Afterlife

When he dies for over a minute, he learns that the afterlife is full of legs playing volleyball, legs farming, and Cuddy's voice. He tilts his head to one side, listening. Mostly, it is just 'Paddles!', 'Clear!' and 'Charge!'

He never tells her this, but the reason he came back is to tell her to shut up, because hearing Cuddy panic just did not happen, in this world or the next. He never comes around to it, because the moment he breathes, Cuddy breathes too. He's never heard her panic voice again, and often wonders if he just imagined it.

Baby

She picks out the colors of the nursery in her mind like her baby is already born. Pink, because she already knows it would like a girl, and doesn't care if pink is too girly. The bassinet at the foot of her bed would be pink, too. Once, in the mall, she almost buys soft fist-sized shoes in white lace for it, but then remembers that it doesn't exist.

He, on the other hand, brings it up whenever he feels the need to see her human, to see her flinch, to want to be there at the moment she remembers.

Candy

He finds himself lucky that he can swipe so much candy in a day without the nurses realizing. Sometimes he would wait until she reaches out for the chocolates Wilson asks for, then grabs for the swirly lollipops a dollar apiece. He reasons out to his eye-rolling friend that contributing so much to saving lives entitles him to free candy. Also that she never notices anyway.

When he leaves at five, Cuddy asks the nurse how much she owes for the day, and pays for his ten-dollar candy raid with a small smile. 'The price of brilliance,' she always says.

Dinner

He calls her at home four times with one hour intervals. The first one he makes at seven is precautionary, in case she cancels her dinner with Wilson. The second, he reasons, is in case Wilson is that boring and the salad isn't really that good.

It's his fifth call that gets an answer, when he disobeys his own rule and calls at ten thirty.

He stays silent on the line after she says hello, secretly delighted that she's in too early for any sleepovers.

She, too, stays on and rolls her eyes at him before putting down the phone.

Eight

House, for the fun of it, throws his magic eight ball out the window. There's a crash and the sound of an alarm.

He annoys eight consecutive nurses by shooting them spitballs. He stops the elevator on the eighth floor for eight whole minutes. He treats eight annoyingly sick patients before walking out of the clinic for the day.

When Cuddy yells at him, What the hell have you been doing all day?

He just smirks and says simply, Celebrating. When she slams his door shut, fuming, he doesn't mind.

They've known each other for eight years now, after all.

Freshmen

She just knew him as a legend.

It pleases her to see Cameron duck her head when she snaps back, but the truth is, she only met him once in a freshman campus tour. Muddy from lacrosse, leering at her from the legs up, someone whispers, 'That's Greg House, he once recited all the answers to his midterms—perfectly—because he was too lazy to write.'

He, on the other hand, still remembers her cup size, her long legs, and the hazy awe in her blue eyes that gets him smirking through clinic duty any day.

Golf

Once, he challenged her to a golf match. Tennis, he says, is just beating the crap out of balls. Golf is the true art—hitting balls at its finest form.

Two weeks later, he's in the clinic complaining of leg pain.

Will you just lay off the voodoo pins? He pops his first Vicodin. I won't go easy on you just because of a little cramp.

Another week and he's limping. Two months and Stacy leaves. It's been eight years and they still haven't played.

Sometimes she wonders if he would have won. Other times, she just wonders if he remembers.

Help

'Was that Cuddy's ninth secretary you've managed to scare?'

'No. You didn't count the fat snorty one and the Yale moron.'

'So you're chasing her secretaries away to—do her a favor?'

'What, you thought I was doing this for the sheer joy of watching them burst into tears and asking for resignation? Why, Jimmy!'

'She needs all the help she can get, you know, especially with employees like you.'

'Competent help, unlike that idiot who got lost because I told her she was in Seattle. I'm her freakshow guardian, protector of the princess from her retarded slaves, hero of the—'

Iscariot

The difference between her and Wilson, mainly, is that he asks for thirty pieces of silver and she for a hundred million.

After she votes to fire House, she goes out the conference room and Wilson meets her forever guilty eyes when she steps outside. Judas, he tells her without words.

(When she sees him outside Tritter's office, and knows what he's done, she nods to him. Judas, she tells him without words.)

The only reason she saves him in the end, redeems herself, is because she knows that if she didn't, she would hang herself with guilt as well.

Japan

On vacation when she is thirteen, she twists her ankle and waits three hours in the clinic waiting room. Her parents are complaining to the hospital administrator.

When she becomes a doctor, she decides she wants her clinic running smoothly, and no one should wait hours for twisted ankles to get untwisted. Even the janitor comes over with his gruff beard and mop and tells her that a doctor should be coming soon.

The boy who came in thirty minutes ago, kicking chairs and upsetting nurses, snaps at him and says he's not surprised. If they can't cure a rash, how could they cure a twisted ankle?

She primly rolls her eyes at him.

When they call out the janitor to diagnose his rock climbing friend, he is speechless.

They both do not remember this, just one of those things lost between them.

But if someone were to ask (say, a coma guy) when he'd first wanted to be a doctor or when she'd first wanted to be an administrator, they would say it was this moment, when he is staring at the brilliant outcast janitor doctor, and she at the brilliant outcast boy, unsurprised because she knew all along.