A/N: The middle scene materialized after a spark of inspiration. The ending scene was an idea I'd been toying with, but didn't have the inspiration for. The beginning scenes came into existence after I pondered, got an idea, and wrote instead of doing my required summer reading (yep, my priorities are definitely in the right place). So this is a bit of a Frankenstein fic, but I'm proud that I finished something in the hideous heat of my writer's block.
What I was trying to accomplish here was capture that aching desire to finally open up, love, and be normal, while also capturing that instinct to pull away. I'd imagine that in this foreign situation of having happiness at his fingertips, House would be like a puppy that actually caught his tail: utterly delighted, but confused, wondering where to go from here, what to do with his prize.
Note: I couldn't remember if Cuddy's babysitter's name was Marina or Mariana, so I chose Marina and went with it. You don't need to tell me if it's wrong.
So…enjoy, I hope, and let's keep counting down the days until that season premiere!
Mood music: Happiness and Uncertainty, both by The Fray.
Intimacy
By: Zayz
Happiness is just outside my window
Would it crash blowing 80 miles an hour?
Or is happiness a little more like knocking
On your door, and you just let it in?
Happiness damn near destroys you
Breaks your faith to pieces on the floor
So you tell yourself, that's enough for now
Happiness has a violent roar
- "Happiness" by The Fray
"You ready to go?"
Cuddy surprises him when she appears like that in his doorway. He had been scrutinizing the MRI he had taken of his patient's brain a few hours ago, sitting in his chair with his feet up on the desk, holding the scan up to his desk light. He was in the midst of his process; although she couldn't have known it, he is vaguely annoyed with her for interrupting.
"Almost," he says.
"Do you want me to wait?" she asks.
House considers.
"If you want," he says, taking care to be non-committal.
"Okay." She sets her bag on the floor and sits on the chair in front of his desk. "Do you see anything in there?"
"I could've sworn this was a brain tumor," he remarks, almost to himself. "But the MRI is clean."
She glances at the white-board visible in the next room, scanning down the list of symptoms.
"You're right," she says. "Brain tumor is most likely."
"Apparently, the test disagrees with me." House clicked his tongue once in irritation. "Huh. Well, I'll run another differential tomorrow and we'll figure it out then."
Now he stands, picking up his little backpack from under his desk.
"What do you want to do for dinner tonight?" he asks.
"Anything is fine," says Cuddy, slinging her bag over her shoulder as well and getting up to leave.
"Is take-out okay?"
"Yeah. My place or yours?"
They exit the office and walk down the hall together, their steps brisk and matching up exactly.
"What does your baby-sitter say?" he asks.
"She's okay staying the night – she just had a fight with her husband," says Cuddy. "So…whatever you want."
"I'll pick the take-out; you pick the location," he tells her as they approach the elevator and he presses the call button.
"Fine," she says. "Your place."
"Great," he answers. "The Chinese take-away down the street."
She smirks.
"What is it with you and Chinese food?" she asks. "You always want Chinese take-out."
He shrugs as the elevator comes and they step inside.
"It's cheap and the manager usually owes me for something – this time, for secretly writing a birth control prescription for his niece," says House.
Cuddy is bewildered. "But…you didn't have to. She could have easily come to our clinic alone and gotten it without any trouble."
It's House's turn to smirk.
"Well, Mr. Wang didn't know that," he says smugly.
She rolls her eyes, but her smile is affectionate.
"Fine," she says. "Chinese take-out it is."
"Excellent," he says lightly. "I knew you'd see it my way."
Both smile as the elevator doors open and the lobby unfolds before them. A few stray doctors and nurses mill about, mulling gravely over blue folders, but no one so much as raises their heads as the two pass by. They come out to the parking lot, the summer air pleasantly warm even now, and they pause.
"I'll have to pick up the stuff if I don't want to pay," says House. "Should I meet you at home?"
"I can come with you," she says quickly.
His face cracks into a knowing grin.
"You just want to ride my motorcycle, don't you."
It isn't a question; it's a statement. She blushes.
"Maybe I do," she says.
"Then all you had to do was ask."
Smirking, House flicks his head towards the handicapped parking. Cuddy laughs and follows, her heels clack-clacking against the pavement behind him. They presently arrive at the motorcycle, waiting patiently in its parking space. House puts the key in and the engine roars to life. He slips on his helmet, hands Cuddy hers; and once they're ready, she wraps her arms tightly around him, squeezing his middle, and he drives off into the night.
Even from the beginning, he could tell the rhythm was off.
In the days and weeks after the crane accident, when both House and Cuddy shyly meandered their way into each other's lives, evenings had settled into a pleasant cadence, steady and simple like the beating of a healthy heart.
Dinner would either be take-out at one of their places or it would be a short, informal meal in a nearby restaurant, just talking. Sensing that House was still not entirely comfortable with a child in his life, Cuddy took great care in securing her babysitter for several extra hours, even entire nights. Marina was a kindly lady in her older years and didn't mind the extra hours so long as they were followed up with extra money. Though guilty for the diminished time she spent with Rachel, she felt it was a necessary evil.
She had to take things slow if she didn't want him to flee. So she made the subsequent sacrifices and spent her free time almost entirely in his company, mostly at his place so that Rachel wouldn't disturb them.
But tonight, straight from the start, he knew something was different.
For one thing, they never go in the same vehicle for dinner. She would take her car; he would take his bike; they would meet up at the desired location and go from there. Even in the evenings, when they spent the night at one of their homes, an extra machine would sit in the driveway. It was practical – Cuddy went to work much earlier than House did – but it was also safe, in that there was always an escape plan ready when necessary.
The fact that she chose to go with him – leave no escape plan, abide by his schedule – is definitely unusual.
And then there's the conversation they had over dinner.
Normally, they exchange small-talk – their days at work, what Wilson was up to, particularly difficult patients – or they banter, debating philosophy or literature or whether House should take more than one patient for the sake of humankind.
Tonight, however, Cuddy seemed to have it in her head that she wanted to talk about their histories.
She asked about his parents, whom she has never met, and what they did. It didn't seem to bother her that his father was dead and he had no desire to talk about him anyway. She wanted to know where he had lived on in his childhood; who his friends (and enemies) were in high school, in college; if he was ever romantically involved with anyone besides Stacy; what he did when he wasn't hanging out with strippers or drinking booze.
These were personal questions, but she drilled on, expecting an answer to every inquiry she could produce from off the top of her head.
He gave brief answers for the questions about his early life and parents; lied about girlfriends and his life in college; and when he couldn't think of something to say, he shot the questions back at her, demanding an answer from her as well. She took him entirely off-guard by complying easily.
He learned that her father was a freelance photographer who specialized in wild-life and that her mother was into advertising, before they both retired; she had lived in her childhood home until college; she had few close friends she was willing to give detail about; she had had a string of unsatisfactory boyfriends through her twenties before deciding her career came first; she wanted to travel to a list of exotic countries before she died.
Some things were harder to talk about – her father's death, the time she found out her boyfriend had been cheating on his fiance with her – but she talked, as if she wanted him to know so she wouldn't have to go there again.
It was fascinating enough listening to her life story, all those things about her he never knew; but it was infinitely harder for him to talk than it was to listen.
Digging up old ghosts over Chinese take-out was not a particularly savory task.
The conversation fluctuated between comical and deeply intimate, but he was uncomfortable through every minute of it. She bared her soul to him, in a lot of ways, and he wasn't entirely ready to receive so much all at once – let alone give her back some of his.
None of the discomfort has gone away, even now as he lies in bed in the middle of the night, Cuddy sleeping soundly beside him, her chest rising and falling in the dark. He can't sleep, replaying bits and pieces of their dialogue in his head, over and over again.
The guilt is a vicious cycle: he feels guilty for not telling her more when she asked, and guiltier still that he is making such a big deal about a simple, though candid, conversation.
It has been a bit of a whirlwind so far, this relationship. Not because they have been particularly active in their day-to-day lives, but because the shifts – small as they are – feel like earthquakes to a creature of habit such as himself.
Everyday she flashes a knowing smile in his direction when they pass each other in the hallways at work, everyday she turns up in his office at the end of a workday with the singular goal of seeing him – everyday she starts talking to him like she did tonight, letting him into her world even without a promise of reciprocation – something a lot like panic flares in his stomach.
Intimacy – both physical and emotional – came about so quickly with them, as though trying to make up for lost time. While the former was easy enough to deal with, the latter wasn't. He knew he had wanted this – he knew she was the one thing right now that could bring him anywhere close to being happy – but now that he's actually here, actually with her, somewhere close to being happy, he is unsettled. He doesn't know where to turn.
He's been in a lot of lonely, scary places before…but this is an entirely different game. It's been a long time since he answered to anyone the way he answers to her.
He turns instinctively to face her. She is cuddled up by his side, her dark hair wild against the milky pillow, and he can feel her warmth practically emanating off of her. How many times he's dreamed of such a scenario is anyone's guess, but he suddenly feels claustrophobic, displaced, removed from the world as he knows it. The sensation of falling grips his stomach. He needs to get out of here. He feels like he is living somebody else's life.
Taking care not to disturb her, he quietly slips out of the room, leaving his cane by the side of the bed.
At first, she thinks it is a particularly vibrant soundtrack to the movie playing in her head.
She is coming home from a trip to a faraway African land, walking through the airport, looking forward to coming home. Rachel is, for once, silent, holding her mother's hand and trotting by her side. She is exhausted; she is homesick; she just wants to get back to her own bed, her own kitchen. The scene is gray but her single-minded longing warps it, making the hallways feel longer and thinner, the lights sharp in some places and depressingly gray in others.
But then consciousness takes over – her eyes open as her dream-self steps out into the sunlight – and the music stays. For the life of her, she can't imagine what it could be.
Groggy, she stirs and blinks the sleep from her eyes. The music persists, relentless, the notes coasting into her room and into her ears. She glances at the clock on the bedside table and finds that, of course, it is four in the morning. Pushing her curls out of her face, she pads to his closet, slips into one of his old baggy shirts, and then pads out to the living room.
Sure enough, there he is, sitting at the piano, his fingers roving across the keys as comfortably as if they are home. The music is not cheerful, certainly, but it's lively enough, with its own unconscious strength, like the rock that sits firm because it knows no better. The mood is hard to pin, because while the notes themselves evoke a certain emotion, his fingers evoke another.
It appears to be a favorite; she can't see any evidence of sheet music to help him along.
He seems to be in some sort of trance: his eyes are closed, the muscles around his mouth taut, and he is in a place far from here, where she can't reach him.
She has never seen him like this before, so focused. Every muscle stands to attention and is fully invested into the task at hand. She has always known he was musical; but to hear him play, really play, it transforms them both. It is as though the instrument brings out his humanity more than a person ever could. Including her.
Fully awake now, she crosses her arms – more for warmth than for a personal statement – and cautiously draws near the piano. Somewhere inside her, she feels guilty for encroaching on his clearly private world, but her attention is piqued: she is here, and she is awake now because of him, and she is curious because she has never known what he does when he is gone. She has never known who he is when he is gone.
She is about a foot away from the piano when his eyes open.
The music continues, evocative and mysterious, but his eyelids lift to reveal irises that have never looked bluer, in the half-light of his living room. She pauses, caught under the spotlight of his gaze; and for a fleeting moment, he looks disarmed, almost vulnerable, as though she has intruded on something she was not supposed to see.
They stare like this for several moments, with the string of music stemming from his fingers unbroken, until he averts his eyes to the ivory keys and she arrives beside the piano, just inches from him – close enough to smell his smell, like wood and coffee. But he continues to play just the same.
"Hey," she says, leaning against the body of the instrument.
He nods to acknowledge that he heard her.
"Why are you here?" she asks.
The music thins out a little, tapers off as some of his attention drifts to her, but the melody is as strong as ever as he mulls this one over.
"I don't know," he says at last, though most unwillingly.
She purses her lips, watching his fingers coax the notes out of each key, loving but firm. He has beautiful hands, lean and sure, with long fingers that are capable of both strength and sensitivity in equal parts. Last night, she had custody of these hands, but they never do for her what they do here – creating magic. She lets her pursed lips fall slack and sighs.
"I've never heard you play before," she admits.
"Not a lot of people have," he offers.
Suddenly brave, or perhaps very stupid, she dares to lower herself to the edge of the piano bench he is seated at. The plastic-infused wood is cold under the thin T-shirt.
"You play well," she says.
He seems taken aback that she would say this – so much so that for a moment, his fingers hover over the keys and the music stops.
For as long as he can remember, his piano has been an outlet. Memory informs him that he was given formal lessons some time in his youth, likely in infrequent spells due to his nomadic military-brat existence. But talent has never had anything to do with why he continues to play. It's funny that she brings it up.
His eyes snap to his side and meet hers, searching her for an answer to a question neither of them asked. And she steadily holds his gaze, searching him for something she cannot name with words. It seems like the world is holding its breath, waiting for them to say something, anything, to break the silence.
Then—
"You can still sleep for a few hours if you come to bed now," she says.
Something deadens behind his face at this.
"No," he says.
She considers for a moment, and parts her lips as if to say something else, but he gets there first and cuts her off.
"What are you doing out here anyway?" he asks gruffly. "It's four in the morning. You should be asleep."
"So should you," she retorts. "I'm awake because your piano woke me up."
For a moment, he seems to have no response to this; but he recovers fast and says, "Then go back to bed. Waiting will only keep you conscious longer."
She finds that she is somehow mildly offended.
"Do you want me to leave?" she asks.
"Yes."
He doesn't flinch. He doesn't look away. He doesn't even pause.
She can only purse her lips to keep from letting the hurt spill out.
"You're more honest with that thing than you are with me," she says at last, unabashedly bitter. "So yes. I think I'll go. I clearly don't have any more business here tonight."
And she gets up without another word, disappearing into the bedroom.
He watches her go, his fingers still poised over the piano keys. The previous guilt returns in full force: for waking her up at this obscure hour; for sending her away when all she wanted was a little bit of him; for letting his anti-social reflex get the better of him.
He can't do this. He can't. She wants more than he can willingly give right now and he can't handle it. And she can't expect him to.
He takes a breath and his eyes avert back to the piano. He tries to shake this off, go back to what he was playing, but the mood is ruined and he knows it. Frustrated, he puts the cover back over the keys and rests his face briefly in his hands, cursing himself for screwing this up – yet again.
He gets up from the piano bench and limps back to the bedroom. The lights are on. He peers inside and finds that she is choosing a book from his shelf. The image is jarring, somehow – Cuddy, in his old t-shirt, standing in his room, taking one of his books to read in his bed. But he swallows his disconcertion before it can do any damage. He joins her at the bookshelf and picks a book for himself as well.
The two of them go back to bed together and climb inside. And, without a word, they read by lamp-light until day breaks and renders the artificial light unnecessary.
Cuddy rides on the back of House's motorcycle to get to work the next day, but otherwise, the morning is as normal as it gets.
House's team is grilled on reasons why the MRI would come back with no brain tumor for a patient who obviously must have a brain tumor. Chase suggests something fairly ludicrous; Thirteen suggests something more so. Foreman squashes both theories without being asked and Taub tries to argue Chase's point. Some of the frustration from the previous night becomes obvious in some of House's particularly nasty retorts, but the team is so accustomed to being bullied that they content themselves with a disgusted expression and silence.
They agree to test Chase's fairly ludicrous theory, for the sake of doing something, and disperse, leaving him alone in his office. He chooses to watch TV.
The afternoon continues forth – and now is when the trouble starts.
House has lunch with Wilson in the cafeteria and then returns to his office for more TV. However, he is interrupted by the arrival of the tests results – they are negative, no surprises there – and another differential takes place. He informs them that he wants to cut into the guy's brain and search for the tumor with the good old naked eye; the team is shocked and instantly barrages him with a million reasons why not. But he listens to none of them and without thinking limps down to Cuddy's office for approval.
The moment he enters, though, and she looks up at him, he remembers the night before.
"Good afternoon, Dr. House," Cuddy says briskly. She holds her phone to her ear; she appears to be on hold. "Make this fast. What do you need?"
"Approval to cut into my patient's brain to look for a tumor," he says, tossing the forms on her desk. The incredulous look on her face – even before she looks at the paperwork – doesn't suggest good things for his cause.
She humors him and flips through the file, but she is done too quickly. She says, "No. There is no way I am letting you do this."
"I know it's a brain tumor," House insists. "It has to be. There's no other explanation."
"Well, if it's a brain tumor, it should show up on the MRI – which it didn't," she reminds him. "So we are forced to conclude that there is no brain tumor and you need to find a different diagnosis."
"Tests can lie," he mutters.
"Patients lie, results lie, tests lie – what doesn't lie in your world?" Cuddy demands, impatient.
He chooses not to answer this.
"It's a brain tumor," he repeats. "And I need to get in there and fish it out before it does any more damage."
"He would die on the operating table – his heart is fragile," says Cuddy, consulting the folder for support.
"He would die if I didn't put him on the operating table, because there is nothing else it could be," House retorts.
"Well, you're not going to cut into his brain," Cuddy says primly, handing him back the file. "So find something else to do. Prove it's there and then we can try and operate."
His general frustration bubbles over; his expression cools rather ominously as he says, "Don't bring last night into your decision. The patient needs the brain surgery and you know it."
Her general frustration bubbles over as well; her expression fires up rather ominously as she says, "Whatever we have doesn't affect my medical decision. So live with it – or find a better rationale."
His glare is ice-cold, but he storms out of the office without another word. And, sighing, Cuddy returns to the phone, the annoying classical hold music still playing in her ear as she waits.
His mood is foul the rest of the afternoon and concentrating on medicine is nothing short of unthinkable.
He sits back in his comfortable desk chair, brooding, after telling the team to continue testing. But any sort of enlightenment eludes him tonight, as the scenes from last night and this afternoon continue to play insistently in his head like a broken loop.
Before last night, it is safe to say that he was…happy. He was happy eating dinner and exchanging small talk; he was happy sleeping over and then going back to work the next morning; he was happy listening to her laugh and letting himself blossom just a little bit under her watch.
She didn't demand much of him. They kept it light and physical, the way he wanted it. After so much wondering and waiting, always too afraid to take the first step, it was like treading through a dream or something. They didn't bicker; they didn't fight. They kept it easy, sweet, and while that wasn't usually his style, he went along with it. He'd fought enough; it was time to surrender a little, and try.
And then…last night.
Last night, she dared to be personal with him. She brought them out of the lightness, out of the comfortable discussions about work, and literature, and movies. She did what normal couples do – she opened up and expected him to do the same. She was in the right and they both knew it; she was just doing what was meant to be done.
It shouldn't have been so big a deal, telling her about his parents and his schooling and his love life and all those stupid trivial things people always want to know about. But somehow, it was, because it didn't just represent her getting to know him; it meant trusting her with his life, essentially – trusting her with the experiences he shared with few else. Trusting her to listen and not judge him too harshly for the things he thought and felt.
That kind of trust doesn't come easily to him. He has avoided it most of his life. And trying to usurp the design now, when it's already so deeply ingrained into his being, is like trying to resurrect a long-buried anchor from the greedy ocean floor.
It takes time and patience, and he knows it, knows that it isn't going to be easy for her or for him; but because he needs her, and is scared of being alone, without her, he has dragged her into the mess and now he isn't sure how far he wants her scouting that ocean floor. The noise of the machines she is inevitably going to use will disturb the peace that comes with the long-established pattern of being alone. And he is afraid of moving, of coming to the surface, being under the glare of the sun – being happy, and open, and free, when he has never known how to be any of these things.
She is disturbing him. She is taking him out of his comfort zone. And it is a testament of how far gone he was that he can't bear to indulge even one personal conversation.
Being happy is a difficult thing, he muses. Being happy means being at peace in a different way – not from fear of the unknown, but from the harmony that comes from knowing he is where he needed to be.
Being happy is a process and he isn't good with processes. He is an endgame kind of person – he cares about the results, not what it takes to get there. That will need to change, if he aspires to be happy with her. And change is always a scary thought.
He glances out the window, at the afternoon beyond the thick glass. The sky is dark; it's almost certainly going to rain tonight. Hopefully it will wait until he is at home; he has to ride his motorcycle home and he doesn't fancy getting soaked.
It does indeed rain like a cliché tonight.
Rain-drops fall like the vertical streaks of an angry painter's brush; the clouds hover, fat guardians scowling in shades of gray; September leaves, dirty and flattened, lay strewn on the roads like remnants of once-fine party favors. The heat of the day has been washed out and the only vividness left is the emerald of the plants, making the view from the window surreal, in a way.
And then there's the sound. The sound of the rain falling to the earth, pitter-pattering against the glass windows with a strength all its own, is soothing. Comforting, in the sense that it remains constant when all else shifts beneath your feet.
A rerun of some 90's sitcom plays and Cuddy half-follows it, but her mind is in a million other places, stretched and tangled like an old spider's web. And the tragedy of it all is that no matter where her thoughts run, they end up in one central hub.
Which – cliché of clichés – is House.
It's a dash of cold water on her dignity, true enough, but if she's not honest with herself she's not sure who she'll be honest with. House is on her mind and it's not like she can just force him out of her thoughts, like she always used to do when things got hard. That's not an option anymore, now that they're together. And she isn't sure if that's an improvement.
Besides the TV, her home is unhelpfully silent. When Rachel screams, or the phone rings, she can get lost in the distraction; but here, on this rainy cliché night, she has no such gift. Her thoughts wander without any reverence for her feelings.
It's no good pretending she isn't hurt about last night, because she is. There's the truth of the matter. She is hurt and upset because her earnest attempts at being personal were soundly rejected, because he snapped at her and tried to insinuate that she couldn't do her job right, because he thought he could slip out of bed in the middle of night and hide from her without her knowing or caring.
No one said dating House was going to be easy; but no one said it would be like this, either.
She is doing her best. She is. She has all but shut Rachel out of her life with him and has poured money into Marina's pocket to do so; she spends every evening in his company and doesn't talk about things that tax him; she doesn't hassle him any more than she needs to at work. She has been careful, more so than she's ever tried to be, and she's ended up with nothing.
She thought he could make her happy and that she, in turn, could make him happy. Apparently, though, happiness can only exist if she ignores her better nature and indulges him.
The injustice rankles. She tries, but he doesn't have to. He just follows her lead and lets her do the work. He is shy about these things, she knows, but a relationship can't remain so unbalanced if it intends to work. He needs to try harder.
And she resolves, here and now, to sit quietly and wait for him until he does. Because she is done extending olive branches that will not be reciprocated. Because if he can't let her in, she has no desire to be there. She has no desire to try either.
The next day at work, business passes as usual. Patients are attended to; paperwork is (for the most part) turned in; meetings are put together and broken apart.
But through that day at work, Cuddy makes no effort to visit House in his office. He goes back to hers to re-insist on the brain surgery, since every test they ran before came back negative, but she holds her ground. She tells him no. He glowers at her, but admits defeat and limps off, no doubt hatching a diabolical plan as he goes. She's just grateful he didn't make any more aspirations about her job – although she's sure he's thought of plenty – and the day goes on.
And when the evening makes its appearance and the doctors begin their trek home, he waits for her in his office and she doesn't come.
Instantly, he is on the alert. Her failure to show up at his office door, smiling and asking what they are doing for dinner, is definitely a bad sign. Even within the context of the past two days, it can mean anything at all, from a dignified silence to a hostile attempt at breaking up. Though he is leaning more towards the former than the latter, he can't put anything past her. He can sense, as he just sometimes does, that he really hurt her that night at the piano.
He dawdles in wait for an extra half or so, spinning slowly in his office chair, wondering if she will break her resolve and show up. But after that half hour comes and goes, he must force himself to assume she won't and that he will have to go home alone, without her.
It's amazing how daunting that sounds, all of a sudden. He has gone home alone too many nights to count; and yet, now that he knows what it's like to leave with someone else, he finds himself slightly disappointed.
In a last ditch attempt at discerning her purpose from her body language, he makes his way to her office to see if she's still in. She isn't. But a note is propped up on her desk and even from here, he can see his name on it in her handwriting – as though she was waiting for him to do exactly this.
Curious, he opens the door. It isn't locked. He picks up the card on the desk and unfolds it. There are only two sentences there – crafted less-than-perfectly, but with enough care that he knows she took time to think and scribe the lines rather than scribble them before rushing out. That, at least, is a small pleasure.
My babysitter wanted the night off. I left early to be with Rachel.
There is no signature, no invitation to come home to her. And it registers in his head how very gutsy it was to leave the note like that, where anyone passing through could see it and take it and read it. She has obviously gone to some lengths to pass this message on to him and he is sure there is some kind of ulterior motive at play here.
Is she testing him, baiting him to see if he'll go to her house knowing that they won't be alone? Or is she banking on his curiosity to take him back to her?
Again, it could mean anything at all – or it could mean just one thing.
He would only find out if he went.
So he tucks the note in his pocket and decides to do that.
It's pouring with rain again tonight. Apparently the storm-clouds from the night before have not yet decided to relinquish their hold upon New Jersey; and after biding their time all day, they release the rain in a torrent under the cover of darkness.
Cuddy watches the rain from the window in her kitchen. Rachel has been fed and put to sleep; she herself has eaten and changed into sweatpants and an old t-shirt, her hair tied back in a messy ponytail. She half-considered watching TV earlier, but decided she wasn't in the mood. So now she watches the rain. It streaks across the window and occasionally accompanies a boom of thunder, a flash of lightning. She only hopes the storm won't disturb the baby.
Loosely, her mind wanders, from scenarios at work and beyond; but tonight, she finds herself not thinking so intensely about House. As though her brain is tired of waiting, of being disappointed, tired of thinking something good is within her reach when she's really doomed for disaster. There's only so much of it she can take and she has already reached her quota.
This isn't going to work, even if there had been promise before in those sweet kisses he gave her at dawn when she told him she loved him, in the kisses that followed, in the laughter and pleasure she saw lighting up both their faces so they suddenly looked and felt twenty-five, bursting with quiet joy.
Happiness is short-lived. She can't depend on him to give her that. Apparently, she can't depend on anyone to give her that. She'll just end up sitting alone, watching the rain and thinking of bad clichés.
This thought barely crosses the expanse of her mind before she hears the knock on the door.
She stands without thinking and begins making her way to the door. The person outside doesn't knock again, confident she heard him or her. She undoes the lock and, out of curiosity, checks the keyhole to identify her visitor.
Not entirely surprisingly, it is the person she has been trying not to think about too often.
She pauses, but opens the door to him.
Neither says anything for a moment, her standing inside the structure she calls home, him standing on her doorstep. He is soaking wet, his hair grungy and clinging to his head, his leather jacket and t-shirt damp with water. He must be cold, too, but he doesn't show it, looking her right in the eye, unmoving.
She wonders what possessed him to come here tonight. There's something romantic about the thought of him thinking of her, hopping onto his motorcycle, braving the storm just to see her. And they both know romantic isn't really his style.
But he did it. He's here. And he did it for her.
Her face softening, she moves away from the door and lets him in. He obliges, even bothering to wipe his feet on the welcome mat before stepping inside. She closes the door behind him and purses her lips, considering him.
"What are you doing here?" she asks.
"You said you'd be home," he tells her.
"Rachel is asleep," she says. "And I've already eaten."
"Me too," he says.
She pauses. "Do you want to borrow my shower?"
"I've had enough of water for the night," he remarks.
She smiles a genuine smile.
"Then do you want coffee?"
"Okay."
He follows her to the kitchen and sits in the same chair she had sat in so recently, while she sets the coffee maker to work. Then she disappears into her room, reappearing a few seconds later holding a towel. He accepts it and begins to dry out his face and hair, trying not to get too much water on her floor.
She watches him in silence. He dabs at his jacket and clothes with the towel, but it doesn't help much and he gives up, putting it in a heap on the table beside him. Now that he is no longer occupied, he watches her in silence.
Then—
"I lied," he says, somewhat flatly. "At the University of Michigan, I dated this girl, Caroline Masters, because she bet me ten bucks that I wouldn't have the guts to go out with her. She was a cheerleader, so she made me go to the some of the games. We dated for about a year. Then she asked me to move in with her. I broke it off and never saw her again."
Questions explode like fireworks in her head at his revelation, and she longs to ask them, but something about his face – his expressive blue eyes in particular – that stops her.
"I also lied about having a room-mate in college," he says. "I had one for a few days, but I drove him out by wetting his sheets, messing up his room, and playing techno all night. So I kept the double room to myself that year."
Now she can't contain herself.
"Why did you lie?" she asks.
Those blue eyes meet her for the second time tonight and he says, "Because you shouldn't have asked."
"If I don't ask, I won't know," she says. "And I want to know. If this is going to work…you need to trust me."
"And you need to trust me," he counters.
She hadn't expected this.
"I do trust you," she says, bewildered.
"This is the first time I've been here since we started going out," he tells her.
"So?"
"So you never asked if I wanted to come," he says. "You always assume we'll be at my place."
Her cheeks go pink.
"Well, I thought you'd be more comfortable there, because of Rachel," she says.
"You assumed," he corrects her.
"You don't like Rachel," she says, somewhat defensively. "You didn't even want me to adopt her."
He doesn't say anything, but the look on his face is resolute. He is annoyed that she didn't give him a choice in the matter. Even if he didn't want to be around Rachel, it was his decision to make, not hers. He is well aware that he will have to deal with her at some point. He can't hide from her forever.
She bites down on her lower lip, considering. Maybe he has a point.
So she holds his gaze and asks, "Do you want to stay over tonight?"
His eyes are undecipherable.
"Yes," he says.
She smiles slightly and stands, picking up the discarded towel. He does the same and they go together to her bedroom. She throws the towel into the hamper in the bathroom and then goes into her closet, emerging with one of her old over-sized t-shirts.
"You can borrow this, if you want," she says, throwing it to him.
He catches it and grins at her. "I guess I won't need pants," he says.
"Your boxers should suffice," she retorts, smirking.
He slips off his jacket and t-shirt and wears her shirt. It smells like her. She strides towards him and kisses him. He returns her kiss and pulls out the elastic from her hair, leaving a curtain of brown open over her shoulders. Smiling, she kisses him once more and then retreats to the bed, tossing the decorative pillows to the floor and pulling off the bed-cover.
She slips under the covers and he joins her. These sheets are not familiar, but he figures, in time, they will be. Thankfully, the baby has not woken up yet. With any luck, she will wait until the morning to stir. But for now, the night is theirs.
A/N: If only you could somehow know how pleased I am to be finished with this. I worked for ages (i.e. a solid month) on it and I can only hope you enjoyed it.
Please remember to review on your way out.