A/N-This fic takes place when Cuddy was a resident, basically, after graduation but before PPTH (I know several people have told me they don't like pre-series fics, sorry guys, but I want to write a short story for each season, and one pre-series to play with the characters a bit. So far I've done 3, 7 and 8.)
Since it's pre-series, I have nothing to base it on except my guess about who they'd be at that time. This one's just for fun. I was going to start my Season 5 fic and it feels too down for me right now (I agree with you TheHouseWitch !), so I'll wait a little and post that one when I'm more in the frame of mind for serious thought.
A reader suggested to me that I switch between primary perspective or focus too much in my stories, and that I should try to follow one character only in each chapter or story, so I'll give it a try with this story, and split the chapters, concentrating on either him or her, and we'll see how it works out. (I've never tried it before).
Disclaimer-I still own nothing, and I still write stories that include adult content. This applies to the whole story.
-Examination-
Lisa Cuddy walked into the exam room, nodding vaguely at the waiting patient with her nose buried in the file as she kicked the door shut with her foot. She was covering a shift in the clinic for a friend so that she could have a three-day weekend. She hadn't even had two days off in a row in longer than she could remember, and it was time to act like she was still only twenty-six years old. Her friend Megan approached her two weeks earlier and pleaded, "You have forgotten how to have fun! I hate you, Dr. Cuddy. You killed Lisa."
Megan's words sat in Cuddy's head for a few days, and then she realized, it was true. Once her residency was over, she had tremendous goals set for herself, unrelenting expectations of excellence that wouldn't leave a lot of room for fun. This weekend would likely be the first time in a very long time that she could enjoy life and remember what it felt like to be the significantly more carefree Lisa Cuddy that Megan had once known in their undergrad days.
Cuddy had three more hours in her shift and she was focused and determined to get everything done that she could so she could actually leave. Then she would go back to her apartment, get a shower, grab her bag and be out the door.
"I have a…pain," the deep, gravelly voice came from the exam table.
"I'm Dr. Cuddy, I'm a resident here at the hospital, I'll be seeing you today," she nodded, still looking over the file. She blinked a few times as she read, her brow furrowed, and she pulled the file closer to make sure her eyes were correctly reading what was on the page. "You have a history of…umm…endometriosis? Mister Smith."
She looked up from the file, expecting to see some other resident or a former-classmate, likely someone playing a prank, and there he was in front of her. Apparently actually becoming a doctor hadn't convinced him to do anything about his appearance, if anything he looked more haphazard, unkempt and frustratingly sexy than he ever did at Michigan. She tried to control her reaction, to look as if she didn't recognize him at all, but the truth was in her eyes. "Well, for pain this bad, sir, I'll have to schedule an internal exam with another doctor. I'll send him right in."
"Hi, Cuddy," he said, with a grin that exuded confidence, his eyes flowing over what he could see that wasn't obscured by an obviously oversized lab coat and loose fitting scrubs.
She sat on the wheeled stool, femininely sneakered feet propelling the stool slowly closer to the ornery patient, keeping a protective barrier of space between them while she still looked through the file with an expression of amusement at the bit of fiction she was reading. She was trying to buy herself time. "I know you?" she asked, trying to play it cool but smirking nonetheless.
"You definitely know me. And you know that you know me."
She shook her head, still unable to control the fact that she was nearly smiling, and her body was flirting in spite of every effort within her to stop that from happening. "Why are you here? Your file says you have issues with endometriosis and irregular periods. I'm only a resident, but I'm pretty certain if you are having those symptoms, your condition is a lot worse than you think."
"My periods are highly irregular, my cycle is over thirty years long and counting. In your professional opinion, is that a long time?"
She crossed her legs at her ankles, put the file on the exam table next to him and folded her hands in her lap. There was no point in pretending she didn't know him, because if she did, he'd relentlessly try to prove that she had known him all along, and she just wanted to get him out of her exam room and finish up her day. "Dr. House, why are you here?"
"For the reasons I've already mentioned, and the stress of it has my blood pressure going through the roof!" he exclaimed with exaggerated, obviously artificial concern as he held out his hand to demonstrate the fact that he was shaking with anxiety.
"Is it?" she nodded skeptically.
"Yes," he sat, staring at her expectantly. "Aren't you going to check it?"
"Didn't the nurse check it?" she asked, picking up the file to look through the notes.
"I told her I only trust doctors with the more complicated procedures. You know it would look really bad if you just assume I'm jerking you around and I leave here and have a cardiac event in your waiting room on my way out the door. Probably wouldn't look good on your pristine record."
She rolled her eyes, then reached over to grab the stand that the blood pressure cuff was hanging on. She stood, approached him, not wanting to appear at all uneasy or uncertain around him, wanting to make it clear that his proximity didn't impact her in the least. She knew if she hesitated, he'd somehow consider her avoidance proof of something. She watched him toy with other people and she heard story after story about him, she knew what to expect.
"Take your arm out," she said dutifully, tapping his left arm with the backs of her fingers.
He removed his arm from his sleeve and looked at her with what she thought was his attempt to look innocent. Winding the cuff around his arm and fastening the Velcro, she began inflating the cuff. When she was done, she roughly jerked the cuff open.
"Gentle. I thought I remembered you having a better bedside manner," he complained.
"BP's fine," she answered with certainty.
"Heart's been doing weird things lately," he said with concern.
"Beating?"
He grinned, obviously loving her quick comeback. She found his pulse on his wrist, concentrating on the familiarity of medicine and pulling her stethoscope from her oversized lab coat pocket. Her hand slipped under his shirt, the cold end of the stethoscope finding his skin. "You know, doctor to doctor, you should warm that up," he said, his eyes all over her face and neck while she stood so close. Her hip actually grazed the side of his leg and they both felt the zip of attraction. Some things never changed.
"Hospital policy clearly states we can't warm things. Wait 'til they do your pelvic for the endometriosis that you clearly have," she countered, expressionless.
She could see his eyes moving all over her, sense the admiration he still seemed to have, feel the warmth of his chest under her hand. "Your heart sounds fine," she said, draping the stethoscope over the stand and sitting back down on the stool. "What are you really doing here?"
"I thought you might want to see me again," he answered confidently.
"Did you?" she scoffed. "What would give you that impression?"
"I don't know, you had a pretty good time the last time we hung out so I thought maybe you'd like to catch up."
"That's funny, I was relatively certain you had a good time. But that…pathetically affectionate and sentimental act you put on the morning after, didn't include the follow up phone call that you practically begged me to believe in."
"I meant to call you," he said with complete sincerity, temporarily dropping the bravado.
"Don't," she laughed, self-assuredly, "it saved me from having to let you down easy."
"I'm here to make it up to you," he announced, ignoring the implications of her previous statement, the fullness of his bravado once again on display.
She stood up, getting ready to leave, trying to make it perfectly clear that he meant little or nothing to her. "Make it up to me? Dr. House, we had a one night stand that I fully acknowledged was going to be a hookup before it even began. I was OK with that or I wouldn't have gone home with you. The sex was fine, maybe even good. But you weren't my first. And you definitely weren't my last. Thanks for the fun, a few years ago. I'm not some pathetic coed sitting around hoping some man will come and rescue me from loneliness. Even if I did briefly, which I didn't, I certainly haven't wasted years thinking about you. Honestly, I'm surprised I even remember you. It was no big deal."
"Did you say the sex was good? I seem to remember an awful lot of superlatives coming out of your mouth that night. Let me see if I can recall a few…"
"No need. I'm sure your memory comes with certain…embellishments."
"The sex wasn't good, it was life-alteringly amazing. For you," he said as he slid down off of the table and pushed his arm back through his shirt sleeve.
"Confident?"
He was standing over her and she blinked, just a bit startled by his proximity as she looked up at him.
"You were the one begging me to never stop," he pointed with certainty, confrontation and flirtation.
He was standing so close that she could feel the pillow of warm air around him melding into the pillow of warm air around her.
"Interesting that you remember that. You were the one begging me for another taste," she said, confidently, right up in his face, remembering the words he whispered when he tried to convince her not to leave the next morning.
His eyes glazed over, he looked at her lips, she started to wonder if the over-confident jackass was going to actually kiss her in the exam room. He leaned a little closer, and whispered, "Of course I begged. You…were the best thing I've ever tasted."
For a few seconds, he won. Her mouth dropped open just the slightest, as she let out the tiniest gasp, more of an audible inward breath, the fire gone from her eyes and replaced with confusion and uncertainty. She had no idea what to do next, she didn't expect him to admit anything like that. He smirked when her eyes dropped to his lips, and she was rendered temporarily speechless. He had the confirmation he wanted. He did get to her. The cockiness in his grin filled her with irritation.
"You aren't making me feel uncomfortable," she responded.
"Good. That's not what I'm trying to do," he said as he seemed to breathe himself closer to her.
"I'm at work," she said, coming to her senses, regaining her poise and clearing her throat. "Is there really anything wrong with you, or are you just here to try to screw with me. Are you hoping I'll rip my panties off, and whip out your dick right here in the exam room before our next eight year hiatus?"
"Not sure I'm ready to settle for a quickie in an exam room."
"I'm not that desperate. I'm not actually desperate at all. Contrary to what you may have left our one night believing, I'm not at all short on self-respect."
"I'm sure you aren't. I respect you."
"Do you?"
"Absolutely. Contrary to what you may have left our one night believing, I probably respected you more after the sex," he stated with a salacious leer.
"Respecting someone and lusting after them are two very different concepts."
"I know the difference between those two things. I also know it's possible to both respect and lust after the same person. And I have never," he looked over her form with great admiration, taking his time without any concern for the fact that she was waiting for him to finish the statement, "ever…seen you as desperate. And I don't want you to rip your panties off for me."
"Good, because that is not going to-"
She stopped when he put one finger up, very nearly touching her lips. "I don't want you to rip them off because I want to take them off for you. I want to drag them slowly down your legs, sneaking a peek at everything you have barely hidden under them. And to top it off, I don't want to take them off for you because I want to…I want to take them off because you ask me to take them off."
She stood there, stunned. She had absolutely no idea what to do with this man. What she knew was that she didn't like was the way he could throw her so easily off balance, the way that he affected her after she hadn't seen him in years.
"As for whipping out my dick," he said flippantly, "You never know until you try, but given what I remember about your talents I won't press charges."
She laughed, both out of surprise and amusement, "I will not be asking you to take off anything that I wear. And I'm definitely not going to whip out your dick."
"This is suddenly sounding less fun than what I was hoping for."
"I'm at work," she said again, her voice steady and certain.
"You already said that."
"Why are you here?" she asked, more curiously, her eyes looking over his face in search of clues she wouldn't find.
"Is this conversation getting repetitious or is that just the endometriosis talking?"
"You need to go back to med school."
"I meant to call you."
"You already said that," she countered.
"If you keep asking the same questions, you'll get the same answers."
"You came from god knows where to apologize for something that happens a thousand times a weekend at universities and bars all over the world? Something that I told you from the start would happen. Your not calling me lived up perfectly to my expectations. We both knew exactly what we were doing."
"What happened wasn't the same as what happens all of the time. It was different. I really was planning on calling."
She rolled her eyes, "You don't have to say that for me. I wasn't as naïve as you seem to think."
"There was nothing about that night that led me to believe that you were naïve. And I know I don't need to say it for you. I need to say it because it's the truth. I got bad news that morning. Something that I thought you'd never be able to look past. So, I didn't force you to make that choice."
"Try again. I don't like being lied to."
"I was expelled from school. Wouldn't be able to go back. At that point, I thought I'd never become a doctor. You're not the kind of person that looks on failure too lightly."
"You didn't call me because…you had academic issues."
"That's a positive spin on it. So, in a manner of speaking, yes."
She stepped back, one hand on her cheek, the heel near the edge of her mouth as she thought, "I don't know what to say."
It was the truth. She had no idea what to say. She had long ago accepted the outcome of their night as a learning experience. She tried not to dwell on it. She felt in some ways it made her stronger, less easily swayed into romantic fantasies, more of a realist. She was disappointed, but certainly not heartbroken. She wanted him when she met him, lusted after him, crushed on him, but she didn't know him well enough to be in love. "I…don't know if I believe you. I also have no idea why it's relevant now after all of this time," she added, regaining her composed professionalism.
She was walking in front of him, thinking, not quite pacing, but only because she was making a conscious effort not to do so. He wrapped his fingers around her free forearm gently, and swung her toward him. "I went on two dates with this woman," he said calmly. "It wasn't serious. Not yet. Something happened last week after my second date with the aforementioned woman that made me think of you. And then I wondered what you were doing. Actually…I obsessed on what you were doing. I want a date."
"You, dating another woman, makes you want a date with me? I'm sure she'd be thrilled to hear that."
"She's not what I want. There was no third date scheduled."
She held her hands out in front of her, emphasizing the seriousness of what she was about to say. "Dr. House, we started something eight years ago! Pretty sure we're well beyond the statute of limitations on that."
"Whatever," he said, disinterested in that fact. "It was still started and it wasn't finished. I have this…weird feeling like it will always feel unfinished because I'm not the type to sit and think about things that are unimportant."
"I'm smarter than you give me credit for. I can translate from horny-male-speak to English. You want a chance to have sex with me again. Someone that you know is amazing…someone who won't go all doe-eyed and fall in love or create complications. So you want a night to get out there, be free and single, one more time before you get all serious with this girl who is a good choice for a long term girlfriend or maybe even a wife. Is that it?"
"I'm not the only one who's confident."
"I have every reason to be. You're the one who came to find me after all this time…proof that my confidence is well placed."
"You were the best lay of my life. And I was your best."
"Was. I haven't been entirely celibate since the last time we met."
"I think I still am your best. If not, I deserve the chance to prove that I am, or more likely, remind you of why I was in the first place."
"See, you get a lot further with me with a little truth. And the truth is that you want one last night of freedom. One more one night stand."
"This isn't one more night before I settle down. I want a chance to go out with you. We skipped that part. We went straight from flirting to fucking…like it was unstoppable."
A loud knock pounded at the door and they both startled a bit. "Yea," she said.
"Li…Dr. Cuddy," a male voice called through the door, "Phillips is looking for you."
"I'll be done here in a minute," Cuddy answered, staring at the door until she was certain the knocker was gone.
"I guess I have to hurry then," House said. "Do you want to go out? Something…date-like?"
She smiled and shook her head. "Can we just do this gracefully? Accept that we had a lot of fun. Both of us. I admit, it was…memorable…let's move on with our lives."
"I don't know if I can. Do you have a boyfriend?"
"No," she answered immediately.
"That was a quick answer. Too quick?"
"Because I anticipated the question"
"That's the only reason?"
"I'm single, but it's because I want to be. I'm busy. I have goals. The time for flings and parties is over."
"Then why the three-day weekend? You have no boyfriend so it isn't a romantic getaway, you don't have tests to study for anymore…"
"How do you know I have off this weekend?" she asked when she realized she had not given him that piece of information.
"Schedule"
"How did you find our schedule?"
"I'm resourceful."
"What do you want?"
"I thought you said you could translate from horny-male-speak to English. This one's not difficult. I. Want. A date. A chance. We skipped that part last time. So it's almost like you owe me."
"I owe you?" she scoffed with utter disbelief.
"I feel used," he said with a forced cry of feigned hurt. "Cheap, taken advantage of, objectified."
"Is that how you feel?" she said dryly as she smirked.
"Yes. But those aren't always bad feelings."
She laughed again, unable to stop herself because the arrogant bastard was charming, shaking her head.
"Tonight. I want to go out," he insisted.
"What about what I want?" she asked.
"You want to go out too."
"I have plans."
He closed his eyes, and breathed in, as if he was mustering up the strength to do or say something, "Please. You'll have the rest of the weekend to do whatever you were going to do. Or I could just follow you around and join you. You could introduce me to your friends…"
She hated how her old crush still sat right underneath the surface of her skin. "You really just want to go out with me?"
"You feel really lucky, don't you?"
She laughed. "My god, is it possible that you are more arrogant than before? Look," she offered, "If you're just looking for a good night, I'd rather you just say so. Like I said, you'll get further with me with honesty."
"If I was just looking for a repeat of our last time, I'd tell you that," he said with almost intimidating sincerity, "Something tells me that if I said I wanted a night of meaningless sex it would be easier to convince you to go out with me. It's less complicated."
Not one for being intimidated easily she was still right there, right in his face and said, "OK. Fine. Let's go out." She grabbed the file, ripped a piece of paper from a tablet beneath it and quickly wrote an address. "Pick me up here. Eight o'clock."
"Is this where you live?"
"Not a chance. It's where I want you to pick me up."
"When does your shift end?"
"Technically three. But you know how residency goes, if I'm lucky, I'll be leaving by five."
"You need three hours after the latest time you may possibly get done to show up at this address to meet me?" he asked in a pleased way.
"I have to go home, shower, and go there to meet you," she said, irritated at the questions.
"You're going to shower? That's never a bad sign," he commented.
"Do you have any idea what sort of things doctors see at these clinics? The sheer variety of viruses and bacteria that come in on almost every one of the patients we see?"
"What was your specialty? I thought you were considering endocrinology."
"I was. I did"
"You're doing your residency in the clinic?"
"That…will give us something to talk about later." She put on her most controlled and relaxed face, an indifferent one, she had the upper hand. "That location. Eight o'clock."
He stepped closer, way too far in her personal space, far too intimate. Something about the way he took a breath, his chest rising in front of her eyes, his exhalation against her neck because he was whispering something so closely that he was almost touching her ear, and suddenly she flashed to exactly what everything about his body felt like. The way it seemed that every last bit of him was somehow coordinating efforts to make her feel the most amazing things. "You won't be disappointed," he replied.
He went to the door, swooping away, unaffected and waving a goodbye. "Can I have your number? In case I get held up."
"Nope," she said, shaking her head. "I gave you my number once, you have to earn the right to get it again."
He walked over to the end of the exam table, yanking a pen out of the pocket of her lab coat without apology on his way. He wrote in large numbers and words across the end of the protective paper cover. It said, simply, "Greg House," and the number.
He ripped it off unceremoniously and began to fold it. Even once folded in half, it was an enormous piece of paper. "In case you get held up, or decide you want me to pick you up at your place. I'm Greg House, like you could forget, and this," he tapped the paper, "is the number for my pager."
He held out a hand, shoving the number toward her, offering one final approving look and walking out the door.
She stood in the exam room after he left, feeling as if she had been standing out in the middle of a field far from civilization, spent twenty minutes avoiding a tornado that she, for some reason, wanted to be carried off by, and once the storm was over, she was left in the middle of the same field, dazed, dizzy and baffled. She folded the paper with his pager number. It crinkled noisily as she tried to reduce it to a more manageable size. It was loud and large, and she had no idea what to do with it, a strangely appropriate metaphor for their re-meeting. She ran the paper to her locker and went to finish her shift.
The truth was, she gave him another location in case she wanted to back out. Back in med school he was known for his clever trickery, and she hadn't forgotten that, in fact, she was looking for it. She was cautious. It seemed like a terrible idea, and, after he practically pleaded for her number that morning all those years ago, and promised he'd call, ultimately he left her waiting by the phone. No, she wasn't heartbroken, but she was hurt. She couldn't admit it to him, or deny it to herself.
There was the temptation to leave him there at the rendezvous point without another word from her. That temptation, as beautiful a piece of vengeance as she'd ever heard of, seemed counterproductive though. She was still horribly attracted to him, and his over the top antics and confidence only seemed to make him sexier, a fact that frustrated her beyond comprehension. She was a bit uncertain as to his actual motivations, he seemed intent on convincing her that it wasn't a hookup, and she didn't really understand why.
She changed quickly in the locker room, and thought about showing up late, making him wait a few minutes, a tiny piece of revenge for the past. Then she wondered how long he'd actually wait. She was debating the options, wondering what to do next. She got dressed in the jogging pants and oversized tee shirt she wore in to work, grabbed her heavy, winter coat, and left for home. She decided, she'd go, after all, it was just one night.
Cuddy lived in an apartment above an old, converted carriage house. When the city limits grew ages ago, places like the one she lived in that used to be in rural areas around the city were swallowed up, and when Cuddy saw the place it seemed like a place where she could relax and feel miles away from work while still within walking distance. There were old, looming trees all around the property. The ground beneath her answered each step with the crisp snapping of fallen leaves. It had been an oddly temperate fall, but it seemed winter was taking hold. She pulled her thick coat more tightly around her as she turned the corner to begin her ascent up the narrow wooden steps to her front door.
She tried not to gasp or show surprise when she saw him sitting on the small landing at the top of the steps. She had a small iron table and one chair sitting on the modest excuse for a porch, placed there with dreams of drinking morning coffee in that spot, but she found that she had little time to enjoy her apartment.
"Nice place," he said as she came closer.
"Should I be concerned with the slightly stalkerish behavior you're demonstrating?" she asked. "Did it occur to you that perhaps I didn't want you to know where I live?"
He was sitting on the landing, one leg stretched out, and she paused on the step just below his leg, her hand braced on the railing.
"More flattering that stalkerish," he responded.
"Why are you here? I'm supposed to meet you in town in two and a half hours."
"I lost the paper with the address."
"Then I guess you didn't really want to see me."
"Oh, I want to see you. If you just would have given me the number, I could have called."
She nodded her head, accepting this piece of insanity in her life and accepting that she should have known he couldn't just embrace the boundaries she put forth, in fact, he was trying to show her why those boundaries actually made things worse.
"Well, you taught me a lesson," she answered dryly.
"I wasn't trying to teach you a lesson. Actually, I wanted to observe you in your natural habitat."
"Or impinge on my privacy."
"I didn't go in."
"Such restraint," she said as she moved past him.
"Or…I was worried that you'd stand me up…try to get a little revenge for my disappearance."
"I'd only feel the need for revenge if I was actually somehow harmed by your disappearance. I told you, you did me a favor, I was worried about letting you down easy."
"Lies"
"I'll be out in about two hours…to walk to the place where we are going to meet. You can sit out here and wait if you want, or go do something fun and meet me there."
She walked inside and clicked the door shut. Although she tried to sound irritated, when she closed the door she couldn't help but smirk. Lots of guys liked her, but no one had ever put so much effort into getting one date.
Walking into her nightstand, she picked up the phone and called Megan to tell her she wouldn't arrive until the next day. Megan complained until Cuddy explained that she had a date, and swore to her friend that she would not set foot inside of any sort of medical building, but that she was actually going out with a guy.
She got her shower, took her time, she was convinced that he would break into her home, and she'd find him somewhere inside, so far he'd consistently tried to cross boundaries, so she wanted to be prepared. She dressed completely before she left the bathroom, but he wasn't in her apartment. She looked around, scanning the open, studio-style apartment and feeling something that almost seemed like disappointment. He wasn't sitting on the landing outside of her door either. She stopped at the fridge to grab a drink, looked out the window over the sink, and she noticed him, he certainly didn't go far. She could barely see him, the only illumination was from the porch light left on by the tenants downstairs, but he was standing on a swing hanging from a mammoth oak that was hung by her neighbors for their daughter. He pinched the rope in the crooks of his arms so he wouldn't fall and rubbed his hands together to warm them, and from his body language, he looked uncomfortably cold. She couldn't believe he was still there, in the dark.
Then she felt guilty. She was really confident in her abilities and that she was attractive, but she found it hard to believe that he would wait outside in the cold for a night of sex, no matter how good it was, so he must have had other intentions. Suddenly his efforts seemed more meaningful, and she really hated the growing swell of guilt in her chest. She scooted up on the sink, opened the window and shouted down, "Dr. House?"
He looked around, acting like he couldn't tell where the sound was coming from. He finally looked up at her and smirked.
"You're going to have to stop with the whole 'Doctor House' thing. This is a date, not a consult," he yelled up to her.
"What are you doing?"
"Something fun until you're ready"
"Come on up, you jackass."
He grinned and in moments, she found him peering inside, trying to see through the thin curtain that covered the squares of glass that formed the window on the upper half of the door. She opened the door and held up a finger. "This doesn't mean anything. I just feel bad that you're out there in the cold."
"So you're trying to tell me that you feel something for me?" he teased.
She lifted her hands with exasperation, and then dropped them at her sides.
"I'm kidding," he nodded and waited for an invitation inside.
She stepped to the side, directed him to an old sofa, turned a small portable heater toward him and turned it on high. "You want a drink?" she asked hesitantly.
"Not if it's going to cause you such pain," he huffed.
"It doesn't," she said apologetically. "I'm just…a little guarded."
"You don't trust me?"
"Not really," she answered. "What do you want to drink?"
"What do you have?"
"I have water. Hot tea. Leftover coffee from this morning that I can heat up. Or I can make a fresh pot."
"No, I said I'm going to take you out. You already don't trust me so I think I should stick to our agreement."
"Noted. We can go out after you thaw."
"Do you have anything more warming?"
"Oh. I have a few bottles of wine and some rum, but not much to mix it with."
"Seriously? You always seemed to enjoy a good drink…or ten. I was convinced you'd hit a button and a fully stocked bar was going to rise out of the floor."
She smirked, "I have one, but I lost the remote."
His eyes glazed over fondly, but he didn't smile or smirk, he just seemed to admire her.
"What do you want?" she asked, more abruptly than she intended.
His momentary trance broke and she could see he was searching for words.
"To drink?" she clarified.
"Oh," he nodded.
"I'll open a bottle of wine," she offered as she slipped from the room.
"OK," he answered in the direction of the kitchen. When she returned, he was looking at his watch and said, "I only have an hour before I have to go."
Her face twisted as she started to await the reason why he wriggled his way into her home only to leave so quickly.
"You have to go too, Cuddy," he added. "You're meeting up with a really hot doctor in an hour…"
She smirked and nodded. She was wondering if she was being too guarded, or if she wasn't being nearly guarded enough, and found her head filled with more and more questions rather than answers.
"It's nice of you to hang out with an old friend before you go," he mused after quickly finishing his glass.
She nodded and poured him a second glass, "Sure thing. Always good to catch up…since I barely even knew you."
"Well, girl," he said enthusiastically, "Why don't you tell your buddy Greg all about your date with the sexy doctor tonight."
"You should probably know that I don't put men with multiple personalities at the top of my list of 'must-dates.'"
"Can I see this list?"
She smiled and shook her head, "Nope"
"You were in the shower a long time," he noted, "does that mean you're anticipating extra curriculars after your date?"
She laughed at his audacity and shook her head, "Who do you think you are? I mean really? I tell you I want to know why you are here. You seem to go out of your way to make me think it's for a date and not just sex…and then you say stuff like that. So what is it? Is this a date or a booty call?"
"What would you say if I said it was a booty call?"
"I'd tell you to call a less complicated booty."
His shoulders shook a little, like he was laughing, and he said, "Good thing then…that it will be a date."
"Why say that then? Why try to make it sound like you're just trying to get laid?"
He leaned forward on the sofa, bracing his forearms on his knees. "It's better than normal lame stuff like 'you look beautiful tonight' or 'you're even better than I remembered."
Her head tilted at the soft way he spoke, at the admission that sounded exactly like what she'd hoped he would say. And then he huffed loudly, "But what woman respects a guy that says crap like that?"
Her eyebrows raised in surprise and she nodded her head as she spoke and walked over to sit on the sofa with him, offering a delicate smile, "I think a lot of women would probably respect a guy who says stuff like that."
"You have an amazing smile," he offered quietly and then paused, "is that something else that women like that would like to hear?"
"I would think so," she nodded, her lips pressed tightly together, feeling as if she was so close to a genuine compliment that he just couldn't let stand. She leaned forward, hands against her knees just like him, and then she said, "Can I ask you something?"
She expected a quick answer, but he actually gave the question thought, "Sure."
"If I'm going to ask, I want the truth."
He pressed his fingers together as he still leaned forward and again gave the matter careful thought. "I'll try," he finally answered.
"You are so confusing. You are the most serious chronically flippant person I've ever met."
"That's your question?"
"An observation related to the question."
"So what's the question?"
"Are you completely self-assured but pretending to be uncertain, or completely uncertain but pretending to be self-assured?"
"Both," he answered immediately and then stood up abruptly, "Come on, why wait, let's get this show on the road."