A/N: This is a story I've had in my head for a while & have actually done different variations of in orig fic. This is a House/Cuddy version, that is peculiarly AU in that yes, it's AU, but some canon events have happened, just under different circumstances. You'll see. Additionally, since this hinges on childhood (and because kids discriminate outside their own age bracket), I made them closer to the same age, Cuddy is less than 3 years younger. The past is in past tense, present is late 90s, circa post infarction and in present tense, pretty simple.
Hopefully this will help waiting to see their collegiate canon past revealed Monday. Please review and enjoy. Thanks for reading!
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Three Hours Between Flights
The mailbox was blue. Stout and lonely it stood at the end of her driveway. Blue, except for metallic silver patches where the paint wore thin.
The day he moved to her block, back to the state he was born in, that blue mailbox was the first thing he saw.
How long had she lived there? Longer than he could stay.
Longer than he would stay, he knew even that first day.
three hours
Greg House sits in baggage claim, waiting. Ruminating. An airport terminal is an appropriate setting for such nostalgic contemplation. Arrivals and departures, home and away is then and again.
With a twist of his wrist he sees he's late, already––for another interview at another hospital that won't hire him.
He's only supposed to be in New Jersey for three hours.
His carryon completes its revolution on the conveyor belt and he stands, slanting heavy on the cane and starting over as he steps out. The crisp chill of the autumn morning sedates his despondency. Wide awake, he stands at the curb. Reaching for a prescription bottle, his hand is in front of his face when a taxi pulls up. He swallows to see the reflection in the windshield is wearing yesterday's beard.
He forgot to shave.
The irony doesn't escape him that he remembers everything else.
An hour after landing, he's been removed from Princeton General by security, adding a fat lip and bloody nose to his already gruff disheveled exterior.
Injured and with two hours to spare, House steps into the free clinic of the nearest hospital he hasn't been banned from.
It's congested, with parents coughing and their kids crying.
There's an instant as he signs in when the recollection precedes the thought and the next three days, the rest of his life, falls into place. He notices a name.
Dr. L. Cuddy
"This wouldn't be a Lisa Cuddy, would it?" House asks a nurse after a minute, pointing to her name on the sheet.
The nurse nods. House pauses, glancing the directory without turning his head completely. She's a department head. Endocrinology. He formulates a lie.
"My cousin had pancreatitus last year. Said she was stellar. Could I possibly request her?"
"It'll be more than an hour."
"I'll wait," he says smiling because the nurse has no idea how long he has been.
Ninety patient minutes later, he's diagnosed seventeen people, emptying the waiting room only to see it refilled. Cuddy comes out, almost impressed by the outsider's ability to evacuate this place with diagnoses. She picks up the chart of her next patient then turns her head, conspicuously searching the crowd for a familiar face.
Greg House.
It can't be. Not her House, not here, not now. She adjusts her posture, just in case, and tries to tame her hair in the metallic reflection at the top of the clipboard. Then she hollers the name she hasn't said in twenty years (of the boy she's thought of every day).
Whether he remembers her she can't tell immediately and, realizing her biggest fear is being forgotten, her eyes freeze on the first thing she sees: his cane. When she realizes what she's doing, her stare darts away quickly and she smiles, leading him back to an exam room.
An involuntary 'oh' escapes after she closes the door and turns to see the dried crimson crescent on his lip, the bruise curving around his eye. And now his nose is starting to bleed again. Cuddy reaches for a tissue.
"I guess this is what you're here for," she says dumbly, having forgotten what she read on the chart a second before.
House stays silent, leering inquisitive and leaning forward like her touch is an incomplete question and she's asking more than daubing a deserved nosebleed. His unrelenting gaze has Cuddy feeling like she's the one being examined. She wipes one last time, nervously and unnecessarily.
"How bad does it hurt?"
A delayed surprise surfaces with the sound of her voice. He was half-expecting a schoolgirl soprano, not the professional, mature, sexy tone, wearing lipstick and expensive perfume. He sighs after a moment, a certain gesture insinuating the stupidity of the question. Really he just wants to listen.
"I can write you a prescription for––"
"You don't remember me," he finally figures out.
Cuddy looks up from the prescription pad and holds his glance. Her first instinct is to raise a palm to his unshaven jaw, run her thumb across the crease of his lips. She wants to kiss him and make it better, to kiss him and show she remembers.
"I could never forget you, House."
Her attempt is to say it dryly, devoid of or at least with vague emotion, but there's a fondness, as well as a sadness in her words. House smiles.
"Little Lisa Cuddy," he starts wistful. "The girl next door became the girl with a God complex," recalling a time when she made him feel like he could walk on water.
"I'm not a girl anymore, I'm a doctor." With tenure.
"The latex gloves say doctor, but the cleavage screams stripper."
"Had to pay for med school somehow."
The back and forth established rapport, adding banter to bedside manner, makes the bold compliment and comeback a catalyst. They're something between interesting strangers and fumbling childhood friends.
House rubs his right thigh. In this life it's not here fault, still the question's tinged with a deja vu-veiled guilt.
"What happened?"
"Interview at Princeton General." He knows she meant the leg.
"You got punched during an interview?"
"Punched, kicked, excommunicated."
She doesn't have to ask what he said to piss off the Chief over there. She knows he's a corrupt philanderer, a bad doctor at best. She wants to reminisce, say 'Still getting into fistfights?' but she can't assume what he'll remember, or what he won't. Unsure what to say next, she lets House fill the silence.
"Really Lise, you look good." A beat.
"How long are you in Princeton?"
"My plane leaves in less than an hour. Why?"
Why? Because she has the prospect of another promotion approaching and he's maimed, unemployed––she wants to help him as much as she wants him.
"I might be able to get you an interview here. We need a new instructor in Nephrology."
It doesn't bother him that she somehow knows his specialty. That she's aware of his reputation, and remembers, turns him on even more.
"Would you be willing to teach, work the clinic when needed?"
"Those who can't do..." He murmurs sardonically. Then he blinks and nods, acknowledging the opportunity.
"I'll make a few calls."
"Thank you," escapes under his breath as her heels echo on the way out.
"Tomorrow at one," she tells him after ten minutes, sticking her head in through the exam room door and pulling it back out before he can respond.
-
House misses his flight, reluctant to reschedule and promising himself that he'll see her again before he leaves.
When he checks into a hotel that night, he's already finished the vicodin prescription she wrote him earlier that day, chasing the last of it with bourbon.
It's been too long to be a coincidence but instead of sentiment he's only filled with resentment, contempt, every loathsome emotion mounted atop his miserable self- disdain.
Now. Why did they have to meet now? He's an unemployed cripple and she's running a department. She is who she's always wanted to be. And he's just alone. Frustrated, he drops the bottle and sprawls across the bed.
He wants to go back. He wants to stay. He wants them both to be the same.
Painless, still thinking of her, he closes his eyes and drifts finally into a dream where yesterday's not so far away.