Title: The Witching Hour
Rating: M for sexual situations and slight langauge.
For: HouseFest Special Prompt Halloween House/Cuddy. (With cameos by Wilson and Cameron.)
Summary: At the Halloween Fundraiser Costume Party House, after being ditched by Little Bo-Peep, thinks he'll try and trick some treats out of the Wicked Witch
Disclaimer: I don't own them. If I did it wouldn't be as much fun to steal- er borrow them.
Grateful thanks to Rox my beta who Rocks! She agreed to proof this under a tight deadline while whacked out on radioactive iodine and lithium. Any errors left are mine.
Word Count: 6k ish
The Witching Hour
Part One
Greg House slumped at a table in what had once been the atrium of Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. To be fair, it was still the atrium. It was now just pulling in overtime as the site of the annual Pediatrics Halloween Costume Fundraiser
Overtime: something I don't get, he groused inwardly.
He'd have been happy to grouse outwardly, but he was being given a wide berth by most of the party goers. Wilson, dressed up as the Phantom of the Opera, wearing his tuxedo from his last wedding and a half mask, had been keeping a discrete eye on him at first; but Wilson loved the parties, the mixing, the mingling, the talking to idiots. He was now tipsy and going up to random women and asking if they wanted to see his lair. It was working, too, the show-off. House's scowl deepened. Better remember to wrap lil Jimmy, he thought at his friend, as he watched him reel in a pretty blond woman in a dirndl, I've treated her for sex-while-stupid before. Wilson, however, was no better at reading his mind than usual as he started to dance her out of the room.
House pulled his cell phone out and hit the speed dial.
"Busy," Wilson's voice was high and breathy. He could hear giggling in the background.
"Trick or treat?"
"Oh for god's sake, House."
"Never mind, I've got a message for Goldilocks," House said. "Tell her to remember to take all her Doxycycline." There was silence on the other end. "Otherwise, the infection will just come back and she'll spread it to some poor schmuck, which is way more of a trick than a treat if you ask--"
"I hate you."
House hung up with a smile.
"Does she really have an STD or are you just mad that Wilson is getting some?"
House winced. He hadn't heard her come over. He turned and gave Cuddy an arch look.
"That would be in violation of doctor-patient confidentiality, wouldn't it, Dr. Cuddy?" he asked innocently.
She made a face at him and sat down, leaning her broomstick on the table. She was wearing a black dress that was silky and slinky and showed off the fun bags, topped with a pointy hat and artfully disarranged hair.
Witch was a good look for her.
"So you've decided to fulfill my French maid fantasy!" he leered at the fun bags in question. "Wrong hat, though, and the skirt should be shorter." He reached out and started gathering it up slowly. "Oh, but the fishnets are right on target. Are those red shoes?" He almost moaned when they came into view.
She didn't say anything; just slapped his hand away and gestured to a waiter.
"I know you can't be dressed as an evil witch," he continued, "because someone told me, I forget who that was, that no scary costumes were allowed this year." He gave her a direct stare. The Halloween Costume Party Fundraiser was one of the few events he'd always gleefully attended. He'd generally picked a venereal disease, taken it to its most horrific untreated extreme and applied makeup and effects accordingly
"I didn't say 'no scary costumes,'" Cuddy said as the waiter brought her a bottled water. "I said no grossly inappropriate and disgusting costumes." She glared at him. "That fake bleeding penis last year crossed the line, House, and you know it."
"No one has a sense of humor anymore."
Cuddy glanced at him. "What the hell are you supposed to be anyway?"
House looked down at his scrubs, Wilson's stethoscope hanging from his neck. "I'm a male nurse."
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A male nurse.
Lisa Cuddy's mind reeled and the laughter exploded out of her at the image of Greg House, the Greg House, directly involved with patient care, working 12 hour shifts and being forced to defer to the wishes of high and mighty doctors.
"Does this mean you're going to vote for me for best costume?" He asked after a moment as she tried to control her laughter. "You always rig it so the benefactors win. Don't think I don't know." There was a grumpy note to his voice. Cuddy glanced up in time to catch his glare.
"This party isn't for us, House. It is for the benefactors, and most importantly, the kids in Pedes." The laughter died as quickly as it had come. Remember you're working, she chided herself.
The hospital wasn't in the black; it hadn't been since Vogler had pulled out. House didn't know that. Wilson didn't understand how bad it was. And her job was balanced on a very thin line that had gotten a lot thinner during Detective Tritter's investigation. It was like trying to walk a tightrope made of spider web, and underneath a pool full of sharks waited for dinner. They'd been waiting since she'd gotten the job. They were always waiting. One day she was going to fall in, and she knew it.
One day soon, maybe.
Cuddy frowned at her bottled water and picked up House's scotch instead, taking a healthy gulp. She didn't drink at the hospital parties, ever. Someone needed to be sober. But rules are made to be broken, she thought, as House demonstrates daily.
"You got administrator cooties all over it!" House accused her, grabbing his drink back.
"Too bad you're immune," she sighed.
All she could do was focus on the day to day. And this was supposed to have been a fun day, but it wasn't. There had been several parties earlier in the various Pedes wings. She'd gone to those to pass out candy and read stories, and while the parties had been as fun as the hospital could make them, she knew in her gut that they weren't fun enough.
The kids knew it too.
She stood up abruptly and scanned the room. "I'm going back to work," she let herself glare at House. "You should try it sometime."
"Wait."
"What?" she asked impatiently.
"Don't forget your metaphor," he pointed with his chin to the broomstick leaning on the table. "I'm glad I'm not the only one here with a visible penis substitute." He rubbed his cane with… affection.
Cuddy's eyebrows popped up and she picked up the broomstick, letting her fingers caress it, running them up and down the handle in a suggestive rhythm. Her blue eyes sparkled as she leaned over him, letting her breasts push against the flimsy silk.
"My metaphor is longer than your metaphor," she breathed, watching his eyes, focused on her breasts as usual, widen and go dark.
"Yeah, and you can sweep the floor with it, too," he swallowed exaggeratedly, "but I wanna watch."
Cuddy rolled her eyes and stalked away. Damn, I should have stayed away from the scotch, and him, mostly him. But she squared her shoulders and marched back into the fray, determined to wrestle rich people away from their money.
"I'm not kidding about that!" he called after her.
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House leaned back and enjoyed the view as Cuddy's ass bounced away.
There really was no way for him to lose their little innuendo duels. If he lost, the fun bags were usually on display and quivering with the joy of victory. If he won he got to watch Cuddy's ass as she stalked off, and the angrier she was the more the ass bounced. Win-win. He took another drink of scotch.
"You can't leave well enough alone can you?" Wilson groused, sitting down and opening the bottle of water Cuddy had left on the table.
"No, but I can leave a pretty young woman with an embarrassing infection alone."
"I've got—"
"I'm sure you have several condoms stashed on your person," House said, looking at Wilson from the corners of his eyes. "Better safe than coming to me for a really embarrassing prescription I won't ever let you forget."
"Uh-huh. You piss Cuddy off?" Wilson changed the subject. "She's got a little wiggle going on."
"Of course." House watched her chat up an improbably elderly hula boy. "It wouldn't be a party otherwise. And you owe me fifty bucks."
"What for?"
"Cuddy had a drink."
"No way!"
"Way!" House held out his hand.
"I don't believe you. She was just here, I saw her leave, and the water was her drink."
"The unopened water was her drink," House glowered at his own drink. "She grabbed my scotch and polluted it with girl germs."
"I don't believe you," Wilson repeated, giving House an intense stare. "No way you'd offer, no way she'd take it. I've won that fifty at every fundraiser the last three years--"
"And you wonder why you always have to lend me money? And I didn't offer it, she just went all grabby. It was creepy, but it did happen." He pointed to the faint lipstick mark on the glass.
"End of the year budget stuff coming up," Wilson said sagely after watching Cuddy circulate for a moment. "Rumor is it's gonna be ugly. I'd better go help her beg for money for the greater good."
And Wilson ambled off, doing his boy scout best to make a good impression on the benefactors.
House watched the party swirl around him. Some people came to talk to him; the newest, but still provisional members of his team, who were wearing simple and inoffensive costumes. Cameron, who had apparently volunteered to help with the parties on the wards and was in a full Glinda the Good Witch costume, complete with extremely poufy skirt, full sparkly headdress and wand, and Forman grumpy in a pirate outfit. He hadn't seen Chase, but Cameron told him, not that he cared, that Chase was on call.
"You should try it some time," she teased him, "you get out of having to go to the parties if you're working."
"Unfortunately I'm a department head," House scowled. "The Wicked Witch of Princeton-Plainsboro made it clear that my participation was required."
"The Wicked Witch?"
"Yup, she of the pointy hat and broomstick-like appliance, Your Goodness." He indicated Cuddy in the crowd.
"Oh." Cameron was suddenly suppressing a smile. "Well, you know there are several traditional ways to deal with Witches. Fire, water," she stood up and backed away from the table big skirts glittering in the party lights, "or you could drop a house on her."
"Are you high?" He leaned forward, trying to get a look at her eyes,
"Think about it," she laughed and swayed off. Which would have been charming but you couldn't even tell where her ass was under all that glitter. That was no fun at all.
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It was eleven-thirty at night, the party was still going on, but it was winding down and Cuddy was tired. It had been a success, everyone had had fun, No one had done anything ridiculously embarrassing and they'd gotten a lot of promises for donations. The one thing she'd miscalculated was House.
He was usually the one doing the ridiculously embarrassing things, and several of their largest benefactors had commented on the fact that they missed it.
What happened to Venereal Disease Guy? She'd heard the question about twenty times that evening and so she'd had to explain about last year, about the complaints she'd gotten. They had then complained that "stuck up old fogies with no sense of humor shouldn't be allowed to ruin nearly innocent fun." And this from a 75-year-old retired bank president.
You can't please everybody, she told herself, sadly scanning the room. House was gone; she'd seen him lurch off with an absurdly young woman in a Bo-Peep costume. Wilson was sitting at a table with a group of people who directed their donations to oncology, talking animatedly. From the way his hands were sketching in the air she thought it was about the new MRI's that were coming out. They were less noisy, more comfortable, in general more user-friendly and even more expensive.
The evening was over. She could go.
She pulled her pointy hat off and headed to her office.
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House dozed.
He'd almost had a good time, there was an open bar and Bo-Peep had been silly and sweet and just barely old enough to not get him thrown in jail. She hadn't had a condom though. And he wasn't board certified in infectious disease for nothing. So he'd had to find Wilson, pick his pocket for condoms and by the time he'd gotten back to the exam room he'd stashed her in, Dr. Ayersman was already there taking her temperature, the old goat.
So now he was trying to sleep off some of the scotch on Cuddy's sofa. Which was damned uncomfortable, but at least no one was likely to come looking for him here. The nice thing about having a reputation for not getting along with someone was that, by seeking out their personal space, no one knew where to look for you.
Of course they hadn't always not gotten along. Once, they'd gotten along very well, almost, he grinned to himself like a House on fire. Damn, he'd been looking forward to getting laid.
He blinked a little as the door to Cuddy's office opened and she stalked in, not looking his way, flipping on the lights and tossing the pointy hat at the sofa and onto his face.
"Hey!" he protested, swiping it off and then blinked. Cuddy had been about to get undressed. Her hands were behind her back and the top of her dress was slipping down as she gaped at him. Idiot! He cursed himself. Couldn't keep your big mouth shut for once.
"House!"
"Don't let me interrupt," he begged, "please keep getting undressed, pretty please?"
She straightened up and pulled the top of the dress so it was more or less back in place and glared at him.
"Get out, House."
"But the show was just starting."
"Show's over--"
"Yeah, yeah," he grumbled and sat up, "how was the party, Your Witchiness? Did you make oodles of money for the greedy little goblins in Pedes?"
"Party was fine. Lots of donations," she sighed a moment, closing her eyes. "We actually got complaints about the complaints about your costume last year. So you can do the absurd disgusting costume thing next year, if you have too, but no bleeding genitalia please. "
"Wow, you told me the truth!" He beamed at her viciously and got up fishing for his cane. "This is so gonna go on my blog. Hospital administratrix tells truth to employee. Is it a Sign of the Apocalypse or A Halloween Miracle?" He limped over to her. He felt a stirring of interest from his southern pole. Well, why not? He thought slowly.
"Aren't you supposed to be helping a minor count sheep?"
"Nooo," he grinned down at her considering. Bo-Peep was ok but there's something so sexy about the wicked witch. "She ditched me for Ayersman. Which shows a stunning lack of judgment and that makes me think I dodged a bullet. Turn around."
"What?"
"Zipper, I need you to give me a ride home, I'm not ready to donate my organs yet," he explained, "my blood alcohol is still on the upswing, and you're nearly sober." This was true enough. He was too drunk to risk the bike, and if she took him home, she'd be at his house. If she was at his house he could convince her to come inside, if she was inside….he tried to keep his intentions off his face.
"Get Wilson--"
"He's mad at me and just as buzzed as I am."
"Your team--"
"Don't want them to know where I live, learned that the hard way with the last team."
"Cameron," she glared at him with a knowing twitch to her lips.
"She'd make sure Chase came too, and that would just be awkward."
"Forman."
"Just turn around," he groused.
"I can't believe I'm agreeing to this," she sighed again. He repressed a grin. "Get out. I'll change and take you home."
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"No, don't change," he complained.
"The party is over, House," she told him firmly, "time to get back to normal."
"Riiiight, only this is the first time I've seen you without a mask on in years."
She flinched, feeling that sentence like a sharp slap on the face.
"Stop it!" he growled, "it wasn't an insult." He grabbed her shoulders and turned her. "When did you get so thin-skinned anyway?" He was silent a moment and she could feel his eyes on her bare back. "I take it back, the skin is perfect."
"House."
She felt his hand drift firmly over her bottom.
"House!"
"Oh, all right, suck all the fun out of everything." He started pulling the zipper up, but he did it slowly and she could feel his finger running up her spine ahead of it.
"House," she sighed.
"Mmm," he agreed.
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The drive back to his place was mostly silent. He took the time to study her. She'd refused to put the hat back on, and she'd stashed the broomstick in the trunk, but she still looked wonderfully witchy, with mussed hair and the black dress setting off the pale skin and eyes.
Pale, that was a symptom. So was exhausted, and stressed.
House kept tabs on the people who made an impact on his life: Wilson, his team, Cuddy, and a few others. When he saw them, he did a quick DDX and filed it away in his mind for later. He rummaged through his Cuddy file and the words Tired, Stressed, and Pale had been coming up a lot recently. It was more indicative of an emotional or personal problem than a medical one, which made sense, with one thing and another the last year kind of sucking.
"So, are you going to tell me what's wrong?" He hoped she wasn't. He didn't want to do the whole heart-to-heart thing, not when he was this buzzed, not at all if it came down to it, but her answer either way would give him another clue, another symptom. If it were a medical problem, he'd bully her into taking care of it. Doctors had a tendency to "I'm fine" themselves to death. If it were personal, he'd sick Wilson on her, win-win, and he'd still get laid.
"Nothing's wrong," she said calmly.
"Back to lying," he tsked. So it was a personal problem. She'd have been more violent in her denial if it were medical.
She pulled up in front of his building but didn't turn the car off. This he knew would be the tricky bit.
"You're coming in," he told her, "trick or treat?"
"No, I'm not."
"You need a drink."
"House, I don't need--"
"It's a soda, Cuddy, a caffeinated beverage to reduce the odds of you wrapping the car around a streetlight or a phone pole on your way home."
Cuddy left it a bit too long before turning off the car with a sigh and getting out.
Oh, crap. Depression, medical and personal.
He made a mental note to call Wilson. The James Wilson Happy Coffee Club was back in business with a new customer.
He lurched up the steps and entered, not looking to see if she followed.
"This is stupid." She was standing in the foyer, leaning on the door.
"No, vehicular manslaughter is stupid. Think of all those poor little ghouls and goblins running around." He rummaged in the fridge and found a Coke.
"It's past midnight."
"Think of all those stupid teenage ghouls and goblins running around who've been experimenting with all sorts of things that make car avoidance more difficult than normal. Get in here," he glared at her. She was still in the doorway, half in and half out.
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"You're letting the heat out," he grumped, throwing ice in a glass and pouring the Coke over it.
She slipped in, reluctantly closing the door and leaning against it. The last time she'd been inside House's apartment had been just after Stacy left, after the infraction and it had not been a good visit. From then on she'd stood in the doorway perhaps a half dozen times over the years. Arguing, yelling, and on occasion begging for help.
She liked the line of the door, the sense of not being in his territory.
"Sit, drink," he ordered her, putting the glass on the end table.
She didn't sit, but she did come forward and pick up the glass. She didn't drink soda very often; the calories were too empty. She took a sip and sighed. It tasted wonderful. All that sugar she normally avoided hit her bloodstream like a freight train and she could feel herself perk up.
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That's more like it. Diagnostician one, administrator zero.
"Told ya so," he said. Cuddy made a face at him. "Yeah," he made the same face back at her. "I still told ya so."
"Thank you," she said, taking another big drink before setting the glass down.
"Whatever." He didn't go in for empty courtesies; it encouraged people. She gave him a small smile and turned to go.
"Wait!" House called out
Crap! How do you seduce women again? I should have asked Jimmy before we left the hospital.
He hadn't had to seduce a woman in years. Mostly he just paid up and the few other times they'd been the ones doing the seducing. Now he was out of practice. He was floundering and hated it.
Cuddy stopped and looked at him. "You have hat head," he told her, limping over and patting the fluffy mass of dark snarls that the pointy hat had created. He knew they would smell nice too; he bent down for a whiff.
"Oh god, not the sniffing thing again."
"I appreciate your shampoo," he said, letting himself give her a slow, wicked grin.
"No kidding, and you're drunk." She took his hand and pushed it away from her hair. Now he was holding her hand and not letting go. "House, I have to go to bed." She turned toward the door again.
"What about my bed?" he asked, throwing caution to the wind. Talking women into bed was overrated anyway, sweeping them into bed now…he let his left arm circle her waist and draw her back against him. "It's closer." He tried to make his tone sound helpful instead of lustful but it didn't seem to be working.
"House!"
"Nice bed, mattress is really…springy," he muttered as he buried his face in her neck. She stiffened up as if the broomstick handle was suddenly doing double duty as her spine and clenched that lovely ass tight. "Mmmm," he groaned, letting loose a long line of fantasies and desires that had built up over the years. He'd never stopped wanting her, even when she was bitchy, or whiny or trying to thwart him, or successfully thwarting him. Not even when he was angry and in pain and hating her. Mostly he buried it, but damn it, he'd gotten her into his house. And he was just drunk enough to not care about the huge fight they would have in the morning. "Stay," he whispered, letting his lips brush her ear.
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"Stay."
House was behind her, his mouth drifting along her neck, and Cuddy shivered. He was mumbling things like, "I know you want," and, "remember when…"and he'd gotten his hand in her neckline, slipping it past the lace of her bra, cupping her breast. Her nipple blossomed against his palm and she could feel his grin on the back of her neck. "I've still got the touch," he gloated.
She was frozen, not sure how to react, not sure if she should react at all. A part of her was angry. How dare he? After all this time, everything that had happened, all the horrible things she'd done and the awful things he'd said. Part was afraid because this was Greg House and he wasn't going to give her any quarter, ever. Sex with him, even for one night, was tantamount to making an appointment to be tortured later, just like he'd tortured Stacy, if not worse. He'd always blamed her more. The debridement surgery had been her suggestion.
But another part of her, the part that was turning in his arms, wrapping one arm around his neck and grabbing his ass through the scrubs with the other before kissing him full on the mouth, didn't care.
She'd managed to have sex just twice in the last year; both times with willing strangers, terms spelled out and understood: sport sex, athletic and impersonal.
But she wanted to be touched by someone who knew her. She'd wanted that for years, it felt like, since her last steady lover had wandered off after some redhead who was twenty years younger than he was. She'd watched her world collapse on itself, getting smaller and smaller, as newer relationships got emptier and emptier. Damn it, she just wanted to have sex with someone who probably wouldn't forget her name the next day, at least not by mistake.
She knew House didn't like her, but he did care. He went out of his way to annoy her, test her, tease her, avoid her, ruin her dates and make her as miserable as possible, while keeping her secrets.
That was how Greg House cared.
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Lucky, luck, lucky, He thought happily as she turned in his arms. He let his mouth wander her face, kissing her eyes, her nose gently, grinning when she grabbed his ass and pressed her mouth to his.
I'm gonna get lucky.
He hadn't thought he'd ever be this lucky again. He let his fingers caress her breast, stroke the nipple, felt her sigh into his mouth and flick his tongue with hers.
And now for something really stupid; I'm such an idiot.
"Cuddy… " He pushed her away from him slightly and leaned down so that his forehead was pressed to hers, his hands on her arms. He had to say this. "Look, I'm drunk, I'm horny and I want you, but this isn't something…I just want you to under—"
"You're drunk, I'm sober, I'm taking advantage of you. It's horrible," she said with exasperated mock sympathy. "Do ya really care?"
"Cuddy!"
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"Oh suck it up." She gave him that direct administrator look. "I have no sexually transmitted diseases I'm aware of and I know you have condoms in here someplace. I'm a consenting sober adult, and you're a consenting drunk one. We're responsible grownups, almost, hooray!" She took a deep breath, not aware of her breasts nearly spilling from her cleavage. "If you want me to go now, tell me now." She braced herself to keep holding his gaze.
House snorted his lips, twitching, trying to stifle a laugh as he shook his head minutely. "I think you just stole my speech, and no, I don't want you to go."
"Good, cause you were gonna be stuck in the clinic for--"
He let go of her arms, reaching around behind her to undo the zipper on her back, letting his hand follow the line of soft skin down even as she stood on her tip-toes to kiss him again, her hands sliding up under the top of his scrubs. She kicked off her shoes and let herself sink down onto the balls of her feet her mouth running down his prickly jaw line to his throat even as she pushed up on the shirt.
"Cuddy," he breathed as she leaned forward to kiss his chest, stroke his nipples with delicate skilled fingers. His hands were on her backside pushing her into him. "Uhm…"
"What?" she demanded as the top of her dress slipped down revealing a lacy black bra
House goggled a moment before saying, "You have to be on top. My thigh makes missionary a bitch."
"Great!"
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"So damn bossy," he muttered, kissing her again, deepening it, letting his tongue stroke hers while he tugged her down the hall. Leaning on her, his cane forgotten, and letting his hands roam. Finding her bra clasp and unfastening it, amused and aroused at the way she was leaving a trail of clothing behind her.
It was the fantasy of a stripper, shedding clothing on the journey to the Promised Land. (As opposed to the reality of the strippers and hookers he'd known who tended to want to fold everything. They were working.)
He let her push him onto the bed, strip his scrub pants off, strip his boxer's off, her mouth following her hands. He closed his eyes and groaned when she bent above him.
He reached down and grabbed her hair, tugging insistently. He almost cried when her mouth slipped off him, though she kept her hands moving gently.
"Yes?"
He propped himself up and looked at her. Her hair was wild, her eyes were the darkest shade of blue he'd ever seen them, and her mouth was curled in her smuggest smile.
"You're wearing too much clothing. And condoms are in the drawer," he gasped out and pointed to the nightstand across the room."
"Who is bossy, exactly?" she asked, but she sashayed to the nightstand anyway, letting the dress fall off her hips at the same time so that she was left in thigh-high fishnets and a black thong. She bent over and rummaged through the drawer, her beautiful butt in the air. "And who is cheap? Non-lubricated, non-flavored, non-ribbed for my pleasure," she complained.
House rolled his eyes. "If I'd known you were coming—"
"Well, not yet."
"I'd have gotten the deluxe assortment," he ground out. He reached out a hand to her.
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"Get your gorgeous fat behind back here."
And she did.
Cuddy was expecting things to keep moving frantically, but House slowed the pace, insisting on taking her stockings off himself. Kissing her toes in a way that made her giggle, kissing her thighs in a way that didn't make her giggle.
He seemed to be everywhere at once and she realized dimly that he was touching, tasting and smelling every part of her, observing her…
Memorizing her.
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She was suddenly straddling him, her eyes fierce. In a remarkable act of self preservation, House kept his mouth shut, while she tore the condom out of its wrapper and assaulted him with it.
"House," she said and it was almost a whimper as she slowly lowered herself onto him. Staying still a moment, adjusting. He reached up and grabbed her hips.
"Yah," he thought it sounded like a squeak but he didn't care about that now, he couldn't care about anything, his whole attention was focused on his groin and the woman encompassing it.
"I don't think—" she started rocking her hips in a gentle rhythm and he groaned as it quickly became less-than-gentle, urgent, and demanding.
"Don't think," he told her as he thrust up to meet her, his desperation more than equal to hers, "just—"
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"---Shut up, for once." And the world came apart around her.
When it resolved itself, she was slumped over his chest, listening to his heart. He stroked her back gently for a moment before easing her off him.
She let herself curl up and doze. She heard water run in the bathroom the toilet flush, all the mundane sounds that happened when you weren't… having mind blowing sex.
She grinned. She couldn't help it.
She caught House looking. Standing in the bathroom door, his expression shadowed. He'd put on a t-shirt and boxers, the bastard, and she was naked, her hair was standing on end. She looked, she was sure, thoroughly screwed.
The grin vanished.
"Stop it," he told her.
She blinked at him.
"It's too soon for the morning-after fight. My nerves aren't up to it yet." He hobbled to the nightstand and poured Vicodin into his palm. "Give it twenty minutes, at least."
"Or we could avoid it all together," Cuddy said, pushing herself up with a little groan as muscles that had relaxed for the first time in weeks protested having to move.
"Nah," he popped the pills in his mouth and then stumbled to the bed, hauling himself onto it with a sigh. "If we avoid it we're just gonna be all awkward at work the next couple of weeks until one of us does something stupid to piss the other one off."
Cuddy looked at him over her shoulder and raised an eyebrow at him.
"Ok, maybe a couple of days before one of us gets our panties in a bundle and ticks the other one off. And I'm talking about you here."
"Ha," she bent down to retrieve a stocking and pulled it on, "more like hours," she muttered.
"Maybe minutes," he conceded, glaring at her, but his lips were twitching. "You need help with those?"
"No, thank you, I'm a big girl now. I can put on my panties on all by myself."
House groaned again.
"I have to go home." It was part statement, part plea, and she wasn't looking at him as she grabbed her dress and pulled it over her head.
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He thought about yelling, but since his goal was to keep her in his apartment so they could have sex again before the inevitable fight, he chose his words carefully and used as reasonable a tone as he could manage.
"Cuddy, it's 1:30 in the morning, you're tired, I'm tired. But---" and reasonableness vanished as she started to try and zip the damn dress up. "I wanna do that again," he pouted.
She gave him that astonished look that she seemed to reserve for him, when he came to her with some impossible and illegal demand.
"I can't right now," he admitted hoping that honesty might throw her off track in his favor, "I need a nap first. But I only get a chance to have sex with you about once a decade and I want to make the most of it."
Cuddy's mouth opened and closed but no sound came out.
"And this whole speechless thing you're doing right now? It's a huge turn-on. Come on," he patted the bed invitingly, "you know you want to."
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"I do want to--" Cuddy admitted. After the whirl of apprehension and suspicion gave way to simple greed, she really did want to do that again. "House, it's just--"
"It was too intense for you, wasn't it?" he teased her gently, the light in his eyes shrewd and mocking. "You need a decade to get over sex with me. Shall we make a date, Halloween 2017? Course I'll be pretty old then and so will--"
Cuddy crawled up on the bed and stretched out next to him.
"We can go trick or treating," she said, putting her arms behind her head.
"Old people trick or treating? Cool." He turned over on his side and let his eyes follow the line of her body. All those lovely clothes for him to take off again. "'Course I think there might be a treat closer to hand," he said, and he started sliding his palm up her leg. Maybe he didn't need a nap after all.
"You never can tell," she said with a small smile, "I know all your tricks, Dr. House."
"I don't know your treats nearly as well as I'd like, Dr. Cuddy," and she gasped a little as he found the top of her stocking and started tugging it down, "I'm a slow learner. "
Cuddy smiled wider now, "why Dr. House, are you sure this isn't a trick?"
"You can never tell," he said, seriously, "everybody lies. "
The End