Author's Note: This takes place at the end of "The Itch" when House was looking into Cuddy's window. I love season five, and the antagonism and constant push and pull between them. This first chapter is necessary to set the premise. After this chapter, I'll write about the aftermath of what happened. In the show, they very often leaned on each other when one of them was hurt, so I'm using that theme again.
I don't own these characters. This is an M rated story, and will often include adult content (smut). There is also some mention of violence in this first chapter.
He pushed and snarled and poked at figurative sore spots every time he'd seen her since they'd kissed. Of course the next thing he knew, he was standing outside of her home. He wanted her, he knew it. And not just in the lusty ways he was comfortable with admitting that he wanted her. Yet again, he found himself walking away. If he had stayed the night they'd kissed, he knew how things could have gone. There would have been sex, amazing sex. The kind of sex he'd walk away from because it meant something.
In this case, 'something' that was remarkably complicated.
So he saw her through her window, and he knew what he had suspected for a long time. This was definitely 'something.' He turned, just two emotional notches down from panicked, so he could leave before she found out he was there. She heard him though, she must have, because she was coming out through her door and stomping down her walkway.
"Are you stalking me?" she called out angrily.
"I was worried that you couldn't take being rejected, so I came to make sure you didn't decide to end it all. Then I remembered-you are probably really used to rejection."
She shook her head, looking upward with apparent frustration. "You're right, who would want me? The insult would be fantastic-except we both know that you want me. So who are you really insulting?"
"If I wanted you, I could have had you. We both know that, too."
"You're an emotional child. No, not a child, children are capable of compassion and love and empathy. Things you clearly know absolutely nothing about."
"I-I don't know about empathy? I would never have-" House started but was interrupted by a loud clanging sound coming from near Cuddy's house.
She turned, looking back at her home and sighing, complaining about raccoons or cats or something that had been digging in her garbage. Looking at him, she tossed her hands out to the side, "Fine, House, say whatever you need to say. You hate me and having any romantic interaction with me would be the most horrendous thing you've ever considered. I don't have time for this argument. You say whatever you need to say to make yourself feel better, but we both know you were the one who kissed me. And I remember how you kissed me. You can lie to yourself, you can lie to everyone else, but you can't lie to me. I was there. Those were not the actions of a man who hates a woman. Now go. Run away. You're good at that."
"I am?"
"Yes. You are. You're an expert at running and pushing away. I'm going to go pick up my damn garbage. You ride home, telling yourself the story about how much you don't want me. Maybe one day, you'll believe it."
She confidently, quickly returned to her house, walking to the space beside it, separated from the street by a tall, wooden gate. He watched her while he climbed onto his bike, his internal dialogue already rehearsing his defense. She opened the gate and it began to swing closed. It was so high that he couldn't see anything on the other side. He wanted to get the fuck out of there before she even came out to confront him. Her fingers were on the outside of the gate, and then he saw them slip too quickly from the edge, slightly pulling the gate forward with her.
It was a fact that he'd deemed irrelevant at first, but his mind kept seeing the way she let go, or more that she didn't seem to want to let go of the gate. He couldn't erase that three-second piece of imagery from his head. He had already started his bike, he didn't remember doing it because he'd been thinking about those same few problematic seconds. So he turned off his bike, grabbed his cane, and limped back toward her gate. He wasn't looking forward to the conversation, if there was one. He hoped to get close, make some sort of comment about her digging through the garbage, and hurry back home when he was sure she was fine.
When he walked through the gate, he knew everything was not fine instantly. There were two figures, wearing dark clothes and ski masks, surrounding her. One had his arms around Cuddy and she was trying to get her body in a good position to defend. The one who held her was bigger than House, probably younger, and also obviously not disabled. Another one stood in front of her, showing a small handgun that was pointed toward her chest.
House didn't go unnoticed for long. The man who was not holding Cuddy pointed the gun at House, gesturing him away from the gate. Meeting Cuddy's eyes, House complied. Cuddy's eyes were certain, determined, still more angry than frightened, but he could see the evidence of worry, even in the dark. The one with the gun demanded, "I want your wallet. Then we'll go inside and see what you two may have that we want."
House sort of sneered, "I've been shot before, with a real gun and not a little pellet gun. I'm really not feeling all that threatened."
"This is a real gun. You want me to prove it to your kneecaps?"
"I can give you my wallet, but I don't really carry anything great in it. If you walk away now, we'll forget you were here," House said.
"You have a pretty wife," the one who was holding Cuddy said. He started grinding his pelvis into her ass, exaggerating the moves to taunt House and attempt to intimidate Cuddy, "I'd love to get to know her better. I'm sure you'd like to watch that. She'd probably appreciate being screwed by a man who can get hard."
"It's actually really difficult to be screwed by a man who can't get hard, just physiologically speaking, unless you have some sort of prop."
"You're funny. You think you're funny, right?"
He looked at Cuddy again, waiting for her to order him to surrender his wallet, but she seemed to know he was buying time. Her patience faded immediately when the man holding her shoved a hand under her shirt and threatened, "You're gonna give your wallet, watch, phone and anything else you got to my friend. Or I am gonna fuck your lady while you watch. I'll bet she's a screamer. Of course maybe I want you to keep being an asshole, either way I'm gonna get something I want."
Cuddy was trying to move away while trapped in the man's arms. From her level of disgust, House guessed the mugger was probably getting turned on from the prospect of power. The man with the gun grabbed House's shirt, easily pulling him off balance and shoving him against Cuddy's wall. House reached into his riding jacket, the man clenching the gun while he watched, and House started turning over his personal belongings. Right before he handed his watch over, the man holding Cuddy growled, "Maybe I want a piece of this anyway."
House quickly looked at Cuddy, he was losing his calm, uncaring persona. He started to feel bile crawling up his throat when he considered for the first time what was probably going to happen to Cuddy if they didn't do something. He met her eyes, they were fiery, angry, refusing to cave to fear and holding onto a deep, powerful rage. She blinked at him very slowly, they had a few seconds to communicate, but he knew she was going to do something, and he was going to be ready.
She somehow managed to elbow her captor in the gut and turn, quickly kneeing his testicles as hard as she could. The perpetrator was obviously in pain, and House grabbed his cane and swung at the man with the gun, connecting with the side of the idiot's head and watching a long gash appear in its wake. The man he hit was not so forgiving though, nor was he incapacitated. He charged at House, raining punches on the older man's torso. Once House was on the ground, the man with the gun started kicking his sides and ribs until the pain shot through every cell in his body. Then everything stopped with the crack of a gun and a loud crash of glass.
Lights came on next door, and floodlights started to light up the back yards around them. When a bedroom window next to Cuddy's opened, she yelled, "Call 911."
The thieves momentarily seemed to consider doing more harm to their victims, but one whispered, "Man, we gotta go."
They both seemed a bit damaged while they hobbled away, but House already felt the bruised flesh covering his chest and the stinging throb around one of his eyes. He tried to clear his sight enough to figure out what had happened to her, hoping that she had been able to protect herself from her attacker. When he finally looked at her, she was picking herself up from a glass recycling pile, her arm and side covered in lacerations.
When he looked over, he saw blood dotting her clothing down the right side. He felt a horrible dizziness for a moment, but she lifted the side of her night shirt and was assessing her own wounds.
"Anything critical?" he asked.
"No," she answered in perfect monotone, "just some scrapes. You?"
House ignored her question. She walked over to help him up from the ground. He could tell by the spreading marks of blood that some of the cuts were more than just scrapes. "How'd you get his gun?"
"I didn't," she said, pointing at her broken window. "The gun went off, but I never had it."
Chaos erupted when police and an ambulance arrived and neighbors were coming to investigate. The police were asking so many questions, most of which Cuddy was answering while House stood silently nearby. After a few minutes, one of the cops said, "Let's go down the hospital, collect a kit, fix you two up."
"She wasn't raped," House responded forcefully, hoping that what he was saying was correct because he did feel consciousness slipping in the middle of the assault.
Everyone seemed stunned when he reacted so strongly.
"Sir," the policeman said, "he threatened to, and there may be physical evidence. He also discharged his firearm. There have been several break-ins in the area, two of them involved very violent rapes and one victim is currently in a coma. If she doesn't wake up, we'll add murder to the list of charges. I don't know if these are the same guys, but we want to catch them so we can find out. Are you going to ride with your friend to the hospital, or do you want a ride down to the station with one of our guys?"
Without responding, House walked past the cops and followed Cuddy to the police car, getting in and pulling the door shut. They didn't talk or even look at each other on the way to the hospital. Once they were in the ER, a policewoman began to collect evidence from both of them. House and Cuddy were offered separate rooms, but neither acknowledged the offers in any way. The policewoman asked Cuddy to remove her clothes to be placed in evidence bags. House left the room without being asked, but he returned a minute later.
He kept his eyes politely cast away from her, but held out a pair of pink scrubs that he had obtained for her to put on. He stripped off his own clothes behind a curtain next to her, tossing them at the woman collecting evidence, and he also returned wearing scrubs. The policewoman said comfortingly to Cuddy, "I'll have someone come in to look at your wounds."
House sat on a wheeled stool in the corner of the room, arms folded, neither had spoken to the other directly since they left her home. An intern came in and saw Cuddy, the smile on his face disappearing when he realized the identity of the patient. He approached nervously, getting the supplies he needed, and the young man seemed to almost shake. Trying to joke, he said, "I didn't expect to have to demonstrate my skills on the boss."
It took an inordinate amount of time to gather the things needed, and the intern was almost bumbling, So House stood, pushing his way between Cuddy and the young man, "Fuck, I'll do it before you try to sew her breasts together."
The younger man left the room with a shy smile, but he seemed grateful for the absolution. Most of the staff there truly were terrified of Cuddy. Of course, House wasn't extremely gentle with her at first. He moved her into place, pushing her knees to one side so he could get close enough to deal with her wounds. After looking over her for a second, he pushed the table away and sat on the bed, facing her. Normally he would have put her arm on the table, but instead, he rested her wrist on his knee and began to anesthetize, clean and close each of the gashes that were too large. In spite of his initial attempts to appear gruff and uncaring, he was unspeakably careful and remarkably gentle once he actually began to work on her. A few wounds he closed with a stitch or two, a few he used butterfly closures on until her arm was completely cared for. The first time he spoke again, he said, "Lie down."
"Why?" she snapped back.
He pointed at her side to the places where blood was already seeping through the scrubs.
"Shit," she answered, lifting the shirt to check her side. Some of the gashes there were a lot worse than the ones on her arm. House figured she was probably too numb to feel much pain yet. She was too poised to have really felt the reality of what had happened.
She pulled the shirt off, tucking it to her chest. She didn't have a bra, after all, she was ready for bed when all of this had happened. She carefully slid down on the bed, trying not to aggravate any wounds. House pushed a pillow toward her chest so she'd have something to cover herself with. He held out his hand for the bloodied scrub top and said, "Give it to me."
He tossed the bloody shirt in with the soiled linens. Cuddy had her arm draped over the pillow while she waited for him to return. Cameron came in at that point, stunned to see the two people who were in her ER. "I didn't know you were involved. I guess I should have known when my intern ran out of here."
"Get me a tetanus shot," House replied.
Cameron came closer, looking at the wounds on Cuddy's side. "What happened?"
"Our usual rave got out of hand. Tetanus shot. I need one."
She turned and left the room, House immediately grabbing another sheet from behind the bed to cover the parts of her side that he wasn't working on. After all of the comments he'd often made and the ways that he'd looked at her, in this circumstance, he was beyond respectful of her physical person. When Cameron returned with the shot, she said, "What can I do?"
House picked up the shot, nodded at her and said, "That's all." He continued to stare, waiting for her to leave.
Cameron looked at Cuddy, "Do you need anything?"
"No thanks, Cameron," Cuddy answered in monotone again.
"Call if you need me."
After Cameron left, Cuddy said, to no one in particular, "I don't have my phone." That fact seemed evidence of how disheveled she was. Cuddy was rarely unprepared.
There weren't many cuts on her side, but the largest and deepest was there, and it actually took House a bit longer to close. While he was finishing, staring at his work, he asked, "Is there anything else? I wasn't really able to pay attention to what was going on with you while he was kicking my ass. Do you need any tests run or-"
She tiled her head to the side and his true question dawned on her, "Oh, no. He didn't rape me, if that's what you mean."
House breathed a sigh of relief, but answered gruffly, "That or anything else I didn't notice."
He gave her the injection in the muscle of her arm, and when he was done, he realized that his left hand was resting on her side just above her hip. He figured it out because she was looking at it. Pulling his hand back quickly, he held out his Vicodin bottle. She took the whole thing from him, looking surprised that he turned over something he valued so much.
He grabbed a new scrub top and quickly wrote a prescription for Vicodin, saying, "It there are any leftovers, you know who to give them to."
"I'm fine," she said handing him the bottle back and pulling the top over her body, realizing how sore she was.
He started to leave and she grabbed his arm, "Your turn."
There was a look of confusion on his face, so she stepped him in front of the mirror. His one eye was deep purple already, and there were three lacerations on the side of his face, one looked like a pulled back flap of skin on his jaw.
"I'll close them up or they'll scar."
He sat on the edge of the bed while she cleaned up the mess from her injuries and she got out clean implements. "Should you call in a real doctor for that?" he asked, the bite missing from his voice.
"This is my chance to permanently disfigure you, I'm not giving that up," she answered, also without a bite in her tone.
She took the same care with him, patiently closing each of the wounds and getting an employee's attention to order another tetanus shot. Her fingers were dainty and chilly against him. Her fingers felt better on him than he wanted them to. She had worn gloves, something that he had neglected to do while he worked on her. He tried to ignore the urge he had to kiss her. It wasn't all that different from how he'd felt the last time he'd caved. She looked small and pained, and there they were, both aching from an attack that was as senseless as it was unexpected. Then there was a look in her eyes of sympathy, a connection that had been made between them. That connection itself was almost as terrifying as the thought of standing by idly while Cuddy was raped.
When he tried to get down, she saw the way he winced, he thought people in the next town probably saw it, too. She stopped him, sticking her fingers under his scrub top and looking at him for permission. He scoffed but lifted his arm to give her access anyway. She literally gasped when she saw his red side, angry and dark and already bruising. "God, House. He kicked you?" He didn't answer, and she touched his arm, "Are you alright?"
He turned, and he could tell from the look on her face that she was bracing for him to say something really cruel. She started to flinch, preparing emotionally for the onslaught, and then he asked, with a flicker of worry, "I don't know. Are you?"
She nodded immediately, like it was no big deal, then she said, less certainly than she nodded, "Maybe. I think so. Let's take you up for X-rays."
"Nothing's broken. Even if it was, they'll tell me to do what I'm going to do anyway: rest, let it heal, take lots and lots of Vicodin."
When they were finally leaving, there was a policeman waiting with House's wallet in the lobby. "They must have dropped this when they were leaving. If there are any missing forms of identification, or credit or debit cards, you should probably cancel them immediately. Ma'am, do you have somewhere else you can stay tonight? I'll send a patrol by periodically, but it might be best for you to wait until we can have someone come out and evaluate your security system. You should also have that broken window replaced."
"I'm fine," she answered stiffly, pushing past the officer to the door.
"Do you need a ride?"
House looked at the cop, "We've got it covered."
When they were outside, he was already calling for a taxi with a phone he must have stolen or borrowed from someone. She didn't even think to ask. She started walking, it was much too far to walk. "God, you're stupid. After what just happened, you're going to walk home? Not to mention the fact that it is really cold if that's all you're wearing."
"I don't have any money and my car's at home," she yelled back.
"It hurts too much for me to chase you."
She turned to him, arms folded, "I'm not asking you to chase me."
"I'm getting a cab, ride along. Are you really too fucking stubborn to ask me for a ride? Did you catch some sort of me-related disease the other night when you couldn't keep your hands off me?"
She hurried back, clearly uncomfortable with the fact that he was so casually mentioning something so personal while they were on hospital grounds. "You know what? I'm not in the mood for this fight. I'm walking,"
She made it a few steps away before he grabbed her arm. They both flinched from the pain.
"You don't even have a phone if something happens," he said quietly. "And if you walk the whole way home, those stitches on your side are going to pull."
"I don't want to spend the ride listening to you try to blame me for something you instigated. I don't need that right now."
"We don't have to talk."
She nodded, standing next to him, her arms still folded across her chest. They were both shivering by the time the taxi arrived, standing apart from each other in their scrubs since their clothing had been taken into evidence. Neither moved closer to find warmth. The cab ride was cold and silent, and when they pulled up to her house, she stared at her door. "Thanks," she said opening the car door but not immediately getting out.
He couldn't shake the imagery of the embarrassed pair of foiled muggers returning to take out their anger on Cuddy. Acting on impulse, he reached across her and pulled her door shut before he gave his address to the cab driver. "What are you doing?" she asked.
There was a hint of relief in her tone, covered by her irritated question.
"They could come back. You're an idiot if you choose to sit there, alone, and wait to see if they do."
