why should anyone care about using her?
Why should House?
As she turned to face him once more, she felt her thoughts trailing down a dark path. Walking towards him, she remembered all of the times she had let him get away with more than was reasonable. Why had she let him do dangerous procedures when her stomach clenched in the knowledge that it was the wrong thing to do? Why had she given him the Vicodin and her love as though he were capable of refraining from abusing either? Why had she chosen to lie under oath for him when he was a man who believed in behaving as selfishly as possible? What about him had made her selflessly give only to be rewarded with him taking all he could?
And then fear did come to her. Not because she was afraid of him. He had revealed every dark part of him the second he had driven his car through her home. There was nothing to learn about him, nothing left to see. She had seen into the very heart of him and learned that, in the end, he had none. He was selfish and cruel and destructive, and he had made all of that perfectly clear.
There was nothing to fear about him.
She was afraid anyway. In spite of all her suspicions over the years, that he would never ever really give her anything in return for all her kindness, she had supported him anyway. As rational and intelligent and scrutinizing as she was, she hadn't applied any of those qualities to her relationship with him. She had purposefully kept herself blind, hoping, waiting for some reason to justify all of her previous faith. And if she was terrified at all then, it was because she questioned her ability to stop that pattern.
He had been such a big part of her life for so long. He had been given the benefit of the doubt more times than she cared to count, for reasons that no longer made any sense. If she couldn't understand her motivation behind that, then how could she trust herself not to make the same mistake again?
She didn’t want to repeat that pattern. He deserved no consideration, no forgiveness from her. After what he’d done, she wasn't sure the law had a punishment comparable to what he deserved. But then, he'd never earned any of the support or love she had given him over the years, had he? It had never been about what he had deserved.
To be sure, she had never gotten what she had earned.
All of those reminders she’d made - "If you do this, we'll both be fired" - that had amounted to zero action from him.
All of those instances where she had nearly begged him to give her what she needed and he hadn’t.
What her loyalty entitled her to, he never gave her. No, she thought once more, he'd never deserved anything she had given him.
Yet she had freely given him what he wanted anyway. What could she tell herself to prove that now was going to be any different?
He had gone so far beyond anything she'd thought he were capable of, yes. But she had the vague notion in her head that this had all happened before. At some point in the past, he had crossed a line - many lines - and she'd forgiven; she'd become used to their new normal. She'd told herself that this was it, that he would back down, that giving him what he wanted would make him more appreciative. And all she'd really done was make him think that if he railed against her hard enough, he could make her do anything.
She wondered in terror if he was right.
And because of that, when she finally reached him, she didn't say anything to him.
"Mommy! It's House!" Rachel exclaimed excitedly.
But Cuddy didn't say anything to her either.
She simply picked her daughter up and walked away.
**************************************
It had felt like a dream. After being so angry and hurt for so long, after spending all that time and energy trying to keep that pain to himself, to not lash out at her and hurt her, he thought it hadn’t really happened. Memories of it came to him in fiery snippets that almost seemed unreal given how much effort he’d put into denying his rage.
But it was real.
He had done it.
And as much as he’d like to claim he wasn’t in control of his actions or didn’t know what he was doing, he had been; he had known. In that moment, when he’d seen Cuddy touching another man, he had come face to face with a truth he hadn’t been ready to accept:
Although House wanted to move on, he couldn’t. Although he had told her to, he didn’t want her to. He hadn’t been ready. After months of trying to act like she didn’t mean anything, like he would be better off without her, he’d been confronted with the knowledge that none of that was true.
He’d realized she had had no trouble convincing herself of any of those things. She had had no problem telling herself that he hadn’t meant anything, that she would be better off without him, because it was the truth.
She’d always been the better person in the relationship. She’d come into the couple knowing that he was someone she had to try with, but if it went wrong, it went wrong. She’d known that there was always someone better on paper out there for her where as he had known that no one else would ever want him. He’d come into the relationship knowing that, if he screwed up with Cuddy, he would never find happiness with anyone else. And what that had meant was… she hadn’t had to try as hard.
She hadn’t tried as hard to make things work. She’d been less forgiving, less interested in doing whatever it took to get through their problems. She’d said that he was the most incredible man she’d ever known, but half the time, it had felt like she’d also believed he was the biggest disappointment. A silly dalliance in her eyes, their relationship had been one she’d always been prepared to end.
And he understood why she would feel that way about him. It wasn’t like he couldn’t comprehend why she would always think in the back of her head that she could do better. He could. When he looked at her, he saw someone who should have had someone far better than him. When he looked at himself, he knew he wasn’t good enough to be with that.
But he had tried so hard to overcome that inevitable failure.
It had been the one thing he’d wanted to do, the only thing he’d truly strived for for months.
Yet he had failed to avoid the inevitable.
Part of him wanted to blame her for that, but it wasn’t her fault. She’d just done the one thing they both knew she was destined to do. She’d done the smart thing really.
But there weren’t words to describe the pain he felt upon seeing her move on while he remained completely entrenched in longing for her.
He had once felt the agony of his own body dying from the inside out. He had known what it was like to feel entire pieces of your body decay, to be permanently missing a part of itself because of that. And he thought that not even that could compare to the pain he felt upon witnessing Cuddy on what he could only assume had been a date.
It sounded all very dramatic, and he knew that. He knew that saying those words out loud would never earn him much sympathy, because people would assume he was exaggerating. But he was not lying. He would have given entire limbs to be with her, to get another chance to be with her. He'd said he'd wanted them to go back to the way things were before, and maybe that hadn't been a lie either. If he couldn't have her back, he'd wanted to pretend like the whole thing had never happened. But seeing her with that stranger, House had known that going back was no longer an option.
Having her back was not an option either.
And so... the only choice he felt he had in those agonizing moments was to destroy it all.
If she was going to move on, then he was going to force himself to do the same. He was going to make her feel the weight of that decision, so that he was no longer the only one bearing the brunt of their break up.
And afterwards, when he walked away, he didn't think it was wrong, because he couldn't even believe that he'd done it. It had felt like a dream, he thought once more. Walking away from her shattered home, he'd felt as though he were floating, wandering through a fantasy world that didn't actually exist. The pain in his leg should have halted him after a block of walking, but he'd effortlessly managed to go three or four blocks before he'd found a cab.
He'd been five minutes from his apartment when the scope of what he'd done had begun to hit him. As though it had been happening in front of him all over again, he'd heard the sound of the car hitting the window. He'd suddenly recalled the noise of shattering glass raining down on his roof, the soft pat of the hairbrush being placed into Cuddy's hands. He'd been confronted with the truth that this was no fantasy.
He had really done that.
He had driven his car through Cuddy's home.
And then... he had not fled, but he'd left. He'd known that she would be angry - furious - and he hadn't wanted to be around for her reaction. Perhaps... okay, it had been a cowardly move, definitely. But some part of him had thought, foolishly admittedly, that if he weren't there, she would more apt to... forgive him?
He didn't know what he expected, because as he stood there in the open market, as he watched her grab Rachel and leave, he didn't even know what he wanted. Truth be told, he hadn't anticipated seeing them here.
But they were here.
He'd been shocked to see Rachel, sickened by the surprise in seeing Cuddy looking at him. Cuddy hadn't said a single word to him before she'd snatched Rachel up. And even minutes after the fact, he wasn't sure how to react.
Was he upset she had walked away without a word?
Had he really wanted to talk to her?
He had intentionally put the metaphorical final nail in the coffin. He'd been caught up in his anger and feelings of rejection when he'd driven through her house, but he hadn't been stupid. He'd known on some level what he was doing, the damage it would cause. He'd fled for the space it would provide, but he wasn't sure what he wanted the space to do: did he think that she would forgive him if he stayed away? Or had he hoped that he would forget about his love for her entirely if he'd left for a while?
He didn't know.
And not knowing what he wanted from himself, much less from her, he let them walk away without a fight. He didn't chase after them. He didn't call out.
Turning in the opposite direction, House simply headed back towards his hotel.
**************************************
The vacation was over for her now.
Cuddy hated thinking that, despised knowing that it was true. Although she supposed having her faith thrown back in her face had obliterated any sense of pride she might have had, she still felt as though House still had the power to humiliate her. He had the ability to ruin things she deserved.
For her own sake, she would have liked to say that seeing him had meant nothing. She would have preferred to say that knowing he was here didn’t bother her, that her vacation was still in tact after being in the same area with him. More than anything, she would have liked any of that to be true.
But it wasn’t.
At all.
With heavy melancholy, she had admitted that there was no escaping him. Upon seeing him, she had known that he would haunt her no matter where she went, no matter what she did.
Foolishly though she still craved an escape. She needed one. His presence was suffocating, and knowing that he was mere yards from her, that he was lurking about on the island somewhere made her feel so vulnerable and unprotected that she could barely breathe.
Rachel, for her part, seemed equally tormented by his nearness. But where as Cuddy wished to be free of him entirely, Rachel was distraught with longing for the man she considered her friend. To have seen him but not be able to talk to him, hug him… it was something her tiny mind couldn’t understand, especially when her mother had been the one to encourage such a friendship in the beginning.
How short sighted that had been, Cuddy thought with self-disgust. Part of her had entered the relationship with House knowing that it could never work out, that she was doing this, because she would be tortured with what ifs if she married Lucas without seeing where this could go. But she had never believed fully that she would be with House five, ten years from now. That possibility had seemed so remote that she hadn’t ever entertained the idea, though she didn’t doubt he had.
Yet she’d allowed Rachel to get close to him anyway. Knowing House would never be dependable enough, she’d let them become friends. At the time, she’d thought that she’d had to let it happen. If she didn’t, House would have known just how scared and reluctant she was. He would have seen how much it terrified her to put trust in them as a family, and he would have taken that fear as a reflection of her feelings for him.
Maybe it had been.
She wished now that it obviously had been, the desire to hurt him strong. But she guessed it didn’t really matter. He’d been allowed to get close, and now Rachel was going to pay the price for it.
She hadn’t seen House drive his car through her home. She didn’t know anything about that, and though Cuddy had failed to protect her before, she was determined for her daughter to never know that truth. It had been bad enough that she’d caught glimpses of House’s insane attempts at self-surgery. It was bad enough that Rachel had any idea that this man in her life wasn’t reliable, dependable, safe to be around. Cuddy didn’t wish to let that mental picture become any more detailed or solidified with knowledge.
That had nothing to do with House. She had no desire to protect him any longer. In the past, she would have suggested discretely to others that, actually, the man wasn’t as bad as he seemed. Now, she not only knew just how wrong she was about that, she also didn’t care if others did either.
With the exception of her daughter.
House didn’t deserve any consideration. But Rachel was so innocent and sweet and perfect, and Cuddy wasn’t going to ruin that to spite him. He’d more than earned her ire; he hadn’t hurt her so badly that she would then in turn harm her child over him.
However, in protecting Rachel, Cuddy could see that her daughter was suffering in other ways. As they walked back to the villa they’d been staying in, Rachel kept squirming, kept saying that the man she’d been talking to was House - as though that were supposed to make everything better.
“I know it was him,” Cuddy conceded in as understanding a voice as she could muster. “But we can’t see him right now.”
“Why?” Rachel whined, her bright eyes imploring her mother for an answer.
“Because. He is… not well. And we can’t see him until he is. He’s too busy being reckless.”
Cuddy’s own gaze shifted to the sand and ocean then. Her explanation was as good as it was ever going to get. There was no better way to put it, because his behavior was so disgusting and wrong and inexplicable that there were no words available to her that would make any of this make sense.
He was sick. Yes.
He was so completely disturbed and ill that he had no idea how unhealthy he was. Cuddy held her daughter closer as the chilling question suddenly passed through her mind: what had he been doing here this whole time anyway? Had he just… tried to kill most of her family and then… what, decided now would be a good time to take those vacation days?
Instantly a vision of him flitted into her consciousness. Replacing the sight of him crashing into her home, she pictured him on the beach as she had been with Rachel. She imagined him with the only company he seemed to keep these days, prostitutes, which Cuddy doubted were in short supply on any vacation he took as of late. While she had been swimming with Rachel in the pool in their little holiday home, had he been elsewhere nearby, lying in a hammock? Had he sipped fruity drinks with little umbrellas, spent his evenings coming inside some young girl with no other options? Had he thought about his behavior at all, reflected on it with any sort of regret or shame? Cuddy didn’t wonder the question, because she looked for a reason to forgive. She just wanted to know if that were how he felt or if, when he looked back upon what he’d done, he was happy. Was he proud of that? She feared he was.
And somehow “sick” didn’t begin to describe what was wrong with him. There were no words for the amount of illness that had twisted his soul into something so evil. But “sick” was the word Rachel would best understand… or not.
“I wanna see him!” Rachel said on the verge of tears.
“We can’t. Not today.”
“When?”
Cuddy looked down at her daughter. “I don’t know. Now’s not a good time.”
Somehow Rachel understood what that meant. Maybe it wasn’t that difficult to deduce that Cuddy’s uncertainty meant they wouldn’t be seeing House for a very long time. Cuddy supposed that, when you went from being with someone nearly every day to never being in their company, it wasn’t hard to assume that the future held more of the same sort of absence.
Then again, perhaps Rachel just didn’t like hearing that she wasn’t going to be playing with House today. That was an unfortunate possibility, but Cuddy didn’t discount it. Because if one thing had become obvious in the aftermath of their break up, it was that House was in all probability Rachel’s best friend. He liked many of the same things she did: cartoons and pancakes and toys. He let her stay up later than she should, let her get away with more than anyone else would have let her. So it wasn’t insane to think that Rachel was simply upset she wouldn’t be able to spend time with her friend at that exact moment.
There was no denying though, Cuddy’s answer only seemed to make Rachel sadder. Maybe she didn’t understand that House was going to be gone from their lives for good, but she clearly knew that he wasn’t going to be with her today. And that just made her cry.
Sobbing, really, with kicking and screaming House’s name, and that was how Cuddy took her daughter back to their part of the resort.
Afterwards, nothing Cuddy did seemed to make it stop. Rachel didn’t want a snack; she didn’t want to swim in the pool or the ocean; she didn’t want to play in the beach or read a book or watch a movie. She wanted to cry and shout for someone Cuddy could never let answer.
And that was how Cuddy knew it was time to go home.
**************************************
He took his time walking back to his hotel. The manager had, for extra cash, promised that there would be a hooker waiting for him when he returned. House had paid willingly, of course, wanting the distraction that simply drinking and lounging on the beach could no longer provide. But having seen Cuddy, he was sure no woman was hot or perverted enough to make him forget that.
Sand sunk between his toes as he walked along the beach. The ocean seemed to thunder in his ears, the waves crashing against the coast with a force he swore he could feel in his bones. When he’d first arrived and looked upon the sea, he’d remembered what he’d done and smiled. But there had been no mirth in his grin.
All he could think when he gazed upon paradise was how beautiful it was in contrast to him. Volcanoes had once erupted to form this gorgeous, lush scenery; the government had for years closed the islands to tourists, feeling as though preserving the blues and greens of this archipelago was more important than making any money. And by comparison he was here on this verdant isle because he nearly ran over his best friend and destroyed his ex-girlfriend’s home. The distinction could not have been more obvious to him then.
But even now the dichotomy was painfully clear for him, the irony of it all impossible to ignore. He was here in this beautiful place, oddly enough with Cuddy. But he wasn’t with her. She was doing God only knew what with her daughter, telling Rachel who knew what about what he’d done. And he was walking back to his hotel, not to the woman he hated loving, but to a woman who meant absolutely nothing to him.
He'd wanted a few days away to... either kill all feelings he had for Cuddy or to ensure that he would come back to a woman who was magically ready to forgive him. He didn't know which outcome he'd really wanted. But in this moment, as he looked out at the vast ocean, he felt himself acknowledging heavily that neither ending was what he was going to get.
This trip hadn't destroyed his feelings for Cuddy. Severing those ties was, for him, an impossible feat; no matter how much he was frustrated with her, no matter how much he told himself he didn't want to be with her, in the end, he still wanted her. Nothing had changed that; he wanted her; he needed her, because being without her was sheer torture.
No, he hadn't found a way to move on.
But he also hadn't made Cuddy any more forgiving. She hated him, absolutely despised him. Of that much he was sure. He hadn't killed his own feelings, but whatever lingering love for him she'd had he'd absolutely extinguished.
Suddenly, the prostitute waiting for him didn’t seem like much of a distraction. And when he finally did return to his room, to this strange woman with dark hair and a smear of bright red lipstick on her tiny mouth, he knew it wasn’t going to work out for him. He’d paid good money to have someone offer him a fun time with no strings attached, but he knew that she wouldn’t be enough to take his mind off of what had happened.
Nothing would be.
And for that very reason, he was grateful to be leaving in the morning. He’d only planned for a couple days here anyway. But knowing that this island would offer him no escape from the problems haunting him, he was glad to be going home. At least at home, there wouldn’t be the sweet veneer of a vacation for him to deal with; things would be miserable, as would he, and that suited him just fine.
Things were awful, so why shouldn’t every inch of his life reflect that truth? It was far better than to have the lie, that he was in paradise, shoved down his throat.
“Something… is wrong?” the prostitute asked suddenly, the broken question interrupting his dark thoughts.
He refocused his gaze on her, realizing that he’d been staring at her unintentionally for the past several minutes. Appraising her once more, he thought again that she wasn’t going to provide much of a distraction. That wasn’t her fault, obviously. She was gorgeous. She had big brown eyes, soft cheeks he wouldn’t mind stroking. Delicate curves were stretched taught over olive, sun-kissed skin, and she had tiny hips he wanted grip tightly as he fucked her as roughly as he could.
Admittedly, she looked young. There was a fullness to her small shape that screamed youth, and he doubted that she was an adult. Best guess, she was sixteen, seventeen maybe, and the fact that he could note that but not care scared him. Legally, she was probably at the age of consent. If she were too young, he doubted it was by any more than a year, and being a prostitute, she was of no concern to anyone except to the man who had obviously pimped her out to him. And again, thinking that should have bothered House. Especially when using her would essentially do nothing to make himself feel better, he thought he should have sent her away. He should have been bothered enough to get rid of her.
But at that moment, he thought it didn’t matter. Cuddy already hated him. His flight was in the morning, but by the time he returned home, everyone would already believe he was beyond redemption anyway. He was a drug addict married to a prostitute. He was the jealous ex-boyfriend who’d destroyed a respected woman’s home. There was nothing he could say or do to regain anyone’s faith after that. Certainly, it wouldn’t matter to the people who he cared about. Cuddy hated him; Wilson would be mad. Fucking some girl no one would ever know or care about anyway was hardly the worst thing he’d done or could do.
He was screwed no matter what, thanks to his own behavior. Why not welcome the inevitable and deserved damnation?
Try as he might, he couldn’t come up with a reason.
“Nothing’s wrong,” he said, knowing that “lie” didn’t even begin to describe what he’d just said. “Take off your clothes.”
She wore a t-shirt and shorts, neither of which took more than a minute for her to remove. That had been all she’d worn. Naked in front of him, she looked amazing.
Her breasts were pert, small but with large, dark areolas that he felt the urge to lick. His gaze moving downward, he was slightly relieved to spot the thatch of dark hair between her legs. As she slinked over to him, he thought that at least she’d been through puberty. Not that that really made any of it better.
Standing in front of him, she reached up with a soft hand and stroked his cheek. He was ready to stop her, to pull away from her, but she was too quick for him. Before he could do that, without any hesitation, she kissed him. She was on her tiptoes, mouth on his, which was unlike any experience with a prostitute he’d had before. Normally they either didn’t kiss or demanded to be paid more for it.
And to be honest, he didn’t like it. He wasn’t the kind to believe that a kiss was intimate in a way sex was not. Sex could be just as meaningful and romantic as any make out session. In this case, he wasn’t looking for meaning or romance in either act anyway, not with her at least, and no matter what she did, kiss him or not, he didn’t feel as though she were crossing the line into intimacy. But he didn’t want her to kiss him. Or rather, he didn’t mind it, but it wasn’t doing anything for him either.
In fact, nothing she did seemed to turn him on, shut his mind down. She tentatively got down on her knees and unzipped his pants. That alone should have been enough to make him a little hard. But it didn’t. Her cool hands pulled him out of his shorts, and she started to stroke him.
She giggled in that way women did in porn as though she thought that would give him some pleasure. When it didn’t, he thought she kept the laughter going out of embarrassment.
House knew he should have been ashamed of his soft dick in her hands. He knew he should have been apologizing or searching for the Viagra he kept in his suitcase or something. But the truth was he didn’t care.
This young girl before him was attractive and surely capable of giving a good fuck, but she wasn’t Cuddy. Therefore, she was never going to give him what he needed, and his body must have known what his mind was telling him: there was no point in even trying to act like this was going to work. Having sex with this woman would offer him no reprieve from his feelings, from what he had done, so why bother?
Frankly even if he wanted to bother, at this point, it was clear that he wasn't going to be able to. No matter what she did, it wasn't working. She wasn't stroking him right, or maybe she was, but it just didn't feel good. And when he started to chafe (she was jerking him off that hard), he couldn't help but gently push her away from him.
She rocked back onto her ass and looked up at him with wide eyes. A hint of fear shined through the dark irises of her eyes; she was unsure what he meant to do.
Quickly he tucked himself back into his jeans. "This isn't going to work," he told her flatly. "You need to leave."
"I...." She didn't understand. But when he handed her her clothes, it was clear that she had understood the request. She just didn't get why he didn't want her.
It wasn't his job to make the prostitute feel better, and he didn't care if she was hurt. She'd gotten paid already, which was all that mattered.
"Just go," he said in a firm voice. "Go," he repeated more loudly when she hesitated.
Eagerly she got dressed and grabbed the money off the nightstand. Without a single word, she scurried out the door, and he was alone once more.
Silently he couldn't help but tell himself he couldn't get off this damn island fast enough.
**************************************
“Rachel, you have to stop screaming,” Cuddy snapped as they wandered through the Fijian airport to their terminal.
She had tried her best. She really had. She’d tried to be patient with her daughter who had only gotten increasingly upset as time passed. She had tried to pretend like House wasn’t on the island with her.
And as usual, Cuddy had failed. Rachel hadn’t been able to let it go, and in truth, neither had Cuddy. That chance encounter had been all they could think about, and she had decided, upon realizing that things weren’t going to get better, that it was time to go home.
She’d booked the earliest available flights the second Rachel had fallen asleep fitfully. There were only a handful of planes that bridged the distance between Fiji and Australia, and all of the direct flights had already sold out when Cuddy had called. Which meant that they would have to stop and change planes on a different island in Fiji before heading towards Sydney.
At least, from Australia to the U.S., it would be a direct flight, though the plane would land in L.A.X. to refuel, she had told herself in the middle of the night when she’d booked the flight.
Unfortunately that thinking didn’t make her feel any better, as she carried a kicking and screaming Rachel to their second flight of the day. And she snapped at her daughter out of frustration.
“Stop kicking me, Rachel.”
“Put me down!” Rachel shouted angrily.
Cuddy just held onto her tighter. “Listen to Mommy. I can’t put you down right now. We’re going to miss our flight if I do. We can play on the plane.”
“But House….”
She stopped moving so she could free her hand to rub her daughter’s back. “I know you want to see him. I know, honey. But we have to go home. You can see him some other time. Not right now though.”
She had said those words or some variation of them many times in the last twelve or so hours. They had become her mantra, a motto she had to turn to every moment Rachel seemed to think asking for House would work. But just as Rachel’s efforts had yet to pay off, so too had Cuddy’s. Because no matter how many times she said it, Rachel never seemed to believe that things would be all right.
“No,” Rachel said sadly, shaking her head.
“Yes,” Cuddy lied. “I promise. But right now we have to get on our plane, all right? We have to go home. Marina misses you so much. And Nana. And Julia.” She grabbed the handle of her carry on once more and started walking towards the terminal. It was wrong to trot out the names of other people Rachel loved in an attempt to distract her. But Cuddy had run out of empty promises, and she had no other tactics left.
Luckily it seemed to work… a little bit anyway. She would have had to have been a complete moron to think that this problem was solved and would go away. Rachel cared about House, and that was unfortunately not going to change any time soon. But Cuddy had bought herself a quiet plane ride from Fiji to Australia, and that was good enough for her. Really, after letting her daughter get close to House, she didn’t think she had the right to ask for more.
She had created this situation.
But all of that personal responsibility went right out the window ten minutes after they’d boarded their third flight of the day. Because it was then, after Cuddy had gotten Rachel in her seat, that she again was taken by surprise.
“Hi.”
Cuddy stood up abruptly as though she had been drenched in freezing cold water. Turning around, she came face to face once more with House.
**************************************
Although she would surely accuse him of otherwise, he had not seen her getting on the plane. Had he seen her, he would have canceled his flight and paid for a brand new ticket. Even if he’d had to spend another day in Australia, even if he’d had to sleep in the airport overnight, he would have preferred that than be on the same plane as her.
But he had been drinking at the bar and hadn’t heard the overhead announcement until they were about to close the gates, and he’d gotten on the flight without any clue as to what waited for him.
The second he saw her, he wanted to turn around and leave. When he noticed that she was in the same row that he would be, he wanted to run.
He didn’t though. It was the one thing he wanted to do, but he knew he couldn’t. There were a couple other stragglers behind him. If he wanted to leave, he would have to barrel through them, and he would have to hope that neither Rachel nor Cuddy herself noticed the commotion he would surely cause.
That would never happen.
He knew it wouldn’t.
And given the speed with which Rachel had run towards him yesterday, he also knew that, once he was spotted, he couldn’t leave. Cuddy would want him to, and he would definitely want to. But he doubted Rachel would allow that to happen, for she would surely throw a fit large enough to possibly get all of them thrown off the plane.
He hoped though that if he let his presence be known, if he paid lip service to Rachel, he could get away unscathed.
Glancing down at his ticket, he verified that this disaster was unavoidable. He was seated next to where Cuddy was placing her things.
Swallowing he forced the single word out. “Hi.”
She straightened up almost immediately. She hadn’t looked relaxed before, not in the slightest. But when she turned to look at him, she seemed even more tense.
Rachel on the other hand couldn’t contain her excitement the second she saw him. “House!”
When she tried to unbuckle herself from her seat, Cuddy reached down to stop her. “No, no, no. Remember what Mommy told you. You have to stay in your seat.” When Rachel kept trying, Cuddy’s voice became firmer. “No. You need to stay in your seat right now.”
House was not surprised that Rachel listened. She had never been spoken to that way, at least not in his presence. As stubborn and angry as Cuddy could be, she was unusually patient and kind towards her own child. Not that she shouldn’t have been, he mentally added quickly, but she had almost always handled Rachel with a certain amount of delicacy. And this was in all probability the most angry Rachel had ever seen her mother be towards her. Knowing that, he didn’t think it was that odd that Rachel stopped what she was doing and listened.
But that thought barely had any time to cross his mind before Cuddy turned to him once more. His guard instantly up once more, he waited for the ire she was just keeping contained to be let loose.
Her voice was calm however. Moving further into their section of seats, she let him step forward so other passengers could move behind him. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m supposed to be here.” He forced himself to sound equally nonchalant about the whole thing. Holding up his ticket for her to see, he explained, “This is where I’m sitting.”
She grabbed the piece of paper from his hand, her eyes instantly devouring every word they could read as quickly as possible. She wanted proof that he was lying - as though he had any interest in spending the next twenty-four hours sitting next to her. When she couldn’t find any evidence of that, she shoved the paper back into his hand.
“You have two choices,” she said in a low voice, probably so that Rachel couldn’t hear. “You can get off the plane or -”
But how she would finish that sentence, they would never know. At that moment a flight attendant interrupted, “Excuse me. We’re about to take off, and I’m going to need you both to take your seats. Would you like me to put your backpack in an overhead bin, sir?”
House wasn’t allowed to answer, because Cuddy interjected. “No, he can’t sit here.”
“I’m sorry,” the woman said in falsely sympathetic voice. “But the flight is full, and for security purposes, we can’t have people switching seats on us.”
Cuddy looked like she was about to lose what little control she had over herself. And in the back of his mind, he had half a mind to let her. If he were really interested in destroying every good feeling he had for her, he couldn’t protect her. Then again, if he wanted her forgiveness, he kind of had to. And the real kicker of course was that either way, she would be mad at him. If he did something, she would be pissed that he helped. If he said nothing, she would be furious with him and accuse him of being selfish.
Similarly, no matter what he did, he was giving the stewardess an invitation to remove him from the flight. If he said what he had done and agreed with Cuddy, he would be kicked off. If he didn’t and Cuddy ended up losing her mind with anger, they would both be tossed off the plane.
And he supposed that was why he ended up speaking up. Because if they were both taken off the flight, they would be spending the next several hours together in an airport. As much as he didn’t want to be stuck in the airport alone for who knew how long, it was still far better than being in the same airport with each other for an unknown period of time.
So he carefully inserted himself into the conversation. “She means she doesn’t want me on the flight at all.”
The flight attendant was unmoved. “I’m sorry, sir, but we’ve closed the gate. You can’t get off now.”
“He has to,” Cuddy insisted. “I’m uncomfortable spending the next twenty-four hours with him.” She stepped forward to put some distance between them and Rachel. “He vandalized my home and -”
“You two know each other?”
“Yes. And I do not want him on the same flight as me.”
House almost expected the stranger to do something. It would have been appropriate, of course. But instead she remained calm, her demeanor flat. “Ma’am, unless you have some reason to suspect that he plans on harming yourself or your fellow passengers, there’s nothing really I can do right now.” She turned to him. “Do you plan on harming her or the other passengers?”
“No.” He didn’t exactly want to stay on the flight, but being arrested for making terroristic threats was hardly a better alternative. “Of course not.”
“Good,” the flight attendant said, clapping her hands together. “Then I’m going to need you both to take your seats.”
Cuddy didn’t move. “But -”
“Please, ma’am. You need to take your seat… unless you would like to be removed from the flight.”
As though she’d been slapped in the face, Cuddy looked stunned. Her mouth opened and closed in shock, like she wanted to verbalize her reaction but didn’t know how to do so. When she did eventually speak, she merely offered a feeble, “O-oh. Okay.”
Awkwardly she sat down in her seat and buckled up. Numb with indecision House did not want to join her. Not even considering her feelings, he couldn’t help but think that this was not what he wanted. Spending the next day sitting next to someone who hated him hardly sounded good to him. To be by her side, to know the entire time that she wanted nothing to do with him, to be there, so close to her, and unable to touch her…
It would be torture.
“Sir,” the flight attendant prompted, pulling him from his dreary thoughts. “You need to take a seat.”
He was reluctant to do as she said. But if the only other option were to cause a scene and get arrested, he thought that he pretty much had to listen to her.
Quickly jamming his stuff under his chair, he plopped down unceremoniously. And Rachel, upon seeing him only one seat away from her, clapped her hands happily. As she began to chatter with him, he could only think:
At least one person was happy.
**************************************
She had not been afraid before. If House had inspired fear in her at all, it was because she was worried of the how she might respond to his presence. Now, having been with him for exactly two hours and five minutes, she could feel terror beginning to bleed through the anger and resentment.
It wasn’t for herself though. She had every right to be afraid of him of course. The idiotic flight attendant had made it seem as though she were foolish for even asking him to be removed from the plane, but the fact was: Cuddy had a right to be terrified.
But if she were starting to feel any fear at all, it was for Rachel.
In all fairness, Cuddy had known her daughter was close to House. She’d seen the way seeing him had made her baby react, and she would have had to have been completely moronic to think that that would disappear just because Cuddy wanted it to. She had known Rachel would be happy to see him, and when the plane had taken off, Cuddy had predicted a flight filled with moments where Rachel tried to talk to him.
What she had not anticipated was House being a willing participant. But he was. For the first hour of the flight, he had focused all of his attention on Rachel. Cuddy had sat between them, listening to them talk about that stupid pirate cartoon. The rock of the plane always made her slightly nauseous, but being witness to this had made the bile burn in the back of her throat. Because then she’d seen that it hadn’t just been Rachel who cared for House.
He cared for her.
And less than a week ago, he’d been so enraged that he’d nearly killed her mother.
That had been all Cuddy could think of as they’d sat there chatting. House had never had an easy time getting close to anyone. For as long as she'd known him, he'd shunned relationships and connections; he'd reviled them, as though friendships made a person weak. But he'd become close with Rachel. He'd opened his heart up to her, but he hadn't done the same thing for Cuddy herself. And after all that effort they'd put into making their relationship work, he'd hated her enough to try to murder her. Yet in spite of that, he'd still thought nothing of being close to her daughter. He had all the affection in the world for Rachel and saved all of his ire for the one person in charge of raising that little girl.
Suddenly, as though she'd never had any idea before, Cuddy had seen just how sick House was. She'd thought she'd known after he'd driven his car through her home. But clearly, he'd still had some surprises left in him.
Thinking that, she'd wanted to scream. She'd wanted to shout and kill him where he sat. She'd known though that that couldn't happen. Even if she'd had the legal right to do it, there'd been Rachel to think about. Rachel would see it, and Cuddy knew that her daughter didn't need to be a witness to any violence.
Her only other option had been to sit there and take it, to stay quiet and listen to this evil man talk to her daughter like they were the best of friends.
Nothing in her life had ever been as difficult. But she had forced herself to do it, for the sake of her daughter. And soon enough the excitement of seeing House got to Rachel, and she fell asleep.
Now, two hours and five minutes into the flight, there was finally silence. But what she had seen left Cuddy terrified.
She didn’t dare close her eyes. Sleep, which she was in desperate need of, would have helped pass the time, but she didn’t trust him. Being around him set her on edge, and the very idea of being unconscious and not keeping an eye on him made her uncomfortable.
Even if that weren’t the case, House seemed to think she could put her time to better use. His fingers lightly and briefly touching the back of her hand, her head snapped towards his direction.
“Don’t do that,” she said in a firm, unwavering voice.
Dramatically he pulled the hand away as if to show that he hadn’t meant any harm. He probably hadn’t, she thought, not then anyway.
“I just thought that, since she’s asleep,” he told her calmly. “Maybe we should talk.”
She chuckled without any joy. “I don’t think so.”
At that moment, she lamented not having seats on either side of the plane. Having had to buy tickets at the last minute, she’d been stuck in the middle row of seats in business class, and as such, the nearest window was still feet away from her. So when she looked away from him, she didn’t really have something to focus her gaze on. Eventually she settled for looking at two of the flight attendants pushing a drink cart around.
House didn’t give up that easily though. “You just want to sit here and pretend like we don’t know each other?”
“That’s exactly what I want.”
Continue on to the rest of the chapter