Shark Week, Tuesday
Title: Shark Week, 2/7
Fandom: House MD
Pairing: House/Cuddy
Warnings: Explicit content HERE.
Summary: A hiatus fic, in response to the prompt “Shark Week” (among other prompts); takes place after the S6 finale, as well as "Coming to Terms" and "Fault Lines".
Disclaimer: Seriously? You do know that I am not David Shore, right?
Tuesday
“What do you mean, ‘why’? Because it’s broken. Again. Two fucking months since its last Thermal Event.”
“Oh.” Wilson looked disappointed. “Tomorrow, maybe?”
“What? Predators of the Deep doesn’t start until seven; I’ll be home in plenty of time.”
“We’re still on?”
“It’s Tuesday.” He maturely left the, “you idiot,” unspoken.
“You’re sure she’s okay with this?”
“The woman just asked me how to say, ‘suck it, GE repair guy,’ in Spanish, Wilson. I think it’s safe to assume she’s very okay with it.”
“I love you,” was the last thing he said.
“I’m sorry,” was the last thing he heard.
He did not understand it, so he hung onto it, working on the puzzle of it, until the shadows took it away from him.
“Showtime,” House mumbled, but as always, the morphine drip was making his speech incomprehensible even to his dreaming self. “Here we go.”
He had not had The Dream in years. He hadn’t forgotten it, though, and he was, strangely, almost comforted by its recent reappearance. Someone had been screwing around with it, re-writing it. The revisions transformed a condensed version of the worst experiences of his life, into something even more sucktastic, and then added a soundtrack.
Cue The Doors, with new lyrics: Hello, I love you, but I just can’t take this …
Just as always, he woke with clamps digging into his right leg and pain radiating up his spine and into his skin and hair; just as always, he was suddenly irrationally afraid to look down at his own body. The ceiling tiles in the post-surgical unit of PPTH hadn’t changed, either, and the smell of his sweat and fear was every bit as acrid in his nostrils as he remembered it.
Hello, I’m sorry, this is for your own good…
This time, though, it wasn’t Stacy who squeezed his hand. This time, it wasn’t brown eyes that looked into his with that choking combination of shame and relief.; it was a pair of smoky blue ones.
Hello, I’m sorry, I have to move on now …
“We debrided the quadricep,” the cutter said, staying on script with that same smug attitude, as if he’d just earned the Nobel Fucking Prize, and then started to babble, taking the medical terminology that House had always been able to understand and turning it into some kind of weird word salad: “There was significant necrosis; the posterior wall of the artery irrigating the limb was blah, blah, blahdy blah, heparin, tissue plasmoid activator, blah blah.” House thought again, I know this, I practically invented this stuff, I teach classes in it, either make sense or shut up.
Hello, I love you, I don’t want you this way …
The same flood of bewilderment and apprehension slamming into him, House struggled to sit up, to follow the conversation, to form a fist, or even a coherent thought, but the meds had turned him to mush.
Hello, I’m sorry, we will always be friends…
This was the point in The Dream where one soft hand landed on his chest, another on his forehead.
The twist this time was that there was only one hand, and it cradled his cheek, and then, instead of saying, “Thank God you’re okay,” someone asked him, in a voice made of equal parts horror and tender concern, “Are you okay?”
“No,” he heard himself whisper, this time. “I’m not.”
Hello, I love you, hey at least you’re alive …
“I’m sorry,” someone said again, straight from The Dream 1.0; the same breathy, weary accusation. “You know I love you, but I just can’t take this.”
House had been convinced that there wasn't anything even his malicious subconscious could do to him that would be worse than getting dumped to the lyrics of a Phil Collins song.
In Dream 2.0, though, it wasn’t Stacy who looked at him with regret and unmistakably, irrevocably, pity; it was Lisa. Bare and shapely legs in heels, not denim-clad, athletic ones in sneakers, turned crisply and walked away.
Then Wilson appeared out of nowhere, gave a quick compassionate jerk of his head and said, as he always said, “Wanna beer?”
“House? I brought nachos, too.”
A warm, masculine this time, and real, hand, touched his elbow, pulled it down from his brow. Emerging from the fuzzed-out confines of the dream - nightmare, daymare, whatever -- House sat up on his couch and rubbed the back of his neck.
Wilson was looking concerned. “Hello? I called you. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“What?” Panicking, House shook his head briskly and regained his focus. “Oh. No, but I will be. Fatigue is cumulative. Sleep isn’t. “
“That’s exactly why you should have stayed home today.” Wilson followed this pronouncement with a genuine clucking noise.
Wilson’s interminable caring was just a fact of life, like cockroaches, or adolescence; House didn’t think it worthy of comment.
“You don’t think you’re just a little too tired - not to mention overqualified -- to be playing Handy Andy?” his friend persisted.
“I’m overqualified, to be wiping noses and treating crotch rot in the clinic.” House raised his voice to carry into the kitchen, where Wilson was taking out dishes and flatware. “So are you. And so is any other department head. If anything, what I did today was more in line with my specialty. Dishwashers, are like the livers of the appliance world.”
The ever-insightful Doctor Wilson didn’t seem to agree with that analogy, but he was too busy acting put-upon to argue about it. He finished heating up the meal and brought House a plate, propping his feet up on the box, which he mercifully didn’t ask about.
House flicked the remote and tucked it under his left butt cheek, then opened his beer using a corner of the coffee table and dropped the bottle cap onto the floor, Wilson’s disapproving glare glancing off him.
“You don’t say anything about my girlfriend and I won’t say anything about yours,” he warned.
Wilson, typically, failed to take the hint. “I know this violates your ‘no attachment to anything that has a pulse’ policy, but I care about you, House.”
House squirmed, and looked at the ceiling for a moment. “You’re a dolphin,” he said. “The year is 1963.”
“House, for God’s sake.”
“The United Sates Navy is training you to beat up on sharks by butting them in the gill pouches with your head.”
“Why?”
“I honestly don’t know. Maybe recruitment was down. Maybe the sharks look like commies. Maybe someone in the defense department was stoned. Now, you are all over beating up on lemon sharks, sandbar sharks, and nurse sharks - See? You hit on nurses even when you’re a dolphin. - but you won’t attack a bull shark of the same shape and size. Why not?”
Wilson sighed. “I don’t know why I even try to look out for you.”
“Because,” House explained with intentional patience, “unlike sandbar sharks, lemon sharks, and nurse sharks, bull sharks attack dolphins in the wild. Even dolphins, Wilson, cannot be persuaded, even by the United States Navy, to fuck with something more whoop-ass than they are.”
Wilson put a hand up. “Hey, you want to be micromanaged and taken for granted by the pretty bull shark, fine by me.”
“I’m not the dolphin in this metaphor, Moron.”
“That’s what you think. But okay. Let’s just forget I said anything.”
“Now that’s a plan. Let’s go back to having me take you for granted.” House stopped glaring disgust long enough to nip a tortilla chip from Wilson’s plate.
Despite himself, Wilson smiled and raised his beer. “The natural order of things.”
House was almost - almost - ready to believe Nolan, who said that it is a basic human right to have someone who, when you’re out late, wants to know where the hell you’ve been and why you didn’t call.
To House’s perspective - he and his shrink were still debating this point -- someone who, when you show up unexpectedly, is happy to see you, was a luxury.
“Hi,” she smiled. “I didn’t think I’d see you until tomorrow morning.”
“Wilson dropped me off.”
“Well, a thousand brownie points to Wilson.”
“He thinks you have me whipped.”
She looked miffed, and he added: “He called it ‘domesticated’.”
“Well, now, if that’s not the pot calling the kettle black,” she said, and rolled her eyes. “We all know you have him whipped.”
He knew some peculiar unnamed antagonism was developing between his best friend and his girlfriend, but he had neither the energy nor the inclination to analyze it: not at this hour, not with her looking the way she did. The buzz that started in his brain whenever he was close enough to smell the soft summery scent of her hair was starting to whisper nasty encouragements.
Which was just weird: she was wearing an opaque nightgown that hung on her like a sack, and hid most of the good stuff. Even though House knew perfectly well the juicy and firm and round sections of flesh that lurked under that fabric, it was the modesty that was setting off klaxons in his head. It was as if she was wearing a warning label, or some sort of announcement that her body was too powerful to be taken all at once, too dangerous for public display.
Christ, why did love and sex always have to be so complicated? Why couldn’t this stuff follow the laws of reason like science, or at least make elegant patterns, the way music did?
“He might be right. Not only am I here, I am early, and sober.” He toed off his shoes and sat on the edge of the bed to take off his jeans.
“And you fixed my dishwasher.” She put her book on the nightstand as he eased into bed beside her. “That’s completely unfair, making yourself useful like that, just when I had you claimed as my impractical, frivolous midlife crisis boytoy.”
“I was going to send you twelve dozen roses, but I thought my way of kissing up was more disconcerting,” he confessed. “And it did require me to spend a couple of hours on my knees. I figured that’s gotta be worth something.”
“Oh, trust me, it is.”
She gave him a shy grin and moved toward him, and he looked down her neckline. Her breasts were creamy and full and his hands knew from memory that they fit perfectly, perfectly, perfectly, in each of them, and his palms ached. Her pretty head tilted coyly, her eyes shining, her hair loose on her shoulders, a faint smile on her extremely kissable lips.
God, he was tired.
He was not, as a rule, a person with a slow burn ratio. He tended to flare out like wildfire, consume whatever was in his path, and incinerate innocent bystanders. What he felt, when he allowed himself to feel anything, was overwhelming, chaotic, it was fast and automatic; when he acted on his feelings, it was explosive, all speed and no control.
As always, she was the exception to the rule.
She docked her body along his length, lifting up his arm and placing it around her, arranging everything just where she wanted it as usual, and nestled into the space beside him, like a jigsaw puzzle piece clicking into place. Her palm rested flat on his chest, the fingers curled slightly in his hair, and he rejected a schoolgirly metaphor about her having his heart in her hand.
He wished - fuck, it hurt to admit this, but - he wished he could just take her. Twelve years was an awfully long time to go between women, and he’d had so many x-rated thoughts about her, that it ought to be easy to just roll over into her hard and hot, gun his motor, take his satisfaction, and then tumble into sleep like a rock off a cliff.
But could he do that? Nooooooo. Not with her. The one time, in fifteen years, that he was beginning to think his luck was changing, that he could go as fast as he liked and lean into the curves and take corners on two wheels, and, well, throw in a whole bunch of other driving metaphors meaning he could be his own uncensored, unfiltered self, here … the one time he felt safe to let his guard down and give in to what he was feeling, his body wasn’t cooperating.
Neither was his mind. Nine months of sitting on the sidelines while she worked toward a life with Lucas, struggling to overcome the long, long memories of everyone who’d witnessed his humiliation, trying to be mature and dignified, managing somehow not to drool or make a particularly pathetic spectacle of his yearnings, had cost him. It had been one hell of a time to develop some self-control, but that’s exactly what he’d done.
So, ripping off her nightgown, laying her out, opening her up, and drilling her, just to resolve the tension and get it over with, was out.
And he didn’t mind that.
She ran one foot slowly along his calf and dragged her eyes all over him.
“Tired?” she asked, and there was invitation in her voice and the reserved dip of her eyelashes.
“Yes,” he answered, and pulled her to him as he rolled toward her. Her lips parted, and he dipped his head, savoring the lingering, biting taste of her tea and the sweep of her tongue against his.
With two tugs the tiny bows of the straps of her nightgown were untied. His hands on her shoulders, he pressed her into the mattress, letting his eyes sweep down her body. She rose up, twisting around him, and pulled the gown off over her head, then settled back into the pillows against the headboard, her knees bent, a tangled sheet draped around her waist.
House was a little punch drunk from the wonder of this. In all that looking at her from afar, he’d been forced to really examine what it was about her that he wanted, and when it became obvious that couldn’t have what he wanted, to identify what it was about her that he needed. His newfound awareness of just how much he needed her forgiveness, her grace, her respect, commanded that he treat her body with appreciation, reverence and care. It was rattling, (and to be candid, more than a little irritating) that finally, after he’d definitely ruled out all the fantasies of the fast hard and nasty, smash-and-grabs that had drawn him to her in the first place, now, of all times, she’d be lying beneath him, ripe and trusting.
His right hand caressing her bare flank, he reached for her. She put her hands softly on either side of his face and wrapped her leg around and moved her foot across his calf, and their kiss was full of raw energy. Wanting skin-to-skin contact the way he wanted oxygen, he reluctantly pulled away from it and with just about no grace or smoothness at all, made himself naked. Her legs and arms were open to him, and his hands went to back to her silky thigh, tracing down to her voluptuous ass.
“I can’t keep this up for long,” he apologized.
“Oh, thank God,” she mumbled. “I’ve been waiting for it for days. Foreplay might kill me.” He laughed. Her hands were hot on his skin, and her hips nudged slowly and rhythmically up against him.
She turned her face away, a blush painting her cheeks, and relocated his hand. Taking the hint, he grinned against her mouth, and let his fingertips play along the wet rim of her, spellbound by her pulse, her greedy, tiny thrusts and the suffocated, eager noises she was making.
She liked sex; she was into sex. Sex with him. These things, along with the feel of her rosy nipple beneath his mouth, were almost enough to make him believe in a loving god.
He wanted to wait; he wanted to tease her higher; he wanted to last; he wanted to be exceptional, to be what she deserved.
But he was only human, so when he adjusted his touch, slowly pushing down into her, and she groaned, low and deep, and tightened around him, he moved his lips from her breast up to her ear, bit down on the sweet patch of her neck above her collarbone, and breathed another apology.
She said his name, the pure and liquid pleasure of it resonating like desire itself in his ears, and her soft pretty hands paused in their path around his ass and up his back, over his shoulders. She touched the top of his bent head, like a priest blessing a communicant, and wrapped her legs around his hips and arched into him as he slid deep inside her, her breath hot against his throat. She pulled him into her at the frenzied spasm of his climax, and somehow he discovered himself panting into the crook of her neck, nuzzling her face and murmuring unintelligible words that might have been, “I love you; I’m sorry”, over and over and over. She rolled onto her side and continued to touch his chin, his cheek, his bottom lip, until he at last fell into a deep and peaceful sleep.
Wednesday