Lisa Cuddy was suddenly shy.
House was lying in bed, his head propped on his elbow, watching her getting dressed.
Less than three hours ago, they were rolling around his bed saying (and doing) very dirty things to each other.
But now, as the sun rose, she had lost a bit of her nerve. She wrapped herself in a sheet and dressed behind the door of his closet. He could just make out the top of her shoulder and the tiniest bit of her ass. It was giving him an erection.
"Come back to bed," he said, holding out his arms in a sleepy sort of way.
"I can't," she said, looking at her watch. "I have a chem test in 3 hours that I need to study for."
"You were so the valedictorian of your class," he teased.
She arched an eyebrow at him.
"Like you weren't?"
House chuckled. How little she knew.
"I was expelled from two schools and nearly flunked out of a third," he said.
She was genuinely shocked.
"Then how did you get into Michigan?"
He shrugged.
"I test well."
She glanced at him. Underneath a haphazardly assembled sheet, he was completely naked.
"You're going to be a bad influence on me, Gregory House," she said, smiling.
"I'm sure going to try," he said.
She walked up to him—kissed him on the mouth.
"I look forward to it," she purred. (Ah, there was that naughty girl from last night.)
"Wanna start right away?" he said, pulling her toward him. She screamed, in a girlish sort of way, shook herself free.
"I can't," she said. Then, noticing his boner, she bit her lip: "Don't tempt me."
He groaned, watched her walk to the door.
"You have McCutcheon for chem, don't you?" he said finally, admitting defeat.
"Yeah?"
"Question no. 3 is always a trick question. Don't get fooled into thinking the reaction is exothermic. The answer is d. None of the above."
She grinned at him.
"Thanks," she said. "See you later?"
"You can count on it," he said.
He watched her leave. He jerked off— luckily for him, he'd memorized every slope and curve of her perfect body last night—and went back to bed.
It was hours later, when he woke, that he found the earring by his feet. He picked it up, looked at it, and smiled.
He'd be sure to give it back to her later.
####
Cuddy was freaking him out.
She was being weirdly. . . nice to him. More than nice: Downright tender.
He had gone into her office, specifically to pick a fight—sparring with Cuddy was one of his favorite pastimes. But instead of doing their normal toe-to-toe, she had rolled over completely—twice.
And then, as if that wasn't bad enough, she had given him a box of lollipops. What the hell?
"Am I being Punk'd?" he had asked.
Finally, she came clean about the earring in his nightstand.
God! He was an idiot! When he'd asked her to fetch the thermometer, in his hungover daze, he'd forgotten all about the damn earring. (Then again, how was he supposed to know she'd go rummaging through his shit? The thermometer was right in the front of the drawer.)
He fumbled for an answer.
The truth was, House had found the earring, while looking for an old medical text, several years after Michigan.
He had considered throwing it away: He had a serious girlfriend now. Lisa Cuddy was nothing but a ghost from his past.
He went so far as to put it in the trash—then, a few hours later, somewhat frantically, he rummaged through the garbage and recovered it.
"What are you doing?" Stacy had said, watching him dig past the banana peels and coffee grinds.
"I uh, lost an important phone number I need," he had lied.
Why did the earring mean so much to him? It was hard to say.
He'd slept with dozens of girls at Michigan, not to mention that one TA he'd had the affair with. But they'd all managed to disappoint him in one way or another.
They were all smart and sexy and interesting. But eventually, inevitably, he grew bored.
But Lisa Cuddy had been different. They had flirted, for weeks, until they finally danced together at the hoe-down. She made him nervous, which was a foreign feeling. He never got nervous around girls—not even gorgeous ones like her.
Back at his off-campus apartment, they had talked for hours—she was smart and quick-witted and frankly ambitious ("I want to run my own department by the time I'm 30," she had boasted) in a way that he found to be completely enticing. And she had this smile that was positively magnetic. It was a cliché but true: She seemed lit from within.
Sex was incredible. At first she was a bit shy, ever so slightly inhibited—but she was naturally, intuitively sexy, and they got into an incredible groove, like long-time lovers. All of that energy inside of him was better than any drug he'd ever tried in his life.
He wasn't prone to romantic flights of fancy—hell, he was a man of science, not a poet. But he could swear he thought he might marry this girl.
And then. . . well. He got the call from the Dean and—fuck his life—that was the end of that.
The earring represented an interrupted dream, sure. But it also represented one perfect night. So he had wrapped it in tissue paper and kept it.
####
He lied to her.
She'd had thrown him a curve, caught him off guard.
He wasn't used to owning up to his feelings—to himself, letalone to her—so he did what he always did: He pretended not to care.
He'd learned a long time ago not to hope for things too much. You hoped for things and you ended up disappointed, every time. Better to not hope for them. Or convince yourself you were better off without them.
Still, he felt like shit about it. He watched her face fall, just for a second. And then he watched her recover—God, she was amazing—and she was as defiant and resolved as ever.
Now he lay on the floor of his office, trying to figure out what to do.
She'd been nice to him lately—that meant she was pleased, or at least flattered, to find the earring.
House knew that Cuddy still had feelings for him—just like he knew he would always have feelings for her.
There had been a few times, in her office, when they were having one of their rip-roaring fights—her eyes were flashing, this undeniable heat was coursing between them—when it was all he could do not to slam her up against a wall and kiss her.
But he never did because. . .then what?
Casual sex? There was nothing casual between him and Cuddy. Too much history there, too much baggage. On the other hand, could he ever truly be with her? Not just as her lover—but as her boyfriend, as the man in her life?
He scratched his head, sighed.
He'd just find some way to piss her off, fuck it up—ruin things, like he always did. And then what would he be left with?
A boss that hated him and a meaningless trinket in his nightstand drawer.
He was having this thought when a gentle voice jarred him from his meditation.
"Why are you lying the floor in the dark?"
Ahh, Cameron. He really needed to consider putting a Do Not Disturb sign on the door. (Not that she would abide it: To Cameron, his wanting to be alone was actually just a sign that he needed more comforting.) He managed, easily enough, to get rid of her—not before she had looked too long at the bit of exposed skin between his t-shirt and jeans, and then looked away, embarrassed.
Closing his eyes again, he had a passing thought: If he had known Cameron at Michigan—if they had been peers, not mentor and student—would he have liked her? (This was possibly a moot point, because he wasn't damaged yet—at least not to the naked eye. She may not have liked him.) But yes, he decided. She was beautiful, in the kind of predictable way that young men particularly craved. She wasn't nearly as sexy as Cuddy, not even close. But her earnestness had its own particular allure. In the end, he decided, he probably would've fucked her, gotten bored with her, dumped her, and broken her heart in some sort of unintentionally cruel way. (Somehow, he'd managed to break her heart even without fucking her—she was just that sensitive.)
He sighed. Disappointing Cameron was bad enough, but disappointing Cuddy—again and again and again—was something he couldn't abide.
How could he leave her like this. . .thinking the earring meant nothing to him, that she meant nothing to him? That was beyond cruel, it was cowardly.
He got up quickly (the blood rushed to his head, he felt wobbly for a second) and then went to his computer, started searching for "shell-shaped earring."
######
This wasn't as easy as he'd hoped. No similar shell-shaped earring was to be found on any jewelry site on the web. He even went to so far as to check eBay, typed in, "Shell earring, 1980s." Nothing. Finally, he found a jewelry maker in Delaware who specialized in "authentic reproductions." He called the guy, described the earring to him.
"If I send you a photo of the earring, can you recreate a pair just like it?"
"Better if you send me the actual earring," the guy said.
House frowned.
"Negative," he said, drumming his fingers on the desk. "No time. What I send you several pictures, from all angles, and give you the exact measurements?"
"I could probably do that," the guy said, skeptically.
"How much?"
"You say it's 14k gold? About an inch and a half in diameter?"
"Yeah."
"260 dollars."
"And how soon can you get it to me?"
"Six to eight weeks?"
House actually laughed.
"I need it in my hands by tomorrow."
"Impossible."
"Nothing is impossible: 2,600 dollars."
He heard an audible gasp on the other end of the phone.
"Friend, for $2600, I'll stay up all night working and drive the earrings to you myself."
#######
He wasn't planning on coming clean to her.
His plan was to present her with the earrings and be the big hero. She'd see how much he cared about her, without him having to say a word. Because gestures spoke louder than words, right?
But it didn't work out that way.
The tiniest flicker of happiness flashed across her face, but then all the hurt and anger came rushing back. Her face turned to stone.
Well, fuck.
So he told her everything. He told her about Michigan. About getting expelled. About how much the night had meant to him. He babbled away like a lovesick fool.
And the relief and happiness that washed over her was simply too enticing to resist. So he kissed her and she kissed back—her breasts pressed up against his chest, her tongue like warm honey in his mouth—and he realized that he had crossed that imaginary line, a line he'd been too cowardly to cross, and that there was no turning back.
Nostalgia has a funny way of playing tricks on you. You go back and eat your favorite ice cream from when you were a kid and find out that, no, it wasn't the greatest ice cream on the planet, but just plain old ice cream, no different from any other. You watch a movie that seemed positively brilliant when you were 12 and now you see the acting was horrible and the plot was filled with enough holes to drive a monster truck through.
But this was not true of Lisa Cuddy. He'd elevated the sex they'd had at Michigan to near mythic proportions. He remembered her as being the sexiest, most desirable, most irresistible creature on earth. And damned if she still was.
If anything, the sex was better now. She'd lost any of that youthful inhibition. She clawed at his back. She whispered ever more unmentionable things in his ear. God, no one turned him on like Lisa Cuddy. No one.
They had sex two times. After, they lay side by side on his bed, both slightly sweaty and out of breath. She was naked—no more girlish shyness. One of his taupe sheets was tangled inadequately across her torso. His finger traced the slope of her breast, then he began to idly caress her nipple with his thumb.
"You're amazing," he said.
"You are too," she said.
He leaned over, lightly bit the nipple he had just turned hard with his thumb.
She moaned a bit, his cue to mount her.
"We're in trouble," she said, with a slightly dirty smile, as he eased onto her.
"Big trouble," he agreed.
######
Cameron noticed it right away. House was in a good mood. He was actually whistling. Quite a contrast from the depressed guy lying on the floor of his office a few days ago.
House's good moods always worried her.
Foreman was in the middle of presenting his theory about the patient when Dr. Cuddy suddenly appeared in the hallway, holding a file.
House saw her, popped up.
"Hold that thought," he said. "And I use the term thought generously."
He went into the hallway.
Cameron watched them, with unchecked curiosity, from the table.
House was smiling at Cuddy in a way she'd never seen him smile before—a kind of flirty, besotted smile. At one point, he leaned toward her and it almost looked they were going to kiss. Then she was sure she saw him mouth the words, "My place?"
When he came back into the office, he looked like a guy who was trying extremely hard not to grin like an idiot.
After the DDx, Cameron approached him.
"What was that all about before with Dr. Cuddy?" she asked.
"What did I tell you the other day?" he said, sharply.
"Of. None. My. And business," she muttered, by rote. "Not necessarily in that order."
"Exactly," he said.
It was later, in the cafeteria, when she was having lunch with Chase that she put all the pieces together.
He had been lying on the floor in the dark thinking about Cuddy! And something had clearly happened between them that now made him extremely happy. (My place? he had said.)
"I think Dr. House and Dr. Cuddy are sleeping together!" she blurted out.
Chase looked up from his sandwich, unperturbed.
"About damn time," he said.
EPILOGUE
As House waited for Cuddy to come over, he opened his nightstand drawer.
"Not tonight boys," he said out loud to the box of condoms. (When they'd had sex, Cuddy had uttered his four favorite words in the English language: I'm on the pill. This was meaningful in more than the obvious ways: It meant that she trusted him, knew that he practiced safe sex and got tested—both true.) He looked at the handcuffs, imagined, for a second, naked and helpless Cuddy chained to his bed—actually got a little hard at the thought. "Too soon," he said, with a chuckle. The half-smoked joint? Hmmm, probably not her style. He couldn't help but smile at the thermometer—how it all began.
Then he took the single earring out of his pocket, rolled it lovingly in tissue paper, and tucked it in the corner of the drawer.